The next morning the block felt like it had been measured and found wanting.

  The air had that metallic tang you taste before a storm—iron and ozone, nerves in the teeth of the city. Even the pigeons seemed to coo more cautiously. People walked with the tentative relief of someone who’d taken off a scarf that had been too tight for too long.

  The Curator had gotten the memo. We’d been noticed.

  I checked my glove in the mirror. The burn mark was gone; Elly had cleaned it, licked it, cursed it, and finally whispered something in a language that sounded like sarcasm with vowels. The stain had turned to ash. The glove looked normal again.

  My reflection didn’t. There was something off about my face, like a document that had been photocopied one too many times. The shadows clung in strange ways.

  “You look like someone who’s been put on a list,” Sélis observed, appearing behind me like a pop-up ad for trouble. Their tone was cheerful as always, because Sélis was blessed with the manners of a supermarket tabloid.

  “Technically I am on a list,” I said. “Aesthetically, I prefer catalogued.”

  “Mm. I prefer curated,” they replied. “Sounds more intentional.”

  Didn’t matter what I called it. Somewhere, inanimate fingers had already written Mercer, Daniel, and filed me away in some celestial cabinet of things-to-deal-with-later. Collectors didn’t misfile. They didn’t forget. They were the accountants of appetite.

  Elly met me at the door with an absurdly practical thing: a black sling bag retrofitted with charms, zippers, and chalk-lined seams.

  “Here,” she said. “Snacks, first aid, and three emergency excuses. You’ll need the excuses more than the snacks.”

  I put it on because the alternative was leaving it behind and becoming an accessory to my own death.

  Outside, the block was already moving. Zorka had claimed the corner post like a feral streetlight—hood up, earbuds in, pretending to vape. The faint shimmer around her told me she’d laced the whole intersection with her trickster wards. She looked like a bored teenager; she was a tripwire with legs.

  Sélis, in contrast, was haunting the rooftops. They’d scavenged a line of copper bells from the hardware store and strung them across the eaves. The bells tinkled when pigeons landed and shrieked when anything heavier did. “Mood set,” they called down.

  “Cheerful,” I muttered. “Apocalypse chic.”

  Eury had claimed my front window. From the inside, she looked like a gargoyle carved from modern anxiety—arms crossed, sunglasses on despite the overcast sky. Her gaze moved constantly, scanning each pedestrian like she could weigh their sins by sight.

  Lily and Elly handled the serious stuff: sigils, salt lines, the good candles that smelled faintly of old paper and rosewater. They worked with an efficiency that made me feel like an apprentice in my own house.

  “Can someone explain the order of operations here?” I asked, half to myself. “I don’t want to be dramatic, but last night I woke up to find my jacket had been notarized.”

  “No,” Eury said flatly, without looking away from the street. “You were put in the ledger. People who get put in the ledger become things other people want to take. We need layers of defense to keep you cozy.”

  “Even so,” Lily added, “they’ll look for a way in.”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Which is to say?” I prompted.

  “They’ll test everything,” Eury said. “Doors, friends, routines. They’ll probe until they find the soft spot.”

  Sélis peeked through the stairwell railing, hanging upside down like a smug bat. “At least there aren’t soft spots in your snack supplies.”

  Lily’s laugh was low and dangerous. “We’ll be your soft spot,” she said. “Only metaphorically.”

  The way she said metaphorically made it sound like a promise. Or a threat. Possibly both.

  Zorka took me on patrol that afternoon.

  She moved through alleys like she was part of the infrastructure, showing me how to blend in—how to make myself unremarkable. I thought I’d been doing that for a quarter century and more, but what did I know?

  “Don’t look like a target,” she said. “Targets have pattern. You want to be background noise. Beige wallpaper. A process running in the back of the system.”

  “Right,” I said. “I’ll just start wearing khakis and talking about mortgage rates.”

  “Not prey,” she corrected. “Prey is obvious. You? You walk like a guy waiting for bad news.”

  “Accurate.”

  “Fix it.”

  I tried squaring my shoulders, rolling my steps differently. She tilted her head. “Better. Still pickable, though. Socks don’t help.”

  I looked down. “What’s wrong with my socks?”

  “They have anime characters on them.”

  I sighed. “They’re ironic.”

  “No,” she said. “They’re a beacon. You may as well tattoo nerd blood type B- on your forehead.”

  By dusk, the block had changed. Subtly.

  Mailboxes bore chalk runes beneath the paint. A stray cat that had never existed before now prowled the stoop, eyes glinting like twin emerald LEDs. Neighbors—those few who weren’t glamoured constructs themselves—gave me nods that lingered just a little too long, like they knew something was coming and weren’t sure if they should thank or blame me for it.

  Elly worked her quiet miracles along the street. She left rune-stamped candles in windowsills and pressed bits of copper mesh into cracks. “Early warning,” she said. “If it burns blue, duck. If it burns red, scream.”

  “Good to know,” I said, pocketing one.

  In the attic, Sélis was a shadow painting new sigils along the beams. Every stroke shimmered faintly, humming to itself. “They won’t come through the roof,” they said, “but if they do, I want them to regret it.”

  Eury, downstairs, was working the glass. She didn’t chant. She just stared at the windows until thin veins of silver light crawled across them, sealing out whatever bureaucratic hell wanted in.

  Lily baked. Of course she baked. Her cinnamon and sugar braided through the wards like emotional reinforcement, the magic equivalent of a warm blanket.

  “Comfort is defense,” she said, handing me a still-hot roll. “You can’t cast hope, but you can feed it.”

  I took a bite. It tasted like being remembered by someone you’d forgotten.

  For the first time since the Collectors started haunting my periphery, I believed maybe we could survive this.

  That night, as the city softened around us, the headquarters looked almost domestic. Sélis knitting what I hoped wasn’t sentient. Elly scrolling Elfnet for rumors. Zorka on the stoop, humming and daring anyone to approach. Eury leaning against the doorframe, eyes dimming from steel to dusk. Lily pouring tea.

  For a moment, it felt like a family sitcom designed by an occult committee.

  Then my phone buzzed. A single flame emoji. Jade’s shorthand for “imminent problem.”

  The message followed a second later:

  THE COLLECTORS ARE ABOUT. WARD YOURSELF. THEY WILL BE THERE SOON.

  I stared at it. “Why does every mission sound like a foreclosure notice?”

  “Because dragons like bureaucracy,” Elly said without looking up. “It makes them feel efficient.”

  Eury’s tone was quieter, heavier. “It’s coming down to it. We’re on the clock.”

  “Maybe it’s not too late for Daniel to sleep with my great aunt,” she added, deadpan.

  Lily shot her a glare that could have cracked marble. “Try it and I’ll melt your mascara.”

  I held up both hands. “Please, no gorgon-succubus custody battles over me tonight.”

  All of them ignored my protests.

  I looked down at my hands instead—still scuffed, a little blood under one nail, streaks of chalk dust on the knuckles. Mundane hands, allegedly. But somewhere, an inhuman ledger had already written my name in neat, precise script.

  “We’ll get through this,” Lily said. She was leaning against the counter now, tea forgotten, voice soft. “It’s not forever, Danny. People sign up for this kind of madness. We just… signed up for you.”

  Something in her tone tightened the air. I almost said something sincere. Instead, I adjusted the strap on my warded jacket and reached for the aluminum bat wrapped in runed leather. The hum through the grip was oddly reassuring—like holding a promise that might actually keep.

  Outside, the streetlights buzzed. Farther off, something flickered behind the fog—shapes too straight, too deliberate.

  The Collectors were patient, precise, inevitable. But us? We were petty, loud, disorganized, and deeply committed to making the valuables uncomfortable to collect.

  They could catalogue us all they wanted. We’d just make damn sure they never found the drawer with the key.