“Trouble doesn’t clock in,” he said. He scanned the room, sharp eyes sweeping over the closed curtains, the stacks of magical weapons on the dining table, the faint runes chalked along the window frames. “Good. You’ve already started.”
Daniel dropped the bat and folded his arms. “Started? We’ve been prepping since the witches left. You didn’t exactly give us a lot to go on.”
Payne dropped the duffel with a heavythunk. “You’ve got more now.”
He unzipped the bag and pulled out a bundle of weapons. Mostly metal, all dangerous. Silver, iron, steel. Some clearly mundane, some humming with magical energy, like they’d been cursed or blessed, or both, depending on the mood of the witch who’d last handled them.
Michael picked up a small, rune-etched axe. “This was in the vault. Did Rayna give it to you?”
Payne didn’t answer. He was already pulling out thick parchment sheets, each covered in complex sigils, and a bundle of candles bound in what looked suspiciously like human hair.
Daniel pointed. “If that’s hair, I don’t want to know who it’s from.”
“Don’t worry. You haven’t met them.” Payne tossed a candle to each of them. “We’re reinforcing everything. Wards, cloaking, psychic dampeners. Something’s sniffing around the girl, and I don’t know if it’s working alone.”
Michael frowned. “You think it’s tracking her?”
“I think itwastracking her. Now that she’s off the grid, it might double back here, trying to track her through us. It could try for a link. Scent markers, latent psychic impressions, whatever it can find.”
Daniel muttered, “Why do they always leave behind scent markers?”
Payne handed them each a narrow strip of enchanted leather. “Tie this around your left ankle. Keeps your thoughts clear. If you’ve had any weird dreams lately, don’t ignore them.”
Michael tied his without complaint. “I don’t dream, Major, unless you count wishful thinking.”
“It’s not the dreaming I’m worried about,” Payne said. “It’s what happensafter.”
They got to work without more questions. Payne marked the walls and windows with chalk sigils that glowed briefly, then sank into the plaster. Daniel set out motion wards and boundary triggers. Michael checked the battery level on the anti-possession grenades they weren’t technically supposed to have.
The brownstone filled with quiet murmurs and the low buzz of activated wards, until the space felt tighter, sharper. More secure.
Michael straightened from where he’d been setting a perimeter glyph behind the couch. “So, what’s the real plan? Just hold the line until the witches come back?”
Payne shook his head. “We hold the line. But if the thing comes back, we don’t wait.”
He looked toward the curtained windows, jaw set. “This time, we hunt it.”
The sun dippedlow over the Tennessee hills, casting long shadows through the trees as the witches finished hauling the last of the altar supplies down the moss-lined path.
“Does the moon know it’s supposed to rise right on cue?” Brianna asked, “Because I amnotdragging this cauldron back uphill in the dark.”
“Speak to it kindly,” Joell said, balancing a basket of candles on one hip and carrying a silver staff. “The moon responds to positive reinforcement.”
“She also responds to bribes,” Victoria added, brushing leaves from her cloak. “I brought strawberry mooncakes.”
“Now I know you’re joking,” Katie said.
“No. I really did bring moon pies,” Victoria said with a smirk.
Lioness said, “I brought vibes.”
“You brought wine,” Rayna corrected. “And none of it made it down the hill unopened.”
“Like I said,Vibes,” she insisted, holding up a bottle of pinot noir like a peace offering.
They reached a mossy clearing that the past magic circles had already softened for them. Flat ground, no brambles, and the hand-carved altar slab in the middle of a circle of trees.
Cushions, lawn chairs, and one inflatable couch that Lioness had conjured for “child-like ambience” circled the firepit.
