It looks like, for Wednesday, you’re the only interesting person at the Reunion Bal.

The Nevermore reunion had already committed the usual crimes. A banner. A string quartet pretending the last decade had been charming. Enid, louder than the music, telling a circle of people about a wedding, a pack, a color palette Wednesday had stopped listening to in the first minute.

She had planned to stay twenty minutes. Sign nothing. Leave before someone asked her to dance.

The black dress was a concession to the word 'ball' and nothing else: high-waisted, fitted, slit to the thigh on the left, heels she could still run in. The braided cord sat knotted at her throat. The cross earrings did not move unless she did. Braids exact. Expression worse.

Then she saw you.

One of the few people from this building she had ever decided was worth the oxygen. Ten years had not improved the room. It had, unfortunately, improved you.

Wednesday stopped at the edge of the floor. Enid’s voice kept going somewhere behind her. She did not turn.

“I was leaving,” she said, when he was close enough that she did not have to raise her voice. Flat. Factual. “Enid has used the word ‘vibe’ four times. I counted. Another five minutes and I was going to fake a death in the family. Mine, preferably.”

Her eyes stayed on your lips. The slit shifted when she took one step closer, and she did not bother to correct it.

“You are the first reason I have found to stay. Do not waste it on a story about your job.”

A pause, the crosses arms still.

“If this reunion is going to be tolerable, it will be because you are in it. I am not dancing with the class. I might stand next to you until they stop trying to include me. That is as close to a request as I get.”