“Which is poetic,” Joell added, “but could also mean full, gibbous, or mirrored. We’ll need context.”
“I’ll bet mirrored,” Victoria muttered. “At least that sounds logical… and fashionable.”
Joell pulled out her grimoire, flipped to a page marked with multiple warning tabs, and began cross-referencing Eli’s arm symbols with entries tagged “metaphysical beacons,” “sympathetic detonation,” and “don’t touch this, Joell, seriously.”
Katie sat on the windowsill, thinking about the moon. It was past its peak now and tinged faintly yellow. It was beautiful, but yes, it felt like it was watching. And what about that phrase Bubbles spouted?The moon is hungry?
Eli looked up sharply. “Can it see me?”
“I don’t think it’s just a light source,” Katie said quietly. “I think it’s part of him or her or them. Like an eye, or a mirror. I think he, she, or they uses it to see us. But don’t listen to me. I’m as clueless as you are.”
Rayna’s voice was steady. “Then we blot out the moon.”
Joell blinked. “That better be metaphorical.”
“Then we do it metaphorically,” Rayna snapped. “But if it’s looking for us through Leonardo’s moon mirroring the sun theory, or that symbol, or through Eli and Katie, we need to hit first.”
Katie nodded slowly. “I guess we need to draw it out.”
Bubbles twitched. “With what? Graffiti?”
“Maybe,” Katie said, straightening her posture. “Or bait. Or both.”
“We talked about rewriting the directions,” Joell reminded everyone. “How’s that coming, Sahara?”
“Ugh. Slowly. Very slowly.”
Joell threw her hands in the air. Frustration was written on her face. “Well, speed it up.”
It did not remember waking.Only watching.
At first, it had watched the small one. Soft thoughts, pulsing with color. The symbol had called it, like a flare in the fog of this sharp, glittering world. It had drawn the symbol while he slept, drawn it on walls and skin and memory. Not just a beacon. A tether.
The mimic had been other shapes before. Not names. Not roles. Onlyreactions.Faces stolen, voices echoed. It had worn her face and spoken as she might speak. It had hoped to disorient the soldier, the sharp one. The one who carried steel and fire in equal measure. But he had not flinched.
That puzzled it. The mimic had no real feelings of its own. No true shape of its own. But it noticed humans had both. In spaces, it moved between forms like shadows moved across glass. But here, it felt more real. It had edges. Hunger. Itwas taking shape.
It had tasted her magic in the illusion. The memory of her force, the bite of her fire. It hadwantedto become her. But there was something in the way. A presence denied. The mimic’s stolen version had cracked before it finished.
Now it curled in the place between, beneath the city’s skin. The tunnels were colder today. The glyphs in its mind flickered when it remembered the boy. Thebeacon-boy. The woman was supposed to find him, but she never came.
It had not meant to hurt the boy. Not unless it had to. It had only partially erased his memories. He was a signal, not the source. And he didn’t realize he was alure.
With the boy gone, it had followed the soldier’s pull to the brownstone. It had entered the wards wearingherface. But the magic there had hissed and recoiled, like flame on oil onwater. The houseknewit was wrong. The mimic had fled with a fragment of something. A memory that wasn’tits own. Inside, the mimic’s thoughts had become less mist and more spine. MoreI. Now it crouched in shadow, unformed and flickering. Listening. Learning.
The moon overhead was not just light. It was a convex mirror. Portal. Eye. It felt the boy with the witches moving. Felt the house shift like a beast rolling over in its sleep.
They had gone home. Now they were back in the place of strong stone and anchored roots. The place where they wrote spells like letters to the Goddess and fought nightmares with hands that glowed.
The mimic stretched. It almost had fingers now. It almost had breath, and it tried to whisper its new name. Not a word. But close.
It would find the boy again. Or the girl with dreams. Or the fire-witch who refused to break. It would wear the moon if it had to, because the mimic was learning. And it was so very hungry.
18
Rayna slipped away from the library’s glow and padded barefoot down the east hallway, where the walls always smelled faintly of cedar. Her phone buzzed once with a new glyph image from Sahara, but she didn’t read it.
She knew where he’d be. Payne, Michael, and Daniel moved all the weapons to the basement of Fort Hamilton. Then Payne had moved into the mansion temporarily, until her Brooklyn home was repaired. There was talk about his moving in with her after that. Michael and Daniel stayed behind to guard the place and maybe find a new place of their own.
