XXX
Over the next few weeks, a strange new normal settled in. Penny became a fixture at our lunch table, her neon energy a chaotic splash of color against Heaton’s pitch-dark gravity. She talked. He listened. His silence became a wall she threw her words against just to hear them bounce.
But beneath the mundane crush of school, a different current pulled us under.
Life split into two worlds.
In the light, there was Penny—gossip, chips, and loud opinions at our corner table.
In the dark, there was only the hunt.
The real tension wasn’t at lunch. It was in the frantic scratch of my pen over Harvey’s desk, in the way my stomach dropped every time Heaton’s name lit up my phone, in the electric shock of his knuckles brushing mine beneath the table.
He never mentioned the Halloween trip again, but its name hung between us.
Every time Penny brought it up, a cold front moved through the cafeteria.
I saw it in the line of Heaton’s jaw, heard it in the flat, clipped edge of his voice.
His eyes would go distant, as if he were already scanning the cliffs of Pelican Point, watching shadows I couldn’t see.
He refused to talk about the things that hunted there.
Eventually, I stopped asking.
His silence was a warning I couldn’t ignore. It also wasn’t one I was ready to obey.
Maybe that was why, when Penny insisted I come over after school to prep for the “Party of the Century,” I didn’t fight her.
For one afternoon, I wanted air that didn’t taste like metal or salt. Something stupid. Something mundane. A world that didn’t involve ghost traps, weapons, or creatures that hunted in the woods while I tried to pick out shoes.
Which was how I ended up in Penny’s bedroom—a space that looked like a costume shop had died a dramatic, glitter-soaked death.
A red feather boa hung strangled in the blades of her ceiling fan. Three sets of plastic vampire fangs stared me down from the dresser with cheap, toothy grins. Penny was half-buried in her closet, launching outfits into the growing mountain behind her.
Every few seconds, something new flew over her shoulder—lace, sequins, a suspiciously small corset, a handful of glitter that caught the afternoon sun.
“Okay,” she announced, voice muffled. She emerged looking deadly serious. “Hear me out. Ketchup and Mustard. Salt and Pepper. Or . . . ”
She paused, eyes gleaming with chaotic intent.
“Devil and Angel. But, you know, the high-fashion, barely-there version.”
I pressed my face into her pillow from where I’d collapsed across her bed. “Define barely-there.”
“Like, if you sneeze, the costume’s over.” She tossed a strappy red thing onto the pile. “I’ll be the bad one. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” I muttered, my math worksheet blurring beneath a mess of pencil marks.
The mental image of anyone seeing me in anything Penny deemed barely there was more distracting than any equation I could solve.
She held up a white lace corset and a skirt that looked more like an expensive napkin than clothing. “You’d be the angel. The irony, the satire—Maddie, we’d be iconic.”
“I think I’d be a popsicle,” I said. “It’s cold in the mountains, Pen.”
Penny flopped beside me, smelling like vanilla lotion and an unapologetic amount of body mist—sweet, loud, and entirely fearless.
“You’re killing me. This is senior year. Our last Halloween before we freefall into the dark void of adulthood.”
“I thought that was college.”
“Worse. Student loans.” She sighed dramatically, then brightened. “Anyway, everyone is going. Even Julian. I nearly died when he told me his club was footing the bill.”
That made me sit up.
“Julian?”
“Yeah. The Lantern Society.” She tossed an old cheer jacket onto the pile. “He’s always been into that spooky, candlelight, séance shit. Apparently, he convinced some mysterious donor to sponsor the event this year.”
A slow, icy dread pooled in my stomach.
That club seemed to orbit every space I stepped into lately, silent and watchful.
“How long have you known him?” I tried to sound casual.
Penny was already digging through her closet again. “Since sophomore year, I think. He transferred in after his parents’ divorce. Joined the Lanterns about five minutes after he walked through the doors. I swear, the guy is . . . drawn to weird things.”
“Right,” I said softly, my mind flashing back to the way Julian’s head had snapped in our direction in the cafeteria—as if he had been waiting for my reaction. “Weird things.”
Penny paused, neon-pink fishnets dangling from one hand.
Her honey-brown eyes sharpened.
“Speaking of weird,” she said, voice dropping into the tone she used right before she pounced. “Is he coming?”
My head tilted, a slow, mechanical motion as my brain tried to catch up. “Who?”
She tossed the fishnets onto the bed, watching me instead of them. “Your permanent, six-foot-three shadow. The one who walks you to class like it’s a job. Is he coming to the party?”
I looked back down at my worksheet. “I don’t know. High-school parties don’t exactly seem like his scene.”
“His scene?” Penny scoffed. “Maddie, that guy doesn’t have a scene. He has a perimeter. And you’re the only thing inside it.”
Heat climbed my neck.
“He’s just . . . around. We’re working on this project for Baker’s class.”
Penny snorted. “Please. If you’re at that bonfire, he’ll be there. I have a feeling he’ll make it his scene pretty quickly. I’d bet my student loans on it.”
I looked at the white lace napkin on the bed.
I could almost hear Heaton’s voice.
You are not setting foot on that cliffside.
“I’ll think about it,” I lied.
Penny squinted at me, then grinned and slipped on a pair of red velvet devil horns. They sat crookedly against her blonde hair.
“So, angel and devil. It’s a vibe. A little dangerous, a little holy. Perfectly balanced for whatever poor decisions we end up making.”
I gave her a flat look. “You say that like we haven’t already maxed out our bad-decision quota.”
“Oh, please.” She adjusted the horns until they looked sharp enough to draw blood. “We’re just getting started.”
“I was leaning toward something more functional.”
“Like?”
“Pajamas.”
“Ew. Absolutely not. Burn them. I’d rather we went naked.” She dove back into her dresser, unleashing a fresh wave of chaos.
I rolled my eyes, though a smile tugged at my mouth. “Fine.” I held up the white lace. “But I’m not wearing the wings. I have limits.”
Penny’s grin went nuclear.
“Sure,” she said, voice dripping with innocence. “We can revisit the accessories later.”
The decision had already been made. We were circling back to the wings and halo whether or not I wanted to—and knowing Penny, they would probably glow in the dark.
By the time Halloween arrived, the school had transformed Pelican Point into a myth.
Seniors compared costume ideas as if it were the Met Gala. Group chats leaked photos of massive speaker setups, bonfire permits, and party favors that probably cost more than my car.
To everyone else, it was the social event of the year.
To me, it was a countdown.
A possibility.
The chance that somewhere in the chaos, I might find a thread leading back to Harvey, the compass, or the truth he’d buried beneath our house.
Penny had offered to drive. She claimed it would be easier, but I knew she wanted total control over the playlist she’d curated specifically, in her words, “to summon terrible decisions before midnight.”
When her car honked from the driveway, I was still in the lab.
Under the sterile overhead lights, the angel costume glittered: a white skirt that barely reached mid-thigh, a lace corset that felt like a second, tighter skin, and wings that shed feathers every time I breathed.
The halo sat crooked in the reflection of a display case, utterly ridiculous against the backdrop of Harvey’s research.
What kind of angel needed a weapon?
An October one, apparently.
My hand hovered over the glass case. I ran my fingers along the cool, reinforced edge until I found what I was looking for: a silver bracelet etched with sigils so fine they looked like lace. A small button, no larger than an emergency alarm, sat inset beneath the clasp.
The tag, written in Harvey’s lazy scrawl, read:
IMMEDIATE PROTECTION. STRIKE ONCE.
“Right,” I muttered. “That’s totally not ominous.”
I slid it onto my wrist—a biting metallic chill that settled beneath my skin.
Then I reached for something smaller. Something concealable.
The compact salt pistol rested in a velvet-lined drawer, sleek and silver. It wasn’t one of the heavy rifles from the hidden wall. It was delicate. Almost elegant. A defensive device built to fit in a hand, loaded with condensed salt rounds that glittered faintly in their chamber.
It felt awful in my palm.
Walking into Pelican Point unarmed felt worse.
Inside the case, two spare salt shells gleamed.
I took them and tucked everything into my purse.
“Just in case.”
For half a breath, I thought about Heaton.
I could still hear the way his voice had dipped, vibrating with terrifying honesty.
You’re not ready for what’s out there.
Maybe I wasn’t.
But this was my choice.
And if the party led to another clue about my dad—or the compass he had spent years using—I had to take the risk.
Outside, Penny honked again.
I checked the silver bracelet one last time, squared my shoulders, and headed for the stairs.
The evening had faded into a deep, bruised violet. Penny’s beat-up sedan idled in the long driveway, headlights flashing impatiently through the dark.
“Finally!” she yelled as I climbed in.
Then she leaned over, eyes widening.
“You look insane. Like, if Heaven had a dress-code violation.”
I buckled my seatbelt; the lace shifting against my skin. “You’re a menace to society, Penny.”
“And yet, you adore me.”
She grinned and cranked the stereo until the speakers throbbed. High-voltage pop exploded into the night as we pulled away, tires spitting gravel behind us.
For thirty minutes, it was easy to forget.
I forgot the cold weight of the pistol in my purse. I forgot the formulas in the lab, the sigils on my wrist, and the burden of my last name. I was just a girl heading toward a night that felt bigger than it had any right to be, chasing something that felt dangerously like freedom.
I leaned my head back, smiling as the wind whipped my hair into a tangled mess.
I pretended not to notice the horizon ahead of us—how it didn’t just darken.
It bled.
A thick, inky blackness swallowed the stars one by one as we climbed toward the cliffs.