Chapter 17
Katie woke with a start.
The dream clung to her skin like sweat. Shadows flickered behind her eyelids, and a new graffiti message glowed in her mind.
She sat up on the couch in the mansion’s lounge, blanket tangled around her ankles.
Bubbles hovered motionless in his orb a few feet away, as if someone had paused his animation.
“Katie,” it said without moving, voice a whisper underwater. “The moon is still hungry.”
“Great,” she croaked, pushing hair from her eyes. “Can you be more specific?”
Bubbles blinked. “About what?”
Katie sighed. “Never mind.”
The image was still there. Not just in her memory, but hovering at the edge of her vision, like afterburn.
A symbol. It looked like a stylized eye, angular, dripping, with what might have been roots stretching downward.
She reached for the notepad Lioness had left beside her and scratched it out in pencil.
A moment later, Eli shuffled into the room.
He looked hollow-eyed but awake, wearing one of Joell’s oversized hoodies and clutching a bowl of cereal like it was an offering to some breakfast god. He paused when he saw her.
Katie turned the pad toward him. “Is this familiar?”
Eli froze.
Then, wordlessly, he rolled up his sleeve.
There it was. Fresh on his arm, gleaming faintly like wet ink, was exactly the same symbol. Except his version writhed subtly with light, pulsing like it was breathing.
Katie whispered, “We’re connected.”
Bubbles bobbed in agreement. “You are the key, and he is the lock. Or maybe the other way around. Hard to say.”
Eli dropped into the armchair across from her. “I think I dreamed it too. But I didn’t know what it meant.”
“You said the markings were a map,” Katie said. “But maybe this one’s a door. I just have a feeling… Roots and an eye?”
Sahara entered a moment later, holding a mug that read I Studied Dead Languages So You Don’t Have To. Her braid was still damp from the shower, and her tone suggested she’d been listening outside the door for at least a minute.
“You two just made my job harder,” she said, setting her mug down and pulling a stack of parchment from her tote.
She dropped the parchment next to Katie’s sketch and started lining up symbols across the table, muttering, “Okay, so this one,” she tapped the root-like tendrils, “matches a variant I saw in the Ostara sequence. And this part,” she pointed to the eye, “looks like a convergence glyph. Not convergence like ‘let’s all meet at Starbucks,’ but convergence like a crossing of planes or triangulation. ”
Eli paled.
“Does that mean it’s closing in? Getting close to finding us?” Katie asked.
Sahara didn’t answer right away. “It might mean it’s looking, or it’s found you two and is watching for someone else to complete the triangulation.”
The lights flickered once. “Damn. I hate it when the mansion tries to communicate.”
“Why?” Eli asked.
“Just that it means ghosts are around. Don’t worry, they’re friendly. I think,” Katie said.
Bubbles twitched in midair.
Joell poked her head around the corner. Her voice was brisk but not unkind. “Morning briefing in the library. Rayna got a message from Payne.”
Katie stood, still clutching the sketchpad. “What kind of message?”
“Not the ‘wish you were here’ kind.” She pointed to Eli’s new pulsing tattoo. “I’m guessing it’s related to that.”
They followed her through the long corridor, past walls hung with ancestral portraits and age-worn tapestries. The L.A.W. mansion always felt old and weird, but today the air carried an edge of urgency beneath the wood polish, overpowering the lavender calming spells.
Rayna stood in the library in fresh combat boots and yesterday’s eyeliner. She was holding her phone and not looking thrilled about it.
“Payne and my pets are alive,” she announced without preamble. “My brownstone’s not in great shape, but he, Michael, and Daniel fought off a mimic. It got through the wards.”
Lioness let out a low whistle. “Didn’t think that was possible.”
“It shouldn’t be,” Rayna said. “But it did. Payne said it was testing them. Learning. And it used my face to throw them off.”
Katie felt a spike of cold panic.
Rayna continued, “We think it’s after the teens. That’s the only thing that makes sense. The markings, the dream-visions, the graffiti. It’s trying to crack the code before we do.”
“You found me before the woman did. The woman who was supposed to find me in the Between,” Eli said. “Now you’re all in her way.”
Victoria nodded grimly from the corner. “We need to move. If it already found Rayna’s brownstone, it won’t stop there. We have to go back to Long Island. We need the vaults, the records, the big guns.”
Joell grabbed her notebook. “Agreed. Vacation is over. We can perform a tactical relocation, so we get this bastard. But we’re not going in half-cocked. I want every symbol from that ritual documented and cross-referenced. Sahara, you’re on translation. Katie, stick with Eli. Rayna—”
“I’ll brief Payne,” Rayna said, already tapping her phone. “Tell him to prep for a counteroffensive.”
Bubbles burped more sparkles. “And snacks!” he said. “Counteroffensives require snacks.”
The mansion didn't wait for instructions. Shutters snapped shut on their own. Chandeliers blinked out. Somewhere, a broom clattered to the ground like a mic drop.
As soon as Rayna hit send on her text to Payne, the floors gave a seismic groan. Books put themselves away, and a golden light held them in place.
“I guess our mansion got the memo,” Brianna muttered, steadying herself as the entire house began to rumble beneath their feet.
The trees swayed away, unnaturally. Leaves floated upward instead of falling. Magic crackled through the air like static before a storm.
“Everybody brace,” Joell called. “She’s not used to being disturbed mid-vacation.”
The L.A.W. mansion, cloaked and sentient, began to dislodge from the Tennessee hillside with a guttural creak that defied physics and civil zoning laws.
Earth fell away. Roots released with reluctant snaps.
In the distance, a rooster screamed bloody murder.
Of course, it would sound like that anyway.
As the foundation groaned, Sahara swept her notes off the table and crammed them into her satchel. “I still need to run a comparative glyph study against the Abu Simbel fragments.”
“You’ll do it on the ride,” Joell said, already snapping out orders. “Crystal, double-check our cloaking. Victoria, check the altar room for anything unstable. Lioness—”
“On my way to the kitchen,” she said, holding up a roll of bubble wrap and a bottle of something red.
Rayna stayed rooted by the window, phone still in hand. She watched the sky, waiting for the reply she already knew was coming.
Payne didn’t text often. When he did, the words came short and sharp. She reviewed his last one.
It wore your face. Not you. Didn’t flinch. We’re fine. Come home. Bring the fire.
Rayna exhaled slowly. The mimic had tried to use her image to throw him off balance, and it hadn’t worked. She wasn’t sure if that made her feel proud or weirdly hurt.
The mansion tore free of its anchor point with a jolt and shimmered out of the visible spectrum, becoming nothing but a gust of wind over the mountains. Below them, the earth sealed up like a zipper.
Inside, the witches stumbled into motion.
Katie hung back with Eli in the central hallway, bracing and holding hands. Rayna joined them.
“So, this is what a tactical relocation looks like?” Eli asked Rayna.
Rayna nodded. “Yeah. Only slightly less chaotic than my family’s holiday dinners.”
His gaze landed on the new symbol on his arm. “Do you think it’s awake now?”
Bubbles floated between them, humming something off-key and off-tempo. “I think it’s awake now…” the goldfish sang to the tune of a 70’s song.
Eli’s throat bobbed. “Please don’t let it find me.”
Moments later, the mansion reappeared, settled into its original foundations on Long Island like it had never left. The wards flared green, then settled into their usual shimmer of latent protection runes and death threats.
Joell wasted no time. “We regroup in the war room in twenty,” she announced. “I want all references to planar crossings, mimic behaviors, and predatory lunar phenomena. If it tried to measure us, we’ll measure it back, harder.”
Lioness stopped in her tracks. “Predatory lunar phenomena?”
Rayna turned, eyes narrowing. “You think this thing’s tied to the moon?”
Sahara reappeared, now dragging a canvas case of scrolls and digital tablets.
“It’s possible. Katie’s dreams spike during full moons.
The graffiti appears overnight. And one of the scrolls from the Ostara sequence mentioned an entity that could only pass through when the moon was ‘most reflective.’”
“Which is poetic,” Joell added, “but could also mean full, gibbous, or mirrored. We’ll need context.”
“I’ll bet mirrored,” Victoria muttered. “At least that sounds logical… and fashionable.”
Joell pulled out her grimoire, flipped to a page marked with multiple warning tabs, and began cross-referencing Eli’s arm symbols with entries tagged “metaphysical beacons,” “sympathetic detonation,” and “don’t touch this, Joell, seriously.”
Katie sat on the windowsill, thinking about the moon. It was past its peak now and tinged faintly yellow. It was beautiful, but yes, it felt like it was watching. And what about that phrase Bubbles spouted? The moon is hungry?
Eli looked up sharply. “Can it see me?”
“I don’t think it’s just a light source,” Katie said quietly. “I think it’s part of him or her or them. Like an eye, or a mirror. I think he, she, or they uses it to see us. But don’t listen to me. I’m as clueless as you are.”
Rayna’s voice was steady. “Then we blot out the moon.”
Joell blinked. “That better be metaphorical.”
“Then we do it metaphorically,” Rayna snapped. “But if it’s looking for us through Leonardo’s moon mirroring the sun theory, or that symbol, or through Eli and Katie, we need to hit first.”
Katie nodded slowly. “I guess we need to draw it out.”
Bubbles twitched. “With what? Graffiti?”
“Maybe,” Katie said, straightening her posture. “Or bait. Or both.”
“We talked about rewriting the directions,” Joell reminded everyone. “How’s that coming, Sahara?”
“Ugh. Slowly. Very slowly.”
Joell threw her hands in the air. Frustration was written on her face. “Well, speed it up.”
It did not remember waking. Only watching.
At first, it had watched the small one. Soft thoughts, pulsing with color. The symbol had called it, like a flare in the fog of this sharp, glittering world. It had drawn the symbol while he slept, drawn it on walls and skin and memory. Not just a beacon. A tether.
The mimic had been other shapes before. Not names. Not roles. Only reactions. Faces stolen, voices echoed. It had worn her face and spoken as she might speak. It had hoped to disorient the soldier, the sharp one. The one who carried steel and fire in equal measure. But he had not flinched.
That puzzled it. The mimic had no real feelings of its own. No true shape of its own. But it noticed humans had both. In spaces, it moved between forms like shadows moved across glass. But here, it felt more real. It had edges. Hunger. It was taking shape.
It had tasted her magic in the illusion. The memory of her force, the bite of her fire. It had wanted to become her. But there was something in the way. A presence denied. The mimic’s stolen version had cracked before it finished.
Now it curled in the place between, beneath the city’s skin. The tunnels were colder today. The glyphs in its mind flickered when it remembered the boy. The beacon-boy. The woman was supposed to find him, but she never came.
It had not meant to hurt the boy. Not unless it had to. It had only partially erased his memories. He was a signal, not the source. And he didn’t realize he was a lure.
With the boy gone, it had followed the soldier’s pull to the brownstone.
It had entered the wards wearing her face.
But the magic there had hissed and recoiled, like flame on oil on water.
The house knew it was wrong. The mimic had fled with a fragment of something.
A memory that wasn’t its own. Inside, the mimic’s thoughts had become less mist and more spine.
More I. Now it crouched in shadow, unformed and flickering. Listening. Learning.
The moon overhead was not just light. It was a convex mirror. Portal. Eye. It felt the boy with the witches moving. Felt the house shift like a beast rolling over in its sleep.
They had gone home. Now they were back in the place of strong stone and anchored roots. The place where they wrote spells like letters to the Goddess and fought nightmares with hands that glowed.
The mimic stretched. It almost had fingers now. It almost had breath, and it tried to whisper its new name. Not a word. But close.
It would find the boy again. Or the girl with dreams. Or the fire-witch who refused to break. It would wear the moon if it had to, because the mimic was learning. And it was so very hungry.