“The photo,” I said.
Three heads turned.
“The one you found in your locker at the station. The one with the red ink on the back.” I looked at Lucian. “Do you still have it?”
“My study drawer.”
“I need to see it.”
He was gone before I finished the sentence. One second standing by the armchair, the next a blur of motion toward the stairsthat confirmed supernatural speed would never stop being unsettling. Percy’s eyebrows shot up. Solomon didn’t flinch.
Lucian reappeared with the photograph in his hand. The whole trip had taken maybe four seconds.
I took it from him and flipped it over.
Two words in red ink, steady and precise.
“I’m watching.”
I set it on the table beside the open journal and the other more clinical documents of formula. The red ink message in the middle. Percy leaned in over my shoulder. Solomon stepped closer on my other side.
The handwriting was identical.
But not with Hudson’s journal.
The mysterious documents.
Same letter formation. Same deliberate strokes. Same disciplined hand that had nothing in common with Hudson’s frantic scrawl.
“This isn’t Hudson’s.” My voice came out quiet. “The message on the photo. He didn’t write it.”
Nobody spoke. The realization settled through the room in stages, rearranging everything we’d assumed until now.
Percy straightened behind me. Solomon’s jaw went tight. Lucian stared at the two documents on the desk, and I watched the recalculation happen behind his eyes.
“The photo was left in our locker,” he said. “Ours.”
I looked at him. The gravity in his expression made my stomach drop, because I could see where he was going before he got there.
“So it’s not a threat to me.”
The quiet stretched. Percy’s hand found the low of my back. Solomon’s arms crossed over his chest. Lucian’s gaze moved from the photograph to me and held.
I was the leverage.
The photo wasn’t a warning that someone was watching me.
It was a message to the three of them. A picture of the one thing they’d burn the world to protect, delivered to the one place only they would find it.
Whoever wrote those words knew about the bond.
Knew about the relationship and exactly what I meant to them. Had framed it in red ink and slid it into their locker.
The most effective threat wasn’t violence.
It was the promise of loss.
“It’s a threat tous,” Lucian said.
