Blood loss is a serious thing, especially buckets of it.
Leon lay in a hospital bed, his neck wrapped in white bandages he no longer needed.
Beside him, Enid was asleep in the chair, her hair a mess, her makeup long since cried off.
She’d been watching over him since he passed out with Thornhill’s body and a giant Hyde corpse laid out behind him.
The police, with Principal Weems and the mayor leaning on them, kept the whole thing as quiet as they could manage, ruling both deaths self-defense.
Wednesday had stayed with him when he was first brought in, and once she’d confirmed he only needed rest, she’d left — though she’d come back a couple of times over the following two days.
Leon woke up a full day after being admitted, but Weems and Enid between them made sure he stayed put anyway.
He’d spent most of it lying still, eating everything high in iron they put in front of him, choking down vitamin B pills Enid insisted on.
Today was the day he was finally allowed to leave.
He turned toward her and gave her shoulder a gentle shake, smiling at her scarecrow hair and half-open eyes.
“Sleep well, little wolf?”
“Good enough, I guess.” She stretched.
“I did offer you the bed,” Leon said.
“You turned me down, though.”
“Keep dreaming.” She smacked his arm and headed for the bathroom, coming back a few minutes later looking considerably more put together.
Leon watched her for a moment — no makeup, hair still a little damp — and sighed to himself.
Even like this, she was adorable.
The fallout from the attack hadn’t been small.
Most students had been pulled out by their parents until Nevermore was repaired, though a handful stayed behind — Wednesday and Enid among them.
Weems took some heat over it.
She’d been the one who’d pushed to hire a normie teacher in the first place, all in the name of community and connection, and that normie had turned out to be a psychopath running a Hyde she planned to use to wipe out every outcast in the building.
What softened the backlash was simple enough: three students had caught it, stopped it, and no outcast had died.
That mattered more to the board than anyone’s original hiring choice.
Repairs would take months.
Leon walked the dorm halls to the sound of hammering and drills, carrying nothing — everything he owned lived in his Spatial Pocket — until he reached Ophelia Hall and knocked on a familiar door.
“Come in.”
Facing down the Hyde hadn’t made him as nervous as this.
Enid had asked him to come by, said they needed to talk about Wednesday and a few other things.
We need to talk dredged up something old and unpleasant from a life he didn’t like thinking about, but he shoved it down and opened the door anyway.
A chair sat in the middle of the room.
Enid stood on one side of it, Wednesday on the other, the window behind them both.
“Take a seat.” Enid’s arms were crossed.
Wednesday said nothing.
Her smile said enough.
“Okay.” Leon shut the door, crossed the room, and sat.
‘They’re not going to kill me, right?’
Enid moved to his right, behind him, leaning close to his ear.
Wednesday took up position on the other side.
“So, Mr.
Lockhart.” Enid’s voice was light, but there was an edge under it.
“We have some questions.”
“Answer honestly,” Wednesday said, “or I get my tools.”
“I’ll do my best.” Leon had already decided how far he’d go — not the System, never the System, but the rest of it, he could give them.
“What are you, exactly?” Enid said.
“You’ve got claws, which is a werewolf trait.
You collect blood, which is vampire.
But you’ve also got some kind of compulsion like a Siren Song, you make things appear out of thin air, you copy voices, you throw black fire, and you heal from a hole in your neck in a few hours.”
“Weems gave it to me while you were in jail — Nightshades archive, every outcast bloodline this school’s ever recorded.
Nothing like you is in it.”
“That’s because I’m not an outcast,” Leon said.
“Then what are you?” Enid asked.
“A wanderer.
With strange powers.” He tried, and failed, to find a better way to say it.
“Think of me as a stranger from another world.”
He’d meant it half as a joke.
It was also, word for word, the truth — and he had no idea how to say it without sounding insane.
“Another world,” Wednesday repeated.
“How did you get here?”
“Wait.” He looked between them.
“You’re just going to believe that?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Enid said.
“Given everything else about you,” Wednesday said, “it’s the explanation that sort of fits.” Neither of them argued it further — they simply nodded and moved on, which threw him more than any accusation would have.
“I have an ability that lets me jump between worlds,” he said.
“It’s not fully in my control.
Borrowed power, more or less.”
Enid’s face went serious.
“Where are you from then?
What is your world like?
And what happened to the real Leon?”
“I’m from earth too, just people who have powers there aren’t called outcasts — people who know of them call them monsters, some call them freaks, and most don’t know they even exist,” Leon explained.
“And there never was a ‘real’ Leon — this was an identity given to me by — think of it as the world’s will.”
“World’s will?
Is that like a god?” Enid asked.
“God’s a strong word,” Leon muttered.
“Just think of it as the law of this universe or world.”
“Hold on.” Enid’s claws extended, resting lightly against his shoulder.
“When we talked about polygamy, is that because you have other girls in your world?
How many, exactly?”
Wednesday’s eyes went cold and fixed on him.
“None,” Leon said quickly.
“I’ve never had a real bond with anyone before you.
And this is the first world I’ve actually traveled to.”
“Hm.” Enid considered that, then looked at Wednesday, then back.
“So what’s going on between you two?”
That landed hard enough to catch both of them off guard.
“Nothing,” they said, at the same time.
“Try again.” Enid crossed her arms.
“I kissed him,” Wednesday said.
“It was an experiment.”
“An experiment.” Enid’s eyebrow went up.
Wednesday’s jaw tightened, just slightly.
“About a week ago, after the first Hyde forest attack, I noticed my heart rate spiked whenever he was near.
It wasn’t a vision.
It wasn’t cardiac.
“And?” Enid asked.
“The data was inconclusive.” A pause.
“It got worse after.
I’m still processing it.”
Leon blinked.
“You kissed me as a science experiment.”
“Initially.” Her eyes flicked to his mouth, then away.
“The results were not what I expected.”
Enid let out a slow breath, looking between them — Wednesday’s carefully blank face, Leon’s stunned one.
She and Leon hadn’t put a label on things either, not officially, despite the car, the hand-holding, the stolen kisses everyone at Nevermore already gossiped about.
Hearing Wednesday admit — however clinically — that she felt something too left Enid’s chest tight with two feelings at once: jealousy, and underneath it, a stubborn, possessive refusal to be pushed aside.
“Right.” She stepped up to his chair and set a hand on his shoulder, thumb resting against his collarbone.
“The experiment’s over.
Next time you need data, you ask.
Both of us.”
“Acceptable,” Wednesday said.
“I don’t like unauthorized variables anyway.”
Leon reached up and covered Enid’s hand with his own, squeezing gently.
Some of the tension went out of her shoulders, a small smile breaking through.
“So,” he said, breaking the quiet.
“Am I dismissed, or is there more to this interrogation?”
Enid didn’t answer right away.
She looked at him, then at Wednesday, and the silence that followed wasn’t cold — it was heavy with something neither of them had said out loud yet.
Leon’s chest tightened.
He thought about Enid in the car — her fear that he’d leave, the fierce way she’d just laid claim to him a minute ago.
He thought about Wednesday, standing perfectly still, working overtime to look like none of this touched her.
He was leaving soon.
Thornhill was dead, Tyler was dead — the mission was as good as finished, with only the report and the Crucible Arena still waiting for him on the other side.
If he didn’t say this now, he’d carry the regret of it across every world he ever set foot in.
Leon stood.
He didn’t step back — he stepped between them.
“No more games,” he said, and meant it.
He took Enid’s hand first, fingers lacing through hers, then turned and offered his other hand to Wednesday.
She looked down at his open palm for a long second.
He half expected her to refuse.
Instead, her hand slid into his, cool and small.
“You both keep talking about rules, and worlds, and experiments.” He looked between them.
“Enid — what happened in that car wasn’t just flirting — I meant it.” He turned to Wednesday.
“And your experiment didn’t fail — I felt it too.”
Enid’s breath caught, her fingers tightening around his, a bright, small smile breaking across her face.
“I don’t know when I’ll have to leave, or how long I’ll be gone once I do,” Leon said, pulling them both a step closer.
“But right now, I want this to be real.
Both of you.
If I’m going to have anchors anywhere, I want them to be you two.”
Wednesday’s eyes widened, just slightly, a faint flush climbing her neck.
She didn’t pull her hand away.
“An official declaration,” she said quietly.
“Illogical, but acceptable.”