My phone chirps with the obnoxiously cheerful bird-tweet my mother made me set.
"Emergencies only," she'd said, tapping the setting herself. "If someone grabs you, I want that thing screaming."
I dig through my purse, fingers brushing lip gloss, crumpled receipts, a stray earring. I'm expecting a text from Mom: Home yet? Alive? Kidnapped?
The kind of anxious check-in that's annoying until the moment you'd give anything to receive it.
The bird chirps again, sharper this time. I finally find the phone wedged under my wallet.
Not Mom.
Unknown: We need to talk.
Unknown: Please don't ignore this.
Unknown: Meet me at the hollow tree behind your house. 11:15 p.m. You have 45 mins.
All the warmth drains out of me at once.
My skin goes cold in that instant way it does when your body knows before your brain catches up.
The hollow tree.
Nobody calls it that except me.
I stare at the screen until the words blur, hoping I misread them, that "hollow tree" will morph into "Holloway Café" or "hallway" or literally anything else.
Anything that lives in the human world, with streetlights and receipts and witnesses.
It doesn't change.
My thumbs hover.
Me: Who is this?
The message whooshes off. The typing bubble doesn't appear. No reply. Just my reflection in the dark screen, eyes a little too wide, mouth a thin line.
The kind of expression that makes you look like prey even when you're standing on your own porch.
A breeze slips under the blanket, cool and sly. For a second it feels like fingers ghost along my spine.
Not a touch—an implication. A suggestion that something could touch if it wanted.
I force myself up off the couch and look out the window slowly—driveway, quiet street, the dark lining of the woods beyond the backyard fence. The only movement is the neighbor's flag, flapping lazily in the night.
Nothing. No black trucks. No mysterious cousins. No pale-eyed strangers.
It should calm me.
It doesn't.
The emptiness feels staged, like the world cleared its throat and stepped back to make room.
The hollow tree isn't a landmark. It's not on any trail maps. If you don't know exactly where to slip through the fence line and which deer path to follow, you'll never find it. Even most of the local kids never wander that far.
So how does some unknown number know?
My phone stays heavy in my hand.
Like it's carrying weight that isn't made of glass and metal—like it's a stone pulled from a riverbed, slick with warning.
I should lock the door, drop the phone in a bowl, and file this under: Weird spam, absolutely ignore.
Instead, my gaze keeps snagging on the dark strip of trees behind the neighboring yards. The woods sit there, patient. Watching. Waiting.
Not menacing in a movie way—more like…familiar. Like it recognizes me and has been waiting for me to look back.
The porch light flickers once.
A tiny hiccup in the glow.
Then steadies.
"Glitch," I whisper, like naming it will make it mundane.
My pulse doesn't believe me.
The text sits on the screen, stubborn and quiet.
Meet me at the hollow tree.
A weird, impossible thought slinks through me:
What if it's him?
Will, with his impossible eyes and suicide-level confidence. Will, who felt like both danger and safety in one breath. Will, who looked at me like he was trying to remember where he'd left me last century.
It's stupid. He doesn't have my number. Evan barely remembers his own girlfriend's birthday; I highly doubt he handed my info over like, Here, stalk my girl's best friend from the treeline.
And Will didn't feel creepily sneaky. He felt…direct. Like a blade, not a shadow.
Still… the timing. The way tonight kept glitching at the edges—lights stuttering, music snagging, time… folding.
I shake it off.
This doesn't feel like Will.
The earlier text—the truck, the parking lot, Nice handwriting. Wrong box—lived in the same unnerving neighborhood. That one felt amused. This one feels… heavier. Closer. Like a hand on the doorknob.
Like it doesn't care if I'm brave, only whether I obey.
I finally move.
My heartbeat is anything but.
The TV flickers blue light across the den, the volume low. Mom is on the couch, cross-legged in sweatpants, knitting something indigo and fuzzy. On-screen, an alien humanoid is in the middle of giving birth on a metal table.
Head. Shoulders. Too many tentacles.
"Oh my Gods," I groan. "Why does it look like that?"
Mom glances up. "It's just you, hun," she says, as if I walked in screaming. She grabs the remote and mutes the soundtrack of wet screaming. "I thought you were still out with Shel. Want tea? Food? Comfort after being exposed to that much country music?"
"We ate," I say, kicking my shoes off. "Thanks for offering carbs and therapy, though. Very nurturing of you."
"Snark," she says mildly. "You must be tired. Did you have fun?"
"Shelby did," I say, dodging. "She's in the kind of relationship where she just stares at Evan like he invented air."
"That's sweet." She sets the knitting aside, giving me the full mom-face. "And what about you?"
Her gaze doesn't just land—it assesses, like she's listening to my heartbeat through my expression.
I drop my purse on the armchair, trying to sound breezy as I recap the safe parts of the night. The wings, the floor show of drunk line dancing, Shelby's shoe crisis, the overpriced earrings she bought for the Masquerade.
I skip over the parts with Will.
My mother's gaze is too sharp.
Sharp in that way that makes me feel twelve again—caught, not because I did something wrong, but because I tried to hide that something mattered.
"Mhm," she says after I finish. "And nothing… interesting happened? No one… new?"
I stare at the TV. The alien baby is now screaming in a way that is somehow worse than the birth scene.
"There was a guy," I hear myself say. "Evan's cousin. He's from Greece."
"Mmhmm." Her tone is calm, but her eyebrows do a very specific climb.
The kind that says: I knew it. I just needed you to say it.
"He's—" I hesitate, searching for words that don't sound like I've had a minor religious experience. "He's… intense."
"Intense how?" she asks, like we're discussing weather patterns, not the man whose eyes have been colonizing my dreams.
I flop down on the arm of the couch. "Tall, dark, emotionally confusing."
"Angela."
"Fine," I huff. "He's… ridiculously handsome. In that old movie way. Not pretty-boy. More like, if he were a young Gregory Peck and also somehow good at smirking like Harrison Ford."
The words come out too fast, like I'm trying to outrun the meaning.
One corner of her mouth lifts. "I see."
"And he says things," I add, because apparently I've decided to overshare. "Like he's known me longer than a few hours. It's… a lot."
Her face softens in a way I don't like.
Softness can be worse than anger. Softness means she believes me.
"I know you're still healing," she says gently. "But you're allowed to be… curious."
"I'm allowed to be single," I counter. "I like being single. I like my heart not feeling like it's in a blender."
"Liking control isn't a crime," she says. "But sometimes control is just fear in a better outfit."
"Wow," I mutter. "Deep. Did Grandma Lottie text you that?"
Her jaw tightens—just a flicker—but she doesn't take the bait. "We can talk more tomorrow. You have work in the morning."
"Lucky me," I say, sliding off the arm of the couch. "Goodnight."
She stands and kisses my temple, lingering a second longer than usual. "Goodnight, love. Lock your window. Please."
The please is quieter than the rest. It lands heavier.
I freeze for the tiniest fraction of time.
"I always do," I lie.
She disappears down the hallway, her slippers whispering against the hardwood. Her bedroom door clicks shut.
I stand there in the blue TV glow, the house wrapped around me like a shell.
A shell can protect you. A shell can also trap you.
My phone chirps again.
The sound is too loud, too bright against the quiet.
I pull it out, already knowing what I'll see.
Still Unknown. Still no name.
Unknown: You're not safe out there alone.
Unknown: But you're less safe if you ignore this.
My throat goes dry.
The words crawl under my skin, finding all the places I keep my fears and tapping them like keys.
The bird chirp feels obscene now.
I should show Mom. March down the hall, shove my phone under her nose, demand answers she probably doesn't have. But she'll worry herself raw. She'll call the headmistress. The academy will clamp down even harder. I'll get more rules, more restrictions, more adults telling me which parts of my life I'm allowed to be present for.
Also, I don't know why, but my gut says:
This isn't meant for her. This is meant for me.
Like it knows exactly who I am when I'm alone.
I lock the front door, flick off the TV, and climb the stairs slowly. The house creaks in familiar places under my weight. Second stair, left corner. Top landing, center board.
Familiar noises—proof this is my life, not a nightmare.
My bedroom smells like vanilla candles and ink and Shelby's perfume from earlier. I shut the door quietly and twist the tiny lock out of habit, even though it wouldn't stop anyone determined.
Habit is what you do when you don't have real safety.
I change out of my jeans and IceHouse clothes, toss them in the hamper, then fish them back out three seconds later because my brain decides the shirt is the only comfortable one I own. Eventually I settle on old jeans, my vintage Ninja Turtles T-shirt, and my oversized black cardigan.
"The emotional support sweater is back," I tell my reflection as I pull my hair up into a messy bun.
The girl in the mirror looks tired. Shadowy eyes. Mouth set a little tight. There's glitter on my collarbone from Shelby's highlighter.
She doesn't look like someone who sneaks out to meet anonymous texters in a haunted forest.
She looks like someone who goes to bed and dreams of exams and stupid boys and never thinks about gods.
She looks like someone who should still be allowed to be ordinary.
My phone screen lights my face as I check the time.
10:30 p.m.
I've got almost forty-five minutes until 11:15.
Plenty of time to make the right decision.
Plenty of time to talk myself out of the wrong one.
Plenty of time for fear to get organized.
I sit crossed legged on my bed, elbows on my knees, phone dangling loosely between my fingers. The house is quiet around me, muffled by insulation and decades of memories.
Logical Brain is loud and very annoyed.
You have work in the morning, it says. You're exhausted. Anonymous numbers are how horror movies start. You literally teach CPR but are out here trying to FAIL Risk Assessment 101.
Another voice—the one that surfed the door of the Ascension scrolls and didn't burn—whispers something different.
What if the text is connected?
The door. The dreams. The invitations. The note in class. The truck. The glitch on the dance floor. The way time snagged and everyone froze except me and Will.
Except…Will. That detail keeps snagging like a thorn.
The hollow tree sits exactly where the wards of the academy's territory ends. I've seen the maps. I've heard the whispers. The old witches who pretend they don't gossip say the woods are… porous there.
Like it's not just trees and dirt.
Like something else once passed through, and left a door.
Like the world has a seam there, and someone keeps picking at it.
My pendant—the silver crescent my grandmother gave me—rests against my chest under my T-shirt. It's warm. Warmer than my skin.
Without thinking, I curl my fingers around it.
A tingling runs down my arm, subtle but real, like pins and needles made of static.
Like the charm is awake, alert, listening with me.
When I blink, there's a flicker at the edge of my vision.
For a heartbeat—just one—the air above my wrist catches the light wrong. A thread of gold, impossibly thin, glints there, looping loosely around my skin like a bracelet made of sunlight.
Then it's gone.
My heart slams so hard I feel it in my teeth.
I taste metal. I taste fear. I taste the storm before it arrives.
"Okay," I whisper. "Nope. We're not doing that. That's fine. Everything's fine."
But the thread—that impossible glint—felt familiar.
Not like something new.
Like something I hadn't been seeing.
Like a filament of starlight that's been there all along, waiting for my eyes to finally catch it.
Waiting for me to stop pretending I'm blind.
My phone vibrates again.
Unknown: I know what you are.
Unknown: And what they're planning.
A cold, deep dread slides into me. The scrolls. The academy's secrets. The stories they only tell in locked rooms. The way Albright says keepers like it's not a role, but a sentence.
The way adults get quiet when the truth is too sharp to hand to a teenager.
I stand so fast the bed creaks.
I could ignore it. I should ignore it. I throw my phone onto the bed, as if it burnt my hand.
But I've spent my whole life being told to stay in my lane, stay in the light, stay on the paths someone else chose for me. Even when I wandered to darker shelves at the academy, it was always under someone else's terms.
And now—finally—there's a chance to get ahead of whatever is happening to me instead of just reacting when it smashes through my life. A chance to dig up whatever star-sized thing has been buried in my bones and name it myself.
A chance to be the one who decides what happens to my body, my mind, my future.
I cross the room and flick off my lamp.
Moonlight spills through the window in soft, silvery bands. The backyard is a black shape beyond the glass. Behind it: trees. Beyond those: the hollow oak.
My clock reads 11:02 p.m.
I've got thirteen minutes.
I could use the front door like a normal person. Sneak down, unlock it, walk out. But Mom hears everything. The lock, the hinge, even the old floorboard by the mat. She'd be up and in the hall before I made it off the porch.
And then she'd look at me with that soft fear I hate more than rules.
The lattice outside my window, on the other hand, has been my unofficial fire escape since I was twelve.
I grab my phone and slip it in my back pocket. I climb out the window onto the roof and tip toe to the edge. The ivy-covered wood creaks when I test it with my weight, but holds. I swing one leg over the sill and sit for a second, the night air sliding cool fingers over my bare ankles.
The air smells like wet leaves and distant rain—like the woods exhaling.
This is stupid, I think.
This is dangerous.
This is exactly how girls die in horror movies.
My pulse quickens.
The golden thread isn't visible anymore, but my skin still tingles like it was there, like some sleeping part of me has rolled over and is now listening.
Like it heard the text and sat up.
What if this is the only warning you get? a quieter part of me whispers. What if ignoring it is worse?
I think about the way the lights glitched over Will's head. The way the invitation burned in my veins when I touched it. The way the Ascension scroll whispered Keeper like a secret it was tired of carrying alone. The way my nightmares press against the inside of my skull, like memories trying to be born.
Like something inside me is trying to crawl back into the light.
I climb onto the sill.
"I'm absolutely not doing this," I whisper as I start to climb down.
The ivy rustles beneath my fingers like laughter.
Not cruel. Just knowing.