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“Salt, then,” Big Brian offers, from beside me. “Proper coarse salt. Draws a line nothing crosses.”

“Also not happening.” Felix’s mouth settles into a grim line.

I cast a quick glance at Dis and Hex and see a faint wariness. I shudder, remembering what salt does to shadow beings. But I trust Felix to win this argument without revealing any secrets.

“How are we meant to protect this space if we can’t even...” Big Brian tries to argue.

“We’re going to protect this space,” Felix interrupts, with the flat finality of someone who has had this exact argument before and has no intention of losing it now, “by not covering my floor in salt or setting off the smoke alarm again. That’s the plan. That’s the whole plan.”

Dave and Big Brian look at each other, visibly disappointed in Felix. They settle, grumbling, into an uneasy truce that satisfies neither of them.

“Right,” Magdalene announces, into the gap this leaves, arms spread wide from the head of the table, kaftan doing most of the actual work of the gesture. “The prophecy has spoken.”

“Has it,” Felix says dryly.

“Through the goats,” Magdalene says. “Through the solar flare. Through the eclipse. Through the specific quality of light yesterday evening, which I’m now confident was a sign rather than simply weather.” She consults a scrap of paper covered in her own handwriting, which even upside down clearly contains at least one diagram of the moon. “The confrontation will come when the shadow is longest and the tea has gone properly cold. That’s precise. I want that noted as precise.”

“That’s every evening in the entire history of tea,” Felix says.

“It’s precise to those who understand it,” Magdalene says, with great dignity.

Big Brian clears his throat and straightens up beside me. “Robins came back to the north field early this year,” he says. “Weeks early. And the ash leaves came on before the chestnut leaves, same as the year the well ran dry.”

“What does that mean?” Adam asks, pen ready, entirely earnest.

“Couldn’t say,” Big Brian says. “But it means something.”

“So between the two of you,” Felix says, “cold tea and unspecified robins.”

“Signs come in many forms,” Magdalene says, wounded.

Felix huffs. “So no specifics on what happens next? What Bunny needs to do? How we help him fight the rising dark?”

“We will be given what we need,” Magdalene intones gravely.

Silence falls. Someone coughs.

“I have led armies,” Dis observes, to the room generally, “on considerably less than this, and even I am uncomfortable.”

“What a confession, Dis,” Hex says, delighted, sitting up properly now. “I’m not uncomfortable at all.”

Dis’s blue eyes narrow as he glares at Hex. The former prince grins mischievously.

“What about the mark?” Adam blurts frantically, clearly scrambling for any distraction at all. “Timing? Triggers? Anything actually useful?”

Magdalene and Big Brian exchange a look, the exact look of two people independently deciding not to admit they don’t know.

Magdalene says, “It glows when it’s meant to.”

“That’s not an answer,” Felix says.

“It’s the one I’ve got,” Magdalene replies.

“Brian Two sends his love,” Big Brian adds, entirely unprompted. “Bad hip, since the lightning. Brian Four’s married to Gerald now, eleven hives between them, very happy.”

“Send my regards to Gerald’s bees,” I say faintly.

“Is there really nothing more specific?” I try, one more time, mostly for my own sake. “Nothing about what actually happens?”