The hatchback sat like a surrendered animal in the alley—scuffed, smelling faintly of ozone and burnt magic charms. We all pointedly ignored the spot where its paint paled in the silhouette of something ancient, where it had apparently leaned against it. From the outline and handprints, something(s) supernatural might have had relations up against/on her car.

  Elly crouched behind the steering wheel, fingers moving over the surfaces of the interior like a mother fussing at a colicky child. She was whispering, soft syllables that made the metal shiver; the charms she'd stitched into the lining of her jacket glowed and winked as she coaxed the last of the ledger-stink and Threshkin scratches and dents out of the car (all except that pesky silhouette).

  Willard’s rats—because of course Willard had rats aplenty—were doing what rats do best, chewing old paper wards like they were artisanal crackers. They made the soft sound of things being eaten that were never supposed to be eaten. Somewhere above us a neon sign buzzed, and the city went on, indifferent.

  We just stood there, which is to say we clustered like a jury trying not to give away what we'd decided.

  My glove hand itched where the ledger paper had been. The mark was small: a tidy little slip of smoke-stain, a burn like someone had stamped me on the cuff and filed me away. Tagged. Certified. The Curator’s handwriting, tidy and smug and permanent. If ledger-ink had a tone, it would be clinical: “Noted.”

  “Not me,” I said, because repetition is its own kind of prayer. “They tagged the glove, not me. Same thing, different phrasing. Totally fine.”

  Lily’s fingers slid along my forearm—warm, gentle, a tether. “Danny,” she said, quiet enough that only I could hear how worried she was, “gloves don’t bleed. You do.”

  Eury, forever composed, folded her arms and became an immovable judgment. Her jaw clipped the consonants clean. “This isn’t fine. Between this and the fiasco at the hotel, they know him now. They know the taste for certain.”

  Elly stood, dust smearing the knees of her jeans like war paint. She had a smudge of brake dust on her cheek and a look I’d come to trust when bad things were finally about to get done. “Then we plan. Right now.”

  I wanted to argue about semantics—about whose name was in which ledger column—about anything that would get me out of the feeling of being a commodity. It was cowardice dressed up as logic. No one obliged me in that.

  Eury returned the rental car, while the rest of us piled into the hatchback, which Elly, understandably, wasn’t parting with for even a moment. At least we didn’t have to walk home or take a bus…

  Back at my place, the living room felt like an evidence locker: Elly had sprawled papers across the coffee table in the way generals arrange maps when they’re about to launch an invasion of another country. A rune-circle hovered on one coaster, rotating slow as a metronome and casting soft light.

  My Pop-Tart Spider perched on the bookshelf, all sugared carapace and too-many eyes, chittering rhythmically like it was moderating a meeting. “WATCHED,” it clicked once. “GUARDED.”

  “Good news,” Elly said, leaning against my armchair like it owed her money. “The Curator isn’t invincible. Its warehouse isn’t impenetrable.”

  “Bad news?” I asked, because hope is a dangerous, thin fabric.

  “We just made sure he knows exactly who stole from him,” she finished. Her fingers drummed against the paper. “We didn’t just poke the ledger. We tootled on his table. Loudly.”

  “I don’t like to tootle loudly.” I lamented.

  “Daniel.” Elly used her stern ‘this isn’t a time for joking’ tone.

  I slumped into my recliner and felt the upholstery sigh. “So, we egged a mafia boss’s house, basically.”

  Eury corrected me, deadpan. “Worse. We showed him we could climb his fences. Now he’ll post guards, making any future incursions harder. And now he knows who to blame for it.”

  “Meaning me,” I muttered. The certainty of it was a small, steady lead weight in my stomach.

  No one argued. That silence did more for my anxiety than any pep talk could.

  The doorbell rang. I looked at the others. Elly cleared her throat. “So, that’s the backup.”

  “Backup?” I frowned.

  Elly shrugged dismissively. “Yeah. Calling in some favors.”

  “The ghosts of makeouts past.” Eury suggested. Clearly, she knew what was happening.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Lily whistled innocently.

  “I won’t ask what this is going to cost me later.” I grumbled.

  The door rattled like a loose tooth and then Sélis, the Dopplegeist, oozed through—phasing across the threshold in a slouch that wasn’t theirs, or maybe was theirs today.

  As a multiple being trapped in a single body, their appearance constantly shifted, generally female but not always. It was as if you caught a different facet of her being from each angle. Their hoodie hung wrong, sleeves rolled at mismatched lengths, and their grin flickered like a bad channel. It reminded me magic motion trading cards, with multiple images.

  “Heard the news from Elly,” they said, but halfway through the sentence their voice dropped into a rasp that didn’t belong in their throat. “You idiots poked the wasp’s nest.” Then it jumped again, lighter, almost teasing, “Very Bold. I like boldness.”

  They didn’t sit so much as collapse into my armchair, angles wrong, like a photo overexposed. “We’ve seen worse,” they muttered, plural, as if the room contained someone or something else that only they could see.

  I wasn’t sure if they were referring to my apartment or the situation. Thank goodness she hadn’t seen it before the ladies did the apartment makeover.

  Behind her, Zorka padded in, jittery. She had too much energy for the square footage—leather jacket half-zipped, nails chewed ragged. She gave the room a quick scan, then scratched behind her ear like a dog who’d forgotten it wasn’t a habit.

  “Looks like your team here called in all the backup,” she said, bouncing on the balls of her feet, “you’re not walking alone anymore. I’ll take shifts. I’ll do all the shifts. Walking mailboxes don’t scare me.” She laughed, too loud, then bit at a thumbnail. “Okay, they scare me a little, but I’m faster.”

  Sélis stretched, spine creaking like old wood. “Relax, Mercer. Between all of us—” their smile split into something tired, brittle, then reassembled— “we’ll notice before anyone gets close.”

  The spider tapped its mandibles, a dry punctuation. “WATCHED. GUARDED.”

  I didn’t like how comforting that sounded.

  My phone chimed. A single flame emoji lit the screen—Jade. Hoardlink.

  CONGRATULATIONS.

  THE CURATOR IS NOT UNTOUCHABLE.

  GOOD WORK, MY LITTLE THIEVES.

  Elly’s knuckles went white on the edge of the table. “She knows already.”

  “Of course she does,” Eury said, folding her hair back like a blade. “She’s been nudging that fight from the shadows. Us against him—maybe that’s been the point. You think it’s coincidence?”

  “I think I hate this job,” I muttered. It felt honest for once.

  Another chime.

  DON’T LOSE MOMENTUM.

  YOUR FINAL TASK APPROACHES.

  I groaned out loud. “Momentum. Like we’re coworkers.”

  “You’re not her coworker,” Elly snapped. “You’re her pawn.”

  “Can I at least be a knight?” I asked. “Pawns don’t get cool moves.”

  Lily smacked my knee. “Shut up. She congratulated you. That means she’s watching. Focus.”

  Sélis made a small show of producing a thermos from behind their back and taking a sip like they hadn’t been there for just five minutes. “We’re not here to play heroic—well, not only to play heroic,” they said. “We’re here to keep you alive and mildly inconvenienced.”

  “Last time I had this kind of conversation I ended up sharing my bed and having several roommates.” I remarked.

  “Do tell.” Sélis eyebrows rose, intrigued.

  I shook my head and put my arms up in an X. “Not an invitation.”

  Zorka leaned forward, voice low. “I know places that don’t have cameras but have eyeballs. I know people who will swap passwords for a cigarette and a story.” She looked at me. “You’ll be fine if you stop being an idiot.”

  “Helpful, as always,” I lied. At least her energy was in the right place.

  She lurched back to a ready stance. “I’m going to take the first patrol.”

  Everyone watched her go.

  Sélis waited until the door clicked shut, “Very high maintenance, that one?”

  “Only the hair.” I remarked, earning a snort of laughter from Eury.

  Meanwhile, Elly glanced over at my aluminum bat, sharpied name across the barrel from a time my teenage ego thought Viking cosplay was a lifestyle. She dragged it across the counter and set it on a towel like a surgeon prepping a scalpel. Runes crawled across the dented metal, faint sparks like someone had threaded lightning through the grain.

  “Aluminum sucks,” she muttered, pressing her palm to the barrel. “Drinks lightning like a colander. But it’s what you have. I’ll reinforce it and keep the energy renewed.”

  “Hey,” I protested. “That bat won three games.”

  “It’ll win you your life,” she said without sarcasm. “But gloves. Always gloves. Your null burns through my enhancements like acid. You’ll insulate yourself, or you’ll fry the magic before it takes.”

  “Am I being issued PPE for baseball?” I asked, because absurdity softens panic.

  “Yes,” she snapped. “And be grateful.”

  I tried to picture myself in a hard hat and safety goggles and failed, which was probably a good thing.

  Night compressed us into a plan. Sélis volunteered to watch the building’s drone-sense—whatever that meant—and to reward any rat that reported back with a half-eaten cracker. Zorka mapped out patrols and ran through them, naming them things like “blitzes” and “sweeps” with alarming efficiency. Lily hummed a tune that made my chest feel safer even though logically it did nothing. Eury laid out contingencies with the coolness of someone explaining mortgage options.

  We sketched the shifts and argued over coffee and cursed at ledger-ink for being so smug. At some point Selis rewired my router for fun, and the spider tried to stick its claws into the ethernet port, and I swatted it away. In the end, it didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings or dignity but my own, being in tech support and all.

  When the others finally peeled away to claim their corners of the city, Elly stayed behind with me for two minutes that stretched and snapped like an elastic band.

  “I can tell you’re getting ready to bolt. You’ve got that trapped look in your eyes.”

  “What? Me? No way.” My laugh was anything but reassuring.

  “Listen,” she said. “You can do whatever you want—complain, fight, be melodramatic… but you don’t get to be alone. Not now.”

  “It’s only been an hour,” I said.

  “It’s been long enough,” she replied.

  She tightened the warning charm of the glove that still smelled faintly of ledger smoke. If they tried to track the glove, we would know.

  “If the Curator comes for you, I’ll hit him where it hurts—wallet, pride, spine, whatever’s exposed. And if that fails, we’ll set him on fire with bad puns and worse music.”

  I laughed because panic needed a door, and then she kissed the top of my head like an aunt at a funeral. “Ride or die,” she said.

  “Just ride. Let’s try not to die.” I suggested, even though I wanted to say something braver. Die was on the table, but not today.