Ward candles don’t lie. They flicker in patterns, and if you know the language—and Elly did, though she swore half the glyphs were invented on the spot—they’ll tell you who’s coming before the footsteps echo. Unfortunately, they’re a bit like tripwires, in that once they’re fully sprung, they may have to be reset.

  That night they didn’t flicker, they bowed, guttering sideways in the same direction as if a giant had leaned against the block, some even going out completely. The mannequin in the thrift-store window groaned, head creaking against glass, runes stitched into its scarf glowing red like it was trying to warn us without lips.

  A rat scrambled down the alley toward us, squeaking through a wad of paper Willard had scrawled on. Sélis caught it mid-leap, their hand briefly the wrong shape for a hand as her identities overlapped. They peeled the message free and read in three voices at once:

  “Collectors. Six. Ledger-scent. Two blocks out.”

  They passed the rat a crumb from their pocket. The rat bowed like it’d just been handed an employee of the month certificate and vanished into the gutter.

  “They’re early,” Elly hissed. “I thought Jade said dawn.”

  “She said soon,” Euryale corrected. “Never trust a dragon to be specific unless it suits them to be so.”

  Zorka bounced on her toes, cracking her knuckles. “Six? Easy. That’s only one apiece. C’mon, you’re each good for at least one mailbox man, right?” She scratched at her ear and grinned like a kid about to knock over a candy store.

  “Never split the party,” I muttered automatically.

  Sélis tilted their head, multiple smiles overlapping at different speeds. “Always split the party,” they whispered, like it was a secret proverb. Although, they were a being that lived in a state of multiplicity, so maybe they just liked some time away from themself.

  We split anyway.

  Team One: Elly, Eury, and me. Logic, force, and the guy with the bad luck to be on the ledger. (Plus, an animated mannequin for fun)

  Team Two: Lily, Sélis, and Zorka. Glamour, ghosts, and chaos on two legs.

  The plan—if we could call it that—was to pinch the Collectors between us in the parking lot behind the old bowling alley. Narrow ground, lots of blind corners, and enough mystery concrete stains and broken neon glass to make magic stick.

  We heard them before we saw them. Not footsteps—no, Collectors don’t walk so much as arrive. It was the sound of a receipt printer that never ran out of paper, the scrape of cabinets being opened and closed. Filing noises. Cold, efficient.

  They poured into the lot in banker coats too neat for the hour, faces blank except for ledger lines burned into their cheeks like account balances. Six of them, just like the rat had promised. Their eyes ticked from fence to lamplight to shadow, as if calculating what was worth repossessing.

  I gripped Mjolnir II, my Sharpied Little League bat. Runes glowed faintly under my leather gloves, feeling like heat pressed against my palms, a battery trying to escape.

  Elly murmured a word and the ward candles along the fence flared—brighter, hotter—marking us in their glow. “Signal’s up,” she said. “They know we’re here.”

  “That was the plan,” Euryale said calmly. Her eyes glittered, hair coiling as if alive. “Let them look. Let them try to take their prize.”

  The animated mannequin moved first. Its runed scarf snapped like a whip, glowing sigils wrapping around the lead Collector’s wrist. It stumbled—jerky, almost human for a moment. Then Lily’s voice rang out from the other side of the lot, sugar-sweet and knife-sharp.

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  “Hey, accountants!” she shouted. “You missed a deadline!”

  The Collectors turned. That’s when Team Two hit from the flanks.

  Zorka came barreling from the shadows, swinging a length of pipe like it owed her money. She cracked it across a Collector’s ribs and whooped, dancing back before its ledger-lines could flare. It crumpled, damaged from a blow that had folded its midsection nearly in half.

  “One down! Who’s next?” She was grinning so wide I half-wondered if she remembered this wasn’t a game.

  Sélis wasn’t a blur so much as a smear—their form doubled and trebled, different silhouettes striking from different angles. One Collector tried to grab them and found itself clutching the wrong arm, the wrong grin. They bent over it, voice overlaying itself: “You file paper, we file your teeth.” The Collector shrieked in binary and broke backward.

  That was our cue.

  Elly slashed a glyph into the air—fire jumped from her palm to the pavement, lines of molten runes fencing in another Collector. Eury lunged beside her, blonde hair snapping forward like a nest of serpents, eyes flashing gold as they turned the creature stone gray. The Collector froze mid-step, calcifying into a mannequin that made the thrift-store one look friendly.

  Which left me.

  The bat hummed in my hands, impatient. I swung at the nearest ledger-man, gloves smoking faintly from the null feedback. The impact was… wrong. Like hitting a file cabinet instead of a body. Paper burst out, shredded and glowing, fluttering into the air like dying moths. The Collector stumbled, lines unraveling across its face.

  “Two down!” Zorka shouted from across the lot, kicking hers in the shin for good measure.

  They rallied then. Cold wind swept the lot, ledgers opening in their hands like endless notebooks. Names whispered from their pages. I swore I heard mine—Mercer, Daniel, underlined twice. My chest tightened.

  Elly grabbed my sleeve, yanking me back before a Collector could snap a chain around my ankle. “Focus!” she barked. “Gloves on, head down, swing hard!”

  I swung again. Sparks, paper, screams that sounded like fax machines receiving a call.

  Sélis dissolved halfway into shadow and came up behind another Collector, their hand rippling like a dozen hands, each one shoving it down. “Filed under lost,” they hissed. The thing hit the ground and stayed.

  I didn’t know what to make of my team’s zippy one-liners. Sure, we’d made out, and every time she seemed to take on a different aspect, but I’d never seen anyone fight like this.

  Eury shattered another with a look. Lily’s laughter wove through the air, confusing, disorienting—the last two Collectors staggered as if drunk. Zorka pounced like a cat that thought she was a dog, snarling as she rolled and judo tossed one into the fence.

  I brought the bat down on the last one. Ledger pages flew, burning as they hit Elly’s warded circle. The mannequin clapped its stiff hands once, approving, wearing a fake plastic smile.

  Silence.

  The lot stank of ozone, burnt paper, rent metal, and sweat. Shredded ledger pages curled in the wind like autumn leaves that had forgotten what trees were.

  Zorka bounced in place, breathing hard, but not nearly spent. She was like a puppy looking for another slipper to chew. “That’s it? That’s it? Six was nothing! We could’ve done twelve!”

  Sélis didn’t laugh. They tilted her head, overlapping expressions rippling like water. “Six is never six,” they said in overlapping voices. “Ledger runs longer. The tab is still open.”

  Elly shoved her hair out of her face, glaring at me. “Next time, we don’t split the party.”

  “I said that!” I protested. “Nobody listened!”

  My pet spider scuttled out from the shadows, clicking smugly. “WATCHED. GUARDED. MORE.”

  And somehow, that last word was the worst part.

  For a heartbeat, the lot was ours. Burnt paper smoldered in the gutters, the mannequin slumped back into glassy silence, and Zorka was still hopping in place like she wanted another round.

  Then the silence stretched too long.

  The shadows didn’t retreat. They thickened. Every alley mouth around the lot rippled like wet ink, and more Collectors began to ooze free from places unknown, their faces stamped with fresh ledger lines, coats sharp as razors. They crawled from behind dumpsters, stepped off rooftops, unlatched themselves from the glow under streetlamps.

  The sound came first: pages turning, cabinets closing, endless paper being shuffled into order. Dozens of them, eyes glinting in moonlight and sodium streetlight, every movement neat and predatory.

  And then he arrived.

  From the mouth of the alley, cane tapping rhythm against concrete, stepped a man too clean for the hour. Bowler hat, striped suit pressed to perfection, pointed ears catching the glow like knives. His grin was as sharp as his cufflinks. He leaned on the cane as if he had all the time in the world and none of it belonged to us.

  The Collectors flanked him in rows, their ledgers opening in unison. The smell of ink and ozone swept through the lot.

  We hadn’t won the battle.

  We’d just rung the dinner bell.