Elena finally took a sip. The bubbles stung her throat, a pleasant fire. “Who wrote it?”
Margot laughed, a low, knowing sound. “Speaking of appetites, I have a script. No one will want to make it. Which means we have to.”
“A twenty-four-year-old boy,” Margot said dryly. “But he has the sense to be terrified of us. I’ll fix his dialogue. The question is: will you act in it, or direct it?”
“To the witches,” she whispered. “We’re not burning this time. We’re directing the fire.”
It wasn’t fantasy. It was a business plan.
Elena set the glass down. She walked to the mirror, where the harsh bulbs illuminated every line on her face. She didn’t flinch. For decades, she had been told that a woman’s face was a map of her failures—every crease a lost battle with time. Now, she saw it as a landscape. Valleys of grief. Ridges of laughter. The deep canyons of a life fully lived.
“Good,” Elena said. “Maybe their widows will invest.”