He snapped his fingers.
Gone.
The specific, absolute absence of a person from a room — not the door-closing kind, not the stepped-out kind. The kind where there had been a presence and now there was a room-shaped space where the presence had been.
She sat in the silence.
Her hand pressed flat against her knee.
Her probability calculations were running at a speed that they usually reserved for crisis scenarios.
From the stairs — footsteps.
"'I changed my mind,'" Celia's voice, already descending, "'I'm not going to fire him, I'll deal with him personally, I'll—'"
She came through the door.
The sitting room.
Avriana, on the sofa.
The prosthetic, beside the sofa where he'd set it.
The room, otherwise: empty.
Celia looked at the space.
Looked at her sister.
"'Where—'" she said.
"'He left,'" Avriana said.
Celia was very still for a moment.
