Then her eyes found Hazel and Nate, standing shoulder to shoulder between the fiction shelves, and something ancient flickered behind the beauty.
"Children." The word held three centuries of patience and a tablespoon of exasperation. "Playing with forces beyond your comprehension." She stepped closer, her rhinestone boots clicking against the moon-phase inlay in the hardwood floor. "Though your families alwaysdidhave excellent timing."
Hazel hadthe conference room cleared in four minutes flat. She swept research papers into folders, shoved Nate's detection equipment to one end of the mahogany table, and pulled theheavy oak doors shut behind them. The sound-dampening spells hummed to life, sealing the room in a pocket of thick silence.
Baba Yaga claimed the head of the table like she'd built it herself. Which, given her age, Hazel couldn't entirely rule out. The purple smoke orb bobbed above her left shoulder, casting violet shadows across the crystal viewing screens.
Zelda and Mac arrived through the side entrance thirty seconds later—Zelda's auburn curls wind-tangled, Mac's sapphire eyes already scanning the room for threats. He positioned himself near the door with the practiced ease of someone who'd guarded a thousand meetings.
"Baba Pain in My Ass." Zelda's tone balanced sarcasm with wariness. "You could've called."
"Phones are sopedestrian." Baba Yaga waved one manicured hand. "Besides, some conversations require proximity. Magical residue doesn't translate well over cellular networks. Although phone sex with your Daddy-O, Fabio, has its perks."
Mrs. Shufflewick stood at attention near the whiteboard, still wearing the herald's court dress, though the tabard had faded. Her silver bun remained perfectly intact despite the costume change—some things, apparently, transcended channeling.
Nate pulled out a chair for Hazel before taking the one beside her. The Codex pulsed warm against her hip, a slow heartbeat rhythm that had started the moment Baba Yaga crossed the threshold.
"Talk to us." Nate leaned forward, forearms on the table. "The detection readings from last week's incident showed dimensional signatures older than anything in our databases. You know what made them."
Baba Yaga studied him. The sparkle in her eyes cooled to something flint-edged.
"Direct. I see why the Codex paired you with her." She turned to Hazel. "That pretty book strapped to your side has beensleeping for a reason, guardian. It woke because something wokefirst."
"What something?" Hazel's fingers found the Codex's leather binding, steadying herself against its warmth.
"An old student." Baba Yaga's voice dropped half an octave. The purple orb dimmed. "One I should have dealt with centuries ago, when dealing was still simple. He's been gathering power, collecting magical pairs like butterflies in a net."
The conference room temperature fell three degrees. Hazel felt it in her teeth.
At the whiteboard, Mrs. Shufflewick's court dress rippled and reformed. The velvet darkened to academic black. A scholar's mortarboard appeared on her silver hair, and wire-rimmed spectacles—different from her usual reading glasses—perched on her nose. She picked up a marker with sudden authority.
"The butterfly metaphor suggests preservation through capture." Mrs. Shufflewick's voice had shifted—clipped, analytical, carrying the cadence of someone accustomed to lecturing halls full of postgraduates. She wroteCOLLECTIONon the whiteboard in precise capital letters. "Someone who collects partnerships to steal their power rather than destroy them. The specimen remains intact while The Collector harvests what made it alive."
Baba Yaga pointed at her. "Give that woman tenure."
"How many pairs?" Mac's question landed like a stone in still water.
The ancient witch held up her hands and spread all ten fingers. Closed them. Spread them again. And again.
Zelda's face lost color. "Thirty? In how long?"
"Decades, darling. Perhaps longer. He'spatient." Baba Yaga traced a nail along the table's grain. "Each pair feeds him. Each capture teaches him more about how partnerships function—their pressure points, their fault lines."
The Codex flared so hot Hazel gasped. Golden light bled through the leather carrier's seams, and the whiteboard behind Mrs. Shufflewick filled with text that none of them had written—dates, locations, names in scripts Hazel half-recognized from the restricted archives.
"And that," Baba Yaga said quietly, watching the Codex's display with an expression Hazel couldn't read, "is why he wants your grimoire. Every pair he's collected, every method he's perfected—the Codex recorded all of it. It's his trophy caseandhis instruction manual, all bound in one very opinionated book."
Hazel's mouth opened to respond—to askwhichpairs,whichlocations, whether any of them survived—when the conference room doors blew inward on a gust of wind that smelled like old parchment and cinnamon.
Elder Thornberry drifted through the doorway feet-first.
Not walked.Drifted. His ancient body hung horizontal in the air, robes trailing behind him like a kite's tail, his wispy beard pointing toward wherever he'd come from. His shoes—mismatched, one Victorian boot and one modern sneaker—entered the room a full three seconds before the rest of him.
"Ah!" He rotated slowly until he was upright, then dropped the last six inches to the floor with a soft thud. His rheumy eyes blinked behind spectacles held together with what appeared to be dental floss and optimism. "Good, good. The ending has already begun. Which means we're right on schedule for the beginning."
Baba Yaga pinched the bridge of her nose.
Mac's body had started to shift, but stopped when he recognized Elder Thornberry. Nate's chair scraped back. Zelda just sighed the sigh of someone who'd been through this particular brand of chaos before.
