We drift toward the windows, watching the empty street. Candace stands so still I'm not sure she's breathing. Maggie paces once, twice, then forces herself behind the counter to stack mugs.
Darla keeps checking her phone, refreshing even though there won't be anything yet. Frankie perches on the edge of a chair, notebook forgotten, gaze distant.
I'm on my feet before I realize I've stood, arms wrapped tight around myself, pacing the middle of the room. This part always gets to me. The waiting. The helplessness. Watching the blast radius of someone else's bad decisions spread while all I can do is hope my phone stays silent.
"Okay," Ruby says, thinner than usual. "Someone tell me something absurd so I don't spiral. Frankie. Weird witch fact. Go."
Frankie blinks as though she's been yanked back from far away. "Uh. Some cultures think teeth hold memories. Like little stones recording what you survive."
Ruby stares. "That was the opposite of helpful."
"Sorry. Low on material today."
Maggie slides a mug toward me. "Drink. If you're going to pass out, at least do it caffeinated."
I take it mostly to keep my hands busy.
We're still trying to make nervous jokes when the floor lurches under my feet. Followed by a deep, impossible sound. A boom that isn't noise so much as the earth flinching. The windows rattle. The floor bucks, a sickening lurch that sends my stomach into my throat. One hanging light swings wildly, chains squealing.
Ruby yelps. "What the hell was that?"
Screams echo faintly outside. A car alarm wails; it's a jagged backdrop to the ringing in my ears. I can't move. Can't breathe. The blast rips through the air and keeps vibrating inside my chest, wrong and enormous. My fingers go numb around the mug. It slips, hits the floor, shatters. Coffee splashes my shoes. I don't feel it.
Someone is talking. Maggie? Ruby? The words smear. Then all our phones shriek at once. Emergency Alert tone. High, insistent, merciless. I fumble my phone out with fingers that don't feel attached.
EMERGENCY ALERT: There has been a bombing. Please remain calm and remain where you are currently located. More details will be released soon.
"Oh my God," I hear myself whisper. My voice doesn't sound like mine.
Maggie's already dialing, face gone pale. Frankie sinks onto the arm of the couch, eyes wide but sure.
Ruby reads her screen, then looks up, color draining. "This is real. This is right now."
"What if they were near it?" Darla's voice cracks. "What if—"
"They'll be okay," Candace says, but it sounds like a prayer, not a promise.
For a second, I am back in Chicago. Crisp white scrubs in a hallway that smells like smoke and money. My father's hand heavy on my shoulder, his voice calm as he tells reporters it's all under control while victims bleed three floors below. Standing in a storage room, watching a man who isn't supposed to exist sign orders with a name that will never touch a headline.
We control the narrative, Sloane. Not the facts.
Those were the days before I understood what I was really seeing. Before I connected the dots between the girls in hospital beds and the men in expensive suits. Before I realized my father wasn't just covering up crimes. He was orchestrating them.
I didn't know then. But I should have.
Maggie's voice cuts through, close and worried. "Sloane? Honey, breathe."
Ruby sinks beside me and grabs my hand, squeezing hard. "Hey. Don't disappear on us. Knox will skin me alive if I let you hit the floor."
I force a laugh. Wrong-sounding. "He'd only maim you a little."
"Atta girl," Ruby says, relief threading through sarcasm.
"I'm fine." Too fast. Too thin.
Frankie frowns at her phone, brow furrowed. "If it's the Holloway building…"
"It is," I say. I'm not sure how I know, but the certainty settles in my chest. Because Donovan doesn't do small.
