Chapter 105: Homecoming Prep

POV: Carly

The gym looked nothing like a gym.

She stood in the entrance on Friday afternoon and turned in a slow circle and felt the specific satisfaction of seeing something she had been building in her head for months exist in the physical world exactly the way she had imagined it.

Black and gold draping from the ceiling in long deliberate swoops, not the flat droopy version from the first attempt, the proper version she had demonstrated three times until everyone understood the difference. Red uplighting along the base of the walls turning the whole room a deep warm crimson after dark. The eight foot tables finally correct, finally white, the black and gold tablecloths fitted and pressed. The banner above the stage in the right font this time, large enough to read from the back of the room, SINNERS AND SAINTS in clean gold lettering against black.

The stage itself she had saved for last, saving the best view of it for this moment. Black curtain backdrop. Two standing candelabras that were theatrical enough to commit to the theme without tipping into Halloween. The DJ setup already in place, wires run cleanly along the base of the stage the way she had specifically requested.

She turned one more time.

It was right.

It was exactly right.

"Okay." Sierra appeared beside her, clipboard in hand, and for the first time in longer than Carly could remember Sierra looked at her without the specific resentment that had been sitting in her expression since the cafeteria declaration. She looked at the room. Then at Carly. "It's actually stunning."

Carly looked at her. "Thank you."

"I mean it." Sierra said. She cleared her throat. "Also I wanted to say, for the record, that I was out of line. A few weeks ago. In the gym, when I said what I said."

Carly was quiet for a moment. "You were."

"Yeah." Sierra nodded. "I know. I just—" She stopped. Started again. "I've known you since sophomore year and I had this idea of who you were and what your life was supposed to look like, and when it didn't look like that anymore it made me uncomfortable. That's on me. Not on you."

Carly looked at the banner.

She thought about all the things she could say. The version where she was gracious and magnanimous and let it all go immediately. She had been performing that version for most of her life for people who expected it from her.

She thought about Whitney's door closed at the end of the corridor.

She thought about the last three days.

She looked at Sierra.

"I appreciate that." She said. Simply and genuinely. "I do. And I accept it." She paused. "But I need you to understand that my life isn't going to go back to looking the way it did. Who I'm with, what that means for my place in this coven — that's not changing. So if the apology comes with conditions about what I'm allowed to do or who I'm allowed to be with, I need to know that now."

Sierra blinked. "No conditions." She said. "That's not what this is."

Carly looked at her steadily.

"I'm not asking you to be happy about it." Carly said. "I'm asking you to respect it. That's all."

Sierra was quiet for a moment.

"Okay." She said. "I can do that."

Carly nodded.

They stood in the gym together looking at the room for a moment.

"The candelabras were my idea." Sierra offered.

Carly turned to look at them. They were good. She hadn't known they were Sierra's. "They're perfect." She said. And meant it.

Sierra looked slightly pleased, the specific pleased of someone who had been waiting to be acknowledged for something and had stopped expecting it.

"The corsages arrived this morning." Sierra said, shifting back into business mode. "The vendor got the colors right this time, I checked every single one. Tables are set. DJ confirmed for seven. Catering confirmed for six thirty." She looked at the clipboard. "I think we're actually ahead of schedule for once in the history of this committee."

"Don't say that." Carly said immediately. "You'll jinx it."

Sierra laughed.

It was the first genuine laugh they had shared in months and it landed in the space between them like something small and significant.

"Okay." Carly said, pulling out her own checklist. "Walk me through the lighting one more time."

POV: Reba

She was supposed to be at practice.

Practice was in twenty minutes and she was standing in the gym doorway instead, watching her brother's girlfriend oversee the finishing touches of what was genuinely one of the most impressive event setups she had ever seen, and thinking about things she probably should not be thinking about right now.

She had watched Carly for months.

On the squad, in the corridors, at faction meetings and after school sessions and all the peripheral moments that accumulated when you shared a world with someone and were paying attention. She had been paying attention longer than anyone else, almost from the beginning, before Niko had even acknowledged what was happening himself.

She had seen it before he had.

That was the thing about being the observant one in a loud family. You learned to read what people weren't saying and she had read Niko's not-saying for long enough to know that what he had with Carly was something different. Something she had stopped waiting to see from him after the first hundred years.

She had also seen what happened at the banquet.

She had not been in the room when Isabel appeared. She had been with the squad across the building when the energy shifted, when Carly had come back through the corridor with the specific expression of someone managing something devastating. Reba had put it together quickly.

She had not said anything to Niko since.

She knew he'd handled it badly. She knew because Carly had been walking the campus for three days with the carefully maintained composure of someone carrying something they didn't want visible, and Niko had been walking it with the specific haunted quality of someone waiting for a sentence to be delivered.

She also knew he'd told Carly the truth in the courtyard.

She didn't know how she knew. She just did. The same way she knew most things about her brother without being told. Because after a hundred years of watching him keep everyone at arm's length, the person who had finally gotten through deserved to know who he actually was.

She hoped it had been enough.

She would not tell him she hoped that.

She looked at the gym one more time. At Carly walking the length of the table arrangement with her clipboard, correcting a fold in the tablecloth, straightening a centerpiece with the specific precision of someone who cared very much about getting things exactly right.

She turned and headed to the locker room to change.

Tonight was going to be something.

She could feel it.