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The third kid didn't have a pulse.
Cole pressed two fingers harder against the girl's throat, counting seconds in his head. Nothing. Her chest rose and fell like she was sleeping off a fever, but her skin was too cold and her lips had gone the color of old soap.
"She's alive," Ivy said from the other side of the room.
Cole pulled his hand back. "Her heart's not beating."
"I know. But she's alive."
He looked over at his partner. Ivy was crouched next to another bed, her palm flat on the floorboards. Her eyes had that glazed look she got when she was reading something no one else could see. Half-blood thing. She saw the dead's last steps burned into the ground like scorch marks.
Cole didn't ask how she knew the kid was alive if her heart had stopped. Ivy was usually right about this stuff. And anyway, the girl's parents were standing in the doorway watching them with the kind of desperate hope that made him want to walk out and not come back.
"Anything?" he asked.
Ivy shook her head. "No prints. No residue. Nothing died here."
"Great."
"You see tracks when something crosses over. Leaves a mark." She stood up, wiping her hand on her coat. "Whatever took them didn't kill them first. Just pulled them under while they were still breathing."
Cole glanced at the three beds lined up against the wall. Two boys, one girl. Ages maybe six to ten. All of them breathing. None of them waking up. The room smelled like sweat and lavender oil, and the mother had put sachets under the pillows like that would help.
"How long?" he asked the parents.
The father spoke first. "Four days for Mattis. Three for Jen. Two for Ellie."
Cole did the math. If the pattern held, another kid would drop tonight or tomorrow.
"Anyone else in the village?"
"Two more," the mother said. Her voice cracked. "The blacksmith's son and the mayor's daughter. Same thing. They just won't wake up."
Five kids. No deaths. No trail for Ivy to follow. Cole scratched the back of his neck and felt the guild sigil there itch under his collar. He'd taken the bounty because it was supposed to be simple. Hunt the thing stealing dreams, kill it, collect the coin, and get out before winter locked the roads.
Simple.
"We'll need to see the others," Ivy said.
The mother nodded and turned, already moving. The father stayed a moment longer, looking at his kids like he was trying to memorize their faces.
"You can wake them?" he asked.
"We'll try," Cole said.
It was the wrong answer. The man wanted a yes. But Cole had learned a long time ago not to make promises he couldn't keep. The father's face went hard and he followed his wife out.
Ivy waited until their footsteps faded down the hall. Then she turned to Cole and said, "You're not going to like this."
"I already don't like this."
"It's a Taker."
Cole went still. "You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Takers don't leave people alive."
"This one does." Ivy crossed her arms. "It's not feeding. It's storing."
Cole stared at the kids in their beds. Storing. That meant the thing was keeping them somewhere, holding them in whatever space it used for a den. And if it was storing them, it had a reason.
"Why?" he asked.
"I don't know. But it's moving west. Every village we passed through, same story. Kids go under, thing's already gone by the time anyone notices."
"So we're chasing it."
"Yeah."
Cole looked at the girl again. Still breathing. Still cold. He reached into his coat and pulled out a piece of chalk, the kind he used for casting circles when he needed to anchor a spell. Ivy watched him kneel next to the bed.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Checking something."
He drew a small circle on the floor, just big enough to fit his hand inside. Then he pressed his palm flat in the center and let a thread of magic seep into the wood. It was a basic trace spell, the kind they taught first-year guild apprentices. If there was residue, any kind of foreign magic clinging to the kid, the circle would light up.
Nothing.
Cole frowned and pushed a little harder. The chalk started to glow faint orange, and he felt the spell catch on something. Not residue. Something deeper. Like a thread running from the girl's chest down through the bed, through the floor, through the earth beneath the house.
"Cole," Ivy said.
He didn't answer. He followed the thread, letting his magic trace it down. It went deep. Deeper than it should. And at the end of it, something was waiting.
"Cole, stop."
He felt it notice him. A cold, hungry attention that snapped onto his magic like a dog onto a scent.
"Cole—"
Ivy grabbed his wrist and yanked his hand out of the circle. The spell snapped and the chalk went dark. Cole sucked in a breath and pulled back, his heart hammering.
"What the hell," he said.
"It was using you," Ivy said. Her grip on his wrist was tight enough to hurt. "You opened a door and it was coming through."
Cole looked at the girl. She hadn't moved. But the air in the room felt different now. Heavier. Like something was pressing down on the space where the spell had been.
"I was just tracing," he said.
"I know. And it felt you. It's connected to them, Cole. All of them. You touch one, it knows."
He wiped the chalk off his hand and stood up. His legs felt shaky. That had never happened before. A trace spell was passive. It wasn't supposed to make contact.
"So what do we do?" he asked.
Ivy let go of his wrist and stepped back. "We find where it's denning. Cut the thread at the source."
"And if we can't find it?"
"Then these kids don't wake up."
Cole looked at her. Ivy's face was locked down, the way it got when she was deciding whether to tell him something. He waited.
"What?" he said.
"The thread you touched. It wasn't just going down."
"Where was it going?"
"West," Ivy said. "Into the Ironthorn."
Cole felt his stomach drop. The Ironthorn was cursed land. No guild mage had gone in there and come back in twenty years. The trees were twisted, the ground didn't follow normal rules, and things lived in there that didn't have names anymore.
"Of course it is," he said.
Ivy almost smiled. "You want to walk away?"
He thought about it. He could. The bounty wasn't worth dying in the Ironthorn. They could head back to Ashford, tell Warren Gray the thing was out of reach, and let someone else take the job.
But the guild didn't send someone else. Not for this. They sent him because he was expendable. A drifter mage with no family and a record that said he didn't follow orders. If he died out west, no one would care.
And Ivy knew that.
"No," he said. "We finish it."
Ivy nodded. She turned toward the door, and Cole followed. They made it three steps before the smallest kid sat up.
Not slow. Not groggy. She just snapped upright like someone had yanked a string, and her eyes opened all at once.
Cole stopped.
The girl turned her head and looked right at him. Her eyes were open but they weren't seeing. They were black all the way through, no white, no iris. Just black.
And then she spoke.
"Hello, Cole."
It wasn't her voice. It was deeper. Rough. A man's voice coming out of a kid's throat.
Ivy moved in front of him, her hand already going for the knife at her belt. But the girl didn't move. She just sat there, staring, her head tilted at an angle that made her neck look wrong.
"Who are you?" Cole asked.
The girl smiled.
"You already know," the voice said. "You've been looking for me."
Cole's mouth went dry. The Taker. It was speaking through her.
"Let her go," he said.
The smile widened.
"Come find me first," it said. "I'm waiting."
And then the girl's eyes rolled back and she dropped onto the bed like a puppet with its strings cut.