Page 11

It didn’t land right. It landed like a door that seemed right but opened into the wrong room. Rowan made a sound — low, unhappy, nothing like the cork-displacement commentary or the espresso machine critique. “Mirelle.” Tor’s voice, close. She turned. He was half out of his chair, his attention already off the ward map and on her face. He’d read her expression before she finished having it.

Her eyes went back to the square. The man was gone.

Same as yesterday. Clean exit, no trace, as if he had decided to stop existing in that spot. “It’s the same man,” she said.

“Where?”

“Vendor stalls. He was there and then —” She spread her hands, fingers wide. “Gone.”

Tor was out of his chair now. Drayce had moved from the counter to the window — no transition, already there. He took in the square the way he read every crowd, as if something in it were hiding. “Clean exit,” Drayce said. Low. Professional. Not a good sign.

She turned from the window. “He smiled at me. Like I was an experiment, not a person. Like he was taking notes.”

Tor held her eyes, didn’t soften, didn’t glance at Drayce for backup. “Don’t be alone on the boardwalk. If you see him again, text me directly. Not the group. Me.” Again, not a suggestion, and not a command. It landed somewhere between the two, in the frequency that said, I have already decided this, and it isn’t up for debate.

Mirelle’s first instinct was to say she was fine. She’d managed alone for years and didn’t need a contact number for a man. She recognized that instinct. It was the same one she’d been running on for three years, and the raccoon situation proved where it got her. “Okay,” she caved.

“That’s it?” Pike said. “No argument?”

“I’m growing,” Mirelle quipped.

The tension went out of Tor’s shoulders, slightly, like a held breath, and of course she caught it, because she was tracking everything about him now.

The men left after a brief, low-voiced exchange at the door that Mirelle did not strain to hear, because straining would have been transparent and she had her dignity to consider. Drayce stopped at the threshold to say a few words to Valene — private, quiet, Valene’s expression shifting ever so slightly. Then they were gone. Rowan moved from the espresso machine to the copper counter. Perimeter check complete. Then she sat by the window, eyes on the square for a while before tucking her luminous feet beneath herself and appearing to stand down. “The raccoon went on alert,” Bexley said. “Before you saw that man. Before any of us did.”

“It’s a summoned creature that reflects my emotional state,” Mirelle said.

“No,” Bexley responded, the single syllable carrying real authority. She had run the numbers. “You reacted to him after Rowan did. If she were only a mirror, that would be backward. She sensed him on her own.” The table went quiet.

“So, it’s not just —” Mirelle started.

“Not just a manifestation.” Bexley underlined three things in quick succession. “She has her own awareness. She notices things without waiting for you to feel them first. That’s —” she added a tab, “— that’s a big deal.”

Mirelle eyed the pen case. “Eight pens?”

“I’m adding a ninth.”

Garnet, quiet since the window incident, studied Rowan. The raccoon stared back, assessing.

“She’s not a mirror,” Garnet said. “She’s a guardian.” That one sat in her chest for a moment. Mirelle met Rowan’s eyes. “My instincts knocked my fruit bowl on the floor.”

“Your instincts,” Garnet said evenly, “have been waiting quite a while to be listened to.”

“I’m charging triple,” Valene announced from the counter. “For the cork handling specifically. I’m itemizing.” Rowan did not acknowledge this.

Mirelle’s gaze drifted to the window, to the square where the man had stood. The smile that hadn’t quite landed. The warmth that sat wrong. Tor’s voice saying not the group, me, as if he’d already decided and didn’t need her to agree.

Her coffee had gone warm rather than cold, which was new.

Baby steps. I didn’t make it cold this time. Progress.

FOUR

TOR

Tor had run emergency responses in burning buildings, in flooded basements, and in a funeral home at midnight, where grief cracked six people open at once and luminescent moths filled the ceiling. In sixteen years he’d handled every version of magical crisis this town could produce. Staying focused had never been a problem.

This morning’s problem sat in the passenger seat of his truck, wearing an oversized cardigan and holding a coffee from the Cauldron and Cup in both hands, her notebook balanced on her knee because, of course, she had a notebook. She stared out at the trees, braced. His wolf thought this was the best morning in recent memory.