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The ships in their bottles caught the firelight. Outside, the tide.

Okay. Not to anyone. Okay.

She woke to gray light and coffee already made. He sat at the worktable with a small pick tool, the magnifying glasses pushed up on his forehead, motionless, the current ship build in front of him. He’d been working on the rigging. Mirelle stayed in the bedroom doorway, studying him, for longer than was strictly necessary.

Magnifying glasses on his forehead. Ships in labeled bottles. Coffee before she was even awake.

She was in considerably more trouble than she’d been in September.

“I can hear you thinking from here.” Without lifting his head.

“I thought my magic went calm when I stopped thinking.”

“You haven’t stopped.”

“I was processing.” He set down the pick. “Coffee’s made.”

“I found it.” She curled into the armchair nearest the fire, both hands wrapped around the mug. The warmth. The cedar scent. The October light. She let herself sit in it without cataloging it.

Her phone buzzed.

Bexley.

I’ve been in the data since 3 AM. There’s a new pattern — creature behavior, timing, and last night’s Rift surge all line up. I need to show you both this morning. I’m using the phrase ‘somewhat concerning.’ I don’t use that phrase lightly.

Mirelle stared at it. “Bexley.” Tor’s head came up.

“She’s been up since three. She says ‘somewhat concerning.’”

He stood. The magnifying glasses came off his forehead in one motion, and professional mode arrived like a second layer over everything that had been there a moment before. “She doesn’t use those words lightly.”

“She has a whole system.”

He handed her the cardigan before she’d even found it — still warm from the chair. She put it on and didn’t say anything about it.

Mirelle picked up her notebook. The phone. Her eyes found him — the morning light, the magnifying glasses on the worktable, the ship half-finished in the bottle. “For the record, last night isn’t going into a drawer somewhere. It’s not finished. I’m not done with it.”

“Good.”

“Tomorrow. The ships. You’re going to show me how the rigging goes.”

“I said if you were still here.”

“I’m coming back.” She picked up her coffee, drained the last of it, and eyed him over the rim. “Count on it.” She smiled as she walked out the door. Outside, gray October, salt air, the ward line humming quietly through the cobblestones. Bexley waiting. The world still moving.

She was warm all the way down.

THIRTEEN

MIRELLE

The Cauldron and Cup at nine o’clock on a rainy Wednesday was a different place from the Cauldron and Cup during business hours. The espresso machine sat dark, and the chalkboard menu faced the wall. Candles had appeared on all the tables, and the copper counter, cleared of its usual display, held what could only be described as Bexley’s situation: notebooks open in a semicircle, four colors of pen uncapped and waiting, and a data printout annotated so thoroughly that it resembled an archaeological dig.

Mirelle arrived with an umbrella and an apology ready. She’d been composing it since Bexley’s text about the creature data, the one that had summoned them all to the café to stare at a wall of numbers that were probably Mirelle’s fault. She’d taken a cab, because it was raining and walking through Spelltide Cove in the rain with an apology prepared was asking for atmospheric irony. So far, she hadn’t produced a single creature.

She opened the café door.

Althea lifted her head from the table she’d colonized near the fireplace. “No.” Flat. Preemptive. “I haven’t said anything.”