For six years, no nymph in Yarrowdeep had made Johnny blush. Lyra Willowmist meant to be the first. She stood outside the bookshop in her emerald bikini, counting the sisters who had failed before her. Sixty-three. Every one had batted her lashes, giggled, leaned close. Johnny had smiled, thanked them, and gone back to his book. Lyra had watched them fail from the trees. She had learned one thing. The old tricks were dead. Through the tall windows, candlelight glowed on packed shelves. Johnny sat in the back, a thick book open on his knees. He did not look up when the door chimed. Lyra let it swing shut behind her. She did not smile. She did not lean. She walked past him to the shelves and pulled down a book of her own. She sat across the aisle and read. Or pretended to. Minutes passed. Johnny turned a page. So did she. The silence stretched until it itched. "You're doing it wrong," he said. Lyra kept her eyes on the page. "Doing what?" "Ignoring me. The last one tried that too. She lasted four minutes." He finally looked up. His eyes were tired, guarded, the eyes of a man who had turned away sixty-three smiles. "I know why nymphs come here." There it was. The dismissal, arriving early. Lyra felt the door of her plan swing shut. If she flirted now, she was the sixty-fourth. If she left, she was nothing. So she did the one thing none of her sisters had risked. She told the truth. "You're right," she said. "I came to seduce you. I studied the ones before me for weeks. I know your walk, your schedule, the shelf you always return to." She closed her book. "It's this one. You've read it four times. I want to know why." Johnny went still. No nymph had ever admitted the game. His guarded look cracked, just slightly. "My mother read it to me," he said. "Before she passed." Lyra did not reach for him. She did not purr. She asked, "What was her favorite part?" He talked. For an hour, he talked, and Lyra listened, and the candles burned low. She learned that Johnny was not cold. He was lonely, and lonely men do not want to be hunted. They want to be known. When the shopkeeper doused the last candle, Johnny walked her to the door. At the threshold he stopped. "You could come back tomorrow," he said. His voice was rough. "If you want." Lyra grinned. "I want." She stepped into the dark, heart pounding. She had done it. She had cracked the door no sister had opened. But walking home, her grin faded. Johnny had asked her back because she seemed honest. Every word after this would have to keep that promise. And her whole nature was the lie. She had won his trust with the one thing she could not afford to give.

Lyra came back the next morning, as promised. But Johnny was not alone. A blonde nymph in a red bikini stood on the bookshop step, blocking the door, a pink butterfly perched on her finger. Lyra knew her. Coral Meadowbrook. She had chased more men than Lyra could count, and she never lost quietly. "You're the one who cracked him," Coral said. No greeting. She flicked her wrist, and the butterfly lifted off. "Word travels. Sixty-three of us failed. Then you walk in and he starts talking." Lyra kept her voice flat. "He wanted honesty." "Honesty." Coral laughed. "You studied his walk. His schedule. His mother's book. You told me that yourself last week, over drinks." She turned toward the open door. "Wonder if he'd call that honest." Johnny stood inside, close enough to hear. His book hung shut at his side. His face had gone still, the guarded look Lyra had watched him give sixty-three nymphs. Lyra's stomach dropped. Coral was right. Every fact Lyra had used to reach him had started as a hunter's notes. If she argued, she looked like a schemer covering her tracks. If she stayed silent, Coral filled the silence with poison. So Lyra did the only thing that had ever worked on him. She told the truth again, all of it, out loud. "She's not lying," Lyra said to Johnny. "I did study you. I planned to trick you like the others. I told Coral my whole plan." She made herself hold his eyes. "Then I met you, and I couldn't do it. So I stopped. That's the only reason you and I ever talked." Coral's smile thinned. "See? She admits it." "She admitted it before you got here," Johnny said. He looked at Coral now. "Yesterday. She told me she came to seduce me. First thing she said." Coral opened her mouth. Nothing came. Her wit ran out. "You came to save me from her," Johnny went on. His voice stayed quiet. "But you didn't tell me one true thing about yourself. You told me about her." He stepped back into the shop. "That's the difference." Coral stood on the step, red bikini bright against the gray wood. For once she said nothing. Then she turned and walked off, and the pink butterfly trailed after her. Johnny held the door for Lyra. "You could have denied it," he said. "She'd have had no proof." "You'd have known," Lyra said. He nodded once. The same nod he gave the nymph with the flowers. But this time he did not walk away. "Come in," he said. Lyra stepped inside, and her heart pounded harder than it had the night before. She had beaten Coral. She had kept his trust. But she saw the trap now with clear eyes. Every truth bought her deeper in. And she still had not told him the one truth that mattered most: she had never planned to stay.