“You realize this is breaking and entering, right?” I whisper, nudging the door shut behind me with my hip while Kursk ducks under the frame with a grunt. The poor guy has to fold himself like origami to make it through. “And I work here.”
“You hold dominion over this fortress,” Kursk says, gaze sweeping the stacks like he’s expecting an ambush from the biography section. “Your authority is law.”
“Pretty sure my authority ends when I start committing felonies,” I mutter.
“I do not know this ‘felony.’ Is it a rival tribe?”
I don’t answer. Mostly because I hear snickering from the back corner.
Booger and Burnout.
Of course.
They’re supposed to be doing homework—probably for the third time this month after failing the first two times—butfrom the giant boobs doodled on the whiteboard and the open Monster Energy cans scattered like confetti, I know they’ve been up to anything but studying.
Booger squints at Kursk. “Yo… is that the WWE dude you were talking about?”
Burnout drops his marker. “Dude, that guy’s jacked. Like, extra-jacked. Like?—”
“Not another word,” I snap.
But it’s too late. They’re already circling Kursk like two cats who just saw the world’s largest can opener.
Burnout grins up at him. “You look like you could deadlift my mom’s SUV.”
“She owns an SUV?” Booger blinks.
“Shut up, Booger.”
I sigh and yank open the break room mini-freezer. “If you two promise not to sayanythingtoanyoneabout what you saw tonight, I will give you each a Hot Pocket and the WiFi password for the restricted staff network.”
They freeze.
I’ve got them.
Kursk, meanwhile, is already pacing the stacks, spear in hand—veiled by illusion, thank God, or the sight of an ancient, rune-carved weapon in the nonfiction section would probably get us all murdered by SWAT.
“This ground… hums,” he mutters, kneeling to press his palm to the floor.
“It’s linoleum,” I say, but then the hairs on my arms rise. The floordoesfeel… weird. Warm, almost. And wrong.
I retreat to the computer terminal while Kursk begins tracing glowing red runes through the air, whispering in that deep, rolling language of his. It sends chills down my spine—but not the bad kind.
I dive into town records, digging through digitized property purchases and old zoning maps. It’s dry work, but I’ve done this kind of research a thousand times.
What I find makes my blood turn to ice.
Every property Calvin’s developed over the last ten years—including the shiny house we just snooped—sits directly on ancient Veil faultlines. Magical stress points. Weak spots between realms.
He’s not just gentrifying Walnut Falls.
He’s turning it into a damned energy farm.
“Holy hell,” I whisper, printing the files. “Kursk—he’s using the land. He’s feeding something.”
The lights flicker.
And then… chaos.
