Sable Moreau was having a fantastic day.
Fantastic as in the weather was great, the outfit ca together on the first try, and the universe seed to arrange itself around her convenience. She'd woken up in Reid's apartnt with the sun coming through his floor-to-ceiling windows at just the right angle to make her skin glow. Showered with his expensive body wash that slled like sandalwood and money. Borrowed one of his shirts because hers had sohow ended up behind the couch, and it looked better on her anyway.
Reid was already gone by the ti she woke up. A case out near the eastern district. He'd left a note on the counter that said "dinner tonight?" with a little drawing of a stick figure holding a sword that was supposed to be him but looked like a child's art project. She'd taken a photo of it and sent it to the group chat.
Pria responded first with a string of heart emojis. Greer sent a thumbs up. Dante sent a voice ssage that was just him making gagging sounds for twelve seconds. Lowell sent nothing because Lowell never sent anything in the group chat unless directly asked a question and sotis not even then.
By noon, Sable was seated at a window table in Lilac & Rye, a cafe in the nicer part of Brimton's magji district. Across from her sat two friends from outside the group, Wendy and Gia, both magjistars she'd t through magji school. The three of them had plates of food that cost more than what so D-Grade magjistars made in a day, and none of them thought twice about it.
"So he just left the note? No kiss goodbye, no breakfast, nothing?" Wendy stirred her drink with a look of exaggerated disappointnt on behalf of Sable's love life.
"He had a case. He's busy." Sable shrugged with a smile that said she wasn't bothered in the slightest.
"Girl, if my man left for work without kissing
goodbye, I'd change the locks." Gia popped a piece of fruit in her mouth.
"Reid isn't the affectionate type in the mornings. He makes up for it." Sable left the implication hanging and Wendy nearly choked on her drink.
"You are such a slut!" Wendy laughed.
"No, we just have a healthy relationship." Sable's auburn curls bounced as she tilted her head with a grin.
This was her favorite version of herself. The one that sat in nice places with nice people and said things that made them laugh or gasp or lean in closer. Sable had learned a long ti ago that the center of attention was the best place to be. It felt good, it looked good, and she hasn’t really seen any bad sides of it yet.
She picked at her food while Wendy launched into a story about a C-Grade magjistar who asked her out by sending a fairie with a handwritten poem. The poem was apparently terrible, which was the whole point of the story. Gia yapped alongside her. Sable half-listened and half-scrolled through her phone, checking the group chat.
Reid had sent a photo of himself standing over what looked like the remains of a daemon with the caption "easy money." Greer responded with fire emojis. Dante responded with "you missed a spot" and an arrow pointing to a smudge on Reid's cheek. Pria responded with the cavon equivalent of whatever the daemon case was worth and a smiley face.
Her life in Brimton was exactly what she wanted it to be. A handso, powerful boyfriend who was on track for A-Grade. A circle of friends who were loyal, fun, and connected. A reputation in the community that opened doors without her having to knock. Cases that paid well enough to afford brunches like this without thinking about the bill. Everything in its right place.
She couldn't even rember the last ti she thought about Baxter.
"Oh, speaking of bad exes," Wendy pivoted seamlessly from her poem story. "Gia, did you ever hear back from that guy who ghosted you after the Star Clan fundraiser?"
"Don't bring him up while I'm eating!" Gia groaned.
"I'll never understand how soone could ghost a girl as pretty as you." Sable slipped the complint in like a card into a deck.
"Right?! That's what I said!" Wendy threw her hands up.
Sable smiled and took a sip of her drink. The sun was warm through the window. The food was good. The company was easy. Days like this made her feel like she had everything figured out.
"Have you guys tried the new place on Fifth? The one with the rooftop seating?" Sable asked, already moving the conversation to the next thing.
"The one that just opened? I heard the wait is like two hours on weekends." Gia scrolled through her phone looking for photos.
"Pria knows the owner. She can get us in whenever." Sable said it casually, as if having a skeleton key to the city's social scene was just a normal perk of friendship.
"Must be nice." Wendy smiled.
"It is." Sable didn't pretend otherwise.
Wendy was about to say sothing else when every window in the cafe shattered inward.
Glass sprayed across tables, into food, across laps and faces and arms. The sound hit first, a sharp and violent eruption that swallowed every other noise in the room. Then the screaming started. Wendy threw her arms over her face. Gia dropped under the table. The other patrons scrambled in every direction, chairs toppling, plates crashing to the floor, voices layering on top of each other in a wave of panic.
Sable's experience kicked in before her brain fully caught up. “Thread Volu I: Puppeteer’s Threads!” Her fingers twitched, and threads of mahna shot from her fingertips on instinct, spreading outward to latch on to the threat. She started to rise from her chair.
A hand grabbed the back of her head.
The grip was inhuman. The fingers wrapped around her skull with a strength that made her entire body understand in a single mont that resistance was not an option. The hand didn't squeeze. It felt like sothing was biting into her skull. But it didn’t bite down to crunch, it bit down to keep a grip on her skull with its teeth.
Sable was slamd face-first into the wall next to their table.
The impact was all at at once. The crack of plaster. The white flash behind her eyes. The spike of pain that started at her forehead and branched through her skull and down her spine like lightning in reverse. Her legs gave out but it didn't matter because the hand was still there, still holding, pressing her face into the crater her own head had made in the wall.
Her mahna threads collapsed. Not because she lost focus, though she did, but because sothing was pulling her mahna out of her body. She could feel it leaving, draining through the point of contact where that hand gripped her skull. Like a faucet had been opened sowhere inside her and everything was rushing toward the hand and disappearing. Her threads dissolved. The ambient mahna she always kept flowing through her body, the background hum that every magjistar lived with, went quiet.
Sable had never felt anything like it. She'd been hit before. She'd been hurt on cases, taken blows from daemons that left bruises and fractures and cuts that the healers had to fix. But those were injuries to her body. This was sothing reaching inside and taking a part of her that she didn't know could be taken.
"SOBODY HELP! PEACEKEEPERS! SOBODY!"
That was Wendy. Sowhere behind her, screaming at the top of her lungs. Sable couldn't see her. She couldn't see anything except plaster dust and the spiderweb of cracks radiating out from where her face t the wall. She tried to speak. Tried to activate any spell at all. Her fingers twitched but nothing ca out. The mahna wasn't there anymore.
'Who? Who is doing this? Who would attack a magjistar in the middle of the day in the middle of the city?'
Sable's hands clawed at the wall, trying to push herself free. The grip on the back of her head didn't budge. She might as well have been trying to move a mountain with her fingernails. The strength difference between her and whoever had her was so wide that the struggle itself felt pointless.
Her friends' screaming was getting further away. Running. Running to get Peacekeepers. Sable wanted to scream at them to co back, to help, to do sothing, but her face was in a wall and her mahna was gone and her body wasn't listening to her the way it was supposed to.
Then she heard sothing that stopped every thought in her head.
A laugh.
Not from the person holding her. From sowhere behind them. A sharp, nasally, grating laugh that she'd heard a thousand tis before. A laugh that used to follow her around at school, that used to echo in the training halls when its owner thought he'd done sothing impressive, that used to make her roll her eyes so hard she thought they'd get stuck.
A laugh she could recognize even in her sleep.
"Can you turn her around for ?" The voice that accompanied the laugh was polite. Almost pleasant. Like soone asking a waiter for more water.
The hand released her face from the wall. For a fraction of a second, Sable felt relief. Air on her skin. The pressure gone. Then the sa hand put its jaws around the back of her neck, spun her around, and held her up off the ground.
Two figures stood behind the one holding her. One was tall, a woman with a polar bear mascot head that covered her face, a massive weapon hanging at her side. She stood with her arms crossed and her head tilted, enjoying the show.
The other was Baxter Rudd.
He looked different from the last ti she'd seen him. Thinner. Harder. His clothes were worn and his hair needed a cut. But the smile on his face was newer and wider than anything she'd ever seen him wear when they were together.
The person holding her wore a panda head that covered their entire head. A woman, based on the body. Short. Five feet, maybe less. Dog-head gloves on both hands, dark purple and pulsing faintly. The panda's eyes stared at her through the mask's openings, and Sable saw nothing in them that she could appeal to.
"Hello, Sable." Baxter greeted her with a smile. "Are you happy to see ?"
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