Page 45

“Probably since the wine rack,” Mirelle offered.

Valene pointed at Rowan. “That was a territorial reconnaissance operation, and I was guarding the wrong flank.” She sat down, dignified, refusing to show how much it stung to be outmaneuvered. “My strategy has been decided.”

“How hard are you going to push?” Althea asked.

“Enough to start a conversation. Not enough to make her leave.” Valene picked up her wine. “I want her to stay. I want her to know I see her.”

“Rowan.” Mirelle addressed the raccoon directly. “Valene sees you.” Rowan placed a cork in a new location and appeared satisfied.

The front door opened. Gerri Wilder, tin parcel under one arm. She came in, spotted the data printout on the wall, and said: “Oh good, you’ve got to the tether part.” She set the tin on the counter and took the corner chair like it had been reserved. Bexley’s pen had stopped moving. “How does she —”

“Don’t mind me,” Gerri said, helping herself to a pastry from the tin. Her eyes met Mirelle’s. “It gets smaller when you’re not alone. Bet you’ve felt that.” The room was quiet.

“Gerri,” Mirelle said, setting down her wine, “how do you know about the tether?”

“I pay attention.” She took a bite of the pastry. “Also, I’ve been seeing that kind of working since before most of you were born, so.” She held out the tin. “Cardamom. Anyone?”

“You knew before I found it in the data.” Bexley, unamused.

“I knew before whoever set it up finished setting it up.” She said it pleasantly, like this was a normal thing to know. “Pass the wine? I walked over.” Fiora passed the wine without speaking. Mirelle’s eyes met Fiora’s. Fiora held her gaze, mouth curved, patient, deciding not to push a door open. Not yet.

Later. With more wine and fewer witnesses.

They sat with the data for a while, which was how Bexley liked it: giving information room to settle before anyone drew conclusions they hadn’t earned yet.

“Someone who has been near me. Regularly.” She was thinking about the man on the boardwalk. The dark hair. The wrong eyes. The loneliness arriving quietly both times, in the minutes after passing him.

Him. It had to be him.

“That’s not a casual operation.” Althea. “It takes real work. They’d need to be around her a lot: close enough to read her, long enough to learn which buttons to push.”

“Great.” She drank her wine. “I’ve been someone’s long-term project. That’s — yes. That’s a thing you want to know about yourself.”

“You’d rather not know?”

“I’d rather it wasn’t happening. But knowing is better than not knowing. For now.” She turned her glass. “Ask me again in an hour.”

“Mirelle.” Fiora’s voice was quiet. Both hands were still flat on the table, not on her glass. “The question I asked earlier.”

“I know.”

“I wasn’t asking abstractly.”

“Fiora —”

“I need to know how long it takes for an awakening. If someone were doing the same thing to —” She stopped, squared her shoulders. “How long would it have to run before you’d feel it?” Fiora’s gaze slid off the data and onto the table.

Althea went still.

“It depends on the lineage.” Careful. “And the suppression. And how long the tether has been running.” The fire crackled.

Nobody named what was sitting at the table with them, because some things needed more than one night, and the wine was running low. Fiora sat rigid in a way Mirelle had never seen, and Althea’s hand had come to rest on the table near Fiora’s without touching it.

Fiora. Someone had been running it on Fiora too.

Garnet spoke up. “More wine.” She produced a second bottle from somewhere, Valene’s somewhere, the place Valene kept the good ones, and filled every glass without asking. This was the thing about Garnet: she could tell when more wine was the answer, and she never made a speech about it. Bexley added a fifteenth pen to her case without comment. That was more alarming than anything she could have said.

The rain had softened by eleven. Mirelle stayed until the candles burned low, until the photographed data reached Tor’s operations account, until Bexley packed her notebooks, tidy and satisfied. Gerri had gone the way Gerri went: not so much a departure as a gradual absence, present and then not. Garnet walked Mirelle to the door. “You’re not apologizing.”