Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
The shop was called The Thornwood Apothecary, and it sat on a cobblestone side street like it had been there since the town was founded. Which, knowing Thornwood’s history, it probably had.
Fernwick was a large mixed-magic city, but Thornwood was only for magical beings. She used to walk these streets daily, but now she only returned when it was time to visit Greenbriar Manor, which was blessedly far away from the town center.
Being back in the town now made Ramona’s palms sweat.
She sat in the car in the parking spot for a full minute after turning off the engine, her hands gripping the steering wheel.
“We can leave if you want,” Zara said quietly from the passenger seat. “Find something online.” They hadn’t spoken much on the drive to Thornwood, instead opting to listen to a podcast dissecting the latest episode of Love Potion in a way that made Ramona’s brain go quiet for the drive.
“No.” Ramona loosened her grip. “No, we need the right supplies. I’m fine.”
Zara let her head fall back against the car headrest. “You’re not fine. Your heart rate just spiked.”
“That’s rude. Stop monitoring my heart rate.”
“I’m not monitoring it. I’m feeling it through the tether. There’s a difference.” Zara tilted her head, studying Ramona with that assessing gaze. “How long has it been since you’ve been around other witches? Apart from your roommates-who-are-definitely-not-your-coven?”
“Two years.” Ramona unbuckled her seat belt. “Give or take.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“How are you feeling about that?”
Ramona scoffed. “Are you a demon or a therapist?”
“A lot of overlap there,” Zara remarked. “Come on. You can talk to me. I am contractually bound to listen to you for at least forty-eight more hours.”
“Well, being here makes me feel like I’d rather drive into oncoming traffic.” Ramona forced a smile. “But here we are.”
Zara didn’t laugh. She just reached over and squeezed Ramona’s hand, brief and firm, before letting go. “I’m right here. The whole time. And I really can burn this place down this time. Your childhood home felt a little too sentimental to let go up in flames, but I did consider it briefly.”
Ramona smiled. “Did the bonfire after let you live that fantasy a little vicariously?”
Zara laughed, the sound quick and surprised. “Sure, Mortal.”
Ramona took a breath. “Okay. Let’s go.”
The shop was everything Mystic Moon Books wasn’t. Where Mystic Moon was warm and a little cluttered, The Thornwood Apothecary was meticulous. Intentional. Every surface gleamed. Nothing felt accidental.
Glass display cases lined the walls, each arranged with unnerving precision.
Polished obsidian pendulums rested on velvet trays.
Small, corked vials held powdered bone and crushed amethyst. Bundles of dried vervain and yarrow hung from brass hooks, labeled in tidy script.
Beeswax tapers infused with rosemary oil stood in regimented rows beside shallow dishes of black sand and iron filings.
Everything curated. Everything measured. Everything undeniably real.
The air smelled faintly of myrrh and damp stone, perhaps, or old earth. Something that made the back of Ramona’s neck prickle, not with nostalgia, but with recognition. Being here, surrounded by genuine magical ingredients and the low thrum of active enchantments, felt like pressing on a bruise.
“It’s beautiful,” Zara murmured, and she sounded genuinely awed. Her eyes were sweeping the shop with that cataloging intensity, but softer somehow. Interested rather than assessing. “The energy in here is remarkable.”
“It should be. It’s been magically active for centuries.” Ramona pulled out the supply list they’d compiled together. “All right. We need moonstone dust. Blessed salt. Hawthorn branches, fresh-cut. And yarrow flowers… I think I saw those near the front.”
Zara held up her fingers as if tallying the list. “I’ll take the left side, you take the right?” she suggested.
“Actually…” Ramona hesitated. “Stay close?”
Zara’s expression softened. “Of course.”
They moved through the shop together, Ramona consulting the list while Zara stayed a half step behind her. Close enough that Ramona could feel her warmth, could feel the steady pulse of the tether between them. Grounding.
Ramona found the moonstone dust first — three different grades, each labeled with its source location. She scanned the labels until she found what they needed: Convergence-sourced, Thornwood district, harvest date October.
“This one,” she said, picking up the jar. The dust inside shimmered faintly, catching the light in a way that was distinctly magical rather than cosmetic. The weight of it in her hand felt right. Familiar in a way that made her chest ache.
She remembered buying moonstone dust like this for research — testing its resonance against archived ritual transcripts in Thornwood’s warded stacks, staying until the wards shifted at two a.m. The old stones had vibrated faintly beneath her palms when she leaned over the reading tables, ink smudged along the side of her hand, silver grit clinging stubbornly to her cuffs.
The air had always smelled like parchment and cold mineral dust, settling into her lungs and making her feel ancient just breathing it in.
Back then, she’d felt precise. Necessary.
Like she had a place carved out just for her.
“Ramona.” Zara’s hand touched her lower back, light but present. “You okay?”
“Fine.” Ramona set the jar on the small basket Zara had picked up. “Let’s keep going.”
They found the blessed salt easily enough. The hawthorn branches were trickier — fresh-cut meant they had to ask the clerk.
The clerk was a tall woman with sharp cheekbones and severe hair pulled back into a tight knot.
She wore fitted charcoal slacks and a structured black vest stitched through with faint silver warding thread — the kind of reinforced, spell-resistant fabric meant for people who actually handled volatile ingredients and not just posed with crystals on social media.
A slim iron ring gleamed on one finger, more functional than decorative.
Her name tag read SEVERINE in small silver letters, and a gray cat wound between her legs as she stood near the counter.
“We need fresh-cut hawthorn branches,” Ramona said, approaching the counter.
Severine looked up from the inventory she was sorting. Her gaze swept over Ramona — taking in the thrift-store jacket, the worn boots, the slight nervous tension in her shoulders — and something shifted in her expression. Not quite disdain. Something worse. Dismissal.
“What kind of ritual?” Severine asked flatly.
“Severance. Binding severance, specifically.” Ramona kept her voice steady. “New moon timing. We need branches cut no more than forty-eight hours before.”
“Binding severance requires Thornwood certification.” Severine’s tone was clipped. Bored. “Do you have credentials?”
The question landed like a slap. Ramona felt her face heat, felt the familiar shrinking sensation — the one that hollowed her out from the inside. The one that reminded her exactly where she no longer belonged.
“I—” she started.
“She doesn’t need credentials to purchase ritual ingredients,” Zara said.
Ramona hadn’t heard her move.
One second Zara was behind her. The next she was at her side — shoulder to shoulder — and somehow taller. Not physically, not in any measurable way, but the space around her seemed to stretch to accommodate her. The overhead lights dimmed by a fraction, as if the air itself had thickened.
Her body seemed to darken as if in shadow. And her voice — it wasn’t loud. It wasn’t sharp. It was cold.
A deep, crushing cold of something that had never known sunlight. Ancient. Terrifying.
Ramona shivered involuntarily.
Severine looked at Zara for the first time. Really looked at her.
Something shifted in her posture. A minute recalibration. Instinct recognizing apex.
“I’m sorry,” Zara continued, each word placed with surgical precision. “Did you just demand credentials from a customer before agreeing to sell her standard ritual supplies? Supplies displayed openly on your shelves, with no certification requirement posted anywhere in this establishment?”
The glass in the nearest display case gave a soft, almost inaudible creak.
Severine opened her mouth. Closed it.
“Because from where I’m standing,” Zara said, leaning forward just slightly, “it appeared you invented a bureaucratic restriction to justify refusing service.”
The air dropped several degrees. Ramona could see her own breath.
“Or,” Zara added softly, shadows pooling at her feet like spilled ink, “did I misunderstand?” Her smile showed her fangs in full display.
“I— no. I apologize.” Severine straightened, her voice suddenly crisp and professional. “We do have fresh-cut hawthorn in the back. I’ll get those for you right now.”
She disappeared through a door behind the counter with considerably more speed than her previous casualness suggested was possible.
The moment she was gone, the temperature normalized. Zara’s posture relaxed by a fraction — back to casual, back to composed, back to the corporate demon who organized bookshop shelves and drank enough coffee to kill a human.
Ramona stared at her.
“What?” Zara asked, turning to face her with an expression of perfect innocence.
“What the hell was that?” Ramona dropped her voice to a whisper.
“What was what?”
“The—” Ramona gestured vaguely at the air around Zara. “The thing. The ice thing. The ‘I will destroy you’ energy.”
“I didn’t threaten anyone.”
“You didn’t have to. She looked like she was going to pass out.”
“Did she?” Zara tilted her head, the picture of feigned surprise. “I didn’t notice.”
“Zara.”
“Hmm?”
“Your demon was showing.”
“Was it?” Zara examined her own fingernails with apparent interest. “How careless of me.”