Her lips curved. “Remember when your Clarity Cordial accidentally made Professor Morrison speak only in rhymes for a week?”
“That was an accident?—”
“You invented a counter-formulation in three days. From scratch. While running your shop and dealing with Morrison’s lawyers.” Avine squeezed her knee. “You solve problems. It’s what you do. This is just a bigger problem.”
“With no obvious solution.”
“Yet,” Dahlia added. “No obvious solution yet.”
Junie looked at her friends—Dahlia’s quiet certainty, Cassia’s fierce loyalty, Narla’s calm wisdom, Avine’s knowing compassion. These women who’d been her family since long before she’d known the word for what they were. Who’d held her up when her mother left, when her first shop nearly failed, when grief and fear and loneliness threatened to swallow her whole.
“What if I can’t figure it out?” The question came out barely above a whisper. “What if this is the thing that finally breaks me?”
“Then we’ll be broken with you.” Cassia’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “And then we’ll figure out how to put the pieces back in a more interesting configuration.”
“That’s not how healing works.”
“It’s how we work.” Cassia’s grin was sharp but affectionate. “I can make his week very wet if you want. The lion. Say the word. Hailstorms, flash floods, mysteriously targeted lightning?—”
“Please don’t electrocute the Coalition investigator.” But Junie was laughing now, watery and hiccupping. “The paperwork alone would be a nightmare.”
“Worth it,” Cassia declared.
Glimmer slithered down from her bookshelf perch and coiled on Junie’s lap, scales easing to a contented gold. Thesnake butted her head against Junie’s palm—comfort, affection, belonging.
“We’ll figure it out,” Avine said. “All of us. Whatever’s happening with the surge, whatever’s happening with your magic—and whatever’s happening with Leo Castellan. That’s what we do.”
Narla’s candle, which had been sitting peacefully white, flickered orange at the mention of Leo’s name.
“I hate that candle,” Junie muttered.
“The candle only speaks truth.” Narla’s smile was knowing. “Perhaps you hate what it’s telling you.”
“Perhaps I hate everything right now.”
“That’s valid.” Narla raised her wine glass. “To hating everything. And to figuring it out anyway.”
The others raised their glasses. Even Glimmer lifted her head, tongue flickering in what might have been a toast.
“To figuring it out,” Junie echoed, and drained her wine.
“Oh—my cousin Rosemary keeps texting, asking when she can visit,” Junie added, steering toward safer ground. “She’s been on a research expedition in the South Pacific for six months. I think she’s losing her mind out there.”
“Tell her Haven Shores is always accepting applications,” Cassia said. “We have an excellent surplus of chaos.”
The night wound down slowly.Dahlia left first, pressing a wrapped bundle of pastries into Junie’s hands with strict instructions to “eat feelings, not suppress them.” Cassia followed, the thunder finally fading as her mood evened, though she extracted a promise that Junie would call if she needed “weather-related intervention.”
Narla paused at the door, her owl drifting on her shoulder with a soft rustle of feathers. The candlelight from inside caught the silver in her hair, making her look ancient and timeless all at once.
“For what it’s worth,” she said quietly, “his scent today—when he left your shop—was different from the dinner.”
“Different how?” Junie didn’t want to ask. She asked anyway, because apparently her mouth had stopped taking orders from her brain.
She patted Junie’s arm, her touch cool and grounding. “Sleep well. Try not to overthink it.”
She left. Junie absolutely overthought it.
Avine was the last to go, lingering to help tidy the wine glasses and pastry crumbs. They worked in comfortable silence for a few minutes, the kind of quiet that could only exist between people who’d known each other long enough to not need words.
