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“I said almost the same thing in almost the same room four months ago, and it took me three conversations, an argument with Drayce, and a full day to get there.” She sipped her coffee. “You’re doing fine.”
“You said I’m getting faster.”
“That too.”
On the counter, Rowan moved a cork two inches to the left and regarded the result. Gerald — she called him Gerald now, which was Pike’s fault — had followed her from the boardwalk. He sat by the café door, waiting to be acknowledged, his dignity intact. “Come in, then.”
Gerald strode in. Rowan studied him. Gerald held her gaze. In that moment, something was decided between them. From behind the counter, Valene said, “I need a security deposit and a facilities review.”
“Send the invoice to the raccoon,” Mirelle said. “She’s in charge.” Rowan selected another cork.
All things considered, this was a six-out-of-ten day. The coffee was warm now. Progress.
SIX
TOR
The alert hit at dusk, and Tor was in the truck by the time the message reached him. Four contacts. Northern ward boundary. Modified: the same variants he had flagged after the café, the ones that moved wrong, targeted wrong. Not wandering as Rift-driven creatures did. Aimed. Someone had pointed them south and told them where to go. He called Drayce one-handed as he pulled out of the security operations parking lot.
“Cliffs,” Drayce spat.
“They’re not going for the ward line. They’re tracking the women — heading straight for them.”
“The women?”
“Yes.” Silence. Then, “Twelve minutes.”
Tor drove faster than the road allowed, and his wolf would not settle anymore. The warm, comfortable version that had been making itself at home since the boardwalk was gone, replaced by the older one. The one with grudges about threats. The one currently treating this as an emergency and offering several suggestions for what to do about it.
He kept his hands on the wheel.
The ward cliffs at dusk smelled of cold salt and the metallic tang of stressed magic — the ward line’s hum running low, the standing stones flickering like they were working too hard. Tor had patrolled this boundary long enough to read it the way other people read the weather. Tonight, it read wrong. Drayce was already at the northern approach. Maelin stood sixty feet south on the right flank, still as a cliff face. Pike geared up at the vehicles, already talking. “Modified, heading for residential streets, coordinated.” He caught up to Tor mid-sentence. “I have thoughts about this.”
“Later.”
“They’re time-sensitive.”
“Pike.” Tor checked his radio. “Right flank with Maelin. Hold it.”
“That’s not where —”
“That’s where I’m putting you.”
Pike went to the right flank. His thoughts went with him. The creatures came over the cliff edge at full speed, and they were wrong from the first second: moving sideways, deliberate, tracking south instead of scattering. They had a destination, and they were heading toward it. Tor let out a partial shift: gold eyes, speed, the wolf close under the surface, controlled and deployed. He held the rest back by will alone.
Later.
He went for the nearest contact.
Drayce took the first one apart. Clean, fast, done. The second went for Pike.
Pike was fast and creative, and he read this boundary better than most. The creature still got him. It caught him across the shoulder and spun him hard into the cliff rock with a crack that made Tor’s head snap around even as he fought his own contact. “Fine!” Pike, from somewhere behind a boulder, before Tor could ask. “I’m fine, it’s —” an impressive stretch of profanity followed, the kind that implied genuine creativity under duress “— okay, I’m going to need a minute.”
“You have thirty seconds.”
“Inspiring leadership.” He shifted against the rock. “Twenty-eight seconds.”
Tor shoved his contact back over the cliff’s edge. The ocean took it. He moved toward Pike’s creature. It turned south the moment Pike went down, abandoning the fight for its real target, which told him everything he needed to know about who was running these things. Creatures like these didn’t think ahead. These did.
