Athena bolted the back door and pressed her forehead to the wood. Six days left. She had counted them down all week, the way other people counted birthdays. The spell sat in her head like a loaded thing, mapped and waiting. She still felt bad about it, and that was the part she kept checking. Tonight she had not used it. Tonight she was still herself. She turned off the kitchen light and listened to the quiet house, and for one more night, that was enough. A heavy thud struck the front door. Athena ran through the hall, past the glow of the stained-glass windows, and yanked it open. A man slumped against the frame, soaked in blood, one hand clutching the carved wood. His eyes found hers. "I know where they hid it," he whispered. "I know why." Then he collapsed across her threshold, and the six days were gone. She knelt. His other hand still gripped a staff, brass gears ticking, blue orbs drifting around a glass eye at its head. The metal was warm. It knew her. It pulsed once against her palm, recognizing the shape of the spell she had hidden for two months. Athena's breath caught. She did not call her coven sister. She dragged him inside and shut the door. Blood traced his path back across the stone walkway, through the trimmed hedges of the front garden, past the small fountain, and out beyond the gate into the dark. A long red line, plain as a finger pointing at her house. Anyone could follow it. Athena stared at the trail, then at the man bleeding on her floor, then at the staff still humming softly in her hand. She stepped outside with a bucket. She started washing the stones. Six days were gone, and she had already chosen.