Chapter 8 Dean
Dean
Notes scattered across my desk paint a fragmented picture of impossibility.
Yellowed pages from my father’s journals, official council records dating back centuries, even controversial texts I’ve pulled from Magnolia Cove’s restricted archives.
None of them explain what I witnessed Missy do to the ward lines though. What I keep witnessing.
My fingers trace the edge of another useless page while an autumn gale rattles the cottage windows.
I have only the single lamp on, the glow casting long shadows past a well-worn leather chair and my stacked bookshelves to the guitar sitting quietly against the wall, waiting.
I let my eyes linger on it for a moment before pushing the thought aside. There’s no time for distractions today.
Words blur together, meaningless academic observations about humans with magical sensitivity.
It’s primarily focused on how to obscure the perception of magic, how to perform memory magic when necessary to erase things that shouldn’t have been seen, and what to do when minds resist magical influence.
Not a single damn word written about music that calms wards, or about someone’s magic being influenced by a human’s presence, or honey-warm eyes that melt the firmest defenses.
I’ve even skimmed my sister’s recently published research—she’s one of the foremost researchers of living magical theory at Calthorne, the top magical university in our country.
If anyone would know of such discoveries, it’s her.
Reading her work feels like pressing against a door she’s closed, and the sting is knowing she continues to shape the field we once shared, while I stand on the outside by choice.
I rub my temples, a low hum of frustration rising in my chest.
The box sitting on the kitchen counter taunts me with its cheerful orange ribbon and familiar handwriting. Mom always loved autumn. She probably has pumpkins stacked on her porch steps and a wreath of dried leaves hanging on the door.
I’ve avoided the package all morning, like ignoring it might make it disappear. Might make the thing deep inside stop tugging at me. As if distance has ever made anything easier.
I rise and stretch then cross toward the box. Better to get it over with. At least Mom and Dad aren’t visiting this month. Her tears—always about how she wishes things could be fixed—are something I don’t have the fortitude for, even on my most focused days.
I untie the ribbon, letting it drop against the butcher block countertop. A tin sits on top and even before I get the lid fully off, the scent hits. Cinnamon—rich and slightly woody—blended with ginger’s bite and a faint touch of nutmeg, all wrapped together in sugar’s sweetness.
Mom’s autumn spice cookies.
Magic shimmers over them, preserving them. But Mom’s love preserves more. A memory comes to me unbidden.
Dean is taking the last cookie! Nell is maybe seven standing with fists propped on her hips.
She’s eaten more than me! I’m indignant. Ten and knowing I can do no wrong. Arrogant enough to truly believe that.
Mom, so much younger and less worried, only smiles and swipes her hand, slicing the cookie perfectly down the middle. There’s plenty to share. And we’ll make more later.
I put the lid back on the cookie tin and move it aside.
Beneath, there’s a sweater, black as night and just as soft.
Mom’s knitted protection charms into every stitch and they hum, as comforting as a whispered prayer.
Some mothers send care packages. Mine sends armor disguised as comfort in a color she doesn’t prefer seeing on me, but knows it’s all I’ll wear.
The letter is last, of course. Mom’s elegant script flows across the page, filled with ordinary words—book club opinions, council gossip, wedding preparations. No mention of my absence. No guilt. Just the weight of everything left unsaid pressed between carefully chosen phrases.
The roses for the ceremony are coming along beautifully, though I sometimes wish we had your preservation abilities. Your father always said you handled temperamental magic with such ease.
I fold the letter without reading farther. I can only take so much of this—the gentle pressure, the expectations wrapped in kindness.
My sister’s face rises unbidden to my mind, her expression the last time I saw her—nose flaring, lips thin, tears spilling from unblinking eyes to streak down reddened cheeks.
I can’t undo what happened, can’t make things right.
The clock chimes two, its sound echoing through my too-empty house.
Time for Emma’s lesson. Time to watch Missy coax impossible things from ordinary moments.
To stand alert for whatever she’s doing to make the magic…
unpredictable. To pretend like that’s what draws me in, not the curve of her lips or the tenor of her laughter.
I leave the cookie tin unopened and step out, not bothering to lock the door. Even if someone dared to break into my house, the wards I’ve set in place would keep them out. Except, perhaps, for Missy.
That thought hangs on me as I begin the walk beneath a cloud-filled sky.
Rachel’s studio seems alive with music, even in its silence, as warm light dances along the curves of instruments and glints off polished brass fixtures.
Today it holds something else—a current in the air that has nothing to do with the wards I maintain and everything to do with the way Missy’s fingers dance across Giuseppe’s strings.
I lean against the wall, keeping my lips pressed together, my gaze distant and bored even as I fight the urge to close my eyes and let her music wash over me.
Emma follows Missy’s lead, her own playing growing more confident with each measure.
The magic within the young witch rises and falls like tides against the shore—volatile but not dangerous. Not yet.
Rachel makes another obscene slurping sound with her iced coffee beside me. I shoot her a glare that would send most residents scurrying. She just grins and rattles her ice. She’s always been impertinent, and given her family’s long-standing roots in Magnolia Cove, I suppose she’s earned the right.
“Emma’s pretty good, huh?” she whispers.
“Mhmm.” Her musical abilities are excellent. Her magical ones even more so. But I’m not getting caught in Rachel’s web of probing questions.
She takes another long, obnoxious slurp. “You know,”—she whispers, as though pretending to preserve the quiet actually matters to her—“glowering at everyone isn’t actually required by the council bylaws last time I checked.”
“And when was that?”
She grins like a shark around her straw. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
A music teacher makes one viral video and saves a small music program and she thinks she’s queen of Magnolia Cove now.
The way Rachel always acts like she has the inside track on everything drives me crazy.
But the worst part is that she’s often right and if she isn’t, she makes her goals happen, anyway.
“I’m focusing on my job,” I say. “Not everyone gets distracted by performances.”
She leans back against the wall then crosses her ankles. “Oh, I don’t know. Seems like you’ve been a bit distracted to me.”
The sheer audacity. Maybe my guard has come down too much if a Cove resident feels bold enough to speak to her Head Warlock this way.
I’m about to say something to that effect when Missy looks up from where she sits in a pool of soft gray light and smiles like sunshine—eyes crinkling at the corners, joy radiating from every curve.
I can almost hear her voice in my head, teasing me about grumpy gnomes.
My lips betray me, curving up without permission. One small crack in carefully constructed walls, and somehow she floods right through.
Missy turns her attention back to Emma. They begin another song, and I pull a breath mint loose then pop it into my mouth.
Rachel’s voice drops to a true whisper, so quiet even I can barely hear it standing next to her. “Alex is pretty protective of her little sister.”
I swallow. “I know.”
I do. The last person Rachel needs to convince me that my growing feelings for Missy are a bad idea is me. I’m trying to think of a response. Maybe a blatant lie. There’s nothing there to worry about. Or a full truth. It’s none of your business. Before I can respond, words die in my throat.
The magic in the room has… shifted. No—transformed. The usual chaos of Emma’s powers, the wild energy that makes her such a challenging student, such a potentially powerful witch if she ever learns to control it, has suddenly… settled.
Rachel and I both turn toward the music.
Missy stands behind Emma, her hands resting lightly on the girl’s shoulders as she plays.
The piece—something by Tchaikovsky—fills the space with impossible richness, as if an entire orchestra plays through Emma's violin. But it’s not just the music that’s extraordinary.
Emma’s magic has found its rhythm, flowing smooth and controlled as spring water. No surges, no sparks, just pure harmonious power guided by Missy’s presence. A presence that should have no effect on magic at all.
Rachel’s iced coffee hangs forgotten halfway to her mouth. Even I can’t maintain my carefully neutral expression. In all my years of studying magic, all my research into humans with unusual sensitivity, I’ve seen nothing like this.
The piece ends. Missy breaks into applause and jumps onto her toes as if she needs to cheer from the highest position she can attain. And then she looks at me.
Her eyes glisten and search. Always searching. Something inside me shifts like tectonic plates realigning. The magic in my blood hums in response, growls with desires I’ve spent years suppressing. It coils tight, a deep primal urge that’s thrumming with questions I’m not ready to answer.
I shouldn’t want this. Shouldn’t want her. But in this moment, even with Rachel watching, with the evidence of impossible things singing between us all, I can’t remember why.
Midnight finds me at my desk, one of Mom’s cookies forgotten beside a stack of grimoires. A single bite taken and the spices still linger on my tongue like memories of simpler days. The ward-locked journal lies open before me, its pages filling with observations that read more like confessions.
Subject demonstrates unprecedented harmonization with magical frequencies…
I pause, press the nib of my pen against the paper until ink bleeds through. Clinical language can’t capture the way Missy’s presence transforms magic itself. How does one document something that defies documentation? Something that feels less like observation and more like witness to a miracle?
When in proximity to the subject, ward stability increases by approximately…
My writing stops again. Nothing about her effect on magic can be measured in percentages and parameters. Nothing about her effect on me fits in these careful notes.
The truth hovers between the lines I can’t bring myself to write: that maybe it’s not just her presence affecting the wards.
Maybe it’s the way my magic reaches for her like the tide drawn by the moon.
The way power surges beneath my skin when she smiles.
How everything feels more alive, more possible, when she’s near.
But that’s not something I can commit to paper. Not something I can let myself examine too closely. Because if my attraction to her influences the wards’ response…
I drop the pen. There’s no point in maintaining this pretense of academic observation. These notes are as false as Magnolia Cove’s non-magical facade we craft for visitors.
Who sees you exactly as you are?
Missy’s words from before echo in my head, golden as the dawn light that cascaded over her. The question lingers alongside the clove and cinnamon spices, demanding an answer I’m not ready to give.
The cookie crumbles beneath my fingers as I reach for it blindly. Outside, waves crash against the shore in a rhythm that reminds me of her playing. Of Emma’s magic finding its harmony under her touch. Of something that shouldn’t be possible becoming beautifully, terrifyingly real.
My father’s journals lie scattered across the desk, their margins filled with his precise handwriting. I used to find comfort in his methodical approach to magical theory. Now his certainties feel like accusations. Magic follows rules, Dean. Understanding those rules is the key to controlling them.
But what if that isn’t true?
Missy breaks every rule simply by existing. Seeing past wards is rare for humans, but not unheard of. Her sister has the same issue. Calming magic, though? Strengthening the wards? Making me feel…
My fingers crush together, and the cookie crumbles over my desk. I wipe the mess away. Pick the pen back up.
Further observation required to determine the extent of the subject's influence on magical energy patterns.
Maybe this is what finding faith feels like—this terrifying certainty that something exists beyond explanation. Beyond control. Beyond something a person can tame, understand, or capture in neatly organized notes.
I close the journal, its wards humming softly in the darkness. Tomorrow I’ll go back to being the council’s perfect protector, the son who stays away to ensure his sister’s happiness, the warlock who puts duty before desire.
But tonight, in the quiet hours between midnight and dawn, I let myself remember the way my magic danced when Missy smiled. How her music made impossible things feel inevitable. The weight of her in my arms and how her laughter echoed into me.
Maybe that’s the most dangerous magic of all.