Morning brought no respite. The storm had only gathered strength overnight, shaking Bosmouth's buildings to their bones and drenching its streets in rivers of foaming floodwater. No matter how high the sun climbed in the sky, it found itself smothered by unbroken layers of thick, sullen cloud that sucked the colour from the landscape. The world as Elise knew it drowned before her eyes, and a single look out of the window was enough to ensnare her thoughts in the same plummeting spiral again and again. Where was Florence? James?

     "Ellie?"

     Where were Robin and Natalie? Were they safe?

     "Ellie."

     What had to happen for her father to let her have a call, a text, or a set of arcane smoke signals from her best friend, or her girlfriend, or whatever word described what they had? Though the more Elise thought about it, the more she realised that it did not matter what she called her. What sparked the brightest fire in her chest and sent the fiercest bolts firing along her nerves was the simple, plain utterance –

     "Ellie."

     – of her girl's name, Cadence.

     Through the gentle currents of her thoughts, Elise felt a concerted gaze bore into the top of her downturned head. Annabelle, her stand-in seminar leader, stood opposite her, clutching a university-branded tote bag and tapping her nails against her other hand's knuckles. "Sorry, I was just..." Elise began as an embarrassed flush torched a path across her face. She dragged the scattered elements of her workspace back into a semblance of order, the heat in her cheeks burning brighter at the sight of the sentence she had started, yet not finished, in her notebook. "I was zoning out during class, wasn't I? Don't worry, I'll try to stay more focused from now on. Sorry."

     "No need to apologise. I know it won't happen again," Annabelle answered with a twitch of the light blue shirt collar that peaked out beneath her navy jumper. "The class ended five minutes ago."

     Elise swivelled in her seat to see that the rest of the classroom lay empty. Desks that had been pushed together for group work at the start of the seminar now stood apart, and the wall-mounted display that had projected Annabelle's presentation had been eased into a blank standby.

     She let her pen drop from her loose hold onto her notebook's open pages. "Oh gosh. I must have been super out of it," Elise uttered through slow breaths. Like the black low-cut top she wore underneath it, the crimson corduroy jacket had fit comfortably when she had tried it on from Cadence's wardrobe that morning. Under Annabelle's focused attention, however, the jacket and her borrowed – and, in typical Cadence fashion, ripped – jeans closed around her, digging into her skin with hot, heaving force. Elise shot up from her seat and started packing her belongings away, and she waved a reassuring hand towards her seminar leader. "If there's anything I missed, I'll be sure to catch up with it later this week, I promise."

     "Relax, Ellie. There wasn't much of a discussion this week anyway, thanks to how many people didn't show." A stiff gust swelled against the windowpane, and Annabelle reeled back and shivered as if the wind had caught her in its fury. Either the seminar leader was an exceptional actor, or she had truly imagined a draught bitter enough to interrupt her explanation. With a pinch of the bridge of her nose, she regained control of her train of thought. "I've seen some crazy storms over the years, but boy, I'll be happy to see the back of this one."

     "Too right." Yet as Elise spoke, the world slid further into darkness through the window. Over the beach, clouds churned into clumps of brackish pitch, festering in the sea's salt-rich air for the right moment to join the weather's onslaught. The storm was stronger than ever, and even she could tell there was a long way to go and a lot of pain to endure before peace returned.

     If there even was any peace to be found past the storm. If the storm ever passed at all.

     The tinkle of the brassy bangles on Annabelle's wrist announced her departure from the desk, and Elise broke free of her glassy-eyed daze. "Before you go, Annabelle," she started, stuffing her final belongings away before snapping her bag shut. "Do you know if James will be back next week? I'm just waiting for some feedback from him on a piece of work, is all."

     While Elise winced at the slight wobble in her feigned casual tone, Annabelle did not seem to notice as she paused by the classroom door. "Are you? Well, that's not ideal. I'll have to get in touch with him about that," she replied with a pensive stroke of her neck. "Last I heard, I'm pencilled in to cover his seminars for the rest of the semester. Sorry, sweetheart."

     "Wait, you're serious? He's not coming back?" Shoving her chair into the desk, Elise rushed around to the door with waving arms. Without the pressure of work to drag him back, there was nothing to stop James keeping Florence and plagiarising more stories in her name. "But he's still got my draft! He can't just ditch his job for a stupid writing break now."

     Wrinkles creased through Annabelle's brow. "Nobody told me anything about why he was leaving. How do you know he's on a writing break?"

     Elise gasped and skidded to a halt, her boot grating across a worn patch of blue carpet. Beneath her nervous breaths, the patter of rain against the window hardened to a determined downpour. "I was just guessing, that's all. Writers need to write...right?" Her final word better resembled a whimper as it left her choked throat, and she ran a hand through her hair. "Anyway, there's someone I need to see, so I should get going. Thanks for leading the seminar, Annabelle. Sorry again for dozing off!"

     "Don't worry about it," Annabelle said, shaking the confused whiplash from her face. "Just...take care, Ellie. It's rough out there right now."

     It was no less rough indoors. As the rain battered against the roof and the wind struck the old walls, the university building stood in grave silence, allowing the storm's song to echo through its empty hallways. Barring the occasional spatter of a leak through the ceiling, nothing stirred in the corridors around Elise. Only snatched glimpses of figures through frosted glass classroom windows reassured her that there were other people around, hiding from the very chaos she walked towards. She would have followed their lead a matter of weeks ago. Now, Cadence needed her help, and she definitely needed her girl's help in kind.

     Somehow, the main bus through the town still waded through the partially flooded streets. Its overworked diesel engine hacked and grunted as it drove the vehicle into the storm's hostile headwinds, the relentless clatter of rain against the chassis ringing between Elise's ears. Most of the seats remained empty throughout her journey, and the few lone individuals that were seated glanced her way as she approached the door. Intentionally or otherwise, a mournful glaze coated their eyes, as if they were already picturing her as the next tragic storm headline.

     If she got the choice, Elise would have preferred being crushed by a fallen tree. At least it was less slapstick than getting wiped out by a runaway shed.

     The police station popped into Elise's sight as soon as the bus departed, its distinctive grey-and-blue façade penetrating the murk and mist that gripped the rest of the town. Polished by constant streams of rainfall, the bent fencing and stone walls appeared sleeker and sharper to intensify the building's already imposing presence. Yet it was not the building itself that knocked the wind from Elise's chest, but the scratched, dented, and all too familiar bottle green saloon car that lurked in the small carpark at its side. Her father was here, as if he had been expecting her.

     As Elise pushed the station's door open, a roaring rush of wind snatched it from her grasp. The door yanked on its rattling hinges, the cacophony of squeaks and snaps earning an alarmed raise of the eyebrow from the uniformed woman hunched over the front desk. "My goodness, you poor thing!" the woman cried as she stepped out from the desk's cramped cubicle. Her warm brown eyes shone past their soft wrinkles, and the slight grey wisps that peeked through her chestnut hair sparkled in the bold overhead lighting. "Have you just been walking in that?"

     "It was less 'walking' and more 'getting blown around in every direction', but yes," Elise answered, sweeping the surface drops from her jeans before they trickled inside the tears. A twisted lock of hair stuck to her forehead, yet there was nobody in the reception's faded blue seats to see her dishevelled state save for the sympathetic desk officer. Through the glass door beside her, she did not see her father among the few bodies that milled around the offices. "Listen, this might sound a bit weird, but...I need to see somebody."

     "No worries, miss! That doesn't sound weird at all. I can sort that for you now," the officer said as she straightened a deep crease out of her fresh white shirt. She removed a black ballpoint pen from her shirt pocket, leading Elise's eye to the sewn patch that identified her as Merryn Stark. "Have a seat just here, and I'll have one of my colleagues come out to you shortly. Could I just take your name, miss?"

     Elise clasped her hand around her arm and took a breath. "I'm Elise, and I actually came here to see a particular officer, if that's possible," she said, and Merryn's pen scraped to a sudden halt. A wary edge hardened the woman's stare, warning her against veering too far off the standard script. "His name's Leon Penrose, and he's my father."

     Tapping her pen against her notepad to the tune of the monochrome wall clock, Merryn pinned Elise to the spot with her keen eyes. "Sorry, is this a personal matter?" she asked, more shaken by the request than by Elise's sudden, violent entrance a moment earlier. At the tentative nod of Elise's head, Merryn's lips knitted together, her nostrils flared. "I appreciate that you've come all this way, but we don't let just anybody walk in and chat with officers while they're on duty. What's this about?"

     "It's about a case he's working on," Elise scrambled to say, quietening her shocked nerves with tight squeezes of her arm. Though she had avoided seeking her dad's help after her mother died, the thought of facing him again after last night boiled her blood to a scorching heat. "I have some evidence that he should see. I tried to get it to him last night, but...he couldn't stop to listen to me."

     "I know that must be frustrating, Elise, but as I'm sure you understand, officers are very busy during the day," Merryn answered, her tone growing terser by the second. With a shake of her head, she returned behind the front desk and swiped a stapled booklet from a healthy paper stack. She presented each of the booklet's near-identical pages, and through the blur of flicked pages shone a brutal gauntlet of dotted lines, tick boxes, and answer sections. As Elise moved to answer, Merryn slapped the papers onto the desk. "If you want to provide new information regarding an open case, I'll have to ask you to fill this form in and –"

     "That's okay, Merryn. I'll take it from here." At some point during their discussion, Leon had appeared in the office doorway and had fixed his gaze on Elise's storm-spattered face. He was unshaven, his dull grey suit was wrinkled and shabby, and the office backlighting cast him in the shifting shadows that pervaded Elise's nightmares. "I'm always willing to make time for my daughter. We can speak in my office."

     The front desk's telephone sliced through the tense air with a pained screech, and Elise jolted out of her defensive posture. Her father's eyes never left her, only narrowing on her every movement with equal parts surprise and suspicion. It was unclear how much he had overheard of Elise's conversation with Merryn, yet his deflated tone suggested that he had plenty to add to his tirade against Cadence. He would be direct, and so would Elise.

     As soon as she stepped into the office, Elise seized the swinging door and slammed it shut. "I'm not sorry," she began, wiping away the memory of a burning pain in her cheek. "And I know you're not either."

     "Do you really think that little of me?" Leon asked as he leaned his back against his desk, a faint, haunted expression banishing the blood from his face. His hands clasped themselves together, and his searching fingers found the slim gold band of his wedding ring. "I love you, Ellie, and whatever you believe, I don't enjoy hurting you. I never have done."

     "That's why you locked up my best friend, is it? Because you love me?" A deep pain snapped somewhere in Elise's chest. Every time she met her father's eye, a black ink stain blotted out the purpose that she had printed onto the front of her mind. He had burned any fragment of familial love from the moment he had hit her. The only bond that could exist between them now, she had decided, was one of mutual exchange. "But you were right. I've been thinking, and as much as I hate to say it, I can't stay here. You win."

     Her father rose from his desk, still spinning his fingers around his wedding ring. "What do you mean? What have you been thinking about?"

     Even gathering the words in her mind chilled Elise's weary bones, and she faced the nearby wall to avoid Leon's pitiful look. "You said it last night – this place isn't good for me. Maybe it's the storm, or maybe it's the past few days catching up with me, but I really don't feel safe here anymore." Clenching her fists and swallowing the bitter spit that coated the inside of her mouth, Elise turned towards her father. "So, I'll do it. I'll go back to Falkerrick with you, as long as you stop throwing all these petty accusations at Cade."

     "First off, I've said nothing about that girl that isn't true. You should know exactly what she's done, given you've been her partner-in-crime for so long." The slow slide of Leon's hand over his face raked over Elise's nerves, and the harshness that sharpened his eyes punctured her confidence. "Hold on. Did she put you up to this? Is this whole performance a joke?"

     "Believe it or not, as much as I love Cade, I can still think for myself just fine," Elise retorted with a roll of her eyes. Stifling the indignant fire that flared to her fingertips at her father's bullish treatment was tough, yet accepting the need to appease him was far tougher. If it had not been for Cadence's sake, she would not have had the strength to withstand Leon's voice. "I'm serious. I'll really move back. All I want is for you to promise you'll leave Cade alone from now on."

     "Is that all?" Leon snapped, salving his terse tone with a lone hollow laugh. He loosened the knot of his burgundy tie, and the room's swelling heat suddenly plummeted and slipped through the cracks in the walls. "If I withdraw my complaint against that girl, are you really going to do what I say? After screaming at me to stay away from you just yesterday?"

     Elise dropped her hands to pull at the hem of her usual skirt, only to find the threads of her ripped jeans there instead. "I promise, Dad," she uttered through thin breaths. The clothes were not heavy to wear, but their unfamiliarity combined with the dread that haunted her words proved a greater burden to bear than expected. "Let Cade go, give us one last day together to say goodbye properly, and then I'll come home. Just one day, that's it."

     A numb inertia overtook her father. His slow breathing eased to a halt, leaving in its wake a perfect silence that locked Time in its grim fetters. "One day," Leon eventually said as he looked up from his pensive dive. He spoke in a low voice, and there was a tension through his jaw that had not been there before. "One day, Ellie. After today, I don't want you to go anywhere near that girl again. Am I making myself clear?"

     The sides of Leon's mouth twitched upwards. He was revelling in this even more than Elise had anticipated, and she bit her tongue to suppress her surging anger. "Like crystal," she spat with all the venom of an arcane curse. "It'll be fine, Dad. One day is all I need."

     Her own words stewed in Elise's head, tuning out whatever chatter her father loosed in her direction on the walk to the holding cells. From the moment she had reunited with Cadence, the whole world had seemed to throw all its weight into ripping them apart. They had so far defied the odds, yet whenever Elise looked at her father's broad-shouldered shape swaggering ahead of her, she only saw reality catching up with them. To care for Cadence was to spend a lifetime running, fighting, and hurting – both with her and because of her. Cadence brought chaos, and where there was chaos, there was disaster.

     A firm hold closed around Elise's wrist, and a cool, heavy weight landed in her palm. She rose from her contemplations to see a scuffed metal door, an equally roughed-up key resting in her grasp. Between her and the door, Leon waved another, larger key as he spoke. "Remember, your little friend isn't the only person we're holding right now, so be careful, and keep that out of sight until you need it," he said, a strikingly sincere note of concern shaking his voice as he indicated the key she hid inside her pocket. "She's in a lock-up on the left. We had a difficult exchange this morning, so it'd be best if she saw you first. I'll be by this door keeping an eye, alright?"

     Without a word, Elise nodded her understanding and stepped through the door her father opened. The holding area was a cramped, dimly lit space, and the narrow central corridor placed her within a hair's breadth of the curls of paint peeling from the walls. She tucked her arms close, took a deep breath of the stale, musty air, and steered her gaze clear of the handful of strangers that loitered inside the cells she passed by.

     "What now, DI Dick? I told you, I'm not admitting to shit." Echoing between the sturdy cell bars, the bold beat of a defiant drum called to Elise. She followed its lead, and at its core, where its rhythm resonated most powerfully through her bones, was Cadence. "Ellie? Ellie! Hell, it feels like I haven't seen you in forever. How the hell did you get back here?"

     "Sometimes it pays to have a tool of a dad in law enforcement," Elise said, clutching the bars of the cell door and pulling herself as close as possible. At the first glimpse of Cadence's shocking hair streak and glowing sleeve tattoo, a hint of a smile appeared on her face. "Hey, Cade. I'm so glad you're okay, and...I'm sorry for not coming sooner."

     Cadence shot up from her flimsy cot and bounded to the door, taking Elise's hands in her own. "Easy, killer. It's not like I was going anywhere, right?" she said, and the feeble corridor lighting painted the first sketch lines of a distinct shadow underneath her eyes. Creases lined her top, and a light glaze sheened off her damp boots. She shared a grin with Elise, then took a moment to scan her friend's outfit. "Wait, are those my clothes? Have you been playing dress-up without me?"

     Keeping hold of the bars, Elise hung back far enough to show off the full extent of her borrowed clothing. "Maybe. I needed a change after being out in the storm, and I didn't bring any of my own clothes to the cabin," she explained, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks under the close attention of Cadence's eager eyes. "I would've asked your permission first, but you were...tied up."

     "Like I'd stand in the way of hot punk Ellie rocking up to see me." Slowly, gently, Cadence reached through the bars and stroked the red fabric of Elise's jacket sleeve. She said nothing, yet something changed in her look, adding an extra fond, starry glaze to the overflowing affection that filled her eyes. When she spoke, it was barely above a whisper. "I'm glad I forgot to give this back. It suits you."

     The steel cell bars pinched into Elise's palms. Now she had the girl in front of her, she could not picture Cadence wearing red corduroy by choice. "What do you mean? Give it back to who?"

     Whatever spell had conquered Cadence suddenly lifted, and she leaned close to Elise's face through the bars. "Real talk, killer: I'm so psyched you're here," she said with a soft touch of Elise's cheek. "I've been missing you like crazy, and since they let Matt go this morning, I haven't even been able to piss him off for giggles. When I bust out of this cage, we're so hitting the road and hanging out somewhere far, far away from here."

     "I hate to spoil your plans, but..." Elise produced the key from her pocket, slid it into the keyhole, and clicked the cell door open. The hinges squealed as the door swung around, revealing the rare sight of Cadence's speechless face. Laughing to herself, Elise flourished the key for her friend to see on its way into her pocket. "No busting out needed, Cade-dini. I missed you too much to not meddle in your escape plan."

     "Woah." Cadence watched the cell door list past her face in silence, moving only as it came to a squeaking halt by the wall. Flickers of curious surprise rumbled in the surrounding cells, yet they dissipated into the wind's distant howl. As she locked eyes with Elise, Cadence eased herself over the newly opened boundary and took her friend by the forearms. "Talk about coming in clutch. One hella sweet overnight makeover, and you're even more of a badass than you were before."

     Without the bars between them, the full impact of her girl's presence struck Elise, and it hit her hard. Hot water flooded her eyes, an immovable lump swelled in her throat, and her heart rocked with a beat that banished her every passing thought. The storm, her worries, and her deal with her father plunged out of sight. Being with Cadence was all that mattered.

     Elise surrendered to the urge to throw her arms around her girl's neck and bury her face in her shoulder. "I learned from the best bad influence I know," she muttered by Cadence's ear.

     Cadence ran her fingers down Elise's back, whispering into her hair. "Like I told you, nothing's coming between us. Not Flo, not Matt, not your asshole dad or this dingy prison – nothing." She brushed Elise's cheek as her girl looked up, and the soft pressure of her fingertips ushered them closer until Cadence's brow rested on Elise's head. "It's you and me, Ellie, and we're unstoppable."

     The blend of their breaths sweetened the pocket of air between them, and Elise could not drink it in quickly enough. Suddenly, she believed this was not the end of their story, but the beginning, and they could tackle whatever plots and twists came their way. After all, Cadence brought chaos, and where there was chaos, there was possibility.