4. Liza
LIZA
I'm pretty sure this motivational system was designed solely to keep me from dying of shame on the days I oversleep, and today I'm only two minutes late and in actual clothes.
Maybe this is progress.
It's a slow crawl up the stairs to my office.
My eyes feel as if they've been individually sandblasted by cat tongues, and my brain is the sort of sleep-deprived where every sound arrives on a five-second delay.
Today, my doorstep is home to two bouquets, white and black, and three coins lined up like the world's smuggest chess pieces.
Just like before, there is no note.
I don't even unlock my office door right away.
Instead, I hover in the hallway, sipping from a coffee cup so enormous it borders on medical equipment.
Marlena from Records, a retired witch and our office den mother, has her Sudoku open on her knee, pencil hovering, eyes cutting sideways at the new intern every few seconds.
Old Roy, the custodian, is crouched by the radiator with a screwdriver that glows faintly green.
He is, as always, a snake shifter doing his best.
Outside, a coastal fog has swallowed the bay, and the corridors of City Hall are pale with it.
For a minute, it's easy to pretend everything's fine: just another sleepy morning, just another impossible Monday disguised in Thursday's clothing.
But then I open the door.
On my desk sits an envelope—bright white, neat as a chalk outline.
No address. No handwriting.
Just my name in block-printed Helvetica, centered on the front like a declaration.
I stand there holding my coffee.
Logic says memo.
Logic says meeting reminder from the mayor, who has a well-documented fondness for anonymous correspondence as a form of personal enrichment.
Logic is doing its best.
I pick it up.
It's heavier than it should be.
Inside is a single sheet folded into thirds with the kind of precision that takes practice.
No letterhead. No sender.
Just a paragraph of text, center-justified, typed in the same font as my name on the front.
Liza Morales,
I hope you enjoyed the flowers. I picked them myself.
I saw that you liked cats; your Gomez is beautiful. I hope he wasn't too frightened by my visit last night. Did you know he gets the zoomies at exactly 2:32 a.m.? For a minute, I thought he'd wake the neighborhood.
I would like to meet you soon.
I read it twice.
Then three more times, the words blurring together until all I can see is that line about the cat.
My hands are shaking, and the coffee nearly sloshes out of the cup.
Gomez had woken me at 2:30, yowling at something unseen, streaking circles over the kitchen table, and scattering the coins across the linoleum.
I'd written it off as another round of Hyperactive Cat Olympics, but someone else—someone outside my apartment—had watched it happen.
My first instinct is to throw the letter away.
My second is to call the police station, which would mean stammering at the dispatcher witch until she puts me on hold and plays something with a pan flute.
But this is Blackthorn, and I am a professional, and professionals do not visibly unravel before ten a.m.
The letter goes back in the envelope.
The envelope goes in the bottom drawer, under the coins, under last year's bullet journal that never made it past February.
Out of sight, almost out of mind.
The day does its best.
I shuffle forms, route festival permits, and talk a retired banshee and a brown owl shifter down from what was apparently a very serious noise dispute.
The staff meeting runs a full hour of Zadok at his most theatrically menacing, and somewhere in the middle of it, I realize I've stopped checking over my shoulder.
A whole hour.
I don't check my phone once.
But at lunch, the phone starts ringing.
The first call is just breathing and static.
I hang up.
Five minutes later it rings again, and this time there's a voice—not quite disguised enough, not quite far enough away.
"You looked... tired today. I like your hair up like that."
Click.
After the third call, I unplug the desk phone and sit very still.
I count to a hundred.
It doesn't help.
Zadok comes in for a signature and finds me staring into the middle distance like I'm waiting for it to explain itself.
"Morales, you look like you've seen a ghost. And not one of the friendly kind."
He sets the file down and leans on my desk, close enough that his spicy-aftershave-and-blueberry-muffin scent leaves no survivors.
"It's nothing," I say, because that's reflex.
He waits one second. Two.
"Would you like to try that again, or should I get my own flavor of intimidation involved?"
He's not joking, and his eyes have gone from espresso to full-on obsidian threat.
I focus on the line of his horns, counting the way they tip forward, and realize I'm about to start crying in front of my supernatural boss.
Instead, I push the envelope toward him.
"Someone's been leaving me things," I say. "And now they're calling. They know my cat's name, what time I wake up, and—"
I stop, embarrassed by how small my voice sounds.
"It's not just a prank."
Zadok scans the letter, his brow furrowing.
He flips it over, sniffs the paper, and frowns even deeper.
"This is deliberately obscure. No fingerprints, and it's too new to pick up a scent. Morales, this isn't normal. You should have said something before."
"I didn't want to make a thing out of it. Maybe it's just... someone with too much time and the city directory."
I try to laugh, but it comes out as a strangled cough.
He drums his claws on the desktop, thinking.
"Have you updated Cassian? You said you would.”
"No," I say a little too defensively.
I don't finish the sentence: because if I let Cass think I'm helpless, he'll never let me do anything normal again.
"We're telling him now," Zadok says, immediately yanking his phone from a pocket and speed-dialing the chief.
Within four minutes, Cassian is barreling into my office, uniform creased and badge gleaming, radiating an aura of I'd like someone to try me today.
He closes the door behind him and fixes both of us with a look that would freeze pond water.
"What happened?"
His gaze slides from me to Zadok and back, then falls on the envelope.
I start talking, my voice shaking a little at first, then faster, tumbling out every detail, every bouquet, every weird midnight coin.
Halfway through, Cassian's hands clench and flex, the only tell through his stone-quiet calm.
By the time I get to the phone calls, his jaw is so tight it looks painful.
"You should have called me sooner."
I glare at the window, cheeks burning.
"It's embarrassing. I thought it was nothing—"
"It is not nothing," Cassian interrupts.
"I'm sending a detail to your house tonight, and tomorrow we're outfitting your apartment with security charms and a proper lock. Zadok, can you get one of your demon minions to ward the perimeter?"
Zadok nods, already texting with one hand and firing off another call with the other.
"Consider it done. I'll get one of the Arcana sisters to construct a rune-etched cat door by five p.m."
"I'm not helpless, you know," I manage.
Cassian steps as close as he dares, then sets his big hand—gentle, absurdly careful—on my upper arm.
"I know," he says, his voice soft but adamant. "But you're not alone, Liza. And whoever this is has crossed a line."
His words make something in my chest ache.
I want to say I can take care of myself, to brush it all off.
But the relief of finally having the cavalry arrive is more than I'll admit out loud.
Zadok rises, sweeping the letter into an evidence bag.
"We'll run this through our local hex-breaker," he says. "You're off the clock. Morales, go home. Double-lock the doors and keep your phone on. Cassian and his crew will handle it until we get to the bottom of this."
So I do.
Walking home feels less like a commute and more like a reconnaissance mission.
I watch every shadow, every parked car.
I count the steps from corner to corner.
When I reach my apartment, Cassian is already there, talking quietly with a vampire from the night patrol and a witch in a safety vest.
He nods to me, sober-faced, and gestures toward the door.
"Don't worry," he says. "Go inside. We're keeping watch."