Somewhere in the darkness below, something that wasn't a cat and wasn't a dog moved between the buildings with purpose that made Raven's magical senses scream.
The hunt had begun.
Hazel feltit before she saw it—a prickle along her scalp, the Codex humming against the edges of her awareness like a tuning fork struck against bone.
She'd been reorganizing the restricted archives by moonlight, a habit Nate had already started teasing her about, when Raven burst through the cat flap at a tremendous speed that made her head spin. The familiar's fur crackled with residual magical energy, and her green eyes held the particular fury Hazel associated with world-ending emergencies or someone touching Raven's food dish.
"Those vindictive exes just compromised our surveillance network with their petty revenge packages!"
Hazel set down the thirteenth-century binding she'd been cataloging. "Which exes? What network? Raven, start from somewhere that makes sense."
Raven leaped onto the reading table and began pacing, tail lashing. "Jinxie organized every cat in town into an intelligence grid. Sectors, checkpoints, dead drops. Quite impressive, actually—don't you dare tell her I said that." She stopped pacing. "We had the whole town covered.Had. Past tense."
"What happened?"
"Poutine and Annie Surely happened. Those furry little sociopaths have been sending cursed mail packages to every tom who ever looked at Jinxie sideways. Hexed sardine tins. Enchanted yarn balls that tangle around the recipient's legs for hours. One of them sent Fat Bastard a dead mouse wrapped in a binding curse that made him sneeze glitter for forty minutes straight."
Hazel pressed her fingers to her temples. "Cat drama took out our intelligence network."
"The cursed packages disrupted the ley-line communication channels the cats were using to relay information. Three whole sectors went dark during the interference. Including—" Raven's voice dropped. "Including the south corridor. The theater district."
The Codex pulsed against Hazel's awareness. Cold this time. Warning.
A crash from the front desk made both of them jump. Mrs. Shufflewick stood in the library doorway wearing what appeared to be a tactical vest over her cardigan, her silver bun now tucked beneath a beret that hadn't been there moments before. Her posture had shifted—shoulders squared, spine military-straight, eyes scanning the room with the flat assessment of someone accustomed to calculating threat vectors.
"Security breach confirmed." Mrs. Shufflewick's voice carried none of its usual genteel warmth. She crossed to the map table and spread her hands across the surface. "The cursedmail interference has disrupted communication channels—The Collector may have noticed the gap in intelligence."
"Mrs. Shufflewick, how did you?—"
"Three-hour window of compromised surveillance over the theater quadrant." The older woman was already sketching sight lines on a notepad, her handwriting sharp and angular—nothing like her usual precise cursive. "That's enough time for a hostile actor to reposition assets, plant secondary devices, or extract embedded agents without detection."
Raven watched with grudging respect. "She's good when she's like this."
"The romantic entanglements of your feline operatives have created a vulnerability cascade." Mrs. Shufflewick tapped three points on her hastily drawn map. "Here, here, and here—your network has gaps wide enough to drive a chicken-legged house through."
Hazel's stomach twisted. Three hours. The Collector's surveillance magic had been patient enough to wait centuries. Three unmonitored hours near the theater—where they'd already found one of its planted artifacts—was a gift wrapped in a bow.
"Can we restore coverage?"
"Not through the same channels. The cursed mail left residual interference on the ley lines. Like static." Raven sat back on her haunches. "I'll need to restructure the entire network. New routes, new protocols, new dead drops." Her whiskers twitched. "And someone needs to have a conversation with Poutine and Annie Surely about the consequences of weaponized heartbreak during active operations."
Mrs. Shufflewick blinked. Her beret dissolved into silver hair. She looked down at the tactical vest over her cardigan with mild confusion.
"Oh my. Did I just—was I wearingcamouflage?"
"You were brilliant," Hazel said. "Also terrifying."
"How peculiar." Mrs. Shufflewick adjusted her glasses. "I do feel rather assertive."
Raven was already heading for the cat flap. She paused, one paw raised.
"I'll handle the network. But Hazel—whatever moved through that gap tonight, it moved with purpose. I could feel it."
The Codex pulsed again. Cold and steady as a heartbeat.
Hazel watched the cat flap swing shut behind Raven's tail and stood in the silence that followed, the Codex's cold pulse settling into her bones like frost creeping across glass.
She pulled out her phone and called Nate.
