Page 29

Not an announcement. Just set it down, and her stillness shifted into something that meant she’d been waiting for the right moment and had finally found it.

“Not the magic.” She held Althea’s gaze. “Not the cliff or the square. How are you doing?”

The fireplace crackled. Nobody reached for the cheese board. The wine glasses did not refill, which was notable.

Althea’s mouth opened. She had twelve responses ready, and she knew exactly which one she would use.

She didn’t use any of them.

The silence stretched past the point when someone usually stepped in to fill it. The coven let it go. That was what they did — they sat in the space until it said what it needed to.

“I’ve been useful for so long,” she said, “that I’m not sure I know who I am when I’m not useful to anyone.”

The fireplace did not tick up. The ward lines did not pulse with the twitchy overreaction of a system tuned too high. The room just held it.

Fiora reached over and touched the rim of Althea’s glass. It refilled on its own and Fiora left her hand there for a moment before she pulled it back.

Bexley closed the notebook. Not the efficient click of a meeting’s close. The quiet of clearing space instead.

Valene covered Althea’s hand with hers and said nothing.

Garnet looked at her with patience.

“You’re just you.”

The air changed.

The warmth that had been sitting low in Althea’s palms all week, that banked pressure she’d been managing since she got here, settled. Like a held breath finally let out. The heat was still there. It had just stopped trying to escape. Warmth doing what warmth was supposed to do.

She pressed her palms flat on the table. Not to contain anything. To feel the wood.

The ward lines beneath the building pulsed once, low and gentle. Not an alarm. An acknowledgment.

“Oh.” Quietly.

“Yes.” Valene hadn’t moved her hand.

Gerri arrived at nine-fifteen with a covered plate, as if she’d known exactly what she’d find and had planned around it.

“I brought the cardamom ones,” she said, setting the plate down as if she had standing access to this table and no intention of explaining herself. “The orange zest ones are for difficult moments. These are for the after.” She surveyed the table: the closed notebook, the hands that had drifted toward each other over the course of the evening, the quiet evidence of women who had already said what they needed to say.

“Good.” She picked up a cookie. “I was going to give it another twenty minutes before coming in. You were efficient tonight. Very efficient.” She had, unmistakably, timed this — and was pleased with the result.

She took a cardamom cookie, bit into it, then moved toward the door. “Don’t ask. I have places to be, and you have a notebook to explain to Fiora eventually.”

“The orange ones are in the bag by the counter.” She was already in the frame. “For later.”

Fiora opened her mouth.

The door closed.

“How does she do that?” Fiora looked at where Gerri had been.

“It’s Gerri,” Valene said, reaching for a cookie.

“That’s not an explanation.”

“No,” Valene agreed. “But it’s accurate.”