Chapter 1
The L.A.W. mansion woke everyone the same way it always did when trouble was inevitable, by flickering every lantern like it was trying to Morse-code S O S.
Rayna stepped into the war room in full Autumn Senior Priestess mode—combat boots, braid, and the facial expression of someone who had already had three cups of coffee and wished they’d been stronger.
“Okay, witches, settle. The ground shook in Manhattan, and none of us were involved, so what’s with that? ”
Chad was already at the oval table, laptop open, tie crooked like he’d sprinted here. “Not a natural quake. Seismographs picked up a spike pattern I’ve only seen in magically-generated tectonic displacement.”
Joell sidestepped him, carrying her mug like it was a fragile, beloved pet. “Translation: something spooky woke up under New York before any of us had caffeine. Rude.”
The air shimmered. Bas appeared by projection, dressed in severe High Priestess chic and radiating the kind of calm that only came from being on a completely different continent. “Good morning my darlings.”
Rayna nodded. “High Priestess! To what do we owe the honor?”
Bas chuckled. “I sensed I might be needed. Chad and I had a chat, and he’s worried that you might challenge his authority.”
“Only if it’s stupid,” Brianna said.
“Look, there is something very ancient trying to surface in Central Park,” Chad said, “We don’t know what it is, who put it there, or when. But there are a couple of you perfectly suited to figure it out. Together.”
Bas’s emerald eyes drifted across the team before landing on two witches who were already trying to inch in opposite directions.
“Sahara. Lioness.”
Both froze.
“No,” Sahara said immediately.
“Nope,” Lioness echoed.
Bas smiled the serene smile of someone who absolutely enjoyed saying this. “You two will handle the Manhattan disturbance together.”
Lioness threw both hands up. “Why? Why would you—why would anyone—pair me with her?”
Sahara crossed her arms. “Because if chaos needs balancing, apparently I’m the poor soul condemned to do the balancing.”
“I don’t cause chaos,” Lioness snapped. “I encourage creativity.”
“You set a sketch on fire with your mind three days ago.”
“It was a controlled burn.”
“The paper screamed.”
Rayna cleared her throat. “Ladies. Bas has spoken.”
“Oh, she’s spoken,” Sahara muttered. “She gleefully declared my doom.”
Bas lifted a brow. “If I wanted your doom, Sahara, I’d pair you with Rayna during her PMS week.”
Rayna pointed her pen at Bas’s projection. “Hey.”
Chad slid printouts across the table. “There’s a localized tremor in Central Park. Pre-quake runic interference, faint pulse readings, wildlife agitation. Something’s trying to rise.”
Lioness leaned over the papers, eyes scanning the diagrams upside down. “Ooh, that’s not normal.”
Sahara snatched the page back and turned it. “You can’t read glyphs upside down.”
“I can if they’re pretty.”
“They’re not meant to be pretty—”
Rayna cut in before a full sibling-style brawl broke out.
“Look. You two argue like toddlers in a shared playpen, but you watch each other’s backs.
Even when you pretend you don’t.” She pointed to Sahara.
“You’d tackle a demon with your bare hands if it so much as breathed near Lioness.
” Then she pointed at Lioness. “And you’d set that demon on fire with interpretive art. ”
Lioness smirked. “I mean. Yeah.”
Sahara sighed skyward. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s just go before the obelisk or volcano or whatever it is gets cranky.”
Bas’s projection softened. “Good. Sahara, keep your grounding sigils ready. Lioness, try not to touch anything glowing unless Sahara supervises.”
Lioness saluted. “No promises.”
Sahara grabbed her backpack and strode toward the door. “Let’s go, Disaster Child.”
“Lead the way, Sand princess.”
Rayna called after them, “Try not to let Manhattan explode!”
Sahara didn’t break stride. “No guarantees!”
And with that, the most incompatible duo in the League marched out together—arguing, bickering, and absolutely ready to defend each other against anything that wasn’t each other.
Sahara Nadir hated mornings almost as much as she hated surprises, and Central Park was giving her both.
Mist clung to the grass. Dog walkers and joggers skirted the caution tape that now boxed off an oddly symmetrical patch of ground near the Ramble. It seemed too symmetrical, too polished, like the earth had been carved by something with a protractor.
Sahara crouched beside the fissure, her fingertips hovering a breath above the soil. The ground still pulsed faintly, as if the quake had left behind an echo that refused to fade.
“Well,” she muttered, “you’re not natural. You’re not accidental. And you’re absolutely older than my last three exes combined.”
Her palm warmed as she drew an anchoring sigil over the crack. Magic hummed under her skin. It was steady at first, then tugging. Something deep beneath the surface seemed to lean upward, curious.
“Nope,” she said sharply, cutting the line of the sigil. “We’re not doing that. I’m not your morning snack.”
A jogger slowed nearby. “Uh… are you a geologist?”
“Absolutely not,” Sahara said.
The jogger blinked, decided that was an acceptable answer, and kept moving.
Sahara inhaled slowly, letting the magic settle. Earth magic was predictable, reliable… well, usually. Today, the ground felt like it was trying too hard to get her attention.
She dusted off her hands and stood. “Okay. Lioness should be here by now. Unless she stopped to pet a butterfly, sketch a squirrel, or join a spontaneous modern dance performance.”
A breeze stirred at her back.
“Oh, please,” she said to the empty path. “Don’t be dramatic wind. I have enough drama coming.”
Her phone buzzed. A message from Chad:
Any sign of secondary activity? Do NOT go down a hole alone.
Sahara rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t planning on spelunking before breakfast.”
She was about to send a begrudgingly professional update when a faint groan split the quiet morning air, sounding like the shift of stone forced against stone.
The fissure widened by a full inch.
Sahara’s breath stalled. “That’s… bad.”
Magic prickled across her arms. She knelt again, tracing the glyphs emerging on the exposed rock. They were ancient, jagged, and furious.
“Definitely not natural,” she whispered. “Definitely not friendly.”
Behind her, sirens wailed in the distance. Probably responding to the building collapse Lioness had insisted on investigating. Sahara pinched the bridge of her nose.
“She’s either already in trouble or already being trouble,” she said. “Figures.”
The earth throbbed again. Hard.
Sahara braced a hand against the ground. “Okay, enough! Stay closed. Stay dormant. Just stay—”
The fissure pulsed, hot this time.
Sahara hissed under her breath. “Lioness, I swear to every deity I can name, where ARE you?”
Because whatever was clawing its way up through Central Park had woken early.
And Sahara really, really did not want to face it without the Disaster Child at her side. She sighed, hoping the ward she cast would be enough to hold it at bay a little longer. If something were to happen, she wanted one of her L.A.W. sisters here with her. ANY of them.
Lioness Graves had meant to go straight to Central Park. She really had. She’d even promised Sahara she wouldn’t “wander off or emotionally adopt anyone.” But then the ground trembled beneath her boots, and a sharp tug—instinct and something more—pulled her toward a side street.
Dust climbed the sky in a gray pillar. A chunk of a mixed-use building had collapsed inward. Sirens wailed. Firefighters scrambled. Civilians gathered in a restless knot behind barriers.
And beneath it all, Lioness felt a flicker of fear. A heartbeat straining. A dropped flashlight. A cramped space.
Someone was alive under there. “Shit,” she said, jogging toward the destruction.
Sahara caught up two seconds later, irritation sharp enough to cut glass. “Lioness! We are supposed to be— Oh.” She stopped short as the wrecked building came into view. “Okay, wow. That’s… not small.”
“There’s someone trapped,” Lioness said. “Basement level. Back right corner.”
Sahara didn’t question it. She knew exactly what kind of “intuition” Lioness had. “Fine. But don’t—”
Lioness was already moving.
Before she reached the caution tape, a fire chief intercepted them. “You two need to stay back. Civilians can’t get close to an active collapse!”
Lioness tried the honest route. “I can help.”
“No,” he said, firm and final. “Not happening.”
Sahara stepped forward, not lying, not bluffing—just debating, which was far more dangerous. “Chief, think this through. Your team is stretched thin, and you know someone’s alive down there.”
“We’re handling it,” he snapped.
“You will,” Sahara agreed calmly, “but right now what you’re doing is arguing with me instead of coordinating your crew, and that’s not helping the person trapped inside. We’re here to help. Maybe focus on that instead.” She produced a couple of fake IDs that said something vague, but believable.
“City engineers, eh?”
It was just distracting enough for Lioness to slip beneath the tape and into the rubble.
Inside, dust coated everything. The air tasted like chalk and metal. Lioness pressed a hand to the wall, letting the building’s shuddering pulse guide her. A ceiling panel groaned above her.
“Easy,” she murmured. “Just stay still. I’m not your problem.”
A faint cough drifted from below.
“There you are,” she whispered. She crawled down a partially collapsed stairwell, twisted sideways through a gap too small for anyone normal-sized, and followed the tiny flickers in her mind—glimpses of a flashlight, scraped fingers, the metallic bite of fear.
She found him slumped in the far corner of what had been a basement storage room. His embroidered shirt said Lieutenant Cal Monroe. Dust streaked his dark blond hair. His leg was pinned under a warped support beam. The fallen flashlight illuminated his strained face.
He blinked at her in disbelief. “You are definitely not on my crew.”
“Nope.” She grinned. “But I’m great at getting into stupid places. And getting people out of them.”
He almost laughed—almost.
Lioness crouched beside him, hand hovering over the beam without touching. Feeling. Listening.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Bad news: you’re stuck. Good news: I know which beams your team needs to move to get you out clean.”
Cal stared. “How could you possibly—”
“Intuition,” she said with a shrug. “And a weird childhood.”
Above them, voices shouted. Firefighters cleared debris, searching for access points.
Lioness raised her voice. “HEY! UP THERE!”
A helmeted head peered down. “How the hell did you get in there?”
“Not important!” she yelled. “You need to lift the crossbeam on your left and the diagonal brace on your right. Only those two. If you touch the center one, everything drops.”
The firefighter hesitated. “Ma’am, respectfully, you don’t—”
Cal cut him off, voice firm. “She’s right! If you touch the center brace, we’re dead!”
That got them moving.
Metal shrieked. Dust rained. The weight on Cal’s leg eased. He dragged himself free, groaning as sensation returned.
Lioness hooked his arm over her shoulders. He was warm, heavy, and definitely not fitting through the tiny gap she had come in through.
“Your crew opened a path,” she said. “We go that way.”
He nodded shakily.
“Good,” Lioness said. “Because my friend Sahara is currently lecturing someone into their next lifetime.”
Sure enough, Sahara stood at the exit, hands on hips, the fire chief looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.Publishing
When she saw them emerge alive, upright, and coated in dust, relief flashed across her face, followed immediately by exasperation. “I cannot take you anywhere,” she told Lioness.
Lioness shrugged. “But I saved a firefighter.”
“Lieutenant Cal Monroe. And yes, she did. She also somehow knew exactly what had to move.”
His gaze lingered on Lioness for a half-beat longer than necessary.
Sahara noticed. Sahara noticed everything.
Lioness, blissfully unaware, just grinned, proud and dusty and glowing with adrenaline.
“I’m glad I could help. We’ll be on our way now.” She flounced off toward the park with Sahara following and shaking her head.