Chapter 14
Gwen was elbow-deep in pie crust when her phone buzzed.
Can we talk? I’m outside.
Forbes. Her heart did something complicated—half leap, half lurch. She’d felt him pulling away yesterday at the festival, some internal struggle she couldn’t name. Then he’d disappeared to Herrick House for dinner and she hadn’t heard from him since.
She wiped flour from her hands and went to the door.
He stood on the porch looking like he hadn’t slept, collar turned up against the October wind. But his eyes—his eyes were different. Clearer somehow. Like something had settled into place.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thank ye. This is actually my best ‘I just witnessed centuries of trauma’ face.”
She blinked. “Your what?”
“May I come in?”
She stepped aside and he entered, bringing cold air and the smell of woodsmoke with him. Her mother’s kitchen wrapped around them—herbs drying from the ceiling, the warmth of the oven, morning light filtering grey through the windows.
Forbes stood in the middle of it all, looking at her like she was the answer to a question he’d been asking for years.
“Alan showed me,” he said.
Three words. They landed in her chest like stones dropped in still water.
“Showed you,” she repeated carefully.
“Culloden. The ghost years. Soni. All of it.” He held up his hand, and she understood. “I know what he is. What he was. I know why ye couldnae tell me.”
Gwen’s knees went watery. She gripped the counter behind her.
“There’s something else,” Forbes said. His voice was careful now. “I asked him about you. About your magic.”
Her stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve watched ye try, Gwen. Multiple times. The candles. The protection charms.” He held her gaze. “I needed tae understand why it keeps failing. Whether—” He stopped.
“Whether I’m deluding myself,” she finished quietly. The old wound, still tender.
“Whether I was missing something.” His voice gentled. “Alan said your magic isn’t broken. It’s too big. Built for protection, not performance. He said ye fail when you’re trying tae prove something—tae me, tae your mother, tae yourself. But when someone ye love is in danger...”
“I’ll rise to meet it.” She’d heard variations of this her whole life. From her mother. From the coven. It had never felt true.
“He believes it,” Forbes said. “Completely. And he told me something else.”
“What?”
“That I needed tae stop watching you like a test tae be passed.” Forbes’s ears went faintly red. “He said ye can feel it—every time I’m in the room, ye know I’m waiting tae see if your magic is real. That kind of pressure is exactly what makes your power retreat.”
Gwen stared at him. No one had ever said that to her before. But the moment he named it, she recognized it as true.
“So I’m choosing,” Forbes continued. “Right now. Before I see any proof. I believe in you, Gwen. Not because I’ve seen your magic work—I haven’t. But because I’ve seen you. And that’s enough.”
She’d imagined this moment a hundred times. Forbes finding out. Forbes running. Forbes looking at her like she was a fraud, a fool, a woman who believed in fairy tales.
He wasn’t running.
“And?” Her voice came out smaller than she wanted.
“And I’m still here.” He took a step toward her. “I’m still here, Gwen.”
“You believe him? All of it?”
“I experienced it. His memories. His death.” Forbes’s voice was steady, but she could see the cost of that steadiness in the tension around his eyes. “I felt what he felt. Lived what he lived, if only for a moment.”
“That’s...” She didn’t have words. “Forbes, that’s not nothing. That changes people.”
“Aye, it does.” Another step closer. “But not the way you’re afraid of.”
“How do you know what I’m afraid of?”
“Because I know you.” He was close enough now that she could see the exhaustion in his face, the raw honesty underneath. “You’re afraid I’ll decide this is all too strange. Too much. That I’ll retreat into comfortable skepticism and pretend last night never happened.”
She couldn’t deny it. That was exactly what she’d been bracing for since she woke up.
“Will you?”
“No.” Simple. Certain. His mouth quirked. “Gwen, after last night, you are officially the least confusing part of my life.”
A knot loosened inside her—one she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying since yesterday. A startled laugh escaped her. “That’s... that might be the strangest compliment I’ve ever received.”
“Get used to strange. I think that’s the theme now.
” His hand found hers, flour dust and all.
“I spent eight years hiding in academic certainty because it was safer than feeling anything real. Then I came tae Salem and met a woman who made me want tae believe in impossible things. I’m done hiding.
I’m done pretending I doonae see what’s right in front of me. ”
Her throat was tight. “What do you see?”
“Someone who deserves a man braver than I’ve been.” His thumb traced across her knuckles. “And I’m trying tae be that man. If you’ll let me.”
Gwen’s eyes burned. She blinked hard, refusing to cry. She was a Bishop witch. She didn’t fall apart just because a Scottish historian said pretty things in her mother’s kitchen.
“You realize what you’re signing up for,” she said. “It’s not just Alan. It’s all of it. The coven. Samhain. My magic that’s too big for anything useful. My mother who will absolutely interrogate you about your intentions.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“Forbes—”
“I’m not asking for everything at once.” His voice gentled. “I’m asking for a chance. Tae learn. Tae understand. Tae be the person ye trust with the truth.”
She looked at him—this stubborn, brilliant, infuriating man who’d walked into her world and refused to leave. Who’d sat across from a former ghost and chosen to believe.
“You already are,” she said. “The person I trust. You have been for a while now.”
Relief crossed his face. Or recognition.
“Then trust me with this too,” he said. “Whatever Samhain brings. Whatever happens when the veil thins. I want to face it with ye.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“So tell me.”
She should. She should explain about the veil, about her role, about the magic that had been building in her for weeks with nowhere to go. About the fear that when the moment came, she’d fail everyone counting on her.
But right now, with Forbes’s hand warm around hers and his eyes fixed on her face, the words wouldn’t come.
Instead, she stepped forward and kissed him.
It wasn’t like the festival—tentative, questioning. This was deliberate. A choice. Her hands fisted in his jacket and she kissed him like she meant it, like she was staking a claim she’d been afraid to make.
Forbes made a rough sound of approval and pulled her closer, one hand at her waist, the other cradling the back of her head. He kissed her back with the same unhurried care he brought to everything—thorough, patient, like he had all the time in the world to learn the shape of her.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing harder than strictly necessary, Forbes pressed his forehead to hers.
“I should have done that days ago,” he murmured.
“You did. At Herrick House.”
“Not like that.” His fingers brushed her jaw. “Not knowing what I know now.”
“Well.” She was slightly breathless, but her wit was recovering. “All it took was ghost trauma and pie crust.”
He laughed—a real laugh that crinkled his eyes. “Worth it.”
The back door opened and Iris Bishop swept in carrying a basket of late-season herbs, stopping short when she saw them.
“Oh,” she said, her eyes darting between their flushed faces and intertwined hands. “Oh, I see.”
“Mom—”
“No, no, don’t mind me.” Iris set down her basket with elaborate casualness. “I’m just gathering rosemary. For protection. As one does.”
Gwen muttered under her breath, “She’s been waiting my entire life to say that at the exact wrong moment.”
Forbes’s lips twitched. “Should I be... protected right now?”
Iris fixed him with a look that was equal parts warmth and warning. “Mr. MacLeod. Lilith called me this morning.”
Gwen blinked. “She called you?”
“She thought Forbes should be the one to tell you.” Iris’s eyes softened. “She was right.”
Forbes nodded slowly. “I see.”
“And how are you finding your new understanding of the world?”
Forbes let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “I keep expecting to wake up. I haven’t yet.” He met her gaze squarely. “But I’m glad I know. Even if I’m still figuring out what tae do with it.”
An understanding passed between them—a test passed.
Iris nodded slowly. “Good. Then you’ll stay for lunch. We have things to discuss before Samhain.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Should I bring notes?” Forbes asked. “A bibliography?”
Iris’s stern expression cracked into what might have been approval. “I like him,” she said to Gwen. “He’s funny.”
“He has his moments.”
“Lunch in an hour. Forbes, you can help me bring in the sage.” She headed back toward the door, then paused. “And Forbes?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For staying.” Her voice was soft with relief. “Not everyone does.”
She disappeared into the garden, leaving them alone again.
Forbes turned to Gwen. “Did I just pass an audition?”
“You passed several.” Gwen reached up and brushed flour from his collar. “Fair warning—lunch will involve more questions. Probably about your intentions, your family history, and your feelings about root vegetables.”
“Root vegetables?”
“Mom has theories.” Gwen paused. “Just nod earnestly when she gets to parsnips.”
“There’s a parsnip section?”
“There’s always a parsnip section.”
He caught her hand, pressed a kiss to her flour-dusted knuckles. “I can handle parsnips. I can handle questions. I can handle your entire magical family, Gwen.”
“You sound very confident for a man who learned ghosts were real twelve hours ago.”
“I’m a fast learner.” His eyes crinkled. “And I’m motivated.”
She wanted to argue. To list all the reasons this was complicated, dangerous, possibly doomed. To protect herself from hoping too much.
But Forbes was looking at her like she was worth risking everything for.
And maybe—just maybe—she was tired of protecting herself from hope.
“Okay,” she said. “Stay for lunch. Meet my mother properly. Survive the parsnip interrogation.”
“And after?”
“After, we’ll figure out together.”
It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t a plan. But standing in her mother’s kitchen with Forbes’s hand in hers, it felt like enough.
For now, it was enough.
She needed to change before lunch. Showing up with flour in her hair wouldn’t help her case.
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” she told him. “Try not to let her corner you alone.”
“I’ll hide behind your father.”
“Smart man.”
The walk to her cottage took her past the old cemetery—the one tourists didn’t know about, tucked behind the Episcopal church.
Not the Charter Street burial ground she used for tours, but the smaller plot where Salem’s quieter dead rested.
Her grandmother was there. Her great-aunt.
Generations of Bishop women who’d carried the same weight Gwen was just learning to name.
She almost walked past without looking.
But movement caught her eye—a figure among the headstones, standing very still.
Jessica Platt.
Gwen stopped.
Without her camera, without her professional armor, Jessica looked... smaller. Younger. She stood before a headstone in the older section, her posture stripped of its usual aggressive angles. One hand rested on the granite, fingers spread like she was trying to absorb something through the stone.
Her expression—
Gwen had seen grief before. Had guided tourists through cemeteries while they wept for ancestors they’d never met. Had held her mother’s hand at her grandmother’s funeral while the coven sang the old songs.
This was different. This was private. Raw. The kind of sorrow you only showed when you thought no one was watching.
Jessica’s shoulders trembled. Just once. Then stilled.
Gwen knew she should leave. This wasn’t meant to be witnessed. Whatever complicated thing Jessica Platt was doing in Salem, this moment wasn’t part of it.
But she couldn’t help reading the headstone from where she stood.
Margaret Hartwell. Beloved grandmother. 1920–2005.
Hartwell.
The name snagged in Gwen’s memory. Her mother had mentioned a Hartwell family once—one of the old Salem names that had left suddenly, years ago. Something about a daughter who’d seen things she shouldn’t have. A family that couldn’t handle what Salem really was.
Jessica’s hand pressed harder against the stone. Then she straightened, composing herself with visible effort.
And turned.
Their eyes met.
For one unguarded second, Gwen saw something in Jessica’s face that looked almost like recognition. Like being caught at something she couldn’t explain.
Then the mask snapped back. The sharp angles returned. Jessica’s chin lifted, and she walked past Gwen without a word, without acknowledgment, as if the moment had never happened.
Gwen watched her go.
What are you really doing here, Jessica Platt?
The question followed her all the way home. Through changing her clothes, brushing flour from her hair, walking back to her mother’s house.
Jessica Platt, who’d arrived in Salem with cameras and questions and an agenda Gwen couldn’t name.
Jessica Platt, whose grandmother was buried in Salem’s quiet cemetery under a name that had fled this town decades ago.
What are you really looking for?
She didn’t have an answer. Not yet.
But she filed it away, the way she filed away all of Salem’s secrets, and went to face the parsnip interrogation.