The plan had three parts.
Thomas laid them out on the kitchen table that night with the maps and William's paper and the particular economy of a man who had been building toward this specific conversation for weeks and had no interest in using more words than it required.
"Spain," he said. "The majority of us. Miralba. The witch hunters." He looked at the room. "We go in knowing what Victor designed this for — the blood collection. We go in knowing Sebastian is the instrument of that. We build around both." He paused. "The hunters are not the primary threat. Sebastian is. Everything we do in Miralba is structured around making sure he does not get what Victor sent him there to get."
"Seven chosen ones," Carlyle said.
"Seven chosen ones," Thomas confirmed. "Victor needs the blood in sequence at the right point in the ritual. If Sebastian can't collect it, the ritual can't complete. The hunters going down is secondary. Necessary, but secondary."
"Who goes for the book," Dean said.
"Smaller group," Thomas said. "Victor's building while we have his attention in Spain. Fast, precise, in and out before he understands what's happening." He looked at Ashton. "You know the building."
"Well enough," Ashton said.
"Who else."
"Me," said Tierney.
The room looked at her.
She looked back at the room with the particular expression she had when she had already decided something and was announcing it rather than proposing it. The expression of a woman who had been running from the Glass line for sixteen years and had arrived at the end of the running.
"The book is the source," Tierney said. "Without it everything collapses. I'm not sending anyone after it without being there myself."
Thomas looked at her.
"Tierney," he said.
"Thomas," she said.
A pause the length of a very old conversation.
"Fine," he said.
"Thank you," she said.
"I'm coming too," Kris said from the window.
Everyone looked at him.
He looked back at the room with the amber eyes and the particular expression of someone who has made a decision that was made some time ago and is now simply informing the room of it.
"The protections on the building are old magic," he said. "Older than anything you have experience with. I do." He looked at Ashton. "You'll need me to get through them without triggering whatever Victor has built around the vault." He paused. "KaSandra is going to Spain. Someone who knows the old magic goes with the book team. That's me."
The room absorbed this.
Thomas looked at KaSandra.
KaSandra looked at Kris with the golden eyes and the expression that was not quite what it would have been three weeks ago, before the small room at the end of the hall and the workshop and twenty-three years ending over a worktable covered in the tools of their shared craft.
"He's right," she said.
"I know," Thomas said. He looked at Kris. "You're on the book team."
Kris accepted this with a nod that said he had expected no other outcome.
"The third part," Katherine said.
Thomas looked at her.
"Sebastian," Katherine said. "You said we build around him. But we also need to account for what happens when KaSandra walks into Miralba and he sees her. You said that changes everything — Victor's plan runs on Sebastian staying focused on the collection. If he loses that focus —"
"Then Victor loses his instrument at the critical moment," KaSandra said. She was looking at the table. "Yes. My presence in Miralba is both the advantage and the variable. Sebastian will be — " She paused. "Unpredictable. When he sees me. What he does next will not follow Victor's script."
"Can we count on that," Dean said.
"You can count on it changing everything," KaSandra said. "Whether the change is useful is what we cannot predict."
The kitchen held this.
"We plan for what we know," Thomas said. "Sebastian loses focus, Victor loses the collection instrument, the ritual cannot complete. That's the outcome we want. How it happens in practice —" He looked at Katherine. "We read it when we're in it."
Katherine nodded.
She looked at the group — at the seventeen of them assembled in the kitchen with the maps between them and Spain getting closer with every hour and the shape of what came next as clear as it was going to be before the doing of it made it clearer.
"When do we leave," Niall asked.
"We're already late," Dean said.
"Tomorrow morning," Thomas said. "First light."