“He’s staying,” I say, in case that wasn’t clear. “That’s not a negotiation. He’s not in a circle anymore, he’s just here, and he’s not going to be a problem for anyone.” I pause. “The most dangerous thing about him is his obsession with Bake Off and news segments about cold remedies.”
Dave, very carefully, looks at Celeste. I cannot read the silent communication they share.
“And the attacks?” Morgana asks. “There were disturbances we felt. Significant ones.”
“Dealt with,” I say. “The entity that was directing them has been neutralised. There’s still an unknown element but it’s not actively targeting us right now and we are working on it.”
I say we without thinking about it. It’s just true.
Morgana looks at me for a long moment. There is something in her expression that I don’t have a name for, something that might be satisfaction if satisfaction looked that gentle.
“Thank you,” she says, “for explaining. And for the apology. It takes something to offer one honestly.”
I nod. I look at the candles. I wait for the other shoe to drop, for the vote to be mentioned, for the formal processes Dave warned me about to begin.
Morgana opens her notebook. She looks at something in it. “Now then,” she says, in a different tone entirely, theone she uses when she’s moving things along. “The solstice planning. Celeste, you had thoughts about the location.”
I blink.
Celeste begins talking about a field in Somerset that someone’s sister owns. Someone else has opinions about the field. Dave starts eating a biscuit from somewhere.
I sit very still.
“Wait,” I say.
Everyone looks at me.
“That’s it?” My voice comes out slightly strangled. “I can stay? That’s just... we’re moving on?”
Morgana looks at me with those clear eyes. “Of course you can stay, Felix,” she says, as if this is self-evident. “You are a valued member of this coven.”
I stare at her. “I am?”
“Yes.” She says it simply, without ceremony. “And we like you.”
“You do?”
“Very much,” she says. “You reorganise the ritual space before every Esbat, and none of the rest of us can be bothered to do it. You have excellent instincts and considerable practical skill.” A pause. “And you make us laugh.”
The room is very quiet.
“Of course you like me,” I say. I pull myself together. “I’m awesome. Everyone likes me in the end.”
Dave makes the laugh-suppression sound again. Celeste rolls her eyes with what I choose to interpret as fondness. Morgana’s mouth does something that would definitely be a smile if she let it get that far.
I sit with this. I sit with the fact that I walked in here braced for a fight and prepared for rejection and ready todefend myself, and instead the coven looked at me and said of course you can stay and we like you, as if it was never in question, as if the question had always been a little absurd.
I look at Dave.
Dave is eating his biscuit with the focused contentment of someone who has no idea he’s about to be held accountable for anything.
“Dave,” I say.
“Mm?” he says.
“You told me Morgana was going to call a formal coven vote on my continued membership.”
Dave considers this. “I said she might.”
