Page 104 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Lucinda’s smile was thin and satisfied. “Thank you.”

Cal’s gaze flicked toward the sky. “I’m not invited, I take it,” he said quietly, and it was not a question.

Eve’s expression hardened. “Council politics.”

Lucinda turned her attention to Cal as if she had just noticed him. “Gargoyles do not sit in our meetings.”

Cal’s eyes gleamed, and his stone posture tightened, but his voice stayed controlled. “You want her present, yet you remove her support.”

Lucinda’s mouth curled. “She would not need support if she were competent.”

Faith stepped between them without thinking. “You should shut up before I make you.”

Lucinda’s eyes narrowed. “Mind your place.”

Faith’s laugh was fierce. “My place is wherever you are not.”

I touched Cal’s arm lightly, a quick grounding gesture. The bond with the egg resonated inside me as though it were part of my soul.

“I’ll be fine,” I told him, even though that phrase was becoming a joke.

Cal’s gaze held mine. “You will not be alone.”

He was not promising to attend the meeting. He was promising something else. Presence. Protection.

Then he stepped back, jaw tight. “I’ll stay off the council grounds. Call if you need me.”

Eve waved us toward the exit. “We have to move. Before Lucinda decides to set something on fire.”

Faith grumbled the entire way off campus. She did not lower her voice, either, which meant several nervous students got to hear a full Faith’s opinion piece.

“I hate her,” Faith said as we strode toward the parking lot. “I hate her clothes. I hate her voice.”

Nishi, walking with the hunters, did not react. “You hate how she abuses her authority.”

Faith glared. “I hate that too.”

I rubbed my ribs. “Focus. If there’s a meeting, it means things have escalated.”

Eve’s eyes stayed on her phone. “Or Lucinda wants a stage.”

Faith made a rude noise that translated to yes.

We did not drive directly to the pack lands. We went to the Magnetic Boutique.

The storefront looked absurdly normal for a town that had spent the night trying to eat itself. Two large picture windows. Soft pink glow. Displays arranged with painful precision. The kind of place where a two hundred dollar T-shirt sat folded as if it deserved a museum label.

Inside, the boutique smelled of perfume and fabric, and the racks were lined in perfect rows, arranged by style and size as if someone had declared war on clutter and won.

We pushed past the shoe section and the glittering pumps and the glass jewelry counter without slowing. The back changing rooms waited, two ordinary stalls and the third that was anything but.

Faith yanked open the third door. The air shimmered.

The portal took us in.

One heartbeat I was standing on soft carpet and the next I was stepping into white marble veined with gray, massive columns rising like the bones of an old empire. Torches flickered along the walls, their light warm but insufficient to chase the heaviness out of the space.

The council chambers sat in the middle of a clearing on pack lands, Roman style and completely out of place, as if someone had dropped a museum into the forest and decided to call it governance.