The first guests had arrived and Press was hiding in the bathroom with an elixir.

Not because he was afraid of being seen. He just wanted to be seen at the right time. He didn't know if Xander had already tipped Dr. Santos off about his presence at the party, but he wasn't taking chances.

The bathroom was so luxurious it was almost offensive, which was typical Santos. White marble floors with gold veining. A freestanding copper tub and fresh lilies in a crystal vase on the vanity. Two sinks with matching oval-shaped gold-rimmed mirrors. The hand towels were monogrammed with a cursive S and were charmed to self-sanitize and self-dry. Press was leaning against the vanity, trying not to touch anything that looked expensive, which was everything.

His heart thumped as Xander's words circled back through his head. How his friends were supposedly talking behind his back. How none of them actually liked him.

He took a swig of his mind-soother elixir and the panic dulled a little. Not enough. But a little.

His friends were his whole life. That was the problem.

Press didn't have the luxury of growing up like them. No Old Magic bloodline, no family estate, no last name that provided opportunities. It was just him, his dad and his mom for a long time, living on the east side of LA. His dad grinded away in the lower levels of a tech company. They weren't poor, but they definitely weren't rich either. They were just regular people in a city that preferred rich people with magic.

Then something shifted when Press was ten. His dad had stumbled onto an application that could revolutionize the tech company's supply chain. The company bought the patent and promoted his dad three times in one year.

Overnight, the Gregors were in a new tax bracket. Press finished fifth grade in public school. By sixth grade, he was in a private school in Caldera Heights, wearing a uniform for the first time.

The other kids didn't accept him at first. His voice was too soft. He had a lisp that gave away his sexuality before he even understood what his sexuality was. He'd hear boys in the hallway imitating the way he talked, stretching out his S's, making their wrists go limp. He learned what "gay" meant at that school. Not from a conversation or a lesson, but from the way a kid named Marcus said it across the lunch table while everyone else laughed.

So Press kept to himself for the rest of middle school. He became the weird kid who drew sigils in the margins of his notebooks and didn't talk much. It seemed easier that way. Safer.

But something happened in high school. He grew four inches in one summer, came back to campus towering over half the boys who'd spent two years making fun of him. And suddenly his sexuality didn't seem to bother anyone as much. By freshman year, Press was ready to stop hiding it. He didn't make an announcement. He just stopped pretending to be straight.

That's when he and Harley found each other. Two outcasts trying to survive school. Harley was non-magical on a scholarship, the only kid in their grade who couldn't afford a single affinity. They bonded over being the wrong people in the right zip code.

They'd make fun of the New Magic kids and their ridiculous affinities. Some kid showing up to homeroom with a temporary facial reconstruction affinity, cheekbones all wrong, looking like a different person every Monday.

They'd laugh at the Old Magic kids too, but under their breath, because Old Magic kids were powerful and petty. You did not want to end up on the wrong side of one.

Press had seen what happened when you did. Once, Marcus DeVane, an annoying, pimple-faced miscreant started teasing Emma Kim, saying racist things about Korea, real nasty stuff. Emma didn't cry or tell a teacher. She didn't have to. She just stared at Marcus until his own shadow wrapped around his ankles and yanked his feet out from under him. He hit the floor so hard the cafeteria went silent. ShadowWeaving, Emma's birthright magic. Marcus never said another word to her.

But something shifted sophomore year when Emma and Press got partnered together in AP Bio. She told Press, casually, over a dissected frog, that with his personality, he should be making content. "You're wasted on an audience of one," she'd said, pointing at Harley across the lab.

Once Press started posting, the followers poured in. And with the followers came the invitations, the brand deals and the DMs from people who'd ignored him for years suddenly wanting to hang out.

But it had always nagged at him. This low hum in the back of his skull that he could never fully turn off. Excluding Harley, he'd always wondered: were these people really his friends? Or were they just here because he suddenly had a following?

Xander's words at the garden party had made him feel things he hadn't felt since middle school. That same smallness. That suspicion that people were laughing at him. And Press wanted to kick himself for feeling it now. He was almost twenty-one. He had a career, a platform, a boyfriend. Why did he still care what people thought?

Because he just did.

And that was the answer he didn't want.

He could hear the party going full swing outside the bathroom door. Music, voices, glasses clinking. The jazz quartet Dr. Santos hired every year was playing smooth music that did nothing to quell his anxiety.

A knock came from the other side of the bathroom door.

Press took another swig of his elixir. The bottle was almost empty. "Almost done!" he called out. Were his words starting to slur? He couldn't tell.

He turned the faucet on, pretended to wash his hands and dried them on one of the monogrammed towels. He folded it neatly and put it back.

He opened the door.

A woman in a curly wig stood on the other side, holding a toy poodle against her chest. She looked Press up and down and wrinkled her nose like she'd smelled something off.

He almost told her the wig was crooked. But starting a scene five minutes into the party wasn't part of the plan. He gave her a tight smile and stepped past her.

The garden party hit him all at once.

The Santos estate's back lawn had been transformed. String lights crisscrossed overhead between old oak trees. Round tables draped in white linen dotted the grass, each one anchored by floral centerpieces, and the jazz quartet played on a small raised platform near the fountain. Waiters in black circulated with trays of champagne flutes and canapés. The pool had been covered with a clear platform and someone had placed floating candles in glass bowls along the edges.

There had to be a hundred people out here, maybe more. Old Magic families in linen and silk, the women in wide-brimmed hats, the men in blazers and linen pants. Press recognized a few faces from PictoGram and TalkThat. A city councilwoman. The head of the Magical Consortium's West Coast chapter. Two influencers he'd collaborated with last year who didn't seem to notice him.

Press traded his empty elixir bottle for a full one off a passing tray and worked his way toward the far side of the lawn, near the cocktail tables by the outdoor bar.

He needed a spot close enough to listen but far enough that nobody would think twice about him standing there. He found it: a high-top table half-hidden by a trellis covered in bougainvillea, with a clear sightline to the bar.

And there, by the cocktail tables, he saw his first targets.

Mr. Kim, Emma's dad, stood with his phone pressed to his ear, gesturing wildly with his free hand. Emma, her black hair bone straight down her back, sat on a barstool next to him, scrolling through her own phone. But she kept glancing up at her father, and something about the way she watched him made Press's skin prickle. She was worried about something.

Press set his drink down and pressed his thumb against the watch on his wrist, feeling for the small notch to turn his Overhear affinity on. He whispered the activation phrase under his breath and the world around him shifted. The jazz quartet faded. The chatter of the party dropped to a murmur, and Mr. Kim's voice sharpened into focus like someone had turned a dial.

Emma straightened on her stool as her father's voice started to climb.

"Daddy, you're talking too loud," she said firmly.

He turned and glared at her before going back to his phone. He dropped his volume but the Overhear caught every word.

"What do you mean?" Mr. Kim hissed. "How did this happen?"

Emma turned and scanned the crowd, checking to see if anyone was paying attention. Press looked down at his drink and kept his face blank.

"I'm on my way. Don't touch anything. We don't want to alert the press." Mr. Kim hung up and shook his head. He rubbed a hand over his face. "I'm sorry, Emma. I've got to go. The lab needs me."

"What happened?" she asked.

"It's the rabbits," he said. He gave her a look that made Press's chest tighten.

Her face went white. "The rabbits?"

"They're all...dead."

"No." She shook her head. "How?"

He looked around before answering, then leaned in closer. "The latest hair smoothing serum we've been testing. It didn't go well. They said it's a big mess over there."

Emma's hand flew to her mouth. "That's awful."

"Yeah. Tell that to the hundred dead rabbits we have on our hands."

Press took a stunned step back from his table. The Kim Skincare line. The brand that printed "Cruelty-Free" on every bottle, every ad and every influencer campaign. The brand Emma repped on her own PictoGram with pictures of rescued animals and donation links.

They were testing on rabbits. At least a hundred of them.

And they were dead.

He should have looked away. He should have picked up his drink, checked his phone, stared at the jazz quartet. Anything. But the elixir had slowed his reflexes and his racing thoughts had frozen the rest of him, and he was still staring at them when Emma's head snapped up.

Their eyes met.

Press saw the exact moment she understood. Her expression shifted from confusion to recognition to ice. He tried to look away, tried to play it off, but it was already too late. He'd been caught and they both knew it.

He turned on his heel to walk away.

But his legs wouldn't move.

It wasn't fear and it wasn't hesitation. Something was physically holding him in place. A tightness around his knees, like a rope cinching. His calves locked. His feet were rooted to the grass.

He looked down. His shadow stretched long behind him in the late afternoon sun, but it was wrong. It wasn't lying flat on the ground the way it should have been. It had twisted, coiled around his legs just below the knees, binding him in place like a knot. The edges of it pulsed, darker than any shadow should be.

ShadowWeaving.

He looked up. Emma was walking toward him. Slowly. Her mouth was moving in a silent mutter, her fingers twitching at her sides like she was pulling invisible strings. Each step she took, the shadow around his knees tightened. He could feel it now, a cold pressure squeezing through his pants and into his skin. It was starting to hurt.

The party carried on around them. The jazz quartet played. Guests laughed. Nobody noticed he couldn't move, or that Emma was walking toward him with murder in her eyes.