The town of Mystic Ridge was a place that lived for its history, or perhaps more accurately, it was a place that lived for the sanitized, polished version of its history. Every century, the passage of the Great Comet was treated as a celestial rebirth, an event that drew the entire community into a frenzy of heritage displays, candlelit vigils, and town-square speeches. But this year, as the banner for the "Night of the Comet" was hoisted across Main Street, the air felt different. It didn't feel like a celebration; it felt like a summons.
I stood in the town square, a clipboard clutched to my chest, watching the volunteers arrange rows of white candles. My head throbbed with the dull, persistent rhythm of a sleepless night. The gold coin was still in my pocket, a cold weight against my thigh, and Jeremy's drawing of the bleeding Silas was burned into my mind.
Look at them, I thought, my internal monologue a cynical whisper against the backdrop of cheerful chatter. They're setting the stage for a party while the monsters are already in the audience. They're lighting candles to welcome a rock from space, unaware that the real darkness is standing right next to them in a leather jacket.
"Lyra! Thank god you're here. We are behind schedule, and the historical society is breathing down my neck about the placement of the kerosene lanterns."
Caroline Forbes descended upon me like a frantic, blonde hurricane. She looked perfect, as always, but there was a tightness around her eyes—a jittery energy that she was trying to mask with over-organization. She was wearing a scarf, despite the afternoon heat, wrapped tightly around her throat.
"I have the list, Caroline. The lanterns go by the Founders' Statue," I said, my voice sounding flat and distant to my own ears. "How is... how are you? You look a bit tired."
"Tired? I'm exhilarated! This is the biggest event of the year," she said, though her hand drifted instinctively to her scarf, her fingers fluttering nervously against the fabric. "And besides, I met someone. Or rather, I've been spending time with someone. Jax Thorne. He's... he's intense, Lyra. Very intense."
My heart stopped. The clipboard nearly slipped from my fingers. I looked at Caroline, really looked at her, and I saw the tell-tale signs. Her eyes were slightly glassy, her movements a little too fluid, like a puppet on loosened strings.
"Caroline, stay away from him," I said, my voice low and urgent. "I'm serious. Jax is... he's dangerous."
Caroline laughed, a bright, brittle sound that didn't reach her eyes. "Dangerous? He's mysterious. And he's a Thorne! He's been telling me so much about the town's history. Things that aren't even in the books. Did you know the old boarding house used to be a site for—"
She stopped abruptly, her gaze shifting to a point over my shoulder. Her expression changed instantly, softening into a look of glazed adoration. I didn't need to turn around to know who was there. The temperature behind me had already plummeted.
"Speaking of the devil," Jax's voice purred. It was a smooth, silken sound that made the hair on my arms stand up.
I turned slowly. Jax was standing a few feet away, leaning against a lamp post with a casual, predatory grace. He was dressed in black, looking like a void in the middle of the sun-drenched square. He smiled at me—a slow, mocking tilt of the lips that showed just a hint of teeth.
"Hello, Lyra. I see you found my little token. I hope it brought you sweet dreams," he said, his blue eyes flashing with a wicked delight.
"Get away from her, Jax," I hissed, stepping between him and Caroline.
"Oh, don't be like that. Caroline and I are just discussing the festivities. She's been a wealth of information," he said, his gaze dropping to Caroline's neck for a split second before returning to mine. "She has such a... vibrant spirit. It's quite refreshing."
Caroline giggled, moving toward him like a moth to a flame. "Jax was just going to help me with the heritage brochures."
"I think Lyra needs a moment of your time for the lantern placement, Caroline," a new voice interrupted.
Silas appeared from the crowd, his presence a calm, grounding counterweight to Jax's chaotic energy. He looked at his brother with a cold, silent warning. Jax just shrugged, his smirk widening.
"Always the killjoy, Silas. Fine. I have some errands to run anyway. Caroline, I'll see you tonight at the observatory?"
"I'll be there," she whispered, her eyes never leaving his.
Jax winked at me, a gesture of pure malice, and vanished into the crowd. Caroline stood there for a second, blinking as if she had just woken up from a trance, before shaking her head and scurrying off toward the town hall.
I turned to Silas, my breath coming in short, angry gasps. "He's using her. He's feeding on her, Silas! I saw the way she looked. I saw the scarf."
Silas didn't deny it. He looked down at the cobblestones, his face etched with a profound sense of shame. "I know. I tried to stop him. But Jax is... he's stronger than I am right now. He's not holding back. He's drinking from the source, while I am barely hanging on."
"Then do something! Use your... your mind thing on her. Make her stay away from him."
"I can't," Silas said, looking at me with those deep, tortured emerald eyes. "If I try to compel her while Jax has already established a link, it could break her. Her mind would become a battlefield between us. I won't risk that."
He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. "But I can help you with the preparations. The historical society asked me to help catalog the archives for the comet display. There are things there... things you should see."
The archives, I thought. Maybe the answers aren't in the stars. Maybe they're in the basement of the library, buried under a hundred years of dust.
"Fine," I said. "Let's go."
The basement of the Mystic Ridge Library was a labyrinth of sliding shelves and smelling of vanilla-scented decay. The light was dim, provided by flickering yellow bulbs that cast long, distorted shadows against the stacks of old newspapers and leather-bound ledgers. It was a silent world, a place where time had been folded up and put away.
Silas moved through the aisles with a familiarity that was unsettling. He didn't need to check the labels; he knew exactly where the records from the 1860s were kept.
"My family helped build this town," Silas said, his voice echoing softly in the narrow space. "We were part of the founding families. The Saltzmans, the Fell family, the Gilberts... and the Thornes."
He pulled a heavy, velvet-bound book from a shelf and laid it on a wooden reading table. He opened it to the middle, the parchment cracking under his touch.
"The Night of the Comet, 1864," he whispered.
I leaned in, my heart racing. There, in the center of the page, was a sketch of the town square as it looked back then. The buildings were different, the clothes were different, but the feeling was the same. A crowd gathered to watch the sky. But as I looked closer, I saw names scribbled in the margins. The Cleansing. The Round-up.
"What was the Cleansing?" I asked, my finger tracing the jagged handwriting.
"The town discovered us," Silas said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "Or rather, they discovered what Jax was doing. He wasn't careful. He never has been. He left a trail of bodies across the valley, and the town leaders decided to strike back. They used the comet as a cover. While everyone was looking at the sky, the town guard was hunting."
He turned the page, and I gasped.
Tucked into the binding was a small, hand-tinted photograph. It was a woman standing on the porch of the Thorne Manor. She was wearing a white dress that seemed to glow against the dark wood of the house.
Kora.
"She wasn't one of us," Silas said, his gaze fixed on the photograph with a longing so intense it felt like a physical weight in the room. "She was a daughter of the town. She was supposed to be the bridge between our world and theirs. I loved her, Lyra. I loved her more than I ever thought possible for a heart that had stopped beating."
"And Jax?" I asked, my internal monologue wondering if the tragedy was as simple as a love triangle.
"Jax loved her too. In his own way. A selfish, destructive way. He wanted to change her. He wanted to make her like us so he could keep her forever. I wanted to let her grow old. I wanted to watch her live a life I could never have."
He looked at me then, and the resemblance between me and the woman in the photograph was so striking it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room.
"The night of the comet in 1864 was the night she died," Silas confessed. "The town set fire to the boarding house where we were staying. They thought they had trapped us all. They didn't care about Kora. They just saw a woman who had sided with the monsters."
I felt a sudden, sharp pang of sympathy for him—and a terrifying sense of dread for myself. Is that my destiny? I wondered. To be the woman caught in the crossfire of a war I didn't start? To be the one who burns so the brothers can keep fighting?
"I couldn't save her," Silas whispered, his hand hovering over the photo but never touching it. "I pulled her out of the fire, but it was too late. I held her while she turned to ash. And for a hundred years, I've been running from that moment."
"And now Jax is back," I said, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place. "He's back because I'm here. He wants a do-over."
"He wants to win this time," Silas said, his eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp green. "He wants to prove that he can take what I love and destroy it before I can even blink. Caroline is just a pawn to him. She's a way to get to me, to distract me while he circles you."
I looked at the photograph of Kora, then back at Silas. I reached out and took his hand. It was cold—so cold it should have been repulsive—but I held on. I needed the connection. I needed to know that there was something real behind the myth.
"I am not her, Silas," I said firmly. "I am not a ghost. And I am not a pawn."
"I know," he said, his fingers closing around mine. "That's why I'm so afraid for you."
While Silas and I were buried in the past, the present was being methodically dismantled in the town square.
Jax Thorne stood in the shadows of the clock tower, watching the townspeople scurry about their tasks. To him, they looked like ants building a mound that he could crush with a single step. He felt the hunger humming in his veins—a low, constant thrum that was amplified by the proximity of so many warm, beating hearts.
"Jax? Are you still here?"
Caroline Forbes approached him, her movements hesitant. She had finished her work with the lanterns, and the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, casting the square in long, orange shadows.
"I'm always here, Caroline," Jax said, turning toward her. He didn't use the smirk this time. He used a look of profound, staged loneliness. "I was just thinking about how much this town has changed. And how much it stays the same."
He walked toward her, his footsteps silent. He reached out and gently untied the scarf around her neck. Caroline didn't move. She didn't even breathe. She stood perfectly still as he revealed the jagged, purple bruises on her skin.
"Does it hurt?" he whispered, his thumb grazing the edge of the wound.
"No," she breathed, her eyes rolling back slightly. "It feels... it feels like a dream."
"Good," Jax murmured, leaning down until his lips were inches from the bruise. "Because dreams are the only place where people like us can truly be happy."
He didn't bite her. Not yet. He just inhaled the scent of her, the sweetness of her fear mixed with the floral notes of her perfume. He needed her sharp. He needed her to be his eyes and ears in the town, to tell him everything Silas was doing, everything Lyra was saying.
"Tell me, Caroline," Jax whispered, his hand sliding into her hair, gripping it just tight enough to make her gasp. "What did Silas and Lyra talk about today?"
"The library," Caroline stammered, her voice a hollow echo. "They went to the library. To the archives."
Jax's eyes darkened to a midnight blue. He let go of her hair and stepped back, a cold, hard smile spreading across his face.
"The archives. Looking for the fire, I suppose," he mused. "Silas always was obsessed with the ending. He never understood that the ending is just a setup for the sequel."
He turned back to Caroline, his expression shifting into something more focused, more dangerous. "Go home, Caroline. Put on your best dress. The comet is coming, and I want you to be looking your best when the world starts to burn."
Caroline nodded, her movements mechanical, and walked away into the gathering gloom. Jax watched her go, his mind already miles away, back in 1864, hearing the crackle of the flames and the screams of the woman who looked just like Lyra Vance.
This time, Silas, he thought, his internal monologue a symphony of malice. This time, I'm the one who holds the match.
Back at the library, the silence was broken by the sound of the town clock striking six. The day was over. The night of the comet was beginning.
Silas and I walked out of the basement, the weight of the history books still heavy in our minds. The town square was now a sea of flickering candles, the white flames reflecting in the shop windows. The air was filled with the sound of a local choir singing old hymns, the music haunting and beautiful in the twilight.
"I have to go meet Jenna and Jeremy," I said, stopping by the fountain. "They'll be looking for me."
"I'll be nearby," Silas said. "I won't let him get close to you."
"Silas... what happened to the others? The other vampires in 1864?"
Silas looked toward the woods, his expression unreadable. "They were trapped in the tomb beneath the old church. Locked away in the dark, starving for a hundred years. The town thought they were gone. But the seals are old, Lyra. And Jax... Jax has always known where the keys are hidden."
The thought of more of them—dozens of them, hungry and vengeful—made my stomach churn. I looked up at the sky. The first faint streak of the comet was visible, a pale, ghostly tail cutting through the darkness.
"It's beautiful," I whispered.
"It's a warning," Silas corrected.
I walked toward the town hall, my mind a whirlwind of fire and ice. I saw Jeremy standing by a tree, his sketchbook open, his eyes fixed on the sky. He looked calmer than he had in the basement, but there was a stillness about him that worried me.
"Hey, Jer," I said, coming up beside him.
"It's here, Lyra," he said, not looking at me. "The light. It's coming to show us what's hiding in the dark."
I looked up at the comet, its light growing stronger with every passing minute. It was a bridge of fire across the heavens, a witness to a century of secrets.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. I flinched, but it was just Aunt Jenna, her face pale in the candlelight. "There you are. I've been looking everywhere. Isn't it amazing?"
"Amazing," I echoed.
As the townspeople began to cheer, a shadow moved across the face of the clock tower. I saw him for a split second—Jax, standing on the ledge, looking down at us with the gaze of a god who had just decided to end the world. He raised a hand in a silent salute, his eyes catching the light of the comet, and then he was gone.
The night was just beginning. The candles were lit, the sky was burning, and the ghosts of 1864 were finally coming home to roost.
I looked at Silas, standing across the square. He was watching me, his green eyes full of a promise he didn't know if he could keep.
The stage was set. The fire was ready. And as the comet reached its zenith, I realized that I wasn't just watching a movie anymore. I was the fire.