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Garnet looked at her mug. “Seven o’clock.” Confirmation and instruction at once.
Althea opened her mouth. Closed it. Ate the last cookie.
“Seven o’clock.”
Valene smiled into her cup. Fiora made a small, triumphant gesture she tried to hide as she reached for a napkin. Bexley added a line to what was now apparently the integration timeline. Garnet said nothing and looked extremely satisfied.
Gerri stood, the plate now empty. “You’re going to be fine,” she said. “The magic will settle. The coven will help. The town likes you. The espresso machine will need a week, but it will forgive you.” She picked up the plate. “Wednesday. Wear comfortable shoes. Magic tends to be hard on footwear.”
“What’s happening Wednesday?”
“Something you’re not ready for yet.” Gerri tucked the plate under her arm, completely unbothered by the look on Althea’s face. “Wear the shoes. Stop asking; I already answered.”
The chalkboard, recovering from the espresso incident, tried once more. It produced: TODAY’S SPECIAL: FIGURING THINGS OUT. PAIRS WELL WITH COOKIES AND HONEST CONVERSATION.
Then, below that, in slightly smaller letters: ALSO AVAILABLE: REGULAR COFFEE. THE MACHINE WILL BE BACK SHORTLY.
The barista, reading this over her shoulder, sighed.
Althea looked at the round table. At the back section of the café, which had apparently been waiting for her, along with everyone else in it. At women who had files, plans, and integration timelines, and at wine at seven o’clock.
She’d moved here for peace.
She was beginning to suspect Spelltide Cove had a different definition of peace than she did.
FOUR
DRAYCE
The chamber was carved from bedrock.
The room held sound without echo. Everything said in it was perfectly audible. Nothing could be spoken in private. This was, Drayce had always thought, an excellent design for governance and a thoroughly terrible one for everything else.
Thirteen seats around the table. Twelve council members and one ward sheriff, who had a dozen other things to do and was currently handling the one that required him to sit still and look like he wanted to be here.
He didn’t particularly want to be here.
Tor stood to his left — Drayce’s younger brother, head of town security, his face set in the practiced, professional neutrality that fifteen years on the job had shaped into something closer to architecture. Tor’s silence was never empty. It stayed fixed on the room: patient, precise, already three steps ahead of whatever the council was about to say.
Gerri was in the back.
No one had invited her. No one questioned it. She had a bag of cookies and a cup of tea, watching the room as if she already knew how the movie ended and was enjoying the dramatic irony anyway.
Drayce had a briefing to run. Gerri would confirm it later.
He opened with the data.
The numbers weren’t his favorite kind of news. Awakenings were happening faster than before. The wards hadn’t been this weak in thirty years. And every time the newest member of the community’s magic spiked, Rift creatures turned up nearby soon after — too often to call it coincidence, though the models kept trying and had been revised twice. He laid it out clean and fast, then put the scout encounter on the table — two nights ago, a coordinated retreat, not random or wandering, directed.
His wolf wanted to know why they were still in this room. Drayce kept going anyway.
The council fragmented, as councils did.
Noss wanted to suppress information about the awakening’s acceleration. His logic was airtight, and his destination was always the same: fewer people knowing things, which Noss called responsible, and Drayce called something else entirely. Drayce listened without agreeing to a single word.
Serath went next.
He wanted to keep closer tabs on newly awakened women. Check-ins. Always knowing where they were. He used the word infrastructure. He used the word safety. He was halfway through a sentence about tracking their normal patterns when Drayce’s voice dropped.
