Mrs. Henderson’s eyes shone. She blinked hard, once, and composed herself. “No. We’re not.”
Lily looked between them with the uncomfortable awareness of a fifteen-year-old who understood more than anyone wanted her to. “Can I still come to the shop on Wednesdays?” she asked. “When it’s rebuilt?”
Hazel looked at the girl. Moon-sickness at fifteen, the dreams, the instability, the constant negotiation between the human mind and the lunar pull. Lily hadn’t asked for any of this. Not the sickness, not her grandmother’s desperate choices, not the Blackwoods’ leverage.
“Wednesdays,” Hazel said. “After school. I’ll have chamomile tea.”
Lily almost smiled. Mrs. Henderson’s hand tightened on her granddaughter’s arm, and they left.
Hazel stared at the empty counter for a long time. Then she washed the mortar, dried it, and put it away.
Marcus had been commuting.Three hours from Boston, most days of the week spent in Willowbrook, driving back for firmbusiness that couldn’t be handled remotely. It was unsustainable and they both knew it. His car’s mileage had doubled. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel once, jerking awake at a rest stop in Augusta at 2 AM with the obsidian scar aching and Hazel’s voice on the phone asking where the hell he was.
He called Malphas on a Tuesday.
“I want to open a satellite office.”
Silence. Then: “Where?”
“Willowbrook, Maine.”
More silence. The kind that cost billable hours.
“You want to open a branch office of Grimm, Malphas & Associates,” Malphas said slowly, “in a town with forty-three supernatural residents, a recently dismantled criminal enterprise, and a cat.”
“The cat is a material witness in an ongoing investigation.”
“The cat is a nuisance.” But there was amusement in Malphas’s voice, the ancient, weary kind that came from managing lawyers for millennia. “Marcus, you’re one of my best attorneys. You’ve been with the firm for three centuries. You have a partnership track that most demons would commit actual crimes for.”
“I’ve committed actual crimes in the last two weeks. Broke into a compound. Assaulted a patriarch. Violated at least four territorial sovereignty provisions.”
“In self-defence.”
“In love.”
The line went quiet again. When Malphas spoke, the amusement was gone, replaced by something older.
“Is she worth it?”
Marcus looked out the window. Across the street, Hazel was arguing with one of Beth’s wolves about load-bearing wall placement. She was gesturing with a hammer. The wolf looked nervous.
“She made me remember why I became a lawyer,” Marcus said. “Not the contracts or the case law or the partnership track. The part where you stand up in a room full of people and saythis is wrongand make it matter.”
“That’s very idealistic for a five-century-old demon.”
“I’m told it’s a personality flaw.”
Malphas sighed. It was a sound like tectonic plates settling. “Fine. But you’re paying for your own office furniture. And the quarterly billing minimum still applies, I don’t care if your entire client base is hedge witches and werewolves.”
“Understood.”
“And Marcus?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t make me regret this. I have too much invested in you to watch you throw it away on a woman who argues with cats.”
“The cat argues with her, actually. It’s an important distinction.”
