Chapter 7 Waiting For Them
Casimir
I traced the perimeter of the hologram table, mentally reciting its dimensions for the hundredth time. They hadn’t changed, of course.
If only people were so easy to quantify.
My gaze drifted to Seri, who knelt next to Brumous, her arms tight around him. She hadn’t left his side since she woke up this morning. Her protectiveness mirrored my own, and seeing her there made my chest tighten with something I couldn’t reduce to data points.
Ko’s solution to our current dilemma was elegant in its simplicity.
Seri wanted to participate in the hunt; I wanted her safely away from danger.
The compromise? She would run operations from Evermere’s security room using the spy eyes, which would transmit everything back to the hologram table.
It kept her secure while giving her agency.
“She’s not demanding to be on the front lines,” Ko had reminded me. “She’s only asking for a seat at our table.”
Win-win, as Zane would say.
I cleared my throat.
“Everyone’s here. Let’s begin.”
Zane lounged against the weapons cabinet, spinning a knife between his fingers.
Koa tinkered with one of the spy eyes, his dark brows furrowed in concentration.
And Seri claimed the desk in the center of the room, one hand still fisted in Brumous’ ruff as he sat next to her, her gray eyes bright with anticipation.
“Tomorrow’s mission—”
“—is perimeter sweep only,” Ko cut in, his eyes flicking to Seri, who only blinked at him and smiled.
I shot him a look. I didn’t need my briefing interrupted, but his addition wasn’t incorrect.
“Standard check for magical residue,” Zane added with a smirk. “Should be boring as my left nut.”
Seri’s brow furrowed and asked, “You have different levels of testicular excitement?”
The question detonated like a grenade. Koa choked on the cookie he was sneaking. My boot caught the leg of the holo table, sending shockwaves through the projection of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. Zane howled, folding over with laughter.
“You—” He gasped, clutching his stomach. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to us, moonbeam.”
Her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes sparkled like silver. The innocence in her question was pure Seri.
I took a deep breath, forcing myself to focus.
“As I was saying, tomorrow’s reconnaissance will focus on an abandoned town that’s now a historical site. Standard protocol, standard equipment.”
I’d run the calculations. Threat assessment, risk factors, success probability.
Tactically, she possessed sufficient skills for basic reconnaissance.
The variable wasn’t her capability, but her trauma responses.
The way she startled at fast movements or sudden noises.
The nightmares that left her screaming. The moments her eyes went vacant, retreating somewhere we couldn’t follow. The flashbacks we couldn’t fight.
And beneath it all, my own paralyzing fear.
That single, vivid illusion replaying whenever I contemplated her in danger.
Amabel’s magic had made it so real. Seri’s broken body on the ground, blood pooling beneath her golden curls, gray eyes open and empty.
Even now, weeks later, the memory could stop my breath mid-inhale, make my hands shake if I let myself dwell on it.
Logically, I knew it hadn’t been real. But logic did little to quiet the voice in my head that whispered: It could be. One mistake, one moment of carelessness, and it could be real.
The recon mission parameters scrolled behind my eyes, variables shifting. Risk assessment. Threat projection. Outcome probability.
“Seri, tomorrow,” I said, “you’ll monitor communications.”
The words tasted strange, equal parts terror and pride. The fear would never leave completely. I’d always count her breaths, measure her steps, calculate probabilities of harm. But denying her this, the right to stand beside us and fight her own battles, would be its own kind of damage.
Her head snapped up, eyes bright.
“Here in the security room,” I clarified, just in case she’d conveniently forgotten.
“With the holo table connected to Koko’s spy eyes.” She nodded, her smile pure sunshine. Then a thought struck her. “Simmy,” she breathed in an excited hush, “do you think I might be able to shadow walk through the holo table? Like, if I see you in danger, do you think I could—”
“Do. Not. Try. It.” My voice dropped to a deadly register, and Zane’s head flew up, his sharp eyes locked on me.
Koa put down his toy and moved a step closer.
Blinking, I forced my shoulders down a quarter of an inch, loosened jaw, uncurled fingers.
“The probability of disaster increases eighty-nine percent with untrained assets and/or untried equipment. In this case, shadow travel through holo table.”
“I mean, you are clumsy, princess.” Zane winked at Seri, fingers drumming an erratic rhythm on his thigh. “Last week you tripped over air.”
“That was a root!” She protested with a scowl, making Brumous whine and nuzzle into her. “My shadow walking worked perfectly yesterday.”
“Accidental teleportation does not equal mission readiness,” I countered. “Additionally, we have not yet adjusted the wards to permit you to shadow walk in and out of Evermere.”
Her lips pursed, a tell that she was about to present an argument she thought was unassailable.
“But what if I’m the variable that prevents disaster?”
She reached into her cardigan pocket, that moon-damned cardigan with its loose threads and snags and lumps, and produced a crumpled sketch. When had she started carrying her drawings everywhere? Another variable unaccounted for.
“The abandoned town’s layout…” She smoothed the paper on the table, fingers trembling ever so slightly. My eyes tracked the tremor. Fatigue-induced or fear? “There’s something sitting near the old grist mill. Not human.”
“Since when do you get spooky radio stations?” Koa leaned closer to study her picture, and I had to admit that the detail was remarkable, considering she’d never been to the site.
“I don’t know.” Her thumb smudged a shadow into what might’ve been tree lines. “Your briefing photos just stuck. Like old memories. Like echoes.”
My tablet hit the counter harder than intended.
“You’re synesthetically mapping paranormal resonance through two-dimensional images?”
She blinked up at me, all innocence and confusion.
“The creepy town’s been gossiping with you, darling?” Zane’s grin stretched wolf-wide. “Bleeding night! That’s a hell of a thing! Hauntography! I love it.”
“Hauntography?” Ko chuckled. “Don’t think it’s really called that.”
“What do you think it’s called, Koko?” Seri asked.
As they speculated, since none of us knew the answer, I closed my eyes.
In the darkness, Father’s voice snapped commands from a decade past:“Sentiment breeds weakness. Calculate, strategize, act.” The numbers came, anyway.
Survival probability with Seri onsite: 63.
2 percent. Survival probability with Seri remote: 98.
9 percent. Margin of error: plus or minus 2.
7 percent accounting for Brumous’ needs.
There was no other viable conclusion: She was staying here tonight.
Yes, my brothers and I knew how it felt to want to prove yourself.
Our father had put us through trial after trial, test after test, making us earn every scrap of his approval.
His approach to training—not parenting; he had never been a parent to us—had been simple: Failure meant pain.
Success meant nothing but higher expectations next time.
And we had no problem with Seri going on low-risk missions, not really.
If we’d done our job properly and trained her well, she would be fine on simple hunts.
At least, that’s what I kept telling myself when I had flashbacks to Amabel’s illusion, so terrifyingly real that I’d believed Seri was dead even after I woke up from it.
As Zane had pointed out right from the beginning, we couldn’t keep Rapunzel locked in her fortress forever.
That wasn’t what she needed. That’s what we wanted.
And she was powerful now, more powerful than I’d have ever guessed when she’d sat at our dining room table and insisted she was a lunar witch, her face twisted into the most adorable scowl…
Coming back to the present, I cleared my throat.
“We will investigate this new development in a clean environment after we develop contingency plans for sensory overload, stamina depletion—”
And Seri leapt to her feet and started jumping up and down.
Brumous lifted his head, watching her with alert blue eyes.
Concerned, I grabbed her shoulders, looking her over to make sure she hadn’t pricked her finger on one of Koa’s tools laying around, but she simply reached up and grabbed my forearms.
“Simmy,” she whispered and dark take me I leaned into the name she’d given me. “I know what you’re doing!”
“What?” I got out before my throat closed.
“You’re cataloging, counting, measuring!” Her laugh held no mockery, just that quiet understanding that unraveled me stitch by stitch. “Making it all into data so it feels…” She tilted her head, her curls catching in the hologram’s glow. “Manageable.”
“It’s how I process.” The confession scraped raw. Heat climbed my neck, shameful and hot.
“I know. And I’m not saying that to stop you.” She rose on tiptoe, dragon fruit dew swamping my senses. “I’m saying that because I see you, Simmy. I see you.”
The floor shifted. Not the sudden lurch of ambush, but the slow, terrifying slide of bedrock giving way.
Three simple words, but they hit harder than any blow I’d ever taken. I see you. Not the tactical mind, not the protector, not the eldest dhampir. Me. Casimir. The parts I kept compartmentalized, the fears I buried beneath probabilities and percentages.