“Miss me?” the newcomer asked Brella with a smirk.

“I saw you two days ago.”

The woman batted her eyes coquettishly, taking a seat next to Leverett. “If I had my druthers, I would see you every day.”

Brella rewarded the woman with a two-fingered gesture, for which Leverett smacked her on the shoulder. Dale laughed. Vel whacked him on the back of the head.

“All right.” Mrs. Callin’s voice cut through the noise like scalding water in snow. “Everyone, shut it. Maisie is here. We have important business.”

“Hear, hear,” Dale cheered, while Hill gently rewound the thread around the spools on his fingers.

“Sorry I’m late.” Maisie lifted a scarf from around her neck and draped it on the back of her chair. “I was with Frances.”

Mrs. Callin raised an eyebrow. “Were you?”

Brella shifted on her seat. “Is she ready? Because if she—”

“Relax, Umbrella.” Maisie had a rakish, confident smile, the kind a dazzling swindler might take years to perfect. “She’s the most eager of all of us.”

“And she knows what’s ahead, right?” Vel’s mouth was tight with worry,  “She knows how difficult it might be?”

Maisie sobered. “She’s known hardships, Vel. She’ll be fine.”

“Good.” Leverett clapped his hands together. “Everyone know their jobs?”

“Frances and I will leave in roughly—” Maisie glanced at the beat-up grandfather clock in the corner. “—twenty-six hours. After the feast.”

“The fate ball is spooled,” Leverett added. He snapped his fingers, and a discarded spool floated up from the floor to land delicately atop Dale’s last unoccupied finger. “Our contact says the king is entirely convinced not to knight Keyes. During the feast, the ball will pull her away.”

“And the other?” Hill asked.

“He’ll follow,” Vel assured him. “He always follows.”

Mrs. Callin nodded. “When they’re in the dungeon, Iris will take the path Frances laid out and retrieve the pair.”

“Where’s Iris?” Leverett whispered to Brella.

“Castle,” she murmured back. “Working.”

“Then Iris will lead Keyes and the other here, where Umbrella and Vel will be waiting to take them through. Any questions?”

Brella shrugged. “None from me.”

Leverett raised a finger. “If you run into Lollie?”

Brella waved a dismissing hand. “I doubt I will. I could barely find her when we were together. But if I do, I’ll cook up a cover with Keyes. Probably that she’s my lover and my Passenger.”

Maisie winced. “Ouch.”

Brella sucked her teeth. “What ‘ouch?’”

“You stop seeing Lollie six months ago, after years of telling her you’re not ready to show her the Between, and suddenly you have someone you’re willing to take through?” She shrugged. “Cold.”

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“You’re an absolute barnyard creature, Umbrella.” Maisie crossed her arms over her chest. “And I think I have a fairly good idea of how it would feel to have the woman I’m seeing—”