Nadia stood in front of her bedroom mirror, applying her foundation, then eyeliner, then a burgundy eye shadow. She usually didn’t bother with makeup, but today she needed every weapon available to her. Her hands were unsteady as she applied her lip stain, the reality of her plan dawning on her. She wished she had a friend on the Council, someone she could talk to without breaking confidentiality codes. Nadia clicked the tube shut and smacked her lips the way she’d seen Eve and Aura do it. Then she grabbed the piece of paper she’d prepped for today and transported to the hallway of 33,26, just outside the Hollow.
“Nadia.” Aura’s little brother was stationed at a desk outside Violet’s office.
Nadia broke into her most convincing flirty smile, if she possessed such a thing. “Hi Amos, how are you?”
“I—good. I didn’t expect to see you today. You know the meeting’s not until tonight, right?” He smiled timidly, radiating nerves. He was fiddling with the edges of the notebook in front of him and his cheeks seemed to be quivering. “I mean obviously you would know that. Since you’re on the Council and everything and you’ve been on it since before I got this job.”
“Right, yeah,” Nadia replied, starting to feel some sympathy.
“Can I help you with something?”
“I just came to have a look at the Spherical map quickly. We’ve been dealing with this band of witches that have just been . . . ugh”—she rolled her eyes in theatrical frustration—“so hard to catch!”
“Oh yeah,” Amos said. “Iris has been having me make those replicas of the map to send to you.” Then he was bashful again. “Violet’s not in though.”
“Oh, is she not?” Nadia asked. It was pretty common knowledge that Violet spent the morning before a Council meeting with her partner and kids. “That’s annoying, I just wanted to get an idea of where the witches might be right this very second and I need the map for that. Would you mind if I just . . . slipped in?”
Amos raised his eyebrows. “Right now?”
“Right now,” Nadia said.
“Yeah, of course. Of course,” he repeated. Amos stood from his desk—or really he sprang up from it, maybe trying to communicate his eagerness to help. He headed down the hall to the Councilmembers’ entrance to the Hollow, and Nadia stopped him.
“Oh, not there!” she said, trying to keep anxiety out of her voice. The more people that saw them interacting, the worse this could get for her.
Amos stopped midstep, then turned.
“Didn’t you want to see the map?”
“Yes,” Nadia said, placing her hand on his shoulder. “But the map was actually moved to Violet’s study. For planning related to the Gathering.”
Amos’s eyes met hers, and Nadia knew he knew she was lying. But he walked to the door next to his desk anyway, then pressed his hand against the panel on the wall and held the door open for Nadia. She walked past him.
“Thank you so much,” she whispered from the other side of the door, then closed it behind her.
Nadia took in the dark panels of the empty office, the gilded paintings of Violet’s foremothers. She walked across the room with an unfamiliar freedom. Her movements were typically so measured and restrained in the study, where she’d only ever been in Violet’s presence, on days when she didn’t hold meetings outside. She stood over the Regent’s desk. Its massive surface was crowded with papers (Violet was notoriously disorganized), all reports from different Sphere agencies. Bookmarked volumes copied from the Archive were flipped open, their pages marked with notes. On one corner of the desk, two charmed dictation pens signed document after document with Violet’s looping signature. A third had fallen, its enchantment apparently too weak to keep it suspended.
Nadia’s neck prickled with heat as she scoured the desk, which was like a monochrome Where’s Waldo. She only had ten, maybe fifteen minutes before Amos got suspicious. Her eye fell to a stack of profiles that had banned written across the top—political dissidents who Violet was allowed to exclude from the Gathering on the basis of safety. Finally, Nadia found what she was looking for, a sheet of Spherical paper that read:
Dear Valued Witch,
You have been affectionately selected to join the Regent, Council, and your fellow witches at this year’s Gathering, to be held at 33,26 on May 28, at 7:00 p.m. WST.
With love,
Your Regent
In the bottom right-hand corner was a charm that read: send immediately.
The rest of the page was blank, the invitations already delivered to a list of names that Nadia couldn’t see. She quickly set out writing the coordinates she’d snuck in on a note card, the numbers disappearing from the Spherical paper as the invitations were sent. She wrote the main ones: the East Village, the Upper West Side, the locations in Brooklyn and in between—then she also added some of the rarer ones, as many as she could fit before she got scared of the time. She couldn’t risk these witches not receiving their invitations. When she finished, she slipped out into the hall and gave Amos a small nod. No witch could ignore an invitation to the Gathering.