Calliope put the peppermint in her mouth and sucked on it contemplatively.

An unsurprising answer, to be sure, though despite divorce seeming to Calliope as equivalent a fate as death, this Mrs. Zabini seemed to be perfectly at ease with it, swanning about without regard for anything. Nor did she sound as though she were searching for a way to worm herself back into her former family’s life. (Calliope didn’t know why she was worried at that, Cosmo was hers now, he couldn’t go back even if he had wanted to - but she had been worried, all the same.) No, Mrs. Zabini seemed very pleasant about it all.

And Calliope felt more like herself after the peppermint, so she pushed down all the rest of her curiosity about how this woman spent her life, free and happy and alone, an straightened up again with another look of cool impatience fashioned on her face. “Well, of course it is,” she said crisply. “So perhaps you ought to find somewhere new to go.”

Resolving to say nothing else to her until they were out of here, Calliope stalked off to try the door again.

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