The Price of Threads
Emry punched a button on the visor above her steering wheel as we raced between the walls of a narrow back alley. Another blast shuddered the ground behind us, flattening part of a small house just beyond a wooden fence. Minor debris rained down on the roof and hood of the car.
The sound of splintering wood and crumbling concrete filled the air. Dust and smoke swirled through the alley like gray snow, catching in the headlights. My fingers dug into the edge of the seat as the car swerved around fallen debris.
Both Raven and I flinched instinctively. The concussive force of the explosion triggered muscle memories from years I’d rather forget—years in uniform, years in combat zones.
“That was close,” I murmured, my throat dry with adrenaline.
Emry shook her head. “That wasn’t close. That was a warning. If they’d wanted to take us out, we’d be gone. They’re just playing with us.”
She gripped the wheel tighter. “We should be grateful. Jakin put my car and this residence on the clearance list. As long as we’re on there, we won’t be harassed by patrols or flagged for detention.”
I frowned. “Why us?”
Emry glanced at me. “What do you mean?”
“This whole situation is a mess.”
“You two have been acting off all day,” Emry said. “If you weren’t so damn lucky—and let’s be honest, irrelevant to the priesthood—I’m not sure you’d still be here. There are folks being deported for less.”
Raven and I exchanged a look, opting not to challenge her yet. In the last reality, we might’ve explained—but this Emry, with her sharpened edge and roving paranoia, wasn’t the same friend we remembered.
“Irrelevant?” Raven echoed softly, just for my ears. “In our timeline, I’m the Last. You can’t get less irrelevant than that.”
I nodded, unease settling deeper in my gut. This world wasn’t just physically different—the entire power structure had shifted.
Emry’s car burst from the alley, fishtailing across an abandoned main street before screeching up her driveway and diving into the open garage. She punched the visor button again, and the door rumbled shut behind us.
For a few moments, she didn’t move. Her hands rested lightly on the steering wheel as her forehead bumped against it in slow, rhythmic contact.
I’d never seen Emry break like this—not in any timeline. She’d always been the strongest of us, the one who held it together even when everything was falling apart. But now her shoulders trembled slightly, her breathing ragged.
Raven moved as if to approach her, one hand half-extended toward her shoulder, then stopped himself. Uncertain, the gesture hung in the air between them.
“Don’t do that again,” she whispered. “You can’t just disappear. Especially not out in the open. Not now.”
Her voice cracked on the last word. She lifted her head, eyes rimmed red. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been looking for you? Three days without sleep. Three days of dodging patrols and bribing information brokers. I thought—” She stopped, swallowing hard. “I thought they got you.”
The raw fear in her voice struck me like a physical blow. Whatever this Emry had been through, it had carved something essential out of her.
Raven and I stepped out of the car in silence.
The yard, carefully tended in this morning’s timeline, was now overgrown—rosebushes wild, lawn unkempt, vines coiling over the porch railings. Whether it was neglect or camouflage, I couldn’t say.
The contrast with the warm, welcoming space we’d left just hours ago was stark. The windows were sealed shut. The hanging plants were withered or gone entirely. The warmth had vanished.
Inside, the transformation was even more jarring. The once warm and soft space was now colder, harder. The windows were sealed behind blackout curtains, and behind those, I caught glimpses of steel shutters. The cozy shelves and blankets I remembered were gone. A sterile scent hung in the air, like fresh-cut metal and burnt electronics.
Where a collection of handmade quilts had once draped over the couch, tactical gear now sat neatly folded. The coffee table where we’d played board games just the night before—in a different reality—had been replaced by a metal workstation covered in electronic components and tools.
Most jarring of all were the plants. The living ones Emry had lovingly tended last night in another timeline were gone, replaced by high-quality plastic replicas positioned near windows and vents.
“Her altar,” Raven whispered, nodding toward a corner of the living room.
I followed his gaze. The goddess shrine Emry had maintained in every timeline I’d known her—dedicated to The Morrigan, with candles and silver trinkets—had been transformed. Now it displayed military insignia, a framed photograph of an unfamiliar older man in uniform, and a single obsidian knife.
We left our phones in the Faraday pouch and placed it on the kitchen table.
Raven reached for Emry’s laptop, but she slapped his hand away—not hard, but firm.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I need to search the library database. A few names, that’s all.”
“Forget it. You don’t have clearance anymore. Neither do I.”
Raven exhaled. “Fine. The open web, then. I’ll stay low profile.”
“You lost your jobs at the think tank already. No point trying to save reputations you no longer have.”
Raven and I shared a glance. That’s new. We’d never worked for think tanks in our reality, and now we’d been fired from jobs we didn’t remember having. How many shifts had there been that we weren’t even aware of?
“Wait,” Raven said, brow furrowing. “When did we lose our jobs?”
“Last Tuesday.” Emry shot him an odd look. “After you published that opinion piece condemning the selection process. Said Aoife was perverting the priesthood’s mission. Called her ‘morally bankrupt’—your words, not mine.” She shook her head. “You two really don’t remember any of this?”
“We’ve been… disoriented,” I offered weakly. “The bombings today didn’t help.”
“I warned you. Told you over and over not to push Aoife. She might be the most powerful High Priestess alive, but she’s also the most vindictive. And now it’s payday.”
She tapped a few keys, rerouting the network connection and activating what looked like a private browser with encryption scripts running in the background. Then she shoved the laptop toward Raven. “Keep it simple. I have calls to make.”
She stepped into the adjoining office, taking her work phone with her and leaving her personal phone on the counter.
As the door closed behind her, the shadow of a drone passed over the not-quite-closed blackout curtains nearest us. The room’s already sparse light dimmed momentarily. I shivered, feeling trapped and exposed simultaneously.
Raven watched her go. “That didn’t sound like the Emry I remember.”
I shook my head. “You’d trust her with your life?”
“I would.”
My voice dropped. “Would you trust this Emry with your life? Because I think we’re in her house, not ours.”
Neither of us spoke more as Raven began his search.
First, he typed in his parents’ names. Their records came up immediately. Wedding photos. Obituaries. Academic papers.
“They’re still here,” he said. “That means I’m still here.”
He scrolled through the results, pausing at an obituary. “Same accident,” he murmured. “Same date. But the wording is different. Fewer mourners are listed.”
I leaned closer to the screen. Between entries for his parents were strange gaps—blank spaces where names should be, or entries marked simply “REVOKED” in bold red letters. People who’d been erased? Or people who’d been “disappeared” by Aoife’s goons?
“What was that one?” I asked, pointing at a name that disappeared too quickly as he scrolled.
“Not sure,” Raven replied, trying to find it again. “The database is behaving strangely. Timestamps are out of order, and some entries seem to be rewriting themselves as we watch.”
I found a mirror and set it on the table.
“See?” I said. “You’re still visible. So am I. The spell still holds.”
He nodded, quietly grateful. “I know. I just needed to see it.”
Next, he searched for Aoife. Still alive. Still President.
He typed in Siobhan—Aoife’s mother. She appeared in a database listing: memory care unit in Jacksonville.
Then he searched for Tessa, his foster mother. Nothing.
Raven’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, trembling slightly. He tried alternate spellings, different search parameters. Still, nothing. It was as if she’d never existed.
I touched his shoulder gently. “I’m sorry.”
He shook it off. “I already mourned her a long time ago. It just… hits different now as a man instead of a boy.”
But tension coiled in his jaw, belying his calm words. No matter how many times you lost someone, it never got easier.
I gestured to the laptop. “Check for Dru.”
A moment later, Raven found her: Drusilla and Eric Cabordes, still listed at the compound on the edge of town.
“That could be our backup plan,” I said.
He searched for Virgil X. Caine—no results.
“What about the book?” I asked. “The Liber Umbrae Nominium—The Book of Shadowed Names we found at Emry’s last night.”
Raven typed it in. Nothing. He tried variations, alternate spellings. Still nothing.
“Gone,” he said. “Or never existed here. Or… it’s above our security clearance, which I suppose here would be non-existent.”
We sat in silence for a few moments, threads spinning between us.
“It’s crazy,” Raven said. “How much has to align just right for any of this to exist. If the spell book hadn’t made its way into that box, if we hadn’t found it when we did…”
“…we wouldn’t remember anything,” I finished.
We talked about The Book of Heroes. About its true purpose—not to glorify the past, but to surgically remove threads of influence from the present. A tool of curation, not celebration.
“A weapon,” I said. “To quietly cull the inconvenient.”
“No priest would ever allow it to be used this way,” Raven replied. “Haphazardly.”
“Exactly. Which is why it has to be Rune.”
He hesitated.
“Look her up,” I urged.
It took a while. But eventually, he found her under her real name—Barbara Simmons, aka Bambi Torelli, currently imprisoned in Ireland for theft and artifact fraud, along with her husband, Marco Torelli, and extended family, Rafe and Lovey Torelli.
“So,” I said, “how do we find the book if she doesn’t have it?”
“Charlie.”
He typed the name.
We found him in Chicago. A divorced librarian in a custody battle with his ex-wife, Daphne. No record associated with the priesthood, no connection to Drusilla or the Special Collections Library.
Just then, Emry returned with a glass of wine for Raven, sparkling water for me.
She hesitated a fraction too long before handing them over, her fingers tight around the stems. Something flashed in her eyes—doubt? Regret?—before she smiled.
My empathic senses flared weakly, trying to read her. Something felt off, but I couldn’t pinpoint what. Like trying to hear a whisper through static.
“You remembered,” I said softly.
“You’re my best friend. I know you better than anyone.”
The way she gripped her own wine glass was strange—her thumb placed oddly on the stem, almost like she was steadying herself.
I felt the familiar tingle of magical shields around her emotions. Emry had always been able to ward off empathic intrusion when she chose to, but in our timeline, she’d never needed to hide from us.
She headed back into the kitchen to finish dinner.
As soon as she was gone, Raven clutched the phone she left behind.
“I found Veronica. Same as before—Vail, Colorado, married to Shelby. But now there’s a phone number.”
He dialed.
A man answered—suspicious, angry. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”
Raven blinked. “I—I’m just an old friend. I’m trying to find out what happened.”
“You’re one of them, aren’t you? From the government?”
Raven tried to calm him, but the man wouldn’t stop.
“She was taken. Right in front of me. They dragged her into a van. Jesus on a cracker, man! She’s just an artist! She did astrology readings—who the hell would—?”
The line went dead.
Raven lowered the phone.
I stared at him. “They got her.”
We each took a slow sip of our drinks. The sparkling water tasted odd—slightly metallic, with a bitter aftertaste that lingered on my tongue. I swirled mine, thoughtful. Things in this reality didn’t taste like this morning’s with its blueberry muffins.
Emry walked back in, her half-empty wine glass in hand, and lowered herself into the chair across from us.
“You two,” she said quietly, “are my best friends. I know you like no one else does.”
She set the glass down.
“But I’ve been watching you today, and I don’t know who you are.”
Raven tensed.
Emry’s eyes darkened. “I don’t know who you are or what you are, but you’re not my Raven and Lilah.”
Raven’s breath shuddered as he inhaled.
“My friends disappeared three days ago,” she continued, her voice tight with controlled emotion. “And now you show up, wearing their faces, knowing things you shouldn’t know, acting like strangers to your own lives. Where are they? What have you done with the real Raven and Lilah?”
A frantic drumming started in my chest. Something was wrong. Very wrong. My limbs felt leaden, unresponsive.
“I’m keeping you unconscious until I figure out who sent you.” Emry rose from her chair. “And until I decide whether to call this in to the authorities or handle it myself. Someone’s going to tell me where my friends are.”
I tried to stand—but the floor tilted. My limbs felt heavy. My throat closed.
My empathic gifts responded too late, burning through whatever was dulling them. And what I felt from Emry wasn’t hatred or anger. It was fear. Bone-deep terror. This wasn’t the Emry I knew at all.
“Raven—” I tried to warn him, but my voice came out slurred, distant.
He lunged forward, slower than he should have been, his movements sluggish. “What did you—” he began but couldn’t finish.
The room warped around the edges, colors bleeding into each other. I caught one last blurred image as darkness crept in: Emry’s face watching us, her expression completely unreadable.
It was the last thing I saw before the world went black.
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