29. Don't open it again for anyone!

Chapter 29: Don't open it again for anyone

Dinner sat between them, half eaten on her side, mostly gone on his, and Mikaela pushed a piece of bread around her plate without actually bringing it to her mouth, staring at nothing.

"I don't even know where to start," she said. "We can't march back in there and start pulling up floorboards, not with Elara watching, not with Kael sniffing around every other day asking questions. And honestly? The more I think about it, the more I wonder if there's even anything to find. Maybe it's just neglect. Underfed kids, not enough caretakers, a building falling apart around them. That'd explain the quiet ones easy enough. No wonder the city doesn't bother, it's the slums, nobody's throwing money at fixing tired children."

Eto kept eating.

"But then there's the window," she went on, quieter now. "Something was watching us. That wasn't neglect. That was something choosing to be seen."

He didn't answer, tearing another piece of meat free.

"You have anything? Any thoughts at all? Because I could use one right about now."

He shrugged, chewing, and she made a frustrated sound low in her throat and dropped the bread back onto her plate.

"You know what, fine. Fine. Eat your dinner. I'll figure it out myself, like always."

She didn't push further, though, and something in her had already learned not to, some quiet understanding that he wasn't ignoring the problem so much as sitting with it in his own way, the way he sat with everything, chewing it slow instead of talking it through.

His mind wasn't on the meat, though not that she could tell. It sat instead on the window at the children's home, the dark glass, the shape behind it that hadn't moved, hadn't so much as breathed as far as he could tell. Something had watched them leave. Something had wanted to be seen doing it.

Three sharp raps on the door cut through the quiet.

Mikaela set down her cup, glanced at Eto, and crossed the room, pulling the door open.

The hallway stood empty. She leaned out, looked left, looked right, nothing but the dim glow of a wall sconce and the creak of the building settling.

"Odd," she muttered, and started to swing the door shut.

The sound hit before it closed.

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It wasn't a scream, wasn't anything with a shape to it at all, just pressure, a wall of it, slamming through the room like the air itself had turned solid and swung. Eto caught the very edge of it before it took him, enough to brace, not enough to stop it. It threw him backward off the chair, through the window behind him in a shattering spray of splinters and lumber, and he was gone from the room entirely, falling, the night swallowing the sound of the impact below.

"Eto!"

Mikaela was at the window in two steps, wood crunching under her boots, staring down into the dark street where he lay sprawled across the cobblestones, unmoving for one long, terrible second.

Then he moved.

He rolled, pushed himself up onto one knee, then to his feet, swaying once before catching his balance, blood running from a dozen shallow cuts across his arms and face where the glass had caught him. He looked up at the empty rooftops, jaw set, eyes already moving, hunting.

The street stayed empty. No sound. No movement. Whatever had thrown him was already gone, or hiding, or both.

Footsteps pounded up the hallway behind Mikaela, the door banging open wider, and Erik shouldered through first, others crowding in behind him, patrons from downstairs drawn by the crash, all of them staring at the shattered window, at the wood scattered across the floorboards, at the cold night air pouring in.

"What happened," Erik demanded. "What in the gods happened up here."

"There was a knock," Mikaela said, voice shaking now that the moment had passed and left her hands empty. "I opened the door, there was no one there, nothing, and then, then there was this sound, this, I don't even know how to describe it, it wasn't a scream, it was just, pressure, it threw him straight through the glass."

The room went quiet.

Not confused quiet. Not the kind of quiet that came from not understanding. Something passed between the faces gathered in the doorway, a look shared quick between two of the patrons, Erik's jaw tightening, and nobody said a word.

"Erik." Mikaela's eyes found his. "You know what that is. I can see it on your face."

He shook his head, slow, and it wasn't a no so much as a refusal. "Lock your door tonight. Both of you. Don't open it again for anyone."

"Erik, tell me what that was."

"Lock the door, Mikaela." His voice had gone hard, final, and he turned before she could push further, herding the others back out into the hall, murmurs trailing after him that cut off the second he was out of earshot.

Down in the street, Eto hadn't moved from the spot where he'd landed, blood drying dark on his skin, splinters still caught in the fabric of his vest. His eyes swept the rooftops slow, methodical, and then stopped.

There.

A figure stood at the edge of a roof three buildings down, robed in black, utterly still against the wash of stars behind it. It hadn't been there a second before. It hadn't made a sound arriving.

He stared. Didn't blink. Didn't breathe.

The figure stared back, and the night held itself perfectly still around the two of them, the whole street gone silent in a way that felt less like calm and more like held breath.

Neither of them moved.

Then, slow, deliberate, the figure turned. Stepped back once, twice, and the dark of the rooftop swallowed it whole, gone without a sound, without so much as a shift in the tiles beneath its feet.

Eto stayed exactly where he was, eyes locked on the empty space where it had stood, blood dried black on his arms. He didn't move. Didn't speak.

The street stayed silent around him, and somewhere above, Mikaela's voice carried faint through the broken window, calling his name into a night that gave nothing back.