Chapter 10 Dean
Dean
Weather, like magic, can shift without warning.
A few hours ago, the sun warmed pumpkins on hay bales and kids licked cider popsicles in the park.
Now lightning splits the sky, illuminating the chaos below.
Palm fronds and Spanish moss whip through the air, while thunder growls warnings across Magnolia Cove’s darkened streets.
I raise my voice above the storm’s fury.
“Reinforce the residential wards first. Standard emergency protocols.”
Gerald nods, rainwater streaming from his hood. “There’s rotation in those clouds. We could be looking at a tornado.”
“Then we need the wards stronger than ever.” I scan the gathering darkness, marking each council member’s position. “Take your usual sections. I’ll handle the nexus points.”
“Grammie Rae was out earlier,” Sarah calls over a rising gust. “Trying to save the Hoopla decorations.”
Of course she was. I press fingers to my temples, fighting the urge to grind my teeth.
Keeping magical beings alive is like trying to wrangle toddlers with boundless curiosity but no sense of self-preservation.
“Get everyone secured in their homes. We’ll need to channel most of the wards’ magic into protecting residential areas tonight. We’ll deal with cleanup tomorrow.”
“But the Hoopla—”
“Has survived sixty-three years of storms.” I cut off Cordelia’s protest. “And we still have three weeks until it’s time. The wards are secure there. Even if we need to replace a few pumpkins, it’ll survive. This won’t be the year we miss.”
The group scatters into the tempest, leaving me to tackle the most complex ward lines. They pulse beneath the island’s surface like arteries of pure magic. And lately, they seem to resonate with a certain cellist’s music.
I shove that thought aside and push through the whipping winds.
Mom’s protection sweater helps, the magic she knitted into each stitch humming against my skin.
But something feels… off. The wards aren’t just straining against the storm.
They’re fluctuating, rippling in a pattern I’ve never felt before.
Following the disturbance takes me down debris-littered paths toward the music performance hall. Tree branches scrape against my jacket, leaving scratches despite the protective magic. But beneath the storm’s rage, I hear it—cello music, as rich and haunting as a midnight confession.
I wrench the door open against the wind. It pulls like it’s going to yank my shoulder out of its socket. Missy sits bathed in silver moonlight, hair braided over one shoulder, completely lost in whatever she’s playing. Her head snaps up at my entrance. “Dean?”
I haul the door closed behind me with a full-body yank. The lock clicks into place—and just like that, the storm's fury is muffled to a dull, distant roar. The sudden quiet is jarring.
“What are you doing out here in this storm?” The words come out harsher than intended, rough and crazed with a fear I’m not ready to examine.
She looks to the windows then color floods her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten. When I can’t sleep, I play and I didn’t want to wake Alex and Ethan. I didn’t realize…” She trails off, her elegant fingers sliding down Giuseppe’s strings.
“You could get hurt.” The raw honesty in my voice has me taking a step back.
Missy raises her face at that and her expression softens into something unreadable.
There’s a vulnerability in her gaze, a quiet understanding that hits me harder than I expect.
The tension between us lingers, thick and charged, but she doesn’t say a word.
A violent gust rattles the windows. Magic crackles through the air like static and the wards vibrate as they strain against nature’s fury. I wince. “Power’s flickering. I should check it.”
That’s when she speaks, and her voice comes out haunted, echoing against the high ceilings. “There’s no power in here right now, Dean.”
I freeze, my hand caught on the doorknob. She’s right—the studio lies in darkness save for the storm-wracked moonlight spilling through the windows. A rookie mistake born of exhaustion and distraction.
Her eyes find mine, questions glistening across them. “That’s not what you really do here. Check power, babysit musical teens, fill out forms? That’s not your actual job, is it?”
Thunder punctuates the loaded silence between us. For once, I answer with truth instead of deflection. “No, it isn’t.” My voice roughens. “Let me check something. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Outside, I pour everything I have into reinforcing the wards, ones that stretch halfway across the island.
Wind batters me as I brace against it. I can feel the pull of the magic, a deep, steady hum beneath the surface of everything.
Each breath is a steady push as I layer the wards one by one, like building a wall brick by brick.
The magic resists at first, pulling back and falling into step with the storm’s erratic rhythm.
But I force it, bending it to my will, snapping it into place and tightening the edges with brutal precision.
By the time I stagger back inside, the world spins at the edges of my vision.
Missy rises, her brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, but I stumble a step.
“Sit down before you fall. Can I get you anything?”
I drop into a chair with a groan, nearly toppling it. “Play for me?”
She blinks and looks like she’s about to protest, words hovering on her lips. Then her gaze softens and instead of arguing she moves toward her cello, finds her seat, and plays.
The first notes hum into the space, filling the emptiness and flooding my senses. I close my eyes and absorb it. The music, but also the way my magic calms beneath it, replenishes, finds a rhythm in time to hers.
I shouldn’t want to understand this connection. Shouldn’t let myself believe in whatever this is, or long for more.
But as the song swells around me, soothing the edges of my frayed thoughts and easing my physical exhaustion, it’s hard not to. Each note she plays pulls at something deep inside me, a thread I didn’t even know was there, unraveling with every breath.
“That’s beautiful,” I whisper when the final note fades. “What was it?”
“Fauré. Elegie.”
“I understand now why people pay hundreds of dollars to come see one of your shows.”
“Been looking up my ticket prices, have you?” The smile in her voice causes me to open my eyes.
Apparently tonight I’m wide open, letting everything slip without a filter.
What the hell am I doing? I’m not supposed to be this…
vulnerable. With anyone. Especially with her.
But the way she looks at me, the way her music wraps around everything inside me, it’s hard to keep that distance.
“Maybe I’ve considered coming to a show.
” The admission costs nothing now, here in the storm-dark quiet.
I realize it’s true. I’d like to see her dressed in some sparkling outfit that costs my weekly salary.
See her gleaming beneath stage lights, pouring her talent out for people who rise and clap like thunder for her.
I imagine the way she might stand there, confident and alive in the spotlight, and it feels like a lifetime away from this intimate moment between us.
“You play like it’s magic,” I whisper the words, barely audible, because I shouldn’t say them.
I shouldn’t—there’s no way to describe what I’m feeling, what I’m seeing.
But it’s the truth. What she’s doing now, here, in an ivory blouse under moonlight playing something that sounds like heaven itself opened up, could hardly seem more magical than any performance in front of an audience.
Maybe she’s an angel. Maybe I’m foolish enough to start believing in something after meeting her.
Or maybe tonight’s work has just sapped me more than I thought.
She turns her bow around in her hand then bats her eyes furiously but a tear slips free, anyway.
“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.
” She whispers too, like we’re exchanging secrets.
“But I haven’t finished the album I’m supposed to be doing with Jules.
I can’t even look at the compositions. I just…
” She falters, her fingers trembling. “Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how to play for myself. ”
I sit higher in my chair. “That didn’t sound like someone who’s forgotten how to play.”
She rests her chin against Giuseppe’s shoulder.
“That was just me playing for me,” she says softly.
“Not the shows, the lights, the applause. All that noise. Jules loves all of that—feeds off it, really. But maybe I don’t.
” She runs her fingers along the cello’s neck.
“Maybe I’ve spent too long chasing what others want to hear, and I’ve forgotten what it feels like to just play because I need to. ”
“And now? Here?”
I need her to say it. For some reason, I long to hear her admit that Magnolia Cove is different, that it’s changing something in her, that she wants to be here. That, maybe, someone as talented and beautiful and worldly as her might want somewhere—someone—who isn’t part of the noise and the frenzy.
Thunder rumbles as she looks up. “I don’t know what it is about this place,” she whispers, “but… I’ve never felt like I can breathe the way I do here. Like there’s space for me…. Just me. Not the performer. Not Margaret Sinclair. Just plain old Missy.”
Her words hang in the air, and for a moment, everything feels impossibly still. Even the storm outside seems to take a breath to hold space for it. Like the weight of her confession has shifted something—like the magic here wants her, just as much as I do, if not more.
I swallow and don’t break eye contact with her. “I’m honored to witness that.”