Chapter 6 Evie #2
“We were hyped on Harbor Lights,” she says.
My stomach turns—same as it did then.
“And you’ve been hiding this whole other path from me!” I snap at her. “Why am I the last to know?”
A flash—Gus’s counter, coffee smell, Kaia’s mom laughing too bright, bragging about a “special program,” a “big opportunity,” like it’s harmless gossip.
“I had to find out from your mom.”
The sound in the diner swells, the jingle trying to lace itself through the argument like it’s seasoning. Like it wants the hurt.
My throat tightens harder. My vision blurs. I can’t breathe.
The memory keeps coming anyway, relentless.
My voice—smaller now, broken at the edges. “So what, I’m just a mistake you have to erase before you go chase your big dream?”
Kaia replies, “Maybe I don’t want my whole life decided by one stupid kiss and one girl who never wants to leave this place!”
Stupid kiss.
One girl.
Never wants to leave.
No—no, no—
The jingle purrs come back like it’s offering comfort. Like it didn’t just drag a knife through my ribs for fun.
My fingers scrabble on the counter again, desperate. I try to suck in air. I can’t. The sound packs into my throat, choking me.
In the memory, I’m shaking, lantern light blurring, tears welling in my eyes even as I glare at her.
“Fine,” I hear myself say, voice vicious with pain. “Go be special somewhere else, Kaia. When you’re done pretending this place and everyone in it doesn’t exist, don’t bother coming back.”
And then—nothing.
Kaia going quiet. Pride like a locked door.
In the diner, the invisible pressure bears down harder, pleased, finding the exact bruise to press. My body gives up. I slide down the side of the counter, hitting the floor.
The sound presses tighter, forcing my head to tilt back, forcing my gaze to the TV.
Kaia’s face fills the screen, mouth forming lyrics I can’t hear clearly over the jingle, over the crowd, over the wrongness.
She looks like first love, some teenager said earlier.
The phrase hits like a cruelty.
Because first love is supposed to be soft. Safe. A memory you keep in a shoebox.
Not a weapon someone can use to choke you.
My throat tries to swallow around it. The pressure tightens. My ears pop. My vision tunnels. The windows reflect a crowd that isn’t there, all of them singing at me with empty mouths.
I can’t move.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t—
Tears spill anyway, hot tracks down my cheeks, my body leaking panic because it can’t leak sound.
My fingers twitch uselessly against the floor.
And then—
The back door explodes inwards.
The sound of it is violent: wood slamming concrete, the bolt snapping, cold fog rolling in like a living thing.
Light floods the diner.
Something brighter and sharper than the warm, overhead bulbs. Gold-white. The air pressure breaks for half a heartbeat, as if whatever has me pinned flinches.
A woman strides in through the fog like she belongs to a different world…
Her back is to me but there’s clearly a sword in her hand—the blade blazingly prismatic, throwing rainbows across the walls as it moves, white wings flaring at the hilt. A strangely familiar sword, but my brain can’t place it.
She looks unreal. Like a myth… Or an angel.
For one terrifying second, my brain refuses to connect that image to anything human.
Then she moves.
Not toward me—toward it.
“Get away from her!” she snarls.
She swings the sword in a clean, brutal arc, and the air answers like it’s been waiting. A gust slams through the diner, sharp and bright, as if the space itself is being shoved back.
The pressure on my chest breaks just enough for me to gasp, air tearing into my lungs like I’ve been underwater.
The windows rattle. The jukebox sputters. The TV picture tears. The crowd-reflections in the glass jerk backward as if slapped.
I suck in air like it’s the first breath I’ve taken in years.
The thing—whatever it is—shrieks without sound. The reflections smear violently, and the jukebox jingle speeds up, pitch warping into something frantic.
My savior moves.
It’s too fast to be real.
She slides across the floor in a motion that could be a dance if it weren’t aimed with killing intent—boots skimming wet tile, sword carving light through fog.
A stool levitates off the floor and hurtles toward her.
“No!” she snaps.
She turns her shoulder, and the air hardens—a barrier blooms from her voice and sword together, catching the stool midair and smashing it aside in splinters.
Coffee cups explode off the counter, shattering like gunshots.
Glass rains down.
Then she’s moving again, chasing something I can’t see, but definitely feel.
I instinctively throw my arms over my head and crawl, half blind, under the nearest booth table like an animal.
From under there, I see it in flashes:
The angel's sword arcing in bright crescents, cutting through something that isn’t solid.
The air rippling with each shouted command.
The TV flickering between fan cams and static.
The windows reflecting a crowd that twists and collapses as if the reflections are being peeled off the glass.
The thing tries to get to me again, I feel it—sound reaching, tugging at my throat and mind, trying to hook into the place where my memories live—
And the angel throws herself into the path like she’s made of stubbornness and light. A blow hits her, something invisible slamming her sideways into the counter. She grunts, knees skidding, but she doesn’t go down.
She plants the sword tip into the tile like an anchor, and her voice goes sharp.
“Not her,” she snarls, and the words land like a threat carved into stone. “Try me.”
The words become force.
The air shoves back.
The diner shakes.
For one insane second, it looks like choreography—like this is a planned stunt in a music video: the perfect lighting, the fog, the warrior angel spinning through flying debris.
Except nothing about the sound of shattering glass is planned.
Nothing about the fear in my bones is scripted.
The thing lashes again, desperate now. The jukebox plays the jingle at double speed, a maddened loop. The TV shows Kaia’s face in close-up, eyes shining, mouth open—then the image twists, her voice layering into the wrong chorus until it feels like the diner itself is singing.
The angelic warrior turns her head slightly, as if she can hear the thread the thing is using to anchor itself.
She steps forward, sword raised.
And then she shouts.
Not a lyric.
Not a song.
A raw, brutal sound, ripped from somewhere deep in her chest.
Her sword seems to amplify it into a blast—sound made solid, a shockwave that slams into the air.
The diner erupts with it.
The jukebox goes dead mid-note.
The TV explodes into static.
The window reflections shatter—not the glass, but the images—the crowd-mouths collapsing into nothing like smoke sucked into a vacuum.
The pressure releases so suddenly I almost throw up.
Silence drops like a curtain. I sit there under the booth, shaking so hard my teeth click, breathing in sharp, ugly gulps.
The angel stands amid overturned stools and broken cups and glass, chest heaving. The sword in her hand dims slightly, still humming, like it’s satisfied.
She lowers it, turns slowly, scanning.
Then her gaze lands on me.
I blink up at her, still half convinced I’m hallucinating.
The light on her face fades just enough, and the angle shifts.
And suddenly I see her.
Not my savior.
Not an angel.
Her.
Kaia Rhee.
My chest goes hollow and hot at the same time.
“You,” I say. The word comes out flat with disbelief, like my throat can’t decide whether to laugh or scream.
And because my life has no mercy, my brain chooses now to register details.
She’s still in the stage look—midnight-blue glitter and sharp gold seams, the kind of structured, lethal little outfit designed to make her look untouchable.
High ponytail swinging, earrings catching the diner lights, boots that look like they were made for kicking doors in.
And her sword is humming like it wants a second round.
But worse? Tasha was right. Which is the worst possible thing to realize mid-trauma.
Her shoulders really are ‘illegal,’ my traitor brain supplies, furious and helpless.
Fuck you, Tasha, for putting that word in my head.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I say, because if I say anything else my heart might actually rip.
Kaia swallows, sword still in her hand like she forgot how to put it down.
“Hi, Evie,” she breathes, voice breaking.