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The problem was, I knew him better than that now. Maybe better than I wanted to admit to myself.

River was very good at silence. Four hundred years had apparently taught him that if he looked sufficiently composed while refusing to answer a question, most people eventually became uncomfortable enough to stop asking. I was not most people.

Unfortunately for both of us, I had more immediate problems.

At ten forty, I stopped pretending to look at my phone. By ten fifty the woman with the socks had left, and the cheerful little bell above the door scraped along the inside of my spine when it closed behind her. Eight minutes later River folded the lost-cat flyer in half and placed it on the empty chair between us. He didn't look at me afterward, but his jaw had tightened, and I understood that he knew exactly what time it was.

Four miles east of that laundromat, inside a black stone building with three blood-red keys carved above its doors, twelve High Priests were taking their seats.

I could picture the chamber despite myself. The rebuilt east wing, its newer stone still a shade lighter than everything surrounding it. Delores somewhere near the front with her grudge polished and ready. Viktor Ocean wearing that ridiculous cufflink that told me every time he lied. And my grandmother at the head of the room, perfectly composed while twelve people decided what should be done with the granddaughter she had admitted, less than twenty-four hours earlier, that she might sell.

At eleven o'clock exactly, I watched the second hand on a cheap wall clock advertising a plumbing company cross the number twelve at the top.

Nothing happened.

I want to be precise about that, because for four days I had been waiting for eleven o'clock like it had personally promised to ruin my life. In my imagination, it had always arrived with consequences. Thunder. Pain. Magic. Possibly an attack. At the very least, I'd expected the pentagram on my finger to burn or the universe to acknowledge that I had just committed the supernatural equivalent of telling twelve of the most powerful witches alive to go fuck themselves.

Instead a dryer buzzed at the far end of the room, and nobody went to empty it. The radio kept playing. The fan continued its endless match with itself.

The world didn't even notice.

"Two minutes past."

River's voice came quietly from next to me, and I glanced at the clock again even though I knew exactly what it said. "I can read a clock, Blackman. I'm not just a pretty face, believe it or not."

"I'm aware."

There was just enough dryness in it to make me look at him. He was still watching the clock, but something faint moved at the corner of his mouth.

There you are. Or at least part of him was still there.

Sitting had become impossible, so I got up and crossed to the washing machine containing my jeans. The metal was warm beneath my palms. Through the round glass door, clothes tumbled through gray water as though Thursday mornings were entirely ordinary and I hadn't just blown up what remained of my life.

Somewhere inside that building, a clerk was writing it down. Byrne, Hazel. Summoned. Did not appear.

Four words. That was all it took to change the shape of a life.

I stared into the turning water until my reflection blurred against it. "Tell me something, Blackman. Did I just do something incredibly stupid?"

The silence behind me stretched long enough that I knew he was deciding whether I actually wanted the truth. Apparently, he decided I did.

"Spectacularly."

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it, although there wasn't much humor in it. "Thank you. I appreciate the nuance."

"You didn't ask me to make you feel better."

"No, but most people would have made some effort."

"Most people lie to you far too often, Miss Byrne."

That got my head around. River had shifted in the chair, one arm stretched along the metal rail behind him. He looked exhausted in a way he would probably deny if I mentioned it, but his attention was finally on me instead of whatever invisible thing had been following him around for four days.

"You also did something nobody has managed to make you do in the two years I've known you," he said. "You made a decision solely for yourself instead of everyone else around you."

The laundromat seemed quieter.

"That doesn't make it a smart thing to do."