"It's not a gown," Penelope said, standing in front of the cracked mirror in her bedroom while Theo Finch circled her like an overenthusiastic vulture. "It's a tube of fabric. It's a sleeveless, heartless tube of fabric that actively resents me."
"It's *vintage*," Theo corrected, his voice muffled by the pins clamped between his teeth. He'd produced them from somewhereâhis tote bag, presumably, which seemed to contain not just a croissant-shaped voice recorder and an unyielding optimism but an entire emergency sewing kit. "Vintage means it has *character*. Character means stains are features. Features meanâ"
"Features mean I look like I was dressed by a particularly ambitious raccoon." Penelope tugged at the hem, which ended at an asymmetric length that might have been couture and might have been the result of someone catching it in a car door. The fabric was a deep burgundy satin, the color of expensive regret, and it fit her the way a glove fits a footâwhich was to say, technically, physically possible, but spiritually wrong.
The ceiling crack above her head had lengthened again. She didn't look at it. Looking at it would mean acknowledging that her bedroom ceiling was staging a slow-motion collapse, and she was already at capacity for impending disasters.
"Hold still," Theo said around his pins. "I need to take up the left side. The invitation said formal, and formal means no one should see yourâ"
"My what?"
"Your *knees*, Penelope. Formal means no knees. Knees are for cocktail hour. Knees are for *brunch*."
"I wasn't aware the Divination Regulatory Council had a position on joints."
"They have a position on everything." Theo straightened, frowning at the gown with the focused intensity of a man who had once described a poorly constructed sandwich as 'a betrayal of everything I hold sacred.' "The catering manual alone is forty-seven pages. Did you know there's a specific protocol for the order in which champagne flutes are arranged on a tray? It's alphabetical by the *vineyard's* name. Not the champagne's name. The *vineyard's*."
"You've memorized it already?"
"I'm on page thirty-one." He said this with the sheepish pride of a man who had also, presumably, memorized the takeout menu of every restaurant within a four-block radius of his apartment. "The section on canapé spacing is genuinely harrowing. There's a diagram."
Penelope stared at herself in the mirror. The burgundy satin bunched at her waist and gaped at the shoulders, giving her the silhouette of someone who had been assembled in a hurry from mismatched parts. Her dark circles looked even darker against the formal fabric, like smudges of charcoal on a painting that was trying very hard to be a portrait of someone who had their life together.
She did not have her life together.
She had thirty-six days until eviction, a ceiling that was actively trying to kill her, a stolen ledger of mundane predictions in the hands of a man she couldn't find, a journalist in a flamingo-pink Hawaiian shirt taking up her bedroom with a sewing kit, andâoh yesâa gala to attend in two days where she would have to convince the Divination Regulatory Council that her Class D, Limited Utility prophetic gift was worth acknowledging, despite the fact that her most recent vision had been about an olive.
An olive that had, to be fair, been remarkably accurate.
"Where did you even get this dress?" Theo asked, pinning the hem with the concentration of a surgeon.
"Goodwill. The one on Meridian, next to the psychic tax office." She shifted her weight, and the floorboard under her left foot groaned in sympathetic protest. "It was four dollars. The tag said 'formal wear, minor damage.' I'm choosing to believe that 'minor damage' refers to the dress and not to my dignity."
"Four dollars," Theo repeated, awed. "That's incredible. That'sâwait." He looked up. "Is that why you have ink on the shoulder?"
"That's from my ledger."
"Your *stolen* ledger?"
"I got ink on my hands before it was stolen. It migrates." She resisted the urge to scratch her shoulder. The gown's satin was the kind of slippery, uncooperative fabric that seemed personally offended by the concept of human skin. "The ink has been there for three weeks. I think it's permanent. I think the ink and I have merged."
Sebastian Crowe chose this moment to appear in her doorway, because Sebastian Crowe had an unerring instinct for materializing during Penelope's most humiliating moments, like a particularly well-dressed haunting.
He leaned against the doorframe in a charcoal suit so impeccably tailored it probably cost more than Penelope's remaining lease, his angular features arranged in an expression of carefully calibrated amusement. He smelled, as always, of jasmineâan aggressive, atmospheric jasmine that seemed to colonize any room he entered.
"You look," he said, pausing just long enough for Penelope's stomach to drop, "like you're being digested by a velvet curtain."
"It's satin, actually."
"My mistake. Satin. The fancy cousin of the family of fabrics that hate you." He tilted his head, studying her with that unsettling too-still gaze that made her feel like a specimen under glass. "Is there a reason your journalist friend is pinning your dress with what appear to be upholstery tacks?"
"They're all I had!" Theo said, defensively.
"They're from the cushions on my reading-room chairs," Penelope added. "The ones I got from the curb on Pickering Street. The previous owner was, I believe, either a theater company or a very ambitious hoarder."
Sebastian's mouth curvedânot quite a smile, but the architectural suggestion of one. He straightened, crossing the threshold into her bedroom with the fluid confidence of someone who had never, in his entire life, been concerned about a ceiling crack. "I came to discuss strategy. But firstâ" He reached into his jacket and produced a slim silver flask. "I thought you might need this."
"What is it?"
"Gin."
"It's ten in the morning."
"And you're being pinned into a four-dollar gown by a man in a flamingo shirt while your ceiling stages a coup. I think gin is appropriate." He paused, and something shifted behind his eyesâsomething that looked, for a fraction of a second, like exhaustion. "I've been rehearsing."
"Rehearsing what?" Theo asked, his mouth full of pins.
"My vision." Sebastian's voice was smooth, measured, each word placed with the precision of a man arranging chess pieces. "I need a convincing prophecy. Something with enough scope to justify my attendance at the gala withoutâ" He stopped. Recalibrated. "Without raising questions about my current... clarity."
Penelope caught the hesitation. She filed it away in the part of her brain that catalogued inconsistencies, right next to the royalty checks in her drawer and the question of why Marcus Durrell had stolen a ledger full of predictions about dropped spoons.
"Your vision's degrading," she said. Not a question.
The room went very still. Even the floorboard stopped groaning.
Sebastian's expression didn't changeânot visibly, not in any way she could point to and name. But something in his posture shifted, like a door closing quietly in a house that had been open a moment before.
"My vision is *fine*," he said, and his voice had dropped half an octave, which meant he was sincere, which meant he was lying. "I simply prefer to prepare. Preparation is not weakness, Penelope. It's strategy."
"Uh-huh."
"It's *strategy*."
"You're repeating yourself."
"I repeat things for emphasis. It's a rhetorical choice." He took a breath, and the mask was backâseamless, polished, impenetrable. "I'll manufacture a vision involving a regulatory forecast. Something about a shift in Class B asset valuations. Boring enough to be believable, specific enough to be impressive."
"That's not how real visions work," Penelope said, quietly.
"No," Sebastian agreed, and for one unguarded moment, his gaze met hers in the mirror. "It isn't."
The silence was broken by the sound of boots on stairsâheavy, deliberate, metronomic boots that could only belong to one person on earth.
Marcus Durrell appeared in the hallway outside Penelope's bedroom, filling the doorframe with the kind of physical solidity that suggested he had been manufactured rather than born. His cheap suit was rumpled, as usual, and his crooked nose gave his face a lopsided severity, like a building that had settled unevenly over time.
"Reporting," he said. Then, registering the sceneâPenelope in a burgundy tube of satin, Theo on his knees with upholstery tacks, Sebastian holding a flask of gin with the elegance of a man in a perfume advertisementâMarcus paused. His brow furrowed. "Is this a... situation."
"This is preparation," Theo said brightly.
"For what?"
"The gala. In two days. The thing we've been discussing for forty-eight hours. The entire reason you're here?"
"I'm here becauseâ" Marcus stopped. His jaw tightened in that way it did when he was deciding, with military precision, exactly how much truth to deploy. "I have a development."
"A development," Penelope repeated, flatly. "Like the kind where you explain why you stole my ledger? That kind of development?"
The silence that followed was thick enough to upholster.
"I didn't steal your ledger," Marcus said. Each word was clipped, careful, deployed like a chess move. "I *relocated* it. For safekeeping."
"You relocated my property from my shop toâwhere, exactly? Your apartment above a laundromat?"
"The Spin Cycle is a *perfectly secure* location. It has a deadbolt."
"It has a deadbolt that I picked in under forty seconds."
"Youâ" Marcus blinked. "You picked my deadbolt?"
"That's not the point. The point is, you took my ledger, which containsâwhat, predictions about delayed trains and dropped cutlery?âand vanished. And now you're standing in my bedroom telling me you have a *development*."
"I have an invitation."
The room stopped.
"To the gala," Marcus clarified, as if anyone needed clarification.
Sebastian's eyes narrowed. Theo dropped a pin. Penelope's left shoulder slid out of the gown's neckline, which was doing nothing for her dignity or her décolletage.
"You," Sebastian said slowly, "have an invitation to the Divination Regulatory Council gala."
"Yes."
"You. The man who lives above a laundromat."
"The Spin Cycle is a *perfectly adequate*â"
"How?" Penelope demanded.
Marcus straightened. His shoulders squared with the unconscious precision of a man for whom posture was not a choice but a condition. "I was already invited. As personal security for Councilwoman Maritza Volkov."
The name landed like a grenade with a etiquette problem.
"Councilwoman Volkov," Theo whispered, and his face did something extraordinaryâcycling through shock, awe, and a feral journalistic hunger in approximately one and a half seconds. "Of the *Volkov* Volkovs? The one who pushed through the Psychic Asset Taxation Reform ofâ"
"Yes," Marcus said.
"You're her *bodyguard*?" Sebastian's voice had gone very quiet, which was always a sign that he was very interested.
"I was assigned to her protective detail eighteen months ago, after I leftâ" Another pause. Another careful editing of truth. "After my previous assignment concluded."
Penelope caught the flinch, buried under the formality. She didn't press it. She recognized the architecture of a sentence that had been rebuilt too many times.
"So you've had an invitation this entire time," she said, pulling her shoulder back into the gown with what she hoped was dignity. "This entire time, while I was tracking you to Fennick Street and interrogating parrotsâ"
"The parrot was Class E," Marcus said, as if this were a reasonable clarification.
"âand you didn't *mention* it?"
"I didn't know you were attending the gala until yesterday. You didn't tell me about the gala until yesterday. Before that, you were asking about the ledger, and Iâ" He stopped. His jaw worked. "I was attempting to protect you."
"From what?"
"From what's in the ledger."
The words hung. Sebastian went very stillâthe too-still stillness of a predator who had just heard something worth hearing. Theo's hand froze halfway to his tote bag, where the croissant-shaped recorder was presumably capturing every syllable.
Penelope opened her mouth.
And the vision hit.
It came fastâfaster than any vision she'd ever had, like a freight train made of light and static and the particular smell of champagne. Her skull lit up from the inside, and suddenly she was somewhere else, *somewhen* else, standing in a room she didn't recognize yetâ
A torn hem. Burgundy satin. A woman's shoe catching on the edge of a carpet, fabric ripping in a sound like a whispered secret. The tear was ragged, diagonal, on the left sideâ
A switched place card. Two names, two seats, a small white rectangle sliding from one position to another with the casual malice of someone who thought they were being cleverâ
A broken heel. The sharp crack of a stiletto giving way, a stumble, a hand catching a tableclothâ
A spilled drink. Amber liquid spreading across white linen like a bruise blooming in reverseâ
And thenâ
For the first time in her lifeâ
Pain.
A champagne flute, shattering. Not falling, not droppedâ*shattering*, in someone's hand, the crystal exploding inward with a sound like a bell being murdered. And blood. Not a lot. Just enough. A palm opened in a clean, diagonal line, and the blood running down between the fingers was very, very red against very, very white skinâ
Penelope gasped and staggered. Her knee hit the edge of her dresser, and the pain of thatâthe mundane, stupid, *physical* pain of a kneecap meeting woodâsnapped her back like a rubber band.
"Penelope!" Theo was on his feet. "Penelope, are youâdid you justâwas that a *vision*?"
She couldn't speak. She was bent over, one hand on the dresser, the other pressed against her temple where a headache was blooming with the delicate persistence of a flower made of hammers.
"What did you see?" Sebastian. Closer now. His voice had dropped, gone sincere, and she could feel him leaning in with an intensity that was almost predatory. "Penelope, what did you see?"
"A torn hem," she managed. "A switched place card. A broken heel. A spilled drink. Andâ" She swallowed. "A champagne flute. Shattering in someone's hand. It cut them. There was blood."
"Whose hand?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see the face. I couldn'tâ"
"Did you see the gown?" Sebastian pressed. "The torn hemâdid you see the gown?"
Penelope looked down.
The burgundy satin of her four-dollar Goodwill dress was torn. Not dramatically, not catastrophicallyâjust a small, ragged, diagonal rip on the left side, where the hem had been. Where the hem *still was*, because she was wearing it right now, in her bedroom, and the tear was fresh, the fabric still slightly warm from whatever force had ripped itâ
But she hadn't torn it.
It hadn't been torn when she'd put it on.
The vision showed a torn hem. And the hem was torn. The vision showed *this* gown, *this* fabric, *this* tearâand the vision had arrived while she was wearing it.
"Oh," she said, very quietly.
Theo looked at the hem. Looked at her face. Looked at the hem again. "That's... that's the dress from the vision? The one you're *wearing*?"
"Yes."
"But the vision just happened. Like, *just* just. Thirty seconds ago."
"Yes."
"And the tear is already here."
"Yes."
Sebastian understood first. She could see it in his faceâthe calculation, the rapid assembly of implications, the quiet horror of someone who had spent his entire life working with prophecy and recognized, with the instinct of a professional, exactly what this meant.
"Your visions are accelerating," he said. His voice was barely above a whisper. "They're arriving closer to the events. The gap between prediction and occurrence is closing."
"The olive vision was hours before," Theo said, his voice climbing. "The choking was *hours* before. And nowâ"
"Now it's seconds," Penelope finished. "The torn hem arrived seconds beforeâor maybe *during*âthe tear. The vision and the event are almost simultaneous."
She sat down on the edge of her bed, because her knees had made a unilateral decision that they were no longer participating in standing. The headache behind her left eye pulsed. The champagne fluteâshattering, bloody, *painful*âwas still burned into the inside of her eyelids like a photograph taken in flash.
"If the acceleration continues," Sebastian said, and his voice had gone very careful, very measured, the voice of someone walking on ice, "the champagne visionâthe one with bloodâ"
"Is less than forty-eight hours away," Penelope said. "The gala is in two days. The visions are catching up to real time. And the champagne fluteâ"
She stopped.
She looked down at the torn hem of her four-dollar gown, the ragged diagonal rip in burgundy satin, and she thought about blood running between fingers. She thought about crystal shattering inward. She thought about the fact that her visions had never, in her entire life, come with pain before, and now they did, and