Kyla woke up at three in the afternoon to seventeen missed calls from her mom, six texts from Josh, and one very angry message from her landlord about noise complaints. Apparently, at some point during the night, she'd knocked over a lamp in her sleep and it had crashed loud enough to wake the neighbors.
"Great," she muttered, rolling out of bed. Her body felt like she'd been hit by a truck. Every muscle ached, and her head was foggy from too little sleep and too much excitement.
She checked Josh's texts:
"You alive?"
"Just checking you didn't get abducted by aliens or something."
"That was a joke. Please tell me you weren't actually abducted by aliens."
"Okay I'm starting to worry now."
"KYLA ARE YOU DEAD?"
"Never mind you're probably just sleeping. I'm sleeping too. This message is from sleep-me."
She smiled and typed back: "Still alive. Slept through the apocalypse. What day is it?"
Her phone rang immediately. Josh.
"You scared me," he said when she answered. "I thought maybe the Messenger had friends who came after you or something."
"Nope, just sleeping like a person who saved the world and then stayed up until dawn." Kyla walked to her kitchen and opened the fridge. Empty except for some questionable yogurt and a half-eaten pizza. "I need food. Real food."
"Funny you should mention that. I'm outside your building with breakfast. Well, lunch. Brunch? Whatever meal it is at three PM."
"You're outside my building?"
"I got worried! You weren't answering. I brought bagels and those fancy coffee drinks you like. The ones with way too much sugar."
Kyla looked down at herself. She was still wearing yesterday's clothes, her hair probably looked like a bird's nest, and she definitely smelled like she'd spent the night fighting interdimensional threats. "Give me ten minutes. I need to shower and look like a human."
"Take your time. I'll be in my car trying not to look like a stalker sitting outside your apartment."
Fifteen minutes later, Kyla emerged from her building feeling much more alive. Josh was leaning against his car, holding a coffee carrier and a bag that smelled amazing. He'd changed clothes too—jeans and a t-shirt that said "I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens."
"Nice shirt," Kyla said.
"My roommate from college got it for me as a joke. Seemed appropriate today." Josh handed her a coffee. "Caramel macchiato with extra caramel and whipped cream. I may have memorized your order."
"That's either really sweet or really creepy."
"I'm going with sweet. Creepy doesn't get you a second date." Josh opened the bag. "I got assorted bagels because I don't know if you're an everything person or a cinnamon raisin person, and that says a lot about someone's character apparently."
"Everything bagel. Obviously. Cinnamon raisin is for people who can't commit to actual breakfast food."
"See, I knew you were smart." Josh pulled out an everything bagel. "I also got cream cheese, but the fancy kind with vegetables in it because the guy at the counter said it was good."
They sat on the hood of his car, eating bagels and drinking overpriced coffee like normal people having a normal day. Except nothing about them was normal anymore.
"Did you sleep at all?" Kyla asked.
"Maybe four hours. Kept having weird dreams about glowing rocks and portals." Josh took a bite of his bagel. "Also my neighbor knocked on my door at nine AM to complain that I was talking in my sleep loud enough to wake him up."
"What were you saying?"
"According to him, something about 'not the tentacles, anything but the tentacles.'" Josh's ears turned red. "Which is embarrassing."
Kyla laughed so hard she almost choked on her coffee. "Tentacles?"
"There might have been tentacles on those creatures we saw. I don't know! It was dark and terrifying!" But Josh was grinning too. "My neighbor definitely thinks I'm weird now."
"You are weird. But in a good way."
They finished their bagels, and Josh pulled out his phone. "So I've been thinking about this task force thing. I looked up some of the cases in that folder Chen gave us. There's some really bizarre stuff."
"Like what?"
"Like a guy who claims he can see exactly twenty-four hours into the future, but only when he's drunk. Or a woman who says her house changes layout every time she sleeps. Or—this one's my favorite—a cat that keeps appearing in crime scene photos even though nobody owns a cat matching that description."
"The cat thing sounds like a normal cat being a cat."
"That's what I thought! But apparently this cat has appeared in crime scenes in five different states over the last ten years. Same cat, same weird white marking on its face. Never ages, never stays long enough to be caught."
Kyla thought about that. A week ago, she would have said it was just a coincidence. Now? After seeing a portal to another dimension and glowing rocks and creatures with too many limbs? "We're going to investigate a mystery cat, aren't we?"
"Probably. Monday." Josh put his phone away. "But that's Monday's problem. Right now, I think we deserve an actual day off. Want to do something normal? Something that doesn't involve life-threatening situations or supernatural phenomena?"
"I don't know if I remember how to be normal."
"Me neither. We could wing it."
They ended up at the beach. Tides had a small stretch of coastline on the eastern edge of the city, nothing fancy but nice enough for walking. The weather was perfect—sunny but not too hot, with a breeze coming off the water.
Kyla took off her shoes and walked in the sand, Josh beside her. There were other people around—families with kids, teenagers playing volleyball, an old man walking his dog. Normal people doing normal things.
"This is nice," Kyla said. "Peaceful."
"Yeah. Hard to believe that two days ago we were fighting to save all these people from an invasion they didn't even know was coming." Josh picked up a flat stone and tried to skip it across the water. It sank immediately. "I was never good at that."
"Let me try." Kyla found her own stone and threw it. It skipped twice before sinking. "Ha! Beat you."
"Oh, it's a competition now?"
"Everything's a competition."
They spent twenty minutes trying to out-skip each other, both of them terrible at it but having fun anyway. An old man walking nearby stopped to watch them, shaking his head.
"You're both doing it wrong," he called out. "Too much wrist, not enough angle."
He demonstrated with his own stone, which skipped six times before disappearing into a wave. Josh and Kyla looked at each other, then back at the old man.
"Teach us your ways," Josh said seriously.
The old man—whose name was Frank—spent the next half hour teaching them the art of stone skipping. He was retired, used to be a geology teacher, came to the beach every day. Just a normal guy who happened to be really good at skipping stones.
"You two seem happy," Frank said as they practiced. "Young love is nice to see."
Kyla felt her face get warm. "Oh, we're not—we're just—"
"Partners," Josh supplied. "Work partners. Who are also... friends. Maybe more than friends. We're still figuring it out."
Frank laughed. "Well, whatever you are, hold onto it. Life's too short to waste time overthinking things."
After Frank left to continue his walk, Josh turned to Kyla. "So. More than friends?"
"I don't know. Are we?" Kyla felt nervous suddenly, like they were teenagers instead of adults who'd saved the world together.
"I'd like to be. If you want." Josh moved closer. "Frank's right. Life's too short. We almost died like four times this week. If that doesn't put things in perspective, I don't know what does."
"We did promise to go on an actual date tomorrow night."
"We did. But also..." Josh reached out and took her hand. "I really want to kiss you right now. Is that okay?"
Kyla's heart was racing. "Yeah. That's okay."
Josh leaned in, and Kyla met him halfway. The kiss was soft and sweet and made her feel like maybe the universe had been trying to bring them together all week. Like all the danger and chaos had a purpose—getting them to this moment, on a beach, holding hands and kissing while waves crashed nearby.
When they pulled apart, Josh was smiling like an idiot. "So, more than friends?"
"Definitely more than friends." Kyla squeezed his hand. "But we're still taking it slow. No moving in together after two weeks or anything crazy like that."
"Deal. Although I should mention my apartment is way nicer than yours. Just saying."
"Hey! My apartment is fine."
"Your apartment has a weird smell."
"That's character."
"That's mold, Kyla."
They walked along the beach for another hour, holding hands and talking about everything except work. Josh told her about his family—his mom was a teacher, his dad ran a hardware store, he had two younger sisters who still lived at home. Kyla talked about her mom in Arizona, about how they talked every week but hadn't seen each other in person in over a year.
"You should visit her," Josh said. "After things settle down with the task force. Take a weekend, go to Arizona."
"Maybe. If we don't die investigating mystery cats and haunted houses first."
"Very optimistic. I like it."
They got ice cream from a truck near the parking lot—chocolate for Kyla, vanilla with rainbow sprinkles for Josh, which she teased him about mercilessly.
"Sprinkles are fun," Josh defended himself. "Life needs more fun."
"You're twenty-three and you order ice cream like a six-year-old."
"And you're judging me while eating chocolate ice cream, which is the most boring flavor."
"Chocolate is classic!"
"Classic is code for boring."
They were still arguing about ice cream flavors when they got back to Josh's car. The sun was starting to set, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple. Tomorrow would be their official first date, and Monday they'd start their new jobs investigating the weird and unexplained. But right now, in this moment, everything felt perfect.
"Thank you," Kyla said as Josh drove her home. "For today. For being normal with me."
"Thank you for letting me be normal with you." Josh pulled up outside her building. "See you tomorrow night? Seven PM? I'll pick you up and we'll go to that Italian place downtown."
"The fancy one?"
"The fancy one. We're celebrating being alive and also our new jobs and also us being more than friends."
"That's a lot of celebrating."
"We deserve it." Josh leaned over and kissed her again, quick and sweet. "Get some more sleep. You still look tired."
"So romantic."
"I try."
Kyla watched him drive away, then headed up to her apartment. Inside, she flopped onto her couch and pulled out the folder Chen had given her. She shouldn't be working—she should be resting like Josh said. But she couldn't help being curious.
She opened the first case file. The one about the woman whose reflection moved on its own. The case was from six months ago. Woman named Diana Park, lived alone in an apartment on the north side of the city. She'd called the police multiple times claiming her bathroom mirror showed her reflection doing things she wasn't doing—waving when she stood still, smiling when she frowned, once even speaking although no sound came through the glass.
Officers had responded, found nothing unusual. Woman was referred to mental health services. Case closed.
But at the bottom of the report, someone had added a note in pen: "Responding officers both reported feeling watched in the apartment. One officer's body camera showed interference near the bathroom. Recommend follow-up."
No follow-up had ever happened.
Kyla pulled out her phone and texted Josh: "Are you reading the case files too?"
His response came immediately: "YES. The mirror one is creepy. Want to investigate it Monday?"
"Definitely. But also we need better hobbies than reading creepy case files on our day off."
"Probably. But where's the fun in that?"
Kyla smiled and set down the file. Monday would come soon enough. For now, she had a date to prepare for and a normal Saturday night to enjoy.
Well, as normal as things could be when you were secretly part of a task force that investigated supernatural phenomena.
She ordered Chinese takeout, took a long bath, and tried not to think about mystery cats or moving reflections or what other impossible things might be waiting for them in Tides.
Tomorrow was for romance and celebrating.
Monday was for saving the world again.
But tonight? Tonight was for spring rolls and bad reality TV and going to bed at a reasonable hour for the first time in a week.
Normal. Or at least normal-adjacent.
And honestly, after everything they'd been through, that was good enough.
End of Chapter 12