The body was in the trunk. Wrapped in a blanket. Amanda didn't ask the name. She didn't want to know it. Lucan had given her a location and a time. The rest was implication.
An overdose. A quiet motel death. Forgotten by the world before the sheets cooled. Perfect for what she needed.
But still…
She hadn't touched it until now.
The warehouse was colder than before. Maybe that was her. Maybe it was the weight of what she'd become willing to carry.
Lucan was already inside. Standing. Waiting.
Amanda dragged the body across the floor, unwrapped it in silence. She didn't meet his eyes. She didn't want to see what he was measuring.
He said nothing for a long time. Then finally.
"You chose well."
She flinched at that, because the praise felt wrong. Like she'd passed a test she didn't remember taking.
"I didn't want to," she said. "I just… didn't stop myself."
Lucan stepped forward, crouched beside the corpse.
"You're learning. That's all that matters."
Amanda sat across from him, legs folded, hands on her knees. The skin beneath her nails was still stained from lifting the body. She hadn't tried to scrub it out.
Lucan nodded toward the corpse's face.
"You'll hold this one longer."
"How long?"
"As long as it takes for him to speak."
Amanda tensed. "You mean like, talk?"
Lucan didn't blink. "No. I mean confess."
She reached forward, slowly, and touched the dead man's arm. The tether snapped wide again, but this time it wasn't violent.
It was familiar.
Like stepping back into a room she'd visited in a dream. The man's life spilled into her hands, images, sounds and smells.
A hallway.
A woman crying.
A cold bathroom floor.
Guilt.
So much of it. She felt herself shaking, but not from fear.
From knowing.
She held the contact longer this time. Ten minutes. Fifteen.
Her nose bled again. Her lips cracked. And then, just before she blacked out she felt it:
"Tell her I didn't mean it." The man's final thought. Sticky with regret.
Amanda broke contact, falling back, hands slick with cold sweat. Lucan stepped forward, offered no comfort. But he didn't look disappointed.
"You heard it?"
Amanda wiped her face. "Yeah."
Lucan crouched beside her again.
"Good," he said. "Now you're ready to start listening."
-----
Location: Private Tarmac, Montreal Outskirts. Two Days After Nora Accessed File SEVERANCE
The jet hadn't stopped humming before Nora opened the hatch. The air was cold, bracing. She stepped onto the tarmac with no escort. No tech. No Authority. Only a black coat, a reinforced case, and a single piece of paper folded neatly in her inner pocket:
"Bon Temps, Louisiana.
Subject likely connected to Amanda Hayes.
Assume high-level protection.
No contact unless authorized."
She'd read it once, burned the rest. The Authority would call it desertion. She called it clarity.
Godric had loved his brother, but feared what he might become. Nora never understood that fear. Never understood why someone like Godric who was unshakable, refined and disciplined could speak of Lucan with both reverence and silence.
But now? She felt it.
In the silence between cities. In the cold between steps. Lucan wasn't a story. Lucan was a threshold. And she was ready to cross it.
Her contact met her at a bar in the Quarter. Low light. Old walls. No surveillance. He was half-drunk, wearing a hat too wide for his thin frame, and didn't look her in the eyes once.
"He's not like the others," he said. "You don't approach him. You don't even talk unless he allows it."
Nora took a slow sip of her drink.
"Where was he last seen?"
"Shreveport. Briefly. Warehouse district. But he's moved. South."
The contact slid a photo across the table. Grainy. Blurry.
But real.
Lucan, grey eyes dulled by streetlight, walking through the middle of a road like he owned it. Like the world would shift if he asked.
Nora studied it for several seconds. The face matched no file. But the posture? It reminded her of Godric.
Before the silence.
Before Lilith.
Before the fall.
The contact leaned in, voice trembling now. "Why are you looking for him?"
Nora met his eyes.
"I was turned by Godric."
The man froze.
Nora's voice lowered, almost reverent. "And he only ever looked uncertain once. When he spoke of Lucan."
The man nodded like he understood. Then made his way for the door.
Nora watched him disappear into the street before pulling a single phone from her coat.
One number. It rang once. Then twice. No answer. But that was expected.
She hadn't called to speak. She'd called to be noticed.
If Lucan was watching as she knew he was, he'd hear it. And when he was ready? He'd come to her. Or he'd let her come to him.
-----
The coven didn't expect him to knock.
But he did. Three soft raps against old oak, in a rhythm meant to mimic heartbeat. They opened the door out of habit, not foresight.
And by the time they realized what they'd done, two were already dead. The third, an older woman named Joselle managed to draw a circle, but it didn't hold.
Caelis stepped inside slowly. No flourish. No rage. His coat was damp from the rain. One eye dark, the other grey.
He looked like someone wearing a body too recently returned to him.
"You should've stayed hidden," Joselle whispered.
Caelis tilted his head. "But that's all witches ever do. Hide. Pray. Burn."
He raised a hand, and the circle cracked. A whisper slid through the air, spoken in an old dialect of Latin too guttural to belong to Rome.
Joselle's legs buckled and blood ran from her nose.
Caelis walked past the bodies of her sisters. One burned. One torn. Neither would be recognizable by morning.
He knelt beside Joselle, now struggling to breathe.
"You speak to the dead," he said.
She nodded weakly.
He placed a single finger on her throat.
"Then carry this to the one who listens."
He leaned close. Whispered one word. Not in magic. Not in command. Just truth.
"Amanda."
Joselle screamed as her voice tore itself open. A single name echoing across death and tether.
"Amanda Hayes!"
Miles away, Amanda sat up in bed, choking on a scream she didn't remember starting. Lucan appeared in the doorway less than thirty seconds later.
No knock.
No announcement.
Just grey eyes fixed on her shaking form.
"I heard it too," he said quietly.
Back in the coven house, Caelis stood. Joselle's body twitched once, then fell still. He wiped blood from his lips with the back of his hand.
Then looked skyward.
"Come," he whispered. "See what you left behind."