We were three blocks into patrol when Theo caught my hand.

  One second my fingers were curled around the strap of my bag; the next, his were threaded through them, warm and sure.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, annoyed and a little off?balance.

  “Walking,” he said blithely. “With my team.”

  I gave him a look.

  He ignored it. “So,” he went on, casual, “I was hoping you were maybe in a better mood than the other day.”

  The day I’d stormed away from the cafeteria like a cartoon kettle? Possibly.

  “Define ‘better,’” I said.

  “Good enough to consider a birthday present?” he said.

  I blinked. “Whose?”

  “Mine,” he said, as if that were obvious. “Next week. Fifteen.”

  I stared at him. “You’re fourteen?”

  “Rude,” he said. “I am a very mature almost?fifteen.”

  “You seem a lot older than that.”

  “I am,” he said, which was both a joke and not. “Anyway. We never had a second date.”

  Before my brain could untangle birthday present = second date = what, Lillibet’s head snapped up.

  I’d started to recognize that look—the slight tilt, eyes unfocusing, hand going to the little device in her ear.

  “Yes,” she said. Pause. “Understood.”

  She turned to us. “Sighting in the mall,” she said. “Food court. Move.”

  We moved.

  The mall at night was a different kind of creepy. Half the stores had pulled their gates down; the others spilled light onto the tile. Fluorescent glare, pop music echoing off high ceilings, the smell of pretzels and sugar and fryer oil stacking into a headache.

  The food court was busy. Clusters of shoppers hunched over trays, scrolling on their phones. A toddler wailed as his ice cream slumped off the cone. A group of teens in matching hoodies argued about which movie to see.

  And threaded through them, like a needle in cotton, was the monster.

  It was bigger than a Greenway Frill. Sleek and low, the way a big cat moved when it was hunting. Its skin was a mottled dark that drank in the light. A halo of tentacles ringed its neck, each one ending in a small, glistening eye that swiveled independently. Its face—or what counted as one—was mostly mouth, a long horizontal slash packed with needle teeth. A serrated barb curved at the end of its tail, twitching lazily.

  It slipped between tables, silent and sinuous, completely ignored.

  Its tongue flicked out, tasting the air. The little eye?tips turned, scanning, as if deciding which oblivious human to start with.

  My stomach rolled. Every single person in the court looked so…helpless. No idea something with that many eyes was shopping for dinner around their ankles.

  “Pigmy Argus,” Theo murmured. “Haven’t seen one of those in a while.”

  “Pigmy?” I whispered. “That thing is not small.”

  “You don’t want to meet the full?size ones,” he said. “Trust me.”

  Lillibet gave us a look. “Focus,” she said. “We’re flanking.”

  We fanned out, like we’d practiced a hundred times in Saturday Club, only this time there were screaming toddlers and Orange Julius cups in the way. I cut along the left side, weaving between chairs. Theo went right, sliding past a group of kids in anime merch. Lillibet took the middle, her posture so nonchalant she might as well have been a bored college student.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The goal was simple: guide, don’t spook. Get it somewhere we could contain it.

  As the Argus started to angle toward the play area where a couple of little kids clambered on plastic cars, Lillibet stepped neatly into its path. One of her hands brushed her jacket where her sword waited; the other carried a tray she’d grabbed off an abandoned table, like she was a normal person bussing dishes.

  The ring of eye?stalks flicked toward her. Its tongue tasted the air again.

  It shifted course.

  Whenever it tried to slide away toward the food court exit, a blade flicked out—so quick no one would’ve seen it—just enough of a flash to make it jerk back from the edge of its chosen path. We hemmed it in without ever fully blocking it, turning it gently toward the service corridor on the far side of the court.

  Once it crossed that threshold, the feel of it changed.

  In the open, around all those people, it had been relaxed. Patient. Here, in the narrow, fluorescent?lit back hallway that smelled like bleach and old fries, it stopped being careful.

  It got mean.

  The halo of eyes tightened, focusing on us. The mouth-slit pulled back in a grotesque grin.

  “Now,” Lillibet said.

  We drew weapons. My father’s red blade hissed free, warm and heavy in my hand. Theo’s black sword came up, stance already low. Lillibet’s green edge flashed.

  The Pigmy Argus struck first.

  It moved faster than it had any right to, tail whipping forward in a spear?thrust that would’ve skewered my lung if I’d been a step closer. I stumbled back, heart slamming. Lillibet’s blade was already in motion, knocking the barb aside with a sharp clang.

  Theo took that as an invitation.

  He went in hard, eyes locked, the reckless edge I’d seen since the Frill fight turned up to maximum. He darted under a sweep of tentacles, came up on its flank, and slashed along its side. Dark fluid spattered the cinderblock wall, sizzling faintly where it hit.

  The Argus screamed—a horrible, many?pitched sound—and spun. One of the neck?eyes fixed on him; the rest tracked us.

  It lunged.

  Theo threw himself sideways, barely clearing the line of its jaws. It still caught him—claws raking across his arm, tearing through jacket and skin. He hissed, but instead of backing off, he drove forward, using the close contact to ram his shoulder into its chest and bring his sword up in a brutal arc.

  “Vasilakis!” Lillibet snapped, somewhere between command and warning.

  He didn’t answer. The wild look was back in his eyes, hotter now. Almost manic.

  We circled, striking where we could. My blade bit into one of the tail tendons; the barb’s whip lost some of its snap. Lillibet’s strikes were surgical—hamstring, tendon, any joint that would slow it.

  The Argus kept going. It took blows from all three of us and still came on, tongue flicking, eyes swiveling, tail lashing.

  Theo took the worst of it.

  A claw raked down his thigh; he staggered and barely recovered. He drove his sword up into the muscle of its shoulder, and while it screamed, its head snapped down and its teeth closed on his calf. He yelled, shoving it off with the flat of his blade, blood already running into his boot.

  “Fall back,” Lillibet ordered. “Regroup—”

  He didn’t hear her. Or he pretended not to.

  He pushed harder, pressing into the space where its tail couldn’t quite reach, trading hit for hit. Every time it tagged him—a swipe, a bite—he forced a strike in return, like he was going to beat it sheerly by refusing to back down.

  Then the tail came in low.

  He was mid?swing when the serrated barb slashed across his chest. The sound made my teeth ache. His breath went out in a harsh grunt; he stumbled backward, sword dropping a fraction.

  The tail retracted, coiled, and shot straight for his heart.

  “NO—”

  Lillibet moved.

  Her green blade flashed, faster than my eyes could track. It smacked the barb aside inches before it hit home. The tail slammed into the wall instead, cracking tile.

  Before the Argus could recover, she stepped in and finished it—one clean, decisive stroke that took the head nearly off. The halo of eyes blinked in grotesque unison, then went dark as the body sagged.

  For a heartbeat, the corridor was just breathing and the drip of monster blood.

  Then Lillibet rounded on Theo.

  It was the most emotion I’d ever seen on her face. Her eyes were hard, jaw tight, nostrils flared from the effort of not shouting.

  “You’re done,” she said.

  Theo, still panting, blinked at her. “What? No. Like hell I am.”

  “It’s over, Theo,” she said, voice flat but shaking at the edges. “You don’t have the maturity or the mindset for this job. Maybe when you’re older. Next year. The one after that.” Her gaze flicked pointedly to the gouges in his arm, the bite in his leg, the blood soaking the front of his shirt. “Not now.”

  He glared at her, wild light still flickering behind his eyes.

  Then, like someone had flipped a switch, his posture changed.

  His shoulders dropped. His jaw unclenched. The manic spark shuttered.

  “Right,” he said, almost breezy. “Okay. That makes sense.”

  He even pulled up the easy, flirty smile, like this was just another joke. But it didn’t reach his eyes.

  Not even a little.