Chapter 5: The Glamour's Bridge
The warmth of the SUV's climate control was the first thing Calista registered as consciousness filtered back through her, the soft hum of the engine a familiar lullaby. But beneath that comfort, something prickled at the edges of her awareness—a discordant note in the otherwise harmonious hum of her family's presence. Her father's signature had shifted, his emotional resonance off-balance, and her mother's was a steady, practiced calm that Calista knew well enough to recognize as a mask.
She kept her breathing slow and even, her eyes closed, her body still. She'd spent enough years learning to read the currents of the people she loved to know when to surface and when to wait.
"Call her," her father said, his voice rough, frayed at the edges. "Please, Casey. I can't—I don't know what we're dealing with here, and I can't shake it."
A pause. The soft click of a phone unlocking.
"I was already planning to," her mother replied, her tone carrying that familiar blend of reassurance and dry practicality that had anchored Calista through childhood storms. "Aunt Callie will know where the records are. If anyone can find a name in that bureaucratic maze of theirs, it's her."
Calista heard the call connect, her mother's voice shifting into a warmer register as she greeted her great-aunt. The one-sided conversation drifted through the cabin, fragmented by road noise and the occasional hiss of a passing vehicle. Calista let the words wash over her, cataloging the emotions beneath them—the undercurrent of worry her mother was trying to conceal, the raw tension bleeding through her father's silence.
She'd known the Bentley Ridge mission was weighing on them, but this felt different. Sharper. More personal.
"—and that's when he saw her," her mother was saying, her voice low, meant to be private. "During sex. She just—appeared. Looked right at him with Elizabeth Harlow's eyes."
Calista's breath caught in her chest. She kept it silent, kept her body loose, but her attention sharpened to a razor's edge.
"That's two times now, Callie. Once in dreams, once awake." Her mother paused, a heavy silence stretching. "He says she's begging him to save her. And that they're watching."
Calista heard her father make a sound—half-growl, half-sigh—and then his voice, rough with emotion: "I've been the sole survivor of that documentary crew for twenty years, and I only just found out yesterday. I know how the Wands operate, so I'm not complaining about that. But I can't—I can't ignore her. Not when she keeps reaching out like this. I need to know who she is. What she wants. If she's even real, or if I'm just losing my goddamn mind."
There was a long pause, and Calista could picture her mother and Aunt Callie exchanging glances through the phone.
"Mike," Aunt Callie's voice came through the speaker, crisper than Calista expected. "I want you to listen to me carefully. You are not losing your mind. The phenomenon you're describing—it has a precedent in interdimensional psychology. Trapped souls sometimes reach out through whatever channel they can find. And strong emotional states, sexual ones especially, can act as a conduit."
"Great," her father muttered. "So I'm a conduit."
"You're a survivor," Aunt Callie said firmly. "And you're the only one who ever left that ridge. Elizabeth's daughter may well be anchoring herself to you because you're the only link she has left to this side of the rift."
"Then tell us her name," her mother cut in. "You have records. The Order has records. We just need a starting point."
Another pause, longer this time. When Aunt Callie spoke again, her voice was tinged with frustration. "I don't have it handy. You have to understand, Casey—the Bentley Ridge incident was classified so deeply that even I had to pull strings to authorize the release of the book. The daughter's identity was sealed along with everything else. I'll need to go through the archives."
Calista opened her eyes.
The world swam into focus—the amber glow of the interior, the grey blur of highway beyond the windows, the silver-streaked heads of her parents in the front seats. Something clicked into place, a quiet certainty blooming in her chest. She didn't know how she knew, not precisely, but the knowledge settled there nonetheless, solid as bone.
The path isn't external. It's internal. It's the same path she used to find me.
She moved slowly, deliberately, pushing herself upright in the back seat. Her parents' conversation faltered as they registered her movement, her mother's gaze flicking to the rearview mirror.
"Calista?" Her mother's voice was careful. "Sweetheart, we didn't mean to wake you—"
"You didn't." Calista's voice was steady, though her heart was hammering against her ribs. "I need to try something."
She didn't wait for permission. She shed her clothes with a practiced efficiency, the soft jersey of her top and the denim of her jeans pooling on the leather seat. The cold air of the cabin kissed her skin, raising goosebumps across her pale arms, but the warmth of her Elven heritage rose to meet it, chasing away the chill.
"Calista—" her father started, but she cut him off.
"I saw it," she said. "The way she reached you. Through the strongest emotional connection you have. The one that ties you to this world more than any other." She met his eyes in the mirror, her own burning with a quiet intensity. "I'm going to do the same thing."
Her mother's brow furrowed. "Cal, you don't know what you're doing."
"I do." She let the glamour rise, the subtle elfin magic that had always been part of her body's rhythm, but now she pushed it outward, summoned it, wove it into a net around herself. "She reaches through sex because it's the most primal emotional channel. I'm half-elf, Mom. I'm built for this."
She settled back in the seat, naked, her legs falling open with a deliberation that made her father look firmly away. Her hand slid down her belly, fingers finding the slick heat between her thighs. Her mother was shouting something, but the sound was fading, the world dissolving into a haze of sensation and intent.
Calista let her fingers work, a practiced rhythm building against her clit. The glamour pulsed around her, seeking, grasping, reaching through the veil. She imagined the void beyond, the dim space where a terrified soul huddled, waiting. She called out with her body, with the heat pooling low in her belly, with every gasp and shudder she coaxed from herself.
And something answered.
The world tilted, and then she was standing.
Stone beneath her bare feet. Cold air against her skin. Dim, grey light filtering from nowhere and everywhere at once. Calista blinked, orienting herself, her heart still pounding from the orgasm that had ripped through her a moment before. The chamber was small, maybe ten feet across, the walls rough-hewn and slick with moisture. A single figure huddled in the corner, arms wrapped around bare knees, face buried in her own hair.
Calista's breath caught.
The woman was young—impossibly young, her skin smooth and unlined, her body lean and untouched by the decades that should have passed since Bentley Ridge. Her hair was a tangled mess of dark waves, and when she looked up, her eyes were the color of storm clouds, rimmed with red from weeping.
"Please," the woman whispered, her voice cracked and raw. "Please, you have to help me. I've been so alone."
Calista moved forward slowly, her glamour pulsing outward like a warm tide, calming and soothing. She crouched down, meeting the woman's eyes, and reached out to touch her cold, trembling arm.
"I'm here." Calista's voice was soft, thick with compassion. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm here to help you."
The woman stared at her, a fragile hope flickering across her gaunt features. "You're real? You're not one of them?"
"I'm real." Calista's fingers brushed the woman's cheek, and a shudder ran through the other woman's frame. "I'm Calista. I'm Mike and Casey's daughter. They're the ones trying to find you."
"Mike and Casey." A choked laugh escaped the woman's lips. "God. They're the last people I ever thought I'd hear about again. Is Mike still—" She hesitated, tears spilling over her cheeks. "Is he still alive?"
"He's more than alive. He's fighting to get you home."
The woman's composure shattered. She sobbed, the sound broken and raw, her body curling in on itself as decades of loneliness poured out of her. Calista wrapped her arms around her, holding her through the storm, her glamour working to soothe and settle the trembling frame.
When the weeping finally quieted, the woman pulled back, wiping her face with shaking hands. "I'm sorry. I'm—I'm not usually like this. I was a researcher. I was composed. I was professional." A bitter laugh. "And then the rift opened, and everything fell apart."
"What's your name?" Calista asked gently. "How do we bring you home?"
"Katrina." The woman's voice steadied, a thread of steel beneath the grief. "Katrina Harlow. I was a junior researcher, only at Bentley Ridge because my mother insisted I learn fieldwork. I was—" She swallowed thickly. "I was nineteen. I should be old now. I should have gray hair and kids and a career. But they froze me. They've kept me here, in this loop, for I don't know how long. I've lost count of the years."
Calista's jaw tightened. "Who? Who kept you trapped here?"
Katrina's gaze dropped to the floor. "They're not from your world. They're not from any world you've ever seen. They existed before the rift, before everything. And they've been waiting for a way through ever since."
"Lady Aemelia," Calista breathed. "Was she part of this? Did she cause the rift?"
Katrina shook her head. "Aemelia was there when it formed. I saw her, standing at the edge of the fields, watching. But she's not one of them. She's powerful, but she's still one of us—shaped by the same world, bound by the same rules." She looked up, her storm-cloud eyes meeting Calista's. "They're not like that. They don't follow rules. They make their own."
Calista felt a chill run down her spine. She squeezed Katrina's hand and spoke softly. "I'm going to bring you home. I promise."
Katrina opened her mouth to speak, but the words died in her throat. Her eyes went wide, fixed on something behind Calista's shoulder.
"Don't turn around," she whispered, her voice a thread of pure terror. "They're here. They're always here."
Calista felt it then—a presence at the edge of her awareness, vast and ancient and hungry. The glamour around her flickered, threatening to gutter out like a candle in a storm. She held Katrina tighter, felt the younger woman's nails dig into her arm, and forced herself to breathe.
"Then we go together," Calista said, her voice low and fierce. "Right now."
She pulled Katrina to her feet, the young woman's legs barely holding her, her body pressed against Calista's as they took a single step toward the edge of nothing. The presence closed in, and Calista felt its attention settle on them, a weight like the ocean pressing down—
She woke gasping, naked and trembling, her body slick with sweat in the back of the SUV. The vehicle had pulled off the highway, and both her parents were turned around in their seats, faces etched with worry.
"Calista!" Her mother's voice cracked. "What the hell was that?"
"The name." Calista's voice shook, but her eyes burned with fierce triumph. "Her name is Katrina. Katrina Harlow. She's real, and she's alive, and she's trapped on the other side of that rift. And whatever's on the other side with her isn't just a conduit or a piece of ancient magic." She paused, the words settling like stones in her chest. "It's watching us."
The words hung in the air like a physical weight, pressing down on the three of them in the cramped confines of the SUV. Mike's hands were white-knuckled on the armrests, his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance, processing what his daughter had just said.
"Katrina Harlow," he repeated, the name tasting foreign on his tongue. "I never—Elizabeth never mentioned a daughter by name. Just that she'd lost her."
Casey reached over, her hand finding his thigh, squeezing with a reassurance she didn't fully feel. "Thirty years of secrets, and we're only now getting pieces. The question is who else knows about her, and what they're doing with that information."
Calista pulled her clothes back on with the same quiet efficiency she'd used to shed them, her movements deliberate. She caught her mother's eye in the rearview mirror. "Aunt Callie needs to know. If there are records locked away that mention her, we need them. Katrina said she was a junior researcher at the site—there have to be rosters, personnel files, something."
Mike finally turned, looking at his daughter with a tenderness that softened the hard lines of his face. "You went through the veil. Into the rift. Just like Elizabeth's voice came through the book, you went in with nothing but glamour and will." He shook his head slowly. "You could have been trapped in there like her."
"Dad, I had to try." Calista's chin lifted, a defiant glint in her silver eyes. "She was reaching out to you during sex because that's your strongest emotional anchor. Mine is different. My strongest connection is to family, to the people I love. That's what let me find her."
Casey's phone buzzed, breaking the moment. She glanced at the screen, her eyebrow arching. "It's Bethany. She's at the archive with Jan and Fatima." She tapped the answer button and put it on speaker, setting the phone in the center console.
"Casey, listen." Bethany's voice came through, crisp and laced with barely contained frustration. "We've been here for three hours, and Jan keeps trying to improvise around containment protocols. I understand her magical methods work, but we're dealing with classified Golden Wand material that predates the Breach. If we don't follow procedure, we could destabilize the evidence."
Jan's voice cut through, sharp and unapologetic. "Stabilize the evidence? Beth, that procedure of yours is why your father's been missing for twenty years. That same protocol locked the Bentley Ridge file so deep that even the Merlin has to dig through three layers of clearance to pull it." A pause, the sound of something heavy being set down. "We're going to find Katrina's records. We're going to do it faster than your precious protocol allows because we've got a living woman trapped in a rift dimension, and every minute we waste following your rules is a minute she spends in that hell."
Fatima's voice came through, measured, cutting through the rising tension like a blade. "Both of you need to stop. Right now." Her tone carried authority that silenced the others. "We're all on the same side. Jan, your improvisation is valuable, but Bethany's caution has a purpose. Beth, your protocol matters, but it can't become an obstacle to the living, breathing person we're trying to save. We will find a middle ground."
Through the speaker, the sound of shuffling papers filtered through, and Jan's voice again, softer: "Fine. But the moment we get what we need, we're going to the ridge. I don't care what kind of clearance it requires."
Mike cleared his throat, drawing the attention of the three women speaking. "Katrina Harlow. Junior researcher. She told Calista to call her that. We have a name now to anchor the search."
Silence from the other end. Then Bethany, a hitch in her voice: "Katrina. Harlow." She repeated it, the syllables slow, tasting them for recognition. "The Harlow family—Elizabeth's her mother. So she's the one."
"She's the one," Calista confirmed, her voice gentle. "And she's still alive, Beth. Whatever happened at the ridge, however the containment team was lost, she's alive. Holding on. Waiting for us to get her out."
In the background, the unmistakable clatter of a metal chair hitting the floor. Hank's voice, muffled but amused: "Jan just knocked over a chair. She's got that 'I'm going to the rift now' look on her face."
Liam's Scottish brogue followed dryly: "Aye, I've seen that look before. It usually ends with someone getting enchanted and the lot of us having to explain it to the Order."
Cameron's voice, level and measured: "Let her go. She'll burn herself out on the first two doors, then she'll slow down."
Jan's voice, indignant through the shuffle: "I resent the implication that I can't be patient."
Fatima's dry laugh came through. "You once enchanted a stoplight because it made you wait four minutes."
"That stoplight was clearly possessed," Jan shot back. "I had to."
Casey muted the call for a moment, covering her mouth to hold back a laugh. She unmuted and spoke over the chaos: "We're heading your way. We've got daylight left, and I want to review whatever records you find before we make decisions."
Bethany's voice cut through the noise. "We'll have the personnel files ready. There's a hard copy archive here that predates the digital transfer. If Katrina Harlow exists in the record, she'll be in the ledgers."
Calista leaned forward, resting her chin on the seat between her parents, her voice pitched for them alone. "She described the rift as a room. A loop. She said they froze her. That's not a natural dimensional rift—that's a constructed prison. Whoever built it wanted her there specifically, wanted her contained."
Mike's jaw tightened. "Which means whatever's on the other side is still there, still watching, still holding her." He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine hummed to life. "Then let's not keep them waiting."
The drive passed in a blurred haze of grey highway, roadside exits flashing by. Casey kept her hand on Mike's thigh, her thumb tracing idle patterns through his jeans, grounding both of them in the present. Calista had fallen silent, her eyes closed, her glamour pulsing in slow, rhythmic waves.
"You know," Casey said, low, watching the road, "when we agreed to help with the Bentley Ridge cleanup, I didn't think it would involve our daughter astral-projecting into a rift dimension to give us a name."
Mike grunted. "I didn't think it would involve my dick channeling spirits."
The bluntness of it startled a laugh out of Casey. "There it is. There's the man I married."
"What? We're talking about the same thing. You were there. I was mid-thrust, and suddenly I'm seeing specters." He shook his head, a reluctant grin tugging at his mouth. "I've had weirder things happen during sex, but not many."
Calista cracked an eye open. "I really didn't need that detail."
"You started it," Mike said, unrepentant. "Astral projection. God. I haven't done that since—" He stopped, a flicker of expression crossing his face.
"Since when?" Casey's tone sharpened with interest.
"Since the summer before we got married," Mike admitted. "Jan got it into her head that I needed to see the Green Moon's bathing ritual as a 'preview' for our honeymoon. She didn't warn me I'd be spirit-walking into the middle of a wedding orgy for one of our friends."
Casey's laughter filled the cabin, bright and honest. "You're telling me you've had astral sex with spirits?"
"I'm telling you," Mike said, a chuckle escaping him despite the weight of the topic, "that the universe has a weird sense of humor about what it shows me."
Calista closed her eyes again, letting their banter wash over her. A small smile curved her lips. Her family had a way of finding humor in the darkest corners, a thread of resilience that had carried them through everything—Bentley Ridge, time loops, kidnapped patriarchs, and now dimensional prisons.
The signs for the archive approached on the horizon, a distant building rising from the flat expanse of farmland. From the outside, it could have been a grain silo or a meteorological station—unremarkable, functional, forgettable. But Calista knew the truth. Beneath the plain exterior, the Golden Wand Archive held centuries of accumulated magical knowledge, sealed vaults with layers of protective charms, and record rooms that never saw sunlight.
And somewhere inside, waiting for them, was an answer to a question thirty years in the making.
Mike pulled the SUV into the gravel lot, the wheels crunching to a stop beside Jan's battered convertible. The car's trunk was open, a duffel bag spilling enchanted trinkets and what appeared to be half a sandwich. The doors of the archive stood ajar, warm light spilling onto the gravel path.
He turned off the engine and sat still for a long moment, his hand resting on the wheel. "We walk in with the name, we find the records, we plan. We do not do anything reckless."
"Since when do we do reckless things?" Casey asked, arching a brow.
For a long beat, all three of them remembered the times they had. Reckless things in other cities. Reckless things involving time travel, magical ceremonies to save the world, fending off giant flying creatures ready to be destroyed in the way that truly mattered. The kind of reckless that had started all of this in the first place.
Mike opened his door and stepped out. "Let's go get Katrina out of the dark."
The archive swallowed them whole, its interior vast and labyrinthine, shelves rising to cathedral-like heights. Glowing filaments wound through the aisles, casting soft, blue-white light onto the massive ledger volumes scattered across reading tables. Bethany, Jan, and Fatima stood at the far end of the room, surrounded by piles of bound documents and electronica scrolls. Jan's braid had come loose, a wild red mane framing her face. Bethany's charcoal suit was immaculate despite the chaos of paper around her. Fatima held a notebook with fierce focus, her pen snapping its lead as she looked up.
"You got it?" Jan asked, bouncing slightly on her heels.
Calista nodded, stepping forward. "Katrina Harlow. Junior researcher, assigned to the Bentley Ridge mission. She says she was nineteen when she disappeared."
Bethany's face went pale, her hand steadying herself against the table. "I remember her. I was eleven when my father left. He mentioned a girl, a student researcher he was mentoring. He said she had a lot to learn, but she had a good head on her shoulders." Her voice dropped. "He would have wanted us to find her."
Jan's voice was softer, carrying a weight of understanding. "Then let's find Katrina. Along with the file, let's see if we can find a street address for the last known residence of the Harlow family." A beat. "And while we're at it, let's pull up the incident log from the day the rift opened."
Fatima closed her notebook, tucking it into a vest pocket. She looked at Mike, then at Casey, her sharp eyes reading something unspoken in their faces. "You two look like you've been to war."
Mike let out a long breath. "Not exactly a war. Just a waking nightmare with a name attached to it now." He recounted the vision quickly—Calista's astral walk through the veil, the frozen chamber, the young woman who had been trapped for decades.
By the time the story ended, the air was heavy with silence. Jan's fists were clenched. Fatima's jaw was tight. Bethany had gone very still, her gaze fixed on the floor.
Hank cleared his throat from where he sat on an overturned crate, wiping his hands on a grease rag. "So we've got a time-frozen hostage in a dimensional prison, and something old and hungry babysitting her." He looked around the group. "Any chance we can just, like, call in a favor from the universe and skip the hard part?"
Kim stirred her curved sword, catching the light. "Universe doesn't do favors. It does tests."
Maryam eyed her twin. "You're starting to sound like Mom."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
Liam, sitting beside Bethany with a steadying hand on her back, cleared his throat. "So we need the records, then. And a way to open the rift from our side without alerting whatever's waiting on the other side." He looked askance at the older women. "Does anyone know what we're actually walking into?"
Fatima squared her shoulders. "We're walking into a trap, cleverly laid and baited. But we're doing it with open eyes, and that gives us an advantage." Her voice found steel, sharp as a blade. "We find the records. We find the hole in their plan. Then we walk through together, and we bring Katrina home."
Jan was already moving, her fingers flying over a console along the wall. "I've got something. Accessing the sealed personnel database—it's in the old registry, the one locked behind magical sigin seals." Her eyes lit up as she read the glowing text appearing before her. "Katrina Elaine Harlow. Date of birth: January 17th, 1999. Assigned to the Wands at age eighteen in a research capacity. Last known location: Bentley Ridge. Missing."
She kept reading, her voice dropping. "Cause: terminated. Declared deceased eight months later." She looked up, and the fire in her eyes had banked to something colder. "They declared a nineteen-year-old girl dead because they couldn't be bothered to find her. Thirty years ago, they closed the file and they never went back. Not once."
Bethany's hand tightened on the table's edge. "Protocol states—"
"Protocol states that Elizabeth's daughter has been rotting in a dimensional prison because nobody filed a missing person's report?" Jan snapped. "Protocol states that a girl who was studying history because she wanted to preserve it is frozen in time in a hell dimension? Fuck protocol. We're getting her out."
The room fell silent. The weight of her words hung in the air, undeniable. Then Bethany spoke, her voice low and quiet. "You're right. Protocol failed Katrina. I've been so focused on following the rules that I forgot the rules are meant to serve people, not the other way around." She looked up at Jan, and something in her eyes had changed. "How do we get to Bentley Ridge?"
Casey stepped forward, pulling out her phone. "We drive. Eight hours straight, maybe less if we take the magi-rail lanes. And we call Elizabeth Harlow on the way—the voice in the book. It's time we asked her what she really knows about the rift and what happened on the day it closed."
Mike looked at her, a question in his eyes. "You think she's going to tell us the whole story?"
"I think she's been waiting thirty years for someone to ask the right questions," Casey replied. "And I think we're finally ready to hear the answers."
The group moved as one toward the door, a sudden unity of purpose overtaking the earlier tension. Behind them, the archive's filament lights flickered and dimmed—the room settling into silence as if the building itself was holding its breath. Outside, the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of blood orange and violet.
Jan's convertible engine roared to life, followed by the rumble of Hank's truck and the near-silent hum of the Williamson SUV. They formed a convoy, headlights cutting through the gathering dusk, and pointed themselves toward Bentley Ridge.
Three hundred miles away, in a penthouse overlooking the Miami skyline, Rick Williamson set down his phone. Stacy looked up from her book, one eyebrow raised.
"They found her," Rick said quietly.
Stacy set the book aside. "Katrina?"
"She's alive, Stace. She's been trapped there all this time, and my sister went into that hellhole to find her name. And now my parents are driving toward the rift with Jan and Bethany and Fatima." He shook his head slowly. "This is going to end badly. It always does."
Stacy rose, crossing to him, and placed her hands on his shoulders. "It ends badly, and then it ends well. That's how it works when you're part of this family." Her voice was warm and wry. "We find another way. We always do."
Rick looked up into her eyes, the woman he'd loved through time itself, over a decade apart and then back together. "I'm going with them."
Stacy was silent for a beat. Then: "I've already packed."
She gestured toward the bedroom door, where a duffel sat waiting. Lightweight tactical gear peeked from the open zipper. "You think I don't know the pattern? Parents disappear into dimensional rifts to save trapped women. It's basically a family tradition by now. I'll be damned if you go alone."
Rick's mouth curved, a slow, reluctant smile. "Stacy, you know I—"
"Shut up and get in the car." She was already moving, pulling a jacket over her shoulders. "We've got about four hours of night driving to catch them before they reach the ridge."
He caught up to her, his hand on her arm. "Wait. Before we go there's something I want to tell you."
She rounded on him, a flicker of irritation in her eyes, but he was already leaning in. The kiss was rough, immediate, tasting of coffee and adrenaline. Stacy melted into it, her hands pulling at his shirt, and in one smooth, heated motion, they tumbled toward the bed.
The stack of books spilled across the floor, forgotten. The duffel sat by the door, patient. Rick pulled Stacy's shirt over her head and found her mouth again, his hands fumbling with the clasp of her bra. She laughed, breathless and wild, and wrenched open his belt buckle in return.
"Tell me later," she breathed, her hips tilting toward his. "Tell me everything later. Right now I need you."
He lowered her to the sheets, the memory of her body mapped across his fingertips like a home he'd been returning to for decades. The space between them knit shut as he settled over her, the heat of her thighs welcoming him in, pulling him down to the heart of her. She arched, a low moan trickling from her throat, and her hands found his shoulders, gripping as his mouth trailed through the soft golden light of the bedroom.
They moved together like a tide, rough and tender and urgent all at once, decades of longing poured into every stroke. Stacy's nails bit into his thighs, her words breaking into syllables as she guided him deeper, and he obeyed, his breath coming in hot, ragged gasps. When she came, it was a shudder that seized her whole body, her mouth parted around his name, and he followed moments after, his face buried in her neck, a sudden warmth flooding between them both.
For a long moment they lay tangled in the aftermath, breathless and glowing. Then Rick propped himself up on his elbows, brushing a strand of silver-streaked hair from Stacy's face.
"Okay," she murmured, her lips curving. "Now tell me."
His eyes held hers, warm and fierce. "When we get to the ridge, I'm going to stand beside my parents. Whatever's waiting on the other side, we're going to face it together—all of us. And I want you beside me. Not because I need you to protect me, but because I can't imagine meeting the end of the world without you there."
Stacy's breath caught. Her fingers curled around his, and her voice came out low and fierce.
"Then we'd better get dressed to face it. I have a feeling things are going to get loud, messy, and very, very strange."
They rose from the bed, dressed quickly, and grabbed the duffel. The door swung shut behind them as the elevator descended, carrying them toward the garage, toward the night, toward the thinning veil at Bentley Ridge.
Back in the archive's shadow, the convoy had reached the highway. The kilometers unfurled in the headlights, an endless ribbon of tarmac cutting through the dark. In the Williamson SUV, Calista sat in the back, her eyes fixed on the glow of her phone.
A new message glowed on the screen.
Katrina Harlow, it read. The Bentley Ridge Incident, Appendix D: Recorded audio transcription, reels 4-7.
She frowned, opening the file. It was an audio transcript, dated three days before the rift closed. The speakers were labeled: E. Harlow, K. Harlow.
Her finger hovered over the play button. Then she pressed it.
A young woman's voice crackled through the speaker, tinged with static and distance. "We're really close to something, Mom. I feel it every time we approach the ridge—it's like something's calling to me. And I know the research team said not to follow the signals, but—"
A second voice, older, sharper, cut in. "Katrina, you need to stop this. This is serious. That rift in there should not be studied up close; weird things are happening, understand? We are not set up for this."
"There is absolutely nothing creepy about it, Mom," Katrina's voice argued, carrying an edge of agitation. "It's unique. It's a discovery. And I can help—"
The recording cut off, replaced by static. Calista sat frozen, the phone clutched in her hand, the weight of the words settling into her bones.
She looked up at her parents, her voice quiet but steady. "Elizabeth knew. She knew what was happening before the rift closed." She met Mike's gaze in the mirror. "And Katrina said something was calling her. She's the one who opened the rift in the first place."
The SUV hummed along the dark highway, carrying them all toward a very different morning.