The usual congregation gathered in the alleyway the next day.

Benji had called Mira out for the remainder of the week, and Tammi claimed a family work emergency to keep Thalia out of school, leaving Janie to sneak around the front during her free time at lunch to meet with the other two girls huddled in the alley which they had planned the morning of.

Mira and Thalia arrived early, though neither girl could stay for long. Both were required to walk their way back to Mister Oreson’s store in the next few minutes; Thalia’s father had dropped them off there on horseback and was waiting to bring them back to Grimmshollow’s clinic. As much as Mira wanted to remain in her hometown as far away from everything as possible, she had a job to do. A responsibility that required carrying some of the family burden.

This time, the emotional baggage was a burden.

The chill was still present in the air. Not even the bundles of scarves and layers were enough to shield Mira from the whipping wind that shot through the alleyway. Mabel was nowhere to be found, either, despite either of the girls’ attempts to locate or lure her towards them. It was common knowledge to Mira that the tabby was temperamental when it came to cold air, so her disappearance didn’t come as a shock. She understood, but Mabel’s absence was very much noticed and Mira wouldn’t have minded having something to hug.

Thalia couldn’t have looked less bothered by the whole thing. She quickly went back to leaning against the brick wall opposite from Mira, her brown and amber eyes lifting to the sky. She pushed the fabrics of the scarf up and coughed into it.

“Something wrong?” Mira asked, dragging her fingertips in the snow.

“No,” Thalia replied. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

“Things.”

“Please just tell me, Lia,” Mira said, knocking the back of her head lightly against the wall. “I hate the whole ‘I don’t want to tell you bad stuff while you’re in a mood’ thing. I’m already upset and pissed. How much worse could my mood get?”

Her friend huffed out air through her nose, as if she were debating things in her head. Finally, Thalia drummed her fingers along the scarf around her neck and said, “I didn’t know it was him.”

Mira squinted, fingers pausing. “What are you talking about?”

“A few years back,” Thalia explained, “when we were in Grade Six, I remembered my mom telling me about a sickly boy she was in charge of helping. She had my father drop me off at the clinic to spend my weekends there. It wasn’t all bad; I sat with some of Mom’s patients and cheered them up, but I remembered that kid. Lethargic, barely lucid. Real bad shape. But then he got better, got checked out, went home and I never thought about it again. Until I saw you with Magic in the alley. And I knew there was something about him that felt familiar.

“The week where you were bringing back boatloads of work in your backpack, my mom told me that she might need me to have my weekends with her at the clinic in Grimmshollow. She wouldn’t tell me why, but I saw her in Chrome making errands more often. And she usually never does her errands unless she needs to talk to people.”

Unconsciously, Mira sat up and leaned forward. Benji had been keeping close communication with Tammi in the week before the mining anniversary. She remembered the haggard look on his face, the defeat in it. The way he struggled with turning away from the alcohol box.

I wasn’t a fan of sending them to Grimmshollow either.

That would explain her father’s scary calmness. He’d had weeks to prepare for that choice and weigh the consequences.

“When you told me that he was stuck at your house in really bad shape, I didn’t think much of it,” Thalia went on. “But that night, my mom called me and told me everything. And I realized that he was the kid my mom treated all those years ago.” She took a breath, slumped against the chipping bricks of the building. “I don’t really know where I’m going with this. But I thought you should know. Plus, knowing that my mom has been preparing for this for weeks, maybe it’ll make you feel a bit better?”

“You know what would also make me feel better?” Mira asked.

“Giving those jerks a full course knuckle sandwich and then some?” Thalia offered.

“Shoving a thistle bush up their asses. And I can’t do that if Janie doesn’t march her ass out of the building.”

“I would have done that faster, Mirabel,” called a voice from just above Mira’s head, “if I wasn’t busy getting a reinforcement or two.”

Descending the steps and rounding the corner wasn’t just Janie, her blonde hair gold in the sun, but Callie, who nervously stood at the slant of the staircase, her eyes to the ground.

Of all fucking people…

Mira wasn’t sure when she’d gotten to her feet, but her fist had made it halfway into the air before Thalia was pulling her back and Janie was between her and Callie, who had cowered a little, arms up to protect her face.

“Don’t you dare!” Thalia hissed, one arm securely around Mira’s waist, pinning her other arm to her side while she struggled. “Don’t! I talked to Janie the other day about this! Mirabel, stop and use that brain of yours.”

Mira almost bit back with something sharp and toxic but swallowed the venom for something less poisonous. “Oh, great,” she scoffed. “More fucking secrets no one bothers to tell me.”

“I would have, but excuse me for wanting to be considerate of the fact that you ran yourself ragged just by being awake. I was gonna tell you today. Calm your shit and listen for once.”

Grudgingly, Mira slowly dropped herself to the floor, seething in her anger, though she made no further attempts to act on it. Cold seeped through the fabrics of her jeans from the snow. She didn’t have the energy to carry out a threat. Frankly, Mira wasn’t even sure if she had the gall to punch Callie in the face. Heavens knew she wanted to for all the trouble that crowd gave her.

Janie blew out a breath, pushing away stray blonde lines from her face. “Never thought I’d see the day where I’d be protecting a Pepper from one of our own,” she said, “but I guess there’s a first for everything.”

“I’m right here,” said Callie, bunched into herself like a turtle in a shell. “You don’t have to talk about me in the third person, Jane. I’m right next to you.”

For the first time, Mira watched her friend scowl and glare at the other girl. It looked so out of place on Janie who spent most of her time giggling. “Don’t call me that,” she said. “You lost that privilege when you laughed at my misfortune and locked me in a closet with spiders. I only asked you to pitch your case because I know how to be civil, not because we’re friends.”

Callie had the decency to keep her mouth shut.

“You’re going to tell Mira and Thalia what you told me over the phone last night,” Janie continued. “Because it’s well within their rights to know, too.”

Mira sat up a little straighter, anger bleeding away for something more attentive and intrigued. But Callie stayed where she was, nervously hunched forward, her gorgeous eyes shifting between every other student in the alley.

Swiveling onto her knees, Mira took a breath. “Callie,” she said, “what did you tell Janie? What’s happening?”

The Pepper stood up a little, brushed her golden hair away from her face and huffed through her nose. “Fuck this,” she mumbled, as though half to herself before leaning against the frigid brick walls of the alley. “Bentley, Jules, and some of the other jocks were planning an end of the semester party this coming weekend. Turns out the chaos twins are staying with family in the western side of Grimmshollow, close to the Sombrail border. Some kind of dress-up party with an animal theme. Weird fancy clothes like they’ll be performing in a play.”

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Thalia frowned. “What does a party have to do with us? What reason would we have to go to one considering everything that’s happened in the last few days?”

“It isn’t about the party itself, Thalia,” Janie said. “It’s the fact that there is one that requires hidden faces.”

“A masquerade,” Mira whispered.

The perfect distraction. The perfect place to hide.

In plain sight.

Something vicious bubbled in the back of Mira’s head, an idea that would likely make her father weep—either out of joy or a mixture of shock and disappointment, she wasn’t quite sure. All she knew was that it was one hell of an idea. “How much time do we have until it happens?”

“Party’s on the twenty-third,” Callie said. “We have a good few days. But … if you plan on doing something, I want in on it.”

That got Mira, Thalia, and Janie’s jaw to drop. What had to have happened for Callie of all people to grow a backbone?

“I’m tired of doing something I don’t want to do,” continued the other girl. “I want to start doing things for myself. Like make my own choices.”

Part of Mira didn’t want to care that Callie was throwing away the social group that sheltered her like a child. The group that coddled her, put a blindfold over her eyes, and hushed her concerns with honeyed venom. The other felt an odd degree of pride. Maybe it was undeserved, maybe it was lingering affection, but Mira was just glad to have more people on her side to stick it to the people who’d made all of their lives different degrees of hell.

“If you go through with this,” Mira said, leaning against the alley wall to give herself leverage to stand, “the Peppers won’t take you back. We may as well be handing you a torch to burn every bridge you’ve made with them.”

The girl grinned, wide and giddy. “I’ve never been one for fires,” Callie said. “But I will gladly take the torch and burn it all to the ground.”

A sharp ring signaled the end of the period, jolting all four girls into reality. Janie swiftly swept Callie away, dragging her by the jacket sleeve and catapulting the two of them up the stairs with nothing more than a “See you both later” while Thalia walked side-by-side with Mira, who kept her head down, gazing off to the side.

She felt a nudge against her shoulder.

“Mirabel,” Thalia said, “what are you thinking about?”

There were a lot of things. She wanted to go back home. She wanted to sleep in her own bed, bake bread in the brick oven to give herself something to do and take her mind off of everything. She wanted to see her father to make sure he was doing okay sitting by Magic’s bedside when Amelia needed to step away. She wanted to know if her brother was going to wake up …

And parts of the plan were starting to come together in her head. But there was something specific they were going to need if all of them were to attend the party in Western Grimmshollow.

“Do you have costumes at your mom or dad’s house?” Mira asked.

“Some from when I was little, maybe. I used to like doing dress-up stuff with my cousins whenever I saw them for birthdays.” Her friend’s face flushed a little when she spoke, as if most young girls didn’t play with their mothers’ clothes and pretend to be someone else. Or someone they could become. “I don’t know who has them, though. Mom might—she’s sentimental about those things. Why?”

“Because we’re going to need some outfits. And I know someone who can help.”

Evening scorched the horizon by the time Mira, Thalia, and Callum—as Tammi called him—made it back to Grimmshollow’s town limits carrying a large trash bag that just barely fit on horseback. Callum dropped Mira off with the bundle at the clinic’s front steps; Thalia insisted on tagging along, but her father declined.

“We’ll come back early in the morning,” he’d said before the horse trotted off slowly into the distance.

Pushing through the double doors lugging an overstuffed bag was far more trouble than it might have been worth, but Mira had one thing on her mind. It was only right for someone else to have their hand in it, too.

The clinic was at a low hum of energy, nurses passing through the hallway without the rush in their steps Mira had seen the other day. It calmed her a little to know that people weren’t frantically rushing in and out of Magic’s room, and that when she did arrive, only Amelia was present, lightly dozing at her son’s side and shifting a little in the armchair she’d taken up as her temporary bed. From a distance, Mira thought Magic’s mother looked serene, curled up the way she was, but a closer look revealed the furrow between her brow, the quick flutter of her eyes beneath her eyelids.

Plagued by dreams, just as her son.

Mira put the bag on the ground, patted the mattress Magic was laying on, and perched on the edge of it, doing everything in her power to block out the droning of the machines breathing life into her brother and focus on the squeaking of the mattress springs instead. She shook the seamstress’ hand. “Amelia?”

The woman inhaled sharply, blinking rapidly as awareness graced her. “Ave?” she murmured, eyes still bleary from sleep. Before Mira could correct her from the confusing name change, Amelia rubbed at her face with her free hand and sat a little straighter. “Oh,” she said. “Hi, Mira.”

“Sorry, did I … ?” Mira didn’t want to say “interrupt.” She had a feeling Amelia was grateful for the awakening seeing how relaxed she looked now that she was alert. Still, she felt a little bad for the disturbance.

“No,” replied Amelia, lifting her arm, Magic’s hand still gripped inside of her own. His elbow hit the mattress with a small noise that could barely even be called one with how little sound it made, only enough for the mattress covers to whisper. The seamstress grazed her son’s hand with her thumb and sighed, tucking her chin to hide a yawn. “It wasn’t a good sleep, anyway.”

“Painful?” Mira asked.

Her brother’s mom gave a weak smile. “Hopeful. The last time this happened I dreamed of him, too. He was always who I went to for these kinds of things, but … we can’t ask ghosts for advice, can we?”

There was nothing for Mira to respond with, so she just nodded her head and let the seamstress, who chuckled a little to herself, continue.

“Bennett was always better with his words than I was and better at helping Magic with them. It was no shock to me that Magic sometimes preferred his father over me. Situationally dependent. I didn’t take offense to it. I was glad that there was at least one of us who could help him figure out what was going on inside of his head …” Amelia’s grip on her son’s hand tightened a fraction—Magic’s fingers were tinged a slightly darker shade of red from the force and Mira had to resist the urge to pry the seamstress’s hand open. “Sometimes I wonder just how differently things would have been if he hadn’t been called to work that morning.”

Heavy silence wavered between the two of them. Mira didn’t know what to say after that and merely nodded her head. Amelia, sensing the discomfort, offered a low, despondent chuckle. “Sorry,” she said, using her free hand to brush a stray strand of hair from Magic’s tube-covered face. “I shouldn’t be bogging you down with that.”

“It’s fine. I was the one who asked.”

“Still doesn’t change the fact that I should be saying this to your father, not you.” Amelia stopped as if considering something, then cleared her throat and continued. “He was here about a couple minutes ago before his nerves acted up and he couldn’t bear to be sitting in the room. Not with the wires.”

Mira managed a grimace, feeling a desperate need to change the topic. She motioned towards her brother with her chin. “How has he been doing, though?”

“No real changes. Right now they’re focusing on getting his mineral counts up. Low potassium, low magnesium. Tammi says that it’s part of what caused his coma in the first place and that if they can reverse it in a manner that won’t shock him, he should theoretically wake up in the next few days.”

Theoretically.

Everything worked in theory if you were hopeful enough and Mira could see it in the woman’s eyes that the faith she had was a hungry sort, spurred by desperation.

But then the seamstress paused, resting a hand along her son’s forehead before briefly turning to face Mira, who felt nerves rise up like a crashing wave. “You came here with something,” Amelia said. “What is it?”

“I have a question for you,” Mira replied.

“Okay.”

“Would you help me with a favor?”

“That depends on what the ‘favor’ is.”

Biting her lip, Mira clasped her hands together and placed them in her lap. “If I tell you, you have to promise me something.”

“Promise you what?” asked Magic’s mother.

“Don’t tell my father.”

Amelia stared at her long and hard, the exhaustion heavy in her green and brown eyes. They flitted from side to side, considering her before she breathed deeply and sighed. “What do you need help with?”

“The kids that caused this, I know who they are. They’ve caused me and Magic a shit ton of problems and I want to settle the score.”

“Mirabel, I don’t want to—”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Mira assured her, dragging the bag of fabrics closer and taking out one of the small cloaks. “I just need some help with the outfits.”

Amelia blinked and slowly sank into her chair, backing away from her son and letting go of his hand. She grazed the fabrics gently before taking the bundle in her arms and lifting it up and down to weigh it. Mira felt her heart pounding in her chest as the seamstress raised a single, dark eyebrow and glanced up from the materials. “How tall are you?”

“Five feet, three inches. The other three are a little taller than me or the same height.”

“When do you need it?”

“This Saturday.”

“Four days,” said Amelia.

“Four days,” confirmed Mira.

Magic’s mother said nothing, only placed the old fabrics into the bag and dragged the plastic behind her. Then she went back to holding Magic’s hand, and Mira felt slightly affronted at the gesture. She was about to complain when Amelia shooed her away like one would a fly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said her mother figure, a coy smile flashing on her face. “You never asked me about anything.”