“Unicorn,” I answered.
“Arealunicorn?” Her voice pitched into a squeal. “Like with a horn andeverything?”
“Everything and then some!” Zane waggled his eyebrows. “You’ve never seen so much glitter in your life.”
“What happened to it? You didn’t—”
“We protected it,” I smirked a little, remembering the client’s face. “When we found out what the client wanted with it, we huntedhiminstead.”
“Oh! Good job, guys!Wasthere ever a time a target got away? I mean, that you didn’tallowto get away like the unicorn?”
“Negative,” Cas responded, military-crisp.
Sprawling out with the grace of a cat that had knocked something expensive off a shelf and felt no remorse, Zane egged on her excitement, embellishing stories until they bordered on fantasy. Casimir stoically drove, his eyes flicking to the GPS every now and then as if it wasn’t literally my job to navigate. It didn’t offend me; it was just who he was. The micromanaging brother who couldn’t help checking everything twice, then once more for good measure.
As for me, I was lost in a wash of memories for some reason. Mom singing while she cooked. How she’d slip each of us a second cookie without us asking. The way she’d smooth my hair back from my forehead when I had nightmares, promising that the?aumakuawould watch over me and how I should listen for them in the space between heartbeat.
I glanced at Cas, wondering if he was remembering, too, but his face was his usual blank mask, eyes focused on the road. He was changing bit by bit, though. We all were.
No, that wasn’t right. Seri wasn’t changing us. She was revealing layers of us. Layers we’d buried the day Mom died, when Lucian decided three grieving six-year-olds needed to become warriors instead of children, sharpening our edges until we cut even ourselves…
“Koko?” Seri’s voice pulled me back. “I asked if there would be any ghost activity at this place? The briefing didn’t mention it, but I thought I should check. Just to be tactically prepared.”
She stumbled slightly over the military terminology, and my heart cracked and sealed in the same breath.
“No spectral anomalies,” Cas answered before I could, his eyes meeting mine briefly. In that split-second glance was a whole conversation.
Cas:She wants to test her abilities.
Me:She’s trying to prove herself useful.
He nodded almost imperceptibly. We’d discovered her “Hauntology,” as Zane had dubbed it, almost by accident. Now she was itching to try it in the field.
“Oh.” Her voice carried disappointment she tried to hide.
“It’s all good, moonbeam,” Zane assured her. “This is just the beginning of your illustrious monster-hunting career. Soon, we’ll havegot ghosts, ghouls, and all manner of supernatural nasties lined up for your viewing pleasure.”
Cas’ knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.
“I mean, with your skills?” Zane was oblivious to the storm brewing in our older brother. “You’re a natural. Hauntology, gravitational pull, dreamwalking…You’re basically a one-woman supernatural SWAT team. Before long, we’ll beyourbackup, bunny.”
I watched Cas’ jaw flex, the tiny muscle jumping beneath his skin. He wanted to keep her safe, layer her in metaphorical bubble wrap at Evermere. The idea of Seri regularly joining our hunts made him physically ill with worry, and I understood. Dark take me, I’d wrap her in my arms and never let go if I could. But I honored the steel beneath her softness. The determination in her eyes when she practiced her abilities. The way she’d stood up to us, to our father, her fang-rotted stepmother…
Seri wasn’t fragile. She was fire, newly kindled and growing stronger every day. To stamp it out or deny it would be worse than anything Arabesque ever did to her.
“Did I tell you about the time we hunted a kraken in Lake Superior?” Zane was saying, spinning some wild tale that had Seri giggling, but my thoughts turned to her training these past four weeks.
We’d kept the Pine Barrens ghost bottled in a containment orb, like capturing smoke in glass. It hadn’t put up much of a fight, which should have been a warning sign. Hunting wasneverthat easy. Seri’s eyes had lit up when she’d first seen it through her newly discovered hauntology, and we’d all been too captivated by her excitement to question our good fortune. Now, looking back, the pieces were aligning in a way that made my skin crawl.
Arabesque’s fingerprints were all over this, even if I was the only one able to see it.
We’d been using the ghost to train Seri in the east wing’s reinforced chamber. Zane would release just enough of the entity to form a partial manifestation while Seri practiced focusing her sight.
“I can see ribbons of blue energy,” she’d said, her eyes tracking movement none of us could perceive. “They’re tangled, like someone tried to knot them together.”
It was Kaori who finally found the real term for hauntology. She’d been researching in the nephilim Council of Elders’ archives when she found the reference.
“Spectral Sight,” she’d said during a video call, her caramel-brown face half-buried in some moldering tome. “An abilityexclusive to lunar witches. Through synesthetic mapping, the witch can uncover echoes of past events, lingering spirits, or hidden entities—”
