Chapter 4
Honey
Honey expected life outside the city to be different, but as the scenery shifted from steel and skyscrapers to rolling hills and wildflower fields, the sheer greenness still took her by surprise.
Clusters of trees lined winding roads, their leaves dense and just starting to blush with hints of early autumn.
Here and there, a white church steeple rose above the greenery, and a little red barn peeked out from behind a stone wall.
On impulse, Honey pressed the button to roll down her window, and a rush of crisp, sun-warmed air spilled into the cab, clean and earthy like it had never once met smog. She breathed it in deeply, and her taxi driver, Lou, promptly sneezed.
“You mind closing that?” he asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. He had a thick Bronx accent and wore mirrored sunglasses despite the overcast sky. “All that nature and shit has my allergies acting up.”
“Of course.”
Lou glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Whaddya doing all the way out here, anyway?”
“Oh, you know. Work.”
He raised a skeptical brow but didn’t push. “Well, hope where you’re staying, they got air conditioning. A buddy of mine did a pickup out here in July. Nearly melted to the seat.”
She made a polite noise of agreement, just as the hair on the back of her neck rose.
She glanced out the window in time to see the lodgings she had reserved.
It was a blue building with a purple door and a carved wooden sign that read The Inn Between.
It was a newly renovated inn just outside Brim’s Hollow.
Of course, it would have been more convenient to stay in town, but never the matter. Honey would make it work.
Shaking off the strange feeling, she lowered her eyes to her lap.
Her folder sat open, pages neatly clipped and organized with color-coded tabs.
She smoothed one hand over the top sheet, a printout of the last wishing well audit nearly two decades prior, then tapped her pen against a corner as if the rhythm could summon focus.
She traced her finger down the checklist she’d made the night before.
Assess the well’s physical integrity.
Obtain layout of the well’s magical source.
Review each coin.
Grant any wishes still within the statute of limitations.
The next time she looked up, they were pulling into Brim's Hollow. The houses began to gather closer together. Each different from the last—some squat and square with tidy shutters, others tall and narrow like they were trying to peek over their neighbors’ shoulders.
The streets twisted in ways that made absolutely no sense to Honey’s city-tuned brain.
They turned down a third curved road, and she wondered why on earth anyone would design a town, even one as small as this, without using a grid system.
Lou glanced in the rearview mirror. “Not much farther now.”
Honey nodded as they turned into Brimrose Lane, and her gaze fixed on the passing storefronts.
The buildings pressed shoulder to shoulder, each one painted a slightly different shade of cheerful—sage green, butter yellow, robin’s egg blue.
A store called The Kettle had lace curtains puffing in the breeze and a chalkboard out front that boasted Brim's Hollow’s best cupcakes.
Across the street, Gribble’s Grub sat like a relic from another time, all gleaming chrome, cozied up beneath a red-and-white striped awning.
A hand-painted sign in the window declared: Brim’s Hollow’s only cupcakes worth trying.
There were hardly any cars parked along the curb, just a single rusty pickup and a faded green cruiser bike resting against a lamppost. A woman and her young son stepped out of a store simply labeled Market in big block letters, each carrying a single brown paper bag in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other.
Lou idled at the intersection, hand hovering over the horn as a family of ducks waddled across the street.
“You see this shit?” he asked Honey, voice more awed than annoyed.
“We can wait,” she assured him as he lowered his hand off the horn.
Honey watched the woman and her son pause to chat with the mailman—a wiry man with a white beard and an old canvas bag slung over one shoulder.
They moved on, only to be caught a few feet later by a neighbor with a baby on her hip, and then again by a woman with a clipboard.
As the mom spoke to the clipboard woman, the boy lingered in front of Gribble’s, licking a towering swirl of soft-serve and glaring across the street at The Kettle like he was defending family honor.
Honey watched it all, riveted in the back seat.
In her world, people didn’t pause three times in one block just to chat. Sidewalks in the city were for moving, not loitering.
Soon, the town gave way to open land, the edges of suburbia softening into hills and fences and wide blue sky. Houses spaced themselves out again. A laundry line fluttered in the breeze. The pavement turned to gravel and crunched beneath the tires.
Finally, the cab curved up a winding drive, past a crooked wooden sign and a gate left open.
“This is you?” Lou asked.
“I believe so,” Honey said, looking over at the farmhouse and the trees stretching out behind it with a sense of foreboding. She got out of the car.
She could admit it was beautiful, but in a way that made her skin crawl. The air smelled too clean. The sky was too big.
And the quiet.
In the city, there was always noise: the low thrum of traffic, horns blaring, people shouting to one another across sidewalks, the rhythmic beat of subway cars underground. Her hand shook slightly as she pulled crisp bills from her pocketbook for Lou’s tip.
She took a slow, measured breath.
It wasn’t completely silent. There were birds calling from the trees and some kind of insect clicking invisibly in the grass. In the distance, an animal let out a low groan, and Honey instinctively flinched.
Lou took the cash from her outstretched hand.
In the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses, she saw a warped version of herself: hair frizzing at the temples from the humid air, blazer clinging awkwardly to one side.
She looked like a woman who’d just stepped off a spaceship and realized she’d landed on the wrong planet.
“Good luck, lady,” Lou said. It wasn’t sarcastic. It was deadly sincere, which somehow made it worse.
Still, she squared her shoulders and reached for the handle of her suitcase. Lou whipped his car around and peeled off like he couldn’t wait to get back to the city.
Before the dust even settled, a chicken strutted by. It paused no more than six feet away.
It was plump, rust-colored, and mean-looking, with beady amber eyes that locked directly onto hers like it was assessing a threat. Or a snack.
Honey took a few steps backward.
The chicken fluffed its feathers with a dramatic shake, and tilted its head in that unnerving bird way, staring straight up at her like it could see into her soul and didn’t much care for what it found.
She wasn’t afraid of animals, exactly. It was simply preparedness that had her yanking her brand-new hardshell suitcase closer, clutching it against her thighs like a shield should the chicken decide to launch a sudden attack.
It was an evolutionary instinct that made her take a step backwards. Certainly not fear.
The chicken blinked one eye. Then the other. Then it took a step toward her. Honey gasped, backing up half a pace before remembering she was a grown woman with a college degree and a job to do.
“Shoo,” she said, with what she hoped was authority.
The chicken did not shoo. In fact, it took another step forward with its chest puffed.
She stomped her foot.
“Shoo!” she said again, louder this time, waving one hand at it.
The chicken blinked.
And stayed put. Apparently, chickens in this town had the same brand of shameless bravado as subway rats.
A woman appeared from the side of the house, adjusting the bandana covering her silver curls.
“Excuse me,” Honey called out. “Could you help me?”
The woman clucked and trudged over to scoop the chicken under her arm. She took Honey in from head to toe and frowned. “You lost, sweetheart?”
Honey glanced down at her outfit, feeling very out of place in her sharp blazer and pants. When she’d gotten into Lou’s cab, she’d applauded herself for swapping out her signature sensible heels for Mary Janes. Not even out of the city yet and she was already proving to be flexible, she’d thought.
“I have an appointment with a Mr. Ethan Hale. Is he your…” She tried to work out the possible relation between this woman and the man who had texted her so rudely.
“Neighbor. Marlene Glasgow. I live just over that way.” She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “He should be inside getting the girls off to school.”
“Thank you.” Honey gave a small smile and a dip of her chin. “And thank you for your help with the…” She stared at the creature still tucked under Marlene’s arm. “Chicken situation.” Straightening her blazer, she made her way to the front porch.
“Hold on a sec, hun,” Marlene called out. “A bit of advice, if you’re who I think you are.”
Honey paused. “And who might that be?”
“A Fed.”
“I’m with the Compliance Bureau.”
“Same thing in his book.”
“I’m not here to investigate anything. Just audit the well.” She hesitated, knowing she shouldn’t ask but not able to resist. “But why would the federal authorities bother him?”
Marlene leaned in and lowered her voice. “Let’s just say folks with his kind of past don’t love surprise visits from people with badges. Compliance or otherwise.”
“I wasn’t aware of any…past.”
“Oh c’mon. Don’t tell me it’s not in that file of yours.”
“I have no idea what you’re referring to. And even if I did, it would be highly improper for me to discuss personal histories with someone who is not directly involved. Per regulation 14.2-3, subsection B—”