Page 73 of Mystic's Sunrise

When I opened it, Spinner stood there, looking tired and edgy, like he hadn’t slept much.

“Hey,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “Sorry to bother you… have you seen Lucy?”

My breath caught.

“She’s gone again.”

***

I COULDN’T REST. Hadn’t been able to sleep since Lucy left a week ago.

Even with the door locked. Even with Mystic’s voice still playing in my head—“She’s gonna be okay, sweetheart. I swear it.”—my body wouldn’t rest.

My bones still remembered fear. My skin, the way cold metal feels pressed against it. My heart, how it races when footsteps stop outside your door and you don’t know if this time… they’ll come in.

I laid there in the dark, my eyes wide open, watching shadows crawl across the ceiling like silent predators. My mind paced the room all night, whispering what ifs like ghosts under the floorboards.

And then finally—Brenda let me know. Lucy was back. Alive, but bruised and bloody. Broken in ways that only she knew.

She hadn’t come to me, and I understood.

God, did I understand.

Some wounds needed silence to breathe. Some pain was too raw to name. There was no way she escaped Fang without pieces of herself left behind.

I wrapped my arms around my stomach, sitting at the edge of the bed. The room felt too big. Too quiet. Like it was waiting for something.

The door opened softly, the light from the hallway cutting through the dark, and Mystic walked in. His hair was still damp, curling at the ends. Freshly showered. Exhausted.

I rose from the bed without thinking and went to him, wrapping my arms around his broad, scarred chest. I pressed my cheek against his shirt, still warm from the dryer, and breathed him in, soap and cologne, and something that had started to feel like home.

“I was getting worried,” I whispered, holding him tighter. “You’ve been back for a while.”

He rested his chin on the top of my head and let out a breath. “Devil called Church,” he said. “Then I had to wash the night off.”

I pulled back slightly, just enough to search his eyes. They carried shadows.

“Was it bad? Did anyone get hurt?”

He shook his head slowly. “Not seriously.”

But something flickered across his face. That quiet storm that brewed when he was holding something back.

“What is it you’re not telling me?”

He hesitated, and then sighed. “Fang got away. And Drago wasn’t there.”

I stepped out of his arms, the words settling into my chest like stones. I turned to the window, staring out at the dark. The night beyond was thick, silent, unforgiving.

We both knew what those words meant.

Lucy and I… we weren’t safe. Not really.

“They always disappear,” I murmured. “Right when you think you’ve won. Like cockroaches scattering when the light hits.”

He came up behind me, his body heat steady and grounding. But his eyes were onme,not the shadows outside. “We’ll get him,” he said quietly. “It’s only a matter of time.”

I shook my head, lips pressed tight. “Sometimes I think it wasn’t meant to be. Me… being free.” My voice cracked around the last word. A confession I hadn’t meant to say aloud.