Everest stiffened beneath my hands. I was so grateful to have the truth about them, to understand what his body language meant in regard to her. His daughter just came in the house looking like she’d been crying. If I did that, my uncle would’ve been beside himself. Everest, on the other hand, was eerily calm on the surface, even while I felt his muscles tighten. “Saber, are you all right?”

She smiled brightly and nodded. Instead of going to him, as she usually did, she went straight to me. She held my phone out to me. “Thanks for letting me use your phone.”

“How’d it go?”

She nodded again. “Just as you said it would."

“Oh, well, that’s a relief.”

She threw her head back and cackled.

Everest leaned his head back on the couch in between my hands. “What are you two talking about?”

“Just a little much needed girl-talk.” Saber rolled her eyes at him, then looked to me with a playful wink. “Look at him, he can’t stand not knowing.”

Everest sighed and shook his head. “Conspiring.”

Saber hopped over the back of the couch and landed on the seat cushion. She leaned back and propped her feet on the coffee table. All that tension in her body outside was long gone. “Fine, you got us. We were fantasizing about setting Avolire on fire and watching it burn brick by brick.”

Braison gasped and pressed his hand to his chest dramatically. “And you didn’t invite me?”

“I’ve planned it out a few times myself,” Aunt Shi-Shi said with a mischievous tight-lipped smile as she lifted a teacup to her mouth. “Sometimes these fantasies are the only company we can keep.”

Everest hung his head and laughed. Saber and Braison cackled. Libby shook her head, then whispered something to Deacon’s projection standing beside her at the bay window. The rest of The Coven glanced back and forth between everyone who’d lived in Avolire and Tegan, who was definitely scheming. Savannah turned to her and nodded, then pointed to Lennox.

Tenn pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re not yet ready to set that castle on fire. Remember, babe?”

She climbed into his lap with a pout. “I know.”

“Right, as fun as those ideas are . . .” I cleared my throat, mostly to take the attention off of the conversation of fire before Everest realized Saber had been lying. “So, about this feeding stuff . . .”

Tenn peeled his gaze off his soulmate and turned to me. “How does that work?”

I walked around the side of the couch to sit on the armrest. “They have two fangs on each side. Did you know that?”

Tegan snapped her fingers. “I was wondering about the second set. They only come out when you turn someone⁠—”