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“Don’t say it like it’s an expletive, Damian.”

“Why are you calling?”

“The trade is accepted. The grieving one paid first. Isn’t that touching?”

“Then you’ll leave them alone?”

There was a horrible pause where we looked at each other under the glare of the kitchen light.

“They can run along with their little lives.”

I quietly but thoroughly exhaled, until my lungs felt too empty. Then I opened the group chat.

they signed up. the trade’s accepted

Callie: OMFG I’m crying

Priya: me too. thank god

Jess: really?

yes, I typed.

Damian hung up and put his palms over his eyes. Then he grabbed me and held me, letting the anxiety of the wait dissolve as breath against my neck. I leaned against him and tried not to think about how that had been the easy part.

“Tomorrow you’re at the gate by four,” I said, running the plan through one more time. “Which means nobody’s driving me to Vivienne’s.”

He nodded. “But you’re safe for now. They accepted the trade. My mother does keep her word. It’s probably the only good thing about her. But keep the shadow token on you. And the salt and nails.”

We found our way to the bedroom, our wine glasses left to sit in the sink. Damian sat on the edge of my bed with his forearms on his knees, looking at the floor between his feet like the call was still going on.

I opened my nightstand drawer, pulled out the spare key I kept in there, and placed it in the palm of his hand.

He looked up at me.

“You said you were searching for a door to open. You have my front door,” I said.

He went still, then tucked it into his pocket and lay back, pulling me onto him. I kissed my way down his body, feeling him shiver under my lips, then took him in my mouth until he groaned and fisted his hand in my hair.

We fell asleep in a loose knot of limbs, the key resting on the nightstand. Outside, night had finally swallowed the day.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I’d told Vivienne I wouldn’t be coming in, because she owed me nineteen vacation days, and I desperately needed a few hours of calm, but she summoned me at noon anyway.

I need your help with packing for tonight, darling she’d texted. come immediately.

I would have no time to come home before driving to Bayshore, so I grabbed my backpack, which I’d packed the night before: everything Branwen had given me, plus a pile of warm blankets, a raincoat, a change of clothes, and towels for the frigid walk back soaked in seawater. Clemency’s locket sat at my throat, and under it, Bram’s opal. The goat was coming to the divorce. I took one final glance around my apartment, as if I was leaving some part of it, or myself, behind, and closed the door.

Vivienne was still in silk pajamas, drinking some Icelandic concoction directly from the bottle because I hadn’t been there to pour it into a glass for her. She paced her closet, staring at the valet rod crammed with hangers like she was deciphering code. The floor was a storm of discarded silk.

“Thank god,” she said to my reflection. “I need your eye. Tonight has to be right.”

She grabbed two dresses from the rod, one plum, one bone.

“Aurora actually provides the guests with linen dresses,” I said breezily, looking at a pile of bangles on a ceramic dish because I couldn’t look at her.

“But I need something to arrive in, Marlowe,” she said, in a tone that suggested I had the brain of a woodland animal. “Aurora says the solstice is the most potent night of the year. I need to look right in that light.”