She rolls out of bed and twists and flexes her body. Her feet and ankles crackle to life. When she bends over to touch the floor, she feels her spine straighten, a subtle click into place. A series of clicks: snap, crackle, pop. From neck to toes, Maeve doesn’t have a joint that won’t click or crunch after too much stillness. She stays like that, folded over, her arms crossed at the elbows, a little extra weight to help gravity pull her into alignment.

The chiropractor took a thermal image of her spine when she was twenty-six, told her the effect of dance—even then—was damage. That her upper vertebrae would likely fuse together before her sixtieth birthday. A kind of spinal arthritis. Overuse. She thinks about that diagnosis and the picture of her spine in reds and purples and blues every time she hears a pop or crack from her shoulders and neck. Folded over like this, she can see her feet, ropy with abuse; how they’ve widened, too, at the arch with age and pregnancy. She pulls up again and stands tall. The good news—at least at her core, the most damaged part of her, the muscles feel sore but strong.

Five minutes, maybe ten, she warms up by herself in her room, getting her mind in shape before she has to deal with anyone else. There is still no power, so nothing has changed: another day as the new kid in school, trying to navigate a tight mesh of strangers. Karo, growing increasingly tense; Justin, vaguely hysterical; and Sadie—

Maeve breaks out of her backbend and looks herself in the mirror, hard. At some point today, she must pull Anna aside and talk to her about Sadie. If nothing else, Anna deserves to know that she’s been watched.

She throws on a pair of loose jeans over her tights, wool socks, and the bulkiest sweater she owns, an Aran fisherman’s knit in pure cream. The bear claw is sitting on her bedside table: she glimpses it there as she’s dressing and looks instinctively to her hand, the dream flooding back in a rush.

She hesitates, then slides the claw into her pocket again, safe against her hip.

Downstairs, a plan is going into action. Karo has made coffee using the fireplace kettle. Anna hovers near the window, where Dan is already lacing up his boots. Justin slumps, half asleep in a chair, red-eyed from the night before—but Sadie is watching keenly as Maeve crosses the lobby toward them.

She just wants a coffee. What now?

“There you are,” Karo says. She looks at Maeve a moment. “We were beginning to wonder.”

Ah—she’s late, somehow. She is about to apologize when Sadie jumps in.

“Where’s Sim?”