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Evelyn looks at me for a long moment. Then she nods, like she's setting down something she's carried too far.

"Her magic doesn't work the way ours does," she says. "We move power. She moves the lines power draws. Wards. Bindings. The seams between one thing and the next."

"Curses," I say.

"Curses." A beat. "And older seams. The kind that are meant to stay shut."

My wolf goes still under my skin.

The mirror. The pale hand on the wrong side of the glass. The window painted shut and opened anyway. The scent that comes and goes like a door swinging.

"Between worlds," I say.

"There's a name for what she is." Evelyn's eyes flick to the others, then back to me. "I won't say it in this house until I'm certain. Old names have weight. Speaking them makes them true."

I already have the name. She breathed it on Maren's porch two mornings ago, too low for Maren to catch. I've carried it ever since, and I won't say it either. Some cowardly part of me believes the same thing she does.

"There hasn't been one in almost 140 years," Evelyn says. "Not confirmed. That cat that won't leave her side. His kind don't come to ordinary witches. They come to hers. He's been waiting for her blood to wake, longer than either of us has been alive. That's how sure we are of what she is."

"And the Veiled Hand?"

"Wants her to open something. On the night the veil is thinnest."

Nine days.

"So we tell her." I plant both hands on the table. "All of it. Tonight."

"Not yet."

I don't decide to hit the table. My palm comes down and the wood splits under it, one long crack running the length of the grain.

The council goes silent.

"I am done," I say, quiet now, which is worse, "hearing that from you."

Evelyn stands. She isn't afraid of me. I'll give her that much.

"We're afraid, Gage."

That stops me. Evelyn doesn't admit fear. Ever.

"Of her?"

"No." Her mouth thins. "Of what comes for her. If we pour a hundred years of history into that girl while her power is this raw, terror will do the rest. You've watched her light a room with a bad mood. Imagine what real fear does. That isn't caution. That's how we keep her breathing long enough to make her own choices."

Her own choices.

She knows exactly where to put the knife.

"You don't know her," I say.

"I know what she is."

"That's the whole difference between us." I straighten. "I know who she is."

I leave them with their cracked table.

The drive back is all dark road and darker company. Nine days. A name I can't say. A woman across twelve feet of grass who won't look at me. My wolf paces the length of it, and for once I don't tell him to settle.