Most Anticipated New Books in April 2021 –– Spring Books Recommendations

Though the night is flush with stars, the sky still seems like a lid of earth closing atop a grave.

It’s a fate that could be mine, should anyone see me sneaking from my home at this hour—a fate reserved for criminals and traitors, rebels and liars. Not me, the doyenne’s emissary.

Even if I am most of those things.

Ever watchful, the palace’s hulking shadow looms across the Parade Court, dogging my nervous tread to the sweet-scented fruit grove where, as promised in the missive that drew me out of bed, my sand-prowler is tethered. In pursuit of blood eaters, Joshial bows a tree trunk with his weight as he flicks his whip of a tongue out.

At the sight of me, he jumps back to the grass on four thick scaled legs. Straining against his leash, he’s more of a hound than a monster-size lizard. Cooing, I scratch the underside of his chin before mounting. There’s no time to retrieve a saddle. Who knows which eyes watch from the windows.

Adjusting my hood, I bend low against Joshial’s wide neck. “Run fast for me tonight,” I whisper. Always the loyal companion, he half sprints, half leaps, taking us away from the palace via the unguarded temple drive, and into a tangle of bush that conceals our descent into the sleeping parish streets at the base of the estate’s mount.

We enter Ol’ Town at a breathless gallop. In the day, it’s a bustling street market. This late, no magi congregate to gossip, their musical patwah mingling with peppery jerk spice and opiate smoke. The slowing click of Joshial’s claws on stone is the sole sound as we bear down upon the destination dictated in the missive. Wedged between vacant neighbors, and down a side street I’d never enter in the day, the building’s windows are either shattered or boarded up; dark puddles, too murky to reflect light from fading witchlight lamps, seep before it, and trampled detritus litters its doorway—where a buguyaga slumps, blanketed in filthy rags. I guide Joshial right up to the snoring witch; his giant pink tongue unfurls and gives the side of her face a good lick.

“Cha!” Abandoning all pretense of sleep, Anya scrubs a filthy sleeve across her cheek. “When will you teach that beast some manners, mon?” Beneath her mucky camouflage, the toasted almond color of her skin is flushed with annoyance; it contrasts against wisps of straight silver hair peeking out from beneath her hood. “And why are you so late?”

“Wahan to you too. Whoever left the missive didn’t wake me.”

Straightening, she swaps her disaffection for the better- fitting militance of her Stealth métier. “I’ll have a word with whichever fool was assigned. Some of the newer recruits could do with having more respect for our discipline.” And who better to teach them than her, the best magically trained shadow I know.

“Can you keep Joshial with you?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I’m on duty with the first battalion tonight, not the resistance.”

Of course. At nightfall the magicless second battalion is replaced by those with magic.

“I’m undercover, obviously, but others in uniform are also making rounds. You’d better take your familiar inside before he licks the wrong face.”

I look at the building’s entrance, and nerves twist in my belly. Away from the palace I can no longer hide behind my mask of political envoy, a professional fence-sitter. In the meeting that waits inside, I’m part of a resistance working against the very structure I serve, and they have a question for me tonight. My answer won’t please us both.

“You’ll be fine as long as you remember to duck when the time calls for it,” Anya says, knowing my expressions almost as well as she knows her own.

We two are bottom and bench. But while she might not fear the aim of Light Giver, the moniker bestowed to the grizzled resistance founder, my cheek smarts at the memory of the last time one of her slippers caught me in the face.

“Now go. I’ll come find you later.”

Joshial takes the entrance sideways, climbing onto the wall with whatever adhesive his clawed feet provide. I leave him in an empty room just off the doorway with plenty of dead insects to devour before venturing on. The building is a trap of endless corridors dimly lit by the soft glow of overhead witchlight orbs. It isn’t a safe house I’ve been in before, which isn’t unusual. The resistance changes location often to avoid detection. They all have the same feel to them, though: damp neglect undercut by a fetid heat—one that licks at my neck, my brow, and only encourages the creeping sense of unease working its way through my limbs.

I am not a liar by nature, but tonight I must sell the sky to magi who know it’s free.

The resistance has tired of our leader, our doyenne. In the beginning, along with the rest of our order, they admired her decisions. Praised their bloom in the garden of her rule. But as time has passed, certain choices she’s made have rankled, caused them to question how well they suit the spiritualism of our order. Enough that the resistance is prepared to prune the garden she’s cultivated until it is barren, and she is no more.

I need to persuade them that she can change, that such extreme action is unnecessary, even as they hone their tools and discuss attack.

Soon snatches of patwah sound from behind a vast sliding metal door, but it’s too quick for me to catch. I linger long enough to straighten my shoulders and fix a look of cool professionalism to my face before drawing the handle back. The door creaks awkwardly upon opening; behind, a small party of fourteen or so Alumbrar, now silent, turn to see who’s entering. Be measured. Be steady, I will myself. Light Keeper is seated on a stool at the head of their gathering, straight-backed and formidable as any elder. Her eyes narrow.

“You’re late, Emissary.” Her tobacco-rough croak is full of reproach.

“The missive was late,” I correct. Lowering my hood frees my silver afro of curls. Here it is a currency, a marker that I’m one of them. “Please, continue.”

She watches me a moment longer, weighing up the trajectory of her aim and my distance, I’m sure, before her eyes, as dark as coal and just as incendiary, dart back to the standing speaker. “You heard her.”

Nodding in acknowledgment at the attendees, I make my way to the back of the gathering while the witch I interrupted launches back into her report about numbers. This meeting is smaller than others I’ve attended, and yet not a single face is familiar to me. I’m again reminded of the size of this resistance and the power of its anonymity—the Nameless, as they titled themselves long before I joined, aren’t as concerned with flaunting their membership as they are with the protection of our order from a leader sure to destroy us.

One they mean to kill.

My fists curl around the cotton fabric of my cape, scrunching up the delicate kaftan beneath. Remaining on the fence will make the upcoming conversation difficult, but not impossible. I have to believe that as the witch ends her spiel and Light Keeper turns her attention to me.

“What news do you have about the Yielding?” Our Aiycan accent is a song, like the music from cicada and cricket, but from her lips it’s flat. Hard. “Last I heard, the Witches Council is still foolish enough to plan for it to go ahead.”

“That’s correct.”

Murmurs of displeasure, annoyance, ripple across the room. I am not ignorant to their vexation. The Yielding, a sacrificial rite, sees seven pickney all about my age, on the cusp of inheriting their magic, compete for the honor of being offered to the Supreme Being in ritual sacrifice. It’s necessary to provide the guzzu of protection wrapped around the island, an enchantment that keeps us safe from once-allied islands who have always craved the power imbibed in the mountains and rivers here, the earth and bush. But it’s also the biggest blight in our order’s history. The nature of Alumbrar isn’t to kill. At least, it wasn’t before the rite.

“But,” I continue, raising my voice slightly, “there has been more discussion than ever before about the Yielding’s merit now we’ve displayed our strengths to those who thought us weak, as well as facing so little threat from Obeah insurgents.”

Light Keeper frowns. “Unfortunately, that’s not a cancellation. I know how you feel about the decision to assassinate Doyenne Cariot, Emissary, but a discussion is not good enough after we’ve imparted our request through protests, missives, and she remains unmoved. Her lack of malleability isn’t something we can afford to ignore any longer. Not this close to another Yielding announcement.”

“If we wait until then, I’m sure she’ll make the right decision.”

Though I project confidence—I’ve been practicing in the mirrors in my rooms—resistance members exchange glances, and sweat builds anew between my shoulder blades. Some of my order shake their heads in pity at me, the fool they believe can’t see her master is a monster. They truly think I’m turning a blind eye to a witch who has killed countless pickney throughout the years to ensure our order remains in power. But how could I be when they know that number includes my only sister?

Death isn’t the answer, it’s the problem here.

“If we assassinate her,” I ask, challenging them now, “how are we any better? How will this island be less bloody after her than it was before her, when she earned her seat killing the last ruler too?”

The wrinkled skin around Light Keeper’s mouth draws tight.

“The Ascension Festival is just six nights away,” I push. “A mere moon phase—and when it comes, the moon will be New. A purifying blessing from the Supreme Being for our entire order, a chance to reflect and grow. It’s the perfect time for the doyenne to announce a resurgence. One without the Yielding.” My voice softens. “We should have faith.”

Alumbrar are Healers, scholars, cerebrals, Artisans. We are not killers. The doyenne can remember that, if she’s given the time. The resistance should remember that.

“Your faith is commendable, Emissary,” Light Keeper says, her words chewed out slowly. “And you’re right to exercise caution, to protect Alumbrar virtue. It’s what will make you a better leader than the one we currently have. But know this.” Her eyes narrow into a look as foreboding as the sky I left outside. “If the doyenne doesn’t renounce the Yielding during the festival, indefinitely, she will be put down. And you need to be prepared to say goodbye when the time comes.”

I swallow. Her message doesn’t go unmissed.

The resistance will make their peace with ridding the island of a tyrannical leader with ease, but my relationship with the doyenne has always been more involved. She’s not just the leader I work for—she’s the witch who gave birth to me.

“Emissary?” Light Keeper pushes. “Do you understand?”

Should the doyenne be stopped? Yes. Replaced? Definitely.

Killed?

Regardless of what she’s done, she gifted me with life. I’ve struggled to endorse her assassination; though it’s not sentiment alone that stays my hand. Ours isn’t a relationship where she combs my afro at night, or I turn to her with my problems. She is my tutor. If she dies, I ascend. And I’m . . . not ready. A secret I can’t tell the Nameless, not when they’re looking to me as they are now, with pity, doubt, questions. Not when I want to lead, in time.

Sitting on the fence cannot cost me the respect of my people.

“Emissary Cariot, your answer?”

I inhale. “I’ll be ready.”

It’s a harmless lie. This island, Aiyca, has been ruled by my family for a decade, and will be for at least a decade more.

Nothing will bring about the Yielding this year, I guarantee it.

“Lower your swords,” Queen Eloana commanded, her hair shining a glossy onyx in the sun as she sank onto one knee. The raw emotion pouring out of her seeped into the temple floors of the Chamber of Nyktos, bitter and hot, tasting of anguish and a helpless sort of anger. It stretched out toward me, needling my skin and brushing against this…primal thing inside me. “And bow before the…before the last descendent of the most ancient ones. She who carries the blood of the King of Gods within her. Bow before your new Queen.”

The blood of the King of Gods? Your new Queen? None of that made sense. Not her words or when she had removed her crown.

A too-thin breath scorched my throat as I looked at the man standing beside the Queen of Atlantia. The crown was still upon the King’s golden-haired head, but the bones had remained a bleached white. Nothing like the gleaming, gilded one the Queen had placed at the feet of the statue of Nyktos. My gaze skipped over the terrible, broken things scattered about the once pristine, white floors. I’d done that to them, adding their blood to what had fallen from the sky, filling the thin fissures in the marble. I didn’t look at that or anyone else—every part of my being focused on him.

He remained on one knee, staring up at me from between the vee of the swords he’d crossed over his chest. His damp hair, blue-black in the Atlantian sunlight, curled against the sandy-hued skin of his forehead. Red streaked those high, angular cheekbones, the proud curve of his jaw, and ran down lips that had once shattered my heart. Lips that had pieced those broken shards back together with the truth. Bright, golden eyes locked with mine, and even bowed before me, so motionless I wasn’t sure he breathed, he still reminded me of one of the wild and strikingly beautiful cave cats I’d once seen caged in Queen Ileana’s palace as a child.

He had been many things to me. A stranger in a dimly lit room who’d been my first kiss. A guard who had sworn to lay down his life for mine. A friend who had looked beyond the veil of the Maiden to truly see me underneath, who’d handed me a sword to protect myself instead of forcing me into a gilded cage. A legend cloaked in darkness and nightmares that had plotted to betray me. A Prince of a kingdom believed to have been lost to time and war, who had suffered unimaginable horrors and yet managed to find the pieces of who he used to be. A brother who would do anything, commit any deed to save his family. His people. A man who bared his soul and stripped open his heart to me—and only me.

My first.

My guard.

My friend.

My betrayer.

My partner.

My husband.

My heartmate.

My everything.

Casteel Da’Neer bowed before me and stared up at me as if I were the only person in the entire kingdom. I didn’t need to concentrate like before to know what he was feeling. Everything he felt was wide-open to me. His emotions were a kaleidoscope of ever-shifting tastes—cool and tart, heavy and spicy, and sweet like chocolate-dipped berries. Those unyieldingly firm and unrelentingly tender lips parted, revealing just the hint of sharp fangs.

“My Queen,” he breathed, and those two smoky words soothed my skin. The lilt of his voice quelled the ancient thing inside me that wanted to take the anger and the fear radiating from all the others and twist it, turn it back, truly give them something to fear, and add to the shattered things thrown about the floor. One side of his lips curled up, and a deep dimple appeared in his right cheek.

Dizzy with relief at the sight of that infuriatingly stupid—and adorable—dimple, my entire body shuddered. I feared that when he saw what I’d done, he’d be afraid. And I couldn’t blame him for that. What I’d done should terrify anyone, but not Casteel. The heat that turned his eyes the color of warmed honey told me that fear was very much the furthest thing from his mind. Which was also a little disturbing. But he was the Dark One, whether he liked being called that or not.

Some of the shock faded, and the pounding adrenaline eased. And when it left, I realized I hurt. My shoulder and the side of my head throbbed. The left side of my face felt puffy, and that had nothing to do with the old scars there. A dull ache pulsed in my legs and arms, and my body felt funny, as if my knees were weakening. I swayed in the warm, salty breeze—

Casteel rose quickly, and I shouldn’t have been surprised by how fast he moved, but I still was. In a heartbeat, he’d gone from kneeling to standing, a foot closer to me, and several things happened at once.

The men and women behind Casteel’s parents, the ones wearing the same white tunics and loose pants of those lying on the floor, also moved. Light reflected off the golden armbands adorning their biceps as they lifted their swords, shifting closer to Casteel’s parents, protecting them. Some reached for crossbows strapped to their backs. They had to be guards of some sort.

A sudden growl of warning came from the largest wolven I’d ever seen. Kieran and Vonetta’s father stood to my right. Jasper had officiated the marriage between Casteel and me in Spessa’s End. He’d been there when Nyktos showed his approval by briefly turning day to night. But now, the steel-hued wolven’s lips peeled back, baring teeth that could tear through flesh and break bone. He was loyal to Casteel, and yet instinct told me that it wasn’t just the guards he warned.

Another snarl came from my left. In the shadows of the blood tree that had sprouted from where my blood had fallen and grown to a massive height within seconds, a fawn-colored wolven crept into my line of sight, head dipped low, and wintery blue eyes iridescent. Kieran. He stared down Casteel. I didn’t understand why either of them would behave this way toward the Prince, but especially Kieran. He had been bonded to Casteel from birth, meant to obey and protect him at all costs. But he was more than a bonded wolven to Casteel. They were brothers, if not by blood then by friendship, and I knew they loved each other.

Right now, nothing about the way Kieran’s ears were pinned back was loving.

Unease skipped its way through me as Kieran sank down, the sleek muscles of his legs tensing as he prepared to attack…Casteel.

My stomach plummeted. This wasn’t right. None of this was right. “No,” I rasped, my voice hoarse and barely recognizable, even to my ears.

Kieran didn’t appear to hear me or care. If he had been acting normally, I would’ve just assumed he was attempting to ignore me, but this was different. He was different. His eyes were brighter than I ever remembered seeing, and they weren’t right because they…they weren’t just blue now. His pupils glowed silvery-white, an aura that seeped out in wispy tendrils across the blue. My head jerked to Jasper. His eyes had changed, too. I’d seen that strange light before. It had been what my skin had done when I healed Beckett’s broken legs—the same silvery glow that had radiated from me minutes earlier.

Icy bursts of surprise raced through Casteel as he eyed the wolven, and then I felt…relief radiate from him.

“You all knew.” Casteel’s voice filled with awe, something no one standing behind him felt. Even the easy grin was absent from the auburn-haired Atlantian. Emil looked at us with wide eyes, broadcasting a healthy dose of fear, as did Naill, who had always appeared utterly unfazed by everything—even when he’d been outnumbered in battle.

Casteel slowly sheathed his swords at his sides. Hands empty, he kept them down. “You all knew something was happening to her. That’s why….” He trailed off, his jaw hardening.

Several of the guards moved to the front of the King and Queen, surrounding them fully—

A shock of white fur shot forward. Delano tucked his tail back as he pawed at the marble. He lifted his head and howled. The eerie yet beautiful sound raised the tiny hairs all over my body.

Off in the distance, the faint sounds of yips and barks answered, growing louder with each second. The leaves on the tall, cone-shaped trees separating the temple from Saion’s Cove trembled as a rolling rumble echoed from the ground below. Blue-and-yellow-winged birds took flight from the trees, scattering to the sky.

“Godsdamn.” Emil turned to the temple steps. He reached for the swords at his sides. “They’re summoning the whole damn city.”

“It’s her.” The deep scar slicing across the older wolven’s forehead stood out starkly. Potent disbelief rolled off Alastir as he stood just outside the circle of guards who’d formed around Casteel’s parents.

“It is not her,” Casteel shot back.

“But it is,” King Valyn confirmed as he stared at me from a face that Casteel’s would one day become. “They’re responding to her. That’s why the ones on the road with us shifted without warning. She called them to her.”

“I…I didn’t call anyone,” I told Casteel, voice cracking.

“I know.” Casteel’s tone softened as his eyes locked with mine.

“But she did,” his mother insisted. “You might not realize it, but you did summon them.”

My eyes darted to her, and I felt my chest wrench. She was everything I’d imagined Casteel’s mother to be. Stunning. Regal. Powerful. Calm now, even as she remained on one knee, even when she had first seen me and demanded of her son—What have you’ve done? What have you brought back? I flinched, fearing those words would stay with me long after today.

Casteel’s features sharpened as golden eyes swept over my face. “If the idiots behind me actually laid down their swords instead of lifting them against my wife, we wouldn’t have an entire colony of wolven about to descend on us,” he bit out. “They are only reacting to the threat.”

“You’re right,” his father agreed as he gently guided his wife to her feet. Blood soaked the knee and the hem of her lilac gown. “But ask yourself why your bonded wolven is guarding someone other than you.”

“I really could care less at the moment,” Casteel responded as the sound of hundreds—if not more—of paws pounding the earth grew even closer. He couldn’t be serious. He had to care, because that was a damn good question.

“You need to care,” his mother cautioned, a thin quiver in her otherwise steady voice. “The bonds have broken.”

The bonds? Hands trembling, my wide eyes shot to the temple steps, to where Emil slowly backed away. Naill had his swords in his hands now.

“She’s right,” Alastir uttered, the skin around his mouth appearing even whiter. “I can… I can feel it—the Primal notam. Her mark. Good gods.” His voice trembled as he stumbled back, nearly stepping on the crown. “They’ve all broken.”

I had no idea what a notam was, but through the confusion and the blossoming panic, there was something odd about what Alastir had stated. If it was true, then why wasn’t he in his wolven form? Was it because he’d already broken his wolven bond with the former King of Atlantia all those years ago?

“Look at their eyes,” the Queen ordered softly, pointing out what I’d seen. “I know you don’t understand. There are things you never needed to learn, Hawke.” Her voice cracked then, thickened at the use of his nickname—a name I’d once believed to be nothing more than a lie. “But what you need to know now is that they no longer serve the Elemental bloodline. You are not safe. Please,” she begged. “Please. Listen to me, Hawke.”

“How?” I croaked. “How could the bond break?”

“That doesn’t matter right now.” The amber of Casteel’s eyes was nearly luminous. “You’re bleeding,” he said as if that were the most important issue at hand.

But it wasn’t. “How?” I repeated.

“It’s what you are.” Eloana’s left hand balled into the skirt of her gown. “You have the blood of a god in you—”

“I’m mortal,” I told her.

A thick lock of dark hair tumbled from her knot as she shook her head. “Yes, you are mortal, but you are descended from a deity—the children of the gods. All it takes is a drop of god’s blood—” She swallowed thickly. “You may have more than just a drop, but what is in your blood, what is in you, supersedes any oath the wolven have taken.”

I remembered then what Kieran had told me in New Haven about the wolven. The gods had given the once-wild kiyou wolves mortal form to serve as guides and protectors to the children of the gods—the deities. Something else Kieran had shared then explained the Queen’s reaction.

My gaze shot to the crown lying near Nyktos’ feet. A drop of deity blood usurped any claim to the Atlantian throne.

Oh, gods, there was a good chance I really might pass out. And how embarrassing would that be?

Eloana’s gaze shifted to her son’s rigid back. “You go near her? Right now? They will see you as a threat to her. They will rip you apart.”

My heart lurched to a panicked stop. Casteel looked as if he might do just that. Behind me, one of the smaller wolven lurched forward, barking and snapping at the air.

Every muscle in my body tensed. “Casteel—”

“It’s okay.” Casteel’s eyes never left mine. “No one is going to harm Poppy. I will not allow that.” His chest rose with a deep, heavy breath. “And you know that, right?”

I nodded as each breath came too fast, too shallowly. It was the only thing I understood at the moment.

“Everything’s all right. They’re just protecting you.” Casteel smiled for me then, but it was tense and tight. He looked to my left, at Kieran. “I don’t know everything that is going on right now, but you—all of you—want to keep her safe. And I’m all about that. You know I would never hurt her. I would tear out my own heart before I did that. She’s injured. I need to make sure she’s okay, and nothing is going to stop me from doing that.” He didn’t blink as he held Kieran’s stare, as the rolling thunder of the other wolven reached the temple steps. “Not even you. Any of you. I will destroy every single one of you who stands between her and me.”

Kieran’s growl deepened, and an emotion I’d never felt from him before poured into me. It was like anger, but older. And it felt like that buzz in my blood had. Ancient. Primal.

And in an instant, I could see it all playing out in my mind as if it were happening before me. Kieran would attack. Or maybe it would be Jasper. I’d seen what kind of damage a wolven could inflict, but Casteel wouldn’t go down easily. He would do just as he’d promised. He’d tear through all that stood between him and me. Wolven would die, and if he harmed Kieran—if he did worse than that, the wolven’s blood wouldn’t just be on Casteel’s hands. It would mark his soul till the day he died.

A wave of wolven crested the temple’s stairs, both small and large, in so many different colors. Their arrival brought terrifying knowledge. Casteel was incredibly strong and unbelievably fast. He would take down many. But he would fall with them.

He would die.

Casteel would die because of me—because I called to these wolven and didn’t know how to make it stop. My heart thumped erratically. A wolven near the steps stalked Emil as he continued backing up. Another tracked Naill as he spoke softly to the wolven, attempting to reason with the creature. The others had zeroed in on the guards surrounding the King and Queen, and a few…. Oh, gods, several of them crept up behind Casteel. This had slipped into chaos, the wolven beyond control of any of them…

I sucked in a sharp breath as my mind raced, breaking free of the pain and turbulence. Something had happened within me to make that drop of god’s blood break the bonds. I superseded their previous oaths, and that had…it had to mean that they now obeyed me.

“Stop,” I ordered as Kieran snapped at Casteel, whose own lips were now peeled back. “Kieran! Stop! You will not hurt Casteel.” My voice rose as a soft hum returned to my blood. “All of you will stop. Now! None of you will attack.”

It was like a switch had been thrown in the wolven’s minds. One second they were all poised to attack, and then they were sinking onto their bellies, lowering their heads between their front paws. I could still feel their anger, the old power, but it had lessened already, was fading in steady waves.

Emil lowered his sword. “That…that was timely. Thank you for that.”

A ragged breath left me as a tremor traveled up and down my arms. I almost couldn’t believe it’d worked as I scanned the temple, seeing all the wolven lying down. My entire being wanted to rebel against further confirmation of what the Queen had claimed, but gods, there was only so much I could deny. Throat dry, I looked at Casteel.

He stared at me, his eyes wide once more. I couldn’t breathe enough. My heart wouldn’t slow enough for me to make sense of what he was feeling.

“He will not hurt me. You all know that,” I said, my voice shaking as I looked at Jasper and then Kieran. “You told me that he was the only person in both kingdoms that I was safe with.  That hasn’t changed.”

The paddock could have been beautiful, Asya supposed. But the cold apprehension burning in her stomach overshadowed it, darkening the flowers to poisonous thorns and muting the colors like fog. It was always like this. Ever since the first time Tarya had taken her on a hunt. Once she was left without a task to complete—a distraction—Asya couldn’t pretend to forget what came next. She’d hoped it would get better, but she still couldn’t shake the lingering fear.

She shifted her feet, trying to ignore the erratic rhythm of her heart. She hated waiting. Each frantic beat stretching out into an eternity.

She just wanted this to be over.

After all, her sister had always been the brave one.

But that was why Asya was here. Why she had to follow this path, no matter how she wavered. She owed it to her sister. They were the two sides of a coin, and if Asya failed, then her sister would too.

Tarya’s words—the words Asya had to live by—pounded through her. This is our duty. Not a question of right or wrong, but balance.

Her aunt stepped forward. She moved silently, slipping like a shadow untethered from its owner, from the gnarled trees and out into the overgrown paddock beyond. She didn’t speak—she rarely did when she felt a Calling—but Asya knew she was meant to follow.

Asya took a shaky breath, touching one finger to the wooden icon around her neck. An unspoken prayer. She could do this.

Far less quietly, she followed Tarya into the uneven grass, wincing at the snapping twigs beneath her boots.

The paddock led to a small cottage, surrounded by more soft crocuses. Their purple seeped out from the house like a bruise. The building’s thatched roof had clearly been recently repaired, and the gray stone was all but consumed by creeping moss. The stench of magic grew with each step Asya took. Wateroses lay scattered on the ground, interspersed with dried rosemary sprigs. The too-sweet scent, cut through with the burn of magic, made her stomach turn.

Tarya stopped by the wooden door. Marks of various saints had been daubed across it in stark black paint, uneven and still wet. Acts of desperation. They felt out of place in the idyllic scene. The sight sent a prickle of unease through Asya’s gut.

“Your weapon,” Tarya prompted, her voice low as the rustle of grass behind them.

Asya’s fingers jumped to the curved bronze shashka at her waist. A careless mistake. She should have drawn the short blade long before. She couldn’t let the apprehension clawing at the edge of her mind overwhelm her. Not this time.

She had to be sure. Immovable. She had to be like Tarya.

Asya unsheathed the weapon, the bronze glinting in the fading light, and forced her hand to steady.

Her aunt gave her a long look, one that said she knew just how Asya’s heart roiled beneath the surface. But Tarya just nodded, turning back to the freshly marked door. Sparks already danced behind her eyes—deep red and burnished gold flames swallowing her usually pale irises. It transformed her from ethereal into something powerful.

Monstrous.

Asya swallowed, pushing that thought away. Her aunt wasn’t a monster.

Tarya reached out and pressed her palm to the wood. Heat rolled from her in a great wave, making Asya’s eyes water. A low splintering noise fractured the air, followed by the snap of the metal bolt. The door swung open. All that was left of the painted sigils was a scorched handprint. Asya’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t help but feel that breaking the saints’ signs was violating some ancient covenant.

But Tarya just stepped inside. Asya tightened her grip on the blade, trying to shake off the sense of foreboding nipping at her heels, and followed.

The cottage was comprised of a single, small room. Heavy fabric hung over the windows, leaving them half in shadow. As Asya’s eyes adjusted, she took in the shapes of furniture—all overturned or smashed against the cracked walls. Clothes were strewn across the floor in a whirl, along with a few shattered plates and even a broken viola, its strings snapped and useless. A statue of Saint Meshnik lay on its side, their head several paces from their armored body. The room looked like it had been ransacked, perhaps set upon by thieves.

Or like someone wanted it to seem that way.

Tarya turned slowly, her sparking eyes taking in the room. Then her gaze fixed on a spot to her left and flames reared across her irises again. Asya couldn’t see anything. But she knew her aunt was not really looking at the wall, she was feeling—reaching for those intangible threads that bound the world and using them to narrow in on her prey.

Asya waited, her breath caught in her chest.

Tarya moved in a flash, as though Vetviya herself had looked down and granted her secret passage through the In-Between. One moment beside Asya, the next in front of the wall. Flames sputtered from her wrist, licking along her forearms as golden and bright as sunlight. She put her hands on the wall, and the flames eagerly reached out to devour.

They burned away what must have been a false panel, revealing a tight crevice behind. Three faces stared out, eyes wide and afraid. Two children, a boy and a girl, clutching onto a man with ash-white hair, now covered in a faint sheen of soot.

“Oryaze,” he breathed, terror rising on his face like waves over a hapless ship. Firebird.

Bile burned in Asya’s throat. She took a halting step back, staring at the huddled family. It’s the man, she told herself. It had to be. The thought murmured through her, a desperate prayer to any god or saint who might be listening.

The man leaped forward, spreading his arms as though hiding the children from view might protect them. As though anything he did would make a difference. “I won’t let you touch her!” he cried, grabbing one of the broken chair legs and brandishing it like a sword.

Asya clenched her teeth, a sharp jab of pity shooting through her. It would be no use. Nothing would.

The flames coiled lazily around Tarya’s wrists as she watched the man with a detached curiosity. “The price must be paid.”

Age of the Rose, 996

The golden bell above my doorframe bobs twice.

I roll my shoulders against the needling ache that settles at the base of my neck whenever that damn thing sounds. After nearly a decade of hearing it, I’ve come to despise the bell’s shrill, tinny clang almost as much as the message it carries: A patron is coming. When it was first installed, my bell gleamed like those the Graces use in their parlors. But now, seeing as the servants conveniently forget to polish it, a mottled green tarnish clings to the thing like a scaly skin. Fitting, I think, that I should have the ugliest bell in Lavender House when I am by far the ugliest creature living inside it.

Alyce. My own name on my patron schedule glares up at me when I glance at the next appointment. Beneath it: The Dark Grace.

Grace, indeed. If I were truly a Grace, I’d be receiving my patrons in a sunny parlor with silk-upholstered chairs and trays of spongy, cream-­frosted tea cakes. Instead, I’m banished to a converted storage annex attached to Lavender House’s kitchen. It’s yet another reason Cook hates me. The space was once a larder and now Cook complains every chance she gets that there isn’t enough storage space in the cellar. I catch her grumbling curses at me when she thinks I’m out of earshot, as if this insufferable chamber is some kind of prize. There are no windows. A dank chill seeps through the rotting mortar, even in the summer heat. And the wretched hearth—­hastily added once I opened my practice—­clogs more often than not, filling my Lair with a perpetual smoky scent and smearing soot on every surface.

It’s more a dragon’s lair out of a story than a parlor in a Grace house. Rose dubbed it such soon after she arrived: the Lair, where the Dark Grace dwells. I hate the place so much that I didn’t even fight her.

Callow ruffles as the bell jangles a second time, as annoyed as I am at the intrusion. I offer my kestrel a few meat trimmings snuck from beneath Cook’s nose.

“What do you think this one wants?” Callow shakes out her white-­speckled wings in a decidedly irritated fashion and nudges my hand with her head. And I suppose there’s no point putting it off any longer. “Enter!”

The chamber door squeals and I can tell immediately from the footsteps that it isn’t one of my regulars. They’re anxious. Hesitant. A startle away from turning and bolting.

I wish they would turn and bolt.

Whispering apologies to Callow, I fix her hood over her head. She’s easier to handle this way, especially around strangers. I’d found the kestrel as a chick some years ago, half-­dead and starving on the sea cliffs outside Briar’s main gates. Though I’m no healing Grace, I was able to nurse her back to health with what tinctures I could concoct. She’s never taken to anyone else. Not that I blame her. Mistress Lavender said it would have been kinder to kill the bird, and one of the servants mistook her for a rat and nearly bludgeoned her to death. The maid was lucky I didn’t return the favor.

The nervous patron hovers in my doorway, hood close around her face despite the oppressive, salt-­soaked heat of late summer. The firelight flits over her features, sharpening her cheekbones. Hollowing her eye sockets. Definitely not a regular. She looks like she thinks I’m going to roast her over a spit. As if my pathetic hearth is large enough to manage that. Would that it could.

“Your Grace.” The edges of her brocade cloak tremble as she scrapes a curtsy.

“What brings you here?” I stroke Callow’s snowy breast with one finger, affecting the cool, detached manner people expect from the Dark Grace. I don’t ask her name. Within these walls, she doesn’t have one. Patrons do not come to my Lair seeking beauty or charm or wit as they would in a Grace’s parlor. They come for revenge. For cruelty. Services provided at a steep price, and that price includes anonymity.

“I . . . I have a . . . cat.” She stumbles. Flushes at her own threadbare deception.

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. My patrons always spare less than half a thought to crafting a decent backstory. Briar’s Grace Laws prevent the use of their magic for ill will, which should directly prohibit my line of work. But I am the only Grace of my kind. And all I do is prepare the elixirs. Once the vials leave my hands, it’s up to the patrons to dispose of them as they please. And as long as I don’t know I’m party to an attack on another citizen, I cannot be held liable for my patrons’ actions. Besides that, my elixirs cost three times the average rate of those of a Grace. And if I stopped working, the Crown wouldn’t get its cut.

“A cat.” I school my features into the neutral expression I’ve perfected over the years.

“Yes, a cat.” She fiddles with the buttons at her sleeves. “A cat too pretty for its own good. She’s getting too much attention from the other . . . cats.”

Dragon’s teeth, she’s even worse than the others. And I once had a man tell me his own rose garden smelled too nice and was attracting bees.

“And you wish to . . .”

“I don’t want to harm the cat,” the woman says automatically. “I just want . . .”

“To give her a few warts?” A standard ugliness elixir.

Her gaze brightens in the gloom. How predictable. New patrons are always so grateful when I offer suggestions. I think it makes them feel less the villain. Like they didn’t come here specifically to do harm to someone they’ve convinced themselves deserves it.

The patron nods and I motion for her to sit at a worn wooden table near the hearth as I start assembling ingredients for the elixir. Swamp water. A dash of powdered nightshade. And, for the warts, I cart over the short, boxy cage that houses my toad, Prince Markham.

The woman stammers, flinching as I plop His Highness on the table in front of her. He lets out a belchy croak.

Only the crackle of the flames and the grind of the pestle break the silence as I work. I’m grateful. Sometimes my patrons try to plump up their lies, offering needless explanations and sugarcoated stories. Hoping I’ll nod along. Make it easier on their consciences. I never do. They deserve whatever guilt festers in their guts.

But this woman only chews the inside of her cheek, glancing at the door every few moments as if she’s worried she’ll be discovered. She needn’t be. Every aspect of my craft is steeped in secrecy. Patrons book their appointments with me using a shrouded alcove around the side of the house, built specifically for the purpose. There’s a little screen secured into the wall, where patrons or their servants can murmur their needs to our house manager, Delphine. She even takes the payments through a slot and allows aliases on the bookings, a practice forbidden to the other Graces. If Delphine guesses who the patrons are, she’s paid well enough to keep her mouth shut.

My current patron, who calls herself Mistress Briar—­how original—­seems to have forgotten about the great care Lavender House has taken to protect her identity. Despite the Lair’s cold, sweat beads on her upper lip and she dabs it away with a lace handkerchief. She jumps every time Callow moves on her perch. Ignoring her restlessness, I hold a long needle over a candle flame, and then with a quiet apology, I pierce one of Prince Markham’s warts. He gurgles in protest as a few drops of his blood, so dark they’re almost black, fall into the waiting vial. I add it to the rest of the mixture.

Now for the most important piece. With a small scalpel, I press down on my finger. A line of green blood—­the source of my power—­wells. I count to three, inhaling the faint scent of woodsmoke and loam that is my magic, as it dribbles onto the other enhancements. Immediately, the mixture hisses. I stir it with a long spoon until a cloud of black smoke erupts from the mortar. My patron covers her slender, highborn nose and coughs.

“For your cat.” I raise an eyebrow, pouring the elixir into a vial and sliding it across the table. “The more you use, the more warts she’ll get.”

She nods and pockets it, not daring to say another word, not even deigning to thank me.

As the door snicks closed behind her, I curse the familiar sickening feeling that settles like hot coals inside me. I should be used to these requests by now. I can’t even count the number of ugliness elixirs I’ve produced over the years. And I’m bound by the Grace Laws to satisfy my patrons’ needs.

But the woman’s abrupt dismissal still stings, as does every other slight I’ve endured since I began working in Lavender House. My patrons pay good coin for my services, but not one of them would willingly meet my eye if they passed me on the street. I am reviled and despised for the very reasons I’m sought out. A figure of dark, evil magic. A member of a race all but stamped out. A Vila.

A monster.

I was ten years old the first time I realised I was strange. Around midnight, a woman dressed in white slipped through my bedroom window and cut off a lock of my hair with sewing scissors. I was awake the whole time, tracking her in the dark, so frozen by fear that I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream.

I watched as she held the curl of my hair to her nose and inhaled. I watched as she put it on her tongue and closed her mouth and savoured the taste for a few moments before swallowing. I watched as she bent over me and ran a fingertip along the hook shaped scar at the base of my throat.

It was only when she opened my door – bound for the bedrooms of my older sisters, with the scissors still held at her side – that I finally screamed.

My mother tackled her in the hall. My sisters helped hold her down. The woman was rough and rabid, thrashing against the three of them with a strength we’d later learn was fueled by amphetamines. She bit my mother. She headbutted my middle sister, Vivi, so hard in the face that her nose was crushed and both of her eye sockets were bruised for weeks.

It was Grey, my eldest sister, who finally subdued her. When she thought my mother wasn’t looking, she bent low over the wild woman’s face and pressed her lips against her mouth. It was a soft kiss right out of a fairy tale, made gruesome by the fact that the woman’s chin was slick with our mother’s blood.

For a moment the air smelled sweet and wrong, a mixture of honey and something else, something rotten. Grey pulled back and held the woman’s head in her hands, and then watched her, intently, waiting. My sister eyes were so black, they looked like polished river stones. She was fourteen then, and already the most beautiful creature I could imagine. I wanted to peel the skin from her body and wear it draped over mine.

The woman shuddered beneath greys touch and then just . . . stopped.

By the time the police arrived, the woman’s eyes were wide and faraway, her limbs so liquid she could no longer stand and had to be carried out, limp as a drunk, by three officers.

I wonder if Grey already knew then what we were.

I woke up to see a witch peering in my bedroom window.

She was little more than a dark shape with a predator’s hungry eyes, razor-wire skinny but somehow female, staring in through the partly open drapes. Sunrise lit up the thin, silvery hair that straggled out from under her hat. I should have leaped up screaming. I should have run at her with any weapon I could find.

Instead I thought, I hope she’s not standing on my basil plants, hazy and unworried. Even half asleep, I knew that there was no such thing as witches. I’d long forgotten the most important thing the theatre had ever taught me—that the human body can hold two truths at once. Even truths that seem to rule each other out: There’s no such things as witches, true. And I was looking at one.

I didn’t understand she might be a real person until our eyes met. Hers widened in surprise. She lurched sideways and was gone, leaving me with the impression of a craggy old-lady face with a sour, turned-down mouth.

I bolted upright, heart rate jacking, letting out a strangled sound that wasn’t quite a scream. Too soft to disturb the kids, but it woke up my husband.

“Bree?” Trey’s voice was thick with sleep.

“I thought I saw someone. Looking through the window at us.”

That got his eyes open.

“A person? In the backyard?” He was already climbing out of bed.

There was a careless six-inch gap between the edges of the drapes. Even as he pushed one all the way aside, my rational brain was catching up, trying to dismiss it.

I said, “It was a witch. I mean, I thought I saw a witch. So . . . grain of salt.”

Trey was peering out, forehead pressed against the glass, but that turned him back to me, a smile starting. “Big pointy hat?”

The memory was dream-soaked, but when he said it, my brain made it so, snapping my hazy mental picture into focus. Not a cardigan. A tatty robe. Not a knit cap. A pointy witch hat. It made the whole thing ridiculous. Of course there was no witch in our backyard, staring in with hungry, haunted eyes.

“I think so,” I admitted. “Her mouth was sunken in, and she was all in black.”

I must have been dreaming, I decided. I was prone to postpartum nightmares, though not usually about anything so concrete as witches. My bad dreams after each of the girls had been almost Victorian, all footsteps and fog.

“The gate is closed and locked. Unless your witch looked spry enough to bounce over an eight-foot privacy fence . . .”

That made me laugh, though it was more of a relieved puff of air. “Nope.”

Trey let go of the drapes. “Want me to go outside and check?”

“Do I want you to sashay around the backyard in your boxers looking for a witch?” I asked. “No. No, I do not.”

He grinned, and I smiled back, even though the animal at the base of my brain was saying that yes, actually, I did want him to He-Man out there and stomp the perimeter, preferably with a golf club cocked up over his shoulder. It was a primal thing, physical and irrational.

There was no witch, obviously, and even if I had seen someone, a flesh-and- blood little old lady was the least threatening type of person on the planet. Only in stories did crones offer poisoned fruit to princesses or snatch up tasty children. But I couldn’t think of an innocent reason for anyone to watch us as we slept. And her flat, greedy gaze! Not confused or blank, like someone’s sweet lost granny. Her hunger was the clearest thing in my memory.

Trey read my doubt. “Seriously. I’ll grab some pants and go check. Just to put your mind at ease.”

I shook my head. I’d been raised on Grimms’ fairy tales by a mother who saw the world as something huge and wild—carnivorous. Her world was full of witches. She’d have already called the cops by now, or even snatched one of Trey’s hunting rifles out of the gun safe and loaded it. She’d be in the backyard already, making the world safer by accidentally shooting our neighbor’s nice old Labradoodle. Or worse, shooting our nice old neighbor.

I wasn’t like her. I didn’t want to be like her, so I pushed away that small, wise voice in my head that kept insisting, You saw something. You saw someone.

I told my husband, “No. Come back to bed.”

Trey tumbled in, and I rolled toward him, running my hand under his T-shirt to feel his heartbeat. It was slow and steady, same as always. Wearing a shirt to bed was new, though. Trey had turned fifty this year. He’d always been built thick, but now he had a bit of a belly, and his chest hair was going gray.

“I hate this stupid shirt,” I told him. I wanted the comfort of tucking in close to his bare skin, wrapping my arms around the warm, strong bulk of him.

He pulled me closer. Close enough for me to know he wasn’t thinking about witches. “I could ditch the shirt. We are up early.”

I glanced back at the clock. “The alarm goes off in twenty minutes. You think you can make it worth my while?” I said it flirty, like a challenge, cocking my eyebrow at him.

His teeth flashed in the dimness. “I can damn sure try.”

He kissed my neck, my shoulder. To my surprise I felt a twinge of something good starting. My sex drive had flatlined in my third trimester. I’d assumed it would resurrect in a few months, when Robert started solid food. That’s how it had worked after the girls. But here was our familiar magic, already sparking up between us.

Maybe it was the dream. That witch had genuinely spooked me, dumping a ton of adrenaline into my blood. As my husband kissed me, my body arched into him, electric, as if to say, We could alldie! Quick, make more people! It apparently hadn’t gotten the memo about Trey’s vasectomy. I kissed him back, serious about it.

“Yeah?” Trey said, surprised.

“Yeah,” I said, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the window. Of course there was not a witch in the yard. Or anyone. But I added, “Close the drapes all the way and you’re on, mister.”

He hurried to yank them shut while I started peeling my nightgown off over my head.

That, of course, was the exact moment a soft gurgle came through the baby monitor.

We both froze, our eyes meeting.

“Oh, Bumper, no!” Trey said.

“Oh, Robert, no,” I corrected automatically. I wasn’t going to bend on this. When I was pregnant, we’d all called him Bumper, as in “the bumper crop.” That had been cute back when it meant my swelling belly. Trey, who’d grown up in Buckhead with Scooters and Biffs and Muffys, still thought it was cute.

The sound faded. We waited, holding our breath. It could go either way. After ten silent seconds, I lifted a victory fist and Trey started toward me.

Robert started babbling then. He was awake and pleased about it, but if I didn’t go get him, he’d start fussing.

“So close!”

“Rain check for tonight?” I asked, pulling my nightgown back on.

Trey shook his head, rueful. “I wish. I fly to Chicago today.”

“Ugh, that’s right. I must have repressed it.” I got up.

He’d be there through the weekend and most of next week, too, thanks to Spencer Shaw. Spence was less than a bosom friend but more than just his partner at the law firm. Their mothers were cousins, so they’d gone to the same schools from the time they were three, even pledging the same frat at UVA. They hadn’t gone their separate ways until law school.

Spence had opted out of this Chicago trip because tonight was the firm’s annual Spring Gala, and he wasn’t one to miss a party. He loved himself a top-shelf open bar and pretty women in cocktail dresses.

Trey wanted me to go to the gala, too. To represent. But I always felt a little out of place at firm events without him. I’d said I would, unless Robert had a cranky afternoon. I had a strong premonition that he would.

“Spence is having a rough time, Bree,” Trey said.

Spence was in the middle of an ugly divorce, his second. My husband would carry him through it, just as he’d carried him during his first ugly divorce.

“So are you. You’re working crazy hours,” I said, shrugging into my robe. “Mostly because of Spence.”

“No. It’s this client.” He and Spence were working with a large Atlanta-based company that was absorbing a family-owned chain of grocery stores. “This is not a marriage of equals we’re officiating.” He leaned close, as if telling me a dirty little secret. “Our groom is a cannibal.”

I let it go. Trey was an equity partner, but Spencer’s name was third on the firm’s letterhead. His father’s name had been first before he died. Also, Robert’s babble was getting whiny around the edges.

“I’ll plan us a date for next weekend. Dinner, wine, kissing,” I promised, then went next door into the nursery.

This room used to be my office, before Robert surprised us. Now the heather-gray walls were covered over in giraffe wallpaper and my desk nook had a changing table in it.

I didn’t mind. I didn’t need an office now; I’d rolled off the boards of the Alliance Theatre and a statewide literacy nonprofit, promising to roll back on in a year or so. The girls had taught me how brief Robert’s babyhood would be. I didn’t want to miss it. I’d blinked, and here he was, already ten weeks old.

I bitched about Trey’s job sometimes, but I was lucky. When I was growing up, my mom worked full-time as a 911 operator plus waitressed on the weekends to make ends meet. I might not love Trey’s long hours, the travel, or the social obligations, but Trey’s career meant I got to watch Anna-Claire’s voice lessons and rehearsals, go to Peyton’s quiz-bowl and robotics meets, and still have time and money to support causes I loved.

I bent over the crib, and Robert kicked his chunky legs, happy to see me. He cooed as I lifted him, trusting that a fresh diaper and a warm bottle were next. I inhaled the crazy perfume of his head. Nothing on earth smelled as delicious as new baby, and this version was particular to him. Not just the scent of baby. This baby. My baby.

I took him to the changing table, and he gave me the goofy grin he’d invented just last week, toothless and so charming. He was easy. A good sleeper, a good eater. Anna-Claire had been trickier, lovely as long as everything went her way but instantly enraged by dirty diapers and late breakfasts. She was so mercurial and demanding that I’d planned a three-year gap before the next one, but she was barely Robert’s age when the stick turned blue. Peyton had been born anxious, and she never slept. Even when I was pregnant, my little insomniac kicked and spun inside me all night long.

“You are my sugar baby,” I told Robert, tucking his fat potato feet back into his pajamas and refastening the snaps. “You’re going to be a nightmare as a toddler to make up for it, aren’t you?”

I toted Robert down the hall to the kitchen to warm his bottle, then sat in the great room, holding him close while he pulled greedily at it. By the time he’d taken his five ounces, the sound of squabbling girls was drifting down the stairs. I kept an ear cocked as I marched Robert up and down, trying to thump a second burp out of him. He had one, I knew it, and he’d be colicky if I didn’t coax it out. I hoped the fussing upstairs would resolve on its own. Often it did. But late last year Peyton had gotten her period. She’d instantly synced up with Anna-Claire, and right now we were heading into danger week.

“Mo-om!” Peyton hollered in two aggrieved syllables. “She took my . . .” I missed the last word.

I toted Robert to the bottom of the stairs, jouncing and patting as I walked.

“Anna-Claire,” I called up.

She poked her face over the banister. She was sleep-rumpled, her masses of dark hair a tumbled mess, and still beautiful enough to take my breath away.

“You always take her side!”

She had a point. I did tend to take Peyton’s side. But life had taken Anna-Claire’s. She was built like me, tall and slim, and where I was pretty, she was gorgeous. She had my even features, but her true violet eyes tilted like kitten eyes, and her lips had a natural upturn, as if she were holding a delightful secret in her mouth, readying to speak or swallow it. She’d also come with a whopping scoop of Trey’s confidence and extroverted charm.

She’d never had an awkward phase, while Peyton was slap in the middle of hers. Right now puppy fat clung to her middle, and her skin had gone a little crazy. She was as cute as a button, with her dad’s round face and snub nose, but when she was next to her sister, people overlooked her.

Peyton joined her sister at the banister. “I haven’t even gotten to wear it yet!”

“Give it back,” I told Anna-Claire, mild but serious, still thumping at Robert.

“Fine. It’s in my middle drawer,” Anna-Claire told her sister, then gave me the eye roll she’d perfected in third grade. “It’s too big for me anyway.”

That was straight-up bitchy, but I let it slide with a warning look because Peyton was already off to go get the whatever-it-was. The fight had been derailed.

I felt a sense of relief that was larger than the moment warranted, as if I’d stepped in and diverted a tempest. I shook my head. It was that awful dream. It still felt like a portentous one. The witch’s gaze had been so avid. I felt more than I thought, Something bad is coming for us.

I shook the little voice warning of doom away. My mother owned it. The voice in her own head must be a stentor. My father by all reports had been a piece of work. I’d never met him, and I was grateful, considering. He was the reason she wouldn’t get on an elevator with any man. Not alone. She kept a loaded handgun in a safe by her bed and was always gifting me pepper sprays and safety whistles. I had never once wondered where Peyton came by her anxiety, but I didn’t live like that. I refused to see the world that way. And I wasn’t going to borrow trouble when I was facing a week of single-parenting two hormone-crazed middle-school girls and a baby.

Anna-Claire stomped down the stairs to the first landing and cocked her hip at me. “Remember you’re a snack mom for rehearsal this afternoon.”

“I know.” Robert let out that last, sneaky burp. It was a whopper.

“Don’t bring bananas,” Anna-Claire said. “Cara’s dad always brings those gross generic fruit-snack things, so you need to bring something edible.”

I kept my smile in place, but it went a little stiff when I heard that Marshall Chase was the other “snack mom.” They really called it that, as if male parents were incapable of passing out raisin boxes and bottled waters. To be fair, he was the only dad I’d ever seen do it. Marshall was tall and lanky and attractive; the other moms made jokes about him being the snack, but a couple of months back, when Grease, Junior was cast, Anna-Claire got the alto lead. His own daughter got Marty. It was a good part with a solo, but it wasn’t Rizzo. I hadn’t ever thought of Marshall as the stage-parent type, but there was no denying that the balmy air between us had gone cool.

I hated it; Marshall and I had both grown up way out in Hurd County, Georgia. His wife, Betsy, had lived across the street from me. She’d been my best friend since before I had concrete memory. She and Marshall dated for most of high school, but they’d broken up when Betsy and I moved into Atlanta to attend Georgia State. Betsy had always been wilder than me, bolder, both more reckless and more fun. By the end of freshman year, she lost her scholarship, and she wasn’t even sorry. She went home, got a job, got back with Marshall. They’d gone through the police academy together and gotten married.

Our lives had forked, but Betsy and I had stayed close. We’d been each other’s maids of honor, and we’d been pregnant together; Cara was born a month before Anna-Claire. I’d always liked Marshall, though in that best-friend’s-husband way that rendered him more Ken doll than man.

When Betsy died in the line of duty, five years back, he’d wanted to move to a safer job, for Cara’s sake. Trey had hired him as an investigator. The firm had been thrilled to get him. Marshall was excellent; he’d been one of the youngest cops ever to make detective in Atlanta.

Last year Cara’s public school lost its arts funding. No more chorus or drama club, and Cara was distraught. Trey put in a word at St. Alban’s, and they’d offered her a scholarship. I’d hoped she and Anna-Claire would bond, like a mini me-and-Betsy, because Anna-Claire was also hip-deep into musical theatre and choir. Instead they were competitors, always up for the same parts and solos.

I couldn’t make them love each other, but I could threaten my too-pretty, too-popular daughter with phoneless exile and unending extra chores if she did one single thing to make Cara feel picked on or unwelcome. Cara had quickly found her own friend set, and her grades were excellent, so I considered the transfer a success. For her.

I’d hoped it would finally give me a real friend at the school. I had more in common with Marshall than with any of the other snack moms. At thirty-eight we were a decade younger than the remaining first wives and a decade older than the stepmothers. Most of these women had grown up with ponies and summers in Provence, while Marshall and I had had secondhand bikes and vacation Bible school.

Instead he’d gotten cooler and cooler, until I worried that my daughter was stealth-hazing his. I’d snuck around, eavesdropping at rehearsals, only to find them working well together. Friendly if not friends.

Even so, Marshall got ever more polite, gravely asking me how my day was going in the same professional, cool tone he used on the pampered Gen Two baby-wives of some of the other lawyers at the firm, like the one divorcing Spence right now.

I hadn’t hired a full-time nanny and made a career out of yoga class and blowouts. I hadn’t gotten into an affair and busted up Trey’s first marriage either. He and Maura split up amicably a year before we met, mostly because he wanted children and she didn’t. Marshall knew all this. He knew me, knew my family.

It bothered me, and I guess it showed, because Anna-Claire caught my stiffness and added, sly, “You should bring those organic Bunny Fruit Snacks. So Mr. Chase knows not to perpetrate that crap.” My eldest had a nose for drama, even when she was offstage.

I shook my head. “All fruit snacks are just tarted-up candy.”

“Ho snack!” Anna-Claire said, laughing, “I should tell Cara that you said her dad brought a ho snack. The cheap kind!”

“If you do, rest assured I’ll be bringing nothing but bananas for the rest of the year.” She made a face. “Now, scoot. Car pool comes in twenty minutes.”

“I’m mostly ready.” She came all the way down to pet her brother’s head, peeping up at me. “Aw, you look sleepy. Want me to take Bumper so you can get a shower?”

“Robert,” I corrected, but I was smiling. Typical Anna-Claire. She’d torment her sister, push boundaries with me, then instaflip to thoughtful. Moments like these I knew she could grow into a lovely, kindhearted woman, as long as Trey and I kept the parenting tight. She was so beautiful that kids and adults alike catered to her in ways that weren’t good for her. It was hard to find the balance between pushing back on that while still being a hundred percent on her side. “You’re sweet, but I got it. Thank you.”

I kissed her and went to check Trey’s packing. He was so color-blind that left to himself he could end up looking like a Mardi Gras float. I narrowly averted a green/blue disaster, then got him out the door. The girls’ ride showed up soon after, and I fell into my day.

Just errands and emails, but I was operating on New Baby Time. Even the simplest things took four times longer than normal. The final bell was ringing as I pulled in to the parking lot by the new Performing Arts Center at St. Alban’s. Hordes of kids began streaming out of the buildings. I hurried as fast as I could while lugging Robert in his infant carrier, his diaper bag, and a reusable grocery bag full of snacks.

The PAC had a long, narrow greenroom between the chorus’s practice room and the orchestra’s, furnished in a hodgepodge of donated chairs and sofas. The whole back wall was windows, facing the parking lot. I saw Marshall already in there and broke into a trot. He was dressed for work in a blue suit that was older than Anna-Claire. I remembered Betsy buying it. It hung awkwardly on his long frame.

By the time I got inside, he’d already set up the table and was laying out fruit snacks and Capri Sun pouches for a steady stream of chattering kids.

“I’m here, sorry!” It came out chirpy and overbright.

“No problem.” He didn’t look up.

I set Robert’s carrier on a nearby sofa and started putting out milk boxes and Ziploc snack bags of baby carrots with hummus cups.

Marshall looked at my offering, his eyebrows lifting. “Does every bag have the exact same number of carrots?”

They did, actually. Ten. I felt a blush beginning, but I was saved from answering by Cara’s entrance. She looked so much like her mother that it hurt my heart every time.

“Hey, Sugar Peep,” Marshall said.

She shot him a mortified glare at the nickname and then said, “Hey, Auntie Bree,” overly loud and bright.

I said, “Break a leg today, kiddo,” and handed her a milk box.

She hurried out, and I gave Marshall a commiserating look. “Both my girls are in that same stage. Sweet to me at home, but in public I’m poison.”

He smiled, unworried. “I hear that in high school they stop pretending that they budded off of Rihanna and will admit to actually having parents.”

Just then Anna-Claire bounded through the door in full sunshine mode, her friend Greer in tow. She released Greer to hurl her arms around me. “Mom! Hummus! If you’d gotten pita chips, it would almost be a worthy snack!”

“Oh, yeah. I see how it is for you.” Marshall sounded good-humored, but not like Marshall. I couldn’t explain it, but I’d known him long enough to feel the difference.

Greer ignored the snacks. “Hi, Ms. Cabbat! Did you bring the baby?” As soon as she said it, she saw the car seat and dropped down to her knees in front of Robert. He was awake and beginning to make hungry noises. “Hi, Bumper! Oh, I love his feet! He’s so little. I can’t stand it!” She pinched his toes, distracting him, making him gurgle.

“We call him Robert,” I said.

“That’s right, Bumper, we call you Robert,” Anna-Claire said, grabbing snacks and then hauling Greer to her feet. They went galloping out in a swirl of plaid uniform skirts.

I turned back to Marshall to say something about adolescent mood swings, but what I saw over his shoulder froze my body, inside and out. It was a blotch of slow-moving darkness on the other side of the big wall of windows. It stopped my words, my very breath. It was her. The witch, from my dream. The one I’d seen peering in my window this morning. She was in the parking lot. Right beside my SUV.

The first words Ellis wrote to the woods were Please come back. She was nine years old, sitting on the bank of the river in the Wild Wood. Zane had named it that. When she came home with muddy shoes and wind-tangled hair, he’d say something like, “Has the hobgoblin been to her Wild Wood again?” And she’d reply, “Yes,” because it was wild and it was hers.

No one but Ellis went in the forest that bordered the trailer park and stretched far beyond the other side of the river. Other people thought that bit of water and trees was just a lot of nothing. They couldn’t see how pretty it was. To get in from the trailer park, they would have to know how to crawl through a thicket of rose and blackberry thorns. Ellis knew the exact spot. It was like a magic door.

The day she wrote the first note, she’d gone straight in from the school bus. She’d done that most days for the last few months since her mother had gotten worse. She liked to sit by the river to do her homework, but that day the math problems sat unsolved in her lap. All she wanted to do was watch the river.

The water was high from spring rains, all kinds of stuff floating past fast. Leaves, branches, a paper cup. A ghostly white cloth that might be a T-shirt slithered over a riffle of rocks. It caught on a submerged branch for a while, but the river worked at it, pulling and fretting, until the cloth jerked away from the branch. Ellis sat up to see if it would get caught again. But the ghost shirt disappeared, sucked by swirling currents into the deep black water. For some reason, she felt as if her insides had sunk down with it.

She ripped a little square from her notebook paper and wrote the three words. Please come back. She stared at them for a long time, then added two more. From Ellis.

She folded the paper in half and tossed it into the river. She watched the little boat glide swiftly away on the gray glass of water. She imagined her words as five staunch sailors who would endure the hazards of rough water to deliver her message. She watched those words until they disappeared around the river bend.

Sending the message felt satisfying. As if something important had transpired between her and the river.

When her note hadn’t brought results a few days later, she decided to be more specific. That blustery April day, she wrote in careful script, Dear Wind, Please bring Zane back. From Ellis. She scaled her climbing tree to the usual high branch, waited for a strong gust of wind, and let the tiny letter go. It flew out of sight much faster than the first message. She hoped that was a good sign.

It wasn’t, not for bringing Zane back, but she kept writing to the woods anyway. She sent more words downriver and into the wind, tucked tiny messages into tree roots, laid them under rocks, sank them into the soft punk of rotting logs.

She didn’t know why she kept doing it. It just felt good, maybe how some kids felt when they talked to God in their prayers. After a while, you figured out no one was going to answer. That made it better, really, because you could say any secret thing you wouldn’t say to someone who was listening. That was all that mattered, getting some of the words out before they piled too full inside you.

The dead human was lying on the deck, on their side, half curled around. A broken feed interface was scattered under the right hand. I’ve seen a lot of dead humans (I mean, a lot) so I did an initial scan and compared the results to archived data sets, like human body temperatures vs. ambient temperature, lividity, and various other really disgusting things involving fluids that happen when humans die. This was all data I still had in long-term storage. The comparison let me estimate a time of death. I said, “Four hours, approximately.”

Dr. Mensah exchanged a look with Senior Officer Indah. Dr. Mensah’s expression was dry. Senior Indah looked annoyed, but then she always looked like that when I was around. She said, “How do you know?”

I converted my scan data, my query, and the comparison results into a report that humans could read and sent it to her feed address, with a copy to Mensah. Indah blinked, her gaze turning preoccupied as she read it. Mensah acknowledged the report as received, but kept watching Indah, one eyebrow raised. (I was still using scan and visual to examine the scene, but I had a task group of my new intel drones circling above my head, supplying me with video.)

We were in a junction in the Preservation Station mall, a circular space where three small corridors met, one a short passage that led through to a large secondary main corridor: the Trans Lateral Bypass. (All the corridors here had names, a Preservation tradition that was only mildly annoying.) This was not a well-traveled junction, whatever its name was; it was mostly a shortcut to get from a residential area to a work area. (On this station there was no separation between transient spaces and long-term station housing like on stations in the Corporation Rim, but that wasn’t even close to being the weirdest thing about Preservation.)

This junction, and Preservation Station in general, were also weird places for humans to get killed; the threat assessment for both transients and station residents was low anyway, and mostly involved accidents and cases of intoxication-related stupidity/aggression in the port area. In this specific junction, threat assessment for accidental death was even lower, close to null. There was nothing here except the lights in the high ceiling and the standard silver-blue textured wall panels, marked with some old graffiti and drawings that were actually being preserved as part of a station-wide history exhibit. I guess if you were really determined, you could find a way to get yourself killed by exposing the power connectors under the panels and shielding and, I don’t know, licking them or something, but this dead human clearly hadn’t.

The full station threat assessment for murder was sitting at a baseline 7 percent. (To make it drop lower than that we’d have to be on an uninhabited planet.) (I’ve never been on a contract on an uninhabited planet because if I was on the planet on a contract then we’d be inhabiting it.) You never found dead humans lying around on the floor like this.

“Well,” Indah began, having finally finished reading the report. (I know, it takes humans forever.) “I don’t know how accurate this is—”

Another security person walked in, one of the techs who normally worked on checking cargo shipments for biohazards, feed ID Tural. They said, “Our scan analysis says the victim’s been dead for about four hours.”

Indah sighed. Tech Tural, who had obviously expected this information to be greeted a little more enthusiastically, was confused.

“ID?” I said. The dead human’s interface was broken so I couldn’t pull anything off it. If whoever did it had been trying to conceal the dead human’s identity, were they naively optimistic? Preservation Station kept an identity record and body scan for permanent residents and every disembarking transient passenger, so it shouldn’t be that hard to run an identity check. “Known associates?”

Tural glanced at Indah and she nodded for them to answer. They said, “There was no subcutaneous marker or clip or augment or anything else with ID. We’ve done an initial search on recent arrival passenger lists using physical details, but couldn’t come up with anything.” At Indah’s dissatisfied expression, Tural added, “Without an interface, we have to wait until Medical gets here to do the body scan so we can try to match it with the visitor entry logs.”

Indah said, “And Medical isn’t here yet because…?”

Tural’s face formed an anticipatory wince. “It’s preventative health check day at the school and the bot who normally does the mobile body scan is busy with that? It has to move the mobile medical suite they use?”

Humans do the “make it a question so it doesn’t sound so bad” thing and it still sounds bad.

Indah did not look pleased. Mensah’s mouth twitched in an “I would like to say things but I am not going to” way. Indah said, “Did you tell them this was an emergency?”

Tural said, “Yes, but they said it was an emergency until the onsite medic pronounced the person dead/unrevivable, after that it went to the end of the list of non-emergency things they have to do.”

Preservation has to make everything complicated. And that’s not a metaphor for my experience here. Okay, yes, it is a metaphor.

Indah’s jaw went tight. “This is a murder. If whoever did this kills someone else—”

Mensah cut her off. “I’ll call them and explain that it’s not an accidental death, and yes, it is an emergency and we need them here now.” She looked toward the body again, her brow furrowed. “The council closed the port and deployed the responder as soon as we got the alert, but are you certain this person is—was—a visitor and not a resident?”

The responder was the armed ship currently on picket duty, discouraging raiders from approaching the station and rendering assistance as needed to local and transient shipping. With the port closed, it would be out there keeping any docked or undocked transports from leaving until the council ordered otherwise.

Tural admitted, “Actually no, Councilor. We’re just guessing that they’re a visitor.”

“I see.” Mensah’s expression was not critical, but I can tell you the face she was making did not indicate that she thought Tural or Indah or anybody in the immediate area was doing a great job. It was obvious Station Security was out of its collective depth here. (At least it was obvious to me.)

Indah must have known that too because she rubbed the bridge of her nose like her head hurt. She was short for a Preservation human, a little lighter brown than Mensah and maybe a little older, but with a solid square build that looked like she could punch someone pretty effectively. That probably wasn’t why she was senior security officer, which was more of an admin job. She told Tural, “Just keep trying to make an ID.”

Tural left with the air of escaping before things got worse. Mensah’s eyebrow was still aimed at Indah and it was getting pointed. (Not really. It’s hard to describe, you had to see it.) Indah made a hands-flung-in-the-air gesture and said, “Fine, let’s go talk about this.”

Mensah led us away from the incident scene and out to the Trans Lateral Bypass. It was wide, with a high arched ceiling that projected a series of holo views of the planet’s surface as if you were looking up through a transparent port. It was an offshoot of the main station mall, a thoroughfare to a section of service offices, with branches into supply areas. Traffic was minimal here right now, but a bot that worked for the station was out with a glowing baton, directing humans, augmented humans, and drone delivery floaters away from the junction entrance and Station Security’s equipment. The group of security officers standing there tried to pretend they weren’t watching us. Mensah’s two council assistants who had walked down with us were watching the security officers critically.

The bot could have engaged a privacy shield but Mensah and Indah just stepped behind a large plant biome with giant paddle-shaped leaves that was screening the entrance to a food service place. (A feed marker in multiple languages and a colorful sign in Preservation Standard Nomenclature indicated it was called “Starchy Foods!!!” and noted that it was closed for its cycle rest period.)

It was relatively private, but I had my drones scan for any attempt to focus a listening device on us. Indah faced me and asked, “You have experience at this?”

Watching her via the drones, I kept my gaze on the Starchy Foods!!! sign, which had little dancing figures around it which I guess were supposed to be starchy foods. I said, “With dead humans? Sure.”

Mensah’s pointed eyebrow was now aimed at me. She tapped my feed for a private connection. I secured it and she sent, Do you think this is GrayCris?

Ugh, maybe? Right now all we had was an anomalous death with no indication of a connection to Mensah or any of my other humans that GrayCris might want to target. I told her, I don’t have enough data to make an assessment yet.

Understood. Then she added, I want you to work on this with Station Security. Even if it isn’t anything to do with our corporate problems, it’s a good opportunity for you.

Double ugh. I told her, They don’t want me. (Hey, I don’t want me, either, but I’m stuck with me.) And it would be easier for me to investigate on my own, particularly if my investigations led to me having to do things like disposing of abruptly dead GrayCris agents.

(No, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body in the station mall, for fuck’s sake.)

She said, If you want to stay in the Preservation Alliance, improving your relationship with Station Security will help immeasurably. This might lead to them hiring you as a consultant.

Mensah didn’t usually take the “this is for your own good, you idiot” tone, so the fact that she had meant she really thought it was a good idea. Also, I’m not an idiot, I knew she was right. But it wasn’t like I could leave Preservation yet, anyway, even if I didn’t like it and it didn’t like me. My threat assessments were still rising steadily. (I had an input on my threat assessment module continuously now so I could get real-time updates instead of just checking it periodically, and yes, it was a constant source of irritation because it reacted to everything. No, it was not helping my anxiety. But it was necessary.)

Station Security had been briefed on the danger from GrayCris but I trusted them as much as they trusted me. (Surprise, it was not very much.) And they had no experience with corporate attacks. Their job was mostly accident first response and maintaining safety equipment and scanning for illegal hazardous cargo, not repelling assassination attempts. They didn’t even patrol outside the port.

Indah watched us with an acerbic expression that indicated she knew we were talking privately on the feed. Mensah was still eyebrow-glaring at me so I answered Indah’s question. “Yes, I’ve had experience with investigating suspicious fatalities in controlled circumstances.”

Indah’s gaze wasn’t exactly skeptical. “What controlled circumstances?”

I said, “Isolated work installations.”

Her expression turned even more grim. “Corporate slave labor camps.”

“Something’s come over you.” That’s what Rita said, over two years ago now, and now she knows it wasn’t just a thing of the moment.

Something happens. We cross a line, we open a door we never knew was there. It might never have happened, we might never have known. Most of life, maybe, is only time served.

Morning traffic in Wimbledon Broadway. Exhausts steaming. I turn the key in the street door, my own breath coming in clouds.

“Something’s come over you, George.”

But she knew even before I did. She’s not in this job for nothing, she can pick up a scent. And soon she’s going to leave me, any day now, I can tell. I can pick up a scent as well.

She’s here before me of course. When isn’t she? She doesn’t sleep these days, she says. “These days” have lasted years. Always awake with the dawn, so why not? Always something to be done. And I pitch up after her. Boss’s privilege. Though it’s not yet half-past eight, and last night I was out on a job till gone two. And today’s a special day.

As I reach the top of the stairs I hear the click and hiss of an already warm kettle being switched on. The computer in her little compartment (we call it the “reception area” but “area” ’s a generous word) is already up and running. It feels like she might have been here all night.

“Cold,” she says, with a shiver at the air I’ve brought in and a little nod to the outside world.

“But beautiful,” I say.

She’ll have been here before the sun hit the streets.

“Coffee or tea?” she says, ignoring my smile — and that word — as if insisting I’ll have had a rough start.

But I don’t have a sleep problem, not now. Though maybe I should. I grab it when I can, catnap, get by on little. An old trick of the trade. And Rita’s sleep problem, if she’s honest about it (and sometimes she is) isn’t really a sleep problem either.

“An empty bed, George, that’s all it is. If there was someone there . . .”

“Tea, I think, Reet. Nice and strong.”

She’s wearing the pale pink top, soft wool, above a charcoal skirt. Round her neck a simple silver chain. The small twinkly stud earrings, a waft of scent. She always gets herself up well, Rita. We have to meet the public, after all.

But the pale pink is like a flag, her favourite colour. A very pale pink — more like white with a blush. I’ve seen her wearing it many times. I’ve seen her wearing a fluffy bathrobe of the same soft pink colour, loosely tied, tits nuzzling inside. Bringing in morning tea.

I go into my office, leaving the door open. The sun is streaming through my first-floor window, the low, blinding sun of a cold November morning, the sun Rita never gets in her compartment, except through the frosted glass of my door.

She follows me in with the tea, and a mug for herself, a bundle under her arm. There’s always this morning conference — my office door open — even as I settle myself in, take off my coat, switch on my own computer, sit down. The sun’s warm through the glass, even if outside the air’s icy.

She puts down my tea, already sipping her own, eyeing me over the rim. She slips the bundle onto my desk, pulls round the other chair — the “client’s chair.” She steps through bars of bright light.

It’s like a marriage really. We’ve both thought it. It’s better than a lot of marriages (we know this). Rita — my assistant, my associate, my partner, or not-quite partner. Her job description has never exactly been set in stone. But I wouldn’t dream of calling her my receptionist (though she is that too) or even my secretary.

“Be an angel, Reet.”

“I am an angel, George.”

Where would I be without her?

But she’s going to leave me, I can tell. One morning like this one: she won’t bring in a mug of her own and she won’t put down the bundle of files, she’ll keep it hugged tight to her, a shield, and she won’t sit down. She’ll say “George” in a way that will make me have to look up, and after a bit I’ll have to say, “Sit down, Rita, for God’s sake,” and she’ll sit facing me like a client.

“It’s been good knowing you, George. It’s been good working with you, but . . .”

She knows what day it is. A Thursday, and Thursdays are special, but she knows the date, the day of the year. November twentieth. Two years — if you count it from that day. Two years and it hasn’t stopped. And if it hasn’t stopped, it will go on for the years to come, however many they’ll be. The time’s gone when she could say (as she did once), “How can you, George — with her?” Or when she could say, to herself: He must be mad, he must be off his head, but he’ll come round, it’ll stop, give it time. He’ll come slinking back. And meanwhile what better guarantee, what better safeguard, really — that woman being where she is?

I think she’s come to accept it — even to respect it. A fact, a feature. Mr. Webb is always “on an assignment” every alternate Thursday afternoon. I’ve even seen this look of sweet sad understanding in her eyes. That’s why I think she’s going to quit.

“Those are for Mrs. Lucas — this afternoon. Five forty-five. Earliest she can do.” A quick glance. “You’ll be back?”

We both know what’s in the envelope. Photographs. Photographs of a man and a woman in a hotel room. A little blurred but clear enough for recognition, at six-by- nine enlargement. “Surveillance equipment” is reliable these days. We have to get the film processed specially — a private contract — and Rita collects. A man and a woman doing things with each other. But this sort of stuff hardly raises an eyebrow or even gets that much of a look from Rita and me. It sits there, like the morning mail, between us.

Our stock-in-trade. Can you see who’s who? That’s the vital thing.

“Yes, I’ll be back by five-thirty.”

“And I’ll just say” — she doesn’t push the point too much — “you’ll be out of the office till then?”

“But I won’t leave before ten. I can take calls till then.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a beautiful day out there,” I say again. “Cold, but beautiful.”

Another sideways look, more lingering this time. She might be saying, You poor bloody idiot.

The eyes are tired, made up immaculately, but tired. The sunlight streaming in is like a warm bath, but it isn’t kind to the lines round her eyes. It catches a wisp of steam rising from her mug and puts a sparkle in her hair. She moves a bit closer to point out something. A silver bracelet at the end of the pink sleeve.

A long time now, since the last time. I’d asked her round to try some of my cooking (Rita may be an angel, but she’s a hopeless cook). I might even have spelt it out to her: a meal, that was all. But that’s the trouble with good cooking (if I say it myself). Not to mention red wine. It warms the heart, the cockles, as well as the stomach. Melts the resistance.

“Things on your mind, Reet?” The considerate boss.

“Not exactly, George. You?” She’d cupped her wineglass in both hands — her nails wine-red too. “It’s just not having anyone there. You know. Somebody by your side.”