Harmony Café’s back storage room had always been strange, but lately, it felt watched. Jo noticed it when the tea canisters started rearranging themselves. Mira noticed it when her chamomile kept steeping itself in the shape of a spiral, and Clorvex noticed it when the mop hissed at him unprovoked.

“This mop knows things,” he muttered, nursing a latte and his pride.

But the real shift came when Mira found the envelope.

No stamp. No handwriting. Just sealed with a wax mark of a blooming tea flower wrapped in thorned vines.

Inside, a note to her, Mira, it’s time to return what you forgot. The leaves remember.

Attached was a pressed oolong leaf that was split down the middle.

Mira turned pale. “No. No, no, no. This blend is extinct.”

Jo raised an eyebrow. “Tea can go extinct?”

“This one can,” Mira whispered. “The Sisterhood of the Steep buried it for a reason.” She had never talked about her past. Not the real past. Not the one before Cedar Grove. Not the one before tea carts and infused miracles, but that night, in the dim glow of the café, she spilled it all. The Sisterhood was ancient. A circle of tea witches who brewed time, memory, and language itself. Mira had trained with them, sworn the leaf oath, and left. “They wanted silence,” she said. “Steeped so deep it erased you.”

Jo’s mug rattled on the counter.

“They tried to make me forget my voice,” Mira added. “But I whispered one word before I left.”

“What word?”

Mira smiled sadly. “No.”

The next morning, every tea blend in the café brewed itself into a message.

One word.

Over and over.

Return.

Clorvex sighed. “I hate ominous steeping.”

Jo stood, holding Mira’s hand. “They want you back?”

“They want to finish what they started.”

Jo nodded, grabbing the mop. “Then we better make tea on our terms.”