An Evening of Investigation and Style

Elsie hung back near the ballroom’s edge, taking a slow measure of the room before crossing to the dessert table. There was a strange energy in the place, a kind of bottled lightning—the harem’s old guard mixing with new arrivals, strangers orbiting each other in unpredictable eddies of gossip, flirtation, and not-quite-competition. The evening’s party was meant to be a murder mystery, but nobody seemed to have the appetite to treat it as life or death. Liesa’s rules had been dispatched, the secret roles handed out; the so-called suspects were already circling in two’s and three’s, interrogating or playacting with a dedication that was as much to the spectacle as to any real interest in catching the “Thief.” It was half game, half group therapy, and Elsie had decided almost immediately that the only role she wanted was witness.

She threaded past a conversation so intense it was practically vibrating—Allie and Isabella, tails bristling and ears on high alert, both giving the impression of guests at the world’s most polite gangland execution—and made her way to the buffet. There, almost blending into the wall despite being nearly six feet of muscle and old-fashioned calm, was Gwen. She looked perfectly at home alone, empty punch glass dangling from two fingers, the other hand braced on the table as she watched the crowd. Her hair, always more golden than blonde, fell loose to her shoulders, the single silver band in it catching the low light whenever she moved. Elsie felt herself ease a little at the sight. There was something about the way Gwen carried herself—like she could handle whatever the room threw at her, and was already in on the joke. Speaking of which…

“Evening, Majesty,” Elsie said, sliding in beside her and plucking a wedge of honey cake from a passing Mildred’s tray. “Should I be nervous, running into a Queen at the scene of the crime?”

Gwen didn’t turn right away, just grinned at the far window and said, “If I were the type to off someone at a party, I’d never do it myself. There’s always someone else to take the fall.” Her eyes flicked over to Elsie’s, sharp and bright. “But you’re safe. Unless you’ve got a stronger claim to the throne than I do.”

Elsie snorted, half in her drink. “I’d have to work up to it. Maybe start by stabbing someone for a decent scone, see how it goes.”

“Work on your plotting voice first,” Gwen replied, deadpan. “You sound like you’re reading out the weather.”

“I’ll have you know the Bristol accent can be quite menacing when it tries,” Elsie countered, but it came out warm. She didn’t even mind being clocked for her vowels. “Anyway, this lot would never let me have the crown. Too much trouble, all that protocol.”

Gwen leaned against the table, close enough now that the warmth of her arm was almost—almost—touching Elsie’s. “You can keep the protocol,” she said, “but you’re welcome to the company.”

There was a pause while Gwen inspected the lineup of desserts, then picked up a lemon tart and looked at it as if waiting for it to confess to something. “Have you ever seen so many people take a game so seriously,” she murmured. “I’d swear a few of them are treating it like an Olympic event.”

Elsie followed her gaze toa seven-foot-tall woman in a leather jacket, interrogating a girl made of violet slime. “Some of these girls haven’t stopped trying to win even after they left their own season.”

“That’s the thing,” Gwen said. “You come to enough of these, you realize it’s never about winning. It’s about being with people who understand you. The only ones who do.” The smile she gave was gentle, tinged with something old. “But you didn’t come over here to talk psychology.”

Elsie thought about lying, then shrugged. “Honestly? I just wanted to see how you were doing. After the kitchen thing.”

The “kitchen thing,” of course, referred to Dawn’s Kitchen, a baking contest so intense it might as well have been staged in a pressure cooker. At least before Marcie and Gina had briefly crashed the entire thing.

Gwen had captained their table, dragging even Myra and Eden into her gravitational pull, and she’d insisted—without a hint of apology—on making a savory pie with apples baked into the meat and a gravy so thick and rich it could have patched the hull of a ship. Elsie had rolled her eyes at the drama but let herself be conscripted, mostly because there was something compelling about the way Gwen took command. At the time, Elsie thought it was just a trick of the game, a way to keep the weaker personalities from drifting. Now, faced with Gwen in the candlelight, she realized that the habit was bone-deep. And the pie... Elsie had to ask about the pie.

Gwen shrugged, a rolling motion that made it impossible not to notice the breadth of her shoulders. “My feet will never recover,” she said, “but I think I could live off the smell of that pie for the next year.”

“It was incredible,” Elsie said, and meant it. “But I’ve got to ask. Where did you even learn that recipe?”

Gwen hesitated, the first sign of real uncertainty since Elsie had met her. “It’s my recipe,” she said. “I mean—I made it up. Here, actually. During my season.” A small pause, like she was still deciding how much to give away. “I hadn’t thought about it for a long time. I just wanted to see if I still could.”

Elsie glanced at her, then looked down at the carpet, her voice softening. “My gran used to make it. I recognized it the second you put the apples in.”

Gwen set down the tart, a little too carefully, and for a moment her hands hung empty. “That’s not possible,” she said, quietly. “I invented that. I’ve only ever made it for my family.”

Elsie nodded, heart thudding unexpectedly. “This is mad. But I know the rules. You stir the filling three times, never a fourth. You cut the apples so thin they disappear, and you brush the crust with an egg from the top, never from the side. And the leaves made of dough, one for each woman around the table.”

Gwen stared at her, the mask of the evening gone. “You’re taking the piss,” she said, but her voice wavered.

“I’m not,” Elsie said, and her voice wavered too.

They stood like that for a moment, the ballroom and all its noise fading to a distant hum. Elsie found her mouth dry and her hands tight on the rim of her glass, and it was a surprise to realize how much it mattered that Gwen not laugh, or turn away.

Gwen said, “Did she call it the Hearth Pie?” The H barely there, dropped like a stone at the start.

Elsie’s laugh was wet, instant. “She did. My family drops the H, though, so it’s just Earth Pie to us.”

Gwen’s eyes went bright. “That’s it. That’s the name. I haven’t heard anyone say that in centuries.” She corrected herself, laughing, the sound so full it made Elsie’s chest hurt. “I’m sorry. This is mad.”

“It is,” Elsie said. “But it’s true. I’ve never met anyone else who knows that name. Or the rule about the three stirs.”

Gwen was silent for a long time, then said, “I used to tell my daughter you did it once for the journey, once for the staying, and once for the coming home.”

Elsie swallowed, hard. “My grandmother said the same. I thought she was making it up.”

Gwen took a deep breath and reached for her glass, but didn’t drink from it. She leaned in, her voice so low it was barely above the buzz of the room. “There’s a story. The recipe goes back a long way, to a woman who made it for her king, the night before they, and the rest of the king’s harem, left the kingdom for the last time. The three stirs were a spell, the story says. For luck, for memory, for love.”

Elsie wanted to laugh, to break the tension, but it stuck in her throat. “That’s a good story,” she said.

Gwen looked at her, the edges of her smile turning gentle. “It’s not just a story. It’s how we remember. You and me both.” She paused, her gaze drifting somewhere beyond the ballroom. “It’s Art’s favorite—my husband’s. And Lottie’s, my wife. Caia would always sneak extra apples into the filling when she thought I wasn’t looking.” Her voice softened further. “We’ve been making this pie for a very long time.”

Elsie blinked, her grip tightening on her glass. She set it down before she could spill it. “Maybe we’re related,” she said, the joke thin and shaky.

Gwen didn’t smile. “We might be. I had children. They had children.” Her voice was low, matter-of-fact. “We’ve lived a long while. It’s possible.”

The air went still around them. Elsie’s throat tightened. “How long?”

“Centuries,” Gwen said, simply.

Something in the way she said it—the sheer quiet certainty—caught in Elsie’s mind. She looked at Gwen properly then: the strength in her hands, the way she held herself like someone who had carried things much heavier than a pie. “Gwen,” Elsie said slowly. “What’s your full name?”

“Gwenhwyfar,” she replied, the old syllables settling like stones. “Gwenhwyfar gwraig Artorius.”

Elsie's hand trembled. She pressed it flat against the table instead.

“Gwenhwyfar,” she repeated, and the name meant nothing to her, foreign and old-sounding, syllables she'd never once had reason to say. But her mind wasn't stuck on the name. It had snagged further back, on the ordinary little word Gwen had used not a minute ago without any weight on it at all.

Husband. Art.

“Your husband,” Elsie said slowly. “You said his name's Art.”

“It is,” Gwen said.

“And you're a queen. You said it in the spa, but you meant it, didn't you. Actual queen.” Elsie heard her own voice thinning out, going careful, the way it did when she was handling something that might go off in her hands. “A king called Art, with a wife called Gwen, and a—“ She stopped. Made herself say it anyway, because not saying it felt worse. “There's only the one Art anybody tells stories about marrying a queen whose name sounds like Gwen. Everyone knows that one. Even people who don't know anything else.”

Gwen watched her get there. Didn't rush her, didn't fill the silence, just watched with the patient, faintly sad fondness of someone who'd had this exact conversation before, in other ballrooms, with other faces.

“Yes,” Gwen said, simply. “That Art.”

Elsie let out a breath that was almost a laugh, except nothing about it was funny. “Right,” she said. “Right, of course. Because that's a normal thing to find out at a party. My gran's Sunday pie recipe is a—a cherished dish. From Camelot.” She heard her own voice climbing and made herself stop, made herself breathe. “And you're—you were—”

“I am,” Gwen said. Not was. Was would have been easier. Am meant it kept going, meant none of it had stopped, and Elsie felt that land somewhere under her ribs.

“Which means.” Elsie's hands had found the edge of the table, gripping it like it was the only fixed thing left in the room. “Which means somewhere back down the line, maybe one of my lot—one of my actual, real ancestors—was at your table. Ate your pie. Was one of your—” She stopped herself before children came out, because it sounded mad even in her own head, and she was fairly sure saying it aloud might actually finish the job of making her fall over.

“Was one of mine,” Gwen said gently, “I don't know which. I never got to know most of them, after.” Something crossed her face then, brief and old and unhealed. “There wasn't time, at the end, to know who carried what forward.”

Elsie stared at her. The ballroom noise had gone distant again, a tide pulled out somewhere past hearing. “I think I need to sit down,” she said, and didn't move.

“You don't have to do anything with it,” Gwen said. “It's just a pie recipe and a strange woman who cooked like your gran, if that's easier.” A small, careful smile. “I've had people choose that. It's not the wrong choice.”

“Is it true, though.” It wasn't really a question, and Elsie heard the stubbornness in it, the same stubbornness that had gotten her past three seasons and a hundred smaller impossibilities. “Whatever I decide to do with it. Is it true.”

Gwen didn't look away. “Yes. Likely.”

Elsie nodded, slowly, like she were setting something down carefully so it wouldn't break. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I'm not—I don't think I'm going to be normal about this for a while. Fair warning.”

“You're allowed that,” Gwen said, and there was real warmth under the wryness now, the two of them back on familiar footing even with the ground still tilted. “Centuries, and I still haven't managed normal about most of it.”

Elsie huffed something that was trying to be a laugh and almost got there. She looked down at Gwen's hand, still resting over hers, and for the first time really let herself feel the weight of it—not a stranger's hand, not even a friend's, but something with roots she was only beginning to understand went all the way down through her own family, generation over generation, to this woman standing at a dessert table with a lemon tart she'd never gotten around to eating.

“I'm going to need you to tell me everything,” Elsie said. “Eventually. Not tonight. But eventually.”

“Eventually,” Gwen agreed, “I will.”

The ballroom rushed back in around them—laughter, someone shrieking with delight over an accusation two tables over, the general glorious chaos of the evening—but Elsie stayed rooted where she was a moment longer, Gwen's hand warm over hers, the taste of honey cake and impossible history still on her tongue.

---

Evelyn reached the edge of the ballroom a few minutes after the crowd had established its social gravity well. She’d been here before, not this place but this position: some corporate offsite or strategic summit, the blue-light swirl of strangers converging on the open bar or clustering by the windows, no one eager to be the first to commit to a conversational orbit. She scouted the perimeter for the least-intrusive vantage, and saw—already installed in the best seat, back to the glass and a notebook balanced in her lap—Claire Freeman, one of the brides-to-be.

She’d noticed the woman three or four times already, earlier in the day: at the breakfast service, at the Sunroom’s strange painting event, again when the crowd first spilled into the Hall. Always at a distance, always looking like she was occupying the minimum possible volume of air. Evelyn had not seen her speak to anyone.

She angled toward the bank of windows. Claire looked up the moment Evelyn’s shadow crossed the patterned carpet, and offered the briefest of acknowledgements: a slow, measured blink. She did not move her hands from the notebook, or otherwise adjust her posture. Evelyn respected that kind of inertia. She settled a full two chairs down, with a buffer chair between, and folded her own hands at her knees.

They sat like that for a while, two women watching the room with equally clinical detachment. Evelyn was the first to break the standoff. “Evelyn,” she said, her voice low and even, not an offering so much as a statement of fact. She did not extend a hand or lean forward, simply held the other woman’s gaze with a level, unblinking attention.

Claire’s mouth twitched. She flipped her own notebook to a fresh page and wrote Claire Freeman. She angled the notebook up for Evelyn to read, then, with a tiny tilt of her head toward the ballroom at large, underscored it once. The effect was subtle, but it read as: I, too, am here mostly to see, not be seen.

Evelyn huffed out a laugh, low and just for herself. She wrote underneath her own name, “Suffice to say this is the highest ratio of ‘suspects’ per square foot I’ve ever worked.”

Claire grinned with her teeth, not her mouth. She wrote, Amateur hour. Two conversations ago, the blonde with the fox ears and tail already told three people she ‘knows’ who the Thief is. If she lasts the night, I’ll eat this pen.

Evelyn read it, and nodded, her own smile registering at a similarly low wattage. She said, “If she cracks first, you win.”

Claire held up a hand: Deal.

For the next few exchanges, they traded in a kind of slow-motion banter, each new line of notebook and each new phrase by Evelyn an answer, a question, a retort, but always with the implication that this was about having something to do, not about actually needing to talk. Evelyn found herself relaxing: not the slouch of boredom, but the way her shoulders came down when she was with someone else who understood the rules. The other woman was competent, and quiet, and nothing about her needed fixing or even decoding.

It was Claire who first broke the rhythm. She wrote out, in larger and slower script than before, Are you doing all right? and turned the page, but held the notebook flat on the table for Evelyn to read instead of offering it up.

Evelyn’s hand hovered above the notebook for a beat. A proper answer wanted to come out, something functional and dismissive, but she found herself pausing before she could finish the deflection. She thought about the party, about the field effect that had pervaded every hour since arrival, about the itch behind her ears that came from not knowing what anyone was actually thinking. Her telepathy had always been less a superpower than a pressure valve, a way to keep the background noise down. Without it, every conversation felt a second off, every read of a face half a note flat.

She said, “This is not the usual kind of crisis. Not even for me.” She then added, “But I’ll take a non-lethal puzzle over what I’m used to.”

Claire read that, considered, then wrote, What do you do, actually? and underlined it twice.

Evelyn hesitated again, a small discomfort she hadn’t anticipated. She said, “I built my own firm. Cross Dynamics. Started with consultancy, but most days it’s just… crisis response. Damage control, when the board or the mayor or the system runs off the rails and nobody else can handle the fallout.” She paused, as she considered how much to reveal. Then she added, “I didn’t pick it. It just always ends up being me. The only one who can see the angles before the room notices they exist.” She met Claire’s gaze steadily. “They call me Oracle in some circles—not for prophecy, but for seeing what others miss until it’s too late.”

Claire wrote in quick, neat lines. Not everyone wants the room read. Sometimes, not even me.

Evelyn smiled, a faint, real thing, and replied, “No one ever does. But the alternative is worse.”

They sat with the exchange for a while, watching the crowd. Claire wrote: You don’t like parties.

Evelyn made a noncommittal sound, then decided it deserved a response. “They make sense when they have a job. This one’s not my brief.”

Claire wrote, pointedly: Then why come?

Evelyn looked down at her hands, watched the way her knuckles shifted under the skin. “The easy answer is that our Host insisted.” She paused, her thumb tracing the line of a faint scar across her palm. “But it’s not a party. It’s the last day before something that changes everything. I used to think that’s when you want to watch how people really are.” She hesitated, the words catching like burrs in her throat. “But I’m not getting any of it now.”

Claire tapped her pen once against the notebook, then wrote: What changed?

Evelyn’s gaze stayed fixed on her hands. “I’m a telepath,” she said, the admission stripped bare. “Or was. The local Host suppressed it when I arrived—part of the festivities.” A dry, humorless laugh escaped her. “Turns out I navigate rooms by reading the static behind everyone’s eyes. Without it… I might as well be deaf.”

Claire’s pen stilled. She looked from Evelyn’s face to her own hands, then wrote, slowly: Missing the gift? or the read?

“Both,” said Evelyn. “And the first is why the second feels like static.”

Claire studied her, then wrote, smaller now: Hard to re-wire the whole world on a deadline.

Evelyn almost laughed. “And I have none of the patience for myself that I’d have for anyone else in this room. They expect me to be the one who already has it figured out.”

She watched as Claire read that, and something flickered across the other woman’s face—surprise, maybe, or agreement. Claire wrote: It's fine not to. I know something about the trade, actually. I lost my voice before I found anything to put in its place — for a while there was only quiet. Then something else grew into where the voice used to be. Not the same shape. But enough to stand in. It's easier, when you have people that support you.

The line landed. Evelyn watched her a long time, then said, “Do you ever wish you could just… not be the reliable one?”

Claire’s ears flicked, and she wrote, I used to. Now I just try to write it down before it goes away.

Evelyn let out a soft, voiceless laugh. “That’s as good a strategy as any.” Then, more softly, she asked, “Does it help? Having the notebook.”

Claire was already writing, her hand quick and practiced: It does. It’s like—

She paused, erased, rewrote.

It’s like if you can name the thing, it becomes less likely to win against you.

Another beat, then,

There are things in here I wouldn’t trust to my own memory. Or anyone’s.

Evelyn considered that. “And you don’t mind having to do it that way?”

Claire wrote: Not anymore. It helped everyone at one time or another. Everything else is just, as they say, lagniappe.

Evelyn read the word, then looked up, both eyebrows arched.

Claire wrote it again, phonetically this time: Lag-nee-yap. Quechua roots, Louisiana word. Means ‘a little extra.’

The faintest smile from Evelyn. “That’s the first time someone’s explained something to me before I asked for it.”

Claire wrote: Oracle needs a vacation.

Evelyn laughed, and there was something brighter in it this time, a warmth that surprised her. “Do you ever want one?”

Claire’s reply was a single line, underlined: I used to. When I thought I was broken. But my sisters and Andy have shown me I am not. So I like the way my head works, now. It’s mine, and I don’t have to choose between that, and being loved.

They let the noise of the ballroom carry for a while. Around them, the crowd performed itself: drinks flowed, laughter rose and broke against the windows, and every so often someone in character would dart in and out of a scene, chasing a clue or a rumor. Neither woman seemed interested in joining it.

After a long pause, Evelyn spoke. “Can I ask you something?”

Claire nodded.

“If the notebook’s your gift, and you lost it—do you think you’d miss it? Or just make a new one?”

Claire seemed to really think about that, the tip of her pen idling above the page. Finally, she wrote: Depends if I lost it or if someone took it away.

That gave Evelyn real pause. “That’s fair,” she said, quietly.

Claire wrote, It once carried Andy three findings I’d been sitting on for two days, afraid of what they’d do to him. A legal precedent. A god’s true name. A possible flaw in the ritual that’s supposed to save the person he loves. I don’t know yet if any of it saves anyone. I just know he needed it, and I was the one who had it to give.

Evelyn read it twice. “That’s not quite the same as what I do. Mine’s faster. Messier. No page to check afterward.” She looked down at her own hands. “But I recognize what you speak of. Being the one who already has the answer before the room’s finished asking the question.”

Claire wrote: Van trusts you. You look after each other.

Evelyn nodded, once. “It’s not the same, though. You have Andy. You have all of them. We are still fractured.” She caught herself. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”

Claire waved it off. It’s okay, she wrote. But yes, I have him. I have the harem. She looked at the room, then back at Evelyn. But it’s not about numbers. It’s about knowing one person is out there who’d know what I wanted said, if I couldn’t say it myself. That’s what the notebook actually is, underneath the rest of it.

Evelyn sat with that. Then said, “Do you ever let yourself forget for a day? Just… not be the one who knows what’s coming.”

Claire wrote, slower this time: I try. Sometimes, it feels like a trick. The best days are when it feels like luck instead.

Evelyn grinned, then: “I’ll drink to luck, then.”

Claire lifted her own glass—a mild fruit punch, untouched for the last half hour—and clinked it lightly against Evelyn’s, both smiling in companionable silence.

They watched the party, let the noise and light rise and fall. Neither spoke for a long time.

Evelyn was the one who broke the quiet, and it wasn’t anything she’d planned to say. “I found out this week that I’d already done something like this once. Months ago. A man got pulled clear of an Alter attack by me and a colleague of mine, Mara, and neither of us slowed down to ask who he was before we moved. He was one of several civilians, you understand.” She paused. “It turned out to be Van. I didn’t know his name yet. I didn’t need to. I just moved.” Her voice stayed even, but something in her jaw didn’t. “Tonight, in a room this full of people I can’t read, I can’t manage that same trick at all.”

Claire didn’t write anything back to that.

Eventually, Claire closed the notebook, not ceremoniously but like she’d simply reached the last page for now. She folded her hands in her lap, looked out at the sea of bright bodies and bright faces and let the air hang heavy and calm.

Evelyn turned her chair so that their shoulders lined up, both watching the room, both at ease with the quiet. The glass wall held their reflections, two women just outside the center of things, neither of them in a hurry to move closer or further away.

Neither needed to fill the rest of the evening with words. They’d done enough for now.

---

Liesa never missed a chance to command a room. She stood on a bench, feet perched with gymnast’s confidence, and called out, “All right, let’s get this next round moving!” Her accent rode clear over the hubbub, bright and quick and impossible to ignore. The whole dance floor quieted by degrees, party energy pooling around her until the only motion left was the relay of Mildreds, distributing flat white boxes and slips of card to the pairs of women that filled the space.

The challenge, this time, was called Myra’s Grace: a timed event in which you and your partner “styled” each other using only what you found in your assigned kit, plus whatever you wore in with. There were no points for finish or for prettiness; you won by creating a version of your partner that looked more like herself than anything she’d walked in with. The crowd buzzed at the edges, already forming lines to watch the process or offer advice, or just to see who could pull off the weirdest look with dignity intact.

Myra and Marie were the judges, a fact which got a round of ribbing from the tables nearest the judges’ nook, but both women took the role with the same dry humor that had defined the whole night.

Erin found her spot at the far end, where Claire Mercer had already unboxed the kit and was methodically sorting through its contents: loops of indigo ribbon, loose white petals, a small cup of body-safe paint, a coil of soft floral wire, and a handful of gold-toned clips. She read the theme card out loud—“‘Undone’”—and then again, softer, like she was recalibrating her whole approach.

“‘Undone’ is kind of a loaded prompt,” Claire Mercer said. She set the card down flat, squared it against the box edge, and for a moment just studied Erin, openly and with no intent to make it seem less than it was.

“Loaded how?” Erin sat on the mat with the ease of someone who’d spent a lot of her life on the ground: legs crossed, arms resting loose on her knees, back straight and strong. Naked from head to toe except for battered sneakers, she looked like she could have been waiting for a sparring partner or a medical exam, not a roomful of women and a body-painting challenge.

Claire Mercer thought about deflecting, then shrugged. “It’s not really a look. It’s a state of being. Are you sure you’re okay with—” she gestured, not at Erin’s nudity but at the fact of her, just, sitting there, taking up her own space without apology.

Erin grinned, not showing teeth but all the more real for it. “You know the only person who ever had an issue with it was Andy? He got over it in about a day.” She reached for the ribbon, twirled it in her fingers, and said, “Just don’t use hot glue on me and we’ll be fine. Go ahead, you’re up first.”

Claire pulled her own hair back into a practical bun, pinning the last flyaway into place with the unspoken determination of a woman who’d gotten herself out of worse scrapes than this. Then she knelt at Erin’s back, just behind and to the left, and considered the blank, unguarded surface of green-tinged skin before her.

She started with the biggest ribbon, winding it down from the left shoulder in a strong, clean spiral, anchoring it with a daub of blue putty just above the elbow. Her fingers were brisk but not rough, the touch of someone who knew exactly what she was doing and had no time for hesitation. She placed petals next, arranging them in a loose, asymmetrical arc from the collarbone up to the edge of the jaw. She used the floral wire to make a thin, spiky halo around Erin’s hairline, then paused to inspect her work.

Erin watched the process through the reflection in the glass doors. She didn’t move or comment, but when Claire’s hand slowed at the hollow above her stomach—a faint curve, a subtle roll that had not been there two months ago—she felt it as plainly as a hand laid on her chest.

Claire’s fingertips hovered there, then continued. She reached for the small jar of pigment, mixed the white and the blue with a practiced flick, and used the tip of her pinkie to make a single, messy line from just under Erin’s breast to her navel. The paint was cold and wet, but Erin didn’t flinch.

“You know,” Claire said, voice quiet, “I’ve done a few of these. Portrait events, fundraisers, parties. It’s always the same. Everyone starts with a plan. But the thing that works—the thing that makes the photo—is always the first mistake. The drip, the smudge, the bit that goes off-book.” She sounded a little self-conscious saying it, but she kept going. “It’s always the part nobody meant to show.”

Erin’s smile didn’t fade, but her eyes went a fraction softer. “So what’s my mistake, then?”

Claire studied the painted line, then said, “You’re not making it any easier by not reacting.” She finished the collarbone arrangement, anchoring one last petal right above the tip of Erin’s breast. “You can look.”

Erin angled to catch her reflection: the blue spiral, the sudden burst of petal color, the weirdly intense line of pigment down her torso. “Looks good,” she said, not just to be polite. Then, watching Claire’s face rather than the arrangement, she caught the practiced half-smile arriving before Claire had decided the moment called for it. “You’ve been performing for a room since you sat down,” Erin said. “This doesn’t have a room in it. Just the two of us.”

Claire’s hands went still on the last petal, nothing ready to say back.

“That’s answer enough,” Erin said, kindly.

For a second the competent ease was just gone, something younger and unfinished left in its place. Claire let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I like knowing the plan,” she admitted. “I don’t know how to do it any other way.”

“I used to be the same,” Erin said, with a touch of something like nostalgia. “Tried to look like I always had it together. When I finally figured out nobody was keeping score, it got a lot less tiring.”

Claire absorbed that in silence, then reached for the box and started over: she unraveled the ribbon, pulled it off Erin’s skin in a quick, sure motion, and instead tied it once around her upper arm and let the rest hang wild and loose. She tossed the rest of the petals into Erin’s hair, messy, not trying to arrange them. She took the jar and, in one bold stroke, drew a quick, uneven line up the side of Erin’s face, skipping the cheekbone entirely.

When she was done, the look was abrupt, raw, almost careless. But for the first time, she seemed satisfied with her own work.

“Now it’s you,” she said, scooting forward and offering her own wrist, then folding herself cross-legged, spine straight as a yardstick.

Erin looked at the supplies, at Claire, and said, “Do you want me to make you pretty, or you want me to make you real?”

Claire looked down, a laugh trembling in her chest. “Let’s do real.”

Erin picked up the last sprig of floral wire, bent it into a lopsided circle, and stuck it behind Claire’s ear. Then she fished in the box, found the tiniest, ugliest weed of a clover among the showy blooms, and tucked it into the edge of the circle. She used her fingertip to press a smudge of blue onto the tip of Claire’s nose, and wiped her hands off on her own thigh.

She said, “You ever seen roadside clover in August? It’s all stems and little dusty flowers, but it holds the dirt together better than anything.” She didn’t say more than that, just let it hang.

Claire went still. She was used to praise, to superlatives and competition, but she was not used to someone making her look like a weed and meaning it as a compliment. She reached up, touched the clover, and said, “You’re good at this.”

“I know,” Erin said. “So are you.”

They sat like that for a while, knees almost touching, the noise and energy of the rest of the room just a low-pressure hum behind them. Claire looked at her hands, then at Erin’s, then said, “You want a drink?”

“No alcohol for me, but otherwise, yeah,” Erin said, “but let’s finish this round first.” She plucked a petal from her own hair, stuck it in the mess of ribbon on Claire’s arm, and grinned.

Claire smiled back, and as she did, a loose strand of her own hair slipped from the bun and drifted toward Erin’s shoulder, slow, unbothered.

Neither woman commented on it.

---

Sarah and Mildred’s station was the furthest from the crowd—closest to the windows, with a view of the darkening ocean beyond the glass. Sarah used the first thirty seconds just to align the place card square with the edge of the supply box, then nudged it again, then a third time, until it looked deliberate and, therefore, unremarkable. She braced herself before she looked inside: a kit built for precision or for ritual, hard to say—two little tins of pigment (one matte black, one gold), a palmful of smooth river stones, a tiny loop of black thread, and a finger-sized stub of white chalk. She hesitated, and then, just to get it out of the way, muttered, “I’m going to be rubbish at this. Sorry in advance.”

Mildred’s attention was on the pigment, but she answered, “It is of no consequence,” and the tone was so even, so without judgment, that Sarah wanted to crawl under the table and stay there.

“I just…” Sarah began, and immediately wanted to backpedal. “I’m not great with, uh, performance art. Or regular art. Or anything where people might look at the result and think about it.”

Mildred picked up the tin of black pigment between thumb and forefinger. “You cannot ruin it,” she said. “If you do, you can start again. Painting over you changes nothing worth changing,” Mildred said. “It is better to mark the places where a flesh-being's worry actually hides. The inside of a wrist. The hollow of a throat. The soft crease behind a knee. Small, and deliberate. The same three points on all flesh-beings.” She considered the tin a moment longer. “It is not required, for the party. I am told the assignment card only says paint something on your partner. But this is a sacrament I know, and I find it pleasing, so I am choosing it.” Then, with perfect composure, she touched her own tongue to the surface of the powder. It was a little too long, a little too purple. Her face didn’t change, not even a blink.

Sarah was horrified. “What are you doing?”

“It needs to taste of nothing,” Mildred said, “or the void is all you will think about while it dries.” She set the tin down. “It tastes of nothing. So you may begin.”

Sarah made a face. “Do you always— Is that a normal thing, or is it just you?”

Mildred considered, then said, “I have not encountered it in others. But there is no other me.”

Sarah laughed, then immediately shushed herself, as if the joke had broken a rule. She reached for the black pigment, and as she did, her hand trembled just enough to tip the tin. “Okay. I’ll start with the wrist, I guess?” She looked up, and found Mildred holding her arm out, palm up, sleeve already rolled back.

The skin was so pale it looked dusted with chalk before the brush even hit it. The veins were blue and neat, but Sarah couldn’t see a single pulse. She dabbed the brush (why was her hand shaking?), then pressed the tiniest dot right above the crease.

It came out a little too big, almost a thumbprint. “Sorry, sorry—”

“It is acceptable,” Mildred said. She kept her arm perfectly still.

Sarah looked at the window instead of at Mildred, but her brain kept inventory anyway: the muscle and bone, the faint freckles, the way the hair on the forearm caught the light. It was a good arm, if you liked arms, which she didn’t, not particularly.

She added a matching dot to the other wrist, then looked up for approval, and only then realized Mildred hadn’t moved her gaze from Sarah’s hands the entire time.

Sarah shifted her weight. “Next is the throat, right?”

“Is it traditional?” said Mildred, and something in the way she asked it made the word sound borrowed, like she'd picked it up recently and was still testing its weight. “I would not know. Where I am from, there is no throat. There is only the place a thing keeps what it does not want taken. On your kind, that is usually here.” She touched her own, precisely.

Sarah looked at the column of Mildred's neck, wondered where else to mark it, and settled on the hollow just under the jaw, where the pulse should be. Again, she went too heavy; the brush was hard to control. This time, she tried to wipe the excess off, but it just smeared.

“It is fine,” Mildred said. “They match.” Her mouth quirked, not quite a smile, but not displeased either.

Sarah relaxed a little. “This is actually quite fun,” she admitted.

Mildred said nothing. She simply waited, letting the silence fill in around them.

Sarah, always the one to crack first, decided to fill it herself. “Is it weird being here?” she asked, then clarified, “Like, not just at this party. In this… Hotel. You’re the first person I’ve met who’s not… you know. Here because you got dragged in by some insane cosmic drama.”

Mildred cocked her head. “I am here for the same reason as everyone else.”

That caught Sarah by surprise. “Really?”

Mildred nodded. “There is always a point, with flesh-beings, where the room fills up and you realize no one is coming to let you out. This is better than the other options.”

Sarah sat with that for a minute. “What’s it like? Before here, I mean.”

Mildred shrugged. “Long. Flesh-beings arrive, they try to solve things, they leave. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they do not.”

The words landed with a flat certainty that made Sarah’s skin prickle. “But that’s not bad, though?”

Mildred turned her gaze back to Sarah. “It is not anything. It just is.”

There was a pause. Sarah tried to think of a follow-up, but nothing seemed right.

Sarah started to say something about how that was actually kind of a relief. Mildred cut her off before she got there, unbothered. “Not relief,” she said. “Being interesting invites appetite. There is a mercy, some nights, in going unnoticed.”

Sarah went very still. She had no memory of saying anything close to that out loud.

“You are accustomed to being watched,” Mildred went on. “Judged. Catalogued. Here, you are only a flesh-being among many, and the eyes are not hungry for you tonight.” She said it as if that had been her point all along. She licked her lips.

For just a moment, the black pigment in the tin didn't reflect the window's light the way it should have—didn't reflect anything, in fact, sat there like a hole cut into the table rather than a color on top of it. Sarah blinked, and it was pigment again.

Sarah realized she’d left the paintbrush hovering in the air. “Sorry, I zoned out. What’s next?”

“Behind the knee,” Mildred said, and her voice was so even it almost made Sarah laugh.

She wanted to ask if this was a joke, but instead, she dutifully bent to mark Mildred's calf, just at the soft crease. Kneeling this close, she noticed the crease didn't quite match where a knee should bend — a fraction of an inch off, like a very good copy—and then she noticed she'd noticed it, and decided this was a thought to have later, somewhere else.

The motion was oddly intimate, kneeling in front of someone you barely knew, drawing a line across the tender skin. When she looked up, Mildred’s expression was unreadable, but she hadn’t moved, hadn’t flinched or shifted or done anything to indicate the weirdness of the situation.

Sarah stood, capped the pigment tin, and said, “You can do me now. If you like.”

Mildred rolled the sleeve back down, then reached for Sarah’s left wrist. The touch was so quick and so sure that Sarah flinched, then immediately felt stupid for doing it.

Mildred’s fingers were warm and dry, and the little mark she made landed dead center on the pulse point. The second wrist went the same way: fast, precise, perfect. She didn’t even need to look for the spot.

At the throat, Mildred paused, tilted Sarah’s chin up with a single finger, and marked the hollow with the same easy confidence. Mildred’s lips parted, the tip of her tongue wetting them as she studied Sarah’s throat. Sarah felt her own heartbeat in her ears, and tried not to blush again. She failed.

“Do you want the knee?” Mildred asked.

Sarah, a little unsteady, said, “Sure.”

Mildred knelt in front of her, found the back of the knee, and pressed the dot into place, so light it barely registered. Sarah felt it anyway.

When Mildred stood, Sarah’s skin still hummed, the marks like static patches she couldn’t ignore.

“There,” Mildred said. “Now they match.”

Sarah looked at her own wrists, her neck, and felt a strange, unexpected calm settle over her.

“Thanks,” she said, and meant it.

“You are welcome. It does nothing,” Mildred added, matter-of-fact, as if this were a courtesy owed rather than a confession. “Six points is not enough, the words were not spoken, and neither of us bled for it. It is only a shape. I simply like the shape.” A pause. “Where I am from, this shape means something closer to home.”

They stood there for a second, letting the quiet settle. Outside, the ocean was almost black. Inside, the crowd’s noise faded to a low hum, and for a while it felt like they were the only two people in the room.

Sarah felt like she should say more, but Mildred was already turning to tidy up the kit, leaving Sarah to absorb the warmth of the marks and the odd, buoyant feeling in her chest.

She decided she liked it.

---

The moment Emi landed at the next station, Candy was already there, bouncing on her heels, her wings folded tight but still managing to fill half the available airspace. “Oh my gosh, look at you,” Candy said, arms already open. “You have six! That’s so cool!”

Emi blushed, but let herself be hugged, four of her arms automatically reciprocating while the other two fluttered, unsure of whether to participate or just hover in excitement. “I love your wings,” Emi said, once she was free. “They’re—like stained glass, but alive.”

Candy’s face brightened. “Nobody’s ever said that before! Usually it’s ‘wow, you must have a hard time getting clothes.’” She grinned, tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “But I’m used to being the weirdest-looking girl in the room. It’s nice not to be for once.”

Emi’s laugh came out shy but real. “I know exactly what you mean.”

They checked the card together: “Portrait,” in bright, confident lettering. Emi nodded once, then, almost out of reflex, did the thing she always did before starting a new piece: she went perfectly quiet, hands steepled at her chin, and just studied Candy. Not staring—just looking, letting her eyes pick up the movement, the shades, the quick-shifting way Candy’s face telegraphed every single emotion before it finished arriving. She noticed, too, the way Candy’s wings quivered whenever she got excited, and the almost constant play of hands as she talked.

After a good, long thirty seconds, Candy started to fidget. “Is this the part where you decide if I’m actually interesting enough to paint?”

Emi shook her head, and her hands spread out in a gentle, no-no gesture. “I’m just trying to see what’s real. Sometimes it takes a while.”

Candy’s laugh was fast, but this time she didn’t hide behind it. “Okay, now you’re making me blush. I didn’t know this was going to be a therapy session.”

Emi let the silence settle, then asked, “What do people usually think about you? On first look.”

Candy shrugged, not bothered. “They think I’m sweet. That I’m a hugger, because I am. Sometimes they think the wings are the whole story.” She flared them, just a little, and the light from the windows caught along the veins, sending fractured golds and deep violets into the air. “But mostly? They think I’m simple.”

Emi reached out, took one of Candy’s hands in her own, and said, “That’s not what I’ve been looking at for the last minute.” She let go, but not all the way, just enough to say, I see you, and then she started.

She picked the metallic black pigment, brushed it across her thumb, and with two hands gently swept it along the edge of Candy’s left wing. The color caught, deepening every shade, making the edge look almost metallic, almost sharp. She used the other hands to hold the wing steady, careful and tender. She looked into Candy's soul gently, and used the pigment to highlight the woman's fierce love, her hidden strength, and when she was done, she took a step back.

Candy looked at the result in the little mirror on the table and went absolutely still. “Oh,” she said, and for a second, nothing else. Then, softly: “I look kind of—” she hesitated, then said it anyway, “—badass.”

Emi smiled, and her six hands all did a little nervous gesture at once. “That’s what I saw, first thing.”

Candy watched herself in the mirror, then turned back to Emi, her face more serious than before. “Thank you,” she said. “Nobody’s ever made me look strong on purpose before.”

Emi shrugged, bashful. “It's just who you are. I can tell.”

Now it was Candy’s turn. She rummaged through the box, found a length of ribbon, and in three quick, playful moves looped it around two of Emi’s six wrists, tying them together in a big, soft bow. “Now you can’t work as fast,” she said, laughing. Then she popped a handful of fresh rose petals (where had she even gotten those?) and scattered them along Emi’s arm, the pinks and reds trailing from elbow to fingertip.

Emi laughed, then looked at herself and said, “I look like I lost a bet with a flower shop.”

“You look cute,” Candy said, then added, “Also, if I let you finish, you’d make me cry. So, consider this self-defense.”

They both cracked up at that, and for a moment, just before Candy really began, the noise of the whole room faded away.