A thin, persistent rain pattered against the kitchen window, turning the back garden into a watercolour wash of greys and greens. Maria watched it as she waited for the kettle to boil, the cordless phone tucked between her shoulder and ear.
"Yes, well, the police said it was a miracle, honestly," she said, her voice a masterclass in weary, neighbourly concern. "Completely off his head, the driver. Could have taken out the whole front wall. As it is, we're just thankful it was the hedge. Gave the lads from the council something to do, I suppose."
She listened, nodding. "Oh, the kids are fine. Shaken up, of course. Erik's buried in his books, and Kaitlyn's… well, she's bouncing off the walls, to be honest. All that adrenaline." She forced a light laugh. It sounded brittle to her own ears. "Right. Cheers, Sarah. Pop by for a cuppa next week, maybe."
She hung up, the false cheer draining from her face. She leaned against the counter, gripping the edge until her knuckles turned white. This was her front line now. Not against monsters, but against school mums and neighbourhood watch coordinators. Every conversation was a potential leak, every kind enquiry a probe she had to deflect.
Outside, through the rain-streaked glass, she saw Jonas. He wasn't checking mystical wards; he was mending the shattered privet hedge with a grim, physical focus. But as she watched, she saw his hands pause where a major branch had been snapped. He placed his palms on either side of the break. The rain steaming gently off his skin wasn't just from the damp. The wood darkened, then softened. When he removed his hands, the break had sealed, the bark knitting together with a series of faint, fibrous clicks. He was using his fire not to burn, but to mend, to encourage rapid, dense growth. He was turning their perimeter into a thicket.
The kettle screamed. She made tea, strong and dark. Fortification.
---
In the large garden shed, the air was cool and smelled of damp earth, engine oil, and the peculiar, clean scent of ozone that always clung to Alistair.
"Right then," Alistair said, his voice a low rumble in the confined space. He stood before the twins, who sat cross-legged on an old, musty horse blanket he'd produced. The shed was deceptively large inside—a trick of space and perception that made Erik's analytical mind itch to understand it. Stone flags covered the earth floor, and the sound of Alistair's hooves, usually silenced by his glamour, clicked softly and deliberately here. He'd told them once it helped him think, to feel the ground properly.
"You've been thinking of this… connection… as something between you. A bridge. A wire." He paced, two steps, a neat pivot. His tail, usually invisible under his long coat, gave a flick, brushing against a shelf of terra cotta pots. "That's the first mistake. It's not between. It is you. The bond is the keel of your shared vessel. If you focus on the keel, you're not sailing, you're in dry dock. You have to feel the whole boat."
Kaitlyn fidgeted, picking at a thread on her jeans. "So we're a boat now? Brilliant. Can this boat punch something?"
"Kaitlyn," Erik murmured, his eyes closed in concentration.
"What? It's boring, this sitting about. We already know we're linked. I felt your tummy ache last Tuesday when you ate all those Jaffa Cakes."
Erik's cheeks flushed. "That's not the point. It's about conscious control. Deliberate synergy."
"Synergy," Alistair repeated, the word dry. "A fancy word for not setting the shed on fire when you get cross. Now, both of you, stop trying. Just listen. Not with your ears. Listen for the other's rhythm. Your breath. Your pulse. The idle noise in your head. Find the shared beat underneath all that."
They tried. Erik's brow furrowed with the effort of it, of parsing the input. Kaitlyn scowled, trying to push her awareness out like a shove. The air between them grew tense, then brittle. A mason jar on a shelf behind Erik's head cracked with a sharp ping.
"Stop." Alistair's voice held a note of frustration. "You're both forcing it. It's not a muscle to flex. It's a… a state to acknowledge."
The shed door opened, letting in a gust of damp air and a wave of dry, focused warmth. Jonas entered, ducking his head under the lintel. He didn't speak, just leaned against the workbench, his arms crossed. He was a solid, quiet presence. The constant, banked-hearth heat of him—the essence of a deep, slow-burning fire—seemed to bleed into the room.
Alistair gave a barely perceptible nod. "Good. Now, try again. And don't try. Just be. Feel the room. Feel the anchor."
Jonas's presence changed the quality of the silence. It became something to lean into, not something to fight against. Erik's breathing deepened. Kaitlyn's restless energy, instead of sparking out, seemed to settle into a low, ready hum. They weren't connecting to each other; they were both tuning to the same frequency, one that resonated with Jonas's stable, elemental core.
For a moment, it worked. There was no flash of light, no shared vision. Just a profound sense of knowing. Erik knew Kaitlyn was about to sigh a second before she did. Kaitlyn felt the precise moment Erik's analytical mind stopped chasing its tail and simply observed.
Then Kaitlyn, emboldened, tried to make a rusted spanner on the bench float. It wobbled an inch into the air. The concentration fractured. Erik, sensing the strain, instinctively tried to help by visualising the spanner's molecular structure to stabilise it. His method clashed with hers. The spanner shot sideways like a bullet, embedding itself in the soft wood of the door with a heavy thwack.
They both flinched, the connection snapping.
"Well," Kaitlyn muttered, rubbing her temple. "Sorted the floating. Not so sorted the aiming."
Before Alistair could respond, the wards on the back garden gate chimed.
It wasn't an alarm. It was a wrong note. A dissonant, grating minor third that vibrated in the teeth rather than the ears.
Erik gasped, doubling over as if gut-punched. His senses were flooded not with sight or sound, but with pure, synesthetic sensation: the taste of grave mould, the smell of wet, cold stone, the feeling of icy water filling his lungs.
Across from him, Kaitlyn didn't cry out. The air around her shimmered, warping like a heat haze off a summer road. The rain pattering on the shed roof above her head sizzled into steam where the distortion met it.
Alistair was moving before the sound faded. In three powerful, ground-covering strides—hooves striking the stone with sharp, purposeful clacks—he was at the shed door and out into the rain.
Jonas was at the twins' side in an instant. "Look at me. Breathe. It's a probe. Just a probe."
Erik was shaking, drawing ragged breaths. "It was… it was so cold."
Kaitlyn's hands were clenched, the heat haze slowly dissipating. "I'm alright. Just… proper angry."
Outside, they saw Alistair at the wrought-iron gate. He didn't open it. He reached over, his long arm snaking through the bars, and plucked something from the top of the stone post. He held it up—a small, vile-looking construct of blackened twigs, bound with what looked like hair, crowned with a small, rotten magpie's skull. A corpse-fetch.
He brought it back to the shed, his face a mask of distaste. He held it in his palm. "A scrying marker. From the old ways. Welsh borders, if I'm not mistaken." He closed his fist. There was a soft, crunching sound, and the fetish dissolved into a curl of foul, greenish smoke that stank of bog and decay.
"Morwen?" Jonas's voice was tight.
"Her signature. Muted. She's not here. Not in Bucks. She's miles off, likely in her high places. This is her… posting a lookout." Alistair wiped his hand on his coat. "She knows the address now. She's not attacking. She's surveying. Measuring the depth of the moat and the height of the walls."
The implication settled over them, colder than the rain. The siege had begun in earnest. The next thing sent wouldn't just look.
---
Later, after a subdued lunch, there was a knock at the front door. A polite, official rap.
Maria's mask slid back into place. She opened the door to a young, earnest-looking PCSO in a high-vis vest over his uniform.
"Mrs. Kelsey? Sorry to bother you. Just a follow-up on the vehicle incident. Making sure everyone's coping alright."
"Oh, of course, come in, you're soaked! Let me get you a tea." Maria's hospitality was a weapon. She ushered him into the front room, away from the view of the garden shed. She talked of shock, of gratitude, of the wonderful response from the emergency services. She served Rich Tea biscuits. She deftly turned his gentle questions about the children's whereabouts ("Oh, upstairs, probably on their computers, you know how they are.") and the odd state of the hedge ("That lorry did a proper number on it, didn't it? My husband's been out there grafting all week.").
The twins, under strict orders, were silent in Erik's room, listening to the murmur of voices below. Kaitlyn mimed throwing a biscuit at the policeman's head. Erik shot her a warning look.
When the door finally closed, Maria's pleasant expression vanished. She locked the door, engaged the heavy deadbolt Jonas had installed, and leaned her forehead against the cool wood. The performance was exhausting.
---
That night, the house was quiet but for the creak of old timbers and the distant hoot of a tawny owl. Erik couldn't sleep. The taste of grave mould still lingered in the back of his throat. He sat by his window, staring into the dark, tangled shape of the garden, mapping every shifting shadow.
His door opened silently. Kaitlyn padded in, dressed in pyjamas, her hair a dark cloud. She didn't say anything. She just sat on the floor, leaning her back against his bedframe. She picked up a discarded book, then put it down.
They didn't speak. They didn't try to meditate.
Erik kept watch with his eyes, tracing the lines of the hedge, the gate, the silhouette of the shed. Kaitlyn kept watch with something else—a low-grade, somatic awareness. She felt the residual warmth in the walls from the day's heating. She felt the faint vibration of the fridge downstairs. She felt the steady, slow burn of her father's presence in the master bedroom, and the quieter, watchful hum of Alistair somewhere below, in the spare room that smelled of old books and stone.
Together, without a single shared thought, they held the perimeter. Their shared awareness was no longer an act, or an exercise. It was a silent, vigilant state of being. A dyad at rest, but firmly, irrevocably, on duty.
Outside, in the dripping dark, something with too many legs scuttled through the revitalised hedge, found the magical defences too sharp, and retreated. The watch had been posted on both sides.
The first move was over. The real game was about to begin.