"Hey."
She turns. Looks up at me. Sap on her cheek. Dirt in her eyebrows. That ridiculous torn strap.
"Where did you learn HOA bylaws?"
"Couldn't sleep last night." She shrugs. "Read the whole charter. Twice. It's eight hundred pages. Did you know there's a section on acceptable lawn gnome facial expressions?"
I stare at her.
"You memorized eight hundred pages of bylaws in one night."
"I wasmotivated." Her eyes drop to my forearms. The bandages have come loose. The runes glow faintly, pulsing with residual adrenaline, green light leaking through the gaps in the wrapping.
She reaches out. Touches the bandage. Her fingertip is warm.
"Your tattoos are showing."
I should rewrap the bandage. That's the rational move. Cover the runes, tuck the edges tight, secure the whole thing with the medical tape I keep in the garage's third drawer, left side, between the zip ties and the emergency flares.
Junia's fingertip traces the gap in the wrapping. The rune beneath it pulses brighter.
I don't rewrap the bandage.
"They're warm," she says. Not a question. Her nail skims along the cloth, following the green glow like she's reading something written in light. "Do they always do this?"
"Only when my heart rate spikes."
Her eyes snap up. Brown. Flecked with gold near the iris. A smear of potting soil arcs across her left cheekbone like war paint.
"Your heart rate is spiking right now?"
"You just faced down three sledgehammer-wielding enforcers and an immortal elf by quoting subsection 7 of an ordinance nobody has read since it was drafted. Yes. My heart rate is spiking."
Her lips part. Just barely. The torn overall strap slides another half inch down her shoulder and she doesn't fix it.
I need to mow something. Edge something. Pressure-wash a driveway. Any physical task that will redirect the absolute wildfire ripping through my nervous system because this woman, this five-foot-six hurricane of jasmine sap and legal technicalities, just verbally dismantled the most powerful being in the subdivision while standing barefoot on cracked soil.
She didn't flinch.
Not once.
Not when the goons shifted their weight forward. Not when Valerius dropped his authority to that ancient, venomous register. Not when three sledgehammers hung in the air between her skull and gravity.
She planted her feet andfought.Not with fists. Not with warband brutality. With eight hundred pages of bureaucratic ammunition she loaded into her brain in a single sleepless night because she wasmotivated.
Both forearms blaze. Green light spills between my fingers, throwing sharp shadows across Junia's face.
"Flynn."
"What."
"You're glowing."
"I'm aware."
"Like, really glowing. The neighbors can probably see."
Mrs. Cho still has her phone out. Barnabus crunches another fistful of popcorn. The Hendersons' teenage son presses his face against their screen door.
