**Chapter 4:**
Tuesday, 9:47 p.m.
I couldn't wait another second.
I kicked the front door so hard the hinges rattled. Skateboard clattered across the hardwood. Mom was at the kitchen island slicing tomatoes like nothing was wrong. Dad was on the couch pretending to watch a Razorbacks rerun.
Both froze when they saw my face.
"Celeste Valentina, shoes off the—"
"No." I yanked the hoodie down, platinum hair sticking to my lip gloss. The locket burned a perfect circle against my skin. "We're doing this now."
I slapped the evidence on the island like a crime-scene tech:
- The touchdown print where eight coyote-mist versions of me wore the locket.
- The cracked Kyoto negative Seras had thrown at me.
- Friday night's sideline shot—Mr. Bathory with no reflection.
- The envelope from my skateboard truck: me asleep, closet door open two inches, red eyes glowing in the dark.
- And finally, the locket itself, mirror splintered, garnet weeping something thicker than blood.
Mom's knife slipped. The tomato rolled off the cutting board and hit the floor with a wet splat.
Dad muted the TV. The sudden silence roared.
"Start talking," I said. My voice cracked on the last word. "Seras Nakamura knows things about Grandma Elowene. About Kyoto. About why we've moved six times since I was six. About why this—" I touched the spiral behind my ear, "—burns every time the mist gets thick. About why coyotes made of fog wear my face. About why my photography teacher drinks steam like it's wine and doesn't cast a reflection."
I was shaking so hard the locket rattled against my sternum.
"I'm not crazy. And if you say 'therapist,' I swear I'll skate straight into the lake and let it keep me."
Mom's shoulders folded like someone had cut her strings. She looked at Dad.
He rubbed a hand over his face—Romanian dark circles, Japanese exhaustion.
"We never wanted it to come to this, *dragă*," he said. The old-country endearment sounded like surrender.
Mom wiped her hands on a dish towel, slow, like she was buying seconds.
Then she walked to the junk drawer—the one I was never allowed to open—and pulled out a key taped to the underside.
She unlocked the hallway closet I'd always thought held winter coats.
It didn't.
Inside: a cedar box the size of a shoebox, bound in iron and salt.
She carried it to the island, set it down as it might explode.
Dad flipped the latches.
Inside:
- A stack of passports—mine, in six different names.
- A Polaroid of me at age six on a Kyoto rooftop, spiral tattoo fresh and bleeding, Grandma Elowene's hand on my shoulder.
- A dried coyote paw tied with red thread.
- And a second locket—identical to mine, but the garnet was black, cracked, empty.
Mom's voice was barely a whisper.
"Your grandmother wasn't just a photographer, Celeste.
Elowene Morau was the last *Primavara Rece*—the Spring Receiver. The most powerful conduit the Ouachita vein ever chose. She could drink the mist and spit out miracles. Heal a dying spring with a tear. Make the lake forget a drowning. Bind shadows. Break bloodlines."
She touched the black garnet.
"She could also destroy entire covenants if she wanted. And she did. More than once."
Dad picked up the story, voice rough.
"The Nakamaru family was the valley's shadow binders for four centuries. They kept the mist *afraid*. Then Elowene showed up in 1949, twenty-two years old, fresh off a boat from Constanța. One look at the Hot Springs vein and she claimed it. The council voted 5-4 to make her Receiver. The Nakamura lost everything—land, titles, the right to even speak the valley's true name."
He met my eyes.
"They've hated Morau's ever since."
I swallowed. "So why run? Why Nashville, Prague, Kyoto—"
"Because every time the spiral behind your ear started to turn," Mom said, "the mist found you. And the Nakamura's always one step behind."
She lifted the dried coyote paw.
"This was mailed to us the day we fled Kyoto. Seras's mother sent it. Inside was a note: *'The debt resets with the next Receiver.'*"
I laughed—sharp, ugly. "So you thought Hot Springs would be different? The literal source?"
Dad's smile was broken glass. "We thought if we came *home*, the valley might protect its own. Elowene's will said the locket would only open for the one born on the vein. You were born here, Celeste. July 19, 2011. Storms knocked the power out for three hours. The lake steamed so hard the dam looked like it was breathing fire."
He touched the cracked mirror inside my locket.
"The day you were born, the mist wrote your name on every window in the maternity ward. Backwards."
Mom finally looked at me—really looked.
"We tried to outrun it. We thought if we kept you away from cameras, away from springs, away from red light, the gift would skip you as it skipped me."
She laughed, wet and bitter.
"Turns out Morau gifts don't skip. They just wait."
The locket snapped open on its own.
The splintered mirror showed three reflections now:
- Me.
- Six-year-old me in Kyoto, smiling.
- And Grandma Elowene—eyes molten silver, mouth moving.
Her voice leaked out, tinny but clear, like a 1920s recording:
**"Celeste. The Nakamura girl will try to break the chain. Don't let her. The valley is dying. Someone has to receive their last breath. Someone has to carry it forward. Or everything your blood paid for turns to steam and forgets."**
The mirror went black.
The cedar box slammed shut by itself.
Outside, thunder cracked directly overhead even though the sky had been clear ten minutes ago.
I found my voice.
"So what am I supposed to do? Just… accept I'm some wizard battery for a haunted lake?"
Mom's eyes filled. "We don't know. Elowene's letters stopped after Kyoto. The last thing she sent was the locket and a single line: *'When the granddaughter wears it, the granddaughter chooses.'*"
Dad added, quieter, "Choose what, she never said."
I looked at the evidence pile. At the coyote paw. At the passports.
At the locket—now pulsing like a second heart.
"I'm not her," I said. "I'm fourteen. I have algebra tomorrow. I can't even ollie a five-stair without eating pavement."
Mom reached for me. I stepped back.
"But I'm done running."
I grabbed the touchdown print—the one with eight mist-coyotes wearing my face.
"I'm developing the rest of that roll tonight. And tomorrow I'm asking Seras what her family thinks 'breaking the chain' means. And then I'm asking Mr. Bathory why he's leaving creepy stalker photos in my closet."
I zipped the locket under my hoodie. It settled against my skin, warm, waiting.
"And if the valley wants my breath, it's gonna have to ask nicer."
Dad started to protest.
I was already at the door, skateboard under my arm.
"Lock up behind me. Apparently, I've got a birthright to bully."
I kicked out into the night.
The mist didn't follow.
It **opened**—a straight shot down Central Avenue, streetlights cutting through the fog.
The spiral behind my ear spun once, slow, deliberate.
The locket answered with a single heartbeat.
Somewhere across town, a coyote howled—Remy's voice underneath it.
Somewhere in the darkroom, a negative I hadn't exposed yet started developing on its own.
And somewhere, Seras Nakamura smiled like a knife finally finding the right vein.
I popped the tail of my board, rolled into the steam.
The valley wanted a Receiver?
Fine.
But this time, the Morau girl was holding the camera.
The locket is heavier now.
It knows you're listening.