Chapter 27 Honey
Honey
Honey sat at the front corner table of The Kettle, steam curling lazily from her teacup as she watched the townspeople meander past the fogged windows. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and resisted the urge to tie the whole thing up into a bun.
The café hummed with energy. The air was rich with the scent of cardamom and warm pastry as Clover moved behind the counter.
Her dark hair was tied back by a red scarf printed with bees, and she hummed an eerie tune as she worked.
With a flick of her wrist, she mashed herbs in a mortar, and steam bloomed from the lip of a copper kettle at just the right moment.
The bell above the door gave a cheerful jingle, and she glanced up just as a figure pushed it open.
Then did a double take.
The man wore an oversized trench coat, a scarf wrapped twice around his neck, and a baseball cap tugged low over his eyes. He looked like someone trying very hard not to look like anyone at all.
But Honey would know that mustache anywhere. Officer Theodore Nolan.
She raised her eyebrows at him in acknowledgement, and he slid in across from her.
“Did a blizzard come in in the time it took Ms. Marrow to brew a pot of tea?” Honey asked.
He leaned across the table and whispered, “I’m incognito.”
“Right. Because nothing says ‘I’m not a cop’ like dressing like a flasher from a 1950s noir film.”
“It’s nothing to do with being on the job.” He glanced around nervously. “And keep your voice down, will you? If Marlene sees me here, I’ll never hear the end of it.
“Ah,” she said, nodding sagely. “The Great Kettle–Gribble’s Grub Cold War.”
“You joke,” he said, unwrapping his scarf just enough to breathe, “but the last time I so much as glanced at a croissant in this place, Marlene called dispatch to report an ‘utter betrayal’ daily for almost a month.”
“Well, you are a public servant,” Honey teased. “And clearly very brave.”
Theo gave her a long-suffering look. “You try policing a town full of witches and magic. You don’t even know the half of what’s hiding within the streets of Brim’s Hollow.”
Honey fell silent at that. She could imagine it. In fact, she had imagined it, more than once. Some part of her, buried beneath spreadsheets and protocols, whispered that maybe she belonged in a town like this. A town where magic hummed beneath the sidewalks.
But the fact of the matter was, she’d be home soon. Her job was nearly done.
She’d come to the café to get away. From the house, from the farm, from the growing pile of notes she still needed to turn into a final report.
The audit was finished; all that was left was writing it up, sealing the file, and sending it off.
It would be her ticket home and her path to the promotion she’d been waiting a decade for. She just…couldn’t make herself do it.
Instead, she was here, hoping the cozy hum of Clover’s café would drown out the churning of her thoughts.
Before she could spiral further, the girl helping Clover approached with a plate. She set a golden, glazed tart in front of her. Honey gave her a grateful smile, but the girl’s attention snagged on Theo. She paused, tilted her head, and then shrugged before retreating to the counter.
“Aren’t you going to order?” Honey asked once the girl had gone. She lifted her fork and gave him a sidelong look.
“No. Well. Yes. Eventually. I’m just…working up the courage.” He shifted in his seat. “I need to ask Clover for a favor, and I—”
“Please don’t tell me if it’s against any regulations or laws,” Honey interrupted.
Theo reached across the table without shame, tore off a corner of her pastry, and popped it into his mouth. “You worry too much.”
Honey arched a brow, but before she could scold him or establish boundaries around sharing her dessert without asking, her phone gave a sharp jangle. She looked at the screen.
Mr. Aldridge.
She stiffened.
Theo followed her gaze. “Friend of yours?”
“Hardly,” she said, already rising. “That’s my boss.”
“You have a boss? I don’t know why I assumed you were the boss.”
She dropped her napkin on the table. “We all answer to someone.”
She hit accept and held the phone to her ear. “Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning, Ms. Baxter.”
Honey froze. Mr. Aldridge was not a man for pleasantries or small talk. If he was starting with one now, something was very wrong.
“Is something the matter, sir?”
“No,” he said, though the hesitation in his tone made her doubt it.
“I know this is highly unusual, maybe even out of order, but Dean Weisel turned in his final report already. He made a compelling case for reassignment.” He paused just long enough for her pulse to start thudding in her ears.
“The Assistant to the Director of Arcane Relations isn’t a position that opens often. ”
She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Of course. I’m just finalizing mine now. You’ll have it tonight.”
“Good,” he said, then added, almost as an afterthought, “and nice catch, by the way. That anomaly you flagged in your initial draft? We had no idea the Hale property was sitting on that kind of power.”
Honey blinked. “Sorry, which anomaly?”
“The evidence of dual power sources. The oversight committee was thrilled. They’ve already recommended a formal hearing for next week.”
She couldn’t breathe. She remembered first walking up to the Hale property and noticing the strange flow of magic through the yard, the ley line that didn’t seem to follow a single path.
She’d included it in her initial report as some kind of anomaly.
But it was just a footnote. She never meant—Oh, god.
“Oh. Uh. That’s—great. Sir, I’m losing you—I think the signal here’s bad—hell—hello?”
She ended the call with a trembling thumb and stared down at the screen like it had betrayed her. The world around her muffled. Voices blended together. The hum of a mixer. The clink of a spoon on porcelain.
Her mind scrambled backward. She’d flagged that as a technicality. A footnote in a margin. She hadn’t intended to trigger a hearing. It wasn’t even a real recommendation, just a placeholder she meant to revise once she understood the flow of magic.
But now the oversight committee was involved. Now it was formal. There were documents. Paper trails. And she knew what they’d find once they dug into it. They'd fall into the “at-risk” category. Which meant…
Which meant the orchard could be—no, would be—claimed by the bureau.
Because of her.
Oh god.
Honey gripped the edge of the table. Her skin prickled. Maybe she could submit a retraction, or argue that it was an exploratory note, or say she’d misfiled the thing entirely. Maybe—
No. That would call more attention to it. It was already scheduled. The train had left the station, and she was tied to the tracks with a bouquet of guilt.
She was going to have to tell Ethan.
Across from her, Theo tilted his head in inspection of her.
She avoided eye contact and reached for her tea. Her hands trembled as she brought it to her lips and forced a sip past the lump in her throat.
“Would you like to talk about it?” he asked when she put her teacup back in its saucer with a clatter.
“Not particularly.”
Theo gave the smallest of nods. He leaned back in the booth, fingers steepled lightly on the table. “That’s fair. Better to push the feelings down until you have a heart attack one day.”
She let out a weak, half-hearted laugh and immediately buried it with another sip of tea.
He waited.
She didn’t look at him, but her voice cracked anyway when she said, “I think I…I might have triggered a formal hearing on the Hale property.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Triggered, as in...?”
“As in it's my fault.” The words tumbled out. “I found an anomaly in the magic flow. I didn’t mean for it to mean anything, but I flagged it, and now it’s in review and—”
She let out a tight breath and pressed her palms against the tabletop to keep them from shaking.
“I didn’t realize it would amount to anything. I thought I was being thorough. And now I’m the reason the Hale family is going to lose their home.”
There it was. Said aloud. A solid, awful truth that dropped into the booth like a stone.
She glanced up finally, eyes wide. “How do I tell Ethan that?”
Theo didn’t answer right away. He just looked at her, calm and steady. Then, gently: “You start with the truth. And you lead with the part where you’re sorry, and you didn’t mean for it to go like this.”
Honey stared at him, heart thudding.
Right. She could do that. Probably.
Maybe they could get past it.
But she knew in her heart, some things, once uprooted, never took root again.
The next morning, she had scoured every clause in the compliance manuals.
Every environmental impact addendum and property stewardship appendix.
She’d texted her neighbor, Ruby, in the middle of the night, asking for screenshots of the older editions, hoping there was some buried language—something grandfathered in—that would give the Hales immunity.
But she came up empty.
She sat with her back pressed against one of the older trees, knees drawn up to her chest. The rough bark bit through her shirt as she stared at the blank computer screen, trying to figure out how to tell him.
She’d submitted her report but felt none of the satisfaction of a job done well.
A crunch of boots on dry grass announced his arrival before she saw him. “Working?” he asked.
She lifted her face and blinked against the sun behind him. “Actually, I’m all done.”
He sank down beside her, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “So, what’s the verdict?”
Honey looked at him.
He’d changed since she’d arrived. The weight on his shoulders had shifted.
The lines bracketing his mouth weren’t carved so deep.
Even with the orchard busier than ever—her new plans in full swing—he was finding his rhythm.
He had morning chore charts taped to the fridge, breakfast casseroles lined up in the freezer, and jobs handed off to the Fritches without a fight.
Little signs of a man who believed there might be breathing room ahead.
If it weren’t for the one thing she couldn’t take back, she might have been proud of that.
“The well’s marked for closure,” she said quietly.
Ethan exhaled. “Oh.” For a moment, his whole face sagged. Then he caught himself and nodded. “Well. I guess that’s good. A little weird, but…good, I think.”
When she didn’t say anything, he bumped her shoulder with his. “You okay?”
“All’s as it should be,” she said with a bitter laugh.
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t, and it would never be.
“About the review Monday,” Honey began, her voice a notch too high.
He waved it off before she could finish.
“Don’t worry about it. I did some research.
I don’t think there’s any problem now that the well’s closed.
I even pulled the old site diagrams and put together a timeline”—he pulled a rolled up stack of papers from his back pocket—“just to show them we’re cooperating. They like that, right? Documentation?”
Honey’s heart gave a tug. Oh, Ethan. At one point she would have loved this but now…
She reached for the words with care. “The review isn’t about the well.” She folded her hands in her lap. “And there’s no beating it.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“It’s about the whole orchard now,” she said gently. “Or rather what’s beneath it.”
His brow furrowed deeper. “You mean the ley lines.”
“You knew about them?”
“Of course. But it’s never been a problem. Other than not keeping the well up to date, we haven’t violated anything.”
She hesitated. Then breathed in deep.
“Because I flagged an anomaly in my first report. I didn’t know what it would trigger. I thought it was a small note. But it pushed the property into fast-track review.”
He stared at her, blinking. “Wait. You’re not the reason they’re reviewing us.”
“I am,” she said, almost too softly to hear.
His mouth opened. Closed. “No. No. You wouldn’t do that.”
“I certainly didn’t do it on purpose,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “It really was just a small footnote, nothing that should have mattered.”
“You’re the one who’s been trying to help this whole time, Honey. You—You got the whole thing planned out, the renovation plans, and—hell, you got the free goats Trent is about to deliver.”
“I was trying to help,” she shot back, her voice shaking. “That’s all I’ve been doing since I got here, trying to make things better, trying to prove I could do some good.”
His jaw clenched, and she could see all the words he was biting back.
“I didn’t mean to—” She stopped herself. His anger was misplaced.
It wasn’t her fault that any of this was happening, not really. She made a note of exactly what she saw, a strange path in the ley lines. Her mistake was not realizing the significance until now.
“I didn’t want it to be true.” She stood slowly. “I tried to figure out a way to fix it. But I can’t.”
He stood, too, and this time there was no catch in his voice, just the sharp edge of betrayal. “You let me hope. You let me think things could get better.”
“They were getting better—”
“Except for the part where my kids’ home is about to be taken away.”
“I didn’t know it would happen like this.” Her voice trembled. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
He turned away from her.
“The right thing,” he said, and the words sounded like they’d been spat onto the ground. Then he spun back to face her. “You show up with your labels, and your rules and your plans, and you tell yourself you’re fixing things. But you don’t live with the fallout. We do.”
Honey flinched. “I’m sorry.”
And for the first time since she’d arrived, she saw no warmth in his eyes. Just a man who had nothing left to lose.
“Then maybe you should go,” he said, voice low and final, “before you fix anything else.”