Chapter 5

  The door shut behind Richard with a whisper, not a slam. That alone felt ominous.

  I stood just inside the apartment, arms crossed, jaw tight. The chaos from the break-in still lingered—books overturned, drawers gaping like open mouths, and shredded papers that had once been a half-decent attempt at a term paper. In the center of it all sat Tudor, tail curled around him like a question mark, eyes flicking between Richard and me like he was judging both our worth.

  Candy handed Richard a steaming mug. “Lemon balm, thyme, little splash of vervain,” she said. “Good for grounding. Unless you’re allergic to plants or honesty.”

  He blinked, clearly unused to Vermont hospitality laced with passive-aggressive herbalism. “Thank you,” he said. “And no, I’m not allergic to either.”

  She turned to me next. “Sadie. Sit. Breathe. You’re buzzing like a Tesla coil.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re vibrating.”

  “I’m fine adjacent.”

  She handed me my mug anyway. The warmth bit into my fingers, reminding me I was still cold, even inside.

  Richard stood by the doorway, coat still on, one hand around his mug like he didn’t know what to do with it—or himself.

  “You can sit,” I muttered. “Not that you deserve it.”

  He didn’t argue. Just sank onto the floor, back against the side of the couch. Tudor trotted over and, in a move that surprised all of us, curled up beside him. Not on him. Not purring. Just… there. Like a bouncer evaluating whether Richard should stay on the list.

  Candy observed this with a tilted head. “He passes inspection, then?” Tudor blinked slowly.

  “Great,” she said. “Because he’s staying on that rug tonight.” “Wait, what?”

  “Your door’s broken, Sadie. The police won’t post a guard. You’ve got a Vatican-adjacent bodyguard, a ninja cat, and me. That’s the night shift.”

  Richard tried to speak. Candy held up a hand. “You’ll stay here. You’ll answer her questions. And you’ll do it like a person, not a spy.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’ll do my best.”

  Candy turned to me. “And you, my love, need to stop pretending this doesn’t scare you.” “I—”

  “Nope. Tea first. Then honesty.”

  I sank down opposite Richard. Candy sat between us like a moderator in a supernatural custody hearing.

  The apartment was still trashed. My chest still hurt. But somehow, in the middle of the ruin and wreckage, we sat.

  And for the first time, it felt like the beginning of something real. Scene Two – The Truth Exchange

  The tea was still too hot. I blew on it with unnecessary force, like that might cool my mood too.

  Candy leaned back against the base of my bookshelf, legs stretched out in front of her, hands folded around her mug like some benevolent tea oracle.

  Richard sat cross-legged on the rug, elbows resting on his knees. He’d taken off his coat but still looked like he was bracing for a confession—or a sniper.

  “So,” I said, staring into my mug, “what now? We swap spooky origin stories? You first, since you’re the one with Vatican clearance and blood-scenting stalker skills.”

  He nodded slowly. “Fair.”

  A pause. Not defensive. Just… measuring.

  “I was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales, near St. David’s Cathedral. ,” he began. “Small village. Sheep, fog, the usual. My mother was part of a long-standing initiative—an unofficial division under Vatican oversight. She believed in balance. That the supernatural world had rules. That those rules were being broken.”

  “Sounds familiar,” I muttered.

  “She trained me young. Latin by age six. How to spot enchantment marks by eight. By twelve, I knew how to bind a Class Two spirit to a brass pin.”

  “Class Two?”

  “Think ‘angry Victorian ghost with furniture privileges.’”

  Candy gave a little snort. “Oh good. We’re classifying poltergeists now.” Richard smiled faintly. “It helps keep the panic organized.”

  I looked at him sideways. “So you’re like a… what? Holy hitman?” “No. That’s not what this is. It’s more like... border patrol. For reality.”

  He met my eyes—really met them, and I hated that my stomach did something twisty when he did.

  “We don’t kill unless we have to. Mostly, we try to keep things contained. Hidden. Balanced.” “And me?” I asked, voice sharp. “What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “That’s the truth.” “Try harder.”

  His jaw tightened. “You are connected to something old. Something royal. You carry a bloodline that’s been dormant for centuries—and recently awakened. We’ve seen signs before, but never this clear. Never this loud. Your 23 & Me triggered a huge response in the paranormal world.”

  I flinched. “I didn’t ask for any of this.” “I know.”

  “And I’m not some pawn in your ancient chess game.”

  “You’re not,” he said quickly. “But you might be the only one who can tip the board. Your DNA tripped multiple agencies – I was dispatched to watch you and ensure your survival”

  Candy sipped her tea and said lightly, “Sounds like she’s quite important. Why all the drama?”.

  He glanced back at me, more serious now. “There was someone else—once. Like you. Tied to the same line. She had the ability to subdue supernatural’s at will. We tried to track her down years ago.”

  “What happened?” “She vanished in the 199’s. We had periodic hits on her location, but were never able tot track her down”

  “What do you mean, vanished?”

  He hesitated. “We think she was taken. Or turned. We don’t know by whom. But the trail led all around New England. Then it went cold.”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. But the idea clanged inside me like an echo. “And you think that person might’ve been... related to me? All the DNA Chatter?.”

  “I think it’s possible,” he said quietly. “But I don’t know for certain. Not yet. What I do know is I’m here to protect you until we recognize a threat – and then eliminate that threat”

  I blinked hard and kept my face neutral. Candy gave me a small nod, as if to say: your turn.

  I sighed. “I was left at a fire station as a newborn. No note. No name. Steve and Martha Warren adopted me. And they’re great. Loving. Weird. Overly committed to dad jokes and home cooking.”

  “But?” Candy prompted gently.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “But I’ve always wondered who came before me,” I said. “What kind of person gives you away like that? What kind of story gets cut off before it even starts?”

  Richard was still. Not cold—just listening with a kind of quiet I hadn’t expected from him.

  “I did the 23andMe test because I thought maybe—just maybe—there’d be a clue. A name. A region. Anything to tell me I wasn’t some cosmic clerical error.”

  “You weren’t,” he said immediately.

  I hated how much I wanted to believe that.

  Candy shifted her mug. “You ever think the story didn’t get cut off?” she asked. “Just... got paused.”

  “I think it’s clawing its way out now,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that is why I picked library sciences as a degree – so that I had the skills to research and the ability to find out where I came from.”

  Richard leaned forward slightly. “You were reading the right books, Sadie. You just didn’t know why yet.”

  I looked at him. “And now?”

  “Now I need to tell you something. Both of you.”

  Candy perked up. “Oh good. Dramatic tone shift. Let’s go.”

  Richard set his mug down. “You’ve heard of the Gardner Museum, yes?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Boston. Art heist. Still unsolved. There’s an empty frame where a Rembrandt used to hang.”

  He nodded. “The *Storm on the Sea of Galilee*. But it wasn’t just a painting. It was a passage way..” Candy blinked. “A what now?”

  “The Gardner was a cloaked location—one of several in the world. Anchored places, older than the buildings themselves. That Rembrandt was a passage point. The painting was alchemically enhanced. It allowed sanctioned movement between realms—our world, and... others.”

  “You’re telling me,” I said slowly, “that the most famous art theft in modern history was actually a magical mugging.”

  He didn’t smile. “That painting was the only stable portal in the Northeast. When it was stolen, the door slammed shut. And something began to wake up behind it.”

  Candy leaned forward. “Wait. So who stole it?”

  “We don’t know. But it wasn’t ordinary criminals. The timing, the precision... it pointed to someone who wanted to sever our access on purpose. An enemy of the the Vatican. About then people began to go missing. Since 19990 theres been a missing person on Boston each month.”

  “What in the world?” I asked.

  Richard’s voice dropped. “Since then, there have been disappearances in Boston. Not tourists. Locals. Researchers. People who touched the museum’s archives. People whose blood might resonate with the veil. But we can’t find a patter; no same blook type, no common except this: when the bodies are found they have no blook and are dusted in ash.”

  Candy’s brow furrowed. “So why track Sadie – what’s she got to do with al of this?.”

  He nodded once. “. She might be the key to reopening what was closed—or preventing it from breaking wide open. Richard drew a breath, as if deciding how much to risk.”The missing journal—the one you found, Sadie—wasn’t supposed to exist outside the Gardner. It went missing from their archives about a month ago, right before your DNA flag hit the system. Isabella’s personal diary, however, is still there. It’s kept under lock in the Dutch Room, never displayed, never loaned. If we can get the two together—the lost volume and Isabella’s own record—we might finally trace who’s been tampering with the veil, and why they’re coming after you.” He glanced between us. “That means we go to Boston. Quietly. The Gardner has answers—and maybe the name of whoever’s next.”

  I stared at him. “You could’ve led with that.”

  “I didn’t want to scare you.”

  “Too late.”

  We fell quiet again. The kind of silence that feels like it belongs to someone else. Something else.

  Outside, snow tapped at the window. Inside, the tea had gone cold.

  We didn’t clean. It felt like tempting fate. Like if we put the couch cushions back, the universe might think we were ready for another round.

  Richard laid out a blanket on the rug without comment. Candy offered him a pillow, then added another just in case he was too polite to ask for one. He accepted both with a murmured “Thank you,” like politeness might keep all this very normal.

  Tudor circled once—tight, precise—and plopped down beside him like a living gargoyle. His golden eyes stayed open.

  “I can’t tell if he’s guarding you or plotting your demise,” I said. Richard looked over, surprisingly soft. “Honestly? I’ll take either.”

  Candy and I retreated to my room, stepping carefully over torn papers and the shattered remains of a lamp that hadn’t deserved to go out like that.

  Inside, we pulled the covers high and clicked off the bedside lamp.

  “Cozy,” Candy whispered. “In that post-traumatic, candlelit monastery kind of way.” “I feel very spiritually enhanced,” I whispered back.

  We lay in silence for a beat.

  Then Candy asked, “So... are we calling him a vampire yet?” I groaned. “No. He’s just... alarmingly competent.”

  “I saw you looking at his arms.” “They were competent arms.” “Mm-hmm.”

  Another pause. The kind that settles not with peace, but with tired honesty.

  “I didn’t know it was possible to feel this weird in your own skin,” I said quietly. Candy turned toward me. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  “More than I’ve admitted.”

  “You’ve been hunted, gaslit by a journal, stalked by a super hot agent, and possibly chosen by fate. You’re allowed to feel untethered.”

  “That’s just it,” I whispered. “I don’t feel untethered. I feel... drawn. Like I’m being footnoted by something ancient—like there’s a page I haven’t read yet, and it’s pulling me to turn it.”

  Candy reached for my hand beneath the blanket. Her fingers were warm, grounding. “You didn’t choose this. But you’re choosing to face it. That counts.”

  “I just keep thinking about... who came before me. Who left me. Why they did.” She didn’t fill the silence. Just waited.

  “I keep wondering if she ever looked back,” I added. “If she missed me. Or if she was already too far gone.”

  Another quiet beat.

  “Call your mom,” Candy said softly. I stiffened.

  “Not because she can fix this,” she continued. “But because she’d want to know. Because she’d pick up no matter what time it is. Because you love her, and this part of the story? It’s still yours to share.”

  The words hit like a pebble in a lake—small, but everything rippled. “Okay,” I said, and meant it.

  Candy didn’t press. She just squeezed my hand once and rolled over, already halfway to sleep.

  Outside, a plow rumbled past. The world kept turning.

  In the living room, the floor creaked. I held my breath—but it was just Tudor repositioning, claws tapping the wood once before stilling again.

  Or so I thought.

  Because a second later, his head snapped toward the window—ears up, body rigid. He didn’t move. Just stared, like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear. Something outside. Or maybe behind the veil of this moment.

  Then he blinked once and settled again, tail curling like a question mark. Through the wall came Richard’s voice, low and quiet:

  “Still awake,” he murmured. I didn’t answer.

  The rustle of his blanket. Then nothing.

  Except—I could’ve sworn I heard Tudor growl. Low and almost... amused.

  I woke to the smell of burnt toast and something that might’ve been courage.

  The apartment was still a wreck, but Candy had clearly tidied up the worst of it and there was there was a new kind of order in it—quiet and temporary, like a camp before the next march. I found Candy in the kitchen, calmly scraping blackened crumbs into the sink.

  “I told him not to touch the toaster,” she said without turning around.

  Richard was at the small table, hunched over a cup of coffee, looking like someone who’d fought a demon in his dreams and then apologized for the inconvenience. Tudor sat on the windowsill, eyes fixed on him like a supervisor evaluating a temp hire.

  “You sleep?” I asked. He nodded. “A little.” “I didn’t.”

  Candy handed me a piece of toast with surgical precision. “Eat. You’re going to need the energy.”

  “For what?” I asked, chewing. Richard looked up. “Boston.”

  Candy leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “He gave me the basics. Gardner Museum, closed portal, supernatural something-something.”

  “There’s more,” Richard said. “And I think you should hear it.”

  I dropped into the chair opposite him. “Let’s have it. Full Vatican brief, please.”

  He folded his hands. “Twenty-two years ago, there was a woman. We don’t know her name. But we had a sliver of data—a blood sample, flagged through a mandatory HIV screening from the early nineties. Back then, those tests were quietly cross-referenced by groups like ours for markers we knew how to read.”

  “Ethical,” Candy muttered.

  Richard nodded once. “We’ve since stopped. But that woman’s blood lit up the entire system.”

  “And you think that woman was my mother,” I said.

  “I think it’s likely. Her genetic markers matched the old Haus Kr?mer profiles. She was in the Connecticut region. The trail went cold before we could make contact. We called her #46”

  “Cold how?”

  “Last known location was Hartford. A job at a historic restoration nonprofit. Then... nothing. Records erased. Paper trail burned. Her apartment emptied. Either she ran, or someone got to her first.”

  My stomach tightened. “And you only just told me this now?” “I didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

  “You’re too late by about three chapters,” I snapped.

  Candy placed a steadying hand on my shoulder. “What’s the plan?”

  Richard leaned forward. “We go to Boston. I have a contact—ex-project, independent now. He manages a low-visibility collection at the Gardner, mostly out of public sight. He can get us in. Corwin’s a good guy, a little quirky, but reliable. This is the last sighting of #46”

  “Aren’t museums very hard to get into? You know , like behind the scenes??”

  “Officially, yes. But the foundation’s more focused on preservation than criminal resolution. My contact runs after-hours research. He’s discreet.”

  “And if we’re not discreet?”

  “We won’t get a second chance.”

  He stood, ran a hand through his hair. ” Maybe we can find that missing journal.”

  My hear stopped for a minute – because I had that journal and I think he knew it.

  Candy blinked. “You say ‘find a missing ghost journal’ like that’s a totally normal thing.”

  “In my line of work, it is.”

  I looked between them. My kitchen, my broken door, a big lie in my book bag, my weird, impossible life.

  And then I said, “Fine. Let’s do it. Let’s drive to Boston and break into a haunted museum.” Richard gave a half-smile. “We’re not breaking in. We’re entering with elevated curiosity.” “Same thing.”

  Candy cleared her throat. “I’ll stay here. Patch things up. I’ll call Martha and Steve if you don’t. Give them a warm-up act.”

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  She pulled me into a hug. “You’ll be okay.”

  “No,” I said into her shoulder. “But I’ll be moving.”

  Richard grabbed his coat. Tudor jumped down from the windowsill and padded over to him like he’d appointed himself navigator.

  I stuffed yesterday’s research into my bag and felt the warmth of the journal.

  We stepped over broken glass and out into the hallway. Sunlight was slanting through the cracked transom like something holy.

  As Richard locked the busted door from the inside—one of his tricks—I asked, “What town in Connecticut?”

  He paused just a second too long. “Mystic” he said.

  And we walked out into the snow.

  How the pacing?