Chapter 2
Lioness Graves hit the Central Park path at a half-jog, still dusty from the building collapse and riding the high of not dying before breakfast. Sahara stalked beside her, muttering under her breath in increasingly sophisticated forms of profanity.
A pigeon took one look at Sahara’s expression and immediately changed flight plans.
The caution tape around the fissure fluttered in the breeze.
More of the ground had shifted since Sahara’s earlier inspection.
Now, the very tip of something that looked like stone jutted barely an inch above the soil.
It might have been the top of an obelisk.
Just the suggestion of a point, but unmistakable.
Lioness slowed. “Oh. That wasn’t there half an hour ago.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Sahara pinched the bridge of her nose. “Which means we’re out of time and options. I need to use the bathroom before I do something regrettable. Don’t touch anything.”
“I never touch anything,” Lioness lied.
Sahara snorted, hard. “Five minutes. Do not cause a scene.”
Lioness gave her a thumbs-up that Sahara absolutely did not trust. Then, Sahara power-walked toward the public restrooms like a woman whose bladder was the only thing preventing a homicide.
The moment Sahara disappeared behind the restroom door, the air shifted.
Lioness inhaled sharply. Oh. Not good. Her stomach dropped an inch, then swooped back up as a wave of pressure rolled through her chest, like being caught between a whisper and a scream.
The ground vibrated beneath her boots. The tiny point of the exposed obelisk began to hum at a low frequency that she felt more than heard.
“Okay,” she whispered. “That’s not nothing.”
A spark skittered through her fingers. Not a spell she’d cast. Not anything she controlled. This was a pulse, a demand, a grab-you-by-the-ribs signal from elsewhere.
And then the vision hit, impolitely. It slammed into her senses like a door ripped off its hinges. Her knees buckled; she dropped onto the dirt next to the park bench. Her hand landed on something familiar… Sahara’s notebook. Already open to a page of immaculate glyphs.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Lioness muttered, not stopping, not thinking, because the vision had her by the throat, and her fingers were already moving.
She grabbed Sahara’s pencil and sketched in frantic, slashing strokes.
Spirals. Runes that weren’t runes. Bars.
A cage! She dragged the pencil across Sahara’s perfect handwriting, layering her images over the carefully drawn symbols.
The prison shifted in her mind’s eye. It bulged. Something on the inside pushed, stretching the structure like it had grown too big for its confinement.
Lioness’s breath hitched. “Oh. That’s bad.” She kept drawing.
Lines darkened. The obelisk stretched downward into the earth like a spine made of stone.
Beneath it, a hollow chamber burned with pressure—dark, ancient, and furious.
She drew the cracks spiderwebbing from the chamber’s walls, spreading upward toward the surface.
She drew the entity’s shape, but only a suggestion—a ripple where something should not have been able to move. A shadow that wasn’t a shadow.
She didn’t draw eyes. The thing didn’t have eyes. It had awareness.
Her wrist cramped. She ignored it. Her heart pounded. She ignored that too. The air thickened with magic so old it smelled like dust. Her pencil scraped hard across the paper, tearing into Sahara’s notes.
Footsteps approached behind her. Lioness didn’t hear them at first, not through the rush and roar in her ears. Not until Sahara’s voice sliced the air like a thrown dagger.
“Lioness!”
Lioness flinched. The pencil slipped. The vision snapped like a rubber band breaking. She blinked, and the world came back into focus.
Sahara stood three feet away, her face frozen somewhere between rage, horror, and devastation. “What,” she said softly but through clenched teeth, “are you doing to my notebook?”
Lioness glanced down. “Oh. Oh, that… I know it looks bad, but it’s important.”
Sahara’s crisp, orderly glyphs were nearly obliterated—buried beneath Lioness’s charcoal-dark lines and chaotic shapes. The page looked like a crime scene reenacted in pencil.
“And my work isn’t important?”
Lioness winced. “I can explain.”
“Can you?” Sahara asked coolly, which was far more terrifying than yelling.
“There was, uh, movement.”
“Movement?” Sahara knelt, snatching the notebook from Lioness’s hands. Her eyes scanned the drawings, then she went very still.
Lioness swallowed. “Do you see it?”
Sahara didn’t answer. Her face drained of color. She traced her fingertips over the bars, the spiral, the chamber.
“This is a prison,” Sahara whispered. “An ancient one. And if your sketch is accurate—which, annoyingly, it always is—then the internal wards are buckling.” She leaned closer, as if she could see more that way.
“Yeah,” Lioness said. “The thing inside is pushing upwards.”
The ground gave a short, sharp pulse, like a fist pounding the soil. Both witches went silent.
Then Sahara exhaled, slow and furious. “Still, I can’t believe you touched my notebook.”
“I had a vision! It was an emergency!”
“Where is your sketchpad?”
“I must have left it back at the building collapse.”
“You used my best pencil.”
Lioness held up the pencil—carbon smudged on her fingers, guilt smudged all over her face. “I’ll buy you a new one?”
Sahara closed the notebook with a decisive snap. “We’re going to talk about this after we keep Manhattan from exploding.”
Lioness nodded quickly. “Right. Priorities.”
They turned back toward the obelisk as the ground throbbed again, deeper this time, almost a warning.
Sahara whispered, “Something or someone is waking.”
Lioness whispered, “Then we need to move up our timeline.”
Sahara Nadir needed five consecutive minutes without Lioness causing emotional, magical, or structural damage. Apparently, that was too much to ask.
She clutched her notebook to her chest like it was a wounded animal as she led them a few paces away from the fissure.
The park was deceptively calm. Dog walkers, joggers, and tourists had no idea a millennia-old prison was stirring beneath their sneakers.
Sahara’s pulse hadn’t settled since the vision ripped through Lioness, and every beat echoed with the same awful realization.
Something down there was pushing up, trying to escape.
She exhaled through her nose, long and deliberate. “Lioness, stand still. I need a minute to process.”
Lioness obeyed, which was suspicious all by itself. She looked pale and unsettled. Still vibrating with leftover psychic static, Sahara softened a fraction. Not much, but enough to let concern creep in.
“You okay?” Sahara asked, quieter than usual.
Lioness blinked. “Yeah. Maybe. That one hit hard.”
Of course it did. Sahara had seen the aftermath in the ruined glyphs and the frantic lines. Whatever Lioness saw, it was evolving. Growing.
Sahara wanted to snap again. She wanted to shake Lioness for grabbing her notebook and drawing over the prep work that she’d spent time perfecting. But the truth was simple and infuriating.
Lioness wasn’t wrong. And Sahara needed her. Before she could decide what to say next, a voice called from behind them.
“Lioness?”
Sahara’s spine went stiff. She turned.
Cal Monroe crossed the grass toward them, carrying a scuffed, dust-covered sketchbook. His uniform was cleaner now, but his posture still carried the exhaustion of someone who’d crawled out of a collapsed building. His gaze softened when it landed on Lioness.
Sahara’s protective instincts rose like a tidal wave.
Lioness brightened. “Cal! Did they give you the morning off?”
He huffed out a laugh. “No. But—uh—this was still at the collapse site.” He held up the sketchbook.
Lioness blinked. “My sketches!”
Sahara silently swore. Perfect. The universe had decided today wasn’t chaotic enough. A civilian needed a peek at the league’s secret weapon.
Cal looked between them, noticing the caution tape, the exposed inches of ancient stone, and Sahara’s body language, which said ‘do not come closer’ with all the force of a magical warning siren.
“Are you two working on something?” he asked.
Sahara snapped into a pleasant smile that fooled absolutely no one. “Routine geological assessment.”
Lioness nodded vigorously. “Yep. Very routine. So routine it’s practically boring.”
Cal raised an eyebrow. “Is that why the ground keeps rumbling?”
Sahara gently nudged Lioness behind her, as if she could physically block the firefighter from noticing the impending doom poking out of the dirt. “Ground does that sometimes.”
“Uh-huh,” Cal said. “And was that before or after your friend saved my life by knowing exactly which beams not to touch?”
Lioness perked up. “Oh! I can explain that—”
“No, she cannot,” Sahara said.
Cal laughed, low and warm, and Sahara hated how Lioness froze for a half second at the sound. “Well, can I at least get the phone number of my savior?”
Oh no. Sahara knew that look. That soft-eyed, spark-catching look. It meant trouble. Emotional trouble. She had not signed up for babysitting, plus monster containment, plus firefighter flirting all in one day.
Cal handed the sketchbook to Lioness. Their fingers brushed. Sahara saw Lioness’s breath hitch. She saw that Cal held her gaze for a moment too long.
She saw everything.
“You should take it easy,” he said. “That was a hell of a thing you did.”
Lioness didn’t move, didn’t blink. “I… uh, yeah. You too.” She scribbled her number on a blank page and handed it to him.
Sahara clapped her hands together. “Wonderful. Great. Well, we have work.”
Cal cleared his throat. “Right.” He gave Lioness a crooked smile. “I’m headed back to my team. Text me if… Well, you don’t have my number, but I’ll send it to you.”
Lioness looked like she’d forgotten what speaking was.
Sahara answered for her. “She won’t need it.”
Cal walked off with one last glance over his shoulder. Lioness waved weakly.
Sahara waited until he was out of earshot before rounding on her. “No.”
Lioness blinked. “What?”
“No,” Sahara repeated. “Absolutely not. You are not adopting a firefighter today. We have an ancient prison cracking open beneath Central Park.”
Lioness scowled. “I’m not adopting him. He just… showed up.”
“Men don’t just show up,” Sahara said. “Not ones with shoulders like that.”
Lioness opened her mouth, probably to protest the shoulders comment, then shut it again. Hey, what can you say to refute the truth?
Sahara softened a fraction. Maybe an eighth of a fraction. “Look. I’m not saying you can’t talk to people. I’m saying, be careful. I know you. You feel things deeply. And right now, you’re vulnerable after that vision.”
Lioness’s expression wavered, revealing the flicker of uncertainty she’d been hiding.
“Yeah,” Lioness admitted. “The vision… It shook me.”
Sahara exhaled. Good. Honesty she could work with. “Then stay close. We need to reestablish grounding sigils and wards before anything else destabilizes.”
Lioness nodded. “Okay. I’m with you.”
Sahara tucked her ruined notebook under her arm and nudged Lioness gently forward. “Come on, Disaster Child.”
Lioness smiled faintly. “Lead the way, Sand Princess.”
A fresh tremor rippled under their boots—subtle, but undeniable. Sahara didn’t need a vision to translate it.
The thing beneath the earth was getting impatient.