Harper’s phone buzzed against her thigh.
She ignored it.
The barista at Honeycomb Café had just misspelled someone’s name in a spectacular new way—“Chrystl” somehow becoming “Krystle”—and Harper needed to text a picture to Rowan with seventeen laughing emojis and a threat to make it into a meme.
Except she couldn’t.
Because Rowan’s phone sat quietly on the coffee table in Harper’s apartment, screen dark, charger coiled uselessly beside it.
Out of habit, Harper pulled her own phone out anyway.
The buzz wasn’t a text.
The notification bar lit with a calendar reminder: SAMHAIN DINNER – 8PM – RO’S.
Harper stared at it.
Her stomach twisted.
“Oh,” she said aloud.
On the other end of the couch, Zia looked up from her laptop. “What,” she asked, pencil paused between her teeth.
“It’s…” Harper swallowed. “It’s been a week.”
“A week since?” Zia prompted.
“Since she…” Harper gestured vaguely upward, sideways, nowhere. “You know. Got Narnia’ed.”
Zia’s eyes softened. “Right,” she said. “Feels…longer.”
“Feels shorter,” Harper said. “Like it’s only been a day, and also ten years.”
Zia shut her laptop.
Stretched.
“Coin?” she asked.
Harper reached into the pocket of her hoodie and pulled it out.
It was warm.
Always warm now.
Not hot.
Just…not room temperature.
A reminder.
A reassurance.
A threat.
Zia watched her fingertips trace the etched edge. “Anything?” she asked.
Harper shook her head. “No more than usual,” she said. “It pulses sometimes. When I’m…thinking about her too hard.”
“You’re always thinking about her too hard,” Zia said gently.
“I know,” Harper said.
They’d developed a routine.
Each night, before bed, Harper would sit cross‑legged on the floor, coin in one hand, the other wrapped around a mug of tea. She’d close her eyes and think of Rowan.
Not in a creepy way. Just…images. Memories. Rowan stacking books taller than Harper, then squeaking when they toppled. Rowan’s frown when customers dog‑eared pages. Rowan’s laugh when Harper slipped a truly terrible romance into her TBR stack “by accident.”
Sometimes the coin would…hum.
Sometimes it wouldn’t.
Zia would sit beside her, fingers tracing patterns in the air. Sigils. Circles. Connecting threads Harper couldn’t see.
Tonight, when Harper closed her fingers around the coin, something was…different.
A sharp prickle.
Like static.
“Ow,” she said, jerking her hand back.
The coin tumbled onto the carpet.
Zia leaned forward. “What?” she asked. “What happened?”
“It bit me,” Harper said.
Zia snorted. “Coins don’t—”
She broke off.
The coin lay on the rug.
A faint, golden light traced its edges.
Not bright.
Not dramatic.
Just…there.
“Okay,” Zia said. “Coins apparently do that now.”
Harper’s heart thudded. “Is that…good?” she asked. “Bad? Neutral?”
Zia reached out, hovering her hand a half‑inch above it. Her pupils dilated.
“Something’s…pulling,” she murmured.
“Pulling from…where,” Harper demanded.
“The other side,” Zia said. “Her side.”
Harper’s throat closed.
“She’s tugging?” she asked, voice thin.
“Not…hard,” Zia said. “Not like ‘get me the fuck out.’ More like…testing. Brushing. Saying…hello.”
“Hello,” Harper said instantly.
Zia shot her a look. “Don’t…answer with words,” she said. “It’s not a phone. It’s…mud.”
Harper snorted despite herself. “You and your metaphors,” she said.
“Close your eyes,” Zia said. “Sit.”
Harper sat.
Cross‑legged.
Hands on her knees.
Zia picked up the coin carefully and pressed it between Harper’s palms.
“Think of her,” Zia said. “Like you have been. But this time, not as…missing. Think of her as…*there.*”
“That’s hard,” Harper said.
“I know,” Zia said softly. “Try.”
Harper exhaled.
Closed her eyes.
She pictured Rowan.
Not the Rowan in the hospital waiting room, pale and scared.
Not the Rowan at the funeral, shoulders hunched.
She pictured Rowan in her flannel, hair a mess, arguing with Mrs. Carrow about whether to move the dragon books to the front display.
She pictured Rowan rolling her eyes when Harper insisted on reading aloud from the smuttiest passages of whatever romance paperback she’d found in the dollar bin.
She pictured Rowan’s hands.
Calloused from lifting boxes.
Burn scar on the side of her right thumb from a forgotten pan.
Bracelet on her wrist.
Light flared behind Harper’s closed lids.
She gasped.
“Easy,” Zia murmured.
Harper wasn’t *seeing* exactly.
But she *felt.*
A tug.
Not of her body.
Of her…attention.
As if someone on the other end of a very long, very thin rope had given it a tentative pull.
“Row,” Harper whispered before she could stop herself.
The rope shivered.
Warmth surged up her arms.
Not heat like fire.
Warmth like…Rowan’s apartment when all three of them were crammed on the couch under too many blankets, arguing about which contestant on a cooking show deserved to be set on fire.
Harper’s eyes stung.
“She’s okay,” she breathed. “She’s…alive.”
Zia’s fingers tightened over hers. “Yes,” she said. “You feel that?”
“Yes,” Harper said. “Yes.”
“Now,” Zia said, voice steady, “think…back. Not words. Just…weight. Presence. Let her know she’s not…alone.”
Harper exhaled.
She pictured her own hands.
Bruised knuckles from a recent skirmish with a bookshelf.
Ink on her fingers from scribbling notes in the margins of a cheap spiral.
She pictured the couch.
The ugly lamp.
The plant Rowan claimed to hate but always watered anyway.
She poured all of that into the sense of the coin between her palms.
The rope thrummed.
Warmth pulsed.
Then, slowly, it settled.
The light behind her closed lids dimmed.
Harper cracked one eye open.
The coin lay still.
No glow.
Just metal.
She let out a shaky breath.
“Well?” she asked.
Zia’s expression was soft. Fierce. Relieved.
“She’s…not tugging hard,” Zia said. “She’s…anchoring. Testing. Learning the feel of the rope.”
“Good,” Harper said hoarsely. “I’m…glad.”
Zia squeezed her knee. “Me too,” she said.
Harper wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “Damn it,” she muttered. “I wasn’t going to cry.”
“You always cry,” Zia said fondly. “It’s one of the things I love about you.”
Harper snorted. “Gross,” she said.
They sat in silence for a minute.
The world outside their apartment went on—cars, sirens, distant laughter.
Inside, the air felt…thicker.
Sharper.
More connected.
“You know this means,” Zia said quietly, “that if she ever *does* tug hard…”
“We’ll feel it,” Harper finished.
“And we’ll have to decide what to do,” Zia said.
“Easy,” Harper said. “We pull back.”
“Through what,” Zia asked dryly. “The microwave?”
“The lake,” Harper said. “The woods. The…weird old tree behind the farmhouse. We’ll find a seam.”
Zia studied her.
“You’re serious,” she said.
Harper met her gaze.
“Yes,” she said simply.
Zia looked at the coin, then back at Harper.
After a moment, she nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “Then we start…planning for that too.”
Harper huffed out a breath.
“Who knew,” she said, “that all those fantasy books about mortals storming fairyland would turn out to be *non‑fiction prep manuals.*”
Zia smiled faintly.
“Ever After is going to be very embarrassed when they realize their ‘fiction’ section is just a travel guide,” she said.
Harper barked a laugh.
The coin warmed again.
Just a little.
Like a heartbeat.
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