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Priya made a strangled noise.
Jess arrived last, looking less drained than the others. She set her bag down, took in our three faces, and her posture recalibrated.
“Okay, everyone looks insane. What did I miss?”
We told her about the mother, the roses, the doorstep, the baths. I poured each of them a glass of wine.
Jess turned her wine glass slowly. “Okay. I’m not saying it isn’t real. We all know what they are now. I just don’t know that the creepy stuff means what you think it means. Maybe we’re reading a horror movie into it.”
“Jess, he knew where my mother lived,” Callie said quietly.
“Okay, that’s bad,” Jess conceded.
“Has yours been weird?” Priya asked her.
Jess shrugged. “Honestly? Soren says he’s going to sign the lease this week. On the store. I’m not really sure what to think.”
Nobody said anything. Callie chewed her thumbnail.
“Jess, you realize you can’t do this, right? If he’s one of them?”
She went quiet. I held my tongue. She would have a few more minutes of a month-long fantasy, before I had to crush it.
“Does yours seem more stressed out?” Callie asked after a moment.
Priya looked up immediately. “Yes.”
“Yeah,” Jess said.
“It’s like…” Callie struggled for words. “Like they’re trying very hard not to be.”
“Marlowe, you haven’t said a thing about Damian,” Priya said.
Pressure gathered in my chest.
“I have a lot to tell you.”
We sat around the coffee table, Jess and I on the couch, and Callie and Priya cross-legged on the floor. Callie shoved a throw cushion into her lap and hugged it close. Priya eyed the salt and nails on the table.
“Marlowe, what’s going on?” she said, clutching her wine.
“Like I said, there’s a way out of this. But for any of it to make sense, I’m going to have to start at the beginning.”
It was hard to know exactly what that was. I started with Damian. What he was, what he’d been born into, what he’d been doing in secret.
The three of them looked back at me, their mouths open.
“But how do you know you can trust him?” Priya said. “That’s exactly what someone in your position would say. It’s what I’d say about Adrian if he wasn’t so intense. It’s what Callie wants to say about Kai right now.”
“I don’t,” I said. “Not the way you mean. I know exactly what it sounds like. But I don’t think a little old lady would invite me over just to lie on his behalf, then explain exactly how we get out of all this.”
They looked at me with their wine in their hands, like I’d just performed a strange magic trick.
I told them about Branwen next. Not all of it. Not her premonition about me and the fox. Only what she’d told me about the coven’s history. I didn’t mention the plan to summon Clemency yet. Just the pool party.
Callie had drained most of her wine. “You’re seriously saying you’re going to recruit Vivienne Blaire?”
“If anyone deserves it, it’s her,” Jess said. When no one laughed, she added, lighter, “What? I’m just saying. Better her than us.”
