Finn gave my hand a soft squeeze. “See, Mom? Nothing to worry about.”
Imani gave a short nod, as if to say,I told you so.
Still, the tension in my muscles didn’t ease. If anything, Indigo’s attitude only made me feel more on edge.
I took a careful step closer, lowering my voice slightly. “Do you know what broke into Finn’s room?”
Indigo flinched as though I’d shouted, her eyes widening in surprise. For a heartbeat, she looked entirely like a child caught off guard, not some demon-infused turncoat witch from the league of supernatural badasses.
“I… I don’t know,” she admitted finally, voice tight. “It’s not something I’m familiar with and it isn’t hailing from any of the infernal realms. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Okay,” I said softly. “Thank you for taking a look.”
Indigo’s shoulders relaxed just slightly, and the tiniest hint of a real smile flickered across her face. I let myself hope it was the beginning of a truce or at least, a step toward one.
Indigo motioned me forward, and I got my first good look at Finn’s room in the daylight.
It was even worse than I’d feared. The closet door hung crooked on its hinges, splintered at the edges where the creature had forced its way through. Inside, the wood floor was gouged and scratched, little shards scattered across the carpet like tiny teeth. The hole in the wall wasn’t just a tear. It looked as ifthe wall had been chewed and shoved outward, a jagged oval of splintered wood and plaster.
Clumps of clothing were thrown to the side, crushed under the weight of whatever had tunneled its way through. The faint smell of scorched dust lingered in the air, and small tufts of insulation poked out from the walls.
I knelt beside the jagged hole, my fingers brushing over splintered wood and scattered clothing, and felt my eyes prick. My chest tightened and I swallowed hard, trying to hold the tears back, but a few slipped free.
Finn came up beside me quietly, his hand slipping into mine. It was so much bigger than it used to be. My boy. My beautiful, grown-up boy.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he said softly, his voice calm and steady. “We’ll fix it. Don’t worry.”
I looked down at him, my heart swelling with a mixture of awe and affection. He was thoughtful, brave, and steady in the face of things that would have scared me half to death at his age.
“I know, buddy. We’ll get through it like we always do. It’s just... a lot.”
Finn offered me a small, reassuring smile. “We’ve got each other, right?”
I nodded, blinking away the tears. Warmth pooled in my chest. I hugged him to me tightly.
“Yeah, buddy,” I whispered. “We do.”
“Now, Poppy, I believe we have some wounds we need to heal?” Imani asked, eyeing me in a way that said she hadn’t forgotten.
Finn looked at me. “Yeah, Mom, what Imani said.”
The stern tone he took with me might have made me laugh and ruffle his hair any other day. But today, it just warmed me. He definitely wasn’t a child anymore. No—he was a young man, and I was so very proud of him.
“Okay, okay,” I said, raising my hands in defeat when Finn’s stare didn’t waver. “I’ll let Imani look at my back. But I need to talk to Betanya and Olga about what they think broke in here first.”
“They don’t know what it is,” Finn said.
I frowned down at him. “You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I kind of do. I think Olga’s hearing might be going because she was talking super loud.They think the creature burrowed through the walls and entered through my closet. Hence the huge hole in the bottom.”
“So they don’t know what it was?”
Finn shrugged. “Olga and Franz seem convinced it’s something they’ve encountered before, but they can’t put their finger on what. They just know it somehow crossed the threshold, whatever that means. Do you know what that means, mom?”
I hugged him to me again to disguise a shiver. A threshold came with the ownership of a place. If a space was truly yours, you could layer magic on its surface. I’d been able to bless and secure my home in such a way for years. If something could burst through all those enchantments to reach Finn anyway, it wasn’t something to be trifled with.
“It means this monster is strong,” I said, deciding the truth was best. Finn never reacted well when I lied to him, even for good reasons. “And that means I’m going to want you to stay at the coven house with Astrid for a while.”
