“What are we going to do?” Enid asked, watching the police cars pull away, the murmur of students still rising and falling around them.
“Something happened,” Wednesday muttered.
“Unless Principal Weems is secretly the Hyde — which we already know she isn’t — someone either tampered with the blood samples, or they found something we missed.”
The lights faded into the distance, and the crowd of students began talking amongst themselves.
Some looked surprised, others angry, a few visibly relieved.
Wednesday scanned the courtyard until she spotted Principal Weems bursting from the building, still fastening her coat as she jogged toward her car.
The engine turned over with a groan.
Before Weems could pull away, Wednesday stepped directly into the headlights, forcing her to stop.
“Miss Addams — what are you doing?” Weems rolled her window down.
“What happened?
How was he arrested?” Wednesday asked.
“How would I know?” Weems said.
“I need to go after them and find out.”
Wednesday didn’t hesitate.
She circled the car and got in.
“I’m coming, then.”
“Fine — but don’t cause trouble.” Weems sighed, and before she could pull away again, another door opened.
“Miss Sinclair — you too?”
“Yes.
I want to go too.”
Weems shook her head, but didn’t argue.
She pulled out of the lot and headed for the sheriff’s department.
***********
“The test came back positive,” Sheriff Galpin said, his eyes dull, uninterested.
“Which test?” Weems demanded.
“Because if anything was faked, or obtained illegally, you will face serious consequences for this.”
“You sound awfully confident the school’s test would’ve come back clean,” Galpin said.
“All I know is the results are positive.
Leon Lockhart is a person of interest in the murder of Jason Myers, and possibly others.”
“The killings started before Leon ever set foot in Nevermore,” Wednesday said, her voice ice-cold.
“Are you suggesting he committed murders while he wasn’t even in town?”
“That’s a matter for further investigation,” Galpin said, already turning away.
Weems and the sheriff kept at it, their voices rising, while Wednesday and Enid stood off to the side.
Wednesday spotted Deputy Santiago outside and crossed to her.
“The killer is a Hyde,” Wednesday said, without preamble.
Santiago was startled.
“Miss Addams — the tests came back positive for Leon Lockhart.
That’s not something we can just ignore.
And he’s the one who told everyone the killer was a Hyde in the first place, which honestly makes his story look worse, not better.”
“If I collected some of your blood, killed someone, and spread it around the scene, would that make you the killer?” Wednesday said.
“That kind of evidence can be faked easily.
Someone could be —”
“Listen.” Santiago’s tone hardened.
“If he didn’t do it, we’ll find out.
Until then, stay out of this.”
She walked off before either of them could respond.
Enid and Wednesday called after her anyway.
“Can we see him?”
“No.
He’s a suspect.
No visitors.”
Enid stepped in front of Wednesday before she could say something that would get them both arrested.
“Deputy, please?
Five minutes.
He hasn’t eaten since breakfast, and he gets really cranky.”
“He’s a suspect, not a houseguest,” Santiago said.
“Then let me phrase it differently,” Wednesday said.
“Deny us access, and I will —.”
Enid’s hand firmly covered her mouth.
“Understood — thank you” Enid said before pulling Wednesday away.
***********
Leon sat in his cell, chains wound around his wrists, his neck, his torso.
Iron, cold against his skin.
Breaking free would take seconds.
Compelling a guard to open the door would take even less.
But the moment he did either, it would turn into a manhunt — and Thornhill would have every excuse she needed to point the entire Jericho police force at him, especially with her attack dog’s father wearing the sheriff’s badge.
Leon opened his status window and scrolled to a skill he’d bought a few days ago and mostly forgotten.
[Nexus Link]
[Description: Establishes a permanent mental and energetic tether with a designated servant, companion, or mate.
Allows instantaneous, silent telepathic communication regardless of distance.]
He could feel it now — threads reaching outward from somewhere behind his sternum, some thick and steady, others so faint they felt like they’d snap if he so much as looked at them wrong.
He examined each of the strong ones, already knowing whose they were before he confirmed it.
Wednesday.
Enid.
Emma.
A handful of others from Nevermore he’d gotten to know.
He reached for Wednesday’s thread first.
She was pacing the hallway outside the room where Weems and the mayor had shut themselves in, looking for any excuse to slip past the guards and check on him, when something tugged at her — a pull she couldn’t place.
Familiar, somehow.
“Leon?”
She let it settle into place, and then she could feel him — close, a few dozen meters away through concrete and iron.
“Hey,” his voice said, inside her head.
“Miss me?”
“Explain the mechanism.
Precisely.” A pause.
“And never do that without warning again.”
“A little trick I picked up.” She could practically hear him smiling.
“Don’t worry about me.
“Then do it.”
“Thornhill’s behind this, probably.
I’ve been thinking — wait, let me bring Enid in”
A moment later.
“Wednesday, why is there a voice in my head?
Is it in yours too?
Please say it’s in yours too.” A beat.
“Can you hear me thinking?
Because if so, I’m sorry about everything.”
Wednesday explained what it was, and the three of them worked through what came next.
They talked for a while.
Leon brought up the tomb again, and after a few minutes, the conversation shifted.
“So we could just do that?” Enid said.
Wednesday was quiet for a moment.
“We could.”
A short pause.
“I actually like that,” Wednesday said.
“You do?” Enid said.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Sure.”
Leon listened to them go back and forth for another minute, with Wednesday picking apart the practical details and Enid raising the obvious problems whenever she spotted one.
Eventually, they settled on what to do.
“Alright,” Wednesday said.
“We’ll handle it.”
“Just don’t get yourselves arrested too,” Leon said.
“We’ll try to contain our enthusiasm.”
Enid laughed.
“See?
That’s exactly the kind of thing that makes me nervous.”
The connection faded soon after.
***********
“Are you guys sure about this?” Enid asked, glancing around the crypt, torchlight throwing long shadows across the stone walls.
“Thornhill doesn’t know we already have the details of her plan,” Wednesday said.
“She won’t see this coming.” Together, they shoved the heavy coffin lid aside, revealing a corpse — somehow preserved, stitched and packed together well enough to pass, at a glance, for an unusually ugly man rather than a two-hundred-year-old ritual component.
“We can skip a few steps ahead.”
Wednesday drew a vial of Crackstone’s blood with a needle, capped it, and reached for the gas can.
“He looks like he’s about to complain to someone,” Enid whispered.
“He’s been dead two hundred years,” Wednesday said.
“He’s earned the right to look displeased.”
“Ugh!
And I wore my good boots for this.” Then she caught Wednesday’s sleeve.
“Wait.
If the heart’s what actually kills him, shouldn’t we do that before the fire?”
Wednesday looked at her for a beat, something like approval crossing her face.
“Finally.
You’re learning.”
“Was that supposed to be a compliment?” Enid was surprised.
“Don’t ruin the moment.” Wednesday grabbed an iron spike from the wall.
The first strike went in shallow — the body was older than she’d expected, the flesh toughened by whatever preservation method had been used.
She struck again, harder, until the spike punched through.
The third strike shattered something inside the chest cavity.
By the fifth, there was nothing left that could be called a heart.
Only then did she strike the match and drop it.
WHOOSH.
They waited out the first burn, stepped back as the heat pressed against their faces.
The body had blackened but held its shape.
Wednesday kicked the lid back over the remains, doused it again, and struck a second match.
It took four passes before Crackstone finally reduced to nothing but ash and bone fragments.
Wednesday scooped a handful into a small jar before they left.
“Why are you keeping that?” Enid asked.
“For my collection.”
***********
A short while later, word of it reached Leon through the link, and he allowed himself a small, satisfied smile.
He walked to the cell door and rapped his knuckles against it.
“Hey.
I want to talk to the sheriff.”
Galpin came, eventually, dragging a chair up to the bars and sitting across from him with the same dull, uninterested expression he’d worn since the arrest.
“Ready to talk now?” he said.
Leon looked into his eyes and let his irises bloom.
“You’re going to go home,” Leon said quietly.
“Get whatever proof you’ve hidden about your wife and your son, and take it to the mayor.
Tell him everything — what she was, what he is, what you knew and when.
All of it.” He paused, watching the compulsion take hold.
“And once he knows everything he needs to know, you’re going to make sure you’re never a problem for me, ever again.”
Galpin’s eyes glazed, unfocused, before he nodded once, slow and mechanical.
“Yes.”
Leon released him from his gaze and watched his eyes clear, the dazed look folding back into ordinary dullness, as if nothing at all had happened.
“Go on, then,” Leon said, and Galpin rose, unlocked nothing, said nothing else, and walked out.
***********
Galpin drove home.
A little over an hour later, he returned to his car with a stack of folders under one arm and drove straight to the mayor’s office.
“What the hell is this, Galpin?” Mayor Walker snapped, annoyance written across his face.
He went to the station to argue Leon’s case personally after Principal Weems told him what happened — the timeline didn’t add up, the boy hadn’t even been in town when the killings started — but Galpin had been stonewalling him at every turn, dead set on the arrest in a way that felt entirely unlike him.
“My confession,” Galpin said, opening the top folder and sliding it across the desk. Get faster updates on g.com.
“My wife.
Françoise Galpin.
She was a Hyde.” He laid out photographs, records, details the mayor had never seen.
“We kept it hidden.
So she wouldn’t be hunted.”
“What?” The mayor stood, chair scraping back.
“I’ve spent years afraid my son would turn out the same way she did.” Galpin pushed a second photo across the desk — a grainy security-camera still of a massive, twisted shape.
“I was right.
That’s the Hyde.”
“Galpin — what the hell are you telling me?” Walker’s voice rose.
“Your son is the one who’s been killing people in this town, and you hid it?”
“From what you’ve told me about Laurel Gates, I believe she’s become his master.
She’s been using him.” Galpin’s voice stayed flat, almost rehearsed.
The mayor flipped through the folder, hands unsteady.
“Are you out of your mind?
Why would you sit on this?”
“He’s my son.” For the first time, something cracked in Galpin’s voice.
“He’s all I have left.”
Walker set the folder down, his jaw tight.
“You’re removed from your position, effective immediately until —”
Before he could finish, Galpin’s hand was already moving to his holster.
BAM.
He was gone before he hit the floor, blood and brain matter spattered across the ceiling behind him.
“GALPIN!” The mayor staggered back, staring at what was left of a man he’d called a friend for twenty years.
***********
Thornhill’s face went stone-still.
“What did you just say?”
“The crypt’s been broken into,” Tyler said.
“Coffin’s open, body’s gone.
There’s fire damage everywhere — I think they burned him.”
“WHAT?” Something shattered against the wall.
“HOW?
HOW DID THEY KNOW?”
Tyler watched her rage, his expression flickering, just for a second, into irritation.
‘She’s too loud.’
“No — no, no, no —” Thornhill paced, hands pressed to her temples, before she stopped all at once, closed her eyes, and breathed.
When she opened them again, she was unnervingly calm.
“Who did this?
Was it Leon?”
“He’s still locked up,” Tyler said.
“My guess is his little girlfriends.
Wednesday and Enid.”
Thornhill’s jaw tightened.
“They’ve ruined everything.” Her eyes went cold, flat, decided.
“Then it’s free for all.”
***********
Tyler stood at the Nevermore gates, chest heaving with something that looked almost like excitement.
“This is going to be fun.”
His eyes swelled, his skin darkening and thickening into something leather-like, teeth pushing out past his lips in jagged rows as his body doubled in size.
ROAR!
***********
Word of what happened at the mayor’s office reached Leon not long after — secondhand, through a rattled guard’s phone call he overheard through the wall.
Galpin had pulled his own gun in front of the mayor and put a bullet in his skull.
Leon sat with that for a while.
He told himself Galpin had brought it on himself.
Hidden what his wife was.
Hidden what his son was doing.
Let people die rather than admit the truth.
Pinned the blame on Leon when he had no other options left.
A man like that made his choices, and the consequences were his to carry.
But Leon had given the order.
“Make sure you’re never a problem for me, ever again.” He’d said it like he meant nothing by it — vague, throwaway phrasing.
He’d assumed Galpin would do something bureaucratic.
Resign quietly.
Take a long drive out of town and never come back.
He’d let the words land soft, and Galpin had filled in the rest with whatever answer his own fear had already prepared for him.
“This is a lesson for me, compulsion is precise.
The clearer the order, the cleaner the outcome.
The vaguer the order, the more space there was for the compelled to interpret it in the worst possible way.”
He’d be precise next time.
Leon filed that away, then let it go.
Now all that’s left is the Hyde.
***********
Wednesday and Enid sat in the quad when a roar tore across the grounds, followed a heartbeat later by screaming.
“What is that?” Enid was already on her feet.
“Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
“Didn’t think she’d actually be crazy enough to send him to the school,” Wednesday muttered.
At the gates, a massive shape stood silhouetted against the gray sky, students scattering in every direction, its monstrous face twisted into something almost gleeful.
The gate shuddered under the first hit, stone dust raining from the foundation.
The second hit cracked one of the locking bars.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Principal Weems and the other faculty were already moving, herding students toward the inner pathways, voices sharp with urgency over the panic.
“What is it doing here?” Weems muttered, staring out at the thing trying to tear its way inside.
************************************
[AUTHOR’S NOTE]
🔥 NEW WEEKLY TARGET: