I walked until I hit the esplanade, not far from where tourists and bored students hovered like clockwork.
That's when I saw her.
She was seated at an outdoor café table, one foot tucked beneath her chair, head tilted as she sipped something iced through a straw. Two girls were with her—ugh. Same ones I'd seen orbiting her on campus.
One of the girls leaned over to show her something on a phone. Eleanor smiled, politely, but her eyes drifted off, quite distant. She wasn't fully listening, just watching the waves behind them.
I slowed my pace, enough to go unnoticed but close enough to see her up close. The light hit her cheekbone like it had been waiting to. Her hair was tied back with a scarf. Her lips were glossed but not overly so. And for a brief second, I wondered if she'd notice me.
One of the girls tapped her nail against the table. The kind of tap that said she'd been dying to talk about herself but was pretending to care about someone else.
"We had ideas for your job thing," she said, sliding her phone across the table. "There's this serviced office business in Broadbeach. And I just know you'd be perfect for the role. Front desk, admin-y stuff. It's like, phones and emails and handing out coffee."
The other girl perked up. "Oh my god, is that the one with the aesthetic lobby and the scent diffuser?"
"Yes," the first one said, excited. "The whole place smells like peppermint and productivity."
Eleanor smiled faintly, looking down at the phone. "Aww, thanks. I'll check it out. I really appreciate this."
The second girl wrinkled her nose, swirling the straw in her drink. "But seriously, why do you even need a job? You've got money, don't you? Like—family money?"
The first one laughed, then leaned in. "Yeah, we've all seen your wardrobe, El. You're not exactly suffering."
Eleanor just sipped her drink, eyes calm. "I'm saving up for something."
Saving for something? That answer looped in my head. Maybe money was a way in—my way in. A reason to talk. My fingers twitched with the impulse to step in, like offer a connection, or a job. Or anything that helps.
But then I remembered the garlic. The sharpness of it. I remembered my body reacting before my brain had time to argue. If I walked up to her now, would she notice it in my face again—the pain I couldn't hide?
I lingered one more second, then I kept walking, slow and silent, passing the café without a glance. I stepped off the pavement and down onto the sand. The tide was low, but everything in me wasn't. The sand was cool beneath my shoes, but my head wasn't. Not after losing to Dom in our earlier match.
***
The sun had already set before I noticed, and I'd gone well past my destination, but I kept walking. My thoughts remained louder than the waves: I couldn't approach Eleanor. Not like this. Not without tipping my hand—or worse, flinching again. But I needed answers, not mere instincts and gut reactions.
I ran through names in my head. People I could tap, favors I could call in. But everyone just tied back to Dom or Allegra. The last thing I needed was more eyes reporting upward. Then there was Aspen.
Our unpredictable, unfiltered, and ever so honest brother—Aspen. He didn't ask too many questions if the snacks were good and the freedom was real. He could easily blend in by shifting around, he could get closer without drawing attention.
Aspen was the youngest. He'd stayed that way in every sense, except for his height.
He was so tall, about my height but an inch extra, that his limbs were too long for his clothes half the time. His hair was a mess of copper-brown waves that refused to be tamed. His eyes had this golden tint when he was worked up—like a fox mid-mischief or mid-hunt, depending on the day. He was charming, wild, and chaotic as hell. Where Dom walked like he was gliding over the world, Aspen crashed through it.
There'd been stretches—long stretches—where we weren't sure if he'd make it through the century with any self-control left.
He used to get into fights over nothing. Someone bumped him at a tavern in Amsterdam once and he turned into a tiger on the spot. Tore through the front window, knocked over a horse cart, and vanished down an alley, only to show up hours later wearing a new coat and acting like we were the crazy ones for caring.
Dom had stared at the coat for a full minute before asking, "Where the hell did you get fur that thick in summer?"
Aspen just shrugged. "Why would I need to tell any of you? All you need to know is that guy was lucky it wasn't him I skinned."
Another time, he shifted into a bear just to break into a manor that rejected him at the door. Not because he needed revenge—but because he wanted to leave claw marks on the piano.
Then there was Berlin. He'd been in some experimental noise band, but they cut him loose after a month. Aspen, ever theatrical, decided to stage his own exit. Literally. He leapt from the top of their rehearsal building, landed in the middle of traffic, and stayed there long enough to cause a small riot.
It wasn't even fatal. He just wanted them to think it was. When we finally caught up to him, he was hiding in a busker's tent eating roast chestnuts and laughing about the headlines.
"I thought you were supposed to be dead," Dom snapped, drenched from sprinting through a thunderstorm to find him.
"I was dead," Aspen said, chewing. "Just emotionally."
"You caused a twenty-car pileup."
"Art is suffering as suffering is art," he replied. "Sometimes it's also just Friday night traffic."
I folded my arms. "You realize I had to bribe a paramedic and two cops just to get your 'corpse' off the street. Then you just disappeared."
Aspen grinned. "Consider it a test of your crisis management skills, brother dear. And you've passed with flying colors."
I'd lost count of how many times I'd had to clean up after him. Bribe someone. Erase memories. Lie through my teeth. And still—despite all of it—I trusted him more than most. Because as reckless as he was, Aspen never lied to us. He was honest about the mess. And in a world like ours, that was rare.
Maybe it wasn't the worst idea. Maybe he was the only one I could trust with this?
I stopped at the edge of the water, letting the tide rush over my shoes, cold and grounding.
Yeah.
It had to be Aspen.