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“The apartment’s unlocked. Key’s on the counter.” Valene navigated the crowd with ease—people parted around her naturally, called her name from nearby stalls, and smiled at her. A child ran past with a lit sparkler, and she caught his shoulder, redirected him away from a hanging glass display, and kept walking. “You can check in after.”

“I’ve had a very long day.”

“I know. You ate a gas-station sandwich in a parking lot for what I guess was an hour while wallowing in self-loathing.”

Althea stopped walking. “I didn’t text you about that.”

“No.” Valene glanced back with a smirk. “But you did it, didn’t you?”

Not a question. She had. She absolutely had. Dammit. How did she always know? She started walking again.

They moved the chairs— and it wasn’t a small number either. Valene didn’t specify why they needed moving, and Althea, knowing her long enough, understood that explanations wouldn’t be given and the chairs would simply be moved. This was how Valene functioned: if something needed doing, it got done. The reasoning was there if you asked, but requests were rare — usually, the task was already complete by the time you thought to ask.

“How long has it been?” Valene asked as they set up the last row. “Since you were here last?”

“Twenty-nine years.” She said it fast. She set a chair down and looked at the ocean through the gap between stalls. The water moved in its patient way. “The town’s so different.”

“How so?”

“Warmer.” She searched for better words but couldn’t find any. “Not the temperature. The whole place. The vibe.”

Valene gave her a look that said a great deal without saying a word. “Get some sleep tonight. The women I mentioned want to meet you tomorrow morning.”

“What women?”

“The coven.”

Althea opened her mouth.

“Don’t make a face.” Valene steered her around a cluster of tourists. “It’s not that kind of coven.”

“I wasn’t making a face.”

“You were absolutely making a face.”

The lights nearest them flickered again. Both candle arrangements in the immediate vicinity leaned, marginally, in her direction.

I am not doing that.

“I think I’ll people-watch for a little while longer.”

The heat at the center of her chest pulsed once. Settled. She was going to need significantly more coffee.

The shift happened at half past seven.

Althea stood near the railing at the northern end of the stalls, watching the ocean in the last of the evening light. The crowd had thickened as the festival reached its peak — more bodies, louder music, the layered noise of a community in celebration. She was tired—tired for a long time, and recently too tired to manage it efficiently. Seventeen years of acting like someone’s idea of a good wife, only to realize that she'd lost not only herself but also her love for the man she’d married—all of it arrived in Spelltide Cove with her and now weighed down her shoulders, patient as the tide.

The warmth in her chest moved.

Not the ambient warmth she’d carried since she arrived. Directional. Purposeful in a way she hadn’t authorized.

One thing at a time.

The heat kept moving. Up through her sternum, toward her collarbones, and toward her hands.

She looked at her palms.

Then the boardwalk's atmosphere changed.