LII
The two weeks after the pines settled into something that almost looked like routine.
Heaton never asked for another spark. He didn’t have to.
The memory of the Nova still lived between us—his mouth at my throat, the heat pouring out of me, the horror on his face afterward.
Since then, he had kept himself on a leash so tight it made my ribs ache.
He drove me to school most mornings. The Nova would wait at the curb before dawn, frost pearled along the windshield, the heater already running hard enough to turn the cab into a low, humming pocket of warmth.
He never mentioned the extra effort it took to keep the car that warm.
I never mentioned that I noticed.
The Lantern curfew was still in place, a thin, suffocating line drawn around town, but Heaton ignored it with the particular arrogance of a dead man who no longer recognized certain rules as binding. Every night after sunset, he took me out to Winter Quarters anyway.
Not dramatically.
Not sweetly.
He simply showed up, opened the passenger door, and expected me to follow.
When he siphoned from the town now, it was different. Cleaner. Colder. He called them micro-doses—controlled charges, little calibrations meant to keep the tether from straining too hard.
They didn’t make him warm. Nothing seemed to do that for long.
But they made him solid, which was the next best thing.
On the evenings we skipped the cabins, the estate swallowed us whole. Penny and I hauled boxes up from the lab while Heaton drifted through the house in a blur of smoke and intent, setting things down before we had fully decided where they belonged.
Dust-choked files. Bent folders.
Old field notes from Harvey’s obsessive years.
Half the time, the boxes gave us nothing but half-truths and false starts.
On those nights, a harsher thought settled between my temples.
What if Dad didn’t come back?
Penny was the one who finally broke the silence.
She sat cross-legged on the floor with my father’s files fanned around her like a paper graveyard, laptop balanced on one knee, chewing the inside of her cheek the way she always did when she was thinking too fast.
“Okay,” she said, not looking up. “I’m officially calling it. There is weird shit happening all over town.”
“Define weird.”
“Sightings. Activity spikes. More missing people.” She scrolled hard enough to make the trackpad click. “The Lanterns are tightening the curfew, but they’re planning this year’s Winter Solstice Festival as if nothing’s wrong.”
She finally looked up, eyes bright with panic.
“They’re even adding a vigil for the Pelican Point kids.”
The room went still.
“Julian.”
Penny nodded. “It’s the perfect cover. If he’s been pulling the strings, he’ll be there to watch the fallout. We need to see who he talks to when he thinks no one’s watching.”
Heaton stood by the window, eyes fixed on the dark tree line.
“I don’t like it.”
“That’s because it’s a terrible idea,” Penny said. “Unfortunately, it’s also the first one we’ve had that might actually get us near somebody useful.”
I stood and stepped into Heaton’s line of sight.
“Then we go.”
His shoulders tightened. “A crowd like that will draw the wrong attention.”
“That’s kind of the point.”
His gray eyes snapped to mine, dark enough to pin me where I stood.
“And the last time you decided to make a point, Madeline, you went over a cliff.”
Penny went silent behind me.
“That wasn’t me trying to prove anything,” I said. “Pelican Point was a real lead, and you know it. I almost died because I followed it alone. This time will be different.”
“Not to Julian.”
His voice dropped lower.
“You’re still looking for a version of him that plays by normal rules.
He doesn’t. He’s been running with the Lanterns for too long.
You and Penny have been on their radar since Halloween—probably before.
By the time you cross that threshold, he’ll already know you’re there, and he’ll have his people watching. ”
Penny shut her laptop with a hard, decisive snap.
“Which is exactly why we don’t need to act like prey.”
She pushed herself to her feet and came to stand beside me, chin lifted.
“If he wants an audience, great. We’ll give him one.”
Something ugly flickered across Heaton’s face.
“It’s not an audience, Penelope. It’s a room full of predators in formal wear. You two are not hunters just because you put on a pair of nice dresses. You’re the late-night delivery.”
Penny folded her arms.
“Okay, first of all, ouch. Second, I’m not saying I love this plan. I’m saying it beats sitting here while your spooky little cult runs laps around us.”
“Thrilling distinction.”
“Also,” Penny added, bumping my shoulder with a mischievous glint in her eyes, “I am absolutely not showing up to a creepy Lantern solstice thing by myself. That’s basically the opening scene of a documentary nobody survives.”
The thought of Victor flickered through my mind—his social grace, his charm, his infuriating talent for making people reveal more than they meant to.
Heaton stopped mid-breath.
His head tilted, eyes narrowing on me as if he had plucked the name directly from my thoughts.
“No.”
I blinked. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
Penny looked between us. “Okay. I hate when you both do that now.”
“Think about it,” I pressed. “Double the coverage. Victor with Penny. You with me. Two couples, one target. We blend in. We stay in each other’s line of sight.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Do you think he’d say yes?”
A reluctant curve touched the corner of Heaton’s mouth.
“I think,” he said bleakly, “he would enjoy it so much I might have to bury him myself afterward.”
Penny’s head swiveled between us.
“Okay. Who is Victor, and when was I planning on meeting this mysterious agent of chaos?”
Heaton exhaled, scrubbing a hand down his jaw as he turned toward the door.
“Sooner than I’d like.”
He got as far as the frame before stopping.
“But let me make one thing clear,” he said. “The festival is not the plan. It’s a distraction.”
His eyes found mine.
“If Julian is setting the stage, I’m not interested in being part of the performance. I want the compass.”
Penny let out a tired breath. “We’ve torn apart the lab, the house, the archives—”
“I’m aware,” Heaton cut in. “Which means it isn’t where Harvey wanted it found.”
His eyes dropped briefly to the scattered notes.
“We’ve chased every version of those clues we can map, and we’re still standing here empty-handed.”
SALT.
PELICAN.
FORK.
Three words. Three trails of nothing.
I felt a familiar frustration tighten in my chest.
“Maybe the clues aren’t places. Maybe they’re . . . something else.”
“Like what?” Penny challenged, throwing her hands up. “It’s Utah, Maddie. Salt. Pelican. Fork. Pick a direction. You’ll hit one. We’re not missing a piece. We’re drowning in them.”
Heaton shifted against the frame, jaw tightening once.
“If the Lanterns had it, they’d already be using it,” he said. “Which means it’s still out there. Somewhere. And until we find it, we’re at a serious disadvantage.”
His eyes cut back to me.
“So yes. We’ll go to the festival if we have to. We’ll watch. We’ll listen. We’ll keep investigating them.” His expression hardened. “But the best chance we have of taking them down is not a crowd, not a vigil, and it’s not Victor in a suit—” his eyes flicked to Penny— “It’s that compass.”
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.
“Which means before we step anywhere near those people, I’ll need a full fucking charge. And I’ll need the tether stable enough that if things go sideways, you stay on your feet.”
That was what quieted the room.
Not his tone.
The reminder beneath it.
The compass. The Lanterns. The festival. All of it came second to the thing none of us wanted to name: Heaton’s survival had become something my body could pay for.
His gaze moved from Penny’s pale face to mine.
“Find the compass, ladies,” he said. “Then we can talk about parties.”