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"Second week of April." I keep my eyes on the post. "You got out of the cab and put one finger in my chest and told me if I wanted to keep a mailbox, I should build one that could take a hit."

She goes quiet.

"That's when it happened. And I spent a hundred and eighty-four days telling myself it was my wolf, and that all I had to do was outlast it." I make myself look at her.

"He's been counting since April. Well, so have I. He just had the guts to admit it."

Her eyes shine wet in the dark and she doesn't blink it away, and I've never once known what to do with being looked at like this.

"I love you," I say. "Out loud, from me, so it isn't something you overheard in my head."

She's across the seat before I finish. "I love you too!"

Her hands come up under my jaw, cold from the gravel, and she kisses me like she's never kissed before.

Then she stops. Pulls back an inch. Stays there, breathing against my mouth, and I feel her go somewhere else entirely.

"Gage." Careful. "Where does your mother live?"

Everything in me stops at once.

"Why?"

"Because I know how it's tied now." Her thumb hasn't moved off my jaw. "Mercy gave me a hundred and forty years of looking at knots she couldn't reach. I haven't tried one yet. But, I think I can help your mother."

"Eleven miles from here," I say. "She'll have the kettle on. She still never drinks it."

51

MAREN

NOVEMBER SECOND

The Lantern Coven files into my shop at ten in the morning, and every last one of them wipes their feet.

Nine of them. Evelyn first, in the same charcoal coat, and eight more behind her who look like women you'd stand behind in line at the bank and never think about again. One of them is holding a bakery box.

Cass is at the register with her arm in a sling and a price gun in her good hand, marking vintage slips at four dollars apiece.

"Those are twenty-two," I tell her.

"They're old underwear, Maren."

"They're 1940s bias-cut silk."

"They're old underwear from 1940." She keeps clicking. Nobody who came through that door last night is going to make her stop.

I don't offer anybody a chair. There are candles flaming behind me that I didn't light, and none of these women have said a word about it, so I know they can see them the way I can now, standing straighter than fire should stand.

"I'm going to say this one time," I tell Evelyn. "Then you can have your coffee and go."

"All right."

"I'm not going behind your gates. Not this week, not in the spring, not when something worse comes." My hands are flat on the counter. "You had a witch like me once and you let the town build a fire under her. So the gates are off the table permanently."

The woman with the bakery box sets it down very quietly.

"Second. If you want a line held or a door shut, you ask me. Just like a person asking for a favor. And I get to say no."