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“How long has Gerri known I was coming?” Althea asked.

Unanimous silence. Bexley carefully capped her pen. Fiora became intensely interested in her coffee cup. Garnet looked at the fireplace. The chalkboard now read: SOME QUESTIONS ARE BETTER WITH PASTRIES.

“I’m going to take that as longer than comfortable to admit.”

“It’s less that she knew,” Valene said carefully, “and more that Gerri tends to… have a sense of where things are headed. And then she makes sure she’s there when they arrive.” She picked up her coffee. “It’s a part of who she is. You get used to it.”

“Do I?”

The door to the café opened.

Gerri arrived with a plate of cookies, as if she’d been standing just outside the whole time, waiting for exactly the right moment.

“Oh, good.” She glanced around the table, satisfied — her schedule had gone smoothly. “You’re all here.” She placed the cookies in the middle and pulled out the last chair as if she’d always known she’d be expected. She turned to Althea. “How are the pipes?”

“Hopefully starting to cool.”

“Good. They will.” She sat down, helped herself to a cookie, and looked ready to say several true things in a row, without an apology. “So, the water ran hot all night.”

“Yes.”

“And this morning you called a plumber.”

“The plumber said it wasn’t in his jurisdiction.”

“Smart man.” Gerri broke the cookie in half. “Here’s what you need to understand. Your magic isn’t random, and it isn’t broken. It’s emotional, which means it does exactly what emotions do when you manage them poorly. It builds pressure. And eventually it goes somewhere, whether you want it to or not.”

“I manage my emotions fine.”

The entire table was unanimous and silent.

“I manage them.” Less convincingly this time.

Gerri responded kindly, saying, “You suppress them, which is very skillful and worked well for most of your life, but it’s disastrous for this magic.” She sipped her coffee. “The main rule is straightforward: emotional honesty keeps the magic stable, while suppression causes instability. The more you try to hold back, the more pressure accumulates, leading to a powerful release when it finally breaks free.”

“Emotional honesty,” Althea repeated. “You’re telling me the solution to accidentally setting things on fire is to have feelings at them.”

“Not at them. With yourself. The magic responds to your internal state. If you acknowledge what you’re experiencing, the fire steadies. If you contain it⁠—”

“Things ignite.”

“Pipes run hot. Buildings notice. Espresso machines get ideas.” Gerri gestured toward the copper-topped counter, easy and familiar, as if she’d had this exact conversation in this exact spot before. “The town is generally emotionally responsive. Founding-line magic is simply more emphatic about it.”

She sat with that. Her most reliable coping mechanism. The one she’d spent years perfecting. The problem.

Her mind briefly, against her explicit wishes, drifted back to the boardwalk — how the fire calmed when Drayce Waryn moved close, how her magic pulled back and steadied in his orbit. She absolutely did not think about his jawline. She was not thinking about the sheriff of Spelltide Cove in a café full of women who could apparently track her emotional state through the plumbing infrastructure. She refused to. She was a professional.

The fireplace behind Garnet’s chair ticked up one notch.

Althea eyed it. It held her gaze, unbothered. She looked at her coffee cup instead.

“That is personally offensive.”

“Most people feel that way,” Gerri said confidently. She seemed completely at ease, clearly having expressed this idea before and genuinely believing it. “Good news: you don’t need to change who you are. I’ve met your personality, and it’s okay. Just stop pretending you’re not feeling anything and label it as professionalism.” She reached for her coffee. “That’s not professionalism, by the way. That’s just suppression in a blazer.”

The espresso machine made a sound.

The sound wasn’t like a typical espresso machine; it was a pressure valve pushed past its limit for years, finally bursting in a spectacular spray of steam and coffee grounds. The blast covered the copper counter, wall, chalkboard (which now read: SEE? EXACTLY LIKE THAT.), and the barista’s apron, which had already caught about sixty percent with a towel.