Updated Apr 13, 2026 • ~8 min read
Chapter 15: The Fight
Oliver
Oliver is going to have nightmares about watching Sage collapse for the rest of his life—however long that turns out to be, which based on recent events might not be very long at all—but for now he channels his terror into action, helping Morgan get Sage to the car and back to Salem and into bed where she can recover from whatever the Collector did to her.
“She’ll be okay,” Morgan says, but she sounds like she’s trying to convince herself as much as Oliver. “She’s powerful. She’s survived worse.”
“Has she?” Oliver asks, because from where he’s sitting, Sage looks pale and fragile in ways that terrify him.
Morgan doesn’t answer, just sets about reinforcing the wards around Sage’s apartment with a grim efficiency that tells Oliver she’s as scared as he is.
It’s noon before Sage wakes up, and Oliver has spent the intervening hours researching frantically, trying to find anything that might help them actually fight the Collector instead of just surviving encounters by luck.
“You should be dead,” Morgan says when Sage sits up, and it’s delivered like an accusation born from fear. “That draining spell should have killed you or at least left you unconscious for days.”
“I’m harder to kill than I look,” Sage says, voice rough, and Oliver brings her water without being asked because it’s something concrete he can do when everything else feels impossible.
“The Collector is playing with us,” Oliver says, pulling up his notes. “They could have killed you—killed all of us—but they didn’t. They’re sending a message.”
“What message?” Sage asks, drinking the water slowly.
“That we’re outmatched,” Morgan says flatly. “That everything we try will fail. That we should give up or run or accept our deaths.”
“Well, that’s not happening,” Sage says, and there’s steel in her voice that makes Oliver’s chest warm with something that might be pride or might be love or might be both.
“So what do we do?” Oliver asks, because he’s good at research but Sage is good at strategy.
“We figure out how the Collector is actually staying corporeal,” Sage says, already moving to her grimoire with the kind of focused determination that suggests she’s processing trauma by working. “Two hundred years of stolen magic should have transformed them completely into an entity by now—they shouldn’t be able to hold physical form at all.”
“So why can they?” Morgan asks, following Sage’s logic.
“Anchor,” Oliver says, the pieces clicking together. “They need a physical anchor to stay partially corporeal. Something that ties them to the material world.”
“Find the anchor, destroy it, and the Collector loses cohesion,” Sage finishes. “They’d revert to pure entity form, which we could then bind or banish.”
It’s a good theory. Oliver wants desperately for it to be correct, because it’s the first plan they’ve had that actually gives them a chance.
They spend the rest of the day researching anchors—historical precedents, magical requirements, how to locate them—and by evening they have enough information to form a working hypothesis.
“The anchor would need to be something personally significant,” Morgan says, reading from a grimoire that looks older than America. “Something from their original life, before they became the Collector.”
“Nathaniel Thorne was a witch hunter in 1692,” Oliver says, pulling up his historical research. “He was caught and imprisoned by his own coven for killing practitioners. What would he have kept from that time?”
They brainstorm possibilities—a weapon, clothing, letters—but nothing feels right until Sage finds a reference in her grandmother’s notes.
“Witch hunters used to bind themselves to their purpose through ritual objects,” she says slowly. “Something that represented their oath to hunt witches. It varied by region but in Salem they used—”
“Medallions,” Oliver finishes, remembering a reference from Daniel’s research. “Iron medallions engraved with binding symbols.”
“If Thorne kept his medallion,” Morgan says, excitement building, “and it’s survived for two centuries—”
“Then that’s the anchor,” Sage confirms. “And if we destroy it, we destroy his ability to maintain physical form.”
It’s the best lead they’ve had, and Oliver watches hope flicker across both witches’ faces before reality reasserts itself.
“We still don’t know where the anchor is,” Morgan points out.
“Or how to get to it without the Collector killing us first,” Sage adds.
“One problem at a time,” Oliver says, channeling optimism he doesn’t entirely feel. “First we locate it, then we figure out how to survive retrieving it.”
The location spell takes Morgan and Sage working together, their magic complementing each other in ways that are beautiful to watch even though it makes Oliver feel useless, and after three hours they have coordinates.
“Boston,” Sage says, staring at the map where the locator spell has marked a spot. “Beacon Hill, specifically. That’s…”
“Near where the original Salem witch trials judges lived,” Oliver finishes, pulling up historical records. “Before the town was called Salem. Thorne must have hidden the medallion somewhere in that area.”
“So we go to Beacon Hill,” Morgan says, already preparing her supplies. “We find the medallion, we destroy it, we bind or banish the Collector before they can kill more witches.”
“It’s going to be protected,” Sage warns. “Probably trapped. Definitely dangerous.”
“Everything about this case is dangerous,” Oliver points out. “At least this time we’re being proactive instead of reactive.”
They plan through the night—Morgan and Sage working on counter-wards while Oliver researches the specific location, trying to narrow down where exactly in Beacon Hill the medallion might be hidden—and by dawn they’re as prepared as they’re going to get.
Which is to say, not very prepared at all, but determination sometimes has to substitute for readiness.
The location turns out to be a historical building that’s been converted to condos, and Oliver feels absurd breaking into someone’s basement with two witches at two PM on a Wednesday, but here they are, living their best criminal lives.
“The medallion should be here,” Sage says, witch-sight active, scanning for magical signatures. “I can feel the anchor energy, but it’s… layered. Protected.”
“Behind the wall,” Morgan says, pressing her hand to the foundation. “There’s a void space. Hidden room, maybe.”
They find the entrance—a section of wall that’s actually a concealed door, ward-locked and probably trapped—and spend twenty tense minutes dismantling the protections while Oliver keeps watch, listening for residents or police or entities that want to kill them.
The door finally opens, revealing a small chamber that’s definitely not part of the original building plans, and in the center, on a pedestal of old stone, is an iron medallion that radiates wrongness in a way even Oliver’s weak sensitivity can detect.
“That’s it,” Sage breathes. “That’s the anchor.”
Morgan moves forward to take it, and everything goes wrong.
The trap activates—not magical wards but physical ones, the room filling with barriers of solid magic that separate all three of them, and then the Collector is there, materializing from shadows, furious in ways Oliver has never seen.
“You’ve been busy,” the Collector hisses, and they sound less human than before, voice layered with echoes of all the witches they’ve consumed. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you searching for my anchor?”
“Worth a try,” Morgan shoots back, already throwing combat spells that the Collector deflects easily.
Oliver is trapped in his section, separated from both witches by barriers he can’t cross, and he watches helplessly as the Collector advances on Sage with clear intent.
“You’re not ready yet,” the Collector says to Sage. “But I’m tired of waiting. I think I’ll take you now and make do with what I have.”
“No!” Oliver shouts, slamming his fists against the barrier, and the Collector glances at him with something that might be amusement.
“The human cares about you,” they observe. “How sweet. How exploitable.”
They move toward Oliver instead of Sage, magic forming around their hands—a killing spell, Oliver realizes with sudden clarity, he’s about to die—and then Sage does something desperate.
She detonates every ward in the building at once.
The explosion is massive—magical energy released in a burst that shatters the barriers and sends all of them flying—and in the chaos, Oliver sees Morgan grab the medallion and Sage grab Oliver, and then they’re running, the building collapsing around them as wards fail and magic goes wild.
They make it out seconds before the entire structure comes down, and Oliver can hear the Collector screaming from inside, trapped by the rubble and the broken wards and the sudden loss of anchor proximity.
“Did we win?” Oliver gasps, coughing from dust and terror.
“We bought time,” Sage corrects, still holding onto him like she’s afraid he’ll disappear. “Morgan has the medallion. We need to destroy it before the Collector digs themselves out.”
They run for Morgan’s car, pile in, and drive away from Beacon Hill while sirens converge on the collapse, and Oliver catches Sage’s hand in the backseat, holding tight.
“You blew up a building,” he says.
“I panicked,” Sage admits.
“It was very dramatic.”
“Shut up, Reyes.”
But she’s smiling, just a little, and Oliver knows they’re not safe yet, knows the Collector will be coming for them as soon as they recover, but for now they have the anchor and each other and maybe—just maybe—a chance.
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