“She also might be the reason the senator keeps typing the word ‘unregulated’ into emails,” she says.
“He can type all he wants,” I say. “We’ll give him regulation until he forgets the word means anything.”
Mara breathes in and lets it out like she’s putting away a tool. “I’ll send the note,” she says. “Nothing with your name on it. No promises we can’t keep. A dress code line and parking instructions so Lila doesn’t stab anyone in the valet line.”
“She doesn’t need a knife,” I say. “She’s efficient without one.”
“Agreed,” she says, and lifts her mug. “Your coffee’s cold.”
“I know,” I say.
She leaves. The door seals the room again. The harbor does what it always does: moves other people’s weight around without caring who I am. The gulls bank hard and slide left, rejoining the air over the ferry terminal like they made a plan and stuck to it.
I look at the mock-up again. My thumb fits along the edge of the invitation like it was printed for this hand to measure. I trace the line of her printed name once. It’s not a ritual. It’s habit: learn an edge and you’ll know where it will cut. The floor plan for the gala sits under the invitations: long hall, three bars, side installation wall with the “community” pieces, main room with the stage we won’t let a politician near, and donor tables arranged in ovals so the cameras can move without showing the exit doors.
I pick up the seating chart and pencil the one change no one will argue about: move the museum’s education director two chairs closer to her, drop the talkative donor one table back, swap the clinician with the board member who cries at the wrong stories. The pencil makes a clean gray mark. I write a note in the margin:NO CHAIR.I write it again. I do not intend to be contradicted on this.
I slide the press clippings into a folder and feel the paper’s weight shift from stack to hand.
The secure phone sits on the desk where I left it after the call two nights ago. The screen is dark. The memory isn’t.
I pick up the phone and unlock it with a code only three people know how to find. The call log is clean of names. The number she used sits in the middle of the screen without a label. I scroll once, then stop, thumb on glass, the same jolt in my neck I felt on the mezzanine when she looked up into the smoked glass and saw a coat and not a face.
“One more step,” I say to the dark screen, and I’m not talking to a piece of hardware. “Aurora. Come closer.”
I set the phone down, turn the chair to the window, and let the harbor sit on the other side of the glass. Control is an ugly word when it comes out of the wrong mouth. I built Sanctuaries to keep wolves out. Now I’m the one waiting at the door.
Chapter 9 – Aurora
The invitation is the first thing I see when I sit down at the worktable.
It’s just a rectangle of heavy cream card stock lying where I set it last night, but it feels like a live wire on paper. The black type looks smug in the morning light.WARD FOUNDATION ANNUAL WINTER GALA.My name is printed cleanly underVIPlike the printer knew how to sound confident.
The studio is cold in the way warehouses always are before the baseboards have time to do anything. The windows hold a damp gray sky. A gull screams at something I can’t see. I pull the paint-streaked hoodie over my head and wrap my fingers around a mug I don’t intend to drink for the heat. The lamp above the table throws a yellow circle onto the invitation and turns the rest of the room into muted shapes. The cloth over the camera hangs where I taped it days ago. The corner curl I smoothed last night stayed down. I’m not thrilled that I checked it twice.
My phone buzzes before I touch the paper. Lila has been awake since time began.
Lila:Rise and grind you luminous menace!! Test fittings at 11, hair at 2, car at 6, party at 7. we have a PLAN. Do not dare cancel on me.
Lila:also look: [screenshot attached]
The screenshot is my name on an RSVP list in a massive spreadsheet of other names that want you to read them. It lives near a column labeled “Confirmed: VIP Seating / Stage Left.” There’s a note next to mine:guest of Block 17. No donors or chairs named. I blow out a breath. Lila’s next text lands before I can type a reply.
Lila:This is how you get taken seriously. You walk in, you don’t apologize, you let the lights love you, and you leave with your spine intact.
Me:I’d like my spine tomorrow too.
Lila:Tomorrow is the easy part. Say yes to tonight.
I set the phone face down long enough to look at the invitation without reading it again. My gut has been sayingtrapsince the envelope showed up in the coffee shop. I ignored the first wave of instinct because I am trying to live a life that isn’t run only by instinct. The problem is that my body’s reads are usually right. The undercurrent is familiar: a net tightening, not enough to cut, enough to change how you move.
I splash water on my face at the sink. The cold bites my skin awake. When I look up, the mirror over the sink finds a woman who slept badly and insists on doing the day anyway. The blue stain under my left thumbnail is almost gone. I didn’t scrub it out. I liked the reminder.
A knock lands on the door before nine. I cross the floor and look through the peephole even though I know the rhythm. Jonah fills the hallway with a cardboard tray of coffee and a paper bag that smells like butter and sugar. His hair is under a cap that used to be black. Paint freckles pattern the brim. He grins into the peephole like he knows I’m there.
I open. “You’re early.”
He raises the tray in salute. “You look like a person who needs fuel. And before you say anything, yes, I brought the kind of coffee you drink. Not the kind I drink. I’m a giver.”
