1. Freddie #3
Delphi’s eyes close, her thumb and forefinger moving straight to the bridge of her nose. She pinches it hard, letting out a breath through her teeth. It’s a move I’ve seen her pull at least a hundred times, usually right before she tries to gently manage me out of my own life choices.
“Working with music is a fine hobby, Winifred,” she says, dropping her hand to smooth down her side of the quilt. “It’s something to do in your downtime. It’s…cathartic. But it isn’t something that’s going to move you forward in your future.”
“Why not?” I ask defiantly, tossing a decorative pillow against the headboard.
“Maren weaves ward-magic straight into her lullabies at the daycares, and nobody’s knocking her door down about her future.
And what about Fern? She literally uses tonal resonance to clear stagnant energy out of the archives in the lower ward. Music is magic.”
“Those witches contribute to the community,” Delphi counters smoothly, stepping around the foot of the bed to adjust the throw blanket she just folded. “Which you also have a responsibility to do, I might add.”
She pauses, softening her voice until it feels like a heavy wool blanket being thrown over a fire.
“Everyone in this town knows you used to have a real talent. Singing, the piano, the guitar—you had a genuine connection to music, and I understand that, Winifred. But for whatever reason, you gave that up long ago.” She looks across the pristine bed at me, her gaze uncomfortably perceptive.
“So now we have to forge a new way forward. You can’t just stay stuck in your life.
At some point we have to simply choose to… grow up.”
An uncomfortable heat flares right at the tips of my ears, crawling down the sides of my neck in a flush I know I can’t hide. I hate when people bring up the before, talking about my past like it’s a corpse we’re all supposed to be quietly mourning.
“I like where I’m at,” I say, picking at a loose thread on the corner of the pillowcase, keeping my eyes glued to the seam. “I love what I do.”
Delphi’s eyebrows climb up toward her hairline. “That, my dear, is the problem. You’re telling me you’re genuinely content spending forty hours a week at a shack selling vinyl records and cassette tapes where the logo is a raccoon wearing a bandana and playing the piano? And smoking, nonetheless?”
I have to bite the shit out of the inside of my cheek to keep from snorting out loud.
Ringo. That raccoon’s name is Ringo, and I spent two hours sketching him on a grease-stained napkin at two in the morning whilst shoveling a carne asada burrito and a strawberry milkshake into my mouth, extremely high, whilst also apparently deciding he needed a cigarette.
It was a last-minute addition, but I think it makes him look even more majestic.
However, if I let it slip that I’m the artistic visionary behind Amberhollow’s most notorious delinquent mammal, Delphi will wring my neck with the fitted sheet that just shaved five years off my life to get onto this godforsaken bed in the first place.
A small, chiming voice suddenly fills the room, slicing right through the quiet space between Delphi and me. “I happen to be a fan of the raccoon.”
Before Delphi can even draw a breath to respond, a quick flash of iridescent light zips past my cheek.
Twyla loops around my shoulders in a dizzying little victory lap, her dragonfly-like wings buzzing like a tiny hummingbird before she perches right on my shoulder.
She plants her bare feet firmly, crossing her tiny arms triumphantly over her chest as if she just single-handedly saved my honor.
I smile down at pixie, biting back another laugh.
She’s ridiculous, but she’s gorgeous. Her bright yellow hair is spun out in a halo of soft, messy curls, topped with a delicate little crown woven from dried wildflowers.
She’s wearing a layered dress made of pink and purple flower petals that overlap like scales, cinched at her waist with a thin, flexible vine belt, and two microscopic dewdrop earrings swing against her jaw whenever she tilts her head.
Slung across her chest is her prized mushroom-leather satchel, which is seemingly bulging at a very suspicious angle.
Twyla is a menace of a kleptomaniac, and I’m ninety-nine percent sure she has something shiny in there right now that she definitely wasn’t supposed to have.
That bag defies every known law of spatial physics; I’ve watched her reach into that tiny pouch and pull out whole cinnamon sticks, mismatched brass buttons, salted pumpkin seeds, and those cellophane-wrapped butterscotch candies she sneaks out of the dish at the front desk.
She’s been my shadow since I was eight years old, ever since I found her caught in a tangle of old garden twine behind my mother’s shed, panicking and beating her wings raw.
I guess you could say I have an affinity for tiny, stuck things.
I’d carefully snip-snipped her free with a pair of kitchen scissors, and we’ve been friends ever since.
Most days she spends her time flitting around town or the Witch Wood causing mild localized mayhem or trying to find the hottest gossip, but every night, without fail, she ends up curled under a scrap of flannel in the tiny wooden bed I built for her on my bedroom windowsill.
Delphi shifts her weight at the foot of the mattress, pinching her eyes shut as if Twyla’s arrival has given her an instant migraine.
“Twyla,” Delphi says. “We are having a serious conversation about Freddie’s future here.”
“And I am offering a serious counter-opinion,” Twyla chirps, her voice sounding like a silver bell being struck with a pin.
She reaches into her satchel, pulls out a single roasted pumpkin seed, and snaps it in half with her teeth.
“That raccoon gives the shop character. And so what if Freddie wants to work at a record shack forever, ignore her great potential, and quietly rot in a comfortable rut? There’s nothing wrong with a small, unremarkable life, Delphi. Leave the girl alone.”
“Twyla!” I hiss, swatting my hand at her.
She just snickers, effortlessly dodging my hand with a flick of her wings while loudly chomping down on her pumpkin seed.
Delphi is midway through drawing another heavy breath—no doubt preparing to tell both of us that my future isn’t a laughing matter—when the front door swings violently open, slamming back against the wooden frame.
Stella Dashwood, my best friend, stands in the doorway, looking like she just swam across the lake fully clothed.
Her dark brown ringlet curls are plastered flat against her flushed cheeks, water running in steady streams down her olive skin and dripping off her jawline onto her collarbone.
Her chest is heaving as if she just sprinted six blocks in the dark.
Whoa. It’s storming? When the hell did that happen?
I flick a glance over my shoulder toward the window.
Outside, the night is pitch black, completely swallowed whole by ink-dark storm clouds.
Rain is pounding against the glass like thrown gravel, and a second later, a jagged flash of lightning cuts across the sky, followed by a floor-shaking rumble of thunder.
Between wrestling with that fitted sheet earlier and getting grilled by Delphi over my somewhat questionable life choices, I had completely blocked out the weather.
Twyla instantly zips behind my ear, her tiny hands clutching my hair as she peeks over my shoulder. She hates thunder.
Stella’s hazel eyes are wide, flicking frantically from Delphi over by the bed right back to me.
“Stells?” I say, my legs moving before my brain even catches up. I take two steps toward her. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
She wipes a wet hand across her forehead, pushing a clump of dripping curls off her face, but she doesn’t move any farther into the room. Water is already pooling around the soles of her shoes on the floor.
“It happened again,” Stella says breathlessly, her voice barely carrying over the sound of the rain hammering the roof. “Another person in Amberhollow is missing.”
Over by the armchair, Jett—who’d been stretched out flat on his side—is suddenly up on all four paws, his ears snapping straight forward.
Delphi’s eyes go wide as she walks around the bedframe, her face looking pale and hollow.
“Who, Stella?” Delphi demands. “Who is missing?”
Stella swallows hard, her eyes locking onto mine with a cold dread that makes the room feel ten degrees colder.
“Sabine Blackwell.”