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He passed Mirelle’s street without stopping. It sat on the route, and her kitchen light was on, a habit of hers, not that he’d been officially tracking it. The light was warm. The house was quiet. She was fine.

She is my mate, she is fine, and she has no idea what’s coming her way. I have her scarf in my truck.

The scarf had been in the back seat long enough that he’d stopped seeing it. He’d been meaning to return it. He’d driven past her house twice with that intention and found a reason not to both times. He was tabling that. At the ops center, he pulled up the residential overlay and added a second alert flag to Mirelle’s address. It was already at priority one. He wanted to see the flag on the screen and know it was there. Unnecessary. He did it regardless.

Then he pulled the other four cases Maelin had flagged and ran them against the same timing. They matched. Not perfectly, with different intervals and different strength, but from the same source. Multiple women. Multiple tracks running at once.

He has been doing this longer than the data shows.

Tor sat with that for a while. The ops center was quiet. Her scarf was still in the back seat. He thought about her in the forest clearing, going quietly, startled when the magic did what she asked. He thought about her hands on his arm on the cliff, tying it off without being asked. He thought about her on the boardwalk, explaining her crisis to no one in particular at full volume because that was how she got through things. He thought about I know you did, said like it wasn’t a large thing to say.

It was an enormous thing.

Tor pulled up Mirelle’s file for the third time this week and started over. He would find this guy. The name, the source, all of it. The thing that had been pressing on her loneliness while she kept thinking that was who she was.

For once, this relationship was not complicated.

NINE

MIRELLE

The professional case for going into the forest with Tor was airtight, and Mirelle was satisfied. One of her early summons had relocated overnight to the Whisperwood trail system. The Lantern, a soft-glowing ovoid, had appeared in the garden weeks earlier and hovered at waist height, occasionally bumping the garden wall as if inspecting it for structural flaws. Tor texted at seven forty-five with coordinates and the phrase “creature location protocol,” the most romantically neutral invitation to a walk in the woods Mirelle had ever received, and she was counting on it staying that way.

She stopped at the café to tell Bexley she was heading out. Bexley, six straight days into the data, glanced up as if she’d confirmed a theory and turned her notebook so Mirelle could see the map. The places the Lantern avoided lined up with the boardwalk stretches where the man had been. “It’s been steering around the tether, even when he’s not there.” Mirelle studied the map for a moment. “My creature figured out the tether before I did.”

“Your creature has been doing this longer than you have.” Writing again. “Go find it. I want to see how it’s been moving.”

“That’s the warmest send-off you’ve ever given me.” Bexley’s pen didn’t stop. “Second warmest. I once told you your magic showed real promise.”

Mirelle went.

Tor was at the trailhead when she arrived.

He’d sent the text; she’d replied. She’d stopped at the café, and he’d still beaten her here. Either he’d driven at an irresponsible speed or he’d been at the trailhead before the text went out, a detail that belonged in Bexley’s orange category. He wasn’t on his phone. His eyes were on the bend where the path emerged from the trees, which meant he’d clocked her before she’d fully cleared it. He lifted a hand — small, economical, the most Tor-possible version of a wave. He seemed to have been debating how long a wait stopped counting as casual.

Professional case. Airtight. We are here for the creature.

“It’s stationary near the creek.”

“Bexley mapped its movements. It’s been avoiding wherever the strange man has been, for days.”

He went still. Focus dropped over him like a shutter. “That’s useful.”

“That’s what Bexley said about you last week.”

He lifted his head. “She said I was useful?”

“She said your data was useful. I’m extrapolating.” Mirelle kept her expression neutral. “She also said my magic was showing real promise. She doesn’t say that about everyone.”

The corner of his mouth moved. Mirelle had been cataloging that tell for weeks. It was the closest he’d ever reliably come to a smile, and it kept doing serious structural damage to her professional case. “Lead the way.” She gestured at the trail before the situation developed further.

In the forest, he moved differently. Not slower, but more settled, his usual efficiency dialed back one notch to let out the part of him that had run these trails for years. He didn’t check his phone every thirty seconds. He navigated, and she found herself studying how he read the trail, the same way she had studied how he read rooms.

Not the moment.

She followed her own signal, the pull she did not yet have a name for, the way she could feel the Lantern’s presence before she could see it. They didn’t talk much. The trail narrowed in places. In those sections she registered him behind her as she did her own heartbeat: involuntary, ongoing, not examined.

The creek came up on their left, and they followed it east. The trail was quieter here. The tourists had thinned out, and the working forest took over: older trees, more moss, and amber-honey warmth woven through the air, summoned creature energy she was only beginning to tell apart from regular morning light. “You can feel it shift here.” He lifted a hand.