{Vessa}
Kat had told her, flat out, that she wasn't coming.
"It's your dinner," she'd said, eyes still on her inscription work. "You set it up, you run it. I'll be a chapter behind on the festival ledgers and very glad to miss salt-cod night. Besides, do you know how awkward that would be? Go have fun."
So it was Kat's house, Kat's family, Kat's everything, and Kat herself was the one part of it that wasn't going to be there. Vessa had thought about that the whole walk over with Samara.
Samara was off the second they stepped through the gate.
She didn't say anything about it, but she didn't have to. Vessa just watched her go a little stiff in the shoulders, watched her eyes do a slow pass over the courtyard, the lamps, the door, like she was counting exits, and Vessa knew exactly what she was thinking.
