The echo of my confirmation still hung in the empty cafeteria when I threw my backpack over my shoulder. Scott and Stiles were already turning toward the double doors, adrenaline practically making them vibrate in place, ready to bolt.
But I didn't take a single step toward the exit. Instead, I turned to the girl sitting at the table.
"Get up," I ordered Rowan, my voice low but leaving no room for negotiation. "I'm dropping you off at my house. Now."
Stiles braked so hard his sneakers squeaked on the linoleum. He spun on his heels, arms wide in pure disbelief, looking like a panicked scarecrow.
"What?!" Stiles yelled, his squeaky voice shattering the hall's silence. "You've gotta be kidding me, right? Lydia is lost in the woods! Unprotected! Probably going through a bizarre mutation and eating raw squirrels! And you want to play private Uber for the new girl?!"
Scott stepped forward, his eyes full of that lost-puppy anxiety.
"Nathan, every minute counts, man. Her scent was already faint near the hospital when we tried tracking it."
Rowan, on the other hand, watched the scene with a lazy smile, leaning back in her chair and spinning a silver ring on her index finger. She seemed to be loving the chaos her mere existence was causing in the group.
I glared at Stiles, my expression shutting down like a vault door. I wasn't going to give in to his hysteria.
"I said I was going to help find Martin, Stiles, and I will." I took a step toward him, closing the distance. "But I also said I have my own problems. Lethal problems."
I pointed my thumb at Rowan, without breaking eye contact with the frantic human in front of me.
"This girl isn't a helpless exchange student needing a ride. She's a Halloway. Leaving a witch of this bloodline loose in Beacon Hills while we run around the woods looking for your platonic crush isn't just stupid, it's suicide. I'm taking her to Marcus, locking the door, and then we figure out Lydia's disappearance."
Stiles opened his mouth to argue, face red with frustration, hands gripping his own hair.
"But the time..."
"I didn't ask for your opinion, Stiles," I cut him off.
My voice came out cold, flat, and heavy, killing any opening for argument. There was no anger, just an unyielding authority.
Stiles froze, blinking stunned, mouth half-open. The reprimand was so dry that even Scott took a half-step back, surprised by my coldness. Two weeks ago, I would have been debating with them, trying to justify my choices. Now, I simply had no patience or energy for high school diplomacy when the topic involved the Halloway bloodline.
I turned my back on them and locked eyes with Rowan, who was watching the exchange with a smile of pure amusement.
"Let's go," I ordered her, walking right past Stiles toward the cafeteria exit.
Rowan shrugged gracefully, adjusting her burgundy leather jacket.
"What a gracious host," she mocked, her light footsteps sounding right behind me. "Salt hospitality is truly everything the rumors say."
I left Scott and Stiles planted in the middle of the cafeteria, bewildered, and marched through the halls to the parking lot. The morning sun reflected off the dark hood of my Charger. I unlocked the doors with the fob and opened the driver's side.
Rowan slid into the passenger seat with the naturalness of someone who owned the car, observing the interior with a critical eye before buckling up.
I got in, slammed the door, and turned the key. The V8 engine roared, a guttural sound that swallowed any awkward silence that might form between us. I shifted into gear and sped off, leaving the school, and my panicked friends, behind.
The interior of the Charger was dominated only by the deep, constant rumble of the V8 engine devouring the asphalt toward the town exit.
The silence between us wasn't just awkward; it was heavy, dense, almost suffocating. It was the kind of silence of two beasts locked in the same cage, waiting to see who would blink first.
I kept my eyes fixed on the road, hands relaxed on the steering wheel, projecting the image of someone who was just giving a ride to an annoying classmate. But my senses were on high alert.
That's when I felt it.
A subtle change in the air pressure inside the cabin. A phantom hum, like the static of an old tube television turned on low volume, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Rowan was probing me.
She didn't move a muscle, kept looking out the window, but her magic was creeping through the car like invisible fingers, trying to find a gap, a crack in my defense where she could peek at my core and measure my true strength.
I didn't pull back. I didn't react. I simply let her senses advance to the edge of my aura.
And then, I let her slam face-first into the wall.
It wasn't an energy shield she could break. It was a vacuum. I had locked my core inside an absolute containment vault, a suppression technique that had cost me sleepless nights and many headaches over the past two weeks. To her Magic Vision, I was just a smooth titanium wall, with no beginning, no end, and no doorknob. Impenetrable.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her smug smile falter. Rowan's jaw clenched slightly, a tiny tic of frustration as she realized her Halloway sensitivity was useless against me. I was many steps ahead of what she expected.
The static in the air vanished suddenly. She pulled her magic back, defeated on that front.
"Impressive," Rowan murmured, her voice cutting through the silence. She turned her face in the passenger seat, giving up the pretense of looking at the scenery, and locked her golden eyes on my profile. "That block of yours. It's so dense it borders on claustrophobic. No one learns to close off their own core like that by accident."
I didn't answer. I just pressed my foot on the gas, making the Charger roar as we passed a speed limit sign.
Realizing the magical approach had failed miserably, she changed strategies. If she couldn't read my mana, she was going to try reading my mind.
"You know... in my family, the name Salt used to be a bad joke or a footnote in history books," Rowan began, her tone taking on that casual, dangerous cadence. "Until Elias didn't come home. Now, suddenly, you guys are the boogeyman of council meetings."
She adjusted herself in the seat, pulling the seatbelt slightly to lean toward me.
"Which makes me curious. What's it like?" she asked, eyes shining with investigative curiosity. "Growing up under the shadow of the great patriarch Marcus Salt? Is he as terrifying at breakfast as the legends say, or does he save his sadism only for the family's enemies?"
I kept my eyes fixed on the road, listening to the Charger's tires hum against the asphalt. I let out a half-laugh, completely devoid of humor, shaking my head.
"He drinks black coffee and complains about the TV news, just like any grumpy old man," I replied, shattering the comic book villain image she had in her head.
Rowan blinked, slightly disarmed by the mundane answer. She shifted her posture in the seat, expecting more.
"There are no epic speeches at breakfast, Rowan," I continued, resting my elbow on the open window. "The truth is that growing up with Marcus is just... stressful. He doesn't coddle you. He basically teaches you from an early age that if you're stupid or slip up, the magical world eats you alive. And that's it. End of lesson."
The silence that followed lost that "mental duel" tension and became just the silence of two people who understood what it was like to carry an absurd amount of pressure on their backs.
I turned my face to her for a second. A thought occurred to me: aside from Elias, who was a hopeless psychopath, Rowan was the first mage my age I was talking to. Someone who, theoretically, played by the same crappy rules I did.
"But since we're talking about problematic families..." I said, my tone more casual, tossing the ball back to her. "What about yours?"
Rowan frowned slightly, maintaining her pose.
"What about my family?"
"Elias was the golden boy, right? The untouchable prodigy," I pointed out, slowing the Charger down as we approached the dirt driveway to my house. "Then he comes here, screws up, loses his magic, and leaves your family with a massive debt. And who do the Halloways send to show their face at the house of the people who ruined him? You."
I turned the steering wheel, feeling the tires crunch the gravel of our private road, and cast her a sideways glance.
"Was that punishment, did they send you as a cheap spy, or did you just draw the short straw?" I asked, straight to the point. "Because to me, it looks like they threw you into the fire to see if we'd bite."
The interior of the car went deadly silent. The sound of rocks hitting the undercarriage was the only thing filling the space between us.
This time, there was no smirk. No quick irony. Rowan's relaxed posture stiffened for a second, and she looked away, staring at the dashboard glovebox. The question had hit a raw nerve, the kind you try to hide from others at school, but that aches all the time.
"Let's just say that, in my family..." Rowan murmured, her voice suddenly quieter and devoid of any mockery. "When the favorite son breaks a toy, it's the weird daughter who has to go clean up the mess."
She looked back at the windshield. The imposing Salt house began to emerge from the trees at the end of the dirt road. The porch was empty, but the front door was open.
Marcus was waiting for us.
Rowan swallowed hard, almost imperceptibly, adjusting her jacket. The "arrogant witch" vanished for a moment, leaving only a sixteen-year-old girl about to walk into the lion's den.
"Just park, Salt," she grumbled, putting the mask of sarcasm back on. "Let's see if your old man really bites."
I stopped the Charger in front of the porch but didn't reach for the key. The engine kept running, the V8's deep rumble vibrating under our feet.
Rowan unbuckled her seatbelt and looked at me, expecting me to do the same. I just adjusted my hands on the steering wheel and stared at the front door, which was half-open.
"I'm not going in," I warned, turning my gaze back to her.
She stopped with her hand on the door handle, forehead wrinkled in genuine confusion.
"What?" Rowan let out a half-laugh of disbelief. "You're going to throw me into the lion's cage alone, Salt? I thought the order was to hand-deliver me."
"The order was to make sure you got here without wandering off. You're here," I replied pragmatically. "Marcus wants to evaluate you, not me. And I still have two idiots waiting for me to hunt down a missing girl in the woods."
Rowan narrowed her eyes, trying to read my expression. When she realized I was serious and wasn't going to step out of the car, the sarcastic little smile returned to her face, though a bit stiffer this time.
"How noble. The hero of Beacon Hills off to save the day," she mocked, pushing the car door open. The cold morning air invaded the cabin. "Good luck playing werewolf babysitter."
"Try not to piss Marcus off to the point where he turns you into a paperweight," I shot back with the same sharp tone.
She huffed, rolling her eyes, and slammed the passenger door with a dull thud.
I watched through the windshield. Rowan climbed the wooden porch steps with firm strides, but I noticed the slight tension in her shoulders. She stopped before the open door, hesitated for a millisecond, and then walked in, swallowed by the shadows of our house's hallway.
As soon as she was out of sight, I took my foot off the brake and threw it into reverse.
I cranked the wheel hard, making the rear tires kick up gravel everywhere as I maneuvered in the yard. I accelerated back onto the dirt road, leaving the dust to settle behind me.
The Charger's engine roared, eating up the distance between my house and the asphalt. With the empty road ahead of me, I rested my left hand on top of the steering wheel, keeping the car steady, and shoved my right hand into my jacket pocket.
I pulled out Lydia's silver brush and held it up by the dashboard.
Now that the Halloway was out of my range, I no longer needed to pretend to be a magical paperweight. I unlocked the mental vault where I kept my true strength. The feeling of relief was immediate, like exhaling after being underwater for too long.
The dense, familiar heat of the Flow rushed through my veins, traveling down my right arm to my fingertips.
I didn't need exaggerated words or rituals. I just focused my intent on the strawberry-blonde hairs tangled in the bristles. In tracking spells, DNA is just the anchor; what you're really looking for is the energy signature, the emotional echo of the person.
I injected a continuous pulse of mana into the brush.
The hairs reacted instantly. They began to darken and shrink, burning without producing heat, transforming into a thin, silver smoke. But the smoke didn't dissipate with the wind from the open window. Instead, it condensed in the air, stretching out like a shining, ethereal silk thread, resisting gravity and physics.
The tip of the smoke thread wavered for a second, confused, reflecting Lydia's likely chaotic mental state. And then, it spun and locked, pointing rigidly to the northwest.
Toward the heart of the Beacon Hills preserve.
"Northwest..." I murmured to myself, assessing the direction. Where the woods were thickest and the terrain was worst.
I gripped the steering wheel and floored the gas pedal. The Charger lurched forward, the speedometer climbing rapidly as I merged onto the main highway, following my own ghost compass.
The asphalt soon gave way to dirt, and then to a narrow, potholed trail that punished the car's suspension. The silver smoke thread floated in the cold cabin air, unwavering, guiding me deeper and deeper into the dark heart of the Beacon Hills Preserve. When the trees became too dense and the exposed roots threatened to tear the Charger's undercarriage, I knew it was time to stop.
I killed the engine. The silence of the forest crashed down on me, heavy and damp.
I got out of the car, feeling the mud sink slightly beneath the soles of my shoes. The magic smoke glided through the open window and hovered in front of me, waiting. I started walking, following the silver trail on foot, plunging into the dark, enclosed woods. The smell of pine and wet earth dominated the air. I kept my aura strictly locked down, suppressing any mana leak while I moved silently, senses on high alert.
The hike lasted about ten minutes until the smoke compass stopped abruptly at the edge of a small, rocky clearing. The silver thread trembled and dissipated into the freezing air.
I pushed aside the branches of a bush and stopped.
There she was.
Lydia Martin was standing in the center of the clearing, shivering uncontrollably in the morning cold. She was completely naked, her pale skin smeared with dirt and scratched by dry branches. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest, in a desperate attempt to cover her breasts and retain what little body heat she had left. She was crying, silent tears streaming down her soot- and terror-stained face. She was the picture of someone who had woken up from a nightmare only to find that reality was even worse.
But what made my muscles go rigid wasn't Lydia's condition. It was what was next to her.
A few steps away from the girl, sitting nonchalantly on a large, moss-covered rock, was a man.
He wore dark clothes and a heavy hood that completely hid his face in the forest shadows. He wasn't touching her. He didn't seem to be physically threatening her at the moment. But his posture was that of someone watching a fascinating experiment.
My eyes narrowed, and Magic Vision prickled at the back of my skull automatically.
There was no smell of wet dog or wolfsbane there. What emanated from that hooded man was something I knew very well: static. A dense, structured, unmistakable hum of Flow. He was a mage. And his mana circulated freely through the air, dense and heavy.
The sound of my foot crushing a dry leaf broke the silence.
Lydia snapped her head in my direction. When she recognized me in the shadows of the trees, the relief that washed over her features broke the last shred of strength she had. Her knees buckled slightly.
"Nathan..." she sobbed, her voice hoarse, weak, and laden with despair. "Help..."
"Lydia..." my voice came out low, perfectly leveled so as not to scare her more than necessary. "It's okay. Look at me. Everything is going to be okay."
I kept my eyes fixed on hers for a second, trying to anchor the girl's sanity, before sliding my cold gaze to the man sitting on the rock.
Keeping my aura and my strength completely suppressed and invisible, I took a slow, calculated step out of the tree line, fully entering the rocky clearing.
The exact moment the sole of my shoe touched the open ground, the man moved.
It wasn't a startle of panic, but the reaction of a spider feeling the web vibrate. He didn't get up from the rock, but casually raised his right hand, pointing his open palm directly at Lydia's pale face.
The air between his fingers distorted with a sudden wave of heat. With a muffled pop, a sphere of living, swirling flames materialized just inches from her skin. The sudden heat and orange light made Lydia gasp and shrink back in terror, but the fireball remained there, floating, lethal and perfectly controlled.
The man still hadn't bothered to turn his face to look at me. He kept his hood aimed at the naked, trembling girl, but a cruel and deeply satisfied smile tore through the shadows covering the lower half of his face.
"I knew I felt the pull of a tracking spell anchoring to you," the man's voice echoed through the clearing, drawling and full of sick amusement. He tilted his head slightly, admiring the sheer dread in Lydia's eyes. "I knew you wouldn't disappoint me, little girl."
Finally, he turned his face toward me, his smile widening as the fire illuminated his jaw.
"The perfect bait."
The heat of the fireball illuminated Lydia's pale face. The air simply vanished from her lungs in a terrified gasp.
Her bare back slammed hard against the rough trunk of the tree behind her, her whole body shrinking, trying to merge with the wood to escape the flames. Her mind, brilliant and logical, collapsed in the face of the impossible. The denial that had kept her sane since Peter Hale's bite finally met its limit, but she clung to it desperately.
She shook her head in a frantic motion, eyes wide and glazed over at the swirling sphere of flames. Her breathing turned into sharp hyperventilation.
"This is a dream..." she muttered, her voice trembling uncontrollably as tears carved clean paths down her dirty face. "This is a dream. I'm still in the hospital. I'm in the hospital bed and this is... it's just the medication."
I didn't back down an inch. I didn't look at the lethal fireball inches from her face, nor at the hooded mage's sick smile. I locked my eyes directly onto Lydia's dilated pupils, projecting all the calm and solidity I could muster.
"Lydia, focus on me," I ordered, my voice acting as a firm anchor in the middle of her nightmare. "You're not dreaming. I'm real. The ground you're standing on is real. Just look at me and no one else."
The hooded man let out a harsh laugh, breaking the moment with blatant mockery.
"What a touching scene," he sneered, slowly standing up from the rock. The sphere of flames followed his hand's movement, illuminating the dark fabric of his hood. "I felt the signature of your magic when the tracking connected to her. So weak. So pathetic. I almost felt pity. But... since you took the trouble to come all the way out here to play the knight in shining armor, I think I can have a little fun breaking your bones before I finish my job with the girl."
The air around the man began to crackle with the pressure of his mana, aggressive and arrogant. He was preparing to attack, absolutely certain he was about to crush a defenseless novice.
I didn't even turn my face toward him.
Lydia, panting and trembling from head to toe, locked those huge, terrified eyes on mine, desperately seeking an anchor in the madness.
"Focus on my voice," I ordered, the tone calm, almost hypnotic, cutting through the hiss of the flames. "In a little bit, you're not going to be able to hear anything else. When that happens, I want you to close your eyes really tight. And only open them when I touch you. Do you understand?"
She blinked, hot tears streaming down her dirt-smeared face. She nodded her head in a fragile, shaky motion, confusion mixing with panic.
"Nathan... what?" she whispered, her voice failing.
Behind her, the hooded mage clicked his tongue, impatient with my audacity in ignoring him. With an arrogant flick of his wrist, he intensified the fireball. The flames roared, doubling in size, and the heat grew so intense it threatened to scorch the dry leaves of the tree Lydia was leaning against.
"Enough with the little farewell scene," the mage growled, mana crackling around him, ready to strike.
Still without taking my eyes off Lydia's pale face, I pulled my right hand out of my jacket pocket. I raised my open palm toward her face and, with a simple, fluid motion, swept my hand to the left, as if pulling a heavy curtain through the air.
The effect was absolute.
An invisible wall of acoustic vacuum slammed shut around Lydia. I saw her lips move in a startled sob, but no sound came out. Her eyes widened in shock for a fraction of a second as she realized the sudden, unnatural silence, but proving how desperate she was for a safe harbor she obeyed.
She squeezed her eyes shut, squeezing them with all the strength she had, and shrank her shoulders against the tree trunk.
She was blind and deaf to the world around her. Protected from the carnage.
I slowly lowered my hand and, for the first time since stepping into the clearing, I turned my face to look at the hooded mage. I let the vault hiding my aura crack open, releasing the first wave of my true magical pressure into the forest air.
His smile disappeared instantly.