Page 18 of Mane Brew

I’m sitting cross-legged in the middle of it, trying to make sense of a forty-year pattern that keeps slipping through my fingers like beer foam. Every time I think I understand one thread, another layer reveals itself underneath.

“The symbol appears in three separate incidents. Cordelia’s private communications. The site where Elder Mathilda was killed. And your brewery.”

“Three locations. What do they have in common?”

“Equidistance to the Registry.” He rearranges the photographs, his hands moving with practiced precision. “All three are in a quarter-mile radius of the ritual site.”

“You think they’re mapping the area.”

“I think they’re establishing access points. Marking locations that have been compromised, preparing for a larger operation.” He sets down the last photograph and straightens, scanning the floor map with the focused expression I’ve already learned to read—not finished, but settling into a conclusion. “We have enough to brief Caius and Elio. The pattern is documented.”

I start gathering pages, stacking them in ways that probably violate several of his filing principles. He doesn’t comment. Small mercy.

“I should get back.” I stand, brushing paper dust from my jeans. “Tanks to check on.”

He collects the remaining files with practiced efficiency, restoring order to the floor in a way that would have taken me an hour. Two minutes. The man is genuinely unsettling.

I’m at the door when he speaks.

“Zeph.”

I pause.

“Be careful. The Preservers know you’re involved now. Your brewery isn’t safe.”

“It’s never been safe. That’s half the appeal.”

“That’s not—” He stops. Takes a breath. “Just be careful.”

I leave without answering.

The walk back to my brewery takes forever. I keep stopping to examine the mist, the stars, the way the evening light plays across the cobblestones. Forty years of conspiracy laid out on someone’s office floor, and somehow the thing that keeps surfacing in my mind is the way he moved through the paper map—every piece placed with that quiet, deliberate attention he brings to everything.

My magic is fizzing when I get home, the copper tanks humming with confused energy that matches my own. The sign above the door reads “Open (Complicated)” and refuses to change no matter how many times I ask.

Complicated. Yeah. That about covers it.

I don’t brew anything. I don’t trust myself to focus.

Instead, I sit in my loft and stare at the ceiling and try to figure out when Rhodes Blackthorn became something other than an irritating bureaucrat.

Damn it.

The tanks hum sympathetically. At least someone understands my pain.

4

RHODES

Ifile the Duskfire report at eleven, which is late for me and early for the conversation currently happening in my head, unbidden, on a loop.

The way she moved through the paper map. Every piece placed with quiet, deliberate attention.

I wrote that. In an official incident log. I strike it out, replace it with subject demonstrated organizational competence exceeding initial assessment, and hate how much worse that sounds.

My lion has opinions about the rewrite. My lion has opinions about most things involving Zeph Grimwood lately, none of which belong in an incident log, all of which he expresses anyway, at volume, from somewhere just behind my ribs.

I catalog the evening properly. Contamination readings, timeline of events, list of witnesses. Professional. Thorough. The way everything in my life has been organized since long before I had a reason to second-guess the color-coding.