Chapter 7 #2
Rayna exhaled. “New rule. We don’t start sentences that way within fifteen feet of a ley-line rupture.”
“These symbols,” Ezra said, tapping the page, “were static yesterday. I checked them three times. Today they’re not.”
He looked up, meeting Rayna’s eyes. “The verb phrase shifted. It used to read ‘open conduit / accept pattern.’ Now it says, ‘open conduit / select pattern.’”
Lioness’s skin tightened. “Select. As in ‘Choose your own adventure?’”
“Language is flexible,” Brianna said weakly.
“Language isn’t this flexible,” Ezra muttered. “Not unless the text is interacting with us.”
He lifted his hand. The ink below his fingertips shimmered, lines thinning and thickening like something was breathing under the paper. Ezra jerked his hand back. The glyphs settled.
“Okay,” he said. “I stand corrected. The text is creepy.”
Lioness’s pencil twitched against the paper, a line dragging itself across the blank page without her permission. A long vertical slash, then another, then a jagged horizontal crack. Her hand shook. She tightened her grip until her knuckles ached. Not yet.
She forced herself to sketch something harmless around the intrusive lines: the barricades, Rayna’s boots, the edge of Magda’s satchel. Distract the vision, let it bleed into something ordinary.
“Lioness?” Magda’s voice was soft and warning. “You good?”
Lioness huffed. “If you mean ‘resisting the urge to channel sentient architecture involuntarily,’ then yes, I’m a solid B-plus.”
Rayna stepped closer, voice low. “If it gets bad, you step out of the circle.”
“Then who’s going to draw us a map out of this mess?” Lioness asked.
Rayna’s mouth flattened. “We’ll improvise. I’m not losing two witches to this rock.”
On the other side of the barricade, Cal sat on a park bench with his back to the whole scene, as ordered. He looked aggressively casual, legs stretched out, leather jacket open, phone in one hand. To anyone else, he was just a hot guy on break, people-watching.
To Lioness, his shoulders were too tense, his head tilted just enough to prove he was listening. Every time someone came too close to the tape, he lifted a hand and waved them away with easy charm.
“Human perimeter’s holding,” Victoria said, following Lioness’s gaze. “Your boyfriend is very obedient.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Lioness said automatically. The denial was fast enough to earn her three raised eyebrows and one soft snort from Brianna.
“Your crush is very obedient,” Brianna amended.
“Not helping,” Lioness muttered. Her cheeks felt warm. Great. She could face an ancient obelisk, but mention Cal, and suddenly she was a teenager.
The ground under her boots shivered. Not a full tremor, just a single pulse, like a massive heart had given one experimental beat.
Everyone felt it.
Crystal went still, eyes wide. “Okay. That, I did not like.”
Water responded first. A narrow puddle near the barricade rippled without any wind. Little beads of water leapt up and fell again in nervous hops.
Magda’s vials chimed softly, their liquid contents jumping in unison.
Reginald flattened himself against Victoria’s neck, tail fluffing out. He chittered in sharp, high bursts that translated perfectly from raccoon into “Nope. Nope. Absolutely not.”
Wally ducked back into Magda’s satchel, only his ears visible. Even Spirit Lion, luminous and huge at the fissure’s edge, lowered his head and bared spectral teeth at the crack in the earth.
Ezra looked from the paper to the fissure. “It’s aware we’re here.”
“It was aware when Sahara looked at it sideways a couple of days ago,” Rayna said. “We’re just the follow-up act.”
Lioness’s pencil moved again, unbidden. A silhouette emerged beside the crack; tall, faceless, hand outstretched. For a split second, it looked like Cal from behind. Her stomach lurched.
She slammed the sketchbook shut.
No. This was not his problem. Not if she could help it.
“Positions,” Rayna said, voice suddenly sharp. “We do this fast. Magda, keep the anchors stable. Crystal, monitor the water. Victoria, if the circle shifts, shout. Brianna, no more time-hopping. Ezra, read only the glyphs we absolutely need. Lioness…”
She turned to her. Lioness felt the weight of it like a hand on her shoulder.
“Remote view only as deep as you have to,” Rayna finished. “If it tries to drag you, let go. Immediately.”
Lioness nodded once. “Understood.”
She stepped into her place in the circle, Spirit Lion pacing at her side like a living, glowing warning sign. The hum under her feet grew louder, syncopated with her heartbeat.
Outside the barricade, Cal leaned back on the bench and tilted his face to the sky, pretending he didn’t feel the air go dense and strange.
Lioness lifted her sketchbook again, opened to a fresh page, and let her pencil hover over the white.
The earth beneath them seemed to inhale.
She drew the first line. Definitely human-looking. Then, as the picture took shape, it looked like a man, trying to claw his way out.
Sahara Nadir hated being benched almost as much as she hated mistranslated glyphs.
The L.A.W. mansion’s command room had started life as a formal library, but like most things in the witches’ world, it had evolved.
One wall was bookshelves stacked with atlases and grimoires.
Another held three mismatched whiteboards layered in equations, glyph fragments, and Joell’s passive-aggressive reminder about cleaning up coffee mugs.
A wide oak table dominated the center, currently covered in maps of Central Park, printed seismic readouts, and a crystal bowl brimming with black water that reflected none of the light in the room. Chad had parked himself on one of the armchairs.
The mansion itself hummed around them in a low, anxious throb. The lanterns along the wall didn’t sway, but their glow brightened and softened in a nervous rhythm, like the house was trying to breathe.
Sahara sat at the table with her feet planted, hands braced on either side of a notebook she’d already filled with too-small handwriting. The back of her neck prickled. Every time her mind drifted toward the obelisk, something cold and bright in her skull tried to grow larger.
She placed her tongue between her teeth, forcing her jaw to relax, and focused on the map instead.
“Report,” Chad said into his phone, because he thought being official would make this less frightening.
“Begin shutting up now,” Rayna said. “Ritual starting…”