At dinner, Beatrice announces, “Eleanor is having one of her salons tonight. I thought Gemma might like to go.”

Christopher nods. “That sounds like fun. How late do you think this one will run?” Beatrice shrugs.

“Perhaps eleven?” she says. “Gemma, what do you say?”

Gemma knows for a fact that she has no say in the matter whatsoever, and that whatever her father thinks this salon thing is, it probably isn’t. Unless it is. Unless he knows. “Sounds like fun,” she says, pushing the last of her spinach around the plate in hopes of making it look less like something she had to eat.

They leave once all the dinner plates are in the dishwasher. Gemma follows Beatrice out to the car, but they don’t get into it. Instead, Beatrice becomes Trixilite, her civilian glamour shedding like spent scales to reveal the dark plum silks and the sparkling jewels that come with rank, her high boots with their heels like knives and her heavy staff with its weighted end. “Let me get a look at you,” she says to Gemma.

Gemma flexes her wrists, feeling clumsy as her coat materializes around her like dark smoke, her jeans and winter boots drifting away to leave her strange, high-topped sandals behind, their curlicues twisting around her calves.

The club is heavy in her hand.

“Hmm,” says Trixilite. “Well, it will be interesting to see where this is headed.” She holds out her hand and nods towards Astrophyllite’s weapon, and she hands it over. Trixilite hefts it experimentally, gives it a measuring swing. “Spikes, I think,” she says, handing it back. “Come along.”

Astrophyllite follows her across rooftops for close to fifteen minutes, until they finally touch down in a backyard lit by elegant white christmas lights. Astrophyllite has never felt so many chaotic auras in one place before that wasn’t also a massive fight. “It’s okay to be out in the open like this?” she asks, alarmed, and Trixilite laughs.

“Of course, darling,” she says, which makes Astrophyllite feel warm in the pit of her stomach despite the night’s chill. “Of course.”

She dares ask the question that has been bothering her since dinner: “Is my father an officer?”

Trixilite laughs harder. “Oh, honey, no,” she says, pressing a hand to the center of Astrophyllite’s back. “He doesn’t have the potential. But he knows about you and I, and when Ethan and Gabby are old enough, I’ll have them initiated into the ranks.”

Astrophyllite nods and tries to imagine her younger siblings at fifteen, lieutenants of the Negaverse. The image comes alarmingly easily.

“It’s a family affair,” says Trixilite, and guides her towards a group assembled on the patio. “I want to introduce you to some friends of mine. Our host, General Nellanite,” she says, indicating a woman who is almost faelike in her petiteness, wearing a dress coat trimmed with pale pink seashells. A long, silver rapier glints at her side, the tip stained with what looks like blood. “Her second, General Karloffite,” a tall man, broad-shouldered and square-faced, wearing a side-fastening coat and black leather gloves. “Captain McCarthite,” a girl the same age as Astrophyllite, wearing a suit, her reddish hair chopped into a short pixie cut. “Captain Aveline,” a tall, large-nosed boy with heavy armor around his shoulders. “Lieutenant Bowerclase,” a young man, bearded, wearing a leather jacket with studs on the shoulders.

“Pleased to meet all of you,” says Astrophyllite, fighting to keep the tremble out of her voice. She knows what Trixilite is doing, she thinks. If she knows the Boston branch, then her refusal becomes personal. It becomes a snub.

“How are you enjoying Boston?” asks Nellanite. “Somewhere you might wish to spend more time, dear?”

I’m being courted, thinks Astrophyllite, terrified, and says, “Maybe.”

Maybe Boston wouldn’t be so bad. She’d never leave the path of Chaos, but no one here seems to question it. There are no senshi or knights to tempt disbelief. Maybe- but then, she remembers Kerberos, his face twisted with rage, the page lying dead at his feet. She has a Wonder somewhere, a little piece of the universe meant just for her, and if she never gets onto the right path then she will never find her way to it.

We are just stones right now, thinks Astrophyllite. Waiting to be carved.