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“You have the face. Put it away.”

“What face?”

“That’s your ‘about-to-give-a-speech-about-being-a-burden’ face. We’ve discussed this face. It does not work here.” Fiora materialized from the kitchen with a glass of wine already poured and held it out. Mirelle took it. That was the thing about Fiora: she didn’t ask. She appeared with the right thing at the right moment.

“Drayce?” Mirelle scanned the room.

“Coven night.” Althea, satisfied, as if she’d sorted this before it even became a question. “He’s been informed. He has accepted.”

“He accepted?”

“I’ve been training him.”

“What does that involve?”

“Primarily, explaining which conversations are mine to have, then waiting for him to decide to trust that.” Althea drank her wine. “It took four months and a long, difficult conversation about the fire magic incident. We don’t discuss the fire magic incident.”

“What was the fire magic incident?”

“We don’t discuss it.”

Garnet came in from the back, shaking rain off her coat. She sat beside Mirelle without ceremony and took in the data wall. “Bexley’s been here since two.” Mirelle studied it. She could believe it. “She asked me to bring more red pens,” Garnet added bluntly, hanging her coat on the back of her chair.

“How many does she have?” Mirelle asked, though the answer was obvious. Garnet considered her response for a moment. “More than before.”

Rowan emerged from behind the espresso machine — not from the top, her established territory, but from behind it, as if she’d been taking stock — and moved to the wine rack like a creature annexing new ground. Valene stiffened on the other side of the counter. “That is a new zone.” A careful mutter. Rowan examined the cork on the nearest bottle. Garnet exhaled. “She’s branching out. I would have started with the 2019 too.”

“She is not expanding. We have an agreement about the wine rack. The agreement does not include expansion.” Rowan placed the cork in a new position. Valene’s eyes went to the pastry case. Then to Rowan. Then to Mirelle, her own complaint ignored in real time. “I want compensation. From the raccoon.”

“From someone. I’m open to negotiation on who.”

Bexley called them to the data table, focused, as if she’d been waiting for the right moment and it had finally arrived. “There’s one new thing, and it’s the part that bothers me.” She moved to the most annotated printout, and the room shifted. “On six of the eight worst days, there’s a small spike in Mirelle’s emotions half an hour before the surge. Same shape every time.”

The room was eerily quiet.

Mirelle studied the data. The spikes were small and regular, pulsing like a heartbeat that wasn’t hers.

That’s my Tuesday walks. That’s the boardwalk.

Fiora set down her wine glass. Mirelle tracked it out of the corner of her eye because Fiora never set anything down. Fiora held things. Even when conversations were uncomfortable, Fiora held her wine, glanced sidelong, and waited for doors to open. Setting the glass down was not a Fiora move.

“Could someone do that deliberately?” Fiora’s voice was level. Not panicked. Level, which, in context, was worse. “Amplify another person’s emotions without their knowing?” It was not a theoretical question. Mirelle heard that right away. Academic curiosity didn’t need the words without their knowing. Althea heard it too. She’d heard it before Fiora finished.

“Yes,” Althea acknowledged quietly, from experience. “A long, carefully tuned connection. It can be done, and the person on the other end doesn’t always know.” She met Mirelle’s eyes.

Mirelle put down her wine.

Her eyes moved over the data. The identical spikes. Her walks, mapped in someone else’s precise, deliberate handwriting. “I spent most of my marriage feeling invisible.” Not performing it. Stating it. “I thought that was who I was.”

Althea’s hand briefly covered hers. “Being needed and being loved aren’t the same thing. And being manipulated and being sad aren’t the same thing either. The sadness was real. The part that made it worse wasn’t yours.” Rain on the windows. The fire. Fiora’s eyes were fixed on the printout, more statuesque than usual.

The creatures arrived quietly, which told Mirelle she was calm. Not the surge variety. Small ones, amber-lit, settling on the windowsills, the bookshelf, and the corner with Valene’s unused mugs. They arrived the way candles did when you lit them in sequence: unhurried, additive. The Lantern appeared at her left side.

Bexley had already clocked them. “You’re calm. The creatures know it.” She uncapped a pen. “Fourteen.” While Bexley counted, Rowan left the wine rack, crossed to the pastry case, and settled on top of it. She sat there as if she’d assessed her options, made her decision, and was done discussing it. Valene turned from the counter slowly. “That —” glaring at Rowan on the pastry case “— is a new zone.”

Garnet, without inflection: “She’s expanding.”

“She is not —” Valene stopped. Squinted. Something in her face ran a rapid internal calculation. “She’s been planning this.”