Elena set the glass down. She walked to the mirror, where the harsh bulbs illuminated every line on her face. She didn’t flinch. For decades, she had been told that a woman’s face was a map of her failures—every crease a lost battle with time. Now, she saw it as a landscape. Valleys of grief. Ridges of laughter. The deep canyons of a life fully lived.

“Good,” Elena said. “Maybe their widows will invest.”

At fifty-eight, Elena Vasquez was a survivor. She had survived the studio system’s casting couches in the 80s, the “aging out” panic of her thirties, the cruel memes about her facelift in her forties, and the glorious, unexpected renaissance of her fifties playing a ruthless matriarch in a prestige drama. Tonight, she’d opened in a one-woman show about Georgia O’Keeffe. The reviews would be out by morning.

A knock came. Not the timid tap of an assistant, but the solid rap of an equal.

“To the witches,” she whispered. “We’re not burning this time. We’re directing the fire.”

“It’s about two women. One a former ingenue, now a director. The other a legendary actress who’s been blacklisted for speaking out. They collaborate on a film about the last woman executed as a witch in Europe. It’s violent, sexual, and deeply, profoundly angry.”