By the time Christine made it back to her building, the sun had climbed just high enough to bleach the rooftops a washed-out gold. The fog had lifted, but the streets still felt damp. Not from weather—from the kind of magic that soaked in and stayed long after the source was gone.

  Her building sat on the edge of shifter territory, wedged between a feral gearshop and a co-op bakery that only opened at night. Six stories of crumbling brick and charm-patched wiring, with just enough structural magic left in the bones to keep the roof from sagging.

  The front door buzzed when she keyed in the pass rune. Not an alarm—just old wards groaning at being disturbed.

  She climbed the stairs instead of taking the lift. The elevator made a sound like it was arguing with itself on a good day, and today didn’t feel lucky.

  Third floor. Unit 3C. Still locked. Still hers.

  Christine stepped inside and bolted the door behind her.

  The apartment was exactly as she’d left it: small, dim, cluttered with courier gear and half-spent charm cases. A kettle blinked its ready light in the kitchenette. The single window let in more noise than sun.

  She stood in the doorway for a full thirty seconds before moving.

  The silence wasn’t right.Not bad. Not threatening.

  Just wrong. Off-beat.

  She shrugged out of her coat, tossed it onto the chair, and pulled the courier bag off her shoulder. It felt lighter than it should’ve.

  The container was gone. Delivered. Done.

  But her skin still tingled like she was carrying something dangerous.

  Christine moved to the window, peeled back the curtain, and looked out over the alley.

  Nothing but a lazy cat on a trash can and a faded glamour tag slowly peeling off a lamppost.

  She let the curtain fall and leaned her forehead against the wall.

  Something wasn’t done.

  Christine filled the kettle and set it on the rune burner.

  The enchantment flickered twice before it caught—a tiny pulse of blue light beneath the coil that cast shadows across her countertop. She leaned on the edge of the sink and stared at the water line rising in the glass window of the kettle.

  Waiting for it to boil felt like the first still moment she’d had all day.

  She hated it.

  The silence was too loud.

  Her thoughts circled like sharks.

  The job was done. Technically clean. No rule broken. No blood spilled.

  And yet—

  She rolled her shoulders, muscles aching in that slow, creeping way that didn’t come from running. Not physical strain. Something else.

  Christine knew that feeling. The one that wrapped itself around your spine and whispered, Something followed you home.

  She tapped her fingers against the counter.

  This wasn’t new. She’d had deliveries go weird before. Packages that hummed when they shouldn’t, clients who blinked too slowly to be real. Hell, there was still a corner of her closet that smelled faintly like seawater and lilacs, and she hadn’t taken a Dreamborn job in months.

  But this wasn’t like those jobs.

  This one had watchers. Interference. Coin that felt too clean.

  And now, her apartment—her one quiet corner of the city—felt like it had been exhaled into. Just enough to notice. Just enough to itch.

  The kettle clicked off.

  Christine poured the water into a chipped mug, added a sachet of ginger-black, and took it to the window. She sat cross-legged on the narrow sill, sipping slowly, eyes half-lidded against the street below.

  The neighborhood moved on without her. Someone argued in fast, slurred Foxlow dialect two floors down. A delivery drone skated past her window and clipped a wire—it sparked, but didn’t fall. A shifter kid tore past on a run, half-shifted and laughing with wild teeth.

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  Normal.

  Or close enough to pass for it.

  Christine let her head rest against the window frame.

  “It's fine,” she muttered, just to hear her own voice.

  It wasn’t.

  But she didn’t have a name for it yet.

  The tea was almost cool when it happened.Christine was halfway through her third sip when the rune on her fridge blinked red.

  Just once.

  A soft, pulsing glow—like a heartbeat behind metal.

  Then it went out.

  She froze.

  That rune wasn’t connected to anything else in the apartment. No system, no function. It was a dead charm.

  Except it wasn’t. Not when it blinked like that.

  It was a signal.

  Rekka’s signal.

  One flash. Red.

  Get out. Now.

  Christine stood without making a sound, mug still in her hand. She set it down on the sill, turned toward the center of the apartment—

  And saw them.

  Across the alley, on the rooftop of the gearshop across the street, a figure stood motionless against the sky. No binoculars. No glamour mesh. Just a long coat, hands behind their back, and the unblinking focus of someone who wasn’t here to be subtle.

  They didn’t wave. Didn’t look away.

  Just watched.

  Christine’s gut twisted. She stepped back from the window—

  BANG.

  The door shook.

  Not a knock. A strike.

  She moved fast.

  Courier bag. Knife charm. Phone.

  Another hit—this one harder, spelled. The wards flared and failed, light scattering in jagged lines like a sigil dropped onto concrete.

  Through the door: the sound of armored boots, spell binders humming, a voice yelling protocol in sterile Legalese.

  “Supernatural Enforcement—open the door!”

  Christine didn’t.

  She ran.

  She dropped the phone. Snatched her coat. Grabbed the charm-satchel, even as the third strike cracked the doorframe with a sound like shattering bone.

  No time for stairs.

  She sprinted to the back corner of the apartment—past the laundry sink, under the broken light fixture—and yanked open a storage hatch so old and dust-choked it looked like part of the wall.

  Inside was a tunnel just barely big enough to crawl through on all fours.

  Unless you weren’t human.

  Her hands shook, but only for a moment.

  Then came the shift.

  Not dramatic. No glowing eyes or snarls. Just a shimmer of skin giving way to russet fur and lithe muscle. Clothes vanished into the magic—bound to her form, waiting.

  In her place stood a sleek red fox with a silver streak down her spine and eyes like molten amber.

  She darted into the tunnel just as the door exploded behind her in a blast of spell-light and splinters.The tunnel twisted twice, then dropped, then spat her out into an alley two buildings over, behind a dumpster that reeked of burned meat and wet newspapers.

  Christine shifted back before her paws even hit the pavement.

  The cold hit like a slap. Barefoot, shirtless under her jacket, breath sharp in her throat. She didn’t stop.

  Down the alley. Across a narrow lot. Onto a fire escape and up, two rungs at a time.

  She didn’t stop until she was on the roof, crouched low behind a heating unit, heart hammering against her ribs.

  The SED didn’t just show up by accident.

  Not this fast. Not to her.

  She hadn’t tripped any wards.

  She hadn’t broken code.

  Someone had pointed them straight to her door.

  She’d been set up.