Chapter Twenty-Five

The next morning, Olivia woke feeling… good.

Not spectacular. Not awful. Just good—the quiet, steady kind of good that felt earned. Her body was present in a way it hadn’t been before, solid and cooperative, if a little sensitive.

She padded into the bathroom and took a quick shower, letting the warm water loosen her muscles. When she turned to check her back in the mirror, twisting as far as she could, she could just barely make out the edge of the raised area Lenny had pointed out the night before—still faintly red, still tender, but calmer somehow. Real.

Brushing her hair proved trickier. The moment the brush passed too close to the back of her skull, a sharp, electric stab of pain shot through her scalp.

“Ow—okay, noted,” she muttered, lowering the brush and gingerly testing the area with her fingers instead. Two spots, sensitive and unmistakable.

Pet brush, she thought with a weak smile. Yeah. Definitely asking Lenny about that.

Dressed a few minutes later, she paused to secure her faux ears on their familiar headband and clip the faux tail to her waistband. The ritual was automatic by now—and for the first time, it made her a little wistful. Soon, she wouldn’t need them.

The thought surprised her.

Maybe afterward, she decided, she’d have a shadow box made. The ears. The tail. The folded newspaper ad that had guided her here in the first place. A reminder of where all of this began.

Breakfast was easy and warm. She greeted Charles and Miss LaDonna cheerfully, settled into her seat, and ate with real enthusiasm—but without the near-feral hunger of the night before. Something had… leveled out.

When she told them about her dream, though, the room grew very still.

She remembered every detail. The forest. The running. The joy. The howl. It didn’t feel like a dream at all—it felt like a memory she hadn’t known she was missing.

Charles and Miss LaDonna listened without interruption, eyes intent, hands folded, absorbing every word.

After breakfast, Olivia headed to the front desk and slipped easily into her routine. Mail sorted. Calls answered. Emails triaged and replied to. Everything felt normal—a strange kind of normal, given everything, but welcome.

Around 10:30, she gathered the mail destined for the green room. The Hosts would be arriving later for the weekend shift, and she liked having things ready ahead of time.

She’d just finished delivering the envelopes and turned back into the hallway when it happened.

Pain.

Not sharp—not sudden—but deep. It began at the crown of her head and drove straight down through her spine, radiating outward into her shoulders, arms, hips, and legs all at once. Every nerve lit up as if struck by lightning, then refused to let go.

Her vision blurred.

Her knees buckled.

She thought she screamed.

Later footage from the hallway camera would show something else entirely: Olivia stumbling, hands flying to her head, lips moving soundlessly as she tried to form words—then collapsing to the floor in a boneless heap.

The pain didn’t stop. It roared.

And then, mercifully, there was movement.

Grint, scheduled to check an access panel just outside the green room, shuffled around the corner mid-bite of a cookie—and froze.

Olivia lay crumpled on the floor.

The cookie dropped from his hand.

Grint screamed.

And ran for help.

Charles arrived first.

Grint’s scream had barely finished echoing down the hall before the air folded, and Charles stepped out of it as if he had always been there. Frost scattered across the green room hallway in a sharp crystalline bloom, racing outward from where his feet touched the floor—only to vanish the instant it brushed Olivia’s skin.

He was already kneeling beside her.

“Too hot,” he muttered, one hand hovering just above her forehead, the other at her throat, feeling the furious heat radiating from her body. Fever. Intense. Wrong.

Olivia’s skin flushed beneath his touch, heat rolling off her in waves, her breath shallow and uneven.

Miss LaDonna was in the breakroom when Grint burst in.

“MISS LADONNA SHE’S DEAD—MISS OLIVIA’S DEAD—”

She simply scooped him up, one arm firm around his middle, the other steadying his frantic hands. “She is not,” she said calmly, already moving. “But she does need help. You did very well.”

She took the stairs two at a time, skirts gathered without breaking stride, calling out as she went. “Bernard.”

The answer came at once, through every vent she passed.“I am aware,” Bernard said evenly. “Reviewing corridor footage now. Charles has her.”

“Good,” Miss LaDonna replied. “Prepare the apartment.”

“I already am.”

She reached Olivia’s door just as the air crystallized again.

Charles appeared in a burst of frost inside the bathroom, Olivia cradled against his chest, her body limp but alive. The cold shattered instantly, steam rising where it met her overheated skin.

Miss LaDonna was already there.

Towels laid out. Washcloths stacked. The small green glass bottle—stoppered, wax-sealed—set within reach.

“Tub,” she said, and Charles nodded once.

They moved together, practiced and precise.

Olivia was lowered gently into the empty bathtub, her head supported, her breathing still shallow but steady. Miss LaDonna’s hands were brisk and professional as they undressed her, murmuring quiet reassurances that Olivia could not hear.

Grint was set carefully on the closed toilet lid, a fresh cookie pressed into his hands to give him something to hold.

“You watch,” Miss LaDonna told him softly. “And you don’t move.”

Grint nodded vigorously. He never disobeyed Miss LaDonna.

Charles removed his coat and vest, handed them to Grint without looking, and rolled up his sleeves. The tub began to fill—cool water, carefully tempered, just warm enough not to shock her fevered body.

As the water rose around Olivia, the changes became impossible to ignore.

The angry swelling at the small of her back had spread—radiating outward across her skin in branching, pulsing patterns. Red, inflamed, hot. Her entire body flushed now, heat trapped beneath the surface as if something inside her was burning to get out.

Miss LaDonna pressed a cool cloth to Olivia’s neck. “Easy, love,” she murmured. “We’ve got you.”

Bernard’s voice came again, quieter now, focused.“Her metabolic rate is spiking. Rapid cellular restructuring. This is not the slow phase.”

Charles’s jaw tightened. “She’s early.”

“Yes,” Bernard agreed. “And very committed.”

Charles closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again, steady as stone. “Then we do this properly.”

The water lapped higher around Olivia’s sides.

She stirred faintly.

And then she gasped.

Olivia was burning.

And at the same time, she was being crushed.

Every inch of her hurt—no, hurt wasn’t enough. It felt as though she were held inside the heart of a roaring furnace while immense, unseen forces pressed in from every side, grinding her down, compressing her bones and muscles and thoughts into something smaller, tighter, different.

She screamed.

Or tried to.

The sound tore out of her in broken sobs as she begged—pleaded—for it to stop, for whoever or whatever was doing this to please let her go, because it was killing her, it had to be killing her—

But nothing stopped.

Charles was already there, already working. He soaked a washcloth in the cooling bathwater and gently wiped her face, her throat, careful not to overstimulate her overheated skin. Miss LaDonna stood at the tub’s edge, hands steady as she broke the wax seal on the small green glass bottle.

Olivia’s head lolled to the side.

“…hot…” she murmured faintly. “…crushing…”

Then her eyes rolled back, and she slipped into unconsciousness.

“Now,” Miss LaDonna said quietly.

Charles took the bottle and poured a generous measure into the bath, then added more to the washcloth, working it into a soft, pale foam. The scent that rose from it was sharp and clean and ancient, something herbal and mineral all at once.

He touched the lather to Olivia’s neck.

Immediately, the angry red flush beneath his fingers began to fade.

Slowly. Steadily.

He worked with infinite care, washing her shoulders, her chest, her arms—head to toe—watching the inflamed heat recede wherever the shampoo touched. When Miss LaDonna helped him ease Olivia upright, he continued across her back, the base of her skull, down her legs.

Everywhere the lather passed, the rash vanished, leaving clear, unblemished skin behind.

And then her hair began to fall.

At first in clumps—dark strands slipping free from her scalp, dissolving soundlessly into the bathwater. Then more: eyebrows, lashes, body hair, all releasing as the shampoo did its work, as if making space for what came next.

Neither Charles nor Miss LaDonna reacted outwardly. This was expected.

With her skin now calm and clear, the changes beneath it were unmistakable.

At her temples and crown, raised shapes pressed from within—two distinct swellings where bone and cartilage were subtly shifting, not yet ready to break through. At the small of her back, the larger mass had smoothed, its inflammation gone, revealing a coiled form beneath the skin, faintly moving.

Alive. Waiting.

They rinsed her thoroughly as the tub drained, then lifted Olivia out together, wrapping her carefully in warm towels. Her fever had broken; her breathing was slower now, deeper.

Bernard’s voice came softly through the vents.“Vitals stabilizing. Core temperature dropping to safe range. Cellular activity remains elevated but controlled.”

“Good,” Charles murmured.

He carried Olivia into the bedroom, Miss LaDonna guiding the way. Greb and Clockett—who had arrived silently minutes earlier—sprang into motion at her word, turning down the bed with practiced efficiency.

The mattress adjusted the moment Olivia was laid upon it, cradling her gently, reshaping itself to support her changing body. The goblins drew the sheets up to her shoulders and stepped back, respectful and quiet.

Charles rested a hand on the bedframe. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

Then he straightened and turned to Miss LaDonna and the gathered goblins.

“And now,” he said, voice calm but weighted with responsibility, “we wait. Someone needs to stay with her—eyes on her unfolding in case anything shifts unexpectedly.”

He glanced between them, one corner of his mouth lifting faintly.

“Shall we draw straws for first watch?”