Chapter 5 First Date, First Threat
The mini-golf course was Kit's idea.
"Think about it," she'd said the night before, sprawled across Sabrina's dorm room floor with her laptop balanced on her stomach. "It's public but not crowded. Photogenic but not try-hard. And if something goes wrong, there's plenty of cover."
"Cover?" Sabrina had asked. "It's putt-putt. What kind of cover does a windmill provide?"
"You'd be surprised."
Now, standing beside Jace at the entrance to Paradise Pines Mini-Golf and Family Fun Center, Sabrina understood what Kit meant. The course was a labyrinth of fiberglass mountains, fake waterfalls, and animatronic woodland creatures that watched every hole with glassy, unnerving eyes. It was ridiculous. It was perfect.
"You're smiling," Jace observed.
"I'm calculating the viral potential of you getting beaten by a windmill."
"Confident. I like it." He paid for their rounds—insisting, loudly enough for the cluster of Silverlake students two holes ahead to hear, that "the guy always pays on the first date"—and handed her a putter. "You know we're being watched, right?"
"By the students or by your cousin?"
"Both." Jace's smile didn't waver, but his eyes flicked toward the parking lot. "Black SUV, tinted windows. Arrived five minutes after we did."
Sabrina didn't look. She'd already clocked the vehicle on their way in—a Denali with no license plate frame, idling in the far corner of the lot. "Syndicate?"
"Probably. Xavier likes to keep tabs." He selected a neon orange golf ball and rolled it between his fingers. "They won't do anything in public. They're just here to report back."
"Then let's give them a good report."
They moved through the first six holes with the easy rhythm of two people who understood performance. Jace was effortlessly charming, teasing Sabrina about her putting stance, letting her win the fourth hole with a deliberately terrible shot that he blamed on "sun glare." Sabrina played the role of the amused, slightly unimpressed girlfriend, rolling her eyes at his excuses and sinking a tricky bank shot on hole five that made the watching students applaud.
For a while, it was almost fun.
Then they reached hole seven, and the animatronic bear at the tee box turned its head to follow Sabrina's movement.
The other animals had been on simple loops—wave a paw, blink an eye, repeat. This bear tracked her with a smooth, deliberate rotation that had nothing to do with hydraulics.
"Jace," she said quietly.
"I see it."
He stepped in front of her, his body blocking the bear's line of sight. The afternoon sun caught his profile, and for just a moment, Sabrina saw something ancient move behind his eyes.
The bear's mouth opened. A voice came out, low and sibilant, nothing like the cheery recorded messages on the other holes.
"The Null walks on borrowed time. The prince walks on borrowed legs. When the solstice comes, both debts come due. "
Then the bear's jaw snapped shut, and its head returned to its original position, a harmless hunk of fiberglass once more.
The students ahead of them hadn't noticed. They were laughing at hole eight, oblivious.
"What the hell was that?" Sabrina whispered.
"A messenger imp. Low-level. They can possess mechanical objects for short periods." Jace's voice was tight. "It means Xavier knows exactly where we are, and he wanted us to know it."
"Consider us knowing." Sabrina forced herself to breathe evenly. "What do we do?"
"We finish the course. We don't give them the reaction they want." He picked up his putter. "And when we leave, we take the back exit."
They played the remaining holes with the same surface-level ease, but Sabrina felt the weight of invisible eyes on her neck the entire time. The black SUV was still in the parking lot when they finished, but Jace guided her toward a service gate near the windmill, and they slipped out onto a side street without incident.
"I'm sorry," he said when they were in his car, the doors locked, the windows tinted dark. "I should have anticipated this."
"You can't anticipate everything."
"I should be able to." His hands were tight on the steering wheel. "If I can't protect you from a messenger imp at a mini-golf course, how am I supposed to protect you from what's coming?"
"I'm not asking you to protect me. I'm asking you to partner with me." Sabrina reached over and placed her hand on his. "That's the deal, remember?"
He looked at her for a long moment. The temperature in the car rose by a degree, then two. Then he exhaled, and it dropped back to normal.
"The deal," he repeated. "Right."
"Take me back to campus. We need to train."
---
The gym was dark and empty when they arrived, the cleaning crew long gone, the security guard accustomed to Sabrina's late-night sessions. She flipped on the court lights over half the floor, leaving the far end in shadow.
"Show me," she said.
"Show you what?"
"Everything. The hellfire. The speed. Whatever else you can do." She set down her gym bag. "I can't help you control something I don't understand."
Jace hesitated at the edge of the lit court. In the half-darkness, he looked younger and older at the same time—a boy carrying centuries of bloodline in his bones.
"It's not safe."
"Neither is what's coming. Show me."
He stepped onto the court. Closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were obsidian.
The transformation was subtle at first—a darkening at the edges of his silhouette, a heat shimmer in the air around his hands. Then the black fire ignited, licking up his forearms in slow, controlled spirals. Not the explosive rage she'd witnessed before, but something held in check, trembling with the effort of restraint.
"This is as much as I can summon without losing control," he said, his voice rougher, deeper. "The fire wants to spread. It wants to consume. Every second I hold it, I'm fighting it."
"Fighting it how?"
"Imagine trying to hold your breath while someone screams inside your skull."
Sabrina circled him, cataloguing details. The fire didn't burn the floor. It didn't consume oxygen—the air around him was hot but breathable. It was, she realized, not physical fire at all, but something else wearing fire's shape.
"What does it respond to?"
"Emotion. Anger, mostly. Fear. Anything that makes me lose focus."
"That's why Xavier is targeting you during the championship. Maximum emotion, maximum audience, maximum chaos." She stopped in front of him. "But emotion isn't just negative. What about the other end of the spectrum?"
"What do you mean?"
"At Brew Theory. When Xavier showed up, your temperature spiked. But when I touched your hand, it dropped. You calmed down." She met his obsidian eyes without flinching. "What if the fire doesn't just respond to rage? What if it responds to everything, and you've only ever fed it the bad stuff?"
Jace was silent. The fire on his arms flickered, uncertain.
"Try something," Sabrina said. "Think about the championship. Not the trap. Not Xavier. Think about the moment after—the buzzer, the win, the contract signed. Think about what you actually want."
"I don't know if I—"
"Try."
He closed his eyes again. The fire guttered, nearly extinguishing, then steadied. When it returned, the black had lightened slightly—still dark, but edged with something almost golden.
"I've never seen it do that," he murmured.
"Positive emotion. Positive control." Sabrina smiled. "Your demonic heritage isn't just a rage monster, Jace. It's just you. All of you. And you've been trying to cut away half of yourself instead of learning to drive the whole thing."
The fire extinguished. His eyes faded back to blue. He looked at her with an expression she couldn't quite name—surprise, maybe, or the beginning of hope.
"How do you do that?" he asked.
"Do what?"
"Look at the thing I've spent my entire life being terrified of and see something I could actually use."
Sabrina picked up a basketball from the rack. "Because I've spent my entire life being told I'm missing something essential. That I'm incomplete. A Null." She spun the ball on her fingertip. "I know what it's like to be defined by what you're not. And I know that the only way out is to redefine yourself on your own terms."
She passed him the ball.
"Now. Let's run drills."
They trained until midnight. Sabrina designed exercises that forced Jace to summon and dismiss his hellfire in increasingly precise increments—a flicker on the fingers, a controlled burn on the palm, a brief corona that encircled his shoulders without spreading. She tracked his heart rate, his breathing, the micro-expressions that preceded loss of control. By the end of the session, he could hold a stable flame for thirty seconds without visible strain.
It was a start.
As they packed up, Jace paused at the gym door.
"Sabrina?"
"Yeah?"
"The thing the imp said. About borrowed time." He didn't turn around. "If something goes wrong—if Xavier's plan works—I need you to know that I—"
"Don't." She crossed to him and took his hand, the same hand that had been wreathed in black fire an hour ago. "We're not doing goodbyes. We're not doing contingency speeches. We're going to win, Jace. We're going to win because we're smarter than them, because we're working harder than them, and because they've spent so long underestimating us that they don't even see us coming."
He turned. His eyes were blue and human and full of something that looked terrifyingly like trust.
"You really believe that?"
"I have to." She squeezed his hand. "I've got nothing else."
---
In the parking lot, the black SUV was gone. But in its place, tucked under the windshield wiper of Sabrina's car, was a single black feather.
Jace picked it up. His expression went cold.
"Xavier's calling card. He wants us to know he can reach us anywhere."
"Let him watch." Sabrina took the feather and snapped it in half. "We're just getting started."
