Baba Yaga's expression held no cruelty. That made it worse.
Ivy stood from the third row, Rafe's hand sliding from her shoulder as she rose. Her green eyes were sharp, focused, the look she got when a poisonous herb revealed medicinal properties under the right conditions.
"What if we could reverse the flow? Make him give back what he's taken?"
Mrs. Shufflewick's outfit snapped to a field surgeon's scrubs. She grabbed a marker and started scrawling on the whiteboard—diagrams, arrows, notation in a language Hazel recognized from the Codex's oldest pages.
"Parasitic magical systems operate bidirectionally," Mrs. Shufflewick said, her voice clipped and clinical. "If he draws power through bonds, the channel exists in both directions. Force-feed him more than he can metabolize and the whole network destabilizes."
Rafe leaned forward. "You're talking about overloading him."
"I'm talking about poisoning him with the thing he eats." Ivy crossed her arms. "I'm an herbalist. I know how toxicity works. The dose makes the poison."
Baba Yaga tilted her head. Something flickered behind her eyes—not disagreement, but the careful assessment of someonewho'd survived eight centuries by knowing which plans got people killed.
"It could work," she said slowly. "Or it could feed him enough power to take every pair on this continent."
Hazel looked at Nate. He looked back. Between them, the bond hummed—fragile and fierce and entirely, terrifyingly worth protecting.
13
PORTAL CHASE AND DESPERATION
The whiteboard discussion died mid-sentence.
Every ward in the library detonated at once—not inward, not a breach, but a systematic unraveling, like someone pulling a single thread from a tapestry and watching the whole thing dissolve. Hazel felt each one snap through the Codex's connection, sharp little deaths running up her spine. Seven wards. Eight. Twelve. Gone in the time it took to draw breath.
The lights flickered. The books on every shelf began to hum—not the cheerful vibration of magical texts at rest, but a low, sick drone that made Hazel's teeth ache.
"He's here." Raven's fur stood straight up, her single eye fixed on the windows.
The glass didn't shatter. It simply wasn't there anymore. One moment, tall gothic panes streaked with moonlight. The next, open air, and through it, the town square—where shadows pooled and thickened into a shape that wore the memory of a man.
The Collector's voice reached them before his form solidified. It came from everywhere, threaded through the book-drone, embedded in the walls.
"Three days was generous. I've reconsidered."
Hazel grabbed Nate's arm. The Codex blazed against her chest, pages riffling on their own, and she felt it show her something—a map, burning gold behind her eyelids. Emergency portals. Three of them, woven into Assjacket's founding wards centuries ago by hands that had fought this same enemy. One beneath the gazebo. One behind the theater. One in the library's basement, behind the water heater she'd been meaning to replace since April.
"Basement," she breathed.
The Collector stepped through the absent windows. His features shifted—handsome, then hollowed, then handsome again, like a signal struggling to hold its frequency. The clothes layered wrong: Victorian collar beneath a Renaissance doublet beneath something older, darker, that predated tailoring altogether. He moved without walking, the distance between the window and the circulation desk simply ceasing to exist.
Fat Bastard hissed. Jinxie planted her three legs and didn't move.
"Run all you like." The Collector's gaze found them with the patient hunger of something that had been starving for centuries. "I have eternity to catch you."
Nate stepped in front of Hazel. She yanked him sideways.
"Together or not at all."
"The emergency portal—now!" She pulled him toward the staff door. Behind them, chairs scraped, people scattered, and Baba Yaga's voice split the air like thunder wrapped in silk.
"Go! We'll protect the town!"
Nate's feet stuttered. He turned back toward the reading room, toward Mrs. Shufflewick already cycling into battle armor, toward Ivy pulling glass vials from her coat, toward Sam half-shifted and snarling.
"What about everyone else?"
