Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
MORGANA
The portal spits us out into my living room.
I stumble forward, breath catching as the world reassembles itself around me. Azrael steadies me with a hand at my elbow, firm and brief, gone again before the binding between us can flare into something painful. Too familiar. Too close.
I’m standing in a space I have not seen in weeks.
Everything is exactly as I left it.
The white leather sofa I paid obscene money for. The abstract art on the walls, originals, not prints, because I am apparently that kind of person. Floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook Central Park, forty stories of Manhattan stretching out below like someone spilled diamonds across velvet.
My penthouse. My life. My carefully constructed kingdom of expensive emptiness.
It feels as though I’m looking at someone else’s home.
“Adequate,” Azrael says.
He is already scanning the room, sharp eyes moving in clean lines as he maps exits and sightlines. Even here, even in my space, he moves as if he owns the geometry of the world.
Kieran appears behind us a second later. Chella follows. She doesn’t hesitate, moving straight to the windows to check angles, reflection points, threats that do not exist yet. Kieran begins a quiet perimeter sweep, footsteps controlled and efficient.
“Adequate?” I echo, because I cannot help it. “This place cost twenty million dollars.”
“Mmm.” Azrael crosses the room and touches the sofa. His fingers sink into the butter-soft leather as if it is nothing. “Very white.”
“It’s modern minimalist.”
His gaze moves over the room again, and for one awful second, I think he sees exactly what is missing.
“It’s sterile.” He turns to me then. “You lived here?”
The past tense lands strangely, like something slipping out of place.
“I live here,” I correct. “Present tense.”
His expression does not change, but something flickers behind his eyes. A small shift. Recognition maybe. Or judgment.
“Of course,” he says.
I want to argue with him. I want to tell him this is still my home, still my life. That I will come back here when all of this is over, once the binding stops pulling at my bones like a second heartbeat.
The words do not come.
They get stuck somewhere between my throat and my chest.
Because he is right.
This place is sterile.
I spent years and too much money building something that looked like a life instead of actually being one. Nothing personal. No photos. No clutter. No history pressed into the walls. Just objects chosen carefully enough to suggest a person might exist here.
I was sleepwalking even before this started. Just with better furniture.
“The mirror pieces,” I say quickly, forcing myself out of the thought before it pulls me under. “Where are they?”
Azrael reaches into nothing and produces a tablet as if it has always been there. Magic, probably. Or something I still don’t understand well enough to be comfortable with.
“The first is in a private collection at the Metropolitan Museum. Part of their new supernatural antiquities exhibit.”
“They have a supernatural exhibit now?”
“Humans are getting curious,” he says. “The rifts made magic harder to hide.”
“So the exhibit is a soft launch for the apocalypse.”
“For diplomacy.”
He swipes the screen. Another image appears. Another location.
“The second piece is owned by Anthony Caruso. Do you know him?”
My stomach drops before I can stop it.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know him.”
Kieran looks up immediately. “Problem?”
“He’s a crime boss,” I say, stepping toward the windows because I cannot look at them while I say it. “Organized crime. High-end theft. The kind of man who makes people disappear when they annoy him.”
Silence settles behind me.
“I stole from him once,” I add. “Three years ago. An antique dagger his grandmother left him. He’s been trying to figure out who took it ever since.”
Another pause. Heavier this time.
“Did he catch you?” Azrael asks.
“No.” My fingers press against the glass. Cold seeps into my skin. “But he knows someone did it. He has people asking questions in the right circles. If he sees me anywhere near his collection, he will put it together.”
“What made you target him?” Kieran asks.
I give a small shrug without turning. “Client paid well. Said the dagger was acquired through questionable means. I didn’t ask questions.”
“You should have,” Azrael says.
There is something in his voice that I do not recognize. Not quite anger. Not quite concern. Something sharper than both.
“That dagger was one of the artifacts I hired you to steal.”
I turn so fast it almost hurts.
“What?”
“Three years ago,” he says calmly. “New York job. Italian crime family. Ornate dagger with a black blade.”
His gaze does not leave mine.
“That was your second job for me.”
Memory snaps into place in fragments.
A black blade wrapped in cloth. Gloves. Silence. A warning not to touch the object barehanded. A payout that kept me comfortable for months.
“The dagger was magical,” I say slowly.
“A shadow-forged blade,” Azrael confirms. “Minor compared to the mirror pieces, but still part of the seal network.”
He sets the tablet down as if it no longer matters.
“Which means Caruso’s been sitting on something he doesn’t understand for years…”
“Or he does understand,” Chella says from the window, her voice steady and distant. “And he has been collecting them on purpose.”
The room shifts with that possibility.
I feel it settle in my stomach like something heavy and cold.
“You’re saying Caruso knows about Aethermoor?” I ask.
“Not necessarily,” Azrael replies. “But he is connected to people who do. There is an underground network. Small groups on Earth who know magic is real. Elementals in exile. Humans with diluted magical bloodlines. Collectors who figured out that some artifacts are not just antiques.”
“How many people?” I ask.
“In New York? Maybe a few hundred know for certain. More who suspect but are afraid to confirm it.”
He moves to the window beside me now. Looks out over the city as if he is reading something written across it.
“Your world has always had thin places,” he says, eyes narrowed. “Where the barriers between realms weaken. Manhattan is one of them. One of the few where Elementals can cross without complex ritual.”
I stare at the skyline.
At the city where I’ve lived my entire adult life.
“So there has been a supernatural underground in my city this whole time,” I say, “and I never knew.”
“That was the point,” Kieran says.
“The fewer humans who know, the safer everyone stays,” Azrael adds. “Your governments have agencies that monitor supernatural activity, but they are fragmented. Ineffective.”
“The museum exhibit, though,” I say.
“The rifts are making concealment harder,” Azrael says. “Human technology advances faster than our ability to stay hidden. Some Elementals believe controlled exposure is better than discovery by accident. They think framing magic as history is safer than letting humans stumble into it unprepared.”
It makes sense in a way that is almost worse than if it did not.
But my focus keeps returning to the same problem.
Caruso.
Me.
The past catching up in real time.
“If Caruso is connected to this underground,” I say carefully, “and he realizes I’m the one who stole his dagger?—”
“Then we make sure he does not see you,” Azrael says immediately.
I turn to him fully now.
“You are serious.”
“We need the piece,” he replies. “If that requires precautions, we adapt.”
“He will kill me if he figures it out.”
“He will try. He won’t succeed.” Azrael’s voice drops on the last word, becoming something colder.
The certainty in those words does something to my pulse.
Chella clears her throat, breaking the moment cleanly.
“What is the strategy for the second piece? Caruso’s?” she asks.
“Caruso’s piece is being moved through a supernatural auction tomorrow. The auction party is tomorrow night. Invitation only.” Azrael sets the tablet down as if the matter is already decided, already finished. “We attend. We bid. We acquire it.”
“That’s your plan? Just walk in and buy it?”
“Unless you have a better suggestion?”
I do. Several. None of them involves legality. All of them involve breaking something, stealing something, or setting off at least one alarm I’m not emotionally prepared to deal with again.
“Fine,” I mutter. “We’ll try it your way.”
“Generous of you.” His mouth barely shifts, but I recognize it anyway. Almost a smile. Almost.
My phone buzzes on the kitchen counter.
The sound cuts through the room like something foreign. Something I forgot existed. I stare at it for a second too long, as if it might disappear if I acknowledge it properly.
It buzzes again. Then again.
“You should check that,” Azrael says.
I cross to the counter slowly, as if the phone might bite me. My fingers are steadier than I expect when I pick it up, which is almost worse.
Two hundred and forty-seven missed calls.
Hundreds of texts.
Voicemails stacked so high they feel like pressure behind my ribs instead of data on a screen.
I scroll without really seeing. Claudia, my assistant, thirty-seven calls. Robert, my business partner, twenty-two. Names from college I haven’t thought about in years. People from galleries, events, the art world orbit I used to move through like it meant something.
My mother. Three calls.
Three, which is more than she usually manages in a month.
Everyone wondering where the hell I’ve gone.
I always thought vanishing would feel clean. Elegant. Like slipping through a locked door.
Instead, it looks like a screen full of names I trained myself not to need.
“I’ve been gone three weeks,” I whisper. The numbers look real, but they don’t feel real. Like they belong to someone else’s life. “They noticed.”
“You are wealthy. Connected. Of course they noticed.”
Azrael moved while I wasn’t looking. Now he’s opening cabinets in my kitchen like he’s done it a hundred times before. Like he belongs here. Like he always has. “What will you tell them?”
“I don’t know.” I set the phone down, then pick it up again without meaning to. “Spontaneous vacation. Mental health break.”