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"Then we're having this conversation too early."
"That's the only time it's worth having. Before anything happens." He finally comes up a step.
"Ansel's talking. Others are listening to him. He wants you to hand her to the Lantern and let the covens fight it out among themselves. Clean hands. Old rules."
"Ansel can come tell me that himself."
"He won't. That's not how it goes and you know it. It will go on like this for a month, and then one night nobody is there to back you."
The porch boards creak under me.
I look out at the yard. Across the twelve feet of frozen grass to the burned door on the other side of it.
"She stays," I say.
Cass exhales. "There it is."
"You disagree?"
"I've been waiting since Tuesday for you to say it out loud." She shrugs. "I've got no problem with the witch. I've got a problem with you doing all of it alone with your jaw locked like a dead man. Use us."
Tobin doesn't move.
"Your father would have made a different call," he says.
"I know."
"He'd have handed her over Tuesday and slept fine."
"I know what my father would have done." My voice comes out lower than I mean it to, and Tobin has the sense not to look away.
"Every single thing I do tries to be the opposite of what he would have done."
The door behind me opens. I know who it is before I turn.
Maren stands in my doorway in socks, quilt around her shoulders, holding two mugs she was carrying out to the men she's never met.
Both mugs are steady. She's been there a while.
Cass says, "Ma'am," which I’m sure she’ll hear about later.
"Hand me over," Maren says.
Nobody answers.
She looks at Tobin, then at Cass, then at me, and she's doing the chin-up thing again, and her voice comes out very level.
"Gage. What does keeping me here cost you?"
20
MAREN
STILL SEVEN DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN
It takes Gage eleven seconds to answer me. I count all of them.
"Attrition," he says.
