Chapter 18
Rayna slipped away from the library’s glow and padded barefoot down the east hallway, where the walls always smelled faintly of cedar. Her phone buzzed once with a new glyph image from Sahara, but she didn’t read it.
She knew where he’d be. Payne, Michael, and Daniel moved all the weapons to the basement of Fort Hamilton.
Then Payne had moved into the mansion temporarily, until her Brooklyn home was repaired.
There was talk about his moving in with her after that.
Michael and Daniel stayed behind to guard the place and maybe find a new place of their own.
The training room in the mansion’s inner sanctuary was cool and dim, lit only by runes pulsing faintly. Payne stood alone, jacket discarded, boots planted, fists wrapped. He wasn’t training. Just moving strategically and boxing against nothing. Shaking off tension, alone.
Rayna leaned against the doorframe and watched. Knowing the mimic may have used her face, her voice, her stance, and still, he hadn’t flinched. That meant something. She just wasn’t sure what.
“You always beat the crap out of the air when you’re mad?” she asked.
He didn’t turn. “Only when the air asks for it.”
She stepped closer. “You okay?”
His shoulders dropped a fraction. “Define okay.”
“The part where you’re not bleeding.”
“That’s a low bar, Rayna.”
“I’m a low-bar kind of girl.”
That got a half-smile. He turned, finally. The barely-there light edged the hard line of his jaw, but his eyes were softer than she expected. And more tired.
“You saw it?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She nodded. He came closer, wrapped knuckles dangling at his sides. “It wasn’t just your face. It moved like you. Almost had your rhythm.”
Rayna exhaled. “But not me.”
“No,” he said, voice low. “Not even close.”
Rayna tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “It’s learning. Fast. Every interaction, every reaction… It’s pulling us into its pattern.”
“And we’re letting it,” he said. “Even now. Watching. Studying. Guessing. It’s getting ahead of us, and that pisses me off.”
She met his eyes. “Then let’s stop waiting.”
He stepped in, close enough to touch. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”
Their mouths almost met, but Rayna leaned back, breath catching. “I smell training sweat and self-loathing. I’m not kissing that.”
His eyes crinkled. “I’ll go shower.”
“Meanwhile, we both strategize. We need a solid plan.”
Payne nodded. The soldier in him straightened, but something in his gaze lingered. Something unspoken and warm.
“Rayna,” he said softly.
She paused at the threshold.
“I didn’t flinch because I know you. I’d flinch for you. Just not from you.”
She hesitated, but when she spoke, her voice was lighter. “Damn. You’re getting good at that.”
“At what?”
“Making me want to survive this.”
Then she was gone, bare feet whispering down the hall.
And Payne stood alone in the training room, heart still hammering, finally aware of just how much he’d been afraid to lose her.
The winds of fate had changed. Or rather, the witches stopped futzing around and decided to do something about this abomination.
They painted glowing runes of protection and strength on each other, on Katie, and on Payne.
There was no more room to paint on Eli, so he was safely hidden away in the mansion’s panic room with the VR headset.
The night air around the L.A.W. mansion buzzed with the tight calm of a planned strike. Spells prepped, weapons drawn, wards pulsing beneath the grass like buried wires. Then it was too quiet. No bugs. No birds. Just a high, metallic hum that built.
“They say silence is golden,” Brianna murmured, eyes scanning the tree line. “This feels more silver and homicidal.”
Rayna didn’t answer. Her pulse was pounding hard enough to drown out snark.
The witches stood in a wide circle around the mansion’s perimeter, candles and salt flickering in place.
A Jeep had been parked in the brush nearby, armed and ready to roll out enchanted iron nets and whatever else Joell had loaded into it.
Payne stood a little behind Rayna’s right shoulder, close enough that she could feel the heat rolling off him. He wasn’t touching her. But he was ready.
Sahara whispered from across the circle, “It’s close.”
Victoria’s eyes flared. “No. It’s here.”
A blur of shadow erupted from the fountain like a geyser of ink, twisting midair and slamming into the salt line.
It screamed, high and shrill like metal tearing itself in half, but didn’t fall back.
It learned. Its second attempt came from underground, bursting out near the fountain in a spray of dirt and stone.
A mimic in the shape of something, but not quite human. Arms too long, and too many teeth.
“Hold!” Rayna shouted.
Magda flung a wall of wind at it, knocking the mimic off balance, then it disappeared, but another shadow peeled from the tree line and launched itself at Rayna.
Payne moved without hesitation, intercepting the creature mid-leap and slamming it to the ground with a grunt. Crystal followed, driving an enchanted spike through the thing’s shoulder. It didn’t bleed. It just hissed, then dissolved into smoke.
“It’s splitting,” Victoria said, hands moving in tight, complex patterns. “Maybe one body, but many projections.”
Rayna’s vision pulsed with magic. “Then we find the source.”
But before they could, the mimic twisted the air again, and this time the attack came from above.
The sky ripped open. Not a portal. A tear. Like someone had clawed the night itself, and something dropped through. A mimic, larger, more solid, wearing the exact face of Joell.
Katie gasped. “That’s not her. That’s not her.”
Joell placed a hand on her hip and glared at it. “No shit. I’d never wear my hair that way.”
The goldfish in Katie’s bubble burped a faint glow and mumbled, “Don’t trust the familiar faces... Oh, it wants cookies,” before forgetting itself and spinning in a circle.
Rayna stepped forward, raising both hands, glyphs swirling to life across her skin. “No mercy,” she whispered. The glyphs lit up the lawn like war paint as the witches unleashed hell.
Magda’s wind became a hurricane funnel. Sahara wove heat into raw flame. Brianna cracked open the earth beneath the mimic’s feet. Victoria moved without speaking, casting spells Rayna didn’t even recognize. Lioness drew sharp, ancient things that shimmered with buried starlight.
But the mimic didn’t go down. It absorbed the spells, body twitching and reshaping with each one, like it was studying, evolving, and growing.
Lioness shouted, “Behind you!”
Rayna spun, but not fast enough. A shadow claw raked across her ward. The impact staggered her, and her magic flared out of sync. Suddenly, the protection glyphs on her arms began to glitch, flickering like bad Wi-Fi.
“Shit. It’s disrupting our focus. Stay focused, everyone!”
Payne was beside her in a second, gun in one hand, spell-tagged blade in the other. “You good?”
Rayna hissed as another claw tore through the air inches from her cheek. “I’m pissed.”
Another mimic projection launched itself at Katie, who had no weapon, just wide eyes and a barely contained familiar.
Victoria yelled, “Protect the girl!”
Too late. The mimic got close, only to be swallowed by a sudden shimmer of orange.
Katie blinked. “Did my fish just—”
The mimic exploded in midair, splattering goop in a five-foot radius. Her goldfish blinked from inside its bubble. “No idea what just happened. I think I vomited.”
Everyone turned toward the Joell-imposter as it began to grin. Its body elongated, split again, and twisted back into a form Rayna did recognize. Her own. How dare it mimic her?
And then it spoke. “Let’s see what makes you break.”
Rayna stared at the mimic wearing her face.
It tilted its head, a little too far, like a marionette with loose strings. Her own smirk stared back at her. Her voice, but lower and laced with bitterness, slid out of its mouth: “What’s it like knowing you’re not the strongest anymore?”
She wanted to lunge. To punch ‘herself’ in the throat. Something. But a hand grabbed her elbow and yanked her backward.
“Not yet,” Joell snapped. “Huddle.”
The witches fell into a staggered, panting circle. They were mud-spattered, singed, and glowing with the kind of exhausted sweat that came right before considering very bad ideas.
Magda’s braid was smoking. Brianna had a cut on her temple. Victoria’s scarf was half burned and somehow still looked chic. Katie hovered at the edge, holding Bubbles like a security blanket.
Rayna blew some hair out of her face. “Okay. What the actual hell did we just unleash?”
“It’s feeding on us,” Victoria said, voice clipped. “Every spell, every flare of power… We’re teaching it. It’s mimicking forms, thought patterns, and magic. I don’t think it was this evolved when it started.”
“We’re making it worse,” Brianna groaned. “We’re literally throwing fuel at a fire demon and asking why it’s getting bigger.”
“We should’ve known,” Sahara added. “The glyphs. The graffiti. All of it consisted of warnings, not puzzles.”
Magda spat into the grass. “Too late for regrets. We need a counteroffensive that won’t go nuclear.”
“Overload?” Victoria suggested. “A simultaneous strike. Hit it with every chaotic, clashing energy we’ve got. Maybe confuse the mimic’s reflexes long enough to trap it.”
“That’s risky,” Rayna said. “We could blow each other up.”
Katie piped up. “My fish says it might work.”
Everyone turned.
The goldfish swirled dramatically in its bubble, then looked vaguely at them and muttered, “Overdo the symbiosis. It worked before. Or maybe popcorn?” Then it hiccupped again.
“Close enough,” Rayna muttered. “Let’s take the shot.”
Magda wiped a smear of blood off Brianna’s cheek. “So, what’s the move?”