Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Wednesday’s POV.

The first day on the road has been interesting, to say the least.

My uncle Fester insists on calling it a road trip. I prefer the term “forced migration.”
He sees adventure in the endless miles of cracked asphalt. I see only decay. Abandoned motels collapsing, the occasional roadkill decorating the road. Nothing more.

How my uncle drives is even more interesting. He drives like a man possessed by caffeine mixed with chaos and, of course,  very poor judgment. He hums off-key to songs only he can hear, his head jerking like a marionette with tangled strings.

At one point he attempted to juggle candied apples while steering with his knees. We survived. The apples did not.

By dusk he pitched my tent beside a pond. “A perfect spot!” he declared. The mosquitoes agreed. I considered strangling him with the tent ropes, but decided to conserve my energy. Murder is best executed with intention, not impulse.

Now I sit beneath canvas walls that smell faintly of mildew and something I won’t name. The candlelight flickers, throwing nervous shadows against the fabric. My notebook waits, demanding I immortalize this day.

I have a few observations. Firstly, my uncle’s appetite for hot dogs is insane. Let’s not even mention his ability to create chaos wherever he goes. Secondly, the highway is the worst purgatory in America. It couldn’t get any worse until we got chased by a raven for twenty miles. My uncle decided to give it a nickname: “Mr. Beasty.”

I know I should be focused on Enid’s situation. She’s the reason for this journey north. I gave her my promise to bring her back. Yet my pen hesitates, and my thoughts wander to Tyler.

His name leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I do not write down his name, but his name is etched on my mind. One moment I see him chained in the dark, drenched in blood and teeth bared. Other times I see him as the boy he once was.

The question of why I saved him claws at me. Logically speaking, he should be dead. My axe should have been his end. I had every reason to end him. But in the final moment I didn’t.

I let him breathe.

I try to rationalize the situation, but no explanation satisfies me. Perhaps I thought him useful. Perhaps I sought leverage for the future. Perhaps I wanted him to suffer longer. All convenient reasons but none are true.

The truth is that when I looked into his eyes, I did not see a monster begging for its end. I saw something I should not have allowed myself to recognize. Anger, yes. Fear, certainly. But beneath it, something human.

I press my pen against the paper hard enough that it tears. I cannot name this act mercy. Mercy implies softness. I am not soft. What I felt was something else. A hesitation that was neither weakness nor strength but something far more dangerous: curiosity.

I spared Tyler Galpin not out of pity, but out of an urge to see what he becomes when allowed to live, wounded but breathing. To study him as one studies a venomous creature in a jar.

And yet… part of me fears I saw not just him but myself reflected back.

…

I lean my back against my pack, trying to see if I can fill another page. My mind is ready to cut deeper, to peel away the layers of Tyler Galpin. I am close to admitting something I have no wish to record.

Before my pen even hits the paper, my tent rattles. The air outside roars with a sudden hiss and pop.

“Don’t panic!” Fester yells, voice cracking with manic pride. “Turns out swamp gas is flammable!”

The stench of sulphur and burning weeds creeps under the flap.

I drop my notebook and  I walk out of my tent. Before I can yell at Fester another sound cuts through the night. Boots crunching on gravel, deliberate, unhurried.

“Fester,” a voice hisses from the dark. “What in hell’s name are you doing?”

Fester spins around, a gas canister still clutched in his hand, sparks flickering around his sleeves. The firelight licks dangerously close to a pale figure at the edge of the camp.

It’s Agnes.

I must admit I am impressed by my uncle. He has almost managed to combine arson, idiocy, and attempted homicide into one single act.

He waves cheerfully, oblivious to the flames almost reaching her. “Hey, Wednesday! Look who dropped by! I almost lit her up like a jack-o’-lantern!”

Agnes dodges the sparks, her eyes narrowing toward me in accusation.

I walk toward Agnes, expression unchanging. “Uncle Fester,” I say cold “if she dies here, I will ensure your obituary reads, ‘Death by his own incompetence.’”

Fester is still grinning, half his coat smoldering from the fire. “Pretty impressive, huh? Almost cooked her in one shot!”

I tilt my head, studying him. “You’ve just set a new world record: attempted arson, assault, and proof of mental deficiency in a single gesture. Congratulations, Uncle. Darwin would be delighted.”

His grin falters for the first time. “Uh… thanks?”

I leave him to puzzle over whether that was praise or condemnation. Of course it is condemnation.

My attention shifts to Agnes, who stamps out the last of the sparks with her boot. Her silhouette is rigid against the glow of swamp fire. She does not bother with pleasantries.

“I found her trail. Enid’s alive. She’s still moving north.”

Agnes tries to deliver the news calmly, expecting me to fill in the rest. Enid is still going north.

“Alive is an acceptable condition,” I reply. “That’s how I promised to return her.”

Agnes exhales. It sounds like something between a scoff and a growl. Her gaze drifts past me toward the open flap of my tent. The candle inside still flickers, illuminating my notebook where I left it open on the ground.

She steps closer, eyes narrowing. “What’s that?”

I turn to see what she’s looking at. The page is smeared but unmistakable. The beginnings of a sketch. Angular jaw, hollow eyes, a shadow that refuses to stay on paper. A sketch of Tyler Galpin.

Agnes walks toward my notebook and picks it up before I can reach it. Her expression sharpens. “Why are you wasting time drawing him?”

I remain still for a second, not even flinching before I respond to her. “I don’t waste time, Agnes. I want to catalogue everything about Hydes. Monsters are easier to dissect when they’re pinned to a page.”

Agnes’s eyes narrow, the notebook still lingering in her grip before I take it back. Her tone is judgmental. “You shouldn’t be wasting thought on him. He’s not just dangerous, Wednesday. He’s unfinished business. The kind that comes back worse.”

Before I can argue with her, Fester interrupts from far too close.

“Gotta admit,” Fester says, leaning against the tent pole like a child caught peeking at Christmas presents, “the kid is interesting.”

Agnes turns around to face Fester. “Were you eavesdropping?”

“Of course.” He grins. “What else would I do?’’

I pinch the bridge of my nose.  Trying to mask my irritation “Uncle, I was under the impression that you were busy scorching your eyebrows off.”

“They’ll grow back,” he shrugs. “But this Tyler…” He jabs a finger in the air, eyes gleaming with a kind of reckless admiration. “I liked him. Met him at that café, remember? Polite kid. Made me a mean latte. Almost didn’t notice he had a murderous alter ego.”

Agnes stares at him as though he has confessed to befriending a rabid dog. “You liked him?”

Fester smiles before nodding “He reminded me of me at his age. Quiet and full of suppressed violence. The good stuff.”

I roll my eyes but the motion wasted in the dark. “Your endorsement isn’t comforting at all, Uncle.”

Agnes looks at me again. “See? Even he finds Tyler ‘interesting.’ And you…” She points at me, as though I have done something wrong. “You’re feeding that obsession with sketches. Why?”

I let the silence fall between us for a moment “Because interest is the first step toward dissection. I intend to know precisely what Tyler Galpin is before I decide whether sparing him was an error… or right choice.’’

Fester chuckles, delighted by the drama he only half understands. Agnes scowls, unsatisfied by my answer.

And me? I feel the night pressing tighter,  heavy with questions I am not ready to answer. Where is Tyler right now? Why did I save him and the most important question will I see him again?

Chapter Text

Wednesday’s POV.

The second day of exile is proving to be as torturous as the first.

The roads leading north are narrow veins carved through skeletal forests. Each mile is identical to the last. Filled with pine trees hunched in permanent mourning, roadside motels clinging to whatever’s left, and the occasional hideous billboard peeling. According to my uncle, these surroundings are scenic. Well, to me they resemble the slow death of civilisation.

His driving isn’t getting any better. He drives with a manic glee that suggests that he either had too much coffee or that he has permanent brain damage. Honestly, it’s most likely both.

What’s even worse is that he insists on sampling local delicacies at every gas station. So far that includes pickled eggs floating in brine, jerky that could’ve been anything, and a lollipop he claims tasted like syrup combined with victory.

Midway through the morning, Fester slams on the brakes of our motorcycle. The motorcycle jerks violently. I almost fall.

“What fresh calamity is this?” I ask, already preparing a list of possible charges to file against him in the event of my premature death.

He points out the ugliest billboard ever. “Look!”

On the side of the road is a gigantic billboard boasting the world’s largest coffee cup. It towers absurdly over a shabby diner, steam painted onto its side in peeling white.

Fester claps his hands like a delighted child. “We have to stop! It’s fate! Tyler made coffee, remember? This is a sign!”

I stare at him, unblinking. “You believe in divine omens delivered through coffee?’’

“Exactly!” Before I can have a say in this, he’s already swerving into the gravel lot.

I consider leaping from the motorcycle. But I know my odds of survival are greater if I remain seated.

Inside the diner, Fester orders the largest coffee on the menu, which arrives in a mug the size of a football. He cradles it lovingly, slurping loud enough to attract the attention of the three customers unlucky enough to witness our arrival.

“Tyler would love this place,” Fester announces between gulps. “He had a way with beans. Real talent. You can’t fake that.”

I spear him with a glare sharp enough to peel flesh. “Uncle Fester, if you mention Tyler Galpin’s barista skills one more time, I will ensure this establishment adds the world’s largest crime scene to its list of attractions.”

He only laughs, foam clinging to his lip. “Deny it all you want, that kid had great barista skills.’’

I sip my water and say nothing. Fester’s idiocy is its own distraction. But his words dig nonetheless, like a nail you can’t stop worrying at with your teeth.

What I never would have imagined is that the world’s largest coffee cup is the world’s largest magnet for gossip.

At the counter, two men in grease-stained clothes mutter loud enough for the whole diner to hear. Their voices are rough from cigarettes and small-town boredom.

‘I swear to god! It was a werewolf. It came out of nowhere and ripped through the camp within seconds. It scared the hell out of my cousin…’’

‘Werewolf? Don’t be ridiculous. It was a bear. Neal.’’

“Bear doesn’t howl like that. Everyone heard it. The whole campground’s packing up this morning.”

Fester leans across the booth, his coffee sloshing dangerously. “You hear that, Wednesday? A werewolf! Maybe it’s Enid!” His eyes sparkle, the way most men look at lottery tickets or explosives.

I fix him with a stare. “Yes, Uncle. Because nothing screams “Alpha Werewolf” like a teenage werewolf advertising her location to campers armed with iPhones.”

He slurps his coffee loudly in retaliation. “It still sounds like Enid.”

I sigh before grabbing my notebook. I open it. My pen scratches across the margin of my notebook. Werewolf attack, northern campground. Zero casualties. High probability: Enid.

The men continue their conversation. “Lucky no one got hurt. Except for a few tents shredded to ribbons. The sheriff’s office says it was a stray wolf. One who lost its pack.’’

The word leaves me feeling uneasy. Enid has always been many things. She’s persistent, sometimes irritating, and way too cheerful, but she was never one without a pack. Yet when she chose to save me, she embraced her biggest fear.

Fester nudges me, lowering his voice to a stage whisper that carries across the booth. “See? We’re getting warmer. Or fuzzier. Depends how you look at it.”

I resist the urge to stab his hand with my fork. “Your optimism is an infection. If you don’t contain it, I’ll be forced to quarantine you.”

He laughs, spilling coffee down his shirt.

I close my notebook and slide from the booth. “Come, Uncle. We’re leaving.”

He gulps down the last of his coffee in one reckless swallow. “North, right? Toward the camp?”

I allow myself the smallest smile. “Precisely.’’

…

The further north we go, the thicker the pines grow. My uncle chatters the entire way about how he wrestled a bear for a picnic beast. Of course he contradicts himself every few sentences. I let his noise wash over me like background static.

By the time we reach the campground, it’s already half empty. Families are loading coolers and tents into dented trucks and cars. The children are clinging to their parents. The campground reeks of fear.

When Fester and I walk further onto the grounds, we see shredded tents everywhere. Poles are snapped clean in two. There are claw marks visible in a picnic table. Raking across its length with a clear warning.

Fester whistles appreciatively. “She’s really finding herself, huh?”

I ignore him. My boots crunch over broken glass, toward the table. Something in the air prickles against my skin, an itch behind my eyes, familiar and unwelcome.

The vision comes before I can resist it.

The forest surrounds me. I can see silver moonlight dripping through the branches of the trees. I can hear the breath of prey scattering into the night. Before I know it, I can see Enid, or well, the wolf version of her, with eyes wild and fur bristling. Her claws slash through anything that comes close to her. She’s not in control. That much is clear.

Shortly after that my vision is replaced by another. This image is blurry. I can see a male hand reach for her. Like a shadow at her back.

I want to see more, but the vision snaps. The world returns in a rush.

Fester looms over me, eyes wide. “Did you just…? You did, didn’t you? You got one of your spooky brain-zaps!”

I straighten, brushing dirt from my hands. “It was a vision.”

He leans in like an eager gossip. “What did you see? Blood? Gore? Zombies?”

“I saw a werewolf thrashing this camp,” I answer flatly. “And someone trying to catch her.’’

Fester grins, thrilled. “So it was Enid!”

“Yes,” I murmur, eyes narrowing toward the tree line. “But she isn’t running from campers.”

…

Fester bounces on his heels like a child waiting for candy. “This is good news! She’s close! All we have to do is follow the carnage north!”

“Or”, I reply, voice flat, “we’re walking into someone else’s trap.”

He grins wider. “Either way. It’s an adventure!”

Before I can correct him on the difference between adventure and impending death, he wanders back toward the motorcycle. He pats the handlebars lovingly, then straddles it like a knight mounting a very unreliable steed.

“North awaits, my dear niece!” He bellows, twisting the throttle. The engine coughs, then roars, then splutters like a dying animal.

“Uncle Fester…”

Before I can finish my sentence, smoke erupts from the exhaust.A horrible grinding sound fills the clearing. The motorcycle lurches forward a foot, then collapses sideways with a hiss of steam.

Fester tumbles into the dirt, arms flailing. He sits up immediately, mud plastered to his coat, grinning as though he’s just invented spontaneous combustion.

“Guess she didn’t like the campground!”

I fold my arms. “You’ve officially reduced our only transport to scrap metal. Congratulations, Uncle. You’ve managed to strand us in a werewolf’s hunting ground.’’

He waves a hand, still grinning. “Relax. We’ll camp here tonight. Nothing says bonding like a fire, some marshmallows, and the threat of imminent mauling.”

“Your idea of bonding is indistinguishable.’’

He ignores me, already dragging his pack toward a clearing with the energy of a pyromaniac who’s found free matches. Sparks soon flicker in the gloom, his laughter carrying through the trees.

I glance back at the shredded tents, the claw marks carved into wood, and the air still heavy with Enid’s desperation from my vision. The forest presses close, dark and waiting.

We are stuck. Thanks to Fester.

…

Uncle Fester, make us a fire. He sits opposite of me, his legs sprawled out. He is poking the flames with a stick that is already on fire. He hums tunelessly, the sound of a man who’s either content or one spark away from self-immolation.

“Did I ever tell you,” he begins suddenly, “about the time I was nearly elected mayor of a small town in Arkansas?”

I arch an eyebrow. “Did the people admire your charisma, or were they simply threatened by your capacity for destruction?”

He grins, eyes shining in the firelight. “Little bit of both. It started with a pie-eating contest. I accidentally electrified the judges’ table, but the crowd thought it was performance art. By the end of the week, they were chanting my name. Would’ve won, too, if the ballot box hadn’t caught fire.”

I say nothing. Experience has taught me that silence is the only safe response to his stories.

He slurps melted marshmallow from his stick, then adds, “Anyway, the point is…you never know where life will take you. One day you’re frying a ballot box, the next you’re rescuing your niece’s werewolf roommate from God-knows-what in the middle of nowhere.”

“An inspiring tale,” I deadpan. “I’ll be sure to pass it down through generations as a warning.”

Eventually his stories die down and his snores take over. I rise, slipping into my tent with my candle and my notebook. I sit down against my pack. Before pulling open my notebook.

I open to the page already scarred with his name. Tyler Galpin. I dissect him like a cadaver. Firstly I start with the Hyde. Hyde acting on pure instinct, being violent without hesitation. Then the boy follows. A boy with barista charm, the illusion to mask the monster. Then combined: a monster and human stitched together as one.

The contradiction of his entire existence gnaws at me. My pen scratches harder, angrier. Why did I let him live? Strategy? Pity? No. Pity is for lesser beings. I let him live because…

Before I can finish writing down my sentence, I can hear the most ridiculous high-pitched feminine scream filling the campgrounds. Of course it’s Fester.

I slam my notebook shut, the candle sputtering out. Annoyance coils in me like a snake. “If he’s discovered a new way to injure himself, I’ll bury him beside the motorcycle.”

“Wednesday!” His voice cracks. “Come here! Now!”

I ran out of my tent, preparing to find Fester roasting his eyebrows or even being strangled by some deranged raccoon. Instead I see him crouched near the fire. His eyes wide, his face is pale. He is holding something in his hands.

At first, I think it’s nothing more than scrap. But when I move closer, I can see it. It’s a jacket, worn and dark. It’s familiar to me. It’s Tyler’s.

Then suddenly a vision slams into me. Making me fall to the ground.

I’m not in the campground. I’m not anywhere near Fester. I’m on the road. The same skeletal highway we’ve travelled all day. The trees blur past, shadows flickering across cracked asphalt. A car engine hums low and steady. In the passenger seat is Tyler. He is alive and focused. Driving the same road as we are.

The vision fractures. I snap back into the campground, lungs aching, Fester still babbling in the background.

“See? I told you! That’s his jacket, right? You know whose it is, don’t you?”

I clutch the notebook against my chest, my voice colder than the flames crackling beside us.

“Yes,” I whisper. “I know exactly whose it is.”

…

Fester is still crouched by the fire. The jacket is dangling from his hands. His eyes glisten with the thrill.

“I knew it!” he crows. “I’ve got a nose for these things.”

I step closer, my shadow swallowing his. “Enlighten me, Uncle. How exactly did you come across this?”

He exhales, “Easy! I was poking around the campground bathrooms, looking for loose change. Checked behind a toilet tank, nothing. Dug in the trash, found half a sandwich. Delicious, by the way. Then bam! Jacket! Just sitting there under the sink like it was waiting for me.”

I stare at him. “You are telling me that you rummaged through the campground, stole a stranger’s abandoned garment, and only afterward realised it belonged to Tyler?’’

“I knew it was his!” he declares. “Recognised it right away from those sketches you keep in your notebook.”

My blood runs cold.“You’ve been going through my notebook?”

“Don’t look at me like that!” He raises his hands defensively, the jacket hanging between them. “I was just… curious and bored. Possibly looking for a crossword puzzle. But hey, you’ve got real talent, kiddo. You captured his brooding glare perfectly. And those muscles! Wow. You really took your time on those.”

I freeze. “You rifled through my private notes, violated my personal space, and then critiqued my anatomical accuracy?”

“Exactly!” He beams like a proud art teacher. “I always knew you had a gift for the human form.”

I stare at him, expression unchanging, though internally I am calculating fifty-seven different ways to make his death look like an accident.

“One day, Uncle Fester,” I say evenly, “your boundless stupidity will get you killed. And when it does, I’ll make sure your epitaph reads, “Died doing what he loved.”

He only laughs, completely oblivious as always. “Front row seat for you, kiddo. I promise.”

I’m about to say something when the truth hits me. Tyler’s not some ghost I’m chasing in my thoughts. I spared him. But now he’s close. Too close for my liking. Thanks to Fester’s invasion of my notebook, I can no longer pretend my obsession with him is hidden.

Chapter Text

Wednesday’s POV

The morning sun comes in early. The forest is still damp from the rain of the night. The fire Uncle Fester built has smouldered into a pathetic curl of smoke. I rise expecting nothing at all. Naturally my uncle delivers exactly to my expectations.

Our motorcycle, may it rest in greasy pieces, has been replaced. Not with a car or even a functioning vehicle that moves fast enough. No, out of all things Fester could’ve stolen or borrowed. He liberated a golf cart.

It’s the biggest insult to someone who could own four wheels. The paint is scuffed, the seats smell faintly of bleach, and there’s a broom wedged in the back.

Fester smiles at me from the driver’s seat, wearing goggles that are entirely unnecessary. “Ta-da! Our noble steed is ready for adventure!”

I stare at him. “You’ve reduced our transportation options from combustion to humiliation and somehow added a broom to the mixture. We’re not at Hogwarts, Uncle.”

Fester acts like the cart has feelings. He pats the plastic dashboard affectionately. Like he’s comforting the cart. ‘Don’t underestimate our Esmeralda, Wednesday. She’s eco-friendly, and..’’ he floors the pedal, causing the cart to lurch forward at a speed rivaling a dying tortoise, “she’s fast.”

I raise my eyebrow while folding my arms at the same time. “If we are pursued by an enemy on crutches, perhaps we stand a chance. Otherwise, we will be roadkill.”

Fester laughs so hard that his vision blurs. His goggles start fogging. “You’re just mad because Esmeralda doesn’t like you. These babies are street legal in Florida, you know.”

“Then I suggest we immediately relocate to Florida,” I reply, voice flat. “So that we can perish in the swamps where this monstrosity belongs.”

He wiggles the wheel dramatically, pretending to drift around an imaginary corner. “Feel that handling? Smooth as butter.”

“If butter had been left in the sun to melt into an oil slick.”

The cart rattles over a tree root with all the stability of a paper coffin. I grip the side rail, calculating how much of my dignity I will lose when we inevitably flip into a ditch.

Fester doesn’t notice. He is too busy narrating ‘’.Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Wednesday Express! Next stop: doom, despair, and a brooding obsession with Tyler Galpin!

“Uncle,” I cut in. “If you ever use my name in the same sentence as the words ‘express’ or ‘Tyler Galpin’ again, I will arrange for this cart to suffer a fatal accident. With you still in it.”

He snickers, unbothered, and honks the tiny plastic horn. It emits a squeak so pitiful that even the squirrels look offended.

I close my eyes briefly. “Day three, and already the abyss has taken a new form: a golf cart.”

…

Packing is simple for me. Everything I have with me fits into a single bag. Uncle Fester, on the other hand, requires a small-scale excavation. By the time he finishes wrestling with his luggage, which included, inexplicably, a bowling pin, three jars of marshmallow fluff, and a half-broken toaster. The sun has risen high enough to punish me for existing.

After what feels like forever, he whistles cheerfully as we load everything in the back of the golf cart. I can’t believe this stupid thing is going to be our transportation.

“Roomy, right? You can practically live in one of these.”

“Yes,” I replied dryly. “If one’s definition of living includes public ridicule and a top speed of fifteen miles per hour.”

We finally drive away, or I think 'crawl away' would be more suitable.

The moment we merge onto the highway, the inevitable happens. Horns blare at us, headlights flash, and after 5 minutes there’s an entire line of vehicles behind us. It’s like we’re driving in a funeral procession. The golf cart sputters along.

Fester is delighted. He waves at everyone who’s furious enough. “Look at them, Wednesday! We’re famous already!”

“Infamous,” I correct him. “The difference is important.”

He honks the horn, producing its signature squeak. The sound of a dying rodent. A trucker leans out of his cab and yells something vulgar. Fester salutes him as if it were applause.

A few hours later we finally pull off the highway. I’m really considering abandoning the cart and walking into oncoming traffic. Unfortunately my survival is mandatory so I can save Enid.

We stop at a shady gas station. There’s a neon sign buzzing. The lot is cracked and littered with cigarette butts.

Inside, the shelves are filled with expired snacks. I select a bag of chips that crunch more like shards of glass than food. Gester grabs an armful of beef jerky and a weird glowing slushie.

I’m halfway finished with my bag of chips when I see a familiar car pull up outside of the gas station. Its shape slams into me like déjà vu: the same skeletal highway, the same hum of the engine, the same shadow I had seen in my vision.

 My throat closes around the chips, and for one horrifying second, I contemplate the indignity of choking to death in a gas station.

I force the shards down and stare. The driver’s side door opens, and someone steps out. I take a look before I realise who it is. It’s Miss Capri. She’s dressed casually. Her heels click against the pavement. She slides into the driver’s seat, unfazed.

I look around to see if I can see Tyler around. But he’s nowhere to be seen.

My pulse quickens, sharp and unwelcome. I tear open my notebook, flipping to a blank page, and scratch furiously. License plate: 9KX-372. I underlined it twice, then circled it, the ink biting into the paper.

Fester leans over my shoulder, jerky dangling from his mouth like a grotesque cigar. “Taking notes again, eh? Let me guess, a new hobby? Highway licence plate bingo?”

I snap the notebook shut. ‘If you mean tracing the movements of a Hyde and his new accomplice? Then yes.’’

Fester chews noisily. “I like this side of you, kiddo. Real detective vibes. You should get a trench coat. Maybe a hat. Ooh, and one of those magnifying glasses that makes your eye huge!”

I turn around to face Fester. ‘’Never compare me to a dime-store detective again.’’

Fester laughs; he’s delighted by my threat. He sprays crumbs across the counter as he laughs. ‘You’re already solving mysteries and planning my funeral. Multi-tasking at its best.’’

I ignore Fester for a second. I stare out of the window as I see the car pull away from the gas station. Miss Capri is behind the wheel. She vanishes back onto the road. Tyler remains absent. The vision I saw showed him in the passenger seat of that same car.

I open my notebook one more time. I scribble beneath the plate number. ‘Miss Capri driving the car. Tyler’s absent.’’

Writing down that Tyler isn’t around feels heavier than it should. If I’m completely honest, I wish Tyler would have gotten a chance to start over. I push away this thought immediately. I

Fester slurps the last of his neon slushie and sighs, ‘Well, kiddo. I’m sure we’ll find your Wolfie friend and Hyde love interest.’’

I have to resist the urge to stab him with my pen the moment he calls Tyler my love interest.

…

When I think we are finally leaving the gas station behind, I hear Uncle Fester screech beside a newspaper rack.

“Look at this!” he yells out, slapping the glass with jerky-stained fingers. “Fresh news! Hot off the press! Probably cold off the press, but still!”

I lean forward, expecting nothing too exciting. Maybe a bake sale, someone who lost their poodle or maybe a stupid coupon. Instead the headline is far more interesting:‘Local farm attacked. Sheriff blames a lone wolf.’’

I snatch the paper from Fester's hand. The article is short and doesn’t say much more than that a barn was destroyed three miles from here. It was shredded overnight. Doors splintered, beams slashed. Livestock oddly untouched. No injuries, unless you count a scarecrow found with one arm ripped clean off and a look that suggests trauma more profound than physical.

Fester whistles, a low, delighted sound. “Sounds like your roommate.”

“Ex-roommate, as Nevermore is no longer a school,” I correct, eyes scanning the piece for details. “Enid doesn’t destroy barns for sport.”

He grins, the expression of a man who reads life as a sitcom. “Maybe she’s evolving. From tents to barns. Natural progression. Next stop: Walmart Supercenter.”

I fold the paper with the same calm precision. There are stories in the creases; I smooth them flat and tuck them away.

The cashier behind the counter is a man whose mullet has its own gravitational pull. He glances up from a lottery scratcher with the expression of a man who has already surrendered to his fate. “The farm’s not far,” he says. “Straight shot down Route 16, take the dirt road past Miller’s Pond. Can’t miss it.”

Fester gives him a bow, ending up tipping the man with his empty slushy cup. “Thank you, good sir. You’ll go down in history as the man who helped us track a werewolf.”

The cashier blinks once at us before returning to his lottery ticket.

Unfortunately we have no other vehicle except for the golf cart that’s now called ‘’Esmeralda.’’ Fester starts the engine.

“Picture it,” he says, voice rising. “Midnight. Barn doors fly. Hay everywhere. Scarecrowmissing an arm!”

I sigh, not answering Fester. I open my notebook and uncap my pen. I write down everything I know about the farm.

The highway before us seems long. Fester drives us to Miller’s Pond. After about 10 minutes, which feels like an eternity in Esmeralda. We turn off the asphalt and drive onto a dirt path.

Roots push up in angry fists against gravel. The trees close their ranks like sentries. Fester navigates the ruts as if he rides a noble steed. I remind myself that the cart has the stability of a paper boat.

We drive upwards on a hill until I see the farm in view.

The barn is exactly in the condition as the newspaper describes. The doors are torn apart, the ribs of the barn are exposed, and support beams seem to have snapped.

I scan the farm, like I’m inventorying a crime scene. I notice a car parked in the driveway of the farm. Not any car. It’s the car that was in my vision and at the gas station just an hour ago. My stomach slides like ice into a hollow I’d rather not name.

Fester doesn’t catch on as quickly as me. Until he notices me going more quiet than usual. Eventually he points with the kind of enthusiasm only a person who has never been permitted to be quiet can muster. “Holy beans! Kiddo, look!”

I see exactly to what, or rather whom, he’s pointing at. There are two figures standing under a weak porch light. I recognise one of them immediately. It’s Miss Capri. She leans against the frame of the farmhouse. Beside her, I see someone I’d never expect to see this soon. Tyler Galpin.

Tyler’s right here. He’s talking to Capri like they are discussing the weather.

For a moment my entire world turns quiet. It’s like my vision gets narrowed down, and I can’t even hear my uncle’s commentary. It’s fading into the background.

Tyler is a study in contradiction: a boy who can brew tenderness into coffee and something else into bone. I had promised myself one thing the night I let him go: closure. Mercy had been a transaction, an experiment. I had never meant for it to become routine.

Fester nearly launches himself out of the cart when he realises it’s Tyler. “It’s him! The barista dude! He’s right there! You were right all along!” He slaps my shoulder with a force that would be impressive if I weren’t already calculating the bruise pattern. “See? My niece, the coffee prophet!”

My gaze remains on Tyler. My voice is flat. ‘Uncle. If you call him ‘the barista dude’ again, I will make this golf cart into your coffin.”

Fester doesn’t hear what I’m saying. He’s too busy grinning like an idiot. “I knew he wasn’t dead! You had that look in your eye. Like, ‘I spared him’, and bam! Here he is, brooding on a porch. This is better than daytime television.”

I scoff at my uncle. I grab my notebook and write down the obvious facts: the same car, the plate number, the address of the farm and the two people who are in sight of us right now: Miss Capri and Tyler Galpin.

The letters come out sharp, almost angry. The ink bites, and for a second I press harder, as if engraving will make the truth less likely to slip away.

I can see Tyler smile at Capri while he speaks.Tyler’s hands are empty. There is no sign of the Hyde in present motion, no blood on his cuffs, and no ears bristling like an animal aware of scent.

I close the notebook slowly, because pen and paper feel like the only things still obeying rules.

“Best road trip ever,” Fester breathes, like a man who has discovered the falling-apart-in-front-of-you genre of entertainment.

I don’t know how to answer Fester. I’m not sure how to feel about all of this. My mind catalogues scenarios: he’s here by coincidence, he’s bait, he’s aligned with Capri, he’s lying in wait. Each possibility is a blade; each one demands I choose whether to stab or to shield.

I see Tyler tilt his head before turning around. For the first time since I decided not to end his life, I feel the full weight of that choice.

He’s right here. That’s way too close for my comfort.

I close the notebook all the way and tuck it beneath my jacket. The paper rustles.

Fester chomps a piece of jerky and hums. “So what now? We sneak up? We introduce ourselves as friendly vagabonds? I could bring cookies.”

“No cookies,” I say. My voice is small and steady and contains more threat than his years of idiocy combined. “We watch. We wait. We do not make a single move that resembles a sitcom punchline.”

He eyes me, then the porch, then me again, delight and something like fear washing across his face in equal parts.

I can hear Tyler laugh at something Capri tells him. His laugh carries across the yard. For a moment it sounds normal. As if he was never the monster who killed all these people back in Jericho.

Chapter Text

Wednesday’s POV

Night comes quicker than I realise. We don’t sleep at the farmhouse because we know it’s not safe. Instead we drive Esmeralda to the edge of the property. We hide the cart behind some trees. Uncle Fester sets up camp where no one can see us.

Uncle Fester insists on dragging the only functional camping chair out of the cart and arranging our packs. He lights a small fire because the man believes all problems are improved by marshmallows.

“Perfect,” he says, tossing a stick on the embers. “Best camping setup ever. Absolute five-star wilderness.”

I remain silent. Taking in the events of today.

You want a marshmallow, Wednesday? They’re slightly toasted. Danger levels: moderate.”

“Danger levels: your taste buds,” I say. I unwrap a small packet of something I brought with me from the gas station.

The rest of the night is uneventful. Fester talks. I mean, of course he talks. He tells me how he once folded a map the wrong way, how he thinks raccoons are government spies and how he accidentally set a billboard on fire and then convinced the town he was in that it was art.

I let him know I am listening, but I don’t say anything back. I’m mostly focused on my notebook.

My handwriting is quick and exact. I list what I saw on the porch: Capri and Tyler. I note the car in the driveway, the license plate I already have printed into memory, and the way Tyler’s laugh sounded.

Writing everything down makes things more manageable. Pinning the truth to the pages of my notebook makes me feel at ease. It feels like this situation is getting to me.

After a while the combination of the fire and Fester's snoring gets to me. I close the notebook and tuck it into my jacket. ‘

‘’Uncle, I’m going for a walk,’’ I say coldly.

He perks up. “Ooh. A walk! Can I come? I can bring…”

“No,” I say. He seems disappointed by my response. “You’ll wake the wildlife. Go. Snore louder if you must.”

…

I walk the campground until the snoring of Fester seems to fade away. I finally find a place where there’s peace and quiet. It’s a riverbed at the edge of the property. I sit on the mud-baked bank, knees pulled up, my notebook warm and folded in my lap. The water’s voice slows my thoughts. I make my pen small and useful, writing of the porch, the car, the plate and, of course, Tyler.

I sit there for a while, writing about everything that has happened. Until I can sense the wind shift all of a sudden. My skin feels prickled the way it does before I get a vision. But to my surprise I don’t get any.

Instead there are footsteps approaching me. They don’t sound human. No, they’re heavy and deliberately coming my way.

I do not stand. I do not run. I am tired of moving like prey. I fold my hands over my knees and remain seated. Let whatever comes, come.

I never would have expected to see her step from the trees into my sight. Eid. Not the light-hearted Enid with a kind smile and hair that catches the sunlight. No, this is Enid, the Alpha werewolf. She’s large and muscular. Her fur catches in the moonlight. Her jaw shows too much tooth. Her eyes, the same colour as the river under storm, find me with the single, simple logic of a predator naming its meal.

For a moment I think I could charm her with the politeness of not startling. Until I see her sniffing the air. Her world seems to narrow, and she focuses on where I am.

Enid presses her paws into the mud. She has a scent of iron mixed with dog smell with her. She circles, teeth flashing, until she finally locks her gaze.

I know I could try to fight her. I could make an attempt to complicate things for her. But I don’t move because I made her a promise. But some part of me, the cruel part of me, wants to run, to fight and break my promise.

One thing is clear: Enid’s not herself. She’s clearly lost her human side. I am her target as her next meal. I’m being hunted by my best friend.

Enid tilts her head. Her muzzle inches closer until I can see the ragged scars that run like geography along her flank. She bares a single tooth. Her paw lifts.

Her movement is a line aimed at undoing me. I feel the cold geometry of imminent end. In that slow, terrible moment the world reduces. There’s nothing but the brightness of her fangs and her paws closing in on me.

I do nothing. I do not plead. I do not beg. There is a small part of me that understands how mercilessly and how accurately the world will keep its promises if you simply stop resisting. Maybe I have no right to the mercy of movement; maybe all I own is this refusal.

Enid’s claws come down toward me. I’m ready to accept my undoing until I find myself falling to the ground.

Something crashes into Enid just a moment before she’s about to hit me. A shape, impossible and loud, slams into Enid with the force of two things colliding: person and Hyde. The Hyde, not Tyler the barista, not the boy I once spared, but the other one, props himself between us.

The Hyde is taller and broader than Enid is. His mouth curls with something that is not quite a grin and not entirely a snarl. Up close, the Hyde smells like old dried blood.

I see him shoving Enid sideways with a brutal shove. The impact is hearable.

Enid falls sideways, claws scrabbling, and lands half in the mud. She spins, furious, and for the first time I hear a different note under her animal noise. She sounds angry.

Enid is about to launch at me again. The Hyde doesn’t hesitate. He jumps between Enid and me. Acting like a shield.

He slams his weight against Enid, forcing her away from the bank, away from me. He moves with insane speed.

Enid lunges again. Not for me, this time, but for the Hyde. I can see how she sees Hyde as a threat. Tyler meets her with a motion that is startling for its precision.

They tumble, a mass of teeth and fur and human impact, into the shallow water, mud blooming around them.

He pushes her under briefly. Long enough for the river to take the sound and then spit it back as something different. She comes up, furious and panting, and the Hyde has a hand over her muzzle like a clamp. For a moment it looks like he’s about to end her.

I yell out in a panic, “Don’t hurt her, please!”

Tyler, in Hyde form, turns his head toward me. I see his face, half familiar, half foreign, looking at me. The Hyde’s eyes are not Tyler’s bright, resigned pupils. They are narrower, a width of slate that considers harming or letting her go. He looks at me with something that isn’t mercy.

I’m about to take a few steps towards them. Trying to do something about this when I hear him growl something.

“Get back,” he growls out. The sound isn’t loud. I don’t know exactly what he’s saying.

It seems Enid does understand. She withdraws from the fight. Something flickers across her face.

I see her lingering at the edge of the reeds, not attacking Tyler or me. Her lips furl. Her eyes keep flicking to me and then to the Hyde, and there is a war in those glances. Territorial, political, painful. The river takes her low growl and turns it into an echo.

Hyde releases his grip and steps back. The movement is not gentle. His palms are caked with mud, and a crescent of fur clings to his knuckles. He breathes, not in a human rhythm but in something that sounds like someone re-threading themselves after being unstitched.

…

I don’t know what’s happening. I find myself watching this confrontation from afar. My throat is raw with the taste of things not said.

“Why?” I ask. “Why save me?”

The Hyde turns around to look at me. He tilts his head for a second. Not answering me. Instead he takes a step away, the movement odd, as if two people are negotiating a single body. Meanwhile, Enid’s shoulders lower fractionally, suspicion still braided through her stance.

I don’t know whether I should be grateful about Tyler saving me from Enid. I know I shouldn’t be happy that he decided to step in. I am the person who spared a monster.

The Hyde doesn’t stay long. He turns and moves back toward where the trees swallow the path, fur and shadow and the memory of a man with two names. Enid watches him go with the patience of the winner of a small, ugly argument. Then, with one last resentful glance at me, she slips into the dark.

I sit very still until the river fills the space they left. My pen is cold in my hand. I think of lists, of variables, contingencies, and the ledger I keep. The Hyde’s intervention is another line to enter.

I write it down. Enid attacked. Hyde intervened. Why he saved me is unknown.

The letters are blunt and true. The water keeps moving, and somewhere behind me, Fester snores as if nothing has happened. The night keeps its counsel, and a new, dangerous fact goes into the book where facts are weapons and promises and warnings.

Chapter Text

Wednesday’s POV

God, morning arrives way too quickly today. Because of the showdown last night I barely got any sleep. My uncle, however, seems to be sleeping just fine. He’s snoring in his chair as if he has not seen the night rip and stitch itself back together. When he wakes, it’s with a smile and a question about marshmallows, like the world is still governed by his small, comforting remarks.

‘’Did you see any wildlife last night?’’ he asks me.

“Enid had dinner plans,” I say.

I say it with a smug tone in my voice because there’s no point in hiding the fact that that’s true. Fester nods at me before asking me if I packed extra socks. He is a man for whom trauma is a laundry problem.

I go back to my tent to get some sleep. I need it to put things in perspective. I’m no good company when my mind hasn’t had its rest. I could even say my urge to stab someone is more present when I am sleep-deprived.

I dream in mechanical scraps: the ring of the machine in Iago Tower, the slug of current, Tyler strapped and small, the weight of an axe that did not fall. The dream is thin and accurate; it leaves me with an ache in my chest.

Suddenly a sound wakes me. It’s not Fester’s famous foghorn or him snoring. No, it’s by carefullywalking into camp. It’s like someone is trying to sneak up on me. Suddenly a shadow leans at the tent flap, and a voice breaks the dim.

“Wednesday.”

I sit up when I hear his voice. It’s Tyler. His face appears in the flap of my tent. His face is all dusty. He stands frozen in his place. It’s like he’s very careful with his movements.

I sit up. My mouth tastes of sleep and something that could be remorse. “You are not supposed to be here,” I say. It is a truth, and not one I have time to soften.

He steps inside with an ease that suggests he has practised slipping into other people’s spaces. “I couldn’t sleep,” he says. “I wanted to see if you were okay. If you were hurt.”

That is an odd sentence to hear from someone who changes between boy and monster. It gives me a strange feeling in my chest. ’I was not eaten,” I answer. “Your Hyde took a poor bite on my behalf.”

He looks away for a second. I can see his jaw tighten. ‘’I didn’t want to hurt you, Wednesday.’’ It feels like an apology that’s arriving weeks late. ‘’There’s something else I need to tell you. Capri…’’

I wait. He has my attention because he is the variable I allowed to live, and variables do not speak unless they want the map redrawn.

“She’s planning something,” he says. “Not tonight, but soon. She’s been meeting with people. It’s about a lot of money.’’ He doesn’t pretend to formalise it; his mouth scrapes its way toward facts. “She met someone last night after you left. A scary dude with guns. They talked about containing the wolf.’’

I grab my pen while Tyler is still talking. I reach for the notebook in my inner pocket and begin to write about what Tyler is telling me. I can see Tyler watching me as I write down everything.

“Containing?” I say. The word tastes like a ledger’s flourish, and it makes my teeth ache. ‘’Containing Enid. Or selling her as a price?’’

Tyler sighs deeply. ‘’I think she sells outcasts for high prices. The rarer, the more valuable. For whoever’s willing to pay for control. For collectors who pretend to be scientists. For anyone who thinks a werewolf is a specimen and not a living thing.”

My stomach goes empty with a very particular kind of cold. “So she’s building a market,” I say. “She’s not trying to save anyone. She’s trying to sell them.”

“Yes,” Tyler says. “She wants to monetise what she thinks is exotic. She promises protection and then sells the parts to the highest bidder. She has contacts. That’s the dangerous bit. People who can deploy gear without asking questions.”

“Why tell me?” I ask. The question is neutral, surgical. If he’s warning me, what does he expect? A thank you? A truce?’’

‘’Because I owe you,’’ he says. ‘’Because you could have killed me, but you didn’t. Last night you didn’t run away either. And because I think Capri is going to sell me as well. She sees me and Enid as a variable.’’

I look at Tyler for a second. He looks tired. He’s not the same boy I met at the café. But he’s not the Hyde either. He’s somewhere between both. There is a humility in the way he shifts his weight that almost looks like guilt.

’Do you have any proof?’’ I ask. Because I need him to get me some proof.

His hand goes to his jacket and comes back with something folded small and dirty: a receipt, a name scrawled in hurried ink, and a photograph folded at the corner. “This was left in the car when Capri got back last night,” he says. “There’s a name on it; that dude made a deposit payment for Enid. There’s an auction house outside of town where Capri is going to auction Enid.’’

I peel the paper open with fingers that are steady because ledger work steadies me. The handwriting is elegant and criminal. The date is in the next week. The name is unfamiliar. The word 'containment' blooms like a bruise in one corner.

“Why show me this?” I ask again. Partly because I want the paper for the evidence heap, partly because I want the calculus of his motives made explicit.

“Because I can’t stop her on my own,” he says simply. “And because you won’t leave. I watched you stand and not run. You stayed. I think you’re not the kind of person to walk away when there are people being made into curiosities.”

It is not flattery. It is a statement of fact that reads like an accusation and a compliment at the same time. I do not like being described so clearly.

“I don’t trust you,” I tell him. ’I still don’t trust you.”

Tyler nods at me like he didn’t expect anything different. “You shouldn’t,” he says. “I haven’t earned trust. I’ve earned nothing, but right now I can offer information. And help you. I’ll do what I can, but if Capri moves, you need to leave this place before she executes the plan.”

“How soon?” I ask.

“Less than a week,” he says. “Maybe three days. She wants the market to have a showpiece. She wants an example that demonstrates a profit and scares the rest into compliance. If she manages to capture Enid, she will get a very high bed. She will take the money, and you will lose Enid.’’

There is a hollow, precise anger in that last sentence that tastes sweet in the way revenge sometimes does. I am careful with sweet things. I scribble the date in my notebook and then underline it twice.

“You expect me to pack up and leave because you tell me to?” I ask.

“I expect you to consider that staying might produce losses you cannot catalogue after the fact,” he says. He leans forward. Up close, his hands have the scars of a man who has been hurt and not calmed. “I can help you get the right information. I will make sure you will get all the information of the bidders. I won’t be here forever, but I promise I will do my best.’’

“You could be lying,” I say. “You could be setting me up. You could want me gone because it suits whatever Hyde plan you have.”

He looks at me like a patient man amazed at the need to explain the obvious. “If I wanted you gone, I would have done it the easy way. You are useful alive for reasons you don’t like. I know because I once needed to be useful to survive.”

There is a small silence between Tyler and me, but Fester snores in oblivion.

’We leave in three days,” I say. “If Capri moves before that, we leave sooner. If you show me more proof and a reason to trust you, I will consider accepting your offer.’’

Tyler inhales deeply. “Good,” he says. Relief softens him for a fraction. “I’ll do my part.”

“Your part better be factual,” I say. “And your Hyde better not be theatrical.”

He flinches at the Hyde mention, a small human motion. “He doesn’t cowboy for sport,” he says. “Not anymore.”

I close the notebook and tuck the paper he gave me inside. The receipt is a small, ugly thing that might save someone. It might save me. I just hope it will save Enid.

Fester wakes then, blinking sleep from his eyes and delighted by the notion of moving. “Road trip?” he asks, unaware of the scale of the decision already set in motion.

Fester, however, seems to be happy with the idea to travel further. He hops up from his chair before clapping his hands.

“Working with Tyler?” he says, practically vibrating. “This is perfect! Imagine it.  Team Fester and Wednesday! We could be unstoppable. I can be the logistics guy. I’ll drive Esmeralda into the enemy base, and you, my niece, will…” He waves vaguely, as if that explains everything.

I flatten him with a look reserved for men who arrange their lives around novelty mugs. “No. You will not drive anything into anything. You will not be logistics. You will mind the marshmallows and not discuss strategy in public.”

He laughs. “Oh, come on. Think about it. Tyler, you know, the broody barista with muscles and mysterious problems, and Wednesday, the brainy one. We’ll have podcasts. We’ll rate coffee and moral hazard.” He pokes the air between me and the tent as if inserting a microphone.

Tyler, standing at the tent flap, gives a single, grudging smirk that shows amusement. He lifts one shoulder the way someone half-interested in joining an improv troupe might. “I don’t do podcasts,” he says flatly.

Fester leans in. “You could! ‘Beans & Beast Mode.’” You will definitely get sponsors. Capri’s already doing the villain angle, so you do the tortured hero. I’ll do the mascot. Imagine the merch.” He rubs his hands together and grins like a man who has found a new hobby that requires no effort and a lot of applause.

I narrow my eyes. “Uncle, if you say the word ‘merch’ one more time, I will carve our exit strategy into your forehead and call it a scalp map.”

He cackles anyway. “Romance might blossom! You never know. Tyler’s moody, you’re moodier ... it could be art.” He winks, which is an anatomical contribution to bad ideas.

Tyler’s smirk tightens. He shakes his head, then turns away toward the trees. “We should move fast,” he says. “If Capri’s timing is right, she won’t wait.”

Fester nudges me with the toe of his shoe, mock-innocent. “See? He’s on board. We’re a team. You’re thrilled, right?”

I take a breath that contains the world’s most patient No. “I am not thrilled. I am prepared.”

Fester pretends to be wounded and then immediately starts listing supplies in a booming whisper as if whispering makes it less ridiculous: rope, tarp, marshmallows, and a very suspicious-looking crowbar. Tyler listens without comment, then steps back into the trees.

We have three days to decide how we’re going to save Enid from Capri.

Chapter Text

Wednesday's POV

I realise we only have two days left to save Enid from being auctioned off as a pet werewolf.

The first thing we do in the morning is wake up Esmeralda. Uncle Fester calls that stupid golf cart the love of his life. He has even polished the plastic dashboard as if this will help its condition.

I’m sitting in the passenger seat waiting for my uncle to join me. I see him strap on a flashlight before he puts on a hat. Somehow he finds it important to bring along three jars of marshmallow fluff.

‘’Just in case!’’ he says to me cheerfully.

I sigh, not answering my uncle. I tighten the strap of my pack and tuck my notebook away.

Fester finally starts, Esmeralda. We drive off into the woods, following the trail Enid has left behind. The forest is difficult to navigate in the morning. The sun is shining through the pine trees, but the air is still cold.

Esmeralda trips in the ruts, a white beetle of a vehicle with an engine that complains like an old man in a queue. Fester drives because it’s quicker to be responsible and slower to be furious. Somehow my uncle thinks it’s useful to hum show tunes at a volume that’s way too loud.

“Imagine the podcast,” he says fifteen minutes in. “You & Tyler debating ethics while I…”

“Uncle,” I say, “if the phrase ‘you & Tyler’ leaves your mouth again, I will invent obligations for you that are more death than hobby.”

Fester chuckles at me.  “We’ll be unstoppable! You’re the brains, I’m the logistics, and Tyler is the brooding barista…”

I’m about to answer my uncle when he almost hits a tree. I manage to grab the steering wheel and steer us left down a path. The cart is too wide for the path. 

The sound of the highway slides away, and the woods knit themselves closer. Tracks reveal themselves in mud: big pads, dragged prints, and the deeper gouges of long claws. We follow them like a sentence I intend to finish.

We find the spot midafternoon, where sunlight punches a hole through the canopy into a small clearing. The ground is churned, leaves peeled back like pages. Something has been argued with here and lost. There is a ruin of grass and a scent that makes the back of my throat tighten.

I see dark blood on the soil. It’s glossy, so I know it’s still fresh. The colour is a bit off, so I know it’s Enid’s blood.

Fester leans over my shoulder, nose in the breeze, eyebrows high like question marks. “Isn’t blood the universal sign of a problem?” He says it like a trivia host. “Also, messy. Should we collect it? Make a scrapbook?”

“Don’t touch anything,” I say. “It’s evidence and also not yours to decorate.”

He recoils as if I have said a bad word at the dinner table. “Of course. I wasn’t…I mean…gross.”

The clearing smells of fur and iron and something else: someone else’s sweat, old leather, and the metallic tang of human presence. A boot print cuts through the blood. We are not the first humans here since whatever happened.

Fester fumbles with his binoculars and peers like a toddler trying on adult accessories. “Maybe she’s nearby,” he suggests. “Maybe she’s…anxious? Wolves have feelings, right?”

“Not in the anecdote sense,” I say. “But yes, she’s near. Or she was.” I touch the smear with the pad of my finger despite my earlier order and pull it away. The scent of it clings like a name. The trail leads off the clearing toward denser growth, toward where the light goes thin.

We jump back onto the golf cart. The trail narrows the moment we drive further into the woods. I record details with the inflexible economy of a person taking inventory: hair caught on a branch, a strip of fabric snagged on a root, a snapped leash of sap that smells faintly of engine oil. Stains on a rock look like paws wiped too clean.

I’m about to say something to my uncle when I hear screaming coming from the trees. Three men run into my sight.

They are wearing work boots and tactical vests. One of the men has a pistol at his hip. The others carry heavy flashlights and wire cutters. They do not look like hunters of the wild so much as collectors of problems. Their faces are sunburnt and mean, their smiles pre-formed for victory.

“Afternoon,” the leader says. “You lost?”

Fester fumbles in his seat and produces a grin that screams, 'I have a courage deficit.' “Nope! Just…just finishing the marshmallow challenge! Have you tried the marshmallow challenge?”

I cut him off with one motion and a look. “We’re looking for a wolf. We saw tracks.”

The leader’s smirk becomes a slower thing, like someone folding a map closed. “Are you finding trouble, or are you making it? This is private property. We’re clearing nearby. You have papers?”

“We have the right to be here,” I say. I keep my voice flat. Esmeralda’s engine idles like a small animal ready to bolt.

One of the men moves to cut us off. He closes the cart’s only viable escape route with the practised arrogance of someone who has done intimidation in rows before. “You leave now, before we make you.”

Fester, for the first time that morning, looks like a man deciding between three really bad choices. His mouth works. Then he does something that makes my internal compass reorient: he lurches for the back of Esmeralda, opens a jar of marshmallow fluff with the solemnity of starting a ritual, and without consultation sticks a big spoonful into his mouth.

He chews, eyes wide, like someone ingesting an allergy test and deciding to pass. Then, in the most inexplicable flourish of our misbegotten road trip, he stands. He hits the cart with the spoon, rips off his goggles, and starts singing.

It is a terrible song. It is a hymn to chaos. It is loud. It is a medley of every campfire ditty he has ever muffled with terrible gusto. The men look at him as if someone has set a small country on fire.

“Hey! What the…” the leader snaps.

I want to be annoyed. But before I can move, something stranger still happens.

From the brush a sound rises. The kind of note that makes hair stand and knives move in pockets. A swarm of small things erupts from the undergrowth, flying, skittering, and raining down in a black, panicked cloud. Crows? No, the shapes are too many, too frantic. Moths? No. It are beetles.

They descend on the men like a living confetti of consumption. One of the attackers slaps at his face and drops his flashlight; the beetles find the sticky jar still open on the cart and dive into it, rubbing themselves in the sugary goo. Another man grabs his jacket and finds his sleeve full of beetles that bite at exposed skin. Panic is instantaneous, and professional fear replaces malicious intent.

Fester takes advantage of the moment with the ease of a man who has always preferred improvisation to planning. He yelps something triumphant. Something I will one day list under “family crimes” before he slams Esmeralda into gear. The cart lurches forward, tyres scrabbling, spitting mud. Fester pulls the wheel; we thread between trees like a white thing trying not to be obvious.

The attackers curse, slap, and stagger after us, but the beetles have turned the clearing into a small apocalypse. The men run flailing into the brush, swatting beetles and cursing the gods of bad timing. One of them gets both boots stuck in a bog and has to be abandoned like a bad idea.

We speed away. I can feel the cart bounce. Fester honks a few times, like he’s proud of Esmeralda’s awful, squeaky dying sound. Fester has never looked happier. He wipes beetle-splattered fluff from his face with a towel and giggles.

“That was…” He pants, euphoric. “…brilliant! I knew the fluff would attract something. I knew it! It’s like nature’s plan!” He pats the jar on his lap fondly.

“Uncle,” I say, “that was not a plan.”

“Accidental genius!” he says, beaming. “We are MacGyver meets Willy Wonka!”

…

It takes about an hour before we stop for a break. I sit down underneath a pine tree. My hands are muddy, and the scent of marshmallow fluff fills the air. I take a moment to grab my notebook so I can write down everything. Clearing found. Blood present. It’s Enid’s. We got ambushed by men with gear. We escaped because of Fester’s idiocy. Note to myself: do not let Fester improvise elaborate strategies without supervision.

Fester peeks over my shoulder into the journal. I turn around to look at him and can see the offended look in his face. However, after a minute or so, it seems like he has already forgotten it.

Fester grabs a book and starts reading out loud. He laughs so hard that he spills his soda all over the floor. I, of course, glare at him with my death stare, which is both effective and useless.

Unfortunately we didn’t find Enid. We did find her blood. But I’m not sure how I’m going to find her in two days.

Esmeralda purrs as if pleased by the day's drama. Fester opens another jar of fluff and offers me a spoon. I decline.

…

It’s late at night when we finally arrive back at our camp. The sun is already gone. Even the golf cart coughs a tired complaint and dies to a stop behind the cedars where we left her, as if pleased to be home.

Fester slides off like a man dismounting from a carnival ride and immediately begins to rearrange the packs with the kind of nervous domesticity usually reserved for people who think tidiness will prevent apocalypse.

“Best day ever,” he declares, like a small, proud deity. “We found blood, we survived beetle armies, we possibly pioneered eco-warfare with marshmallow fluff…”

“Fester,” I cut him off. “Please stop inventing histories.”

He pretends to sulk and instead produces a ridiculous grin. “Fine. But admit it… that was cinematic.”

I sigh at him yet again before sitting down near my tent. I dump my boots on the ground. The air is cold tonight.

I am halfway to the tent with the notebook under my arm when Tyler steps out from the shadow behind the cooking stand, the way someone steps into a room to speak truth to people who prefer stories. He is exactly where he should not be and precisely where we need him.

He smells like dirt and something metallic; his shirt has a smear of dark on the cuff. He does not smile. Tyler rarely does the smile-that-says-anything. He looks like a man who has had life balanced against him.

“Tyler,” Fester chirps before I can. “You missed us! We did…oh my God, you should have seen the beetles…” He is halfway to narrating the beetle-mash miracle, and Tyler’s look slices him off mid-sentence like practised shears.

Tyler ignores the commentary. He looks at me.

“We need to move,” he says.

My pen is already uncapped inside my jacket. Routine makes a weapon of me; habit steadies my hands. “Why?” I ask, although I can take a guess.

His jaw stiffens. “Capri took Enid.”

For a second the world narrows to the single syllable of her name. My stomach empties into a hard little stone and settles there. I think of the blood in the clearing, of the snapped fabric, of the men with gear and the beetle nonsense that bought us time.

Fester’s face does a series of cartoon flips at once: confusion, hope, denial, then pitch-terrified. “What? No. Capri...why...how... Is she… does she have permission? Is it legal? Can someone call a lawyer who fights monsters? Do we have insurance?”

“Keep your brain for junk mail,” I say. “Fester, sit down. Breathe like an instrument.” He inhales like a man who thinks breath is a party trick and then actually manages to slow.

Tyler steps closer, the kind of closeness that is not about intimacy but urgency. He drops something into my palm. It’s a patch of fur caught on twine. I recognise the coarse dark hair even before I catalogue the mud. The smell is sharp and undeniable.

“She’s been taken to a compound Capri is arranging,” Tyler says. “They’re moving her tonight. There’s an auction or a demonstration. People will come. They’ll sell a showpiece. Capri’s securing the prime spot.”

My pen scrapes across paper with the precision of a blade writing orders. I make a new line on the ledger: Enid captured. Destination unknown. Move now? Ink pools obediently.

Fester, who has now sat down and is using his hat as a thinking device, whistles audibly. “That’s…that’s bad. That’s really bad. That’s…uh…commercial-grade bad.”

“It’s worse,” Tyler says. His eyes are steady on me. “They’ll make a spectacle out of her. Capri has buyers. People who pay to see control exercised. If they get her in front of a crowd, it becomes impossibly expensive to undo.”

“How long?” I ask.

“Hours,” Tyler says. “She’s already in transit. Possibly in the next shipment out of town. If we move now, we might intercept. If we wait, they get distance and paperwork and a platform. The platform makes monsters into merchandise.”

Fester literally jumps to his feet. “We ride! We’ll chase! Esmeralda can go in full throttle! I’ll navigate! I have maps! I can…”

I close my mouth on the ache forming in it. “Three days was a plan,” I say to him. “Now it’s hours. Pack only what you can carry. Bring no sentimental objects that double as trip hazards. Bring the gun if you have to bring something ridiculous.” I pause. “Bring nothing that will make you a target.”

Tyler’s look is unreadable. “I’ll find a route. I know a road they use for transfers. I can get us close. But we need speed and no attention.”

Fester’s grin is wide. “Oh! I love raids! Do we raid at night? Maybe sing a rally cry! I can bring a trumpet!”

“Bring only the things you need. I said, “I cut him off, which has the effect of focusing him marginally. He nods like a collared animal and then, because he cannot wholly be tamed, adds, “But the trumpet idea was golden.”

Tyler looks at me again, a long, measured assessment. “I couldn’t stop them,” he confesses quietly. “I was close. I tried. But they had crates and people who knew how to move animals. Capri’s not amateurish. She planned this.” His voice tightens. “I can get you there, but it will be dangerous.”

“Then we move now,” I tell them both. “We take Esmeralda, and we drive. Tyler, you show us the route. Fester, you can sing.’’

Tyler steps back into the shadow, and for the first time that night, I think I read something close to exhaustion in his face. “If Capri wants to make a show, they’ll be expecting more than strength. They’ll be counting on people who admire power. Wealthy people who want to collect trophies. They will come prepared to buy and remove. We don’t have money for bidding. We need to cause a disruption.’’

Fester slaps his thigh. “Disruption! My favourite sport. Are we allowed to wear crazy hats for disruption?”

My mouth almost curls with something that approximates humour and then does not.

Tyler reaches in his jacket and pulls out a small scrap of paper. It’s the same receipt, folded, with an address. He slides it to me. “This is where they’re staging tonight. It’s outside town, an old warehouse the buyers use. They’ll move her through the back. There’s a gate.”

I look at the name on the paper and feel my spine turn into a wire I can’t let go of. Everything condenses into a single line of action: go, intercept, get Enid, destroy the platform.

Fester fumbles with a map like a child deciding which superhero cape to wear. “Road trip!” he says.

Tyler’s voice is low and hard as a promise. “We move now.”

…

Chapter Text

Wednesday’s POV

We move under the full moon. Esmeralda coughs and wakes as if clearing its throat for a confession. The golf cart’s engine rattles in small, patient complaints; Fester straps in with the seriousness of a man signing an oath; three jars of marshmallow fluff thud against his knees like small, absurd relics. “Think of the comfort factor,” he says, arranging the jars in a cradle.

“Comfort makes bad historians,” I say, sliding my notebook into the inner pocket where my hand can find it without asking. “Leave them.”

He sniffs as if offended. “You’re no fun. Also, snacks are morale.”

Tyler waits under the bridge like he said. He hands me a scrap of paper folded so many times it has the patience of a criminal. Gate guards swap at 23:00. Back road two miles west. Soft shoulder, truck route. Watch for dogs. His fingers are steady when they press it into my palm. “I’ll meet you at the bridge,” he says. He does not look at me when he adds, “Move fast and quietly.”

Fester slaps his knee. “Bridge! I love bridges. They make great photos. Also, bridges are symbolic of…”

“No music,” I say. “Also, no trumpet.”

“Why not? Trumpet is dramatic.” He already imagines it. His eyes glitter at the image of triumph rendered in brass. “You could narrate, and I could…”

“Uncle.” I say, “No trumpet.”

He sulks in the way men with too much optimism sulk: loudly, theatrically, and in three different keys. Then he clicks the ignition, and Esmeralda lurches forward in that determined, apologetic way it has perfected.

The back road is narrower than the map suggests and darker than the radio commercials promise. Trees fold their fingers over the lane. We creep up the shoulder, headlights punching holes in the night. The cart eats potholes. I keep my eyes at the margins. Tyler leads like a man who has been practising invisibility in small instalments: a low silhouette, quick steps, and a ghost that knows the difference between a hunter and someone pretending to be quiet.

Fester hums under his breath. They’re show tunes rendered as a nervous charm. Every truck that thunders past makes him start as if the world is giving him mild electric shocks. He fumbles with a paper map printed in a decade that treated fonts as suggestions and snacks as equipment. He murmurs lists under his breath like a litany. Occasionally he pokes me in the ribs with a question trimmed in panic. “Do we have, like, a plan B? Plan B should be dramatic. And functional.”

“We have contingencies,” I say. “Plan B is: do not die before doing useful things. Also, no singing.”

He eyes me mournfully. “That’s not a plan; that’s a life goal.”

We slide under a bridge where water moves the world along. The air smells of damp metal and old leaves. Tyler waits with his back to the water, hands tucked into his jacket like he’s guarding warmth. He folds the scrap of paper into a smaller, sharper thing and points.

“Two guards per shift at the east dock,” he says. “They swap at twenty-three. At the swap someone opens the gate to let a rig through. If we time it so we slip behind that motion, the yard’s momentarily occupied. There’s a secondary route through an unmanned lot with low grass. It’s soft enough for the cart. They expect trucks. They won’t expect a golf cart.”

Fester leans forward, earnest. “So we sneak. I can be very sneaky. I was a quiet child. My stealth is historic…ish.”

“You are our noise,” I tell him. “Do what you do, but not loudly. Just leave the trumpet.”

He raises one hand solemnly. “I accept the noise. I will be quietly loud.”

Tyler gives us a look like a teacher who has been saddled with improv students. “We keep to shadows. We go when guards change. Four minutes of confusion is our window. Keep radios off. Don’t run unless necessary. Dogs are trained to bark at novelty; they aren’t idiots. If a dog sniffs and makes a decision, be patient.”

I log it all in my head, the way I always do. Timekeepers: gate swap twenty-three. Obstacles: dogs, cameras, and a man in a headset who likes to joke. Resources: a small white cart that is not built for speed but is narrow enough to be insultingly useful. Variables: Fester’s improvisational bravery and Tyler’s hydeness, which is a variable I both rely on and distrust. I write none of it down; some lists are meant to be burnt if found.

The road narrows into industrial punctuation: chain-link fences, stacks of pallets, and a container half-swallowed by the dark. Tractor lights blink like distant fireflies. A truck idles at the dock, hazard lights blinking a slow, patient eye. Men move with gloves and radios. The field smells of diesel and straw and the small metallic tang of money.

We park under a hedgerow a fair distance off and watch. Tyler points: a van backed to the bay, crates arranged like inventory. Men move with the bored choreography of paid muscle. He brings his thumb down on a crease of the map. “There. See the cluster? That’s where they keep specimen crates. Lot mark stencilled on the timber.” He does not say it loudly; he does not need to.

Fester leans in and peeks at the map, breathing like he’s been invited to a secret. “Do you think they’ll have snacks? You know, for the buyers. Maybe little tasting stations.”

I press my pen into the paper between my fingers until the point digs a fraction. “Fester, if you invent an event called ‘buyer brunch’, I will make you the main course.”

He blinks at me, then grins. “That’s a compliment, right?”

Tyler doesn’t smile. “We watch their patterns,” he says. “If there’s an earlier swap or an extra van, we shift. We can use the bridge as a staging point. I’ll mark the route. You drive; I point.”

“Fine,” Fester says, bouncing with the small, illogical glee of a man who has decided the world is a game he has been admitted to. “I’ll drive. I’ll be the getaway aesthetic. Also, I brought snacks.”

“You have three jars of fluff,” I note.

“They are morale,” he says, and pats the bag like it’s affectionate. “Also, I thought we might bribe a guard with a spoonful. Who can resist artisanal fluff?”

“We’re not bribing anyone,” I say. “We’re stealing a friend.”

The word 'friend' sits in the car like a small bomb. Fester’s face softens for a second in a way that makes him dangerous, not because of strength but because it reveals a kernel of sentimental courage. He swallows a laugh and becomes ridiculous again before the moment can age.

We sit in a practised silence, each doing the work our nerves require. Tyler checks his watch, then the road. Shadows fold and unfold like pages. I list things for myself and the ledger takes them without complaint: Time:myself, twenty-two fifty. Guards: two per shift. Dogs: one on a loop. Gate: manual override at the east hinge. Variable: Capri films and expects spectacle. Contingency: if the gate slams, we have a second entry through the south yard.

Fester clears his throat. “Anyone want a morale marshmallow?”

“No,” I say. “But if you sing the national anthem in code, I will throw you under a truck.”

He smiles and, for once, is quiet. The cart breathes, and the world narrows. Moving fast and quietly is less a tactic than a promise you make to the people whose names you refuse to lose. We drive toward the place that thinks people are inventory.

…

We ease Esmeralda between two shipping containers. The grass hushes our tyres. Dew soaks the hems of my jeans. Tyler moves like someone who has done this before. He makes himself small, taking efficient steps that keep him out of sight. Fester fusses with his safety vest like it’s a costume that will make him brave.

The yard is a patchwork of light and shadow. A van sits against the dock; crates are stacked nearby. Men walk with radios, checking clipboards. Cameras on poles sweep the scene. A dog pads along a handler’s heels, nose low, ears alert.

Tyler whispers, “Three handlers on the dock. Two on the perimeter. One at the camera bank. They rotated faster than I thought.”

“Change plan?” I ask.

“Adjust. Fester becomes visible. He distracts. You and I go quiet. I handle the crate. You handle the cart.” He hands me a pair of wire cutters. He points out a narrow corridor between pallets leading toward a crate marked Lot #7.

Fester brightens at “visible”. He stands up like a man taking a bow. “I’ll be visible. Like a lighthouse, but cuter.”

“You will be a distraction,” I say. “Not loud singing. Not merch stalls. Distract, then vanish.”

He nods solemnly and tucks his jar of fluff into his jacket as if it’s a secret weapon.

Tyler checks his watch. “Cameras sweep in a six-minute cycle. The north pallet stack has a blind spot for about ninety seconds after the dock light blinks. That’s our window. Move fast, stay low.”

We time the camera sweep. It passes us and keeps going. For ninety seconds the pallet stack becomes a hollow we can hide in. We slide through the gap.

Inside, crates sit like wooden boxes of bad news. One is stencilled: LOT #7 LIVE SPECIMEN. A laminated invoice flaps on a clipboard: PAID BUYER: PRIVATE. DELIVERY: TONIGHT. SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS: MAINTAIN REACTIVITY.

A handler speaks into his headset: “Keep her reactive. Buyers want a show. Don’t sedate too deeply. They pay extra for resistance.”

The words land like a punch. I taste cold iron at the back of my throat. This is not rescue practice. It’s selling something alive.

Tyler crouches by the crate, hands gloved. The padlock is heavy and new. He works it with steady fingers. I pry at a secondary latch. From inside comes a muffled sound. It’s a low, choked noise that makes my skin crawl. Enid is somewhere in that wood.

Fester steps out with perfect bad timing. He flails, waving a map and calling, “Excuse me! Delivery problem! Sorry, so sorry! Which dock is this? My GPS lied to me!” He’s loud and ridiculous and exactly what we need: human confusion.

A handler turns. “Who the hell…?” he starts.

Fester bats his eyelashes and stammers. “I’m terribly lost! This map’s terrible! I could have sworn this was… Oh my goodness, your safety vest is so flattering!” He is doing his best impression of someone who won’t be taken seriously.

The handler frowns and crosses toward him to sort the mess. Two other men glance at the open crate. That’s the opening Tyler needs.

The padlock surrenders with a small click. Tyler slips the hasp free. He peels back the crate top, and straw smells the air. A muzzle gapes through the slats. Enid’s eyes find mine. They’re wide, amber, full of fear and something close to recognition.

She is bound with thick rope, and her breathing is rough. I press my hand through the slats and feel coarse fur and a tremor. Her muscles twitch against the ropes. She tries to move, and the restraints bite.

“Shh,” I tell her softly. “Hold. I’m here.”

Tyler works the knots with concentrated speed. “If she snaps, step back,” he whispers. “If she stays, loosen more. We carry her out.”

He slips the muzzle strap loose. Enid breathes deeper, tasting the air like someone relearning how to breathe. Tyler cuts the rope, and it drops away. For a half-second she tests a leg like a person checking if a wound still hurts. Then the alarm cracks.

A shout goes up: “Hey! Who is that? Get back!”

Tyler moves fast. He lifts Enid as if she is both heavy and fragile. She presses into him, not attacking him but not trusting the space either. Fester is still performing. He yelps an apology to anyone in earshot, flapping and talking, buying seconds with noise.

Spotlights swing hard. Dogs bark. Radios snap commands. Men sprint towards us.

“Run!” Tyler snaps, and his voice is clean and sharp. He vaults over pallets, Enid tucked into his arms. I follow, pushing a pallet aside to clear a path.

We reach Esmeralda. I throw myself into the driver’s seat; Tyler is shoving Enid into the small nook behind the seats.

…

The spotlight catches us full. It’s a bright, accusing circle that shows every mistake. For a moment the yard freezes: men, lights, barking dogs. Then everything accelerates.

Tyler tucks Enid tighter against his chest. She presses into him, body trembling but not fighting. There’s a thin, wet sound as she exhales, and for a second she is only breathing.

“Go!” Tyler snaps. His voice is small and perfect for cutting through chaos.

I slam Esmeralda forward. The cart jumps like an animal startled, and we lurch into motion. Gravel spits. A guard throws himself in our path and misses by inches as we hop a low concrete kerb. The dog nearest us snaps its jaws and slides past, angry and useless without a handler to direct it.

Fester is a windmill of energy. He’s flailing, shouting, trying to make himself a moving target that buys us space. “Right this way! Wrong gate! Oops!” he calls, because panic makes him inventive. He’s waving a flashlight like a flag, and it’s the most infuriating thing I’ve ever been grateful for.

“Uncle, stop waving the light like a disco weapon!” I shout, one hand on the wheel, the other on the cart’s little horn. He dutifully waves the light some more because commitment is his speciality.

We clear the yard and cut onto a service road that runs along the fence. Headlights bloom like eyes behind us. It’s not the friendly blink of a car, but a hard, mechanical pursuit. A van peels out of the dock and follows, sirenless and hungry.

The cart is not built for speed. Esmeralda complains in a way that sounds like a small animal with a bad cough. Tyler leans low over Enid, whispering something I don’t hear. He gives me quick directions: “Left at the old mill. Two turns through the orchard. They’ll follow the main road.” His voice is both map and anchor.

“Left at the old mill,” I repeat into the night. Fester fumbles with the map, upside down at first, then right-side up. “I know a shortcut! It’s scenic!” he says, as if selling the idea.

The orchard road is narrow and stitched with ruts. Apples lie like forgotten grenades. Trees brush the cart’s sides and knock loose a rain of leaves that drift against the headlights. We thread the lane too fast; for a breath the cart bucks, and I think of the list of things I will never do and then I pull it right.

Behind us a truck rumbles down the main road, and its headlights split like blades. They are gaining. Men shout into radios; voices mix into a single, urgent static.

Enid shifts in Tyler’s arms. She slides her muzzle against his neck. Her breath is warm and wet. Up close the scent of her is iron and fur and a wild, living thing that refuses to be a label.

“Stay with us,” I tell her, not because I think she needs the command but because speaking steadies the world. “Quiet. Trust me.” The words feel loud and small at once.

We take the orchard’s last bend and hit a dirt farm lane that is barely a suggestion. A parked pickup blocks half of it. It’s a last-minute barrier, someone trying to be clever, but Tyler is already out, leaping from the cart with Enid still in his arms. He jogs through the field, boots eating mud, and I follow too quickly. The cart bumps and judders; I keep my eyes on the space where the headlights linger and on the small arc of Tyler’s shoulders moving ahead.

Fester, doing his best to be useful, throws a length of rope he keeps for sentimental reasons. “Tie up the gate!” he yells to nobody in particular. He’s both a help and a hazard; his grin broadens when the rope catches a fence post and our little cart rolls through a gap.

The van is close enough now that I can see its driver’s profile. It’s a silhouette bent forward with the study of someone who has rehearsed capture. A second vehicle is turning onto the lane behind them.

We cross a shallow culvert, and the cart belts across wet ruts. Esmeralda groans, and I polish my hands on the wheel until they ache. The orchard closes behind us like a throat. We are narrow and low, and for a few blessed seconds the trees swallow the sound of pursuit.

Then a spotlight swings through the orchard and finds us again. The beam eats the darkness and paints our little cart in white. A radio crackles: “There! Behind the trees! Keep them in sight!”

“They have dogs and radios,” Tyler says, and something in his voice softens with a memory I don’t know. “They’ll push the perimeter. We cut through the marsh. Two minutes to the bridge…”

He glances at Enid. The Hyde shift is a small thing: a deeper breath, a tightening at the jaw. Tyler’s hands are steady, but there is a weight to them I haven’t seen fully before. Not a menace exactly, but the promise that he will hurt anything that hurts what he holds.

I drive with that promise. The marsh road is worse than the orchard lane. It’s softer, with hidden puddles. Esmeralda’s little engine labours; dirt slaps the wheel wells. We splash through a shallow pool, and the cart shudders.

A sound cracks behind us. It’s metal on metal, a splintering crash. One of the pursuing vehicles clipped a fallen tree across the road; it skidded, sparked, and went off the track. That buys us precious seconds. Fester whoops like a child at a magic trick. “Nature helps!” he cries.

“Nature is not a tactic,” I say, even as relief linesmy chest.

We reach the bridge. Tyler knows. It’s a narrow old thing with guardrails one could vault in a hurry and a watercourse that runs like quicksilver beneath. Tyler points to a pull-off under the bridge where the grass is tall and the shadow is deep. “Park,” he whispers. “Blend in. Wait for me.”

He lifts Enid from the cart, and she folds into him like a creature that’s learning to accept a hand. For a moment I watch them: the barista and the werewolf, a clumsy, unlikely pair. Tyler sets her down in the grass and checks her quickly. There are no new cuts, breathing a little steadier. He presses fingertips along her flank like reading a pulse.

Fester flops down against the cart, breathless and ridiculous, and pulls a jar of marshmallow fluff out as if to celebrate. “Victory snack?” he asks.

“No,” I say, soft but firm. “Not yet.”

We crouch in the dark under the bridge. In my notebook my pen hovers over a new ledger line: We have Enid. We are not safe. They know her crate number. They have buyers and money. We have a plan and two very small engines. The ink feels heavy.

Tyler stands, scanning the treeline. He looks tired enough to be dangerous. “They’ll try to box us in,” he says. “They’ll expect us to head for the main road. Someone will try to cut us off. We keep low. We walk until the cart is not a target, and then we go.”

Fester nods, overly solemn. “I will be low. I will be stealthy, quietly loud.”

I close the notebook and slip it into my jacket. The night is a small thing here: water moving under the bridge, the far-off mutter of tyres, the steadying noise of a man breathing next to an animal trying to remember being free.

A beam of light comes from the road and grows brighter. Headlights are coming toward the bridge. For a second there is no sound but the river and the small, insistent beating of my own pulse.

Someone is coming.

…

Headlights bloom across the bridge. For a moment the light washes everything flat. The grass, the metal, the small white body of Esmeralda. My chest tightens the way it does before decisions that don't leave room for rehearsal.

Tyler freezes, listening. Enid tucks her head against his jacket and breathes shallowly, like someone relearning patience. Fester fumbles with his jar of fluff as if a snack could be a strategy; he keeps one hand on it like a talisman.

“People,” Tyler whispers. “Coming this way.”

“Hide or run?” Fester asks, voice pitched somewhere between hopeful and hungry for drama. He is already glancing for places to be theatrically concealed.

“Hide,” I say. “Quiet. Be invisible without performance.”

Fester tries to look invisible and instead becomes a human question mark in a safety vest. He crouches behind the cart with an elegance he did not know he owned and whispers, “I’m a shadow. Very small. Very cute.”

I pinch the bridge rail until my knuckles go white and point with my chin to a scrape of reeds near the edge of the water. “There. Crawl.”

We move slowly and sensibly. Tyler lifts Enid with the careful strength of someone balancing two lives at once. She presses in, eyes half-lidded, and for once the Hyde is a quiet thing, not the threat I worry he might be.

The approaching vehicle slows; its lights fold into a single, patient beam. It is not a police cruiser; its grille is heavy and utilitarian. A van, not marked, not official. The sound of its engine is a steady animal. The driver rolls down a window, and a beam sweeps side to side as if searching for movement. A man steps out: tall, heavy jacket, hands in his pockets like he expects respect to warm him. He holds a flashlight, not aimed yet, but he prefers posture to theatrics.

“Evening,” he calls. The light hits his face, and I study it: the scar on his brow and the way his smile is economical, not welcoming. He looks professional in the way men who sell constraint do. He carries the look of someone hired to finish tasks people would rather forget.

“State your business,” Tyler answers. He is calm in a way that is practised and dangerous; the stillness around him is not peace but readiness.

The man jerks his chin toward the yard. “We got a call. Movement. A small cart on the orchard lane.” His voice is flat. “Heard something. Thought maybe rats. Didn’t think much. Then I saw you.”

Fester’s whisper is a private broadcast: “Should have brought the marshmallows.”

“Keep your marshmallows off the bridge,” I hiss. “No one needs them now.”

The man crosses the bridge in slow steps, flashlight cutting short arcs. He stares at the cart as if it might confess its crimes. When he reaches the shadow of our hiding place, he squints, and the light finds Fester’s blinking eyes. Fester starts and smiles the smile of a man trying to appear casual and failing.

“Evenin’,” Fester says loudly, because he doesn’t do quiet like the rest of us. “Lovely night! The river is so peaceful. Have you seen any, uh, lost puppies?”

The man’s jaw ticks. He is not amused. He clicks something on his radio, and a voice answers in static: “Confirm visual on a small vehicle. Two adults, one possibly injured. No, no, no, it looks like a canine. Keep eyes on them. Don’t approach alone.”

The man’s mouth tightens. He steps closer. The beam scans our faces. It lands on Enid; only the slight curl of fur over Tyler's arm is visible, but it is enough. The man’s eyes harden in a way I have seen on men who measure animals as inventory.

“Who are you?” he asks. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re passing through,” Tyler says. His voice is flat; his fingers tighten for a second on Enid’s flanks. “Why are you following us?”

“We follow orders,” the man says. “Local security. The report came from a private contractor. They pay well. They want anything suspicious rounded up.” His smile is small and dull. “If you’re with the wrong crowd, you’ll be turned over.”

There it is: the code phrase for a business that pays for itself. Capri’s operation runs on chequebooks and favours; private contractors take the edges off responsibility. The world narrows to the economy of cruelty.

Fester, who is not built for tension, tries to improvise charm. “We’re from out of town! Road trip! We have snacks!” He offers the jar of fluff as if it is a peace offering or at least an amusing misdirection.

The man’s expression does not change. He steps a foot closer, and his flashlight whines like a small animal. “Are you armed?” he asks, casual, the way you would ask a neighbour if they’d like sugar.

“No,” Tyler says. “We’re not armed.”

The man’s radio chirps again. Another voice: Movement near bridge. Hold position. Backup en route. The word 'backup' is a hard, cold thing.

Tyler looks at me. The depth of his worry is a quiet weight. He lowers his voice so that only I and Enid and Fester might hear the meaning. “If they try to take her, don’t make a scene. Get to the cart. Drive. If I have to, I will…”

He doesn’t finish. I do not let him. Speech has a dangerous way of becoming a promise that must be fulfilled. Instead I press my palm flat against Enid, feeling the tremor along her side, and say, “If you have to, you will go with the plan. No exceptions.” My words are a briefing disguised as comfort.

The man narrows his eyes. He steps forward until he is close enough for us to smell dust and tobacco on his breath. “I’ll need identification,” he says. “If you refuse, I can take you in until we sort it out.”

Tyler inhales once, slowly. Hyde at his edge moves like a held animal: coiled, patient, dangerous. For a moment I glimpse the other side of him. His broader shoulders, a jaw not quite human in its set, and something cold as a stone. It makes the hair at my neck stand up.

“Identification,” Tyler repeats. He reaches into his jacket and produces nothing but a folded receipt and a small, grubby notebook. He does not bluff. He is not a man who lies with props. “We do not have papers for animals,” he says. “We have a friend, and we will not hand her over to people who sell living things.”

The man’s face goes very still. He has the look of someone who knows how to make a phone call that ends arguments. He nods with perfunctory politeness and snaps into his radio: “We have hostile refusal. Bring it in. Repeat, bring them in. Do not engage unless necessary.”

“Now,” Tyler says.

The word drops like a final order. The man straightens and moves to his van. He walks with a purpose that smells like leverage. His radio is a small, ugly thing that already sounds like reinforcements.

We have one choice: stand and fight with the chance of escalating into a catastrophe none of us can win, or move and risk leaving Enid exposed to the buyers if we fail. The decision is not a negotiation; it is a sharpened instrument.

Fester, always a source of misplaced optimism, whispers, “We could offer him fluff for ID? Everyone loves fluff.”

“Uncle,” I say, low enough so the man’s radio can’t pick it up. “If you offer fluff, you will be the only one I let die in a cartoonishly ironic manner.”

Fester pretends to be wounded and then stumbles toward the cart, as if the weight of being a walking distraction requires repositioning. It’s a small, human deflection and, in its ridiculousness, useful. The man watches Fester move, and for a tiny, fatal second, the radio chatter feeds the van’s engine like fuel to a beast.

Tyler exhales a sound that is half-anger, half-calculation. He bends close to Enid’s ear and murmurs, “If I go, Hyde, get to the cart. Do not come near unless you want me to make someone sorry.” The threat is not theatrical; it is a ledger entry set in muscle.

I swallow the urge to tell him not to. Not because I’m naive, but because the math of the moment is exact: what ends this is speed and not sudden violence that will bring more people. He nods once, an almost imperceptible agreement, and straightens.

The man returns, backlit by the van’s interior light, radio pressed to his mouth. “Backup is two minutes out. Stay where you are.” He does not sound confident; he sounds contracted into the job.

Two minutes. The world has shrunk to a watch. Tyler’s eyes find mine. “Bridge,” he says. He is already moving, changing the plan. “We go now. Quiet. Use the reeds. Keep that man distracted. Fester acts all the things you can act.”

Fester salutes like a small, ridiculous soldier. “On it. I will be invisible and loud.”

We move.

Tyler slips into the reeds with Enid tucked across his shoulders like contraband. She breathes against his neck; the sound is a small, repeated storm. I follow close, hauling gear and keeping my voice a low instrument of instruction. Fester stumbles after us, a shadow with a flashlight that seems to insist on announcing our presence even as it tries to hide him.

The van drives off the bridge, and the man’s silhouette recedes into the yellow cone of his own spotlight. He calls into his radio: “They’re heading over the bridge. Follow the track. Don’t lose them.”

We drop into the marsh grass and move like thieves in prayer. Water sucks at our boots. The reeds close around us, a green throat that masks sound. Behind the curtain of growth, the van’s engine hums higher for a moment, then fades as it takes a longer route.

For now we are in a pocket of night that hides the chase. I breathe in the reek of river and mud and the sweet, iron smell that follows Enid. My pen hums against paper in my head: time, sound, men, moving parts. We all move toward the same thin hope: get her off this line of commerce and into a place with fewer hands.

Two minutes feels like an hour. The grass has ears, and our breaths are loud. We press forward, toward the silence ahead and whatever fury waits if we stumble.

…

We push through the reeds until the marshland stops. The ground is pulling at our boots; mud tries to take whatever we carry. For a while the only sound is water, carried faintly on the wind, and Enid breathing against Tyler’s chest.

Tyler is quiet. His steps are careful and quick. Fester is loud in the small, committed ways he can’t stop: the occasional muttered trivia about wildlife, a whispered cheer when his foot finds solid ground. I let his noise be. Some distractions are useful.

We find a place Tyler knows: an old boathouse half-swallowed by brush, its roof sagging and its door off its hinges. It sits where the river bends slow, a place people forget unless they want to. Tyler nods, quick and grateful. “We can hide her here for a bit,” he says. “It’s private and off the main line. We lie low, patch what we can, then move before morning.”

We get Enid inside. The smell of hay and old wood mixes with the iron smell clinging to her. I kneel and check the ropes where Tyler cut them. There are bruises and one shallow gash across a foreleg; it’s not life-threatening, but it’s sharp enough to matter. I fetch water from a rusted can and clean the wound. Enid flinches at first, then neither pulls away nor attacks. Her eyes find mine. For a second, a weird, dangerous second, there’s the friend I remember and the animal that has been hunted.

“Thank you for trusting me enough to help us,” Tyler says to me, quietly. The words are small a confession.

Fester drops his pack and produces a towel with the kind of pride of a man who’s prepared for everything. “I brought towels!” he announces. “This one smells faintly of waffles.”

“No one needs waffle-scented towels,” I say, but I take it. The towel is clumsy but clean enough. Fester watches as if we are performing a miracle. He is the sort of person who will believe in miracles when they involve marshmallow fluff or misplaced courage.

Tyler checks Enid’s breathing and her pupils. “She’s come down from sedation. They used something light; someone wanted a reaction, not damage.” He rubs his thumb over her flank. “She’ll sleep if we calm her.”

I sit back on my heels and sketch quick notes in the margins of my notebook: Bruise R front. Gash superficial. Sedative used: short half-life. Possible stimulants used to ensure reactivity. Needs rest and quiet. Transfer schedule unknown but soon. The ledger keeps me centred the way a heartbeat does.

Enid lets out a low sound and curls into a ball. Her breath evens. For the first time all night, she closes her eyes. Tyler exhales a breath I’ve never heard him release before. It’s a sound that is almost relief.

“Do you think she remembers me? I tried to help her while she was captured. ” he asks, quietly enough that the question is fragile.

“She remembers enough,” I say. “She remembers you being the Hyde. Memory misfires. But she knows your scent.” I mean it, and do not soften the edges. There are things mercy does not make pretty.

Fester, having failed at quiet, attempts competence in a different direction. He fans the broken door for flies, rattles through his pack for bandaids and useless comforts, and then, proudly, offers Tyler a spoonful of marshmallow fluff.

Tyler looks at the spoon, then at Fester, then at Enid. He doesn’t take it. “Later,” he says. “Now: water, bandage, clean.” Practical and blunt: his hands stay steady.

We work fast. I wrap the shallow gash with a strip of cloth. Tyler keeps watch at the doorway, eyes on the dark line of the river and the faint sheen of the road beyond. The boathouse creaks like a thing sighing in sleep.

After a while of quiet, Tyler speaks. He talks in the short, careful sentences of someone who measures risk aloud so others can understand it.

“Capri’s not running this alone,” he says. “She has buyers and a network that moves animals out of sight. Private buyers hire couriers, secure trucks, and contracts that make things legal in the worst way. She’s got a phone team, and she films everything. People pay for spectacle. That’s how she makes money.”

“She used to run parties,” Fester says, puzzling the logic out loud. “So glamour. So… auctionable?”

“Not parties,” Tyler corrects. “Markets. Private collectors. People who want trophies and will spend enough that laws are a problem they can solve.” He looks at Enid, and his jaw tightens. “They stage her. They show her reaction. They sell the show.”

The words are blunt and ugly and rearrange the room into something colder. Fester looks pale for a second. He asks, “Can we just buy her? Like, pay them? How much is a werewolf?”

The question is stupid in the way only an honest person can be: practical and wrong-headed. Tyler’s mouth hardens. “It’s not about money alone. They launder purchases, they create legal loopholes, and the price goes up when something fights. If we pay, we feed the market. We make it worse.”

“That’s deeply depressing,” Fester says. “Also expensive.”

“It’s a network,” Tyler says. “They have storage sites, paperwork, and routes. If we free her, they widen the search and tighten the net. We intercept tonight because once she’s moved to a registered buyer, the paper trail buries her.”

I breathe slowly. The plan remains the blunt tool: move, hide, get her out of the system. The night feels thinner the closer we get to the idea of success. Triumph is a dangerous thing.

We set a quiet watch. Tyler sits on a crate and sleeps like someone who can fall into short, clean naps. I keep the notebook on my knees and draw lines more than words: time, wind, sounds. Fester falls asleep with his safety vest under his head and one jar of fluff gripped like a dream.

The hours shrink. Dawn is a rumour when the sudden whine of a motor splits the marsh. Tyler's eyes snap open. He is not slow. He is alert with the speed of someone who knows how fast decisions must be.

“Not them,” he breathes. A sound like a vehicle; not a van, not the convoy, but small and precise: a drone.

The spotlight that follows is thin and clinical. It sweeps across the boathouse like a searchlight tracing a guilty conscience. The beam cuts through grass, finds our white cart, and finds the shape of a man asleep with his marshmallow in his hand.

Fester wakes with a soft curse and wraps his arms around the jar. “They’ve invented breakfast drones now?” he says, half-joking.

“No,” Tyler says. “Capri uses drones to preview movement and to livestream. She started paying for aerials last season.” He stands, fast and cold. “They’ll try to relocate her if they think we’re nearby. Or they’ll try to flush us out.”

We are not quiet for long. The drone’s camera clicks, and the speaker emits a synthesised voice: “This area is private property. Please identify yourselves.” The voice is flat and too polite for what it asks.

Tyler moves to the doorway, shielded. “We can’t let them film,” he says. “If they film, they broadcast, and buyers start to bid. We have to keep any footage from going live.”

“How do you stop a drone?” Fester asks, helpless and practical.

I already have answers in my head: signal jammers, nets, traps. We have none. Only decisions that do not wait for tools.

Tyler looks at me. For a second he is two things at once: the barista with injured hands and the man whose other side solves problems with force. “When I cut in the yard, they filmed. Capri banked on visibility. If she can broadcast Enid alive, she gets more money. We need to get her off any grid: no phones, no drones. We move now, while they’re figuring out where the signal came from.”

The drone hovers, scanning. The synthesised voice repeats: “Remain where you are.”

Fester whispers, “Maybe we can offer it fluff? Drones like fluff, right?”

“Uncle,” I say. “If you try to bribe a camera, I will become a more literal expression of my displeasure.”

He sulks into quiet obedience. Tyler moves first. He lifts Enid, who has started to stir with a low, restless sound, and turns toward the back of the boathouse, where a narrow, overgrown path slips away from the river. “This way,” he says. “We duck through the wetland and then the old cart track. It’s slower, but it keeps her out of line of sight.”

We move as quietly as we can. The drone sweeps and re-sweeps, its light tracing us like a question mark. Somewhere, a phone chat bubbles with operators, and a human voice wonders aloud if the target is worthy of bids. That small human voice is enough; it means someone is paying attention.

Halfway down the path, the drone’s light narrows to a bright pin, and the speaker blares in a voice that has lost courtesy: “Stop! You are on private property. Lay down your hands and surrender the animal. Come out with your hands empty.”

I stop. My feet are rooted in mud and river smell. The path is a thin place between seeing and not seeing. The words leave the speaker like a rope.

Tyler turns. His face is calm in a way that is not peace. “We don’t surrender animals,” he says. “We take them somewhere quieter.”

The drone hesitates, and then the light grows. A noise comes from it now too, a tiny motor note that to me sounds like the beginning of an unravelling.

Behind the drone, in the half-light, something else appears: a second vehicle lights up the road, its headlights tracing the marsh. Not the main convoy, but close enough. A silhouette steps out beside it and holds something long and black: not a flashlight, but an object that glitters coldly in the light.

Capri’s voice cuts through the night over the small speaker, not the drone, but a phone call patched to every line: “I see you,” she says, soft and clear. “Don’t make this messy. Bring her out. I’ll make it worth your while.”

The promise hangs like a trap. We are in the marsh with less than we thought and an enemy who broadcasts.

We have one small chance: move now and try to outrun the cameras, or stand and risk giving them the angle they want. The decision is a knife that requires hands.

I look at Tyler. He looks at Enid. The Hyde under his skin tightens like a wound about to close. The night smells like iron and choices and the ledger scribbles, impatient and precise: Drones. Live feed. Backup on the way. Decision: move through reeds or surrender. Risk: broadcast = buyers increase.

Tyler says, very quietly, “We move. Now.”

Fester breathes a comic, sharp little word: “Onwards, heroic troupe!”