Updated Apr 13, 2026 • ~12 min read
Chapter 9: Fourth Witch Vanishes
Sage
Sage is halfway through translating a passage about historical entity containment methods when her phone rings with a number she doesn’t recognize, and something cold settles in her stomach because unknown calls at two in the morning are never good news.
“Thornwood,” she answers, already standing, already reaching for her bag of magical supplies.
“This is DETECTIVE MARCUS RIVERA, Boston PD supernatural crimes division,” a tired voice says. “We have a situation. Another witch has vanished—LUCIA SANTOS, 28, from the Harbor Coven. Witnesses saw her entering her apartment building an hour ago but she never made it to her door. Same pattern as the previous victims.”
Sage’s chest tightens because she knows that coven, knows that losing one of their members is going to devastate them.
“I’m on my way,” Sage says, already grabbing her coat. “Don’t let anyone touch the scene.”
She hangs up and immediately calls Oliver—they’ve been working together for two weeks now, the awkwardness from their fight mostly faded, and somewhere along the way it became automatic to include him in emergencies—and he answers on the second ring, voice alert despite the hour.
“Sage? What’s wrong?”
“Fourth victim. Harbor Coven, fire specialist. I’m heading to the scene now.”
“I’ll meet you there,” Oliver says immediately. “Text me the address.”
Sage does, and twenty minutes later she’s standing in the lobby of a converted warehouse building in South Boston with Oliver at her side and Detective Rivera looking at her like she’s either his best hope or his worst nightmare.
“Thornwood witch,” Rivera says by way of greeting. He’s in his fifties, has the kind of exhaustion that comes from dealing with magical crimes that regular police can’t solve, and Sage knows he was one of the detectives who investigated her coven’s massacre five years ago. “Heard you were consulting on this case.”
“Trying to stop more deaths,” Sage says shortly. “Where did she vanish?”
Rivera leads them to the elevator bay, and Sage can feel it immediately—that same wrongness she felt at the other scenes, the void where a witch used to exist, reality scooped out and left hollow.
Oliver’s sensitivity must be picking it up too because he goes very still, his expression shifting from concerned to focused.
“She got out of the elevator here,” Rivera says, gesturing to the space between the elevator and the hallway leading to apartments. “Security footage shows her stepping out, and then…” He makes a gesture indicating nothing. “Static on the cameras for exactly forty seconds, and when they come back online, she’s gone.”
Sage pulls out her scrying compass and silver dust, not bothering to explain to Rivera what she’s doing because he’s seen enough magical investigation to know when to stay quiet and let practitioners work.
The dust settles into the floor, and the void appears—darker than the previous sites, more aggressive, like the Collector is getting stronger with each acquisition or less careful about hiding their tracks.
“Same signature,” Sage murmurs, pressing her hand to the edge of the void and feeling the familiar cold. “It’s definitely one entity, not multiple.”
“How many more before they stop?” Oliver asks quietly, and Sage hears the fear beneath his careful tone.
“I don’t know,” Sage admits, pulling her hand back and wrapping the small cut she made to activate the tracking spell. “But they’re escalating. Two weeks between the first attacks, then twelve days, then five days, and now three days. They’re hunting faster.”
“Why?” Rivera asks, taking notes even though Sage knows magical investigations rarely result in arrests because how do you arrest something that’s barely corporeal?
“The ritual they’re using is degrading,” Oliver supplies, looking at Sage for confirmation. “They need to complete the next version before they lose cohesion, which means they can’t afford to wait between acquisitions anymore.”
“Which makes them more dangerous,” Sage continues, standing and surveying the scene with growing dread. “Desperate. They’ll take more risks, be more aggressive, and probably start targeting witches who are better protected because they’re running out of time.”
Rivera looks grim. “How do we stop them?”
“We’re working on that,” Sage says, which is not entirely true because they have theories but no concrete plan. “In the meantime, tell the Harbor Coven to stay together, ward heavily, and don’t go anywhere alone.”
“Already did,” Rivera says. “But Sage… Catherine was with someone when she vanished. Her girlfriend was five feet behind her, coming out of the elevator a few seconds later. The Collector took Catherine in front of a witness and the girlfriend didn’t see anything except the void where Catherine used to be.”
Sage feels ice slide down her spine because that’s new, that’s different from the previous attacks where the Collector hunted witches who were alone or isolated.
“They’re getting bold,” she says quietly.
“Or they’re strong enough now that they don’t need to hide,” Oliver adds, and Sage doesn’t like how right that sounds.
They spend another hour at the scene, Sage tracing magical signatures while Oliver catalogues every detail and Rivera coordinates with other officers to interview witnesses, and by the time they’re done, Sage is exhausted and furious and terrified in equal measure.
The Collector has taken four witches in less than a month. At this rate, they’ll have enough power for their ritual within two weeks, and then they’ll come for Sage, and she still doesn’t have a plan for how to stop something that’s survived for two hundred years by stealing the power of practitioners stronger than her.
Oliver follows her to her car—he drove separately but apparently isn’t letting her leave alone—and Sage doesn’t have the energy to argue about it.
“You need protection,” Oliver says when they’re standing by her vehicle, the city quiet around them in the pre-dawn darkness. “Sage, you’re the target. The Collector took your coven five years ago and they’re building toward taking you now. You can’t keep going home to an empty apartment.”
“I can protect myself,” Sage says automatically, but even she can hear how hollow it sounds.
“I know you can,” Oliver says, and there’s no condescension in his voice, just genuine concern. “But let me help anyway. Stay with me, or let me stay with you, or at the very least don’t be alone when the Collector is hunting this aggressively.”
Sage wants to refuse because accepting protection means admitting she’s scared, means letting Oliver deeper into her life, means trusting him in ways that could devastate her when—not if, when—he eventually leaves or dies or proves that trust was a mistake.
But she is scared. She’s terrified, actually, because four witches are dead and the pattern is accelerating and Sage barely survived last time and she knows, she knows with certainty that makes her bones ache, that the Collector is coming for her soon.
“You don’t have to do this,” she says instead of accepting, giving Oliver an out. “This isn’t your fight. You could walk away right now and no one would blame you.”
Oliver steps closer, and Sage can see determination in his eyes, the kind of stubborn persistence that first annoyed her and now makes her chest tight with something that might be affection.
“I’m not walking away,” he says quietly. “I know you think everyone leaves eventually, but I’m not everyone. I’m staying. Through this investigation, through whatever comes after, I’m staying.”
“You can’t promise that,” Sage says, voice rough. “People die. People leave. You don’t know—”
“You’re right, I don’t know the future,” Oliver interrupts gently. “But I know that right now, in this moment, I’m choosing to stay. And I’ll keep choosing that every day until you believe me.”
Sage looks at him, at this ridiculous optimistic human who should have run from her the moment they met, who keeps showing up with coffee and apologies and promises he might not be able to keep, and she feels something in her chest crack.
“Fine,” she says, and she’s not sure if she’s agreeing to protection or to trying to trust him or to both. “You can stay at my place. But you’re sleeping on the couch.”
“I can work with that,” Oliver says, grinning, and Sage rolls her eyes but doesn’t fight the small smile that tugs at her mouth.
They drive back to Salem in separate cars—Sage needs her vehicle for independence, needs the ability to leave if this gets too overwhelming—and by the time she’s parking in the alley behind Thornwood Occult, the sun is starting to rise, painting the sky in colors that would be beautiful if Sage weren’t so exhausted.
Oliver parks beside her, grabbing a bag from his trunk that suggests he came prepared for this possibility, and Sage doesn’t comment on it, just leads him upstairs and disables the wards to let him through.
Her apartment feels different with Oliver in it at dawn instead of evening—more intimate, somehow, like inviting him into her morning routine is more significant than sharing workspace—and Sage busies herself making coffee to avoid thinking about it too hard.
“Thank you,” Oliver says from where he’s settled on her couch, looking tired but content. “For trusting me enough to let me stay.”
“Don’t make it weird,” Sage says, but there’s no bite in it.
“Too late, it’s already weird,” Oliver says cheerfully. “We’re fighting an immortal entity and I’m sleeping on your couch because you’re too stubborn to admit you want company. It’s maximally weird.”
“I don’t want company,” Sage lies. “I want backup.”
“Sure,” Oliver agrees in a tone that means he knows she’s lying. “Backup. That’s definitely what this is.”
Sage brings him coffee—she knows his order now, the way he knows hers, and there’s something domestic about that knowledge that makes her uncomfortable—and settles into the chair across from him instead of sitting beside him on the couch because maintaining distance is important even when she’s just agreed to let him stay.
“We need a better plan,” Sage says, steering the conversation back to safe territory. “Four witches are dead, the Collector is accelerating, and we still don’t know how to actually stop them beyond ‘figure out what they want and destroy it,’ which is not a plan.”
“We know they’re building toward a ritual,” Oliver says, pulling out his notebook. “And we know they need specific types of magic—we should map out what they’ve collected so far and predict what they still need.”
Sage nods, already cataloguing the victims in her mind. “Melissa Hunt was a generalist with strong warding. Emma Wilson specialized in protection magic. Rebecca Torres was elemental, specifically water. Lucia Santos—the one just taken—specializes in fire magic.”
“Different specializations,” Oliver notes. “Protection, elemental water, elemental fire… what else would a power-collection ritual need?”
“Depends on the purpose,” Sage says, moving to grab one of her grimoires. “But typically you’d want balance—all four elements, different magical disciplines, maybe some specialized skills like divination or necromancy.”
They spend the next hour mapping possibilities, and by the time Rowan lets herself in at eight AM—apparently having a key means she feels entitled to visit whenever—they have a preliminary list of likely targets.
“Oliver’s still here,” Rowan observes with barely concealed glee. “And he has a overnight bag. Sage, are you two—”
“He’s staying for protection,” Sage interrupts. “The Collector is escalating. It’s practical.”
“Very practical,” Rowan agrees, not bothering to hide her grin. “Practically romantic, even.”
“I’m going to fire you,” Sage threatens.
“No, you’re not,” Rowan says cheerfully. “You love me. Also, I brought breakfast because I knew neither of you would eat.”
She did indeed bring breakfast—bagels and cream cheese from the café down the street—and Sage accepts it with grudging gratitude because Rowan is right, she hadn’t been planning to eat.
They work through the morning, Rowan helping with research while Oliver coordinates with Daniel via phone, and Sage finds herself watching Oliver more than she should, noticing the way he smiles when he figures something out, the way he gestures while explaining theories, the way he looks at her sometimes like she’s something precious.
It’s terrifying. The whole situation is terrifying—four witches dead, an immortal entity hunting her, and somewhere along the way she’s started caring about Oliver Reyes in ways that are absolutely going to destroy her when this goes wrong.
Because it will go wrong. It always does.
But for now, for this moment, Oliver is here, making terrible jokes with Rowan and bringing Sage coffee without being asked and insisting on protecting her even though he’s mostly human and definitely outmatched.
And Sage, despite every instinct screaming at her to push him away, lets him stay.
“We’re going to figure this out,” Oliver says later, when Rowan has left and they’re alone again, surrounded by research and coffee cups and the slowly fading daylight.
“You don’t know that,” Sage says.
“I believe it anyway,” Oliver responds, and his smile is so genuinely optimistic that Sage wants to kiss him or hit him or both.
She does neither, just returns to her research, but when Oliver falls asleep on her couch around midnight—still in his clothes, notebook fallen onto his chest—Sage pulls a blanket over him with careful hands.
And when she finally goes to her own bed, exhausted and scared and more hopeful than she wants to admit, she falls asleep to the sound of Oliver’s steady breathing in the other room and tells herself it’s just practical, just backup, just protection.
The lie doesn’t even convince her, but she tells it anyway.
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