Chapter 7 Kaia #3
“Yes or no,” Bane says.
Her lips press tight. Then, through her teeth, she says, “Yes.”
The ribbon settles.
A faint shimmer—like glass cooling—wraps around her wrist. The runes dim until they’re invisible.
Evie flexes her fingers as if expecting pain.
“Great,” she says, brittle. “So now I’m contractually gagged by magic. Awesome.”
Devin brightens with relief. “Thank you for cooperating. This will remain confidential.”
Evie’s smile is sharp. “Yeah. I gathered.”
Mr. Bane turns to me. “Brief her.”
Evie’s eyes narrow again. “You’re briefing me?”
“I’m the one who dragged this into your diner,” I say. My voice stays steady, but my stomach twists. “So yes.”
Cohen checks his watch as if time itself is a weapon. “We’ll begin containment cleanup.”
Mr. Bane doesn’t waste a second. He steps into the wreckage with the same calm he brought through the door and begins drawing sigils into the air, murmuring something I can’t quite catch. Each is drawn with two fingers and a soft, final motion, locking a door only he can see.
Devin is already on his phone, back in his “this is fine” voice. “Yes. Yes, Lighthouse Diner. Minor property damage. No injuries. I need a discrete overnight crew. Yes, cleaning and replacement. No uniforms. No signage.” He glances toward Evie, smile strained. “Thank you.”
Evie’s eyes narrow at him like she’d like to throw his phone into the fryer.
Cohen watches all of it with clipped approval, clearly satisfied the mess is being handled, then looks at me. “Brief her quickly.”
As if Evie is a file that can be summarized.
And I’m tasked with figuring out how to tell her the world is bigger and uglier than she ever asked it to be.
I gesture toward the least-destroyed booth: one corner still upright, table only slightly shifted, like the diner itself tried to preserve a small pocket of normal.
Evie moves first, stiff and wary. I follow, careful not to crowd her.
We sit across from each other. And for a moment, the sight of her in a booth again hits me so hard it feels like I’ve fallen through time.
It reminds me of old nights: fries between us, receipts covered in scribbles, laughter that felt like home.
Another life.
I swallow and force my voice into something simple.
“Okay,” I say. “Here’s what’s real. Demons exist,” I say. “Not in the metaphorical sense. In the literal sense. They take many different forms, but they all feed on emotion. The one that attacked you tonight’s favorite is nostalgia, longing, anything that loops.”
Evie’s eyes flick to the jukebox, then the TV static. “So… that thing was—what?”
“A splinter,” I say. “A fragment of the main demonic presence.”
“The Chorus,” Evie says, as if the words taste like rust. “That’s what you called it earlier.”
I nod. “Yeah, that’s what they named it. Demons like the Chorus form in places like this… festivals, traditions, anything that makes people cling to the past. It piggybacks on familiar hooks. Jingles. Songs everyone knows. The Council tracked it here… to Harbor’s Edge.”
Evie’s voice is low. “It used the Harbor Lights commercial.”
My stomach twists. “Yeah. It’s attracted to the festival…”
“And it…” Her throat tightens. She swallows hard. “It tried to—”
“Get into you,” I say, blunt because softness would break her. “It wanted your voice. Your memories.”
Evie looks away like she might gag.
I keep going. “We perform inside warded venues because music is bait. Our shows pull it in. The wards trap it. We kill it before it spreads.”
Evie’s laugh is hollow. “So you’re demon hunters with fancy lighting?”
“Yes,” I say. “Basically.”
Her gaze snaps back. “And you do this… all the time?”
I don’t flinch. “Yes.”
“And people just—go home after? Like nothing happened?”
“They don’t know,” I say. “The wards keep the demons from touching them… Well. Most of the time.”
Evie points at the diner, at the destruction. “Most of the time.”
I nod once. “Most of the time.”
There’s a beat where the only sound is the neon buzzing and the distant town noise outside.
Then Evie says, voice quiet and vicious, “So when you left… when you were recruited... You left and joined… this?”
The word joined hurts, because it implies I ran toward it with open arms.
“I got recruited,” I say, and the sentence tastes like old panic.
I force the next part out carefully, plain.
“Some people are born with a Spark. Most of them never know it’s there—they just have weird luck, or lights flicker when they’re upset, or their dreams feel too real.
The Council calls them Resonants. People whose bodies… are capable of magic.”
Evie doesn’t blink.
“So yeah. The Council trained me on how to control it, and Eon recruited me to be part of Midnight Halo.”
Evie’s brows raise, and she simply says, “Congrats.”
Nothing else. She doesn’t ask how they found me, what it was like, or anything.
She doesn’t care.
Somehow, that stings worse than anything.
Behind her, Devin and Mr. Bane speak in low voices.
“…crowd readings were off the charts,” Devin says.
“Patron yields,” Mr. Bane murmurs back, quietly, “are higher when…”
Patron.
The word hooks behind my ribs.
I keep my face still. My heart rate ticks up.
Patron yields?
I don’t know what it means, not really, but it doesn’t sound like typical Council and Eon talk.
I file it away for later though, because Evie is staring at Bane now like she can smell the same wrongness.
“Can I go?” she asks abruptly. “I need to get home.”
Mr. Bane’s gaze slides to her wrist, to the place the binding sits invisible. “Not unescorted,” he says, calm as a policy. “You’re a fresh exposure. The first hours are the most unpredictable.”
Evie’s breathing goes faster. “I have to go. I need to check on my grandma.”
The guilt spikes so hard it nearly knocks the wind out of me.
Cohen seems to register the word grandma in the way bureaucrats register liability. He steps closer, voice smoothing into something almost humane. “We can escort you,” he says. “Just to the door. No fuss.”
“I can walk her,” I cut in before I can overthink it.
Devin’s head snaps toward me, alarmed. Cohen’s gaze sharpens like he’s about to remind me of a hundred rules.
Evie’s eyes slide to mine, unimpressed. “Bad idea,” she says flatly. “You’d be recognized in a heartbeat. I’m fine.”
I take a slow breath. “I want to make sure you get there safe.”
Her shoulders lift, defensive. “I can take care of myself.”
“I know,” I say, and I mean it. “You’ve been doing it for years.”
The words land wrong. They always do when I admit anything that sounds like regret.
Evie’s face flickers—hurt, then anger again—and she gives me a thin, bitter smile. “Wow. Thanks for the reminder.”
“I’m not—” I start.
“Don’t,” she cuts in, and the word is sharp enough to end the sentence.
She looks away first.
Devin clears his throat as if he’s desperate to get back to a script. “The diner will be in perfect condition before we leave tonight,” he says. “Restored. Sanitized. No… evidence.”
Evie glances around at the wreckage—broken glass, overturned stools, coffee smeared like blood—and for a second, disbelief cracks her expression.
Then she nods once, tightly. “How generous.”
She reaches for her purse and fumbles with her keys and phone.
I step slightly closer, but not close enough to touch.
Just close enough to be heard without Devin and the Council to catch every syllable and turning it into a liability report.
I’ve already made myself a problem tonight.
I don’t need to hand them another reason to pull me aside and lecture me later.
Or worse, label me as incompetent.
“Evie,” I say quietly. “I’m going to walk you to your door.”
Her head snaps up. “No.”
“Yes,” I say, calm. “You can hate me the entire way. But you’re not walking through Harbor’s Edge alone right after a demon tried to crawl down your throat.”
Her lips part with a retort.
I beat her to it. “If you want to yell at me, you’ll have more opportunities. If it tries to attack you again, it won’t get the chance.”
Evie stares at me, chest rising and falling fast.
Then she shakes her head and says, “Fine.”
Cohen glances toward the door. “We can keep it low-profile,” he says. “No vans. Just a walk. We’ll follow behind.”
Evie looks like she wants to refuse out of principle. But her hand tightens around her keys until her knuckles go pale.
She exhales, sharp. “Fine. Whatever. Walk me. But if anyone tries to step into my house, I will hit you with a pan. My grandma can’t know about any of this.”
I nod once. “Understood.”
Evie grabs her coat and shrugs it on with jerky movements. She doesn’t look at the wreckage again. She doesn’t look at me.
She walks toward the door like she’s walking out of a fire.
I follow two steps behind, Aurora fully dismissed now—just a faint warmth under my skin. I keep my hand near my side anyway, ready to summon if I have to. Everything about me is painfully human again.
Devin appears at my shoulder with the kind of brisk efficiency he uses when he wants a problem to look smaller. He shoves a beanie into my hand, then a plain dark coat. “Cover up,” he mutters.
“Thanks,” I say, even though he’s likely more worried about the PR scandal this could cause than me being cold.
Still, I pull the beanie down and shrug into the long coat, letting them swallow any part of me that reads like pop star from ten feet away.
At the threshold, Evie pauses and looks back at the diner.
Her voice drops to something raw. “This is insane.”
“I know,” I say again.
She turns her head just enough to look at me out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t think saving me buys you anything.”
The words hit hard because a part of me—some pathetic part—wants it to buy me forgiveness. A reset. A hug. A do-over.
Instead, all I can do is tell the truth.
“It doesn’t,” I say quietly. “I didn’t do it for that.”
Evie’s mouth tightens like she hates that answer more than any excuse.
Outside, fog curls around the streetlights. The town still hums with leftover show energy—some people drifting home in little groups, laughter too loud, voices snagging on half-remembered choruses.
Behind us, Devin heads to a nearby van, and Cohen focuses on the diner like it’s a scene to be managed and filed away. Like broken glass and terror can be reduced to paperwork.
Evie steps into the night.
I step after her.
And for the first time in years, I’m walking beside the life I abandoned, close enough to feel the heat of it, close enough to hear her breathing.
Close enough to know that whatever I just did, whatever “terms and conditions” I signed with my veto and my voice…
I’m not leaving this time.