Page 110 of No Charm Done

Something about the image nagged at Luna, though. Something minor, something everyone else had overlooked. Something the color of an expensive glass of wine. She reached out and took her sister’s phone to see for herself. With finger and thumb, she expanded the image. There, hanging lifelessly amid the twisted, smoldering wreck.

Shaw’s tie.

Which meant⁠—

“No,” Luna heard herself say. The word came out broken. “No, he can’t be⁠—”

The phone slipped from her fingers. Her legs stopped working. Suddenly she was on her knees on the sidewalk, not remembering how she got there.

Shaw was dead.

Delilah made a sound like she’d been hit. “Oh my gods . . . He called Luna. He called, and I didn’t tell you because I thought . . . He must’ve been trying to warn us. Oh, Luna . . .” She dropped to the ground and wrapped her arms around her sister. “My sweet sister, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, honey.” Mama’s arms were around her now, and Scarlett’s, and Delilah’s, all three of them trying to hold Luna together while she came apart.

Around them, Vex’s meltdown continued—lawyers, investors, the press—but Luna couldn’t hear it anymore. There was only the image of that tie, burned almost beyond recognition. The crushing weight of what it meant.

“Oh, ladies! Yoo hoo! Excuse me, ladies!”

The voice came from across the green—bright, cheerful, deeply inappropriate given the circumstances.

Chuck hadn’t moved from his front-row seat, but he was waving one hand like a too-eager student answering an easy question. “Oh, ladies? Ladies?”

Mama’s head snapped up. “Not now!”

“Mind your own business,” Delilah said sharply, her arms tightening around Luna.

“My darlings, don’t you know? Everything that ever was and will be is quite literally my business.”

Kelly stood slowly and took three deliberate steps toward the green. Her voice was perfectly level, perfectly controlled, and absolutely done with nonsense.

“I can’t help but notice you’ve just suffered a greater financial loss than anyone else involved. Possibly greater than all the others combined. And yet you don’t seem troubled at all. Which makes me wonder: who are you, exactly?”

Her question hung in the air unanswered while Vex’s world continued unraveling. Phone calls, shouting, the death rattle of a tech empire. But the witches weren’t watching Vex anymore. Their gimlet eyes were all locked on Chuck the Investor.

He leaned back in his folding chair, that pleasant smile never wavering. “Come now, Kelly Melrose,” he said softly. “You must know by now.”

She stared, her jaw tightening.

Scarlett had gone very pale. “Mama, what’s going on?”

“I think I do.” Kelly’s gaze didn’t shift from the mysterious stranger. “You’re a friend of Louise Demain.”

“Precisely. And as you well know, time witches don’t tend to have a surfeit of friends. Which means, I must be . . .”

Delilah looked between them, confused. “What the hell is he talking about?”

“He’s not human,” Belinda whispered. “Oh dear, what is he?”

Even in the infinite depths of her grief, Luna couldn’t help but understand. She’d met Chuck the Investor too many times before. He was a cranky old woman at a Christmas house. He was a butter cow. He was Dr. Frank-N-Furter. “He’s Myrna.”

Chuck spread his hands in a gesture of both welcome and mockery. “Nice to see you again. Well. This has been absolutely delightful, but I’m afraid consequences must be paid.”

Luna barely registered his words through her grief, but she saw movement in her peripheral vision. Chuck was walking toward the gazebo where Vex stood, still shorter, still devastated, surrounded by his panicking assistants.

“What?” Vex’s voice cracked. “No, I’m already ruined! Do you know what’s going to happen to me? Lawsuits, criminal charges—they crucified Elizabeth Holmes for less than this⁠—”

“Yes, yes. Earthly punishments.” Chuck waved a dismissive hand. “So tedious. So temporary. What you need is something more permanent.”