3. Alaric
ALARIC
I’ve been smelling her for three days.
That reads differently written out. Let me clarify: for this entirely legal, above-board, impeccably tasteful assignment, I’ve spent the last seventy-two hours combing the slouching grid of Blackthorn Township and the first ring of the Forbidden Forest, cataloguing every whiff of human female for a client I barely remember, but whose check will buy six months of freedom—and the dubious luxury of my Cask of Amontillado-chic bachelor pad above the mortuary.
I don’t normally take missing person gigs.
Waste of my talents, not to mention my time.
There’s always a song and dance: the flyers, the heartbroken spouse, the best friend who calls every hour like stirring the pot with an ever-thinner spoon will somehow make the soup less tragic.
Still, the man who placed the order came by personal referral—my favorite kind of leech.
Leland Brooks.
Third-generation real estate, zero percent body fat, voice like a prize-winning carrot.
Thistlebrook money is a different animal from Blackthorn money—cleaner on the surface, worse underneath.
The kind of money whose charitable donations always seem to land in the same column as favors owed.
When Leland says jump, even the town’s ghosts ask how high before they resume haunting your rental listing.
Per his request, the mark is a woman named Birdie Longfellow, last known location: somewhere in or around Blackthorn, population three thousand and change, depending on whether you count the dead. I always do.
Twenty-three years old.
"Academically promising, emotionally average," according to her transcript.
Brown hair. A face I’d call pretty enough to stick in memory.
There’s a headshot attached, one of those passport-style abominations with the mottled blue background and a smile that knows the camera is a loaded gun.
I have not seen her.
But I know her smell.
It’s not wholly human, not after a few days here. Blackthorn does something to people. Everyone leaves with a little more woodland in their posture, a layer of lichen in their laugh. Even so, she’s been clever—doubly so if she’s got someone helping her with the right wards.
The first day, I thought I’d catch her at the general store. Everyone goes to the general store, even if it’s half taxidermy, half dubious candle boutique. By the second day, I realized she wasn’t shopping at all. No cash withdrawals. No Wi-Fi pings. Not even a suspicious post office run.
By the third day, I stopped counting on the predictable holes in the net.
She’d gone properly, professionally missing.
Which is how I find myself, pre-dawn, shoulder-deep in a bramble thicket outside the Button Cottage, backpack full of side-hustle gadgets, burning my last cigarette and contemplating the merits of simply walking up and knocking.
If I could cross the ward barrier, this could end tonight.
Unfortunately, I can see the cottage, but I can’t reach it. Every time I creep too close, the path bends beneath my feet and deposits me back beside the same smug fencepost.
There are worse plans.
There are also better ones, and the local police chief would far prefer I use those.
Cassian isn’t just the chief. He’s also my friend and, once, the subject of an ill-advised arm-wrestling bet that nearly cost us both the annual axe-apple diving contest and our dental work.
He does not like it when I draw attention.
He especially does not like it when I accuse random townsfolk of being international fugitives in disguise, which is why last month’s incident with Mrs. Blood’s "yoga instructor nephew" still stings.
So: subtle it is.
Which, in this case, means literal loitering at the edge of town, hoping to catch a glimpse—or, failing that, a fresh scent.
I lean against the split-rail fence and listen to the morning shake itself awake: the woodpecker on the church steeple, the grumpy crow in the parking lot, the unearthly expanse of silence that means the town’s witches are having a lie-in.
Then a flash of hot pink, so violently saturated it warps the visible spectrum, comes skipping down the gravel path toward Button Cottage, a paper bag swinging from one wrist and a cloud of citrus and static electricity radiating in every direction.
Dandy.
Dandelion Zephyr, the town’s second-most-unruly witch, is not a morning person. She is a person for all times and places except the hour before ten, when her brain is still locked in a time zone several planets to the left of here.
But the person in the Birdie file was, by all reports, a late riser too, so what’s Dandy doing out here at six fifty-eight carrying what looks and smells like garlic bread and bad intentions?
I’m about to peel myself away from the fencepost and take a closer look when two things happen simultaneously:
One, the sky opens up in a brief New England-style downpour.
Two, Dandy disappears.
I mean that literally.
One moment she’s there.
The next she isn’t, leaving behind nothing but a chalky afterimage where she stood.
I blink.
I blink again.
The world looks exactly the same, give or take a little more rain.
Even the birds don’t notice.
Well.
Witchery.
Not unusual.
The location is.
Button Cottage sits just inside the borders of the Forbidden Forest, and the last time I checked, its owner was a retired tax auditor with a nervous parrot collection—not a coven annex.
Besides, witchy disappearing acts that polished usually leave a little whiplash in the air. Ozone. Glitter. A faint magical hangover.
This one ripples, yes, but I can't trace a thing beyond the ward's edge.
My brain shrugs and files it under Curiosities, For Now.
Now I'm interested.
Dandy hasn't vanished.
She's crossed a threshold I can't.
The smell of garlic bread stops exactly where the ward begins.
Interesting.
I decide to follow.
I'm not proud of the way I trail her, but after six months of running prowl patrols for Cassian, I've turned not being seen into something resembling a science.
Nature helps.
Rain softens everything—footsteps, voices, the line between here and not-here.
I skirt the edge of Button Cottage and circle behind it, where a mossy stone wall marks the property line. There's a side gate barely hanging on, and beyond it a wedge of garden bursting with feral chives and something that might be thyme... if thyme ever learned to throw elbows.
No sign of Dandy.
But the smell of garlic bread is strong.
So is coffee.
Not just any coffee—the Midnight Espresso blend Cassian imports for the station.
Whatever's happening inside that cottage feels suspiciously cozy.
Which doesn't quite fit my mental image of Birdie Longfellow, Town Recluse Number One.
A flicker of movement catches my eye.
Curtain.
Voices.
I can't quite make out the words at first. One voice is higher, bright and excitable. The other is lower, softer, with a laugh that sounds delightfully out of practice.
Against every professional instinct, I edge closer until I'm crouched behind a rain barrel, close enough for the voices to separate into words.
"And then what?" Dandy asks, somehow managing to fill every square inch of the room with her voice.
"Then I told her it wasn't a real opossum," the other woman says—Birdie? "But she screamed anyway."
A beat.
"I felt bad."
Another beat.
"But only a little."
They both howl, Dandy's laughter a banshee wail and the stranger's a champagne fizz.
The warmth carries through the walls, and unexpectedly—against every expectation—I envy it.
Then—
Footsteps.
Not inside.
Outside.
Gravel crunches beneath polished shoes, measured and deliberate. I duck lower behind the rain barrel, and through the filigree of the rain I recognize a silhouette you don't forget.
Leland Brooks.
Suit so sharp it could cut from this distance.
Not a man who blends.
Not a man who waits.
My stomach sinks.
Leland Brooks should not be standing on that porch.
The cottage is warded.
Either someone invited him...
...or someone just taught me a very uncomfortable lesson about magic.
I'm too far away to hear the conversation, but I catch the flicker of Dandy's pink curls as she answers the door.
One hand lands on her hip.
The other keeps hold of the paper bag.
Even from here I can tell her eyebrows have achieved low orbit.
Leland says something.
Dandy fires something back.
Another volley.
Then the door opens wider.
She steps onto the porch.
Birdie Longfellow.
The first real look I've had since taking the case.
She's smaller than I expected.
Softer, too.
Brown hair twisted into a careless knot. Freckles scattered across her nose. Bare feet peeking from beneath the hem of an oversized cardigan that looks more borrowed than bought.
She isn't looking for me.
She's looking at Leland.
Whatever expression passes between them is gone before I can pin it down.
Recognition.
Wariness.
Maybe resignation.
Maybe all three.
Then her gaze drifts.
Past Leland.
Past Dandy.
Toward the tree line.
Toward me.
For one suspended heartbeat, the world narrows to that single look.
I'm not usually prone to mystical revelations, but the air seems to compress around us anyway.
She has the look of someone who's spent her whole life being overlooked...
...and learned to survive because of it.
No panic.
No relief.
No silent plea for rescue.
Just quiet assessment.
Like she's deciding whether I'm part of the problem.
Then she slips back inside.
The door closes with a soft click.
Somehow...
I feel dismissed.
I wait.
Five minutes.
Ten.
The rain settles into a patient drizzle, soaking through my coat while Leland remains on the porch, saying whatever men like Leland always think will solve things if they say them long enough.
Eventually he leaves.
No shouting.
No dramatic confrontation.
Just another expensive suit disappearing down a muddy path that clearly resents having to support Italian leather.
I stay where I am a few minutes longer, watching the cottage.
Nothing.
No movement behind the curtains.
No second trip outside.
No magical explosion.
If they're planning an exorcism, an intervention, or a flash mob...
They're keeping it indoors.
Which leaves me with exactly three facts.
Birdie Longfellow is here.
Someone has wrapped Button Cottage in a ward clever enough to keep out a vampire detective.
And Leland Brooks knows far more than he admitted when he hired me.
The first two make me curious.
The third makes me nervous.
That's usually when things get interesting.