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“This isn’t about handing anyone anything.”

“It becomes that if I disappear from Hollowfield.”

“You don’t have to disappear. But tomorrow doesn’t look like today.”

“Then tell me what tomorrow looks like.”

The challenge in her expression was familiar now.

So was the effect it had on me.

I kept my hand over hers while I considered the question. From this chair, with the curtains drawn and her kitchen light falling across our arms, it would have been easy to tell her she wasn’t going anywhere. Tomorrow I’d still have to explain how she was supposed to run an attraction from her kitchen, or recognize a change in a room she wasn’t allowed to see.

“It starts with you showing me where you need to be,” I said. “We work out which checks require you and which ones somebody else can handle. I want less time in narrow passages, fewer last-minute changes, and a route we’ve both walked before guests arrive.”

“And if one of those checks takes me somewhere you’d rather I didn’t go?”

“Then you explain what needs doing, and we find a way to do it. I’m not asking you to pretend the event can run without you.”

She turned toward me, bringing her knee farther between mine. The movement pulled her thermal snug across her shoulder, and I had to keep my attention on what she was saying instead of the warm inch of skin exposed at her collar.

“You already know it can’t,” she said. “When we went around the guests tonight, you followed me because I could see where the line was going to back up. You couldn’t have fixed that by telling everyone to stop.”

“I remember. I also remember how close that figure came to you.”

For a moment she said nothing. The refrigerator stopped humming, leaving us with the faint scrape of leaves outside and the sound of her sleeve against the table. I could still picture the wooden frame striking the post beside us. Sybil had been answering radio calls again within minutes, but I’d kept looking at the space where her head had been.

She glanced toward the curtained window before meeting my eyes again.

“I’m not offering to walk through the corn alone to prove something. I know why you’re worried.” She shifted her hand beneath mine until our palms met. “But Hollowfield is the biggest contract I have. People have already watched me get arrested. That woman at the ticket booth wouldn’t even speak to me after she recognized me. I can’t give everyone another reason to assume I’m finished.”

Across the table, a corner of a vendor folder stuck out beneath a stack of schedules. Her company name was printed along its edge. Earlier that morning, her aunts had been clearing enough space among those papers for breakfast; tonight, Sybil sat beside them arguing for the chance to keep doing the work.

“I’m not asking you to save your reputation by getting hurt,” I said.

“I know. I’m asking you to remember that I might notice something you won’t. You can check whether a passage is empty. I can tell you whether it’s supposed to be there, whether a prop belongs beside it, whether someone has changed the way people move through the room. You need both.”

I looked down at our joined hands. She hadn’t pulled away while we argued, and neither had I. Her fingers rested between mine with a familiarity I hadn’t earned much time to get used to.

“You stay with me,” I said. “We decide where we’re going before we move, and when something changes, we stop long enough to understand it. I don’t want you working around a problem before either of us knows whether somebody put it there deliberately.”

“That’s fair. As long as stopping doesn’t automatically mean sending me back to production while everyone else decides what happened.”

“You’ll be there. I’ll need you to explain what I’m looking at.”

Sybil leaned back against her chair. She still held my hand, but the pressure of her fingers eased. I let the conversation rest instead of finding another way to repeat myself.

Without the noise from the attraction, I could hear her breathe. The sleeve of her thermal had ridden up, and a faint streak of dust marked her forearm. She’d spent the evening solving one problem after another, usually while someone waited impatiently for her answer. Now there was nobody calling her name over a radio.

I lifted my free hand and brushed the loose strand of hair away from her cheek.

I let my fingers remain against her cheek.

Sybil had spent most of the last two days meeting every attempt to control her with another argument, another practical objection, another reason she should be allowed to keep moving. Even now, late at night, exhaustion hadn’t softened that part of her. She was still the woman who had redirected guests minutes after nearly being hit by a malfunctioning scare figure and then come home to find part of her attraction waiting on her porch.

But she wasn’t arguing now.

Her face rested lightly against my hand, and her gaze had dropped to my mouth.