Chapter 63: Second Full Moon

Georgia

I count this time, instead of running.

I know it’s coming before Mandi even says anything. Ever since I crossed those disappearances against the lunar calendar on my phone weeks ago, the one I never actually closed out of, I’ve kept marking the dates in the corner of my notebook, watching them line up with the moon a little too perfectly to be coincidence. Tonight the corner of the page has a small circle drawn around it, my own handwriting from days ago warning me this one was coming. I can feel it, too, in the strange, held quality of the campus all evening, the way the dining hall emptied out earlier than usual, the way a study group I passed on the quad broke up without anyone really explaining why.

The first time this happened, back in my early weeks here, I went outside. I saw a massive shadow break the treeline, golden eyes locking onto mine across the dark, and I ran for the dorms so fast I barely remember the distance between the forest edge and my own front door. My lungs had burned for an hour afterward, like I’d inhaled ice instead of air. This time, I don’t go outside at all.

This time, I sit at my window with the lights off and my notebook open on my knees, and I watch.

"You should sleep," Mandi murmurs from her bed, her voice thick with false drowsiness.

"I’m fine," I answer.

The blanket rustles as she turns her back toward the wall. I’ve learned by now that asking just makes her face do that complicated thing it did with the necklace, fear and loyalty tangled together in a knot she can’t untie for me yet.

Around midnight, the first figures start moving across the quad below.

I count them, the way I promised myself I would this time instead of just staring in useless, frozen horror. One, then three more joining from a different dorm building, then a small cluster from the direction of the dining hall, all of them moving with the same eerie, coordinated silence, like a single organism split into dozens of separate bodies. No talking. No laughing, no whispered conversation the way you’d expect from any group of students sneaking around after curfew. Just quiet, purposeful movement, all of it flowing steadily toward the dark line of Rosethorn Forest at the edge of campus.

Seven. Twelve. Nineteen. Past twenty, the numbers blur together as more shapes join from directions I can’t fully track from a single window. Dozens of students moving through the dark with the same unified purpose, like something ancient calling them all toward the same destination at the same moment.

I press my palm flat against the cold glass, my notebook forgotten open on my lap, pen still uncapped in my other hand. The chill bites into my skin, grounding me in a way nothing else in this moment does.

That’s when one of the figures stops.

Mid-stride, abruptly, like something yanked at an invisible leash. Tall, broad shouldered, moving with a particular fluid confidence I’ve catalogued so many times now that I recognize it instantly even from three stories up.

Puck.

He turns, slowly, deliberately, until he’s facing directly toward my building, directly toward this exact window, like he knew precisely which pane of glass I’d be sitting behind. Even from this distance, even through the dark, I see his eyes.

Gold. Unmistakable, glowing faintly in a way that shouldn’t be visible from this far away and yet absolutely is, twin points of light fixed on me with an intensity that steals the air right out of my chest.

I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I just sit there, frozen against the glass, staring back at him across the distance, and something passes between us in that look that I don’t have language for, something that feels less like being watched and more like being asked a question I don’t understand yet.

The seconds stretch. Ten. Twenty. Half a minute, maybe more, the two of us locked together across all that dark, empty space, the rest of the group continuing to flow past him toward the trees while he stands motionless, waiting, watching.

I don’t look away. Some instinct in me understands that looking away first would mean something, would answer whatever question his eyes are asking in a way I’m not ready to answer.

It’s Liam who breaks it. He appears at Puck’s side seemingly from nowhere, one hand closing around his arm.

"We don’t have time for this," Liam hisses, his tone sharp with warning.

Puck doesn’t respond right away. For one more long second his gaze stays locked on my window, gold eyes steady, unreadable, and then Liam pulls harder.

"Puck. Now," Liam snaps, urgency cracking through his voice.

Reluctantly, Puck turns and lets himself be led toward the trees.

I watch him go. I watch the space between them and the treeline shrink, watch the dark swallow first Liam, then Puck, then the last stragglers of the group, until the quad below is empty and still, no sign that dozens of students just crossed it in near total silence only minutes ago.

I don’t move from the window even after the last figure disappears. I sit there for a long time, my palm still pressed flat against the cold glass, staring out at a forest that’s gone completely quiet now, holding whatever secret it’s just swallowed whole.

Behind me, Mandi shifts again, and this time her voice comes out clear, no pretense of sleep left in it.

"You saw him stop," she says, statement rather than question, weariness threading through every syllable.

"Yeah," I whisper, my throat tight around the single word.

"That’s not normal," Mandi adds, quiet and grim, like she’s confirming something she wishes weren’t true.

I don’t answer her. There isn’t an answer I have yet that would make either of us feel better.

Eventually my hand finds the pen again. I look down at the blank space waiting on the page, my earlier tally of figures scrawled messily in the margin, seven, twelve, nineteen, and past twenty, and beneath all of that I write one line, careful and slow, like getting the words exactly right somehow matters more than it should.

He looked at me like he was asking permission for something. I don’t know what.

I close the notebook and sit with it in my lap a while longer, the window still cold against my palm, the forest outside giving nothing else away.