Stella went still.
Not her usual theatrical stillness—this was deeper, older. The kind of stillness that belongs to predators and statues and things carved out of darkness.
Her spine straightened, smoothing an invisible century of pretend frailty from her shoulders. Her eyes, usually a warm, mischievous dark, went flat and bright all at once, pupils narrowing to thin slits.
Her teeth… lengthened.
It was subtle at first, a glint when her lip curled, but then I saw the fangs drop properly, sharp points catching the light. Her skin seemed to pale and tighten, not in a withering way, but like marble under moonlight.
Stella the tea witch went away.
In her place stood Stella the vampire, full stop.
My breath caught.
Beside me, the Silver Wolf’s human form shivered like heat haze. Her muscles thickened, bones shifting beneath skin in ways that made my own joints ache in sympathy. She stepped back from the window and let go.
Skin rippled into fur, gray and silver washing over her like poured metal. Her face elongated, eyes turning pure predator gold. In the space of a heartbeat, Keegan’s mother was gone, and the wolf stood where she’d been, bigger than any natural wolf had a right to be, hackles raised, lips peeled back from long white teeth.
The air itself flinched.
My dad’s change was subtler but no less real. The lines around his mouth deepened, his jaw setting with that stubborn, bulldog determination that had carried him through years of curse and exile. His hands curled into fists on the table, knuckles whitening. I felt the wolf in him surge forward, pressing against his skin, held back only because he hadn’t given it permission yet.
Bella didn’t hesitate.
One second, she was a jittery, freckled woman with wild hair and bright eyes. The next, she arched her back, and her magic rippled out in a copper-gold flash. Fur burst along herarms, her fingers shortening, nails sharpening into tiny claws. Her nose elongated in a dainty little fox muzzle. Clothes blurred and adjusted, courtesy of some very clever shifter spells, and then a sleek fox stood in the middle of Stella’s tea shop, tail fluffed, ears pinned back, a low growl rumbling in her throat.
Ardetia stepped away from the table and into a patch of shadow that hadn’t been there a moment before. The light bent around her, as if trying not to touch. Her eyes went from gentle, wary to something brighter, frost-edged. A faint shimmer danced over her skin in tiny, crystalline motes, like the moment ice starts to form on water.
Nova moved too, staff in hand, but she didn’t rush to the window. Instead, she took a position slightly back and to the side, where she could see both the street and the rest of us at once. Her jaw clenched; the runes on her staff lit one by one, responding to her call.
The tea shop, the cozy refuge, the place of pastries and gossip, had just become a war room.
I forced myself to look outside again.
Shadows were rolling through the street.
Not natural shadows—the kind cast by clouds or people. These were thicker, moving with intent, sliding along the cobbles and up the walls like oil poured in slow motion. They reached for doorways, curling around lampposts, seeping into the cracks between stones.
The glass of the windows fogged from the outside, white breath spreading in delicate, creeping patterns. Frost feathered across the panes in jagged spirals.
Stonewick was being… touched.
Claimed.
My lungs forgot how to function for a second.
Movement flickered at the edge of my vision. I saw shopkeepers in the square step back, instinctively retreating from the roiling dark. Faces appeared in upper windows, pale and startled, then vanished as shutters were pulled closed. The ordinary, mundane magic of the town’s life tucked itself in, ceding the streets to whatever was coming.
The gargoyles on the inn across the street stood stout.
“Everyone away from the glass,” Nova said sharply. “Now.”
Her voice snapped the spell of stunned stillness.
Chairs scraped. People moved.
Keegan’s hand seized my arm and pulled me back from the window before my feet fully remembered how to cooperate. I didn’t protest. The urge to press closer, to see more, fought with the urge to run in exactly the opposite direction.
