3. Anouk
THREE
ANOUK
Meredith Thornwood’s hands haven’t stopped shaking since we arrived.
The elderly witch clutches her teacup with white-knuckled determination, as if the delicate porcelain might anchor her to the present.
Her sitting room is cramped and over-warm, filled with the accumulated clutter of seventy-three years—embroidered cushions, dried flower arrangements, photographs of children and grandchildren covering every available surface.
“She was different in those last weeks,” Meredith says, her voice thin. “Not herself at all. Distracted. She kept forgetting what day it was, what she’d eaten for breakfast. Once she called me by her sister’s name—and her sister’s been dead for thirty years.”
I make a note in my leather journal. Beside me—close enough that I’m acutely aware of his presence without looking—Caius stands near the window. Watching. Listening. Taking in details I might miss while I focus on the conversation.
We’ve been doing this all morning. Four interviews so far. Four different people who saw Mathilda in her final days. Four variations on the same theme.
“Did she mention what was troubling her?” I keep my voice gentle. Meredith startles at loud noises—I noticed her flinch when the kettle whistled—and pushing too hard will only make her retreat into platitudes.
“Dreams.” Meredith sets down her cup with trembling fingers, the porcelain rattling against the saucer. “She kept talking about dreams. Said they felt more real than being awake. Said she was remembering things that happened before she was born, which makes no sense at all, does it?”
“What kind of things?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Old stories. Witches and shifters being different than they are now. Being… paired, somehow? Partners?” Meredith waves a vague hand. “I assumed it was just her mind wandering. You know how it is. When we get to a certain age, the magic starts to…”
“Deteriorate?”
“Wander.” Her smile is sad, apologetic. “My grandmother used to talk to people who weren’t there. Near the end. I thought Mathilda was just… wandering too.”
But Mathilda wasn’t wandering. The letter she left me proves that. She was terrified, and she was trying to tell anyone who would listen what she’d discovered.
No one listened.
“Did she mention anyone paying particular attention to her?” Caius’s voice cuts through the stuffy room, quiet but commanding. “Anyone who seemed… unusually interested in her condition?”
Meredith’s brow furrows. “Well, there was… no, I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Anything might help,” I prompt.
“Elder Ashworth stopped by several times that last week.” Meredith twists her teacup in her hands. “Mathilda mentioned it. Said Cordelia was being ‘too kind.’ That’s an odd way to describe kindness, isn’t it? Too kind. As if kindness could be suspicious.”
I don’t glance at Caius. I don’t need to. I can feel the slight shift in his posture, the tension that enters his frame at Cordelia’s name.
We thank Meredith for her time. She walks us to the door with trembling steps, pressing a packet of shortbread into my hands because “you’re too thin, Coven Leader, you need to eat more,” and I accept it with the grave courtesy the gesture deserves.
Outside, the mist hangs dense over The Hollow. I read it instinctively—an old skill, learned from my grandmother before she passed. This particular thickness means powerful magic stirring nearby. Or danger approaching.
These days, both seem equally likely.
“That’s the fourth person who assumed Mathilda was losing her mind.” I flip through my notes as we walk. The cobblestones are slick with morning dew, and I have to watch my footing in these impractical heels I insist on wearing because a coven leader should look the part.
We’d tried to find the apprentice first. Whoever she was, she’d left Mistvale two days after Mathilda’s funeral—no forwarding address, no word to the coven registry. Suspicious timing, duly noted, no thread yet to pull.
“Convenient.” Caius’s voice is pitched low, for my ears only. “If everyone assumes she was confused, no one examines what she was actually saying.”
“Someone wanted her dismissed. Someone who knew exactly what those dreams meant.”
“Cordelia visited her three times that final week. According to everyone we’ve spoken with.”
“To ‘check on her welfare.’” I tuck the journal back into my coat. “Or to assess how much she remembered. And to decide when she became too dangerous to let live.”
The words settle between us, heavy with implication.
We pass Moonpetal Bakery, where Sunny Clearwater waves enthusiastically through the window. Her toad familiar, Biscuit, perches on her shoulder with an expression of profound disapproval—whether for us or for existence in general, it’s impossible to tell.
“Coven Leader!” Sunny pokes her head out the door. “I’ve got fresh scones with mood-enhancing properties! You look like you could use some joy!”
“Perhaps later.” I manage a smile that probably doesn’t reach my eyes.
“I’ll save you the best ones! The cranberry-orange have been especially effective for melancholy!” She beams and ducks back inside. Biscuit continues to stare at us with amphibian judgment.
Caius’s arm brushes mine as we navigate around a cluster of pixies swarming a flower box. The contact is brief, accidental—and sends heat racing across my skin in ways that have nothing to do with magic.
I don’t pull away. I should. I don’t.
“You’re quiet,” he observes.
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re always thinking. This is different.”
The words come out anyway.
“She tried to tell people.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have. I’m the coven leader. It’s my job to know when trouble is brewing.” My voice sharpens more than I intend. “Instead, I was so busy managing council politics and pretending my magic wasn’t—”
I stop. Some confessions are too dangerous, even now.
Caius stops walking.
I take two more steps before I realize he’s no longer beside me. When I turn back, he’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite decipher—concern and frustration and warmth all tangled up.
“We should get back.” I turn away before my face can betray anything else. “Cordelia is stopping by the apothecary this afternoon. She sent word that she has ‘concerns’ about my inquiries.”
“Of course she does.” Caius falls into step beside me again, and I’m acutely aware of the warmth radiating from him, the controlled power in every movement. “I’ll make myself scarce while she’s there.”
“That’s probably wise. If she suspects we’re coordinating—”
“She’ll escalate.” His hand brushes my elbow as we turn a corner—a steadying touch, present then gone before I can react. “I’ll be at The Den. If you need me.”
If I need him.
The words settle into my chest and refuse to leave.
Elder Cordelia Ashworth arrives at precisely three o’clock.
“Coven Leader Darkwater.” Cordelia settles into the visitor’s chair across from my desk with the ease of someone who’s occupied it many times before. “Thank you for making time to see me. I know how busy you must be.”
“Of course, Elder Ashworth.” I fold my hands on the desk—a gesture that looks calm and feels like restraint. “Your message mentioned concerns.”
“Yes.” The word comes weighted with gentle disapproval. “About this… investigation you seem to be conducting into poor Mathilda’s passing.”
“An elder is dead. Looking into the circumstances seems appropriate.”
“An elderly witch passed away from magical exhaustion.” Cordelia’s hands fold in her lap, mirroring mine—a technique I recognize from years of council negotiations. “Tragic, certainly. But natural. These things happen as we age.”
“The healers said she had decades left. Her magic was stable. Strong.”
“Healers can be wrong.” A flicker passes behind Cordelia’s warm expression—brief, cold, quickly hidden. “And Mathilda had been… struggling, these past weeks. Confused. Distracted. Speaking of things that made no sense. Her mind was clearly failing. When that happens, the body often follows.”
“You visited her three times in her final week.”
The flicker again. Longer this time. “I was concerned about her welfare. Forty years of friendship tends to create such attachments.”
“What did you discuss during those visits?”
“Nothing of consequence.” Cordelia waves a dismissive hand, her rings catching the afternoon light.
“Old memories. Council gossip. She rambled about dreams—nonsense, mostly. Her sister. Her childhood. Things that supposedly happened before any coven records began.” A soft, pitying smile. “The wanderings of an aging mind.”
Things that happened before coven records began.
The same things Mathilda was researching obsessively in the archives. The same things she wrote about in her letter to me. The same things, apparently, that got her killed.
“I appreciate you sharing that.” I offer a practiced smile that reveals nothing. “Was there anything else?”
“Only this.” Cordelia leans forward, her expression shifting to what might pass for sincerity if I weren’t watching so carefully.
“Mathilda was old. Her death was sad but natural. Stirring up suspicion only damages the coven’s unity—and we’ve had quite enough disruption lately, haven’t we?
First Iskra. Then Valesh. The community is on edge.
The last thing we need is our coven leader suggesting that yet another elder was… ” She pauses delicately. “Murdered.”
The word hangs in the air.
“I haven’t used that word publicly.”
“But you’re thinking it. I can see it in your approach—the interviews, the questions, treating this like a crime rather than a tragedy.” Cordelia’s smile doesn’t waver, but steel lurks beneath it. “I’m simply suggesting that discretion might serve the coven better than… examination.”
“And I appreciate the suggestion.” My voice could frost glass. “I’ll certainly take it under advisement.”