Chapter 17

  The Crooked Crumb was busier than usual that morning, the air thick with coffee steam and the hiss of the espresso machine. Snow slushed off boots by the door, chatter rose and fell like background music, and the smell of butter and sugar wrapped around me in a way that made it hard to remember last night’s alarms and arguments.

  We’d taken over the corner table again. Not by design—just because no one else was going to argue with Mrs. Vickers once she flounced into the seat in a sequined turban and a leopard-print coat that looked like it had eaten someone else’s wardrobe. She ordered a “breakfast martini” like it was on the menu and dared the barista to question her. He didn’t. Tudor was curled up under my chair, tail flicking lazily, as if daring anyone to try him again.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Candy said, catching me sneaking a piece of her cranberry scone. “You’ve got your own.”

  “Yours tastes better,” I said around the bite.

  “Honey, really?”

  Nina snorted into her latte. “This is what passes for domestic bliss now? Petty pastry theft?”

  “Don’t knock it,” Mrs. Vickers said, raising her glass. “I’ve been married three times, and pastry theft was the least of my problems. Husband number two once gambled away my car on a Thursday night and expected me to drive him to work Friday morning. With what, darling, roller skates?”

  That earned a laugh, even from Richard, who’d been radiating storm cloud vibes.. For a few minutes, it almost felt like normal life: coffee, sugar, banter. A family, if you tilted your head and squinted.

  I kept thinking about the night before. Richard had slept on my floor, his back braced against the apartment door like he could hold back the whole world if it came knocking. Tudor had claimed him instantly, curling on his chest with a smug purr, tail flicking every time he shifted. I should have slept too, but the book had other plans. It had hummed all night on the coffee table, low and steady, and I’d sat awake paging through it, hunting for more scraps about Elizabeth—the Phoenix Queen. Every entry I found felt like it was holding something back, waiting for me to understand what I was really reading.

  Mrs. Vickers leaned conspiratorially toward Officer Kimball, who’d stopped in to check the alarm report but hadn’t escaped her orbit. “And you, dear, don’t ever marry a man who irons his socks. Trust me, it ends in tears and starch burns.”

  Kimball flushed crimson, nearly choking on his tea.

  I glanced up then and caught sight of a man across the street. He stood too still for the weather, collar turned up against the wind, eyes on the bakery window. Not moving. Not even pretending to look anywhere else.

  I blinked, and someone passed between us—a woman with a stroller, a man balancing two coffees—and when the view cleared, the watcher was gone.

  “Problem?” Richard asked quietly. “Nothing,” I lied, tugging my mug closer.

  He studied me a second longer, then shifted his attention back to the table. “We need to change tactics,” he said, voice cutting through the chatter. “Too many of us together draws attention. If someone’s already watching, we make it easy for them.”

  Candy frowned. “You’re suggesting we split up? That’s exactly when people get picked off in horror movies.”

  “Movies are exaggerated,” Richard said. “But the principle stands. Smaller groups can move without notice. We cover more ground. We don’t give Corwin or anyone else a chance to pin us down in one strike.”

  “Practical,” Nina admitted. “Though I don’t like the odds.”

  Mrs. Vickers smoothed her leopard coat and sipped her martini. “Darling, if you’re trying to look inconspicuous, perhaps don’t travel with a man who looks like he should be storming a Norse battlefield. If you want subtle, put him in flannel and send him to shovel driveways.

  Otherwise, the whole town will know you’re up to mischief.” Richard ignored her, but his jaw twitched.

  I sipped my coffee, trying not to imagine the faceless watcher still outside. For a few minutes this morning, it had almost felt safe. But Richard was right—we were being noticed. And something in my gut told me we wouldn’t get another quiet breakfast like this for a long time.

  The snow had stopped, but the morning was still white and sharp, the kind of cold that bites through gloves. I left the bakery with my bag slung over one shoulder, intending to make the quick loop back to my apartment for the book. One Block. Ten minutes, tops.

  I kept replaying Richard’s words—*we should split up*—and feeling a prickle at the back of my neck. A normal girl might have called this paranoia. Me? I’d learned the hard way that paranoia was usually step one in not dying.

  Tudor padded along at my heels, tail high, ears swiveling at every sound. He was more bodyguard than cat. Which is why the hairs on my arms rose when he froze. Just stopped dead on the cracked sidewalk, eyes gone to slits.

  “Tu?” I whispered.

  That’s when the van pulled up.

  A black panel van—old, dented, sliding door already opening before it even fully stopped. Three men in ski masks surged out like a tide.

  “What the—?” I didn’t even finish. One grabbed my arm, another yanked the bag off my shoulder. Tudor launched like a missile, claws out, a scream of fury ripping from his throat. He hit the nearest man square in the chest, all claws and teeth, shredding fabric, drawing blood.

  The man cursed, stumbling back, but another booted forward and kicked Tudor hard, sending him skidding across the snow.

  “NO!” I screamed, the sound raw in my throat. I twisted, kicked, bit—anything. My boot connected with a shin, my elbow cracked into someone’s ribs. “You picked the wrong girl for your creepy van fantasy!”

  A cloth gag jammed into my mouth. My wrists were yanked behind me, duct tape ripping loud as a gunshot.

  I screamed anyway, muffled, furious.

  Nobody came. The street was empty, or maybe everyone was too smart to interfere with a panel van and ski masks.

  They hauled me into the back, shoving me onto cold metal flooring that smelled of gasoline and something rotten. Tudor’s furious howl still echoed behind us. My chest ached with worry—had he been hurt worse than I saw? Was he lying in the snow?

  “Don’t hurt him,” I choked, words mangled through the gag. My voice was swallowed by the roar of the engine as the van lurched forward.

  A figure leaned over me, breath reeking of cigarettes through the mask. He ripped the gag down just enough for me to speak. “Where’s the book?” he demanded.

  “The book?” I rasped, anger boiling up under the fear. “You could’ve just checked it out of the library. I hear late fees are brutal.”

  The masked man’s eyes narrowed. He slammed my head hard against the van wall. Stars burst behind my eyes, pain exploding sharp and nauseating.

  “Still funny?” he growled.

  I spat blood at his boot. “Funnier than your face.”

  The punch caught me square in the jaw, snapping my head sideways. Pain jolted down my neck. My eyes watered, but I refused to let them see me cry.

  From the front seat came a voice. Low. Cadenced. The words weren’t clear, but the rhythm was unmistakable: the same eerie, ritual-like cadence I’d once overheard when Corwin thought no one was listening. The same tone that had slid under my skin then, the same one I swore I’d never forget.

  “Not her words,” the driver intoned. “Her blood. It remembers.” I froze, every nerve ending screaming.

  The man beside me yanked the gag back into place and tightened the tape around my wrists until I hissed into the cloth.

  I fought back panic. *Breathe, Sadie. Survive the next second. Then the next. That’s the game.*

  Fear clawed at my ribs. Anger sat right beside it, hot and sparking. And beneath it all, one clear thought: if they so much as touched my family—Steve and Martha back in Connecticut, or my ragtag bakery crew who’d somehow become family too—I’d make sure the blood they were so obsessed with was theirs.

  The van rattled down back streets, no windows, no sense of where we were going. My wrists burned, my jaw throbbed, but my mouth refused to stop.

  I spat the gag halfway out and growled, voice ragged, “Tell your boss he should’ve brought more guys.”

  A hand shoved me back down. Tape pressed over my mouth this time. But the smirk in my eyes? They couldn’t touch that.

  The room was so cold my breath smoked in the air. Concrete walls, one bare bulb swinging from the ceiling, a trickle of water leaking somewhere out of sight. My wrists burned where they’d been taped to the arms of the chair. My jaw ached from the punch.

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  I tested the bindings. No give.

  One of the masked men crouched in front of me, head tilted. “We know what you’ve been looking up,” he said. His voice was nasal, unremarkable, the kind of voice you’d forget in a crowd. But the words made my stomach turn.

  “You’re a curious little crow, aren’t you? Anne of Cleves. Haus Kr?mer. House of the Crow.” He grinned under the mask. “You thought you were the only one who could dig in dusty archives?”

  My throat went dry, but I forced a smirk. “Wow. Congratulations on learning how to use Google. Real terrifying.”

  The man’s fist lashed out, clipping my temple. Pain flared white, but I forced myself to breathe through it.

  Another stepped closer, voice lower. “You know the ley line that runs from Willoughby down to Boston? It’s waking up because of you. The book has your blood on it. Your blood opens it. You can’t lie to us.”

  My stomach lurched, memory of the journal’s warmth flaring in my mind. The way it had seemed to breathe under my hands.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, voice steady despite the ache in my ribs. “And if I did, I wouldn’t tell a bunch of bargain-bin kidnappers in ski masks.”

  The first man backhanded me, hard enough to snap my head sideways. Blood filled my mouth, hot and coppery.

  “Careful,” I muttered through split lips. “Keep hitting me and I’ll start charging you by the punch.”

  That earned me another blow to the gut, sharp enough to knock the wind from me.

  For a split second, hunched forward in the chair, air gone from my lungs, I thought: *this is it. I’m going to die here, in some freezing basement, without even saying goodbye.*

  Images flickered unbidden — Steve and Martha’s kitchen, the way my mom’s hands shook when she served coffee but never spilled a drop. The bakery crew crowded around our corner table, Mrs. Vickers clinking her ridiculous martini glass. Even Tudor, probably prowling the snow for me.

  And Richard. Always Richard. His storm-blue eyes, his maddening arrogance, the steady way he’d looked at me last night when the world felt like it might finally stop spinning. *I should’ve told him. That I care. That he’s not just some Viking pain in my ass.*

  I swallowed hard, shoved the thought down, and lifted my chin. And then I heard it again.

  That cadence. The low, ritualistic murmur seeping in from the far side of the room. Not clear words—more like the rhythm of something ancient, something practiced. The same I’d overheard in the Spanish Chapel when Corwin thought no one was listening. The same tone that had slid under my skin then, the same one I swore I’d never forget.

  “Not her words,” the voice intoned. “Her blood. It remembers.” I froze, every nerve ending screaming.

  The man beside me yanked the gag back into place and tightened the tape around my wrists until I hissed into the cloth.

  I fought back panic. *Breathe, Sadie. Survive the next second. Then the next. That’s the game.* Don’t let them rattle you. I began to feel that black rage fill my gut and radiate out. My vision dimmed -either from fury or a concussion, hard to tell.

  Fear clawed at my ribs. Anger sat right beside it, hot and sparking.

  The bulb above me flickered. Through a half-open door at the far wall, I glimpsed him. Just a silhouette: tall, shoulders squared, face shadowed. But I knew. My skin knew.

  Corwin.

  The chant stopped. His voice carried, smooth and poisonous: “You’ll break, little crow. Not tonight, perhaps. But soon. An you’ll do what your mother did not; You’ll harness the Phoenix Queen for me.”

  The masked men shifted, uneasy.

  “Remove that rag, I want to hear what our little crow has to say” Corwin ordered. The closest henchman reached over the pulled the gag out with a surprising lack of kindness. Asshole.

  I spat blood at the floor and grinned through it. “Newsflash: I don’t break. But if you want bedtime stories, I’ve got a few. One ends with you in jail, another ends with me kicking your ass. Dealer’s choice.”

  The man in front of me raised his hand again, but a single word from Corwin stopped him. “Enough.”

  They stepped back. My heart hammered, but I refused to look away from the dark doorway. He wanted me afraid. He’d have to settle for furious.

  Time blurred in the basement. Hunger, pain, thirst — they all dissolved into a single loop of cold and waiting. At some point I stopped counting the hours. My head throbbed from where they’d slammed it against the van wall. My wrists were numb under the tape. Hours ago I peed my pants, so my bladder was great but I was icky and wet and cold.

  I thought my crew would come for me that night. When they didn’t, I told myself tomorrow. But by the next day, the gnawing certainty settled in: maybe no one was coming. Maybe they were dead.

  The bulb flickered again. The masked men had grown restless, their muttering sharper, meaner. Corwin’s silhouette appeared once or twice, always retreating before I could snarl at him. He wanted me desperate.

  I was close.

  The explosion hit first — a crack of sound, the bulb shattering above me. A flash of blue light arced across the ceiling, rattling dust loose from the rafters. My ears rang.

  The door blew open.

  Richard stormed in first, blade in one hand, the other raised. Energy — actual, shimmering energy — rippled from his palm and sent the two masked henchmen flying back into the wall. They hit the ground like rag dolls, weapons skittering across the concrete.

  Nina followed, lips moving in a chant I didn’t recognize, a sigil glowing in the air before her. It pulsed once and detonated with a thunderclap, flinging another attacker backward. Not a bomb — more like air itself punched him off his feet. The room suddenly smelt of salt air and gunpowder.

  And Candy. Sweet, steady Candy. She came last, not with fire or steel, but with something small and sharp in her hand — a vial. She hurled it at the ground, and when it shattered, smoke billowed out, thick and blinding. The masked men coughed and stumbled, eyes watering.

  Tudor’s scream of fury cut through the haze, claws raking one of the kidnappers who had the bad luck to stumble close.

  Chaos. Screams. Spells cracking like lightning. My heart thrashed.

  Richard cut through the tape around my wrists with a blade so sharp I barely felt it. His free hand grabbed the back of my neck, steadying me. “I’ve got you,” he growled, voice fierce,

  almost broken.

  I tried to stand — and collapsed. My legs refused to hold me. Pain buckled through my knees.

  Without hesitation, Richard scooped me halfway up, supporting most of my weight against his side. “Lean on me,” he ordered.

  We staggered into the hallway, smoke swirling around us. I managed to rasp, “Where… where are we?”

  Candy steadied me on the other side, her voice quick but steady. “Old tap and die company. Just over in the next town. Shut down in ’91 when the soil got poisoned. Corwin thought no one would ever look for you here.”

  Nina’s eyes flashed as she pressed a glowing sigil into the wall to block pursuit. “And he wasn’t entirely wrong. I felt it as soon as we hit Lyndonville — the ley line there has a deeper pulse now, darker. Like it was feeding this place.”

  The fight raged on as they hauled me forward, each taking turns to keep me upright: Richard bracing me through the blasts, Nina dragging me when my knees gave out, Candy pulling me under her arm when both of them faltered. I was dead weight, but none of them let me fall.

  We broke into the main factory floor, a cavernous space littered with rusted machinery. Corwin stood at the far end, his cloak torn, eyes alight with fury. He raised one hand, chanting. A surge of power ripped through the air, blasting chunks of concrete into shrapnel.

  Richard caught most of it on a warding shield, but the impact rocked us back. Nina fired another sigil, a crackling burst of red light that struck Corwin square in the shoulder. He staggered, snarling.

  Candy lobbed a vial that burst at his feet, smoke and sparks coiling around his legs. He coughed, stumbled — and Tudor lunged again, claws tearing at his sleeve.

  I watched, dazed, as Richard closed the gap. His blade caught Corwin across the ribs — a clean, brutal strike. Blood sprayed across the concrete. For a heartbeat, victory seemed possible.

  But Corwin twisted, eyes burning with inhuman light. With a guttural word, he unleashed a wave of force that knocked all of us sprawling. When the dust cleared, he was gone — limping, wounded, but gone.

  “Damn it!” Richard slammed his fist into the wall. “He won’t get far.”

  But even wounded, Corwin’s absence pressed heavier than his presence had. He was still out there. Alone. Dangerous.

  They bundled me outside, my body nearly useless, and into the waiting vehicle. Richard climbed behind the wheel, eyes grim.

  The tires shrieked as we tore away. For a long moment, no one spoke. Just the roar of the engine and my heartbeat thudding too loud in my ears.

  I finally rasped, “How did you even find me?”

  Richard’s grip tightened on the wheel, but it was Nina who answered first. “Research. You weren’t just grabbed at random. I’d been tracing ley lines, remember? There’s one from Willoughby all the way to Mission Hill. When it spiked, I knew you were caught in the middle of it.”

  Candy lifted her hand sheepishly. “And… I may have had help. From Tudor. He wouldn’t stop yowling until I followed him. And when I asked what was wrong—” she hesitated, cheeks pink, “—he gave me a picture. Not words, more like a memory. You, bound and bleeding, but still fighting. Brave as could be. That’s when I knew.”

  Candy cleared her throat. “And for the record, it’s not like Tudor talks to me in English. Cats don’t work that way. I use herbs—thyme, rue, fennel—burned in small charms. They open a little space between the ordinary and the magical. That’s why my bakery always smells the way it does. That’s why people leave lighter than they came in. Tudor just… pushes his thoughts through that space. Not words, not pictures exactly—more like impressions I can catch.”

  She smiled down at him. “And he really, really loves you, Sadie. That part comes through loud and clear.”

  I stroked Tudor’s soot-streaked fur, tears stinging. “Good boy.”

  Nina gave a weary sigh. “And don’t let Richard underplay it. He carved through their wards like butter, and he put a blade into Corwin that should’ve ended him. If Corwin’s close to death, it’s because of Richard.”

  Richard said nothing, jaw tight, eyes on the road. But he didn’t deny it.

  Candy added softly, “And don’t forget Mr. Durney. Your conspiracy-theorist neighbor with

  his ‘shadow people’? He wasn’t entirely wrong. He pointed us to the factory, actually gave us a floor layout. Turns out he used to be the foreman here before it shut down in ’91. Without his directions, we never would’ve found the basement.”

  I stared at them — my ragtag, ridiculous team. A Vatican enforcer, a sharp-tongued Siren, a kitchen witch who could talk to cats, a tuxedo cat with a vendetta, and a retired foreman neighbor who still saw shadows.

  “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” I whispered.

  “Do both,” Nina suggested, leaning her head back against the seat. “That’s pretty much our group motto.”

  For a heartbeat, the car filled with tired, incredulous laughter. Even Richard’s mouth twitched, though he tried to hide it.

  I slumped against the seat, the pain in my body still screaming, but for the first time in days, I felt less alone. We were bruised, bloodied, confused—but we were together.

  And together, maybe, we had a chance.

  Richard scooped me up without asking, his arms steady despite the mess of bruises we both wore. I wanted to protest, but the warmth of him, the surety, melted the words on my tongue. He carried me up the stairs like I weighed nothing, pushed open the apartment door with his shoulder, and set me gently down beside the tub. Tudor hopped onto the counter, golden eyes wide, tail flicking like he was keeping score. Richard twisted the taps until the water steamed, then straightened, his jaw tight but his voice soft. “I’ll stand guard outside the door.”

  Which, of course, made my brain short-circuit. Steam, bruises, Richard’s Viking silhouette lingering in my bathroom doorway—it was way too much for someone still covered in dirt and blood. I managed a nod, flustered and unreasonably into it.

  By the time the soak had eased the ache from my bones, the apartment felt warmer, safer. I padded into my bedroom to find a pair of soft leggings and a fluffy sweatshirt already laid out on the bed, like someone had thought ahead for me. Richard was settled in the chair by the window, reading one of my battered library-science texts like it was fine literature.

  “Thank you,” I murmured.

  He looked up, and for a moment there was no storm, no Vatican, no Phoenix Queen. Just him. “Being around you,” he said, voice low, “is the most incredible feeling I’ve ever had. When you were taken—when I thought I might lose you—I nearly lost my mind.”

  “Being around you,” he said, voice low, “is the most incredible feeling I’ve ever had. When you were taken—when I thought I might lose you—I nearly lost my mind.”

  The words hit me harder than any bruise. I stood there, wrapped in soft cotton, feeling stripped bare anyway. For once, I didn’t reach for a joke to cover the silence. I just let it stretch, warm and fragile, until I crossed the room and rested my hand lightly on his shoulder. He closed the book without looking down, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “I’m still here,” I whispered. “You didn’t lose me.”

  Something in his face eased at that—like I’d handed him back a piece of himself he hadn’t realized was missing. Tudor purred from the bed, as if to second the promise, and the world outside our walls felt a little farther away.

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