I closed my eyes and thought back to the founder’s cryptic eyes and her joined hands, her fingers so significantly intertwined. Forge onward, together, echoing in my mind on loop.

And then, assisted by the pleasant, free-associative drift of the séance afterglow, I had a sudden flash of seemingly unrelated memory—Talia’s hand skimming over my mother’s animated primroses as they recoiled from her. Then Talia’s remembered words, when she explained why this would be.

Avramovs feel anathema to them. Or at least, that’s what Linden thinks, and she’d be the expert.

“You know what,” I said slowly, still making the connections as I spoke, my brain leaping from thought to thought like a toad traversing lily pads. “I’m not sure this is what she meant, but . . . it does give me an idea.”

“Oooh.” Talia lifted a languid eyebrow, leaning forward. “Do tell.”

“So, Thorn and Avramov magics are fundamentally incompatible, right? They do green magic, life-and-light stuff; you do necromancy, death-based spells. Kind of . . . anathema to each other. Like what you told me in my mom’s garden, the way you described why animated plants don’t react well to your presence.”

Talia nodded slowly, her gaze shifting back and forth somewhere above my shoulder as she ran this through her mind. “Okay, with you so far.”

“So what if you and Rowan combined your raw magics, braided them together?” I barreled on, flushing with sudden excitement as the notion unfolded in my mind, gained breadth and clarity. “I’m thinking they’d cancel each other out into something like . . . like a nullifying field. So if Gareth starts gaining on you too closely, boom—you two spring a trap around him, keep him from advancing any farther.”

“So it would be like antimatter, almost,” Talia said, breathless, her eyes lighting with appreciation and that familiar, feral thrill. “Or antimagic. Harlow, that’s a stroke of genius. I mean, batshit too, and dangerous as fuck; just think how insanely unstable a medium we’re talking here! Nothing like that’s ever been done before, I don’t think. But also, yeah . . . just, wildly genius.”

“I really think it might work, if the two of you are game,” I said, glowing with the compliment. “I know it’s risky, and asking a lot. But at this point, we go big or go home, right?”

“And risky or not, there’s no chance in hell we’re not going to at least try it, now that you’ve thought of it. I’ll run it by Rowan, but after the way Gareth dunked on us last time, I think he’ll be more than down.” She lifted the samovar to me in toast, taking a swig and then offering it to me. “Cheers, Harlow. All may not yet be lost.”

I took the samovar and toasted her back, feeling almost giddy with renewed hope. Then we sat quiet for a minute, both lost in separate thought, the silent dark pooling around us like slow waters. The Bitters grounds were perfectly still, broken only by the faint calls of night birds, the shrill chirrups of daredevil bats swooping around the mansion’s many turrets and towers.