Chapter 19 Ghosts and Guardians
Ghosts And Guardians
I shouldered my bag and headed for the exit, but Rita intercepted me at the bar. She was wiping down glasses with mechanical precision, her movements sharp and efficient despite the late hour. When she looked up, her eyes held that familiar glint: part concern, part calculation.
“You look wrecked,” she said, setting down the towel.
“Maybe I am.” I dropped onto a barstool. “Who was the guy with Ulysses? Gray suit. Expensive enough to make this place look like a tax write-off.”
The glass stilled in her hand. That was my answer.
Rita finished polishing the glass, then set it aside with a neat, almost reverent clink. She leaned in over the bar, the overhead lights catching flecks of gold in her irises, no-nonsense, predatory, the way cats look just before they decide whether to pounce or bolt.
“That’s a dangerous curiosity,” she said.
“Feels like I’m already in it.”
Now she looked at me. Really looked.
She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial hush. “The suit?” she said. “Nightwarden.”
She let the word hang there, like I should know what it meant. When I didn’t react, one brow ticked upward.
“Inner circle,” she went on. “Means paperwork if you’re lucky. Blood if you’re not.”
My stomach tightened. “Inner circle of what?”
She snorted softly. “You work here and still think this is just a bar?”
“Humor me.”
“The Coven,” she said. “Top of the vampire food chain. Old money. Older grudges. They run clans like corporations. Smile for the public. Tear each other apart in private.”
I tried to wrap my head around it, the way Rita spoke of supernatural hierarchies as if discussing rival suppliers or union bosses.
“And Ulysses?”
“He’s important enough to get a visit.”
That landed.
I tried to picture it, Ulysses sitting at the head of a long mahogany table, flanked by pale, bored lieutenants in bespoke suits, each more dangerous than the next, all sipping from glasses that never needed to be filled.
“So when one of them shows up…” I meant it to sound casual, but the question landed heavier than I’d expected.
“Someone’s about to get corrected.” Her eyes flicked toward the hallway where Ulysses had disappeared. “Sometimes that’s a warning. Sometimes it’s a removal.”
“Removal,” I repeated.
She leaned closer. Her voice dropped, but not enough to hide it from anyone listening.
“You ever watch wolves thin a pack?”
That was all she gave me.
I swallowed. “And if your name’s on the list?”
“You stay boring.” Her expression hardened. “Or you make sure somebody powerful needs you alive.”
She hesitated, then reached across the bar, resting her hand over mine. Her fingers were cold but steady.
“You’re not the first girl he’s kept close,” she said. “But you might be the first who noticed the door locking behind her.”
That hit harder than anything else.
I could feel the puzzle pieces shifting, reshaping into something sharper, more dangerous.
“Thanks, Rita,” I said, meaning it.
“Don’t.” She pulled her hand back. “Just don’t get dead.”
I slid off the stool, the room suddenly smaller. The whole city felt different now, less like a playground, more like a chessboard where every pawn bled if you knocked it over.
“Tuesday?” I asked.
She grinned, all teeth. “If you’re still in one piece.”
The walk home felt longer than usual. I kept my head down, but my mind was racing, piecing together snatches of overheard bar talk, half-remembered rumors, Rita’s warnings, and Ulysses’s threats, all of it knitting into a story I wasn’t sure I wanted to finish reading. But I couldn’t stop, not now.
The city was quieter on the side streets, but I still felt watched, like every stoop and alley had a pair of eyes stashed just out of view. When I reached my apartment, I locked the door behind me, twice, and checked the window latches. Then checked them again.
I sat on the edge of my bed, fingers tracing the creased edges of Ava’s photo, and let the silence settle. It was too late to pretend I could go back to normal, too late to unsee the world as it really was. But maybe, I thought, that was the only way to keep from getting swallowed by it.
Maybe curiosity was dangerous.
But ignorance? Ignorance was fatal.
I fell asleep with the Polaroid pressed against my heart, Ava’s laughter echoing through my dreams, and the faintest trace of aftershave still clinging to the air.
* * *
The following morning didn’t ease in. It detonated.
Something loud and electronic blared from the living room, some animated series Mateo insisted wasn’t “for kids,” even though it involved neon monsters screaming about friendship.
I dragged myself upright.
Mateo was sprawled on the couch in an oversized Knicks T-shirt and athletic shorts, one leg dangling off the armrest, cereal bowl balanced dangerously on his stomach. His backpack lay open on the floor beside him, half-zipped like he’d already packed in a hurry.
He didn’t look up when I appeared.
“You’re alive,” he said, eyes still on the screen.
“Barely.”
He muted the show. That alone told me something.
“You okay?” he asked, casual. Too casual.
“I’m fine.”
He studied me then, sharper than he used to. Eleven had brought angles to his face. Awareness. He saw more than he let on.
“You look tired,” he said. Not concerned. Assessing.
“I am tired.”
He nodded like he’d logged that information somewhere private.
On the coffee table sat a sheet of paper covered in heavy blue marker.
“You drew that?” I asked.
He shifted, suddenly defensive. “It’s just something.”
I stepped closer.
It wasn’t just something.
The pendant shape was deliberate. It was a hexagonal bullet-shaped one, its surface smooth yet rugged, with curling, intricate filigree carved into the stone.
It looked old, impossibly old, and yet familiar in a way that made my stomach knot.
Around the pendant, Mateo had drawn hands, a pair of them, one large and one small, as if in the act of passing the pendant from adult to child.
The word REMEMBER was printed in block letters at the top. Pressed so hard it indented the wood beneath.
“Dream?” I asked gently.
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I’ve seen it before,” he said. Then, quickly, “Probably online or something.”
That was new. The self-edit.
I stared at the drawing, the filigree lines, the way the blue seemed to glow even in the kitchen’s weak light. The memory tugged at something inside me, distant and half-buried, the way nightmares sometimes left a residue even after daylight chased them off.
“Does it mean anything?” I asked.
He hesitated. Then he said, “Do you want it to?”
That one landed.
I crouched beside him. “You can tell me if something feels weird.”
He rolled his eyes lightly, but it lacked bite. “It’s not weird.”
He paused for a second, then he added, “It just felt important.”
Mateo held the drawing up and stared at it like he was waiting for it to tell him something.
I poured myself a mug of coffee, took a reckless sip, and watched him for any sign that last night had followed me home. I reached out and smoothed his hair, tucking a wild strand behind his ear. He leaned away, not far, just enough to register the protest.
“You want eggs,” I asked, “or are you planning to survive exclusively on sugar puffs?”
He considered it like a contract negotiation. “Both.”
Then, after a beat: “Can I keep the drawing?”
“Of course.” I kissed his temple anyway. He tolerated it. “It’s a masterpiece.”
I kept my tone light, but I folded the page myself, careful not to crease the pendant.
As I reached for the eggs, I caught sight of Ava’s Polaroid peeking from my pocket, the crease in the photo matching the curve of my hip. Last night’s conversation replayed in my head: the warnings, the coven, the sense that I was being watched, measured, hunted.
I glanced back at Mateo. He’d unmuted the cartoon but wasn’t really watching. The folded paper rested beside him, one hand casually draped over it.
For now, he was here, he was safe. Solid. Breathing. Mine. And that would have to be enough.
I rinsed a pan, cracked two eggs, and tried not to think about the way the yolks bled across the white, perfect and whole, until the smallest pressure broke them open.
Then the coffee kicked in, and my mind spun back to the pendant. The blue in Mateo’s drawing, it was almost the same shade as the stone in Ava’s favorite ring. The one she never took off, not even when she danced. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen a matching necklace.
Nothing.
Coincidence, I told myself.
But maybe it was something. A clue. A warning.
When Mateo finished eating, he slid the folded page into his backpack with careful indifference. Like it didn’t matter.
I noticed anyway.
“Mom,” he said, already halfway to the hall, “is it cool if I go to Ms. White’s? Billy’s there.”
Casual. As if permission was a mere formality.
I hesitated, mug hovering midair. The idea of him out of sight scraped against something raw.
But Ms. White was safe, a retired librarian with a penchant for baking cookies and an uncanny knack for reading kids the riot act when they strayed too close to mischief, and Billy, her grandson, was the same age as Mateo, visiting only every other weekend.
“I’ll stay inside,” he added quickly. “We’re doing a puzzle.”
Strategic honesty.
“A thousand pieces?” I asked.
“All cats,” he said. “Apparently, that makes it easier.”
“For her.”
He smirked. “We’ll see.”
I pointed at him with the coffee mug. “Hallways only. No street sprints.”
He rolled his eyes, but softer than usual. “That was one time.”
“Twice.”
He ignored that. Slipped on his sneakers. Shouldered his backpack.
At the door, he hesitated just long enough to look back.
“Back before lunch,” he said. Not a promise. A reassurance.
My heart performed a complicated dance of pride and terror as I watched him go, the apartment door clicking shut behind him with the finality of a starting pistol.