Never in a million years would the conclave have come looking for me. Even if they had, they would have had trouble locating Aunt Dot’s traveling caravan because of the layers of concealment spells she wove around our mobile homes. Gemini were restless souls. Always on the move, always looking ahead to the next thing. Content to leave the past in the past. We enjoyed our own company and preferred our own kind. Untrusting of outsiders, and that went double for those wearing badges. No. The conclave never would have found me if I hadn’t wanted to be found.

Aunt Dot had given me an earful when I got my acceptance letter. She saw my attending the academy as penance and still felt like I had turned myself in to the authorities for the crime I hadn’t committed as a child. She wasn’t wrong. Someone ought to pay for Lori’s death. Why not me, the last person to see her alive?

“Guess so.” The overhead lights fascinated her for a second while she gathered her thoughts. “Though I suppose we all end up where we’re meant to be.” Her gaze cut to me. “Fate and all that jazz.”

“Sure,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I agreed with her. Fate and I weren’t on speaking terms. An anemic bell tinkled, and a woman with a long brown ponytail entered the diner. The smile proved she wasn’t Mrs. Rebec, but her arrival was a sobering reminder of the scene we had left behind. “Do you think Harlow will be safe tonight?”

Thierry’s head lifted, and she stared through the large windows positioned across the front of the diner. “We have a guy watching the hotel tonight just in case the widow gets any ideas.”

“Good.” I rubbed my arms. “She didn’t deserve this.”

“I hope it serves as a wakeup call for her. A good man died at the sinks because your friend couldn’t do her job.” Her lips pinched together. “We’re lucky Jasper was the only one we lost. Talk to Harlow. Convince her that her limitations need to be documented. A consultant who can’t do the job she’s hired to do won’t have much of a career once her clients catch wind of her record. This is the kind of black mark that never fades.”

The impulse to dispute Harlow was a friend while wearing her bracelet caused the words to stick in my throat. The girl was out of her depth, there we agreed, but how likely was a teenager to accept advice from someone she barely knew?