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“The prophecy itself is quite simple,” Magdalene begins, settling into what is unmistakably a well worn groove. The cadence of someone who’s told this story so many times the words have gone smooth. “Two forces, born opposite, destined to meet. The Rising Dark, ancient and hungry, gathering itself somewhere beyond ordinary sight. And the Light, born pure into an ordinary life, raised gently, kept ignorant of its own weight until the signs declared it time.”

“And the signs are goats,” Felix says.

“The signs are many things,” Magdalene says. “The goats are simply the clearest of them.”

“Right. Of course. Silly of me,” Felix says.

“There was also a comet,” Magdalene adds, unbothered, “several years back, which nobody at the compound noticed because Brian Two had just discovered composting and wouldn’t stop talking about worms.”

“That tracks,” I mutter.

Felix turns to look at me properly, something working behind his eyes that I recognise, the specific look of a man assembling a joke and deciding, after brief internal debate, that the joke is worth the risk.

“So you’re basically the messiah,” he says.

“I’m really not,” I say.

“Born under mysterious circumstances, destined to save the world from ultimate darkness,” Felix says. “Bunny, that’s extremely messiah.”

“I make coffee for a living,” I say.

“Jesus had a trade too,” Felix says.

“Felix,” I say, warning in my voice.

“I’m just saying, if you start turning water into wine at the next game night, I want advance warning so I don’t waste money buying wine,” Felix says.

“I can’t turn water into anything,” I say. “I can barely turn dough into bread that doesn’t collapse.”

“Give it time,” Felix says, entirely too pleased with himself, and I feel my face go warm, the particular squirming discomfort of being looked at properly by people who know me, really examined, weighed against something enormous I never asked to carry.

“It’s not funny,” I say, quieter than I mean to.

Felix’s grin drops slightly. “I know. Sorry. It’s a lot to take in and apparently my brain’s decided jokes are the only tool it’s got left.”

“It’s fine,” I say, though it isn’t, not entirely. The weight of the last twenty minutes settling somewhere behind my ribs in a way I don’t quite know what to do with. I’ve spent my whole life being told I was special without ever fully believing the word applied to anything real. Hearing it confirmed, loudly, in the middle of my own workplace, over the smell of burnt milk and somebody’s abandoned oat flat white, doesn’t feel the way I always privately imagined it might. It feels enormous and slightly unbearable, like a coat two sizes too large that somebody’s expecting me to grow into on the spot. There’s a small, mean part of me that wonders whether I’m allowed to feel unhappy about a title I’ve apparently held since birth, or whether that’s simply an ungrateful way to receive the one thing High Priestess Magdalene has ever been entirely certain about.

Magdalene, entirely unaware of the small crisis unfolding across the table from her, has moved on to describing the exact lunar phase of the goat circle in considerable astronomical detail. It’s somewhere in the middle of that explanation that her whole body goes suddenly, sharply still.

Her eyes snap to the spot just behind my shoulder.

“There,” she says, voice dropping to something low and urgent, entirely different from the theatrical warmth of a moment ago. “A dark spirit.”

My stomach drops.

“A dark spirit,” she says again, already rising from her stool, one hand diving into the enormous woven bag she always has slung over her shoulder. It emerges with a small cloth pouch tied with red string, one I recognise instantly, and with genuine horror. “Brian, get back, it’s drawn to you, they always are, it’s the light, it calls to them, you have to move, now.”

Beside me, Felix is already half out of his chair, ready to fight the woman he was just joking with. Something crackles faintly at his fingertips, small and violet and entirely serious. The look on his face is one I’ve only seen a handful of times before, the one that means he’s stopped thinking of himself as a barista and started thinking of himself as a witch with a job to do. Adam has gone properly white, one hand gripping the edge of the table like he’s bracing to physically throw himself between Magdalene and whatever’s about to happen. His mouth is already open on the start of a word that doesn’t quite make it out.

“Magdalene, wait, please, just wait one moment,” Adam says.

She’s already working the string loose, fingers quick and practiced, salt catching the light as she tips a measure into her palm. I’m out of my chair and moving before I’ve properly decided to, putting myself squarely between her and where I can feel him, still and coiled and utterly unreadable.

“Magdalene, stop. Please,” I say.

“Brian, move,” Magdalene says. “You don’t understand what these things are capable of, I’ve seen what they do to people who let their guard down.”

“I do understand. Better than you, actually, in this specific case.” I hold both hands up, one towards her, one back towards him. A small human barrier between forty years of fear and someone whose capabilities I’ve never seen. “He’s not a dark spirit. He’s not going to hurt me. He’s not going to hurt anyone.”