VII
I veered hard into the bathroom, shoulder-checking the door and stumbling into a sickly yellow glow that made the tiles look jaundiced.
My hands slammed down on the porcelain sink, knuckles bone-white.
I was sucking in air, but it wouldn’t catch, each breath a ragged, useless gasp. In the mirror, my reflection blurred.
Not here.
Not now.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced the air down, counting backward from ten like a prayer.
Nine.
Eight.
Sev—
A toilet flushed.
The sound cracked through the silence.
I flinched, eyes snapping open.
A stall door swung wide, and a voice drifted out—dry, unimpressed, and dangerously smooth.
“Tell me, does that actually help?”
I looked up to find Sasha Hayes studying my reflection in the mirror. Perfect skirt. Perfect makeup. Perfectly arched brow.
Absolutely zero interest in pretending this wasn’t weird.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t—not with my pulse skittering like a trapped insect against my ribs.
Sasha glided to the sink beside mine, movements fluid and graceful. She didn’t turn to look at me. She just watched me in the mirror.
“Tough first day?”
“I—sorry?”
I turned on the faucet. The rush of water was a desperate attempt to drown out my heartbeat.
“You looked like you were about to pass out,” she said, turning on her own faucet, the sound a perfect mirror of mine. “Figured I’d ask.”
“I’m fine.”
The lie came out thin.
“I’m Madeline. I just—”
“No.” She turned off the water, shook her hands with delicate precision, and leaned one hip against the counter. “We’re definitely not doing that.”
She went straight for the jugular.
“I’m more interested in how you know Ford McCrae.”
The question landed like a punch, derailing my attempt at normalcy. I remembered Penny’s warning—the property damage, the ugly crying, the breakup that had its own soundtrack.
“We’re old family friends,” I said, trying to match her chill. “We knew each other as kids.”
Sasha’s smile was beautiful and razor-thin.
“Huh. See, my sister Natalie would have mentioned that.”
Her voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper.
“Considering he still texts her. Daily.”
She let the words hang.
“So, I figured you were another one of his little projects. You know. The broken ones he likes to fix.”
She dug through her bag, pulled out a tube of lip gloss, and reapplied it with the precision of a surgeon. The cap snapped shut; the click echoing off the tiles.
“Good luck with Mapleton.”
Her heels clicked away.
The door swung shut.
And then it was me, the buzz of dying lights, the heavy thud of my heartbeat, and the deep, tender ache of a bruise I couldn’t see.
By the time I reached third period, Penny was pacing outside the classroom door, her thumb tapping frantic Morse code against the brick wall. Her entire face lit up with relief when she spotted me.
“Oh, thank God.” She snagged my arm and towed me forward. “Mr. Lin locks the door at the bell. Physically. He’ll barricade you out and stare through the glass like you’re an infected zombie.”
We slipped inside as the second bell blared. Mr. Lin stood at the front, ruler held like a ceremonial sword, redirecting students with the icy precision of airport traffic control.
Penny mouthed, Close one.
The next hour dragged through chalkboard equations and worksheets that began colonizing the margins of my planner. But my mind stayed in that bathroom.
My panic attack.
Sasha’s razor-thin smile.
Ford’s projects.
Halfway through, a folded note skated onto my desk.
Ceramics is suddenly bearable. Guess who’s in it.
I raised a skeptical eyebrow at Penny.
She was already watching me, her mouth forming the words with full, dramatic flourish.
The human serotonin dispenser.
Despite the chill settling in my ribs, I nearly laughed.
By the time the bell rang for lunch, I felt wrung out, like I’d run a marathon in silence.
The cafeteria was a riot of noise—trays clattering, laughter, students zigzagging through the aisles like loose electrons. Penny led me to a table by the window where the rest of her group had already spread out.
Tess looked up first, eyebrows lifting.
“So apparently Sasha’s telling everyone the new girl had a meltdown after second period.”
Penny’s expression snapped from cheerful to lethal.
“Wait—what meltdown? Maddie, what happened?”
“I’m fine,” I said too quickly. “Coach Baker got a little too enthusiastic about my dad’s ghost stuff. I needed air. Sasha just happened to be in the splash zone.”
Penny dropped into her seat, smoothing the skirt of her floral dress as if resetting her entire mood.
“Okay, first, Sasha’s a human migraine. And second, I saw you after class. You were fine.”
“Apparently, being fine is offensive now,” Tess muttered.
She picked a grape from her container and tossed it into the air, catching it in her mouth.
I would have smirked, but a figure shifted outside the window.
Jet-black hair.
Hood down.
He crossed the courtyard with a hasty stride, and for once, he wasn’t looking at me.
“Who’s that?” I asked, my voice dropping.
Tess followed my gaze, eyes narrowing.
“Him? Another new kid. Enrolled this morning.”
Penny turned. “Wait—how do you know that?”
Tess flicked another grape into the air, catching it without looking away from the window.
“First-period office aide, remember? Respect the position, McCrae.”
She leaned back, voice dropping into a smug whisper.
“His file barely loaded. The system kept glitching every time I tried to open the PDF. I only caught the first name.”
She paused.
“Heaton.”
Penny wrinkled her nose. “That’s it? No last name?”
“Nope. Admin was losing their mind. No transcripts. No address. No emergency contact.” Tess looked back toward the window. “It’s like he just poof—materialized in the parking lot this morning.”
“I bet he’s going off campus for lunch,” Nico said, stabbing his fork into a sad square of spaghetti surprise. “Can’t blame him.”
“Honestly,” Penny groaned, “I’d haunt the nearest drive-thru, too.”
I wasn’t listening.
Heaton cut across the bleached concrete of the courtyard, a streak of ink against white pavement. He didn’t just walk; he seemed to bleed into the shadows of the gym wall, his silhouette stretching, thinning, then vanishing as he turned the corner.
Something in me clicked into place.
Decisive and entirely irrational.
“I need to drop something off at my locker,” I said, already halfway out of my seat.
Penny blinked, fork hovering midair. “You want me to—?”
“I’ll be right back.”
Before she could protest, I turned on my heel.
My heart pounded in an uneven rhythm, my skin prickling with a strange electric adrenaline that felt more like a need than a choice.
Fourth period held most of the school captive. The corridors stretched quietly, broken only by the hum of vending machines and the tired yellow flicker of overhead lights.
I shoved through the double doors at the end of the gymnasium and stepped into the senior parking lot. The area was a wasteland of cracked pavement and sun-baked metal. A restless wind skimmed the asphalt, dragging dead leaves in loose, skeletal spirals toward the woods.
Empty.
My heart dipped—not with relief, but with a sharp, hollow pang of disappointment.
I turned to head back to the cafeteria.
Then the air bottomed out. The temperature plummeted so fast that my next breath hitched, oxygen crystallizing in my lungs. When I exhaled, the mist didn’t dissipate. It hung there, a plume of white smoke.
A voice slid out from behind a black SUV, low and dangerously amused.
“Did you get your fill of the October girl yet?”
Then, a soft, venomous whisper.
“She’s warm, Heaton. Try not to make a mess.”
Instinct took over and I moved.
One second I was in the open. The next, I was pressed flat against a brick pillar, cold stone shocking my spine while my pulse hammered in my ears.
“I told you. I’m handling it.”
Frost advanced across the pavement toward my boots.
A scoff cracked through the air—bitter and distinctly female.
“We’re miles from home, Heaton. Hours. We’re exposed. And for what?” Her voice cut through the lot like a knife. “Because you can’t keep your shadows from chasing an October?”
“You think I asked for a tail? You shouldn’t be this far north. Any of you.”
“We’re not here to accuse you.” This voice was softer, steadier—the tone meant to soothe a wounded animal before it attacked. “We’re here because it’s been too long since you’ve been to the mines. We’re worried.”
“I’m fine,” Heaton snapped.
The sound of ice cracking just before it gave way.
“Then come back,” the soft voice pleaded. “To Winter Quarters. Just come home.”
Home.
The word hit like a physical blow.
My fingers curled around the rough brick of the pillar, grit digging into my nails.
Heaton’s reply landed with the finality of a snapped bone.
“You know he’d never allow that.”
A pause followed—cold, resigned, thick with a history I couldn’t touch.
“And we all know why.”
“Then explain why you’re following her,” the first voice demanded. “That family is nothing but a graveyard, Heaton. The Octobers are rot dressed up in silk, and you’re acting like she’s a lifeline.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“We just want to know you’re safe, brother,” a male voice added—low, wary, and fiercely protective.
Brother.
The word punched the air out of my lungs.
This wasn’t a secret meeting.
This was a family.
A tingle raced across my arms, a static charge that made the hairs on my neck stand up.
A fresh voice cut through the tension—knife-sharp and alarmed.
“We’re not alone.”
The world went silent.
No wind.
No leaves.
No distant traffic.
Heaton’s voice snapped like a trap springing shut.
“Come. Out.”
The command hit me like a physical tether. Every nerve in my body screamed run, but my feet betrayed me, moving with a stiff obedience that felt like a magnet being dragged toward another pole.
I stepped out from behind the pillar; the sun hitting my face like an accusation.
They turned in one fluid motion.
There were six of them. And the sight was so jarring that I forgot how to breathe. They looked torn from the pages of a grim fairy tale—a strange, terrifying pack that didn’t belong in a sun-bleached high school parking lot.
Heaton stood in the center, the still point in their universe of unease.
The two on his right were clearly fraternal twins; their hair a violent shock of red-gold—the only warm thing about them.
Their eyes were the color of smoldering ash.
The sister leaned against the rear of a polished red hatchback, all defensive, predatory grace.
Her brother stood tall beside her, like a heron ready to strike.
To Heaton’s left stood a woman who looked sculpted from moonlight and bone. Her dress was a simple pale shift, and her pale hair was pulled back from a face of almost inhuman beauty. Her eyes, nearly bleached of color, tracked my every move with detached, clinical curiosity.
But it was the girl perched on the hood of the red hatchback who made my skin crawl.
Black ringlets fell to her waist, cascading over her shoulders like spilled ink. She was barefoot, toes curled against the warm metal, utterly comfortable in a place where she did not belong.
Her gray eyes glittered with something feral.
Beside the car, another man leaned casually against the driver’s side door.
He wasn’t looking at me.
He was watching the barefoot girl.
Relaxed.
But completely attentive.
“Oh,” the redhead said, voice dripping with malice. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
The girl with the ink-black hair let out a low, guttural sound.
Heaton didn’t look like a student anymore. He looked like a storm held in human shape.
His silver eyes locked onto mine, and for a split second, I saw it.
Pure terror.
Not for himself.
For me.
His jaw locked so hard that the muscle in his neck flexed.
The rest of them were a wordless contradiction to the world behind me.
No backpacks. No phones. No pretense of belonging. Just six pairs of gray eyes watering with the interest of wolves deciding which part of the deer to eat first.
“I said I’m handling it,” Heaton said, voice a low vibration, a command that moved through the air and made the twins shift their weight.
“Such a firm hand you have,” the red-haired woman snapped, pushing off the car.
The pale-haired woman’s fingers tightened on Heaton’s sleeve—a flicker of genuine fear crossing her features so faintly I almost missed it.
Heaton finally turned to her, voice dropping to a whisper.
“Go.”
She shook her head once—small and stubborn—before reluctantly releasing his arm.
The others reacted without a word, a synchronized movement so precise it suggested they shared a single mind.
The barefoot girl moved first, sliding off the hood. She didn’t head for the pavement; she slipped into the long shadows of the treeline.
The twins followed, moving in lockstep.
The light-haired woman drifted behind them, looking back at me just once. Her eyes were a morning mist, clouded with a pity I didn’t want and a warning I couldn’t understand.
They disappeared behind a row of faculty vehicles.
A moment later, a black car I hadn’t noticed pulled from the shade of the pines, engine silent. They filed inside, and with a soft crunch of gravel, they were gone.
Only when the taillights vanished did Heaton turn.
The silence that rushed back into the lot was deafening.
I stood rooted to the pavement, the heat of the afternoon dying beneath his stare.
His eyes were liquid mercury, lit from within like lightning caged under ice. He looked expectant, as if he had known exactly where I was the entire time and was already disappointed.
“You know, spying requires a certain . . . subtlety,” he said, his voice smooth as a blade sliding from its sheath. “You have all the grace of a falling piano.”
Heat rushed up my neck, a violent contrast to the frost in the air.
“I wasn’t spying—”
“Oh, you were.”
He started toward me.
One step.
Two.
“You’re just remarkably bad at it.”
He leaned closer.
“But it doesn’t matter. I could find you in a crowded room with my eyes closed, October. So, please—keep trying.”
His mouth curved.
“I enjoy knowing exactly where you are.”