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Knox looked through Carrick’s comparison projection. His expression did not change. “It does not look like me.”

“You don’t look like you either. You spent a hundred years dead. Give me a minute.”

His mouth twitched. Barely. I counted it as applause.

The second attempt came closer. Not close enough, but closer. I could see the right relationship between the layers now… The way the MacAllen thread needed to sit forward, bright enough to catch attention, while Lou’s deeper resonance gave it weight without swallowing it whole.

The more I tried to control it, the more obvious the forgery became. Too much pressure made the edges hard. Too much intention made the whole thing scream fake in seven Magical languages.

So, I stopped pushing.

I let Earth hold the shape. I let Sky bend the light. I let my Magic do what it had always done best: refract. Not dominate. Not imitate. Bend. It was terrifying how much relief lived inside that word. Bend meant I did not have to become what Hell wanted. I only had to make the truth harder for it to grab.

The third attempt settled into the air with a quiet click I felt between my teeth.

Carrick went quiet.

Bernie leaned closer to the projection. “That could work.”

Knox’s head turned. “Could?”

Bernie looked at him over the rim of her glasses. “Would you prefer I lie?”

“No.”

I lifted one hand. “I would. I’m exhausted.”

Nobody took me up on it, which seemed unfair.

We left Guy’s kitchen sometime after that, because if I had to stare at another glowing diagram before seeing the sun, I was going to start licking windows.

Arrhythmia had apparently decided that a near apocalypse was no reason to neglect Halloween. Orange lights sagged between crooked lampposts and storefront awnings, blinking in uneven little pulses like drunken fireflies. Paper ghosts flapped from gutters in a breeze that smelled like damp leaves, fried dough, and spell-warmed wax. A Ghoul with jowls like a bulldog was on a ladder, hanging another strand with the confidence of a man who had never respected gravity and had never once benefited from doing so. His hammer kept missing the nail and hitting his thumb, which seemed rude since he was technically missing several of the usual thumb consequences. Two Witches levitated pumpkins along the curb while arguing over whether glitter was festive or a hate crime against good taste. The pumpkins bobbed in the air, round and orange and faintly steaming from whatever charm kept them warm. A Vampire in sunglasses stood beneath a black-and-purple wreath and complained that plastic bats were offensive stereotypes. A troll carried an enormous carved pumpkin under one arm like it weighed less than a purse dog, while a cluster of Pixies tried to convince him it needed “just one more tasteful explosion of sparkle.”

Someone from the bar, Paws, Claws, & Fangs, spotted me from across the street and waved with one hand while balancing a tray of pastries shaped like tiny screaming ghosts. Their icing mouths were open in dramatic terror, which felt relatable. I waved back before my brain could remind me that I was walking toward a murder cabin to help catfish Hell with Magical forgery.

Across from us, a bakery window fogged with cinnamon-sugar steam, and someone had spelled a skeleton decoration to tap-dance badly beside the door. Its left foot kept falling off with a dry little clatter, then reconnecting itself to the ankle with a loud SNAP! Nobody seemed concerned. A bell over the bakery door jingled, a broom swept glitter off the sidewalk by itself, and somewhere a tiny dog in a spider costume barked at a jack-o’-lantern that barked back.

I should not have felt safe inside a supernatural prison with a Hellmouth under it. And yet the morning smelled like coffee, damp leaves, spell-warmed pumpkins, cinnamon, burnt toast, and the sharp ozone snap of minor household charms misbehaving in public. The sun had finally committed to existing, pale and gold over the rooftops, catching on window glass, copper gutters, and the glossy black backs of decorative crows that turned their heads to watch us pass. People bickered about extension cords, ladder placement, and whether cursed garland counted as a safety hazard if it only hissed at tourists. A child in a tiny Werewolf costume chased a floating paper ghost down the sidewalk. At the same time, someone's familiar– a cat with too many tails and an excellent hat– watched from a windowsill with deep professional judgment. Somewhere nearby, a radio played an old monster-mash song badly enough that it might have been a curse. Life kept happening in the shadow of terrible things, noisy and ridiculous and stubborn as hell, and for a few blocks, I let the noise hold me up.

Knox watched all of it like he had forgotten the world could be ridiculous on purpose.

He did not stare in wonder. Knox was not built for wonder where witnesses might see it. But his gaze lingered on morning sunlight catching in orange string lights, on a kid shrieking with laughter when a pumpkin floated upside down, on Hank buying coffee from a cart run by someone with antlers and extremely strong opinions about oat milk. He tracked the ordinary details like evidence: steam rising from paper cups, chalk dust on a café sign, someone laughing too loudly at a skeleton losing its foot again, the soft brush of a paper ghost against his sleeve before it drifted away. His face did not change much, but his shoulders lowered by a fraction. Small. Almost nothing. Enough. It made something in my chest ache in a ridiculous, inconvenient way, because he was not looking at miracles. He was looking at breakfast carts and bad decorations like they were proof the world had kept a chair for him.

Nothing monumental. That was exactly why it mattered.

“You okay?” I asked.

Knox looked away from the street and back to me. There was tiredness in his face, and darkness, and something quieter than both. “Yeah.”

This time, I believed him.

At the murder cabin, everyone immediately started doing terrifyingly competent things. Carrick’s calculations unfolded into a monitoring projection over the main room. Bernie positioned the preserved Topside relay imprint in a containment circle that smelled like ozone and old pennies. Guy moved to the plate beside the hearth, the red-bronze Warden key in his hand. Hank checked the windows because apparently somebody had to represent common sense.

Knox and I ended up outside on the porch for exactly three minutes while the others made the interior look like a Magical crime scene with better lighting.

I leaned against the porch rail. The wood was cold through my jacket, rough beneath my palms and silvered with old weather. The cabin smelled like damp boards, pine sap, and the faint medicinal bite of Warden Magic waking up inside the walls. Somewhere in the trees, something with too many legs clicked through the leaves and minded its own business, which I appreciated deeply. Knox stood beside me close enough that his sleeve brushed mine when the wind moved, not touching enough to demand anything, near enough that I could feel him choose not to step away.

“So, Dead Guy,” I said. “What happens after we tell Hell to go fuck itself?”