She walked out into the rainy October night, leaving Lucas Vane standing alone in a room full of drying ink. And on the table, where the creature had been, a single drop of ink trembled—then shaped itself into a tiny, smiling raven. It spread its wings, flew to Megan’s shoulder, and dissolved into a happy smudge on her collar.

“Fine,” she whispered. “But we do it my way. Tonight. In the art room. And you bring that notebook—every page.”

It started subtly. Last spring, she’d been doodling in the margins of her history notes—a little dragon, nothing special—when the dragon’s tail twitched. She blinked, certain she’d imagined it. Then the dragon stretched its paper wings and sneezed a tiny puff of graphite smoke.

“You should have remembered,” Megan said, wiping her pen clean on his letterman jacket. “I’m the one who draws the lines.”

“Draw it,” Lucas said, pointing to the page with The Hollow .

“Save it.” He pulled something from his jacket: a small, leather-bound notebook. It was old, the pages yellowed and warped. He opened it to a page covered in diagrams and cramped handwriting. “My great-grandfather was an artist too. He left this behind. Notes about ‘lucid ink’—the ability to animate drawings. He could never do it himself. But you can.”