Chapter 8 Three Hemlocks
Three Hemlocks
“Shove up, will you?”
Carrying four drinks at once, Casimir edged his way into the booth without waiting for a response and earned two matching profanities from Robin and Laurel Hemlock in return.
“Make yourself at home, mate,” Robin said, managing to scoop up his pint just in time to avoid Cas’s left arm, but not before his elbow sent the foam sloshing across the table.
Casimir might have looked like a handsome prince, but the man had all the grace and decorum of a three-legged giraffe when he wasn’t trying to impress.
Unfortunately for Robin’s pint, the four of them had given up trying to impress each other a long, long time ago.
“How are we, chaps? Oh, the damn table’s wet, how annoying,” Cas said, dunking his sweater sleeve straight into the puddle.
“Yeah, funny that,” Robin laughed, shaking his head.
“I’m well. It’s half term, so I couldn’t be happier.
A whole week with the girls at home, though.
We’re going to come by the museum on Wednesday, I think, to get them out of the house.
They’ll love the fairy-tale stuff. They’d love their Auntie Laur to be there too, but I’m guessing you’re too frantic at the mo? ”
“Frantic? What’s wrong?” Sage struggled under the weight of the research she’d decided was crucial to take home, then dumped her collection of overflowing book bags, satchels and briefcases under the round table before unravelling her striped scarf.
At her brother’s comment, she shot a look at her younger sister, who was tucked into the corner of the booth with her legs crossed.
Laurel always reminded Sage of a baby bird that needed scooping up and tucking somewhere soft.
Despite them all now teetering on the brink of their thirties, her younger siblings would always be her little brother and sister.
The merest mention of one of them being anything less than “good” and “happy” filled her with a syrupy dread that assumed the worst and a determination to fix whatever their problem might be.
She had never been able to grow out of that.
Their table at the Dapple Grey was the same one they took every time, the precious corner booth beneath the window.
The whole place was lit with a watery, golden glow from the wall sconces and old chandelier, which caught the grey raindrops on the glass and turned each familiar, local face inside the pub orange.
The rustle of the hydrangeas in the wind outside was audible through the thin diamond panes.
It was, if truth be told, a bit of a dump, with a perpetual smell of old ale, a jarringly bright fruit machine that refused ever to pay out a penny and floral rugs that had long faded to miscellaneous shades of sticky brown.
But it was the Dap. There weren’t many other options for evenings out in Port Sylvan.
Old Ron, who ran the place, kept prices stupidly low, and although Sage was usually dragged there against her will, she did quite enjoy forcing them all to do the pub quiz every Tuesday.
“A bit dramatic, Robin,” Laurel laughed, shaking her head. “It’s nothing,” she added, to reassure Cas and Sage. “Just being walloped by deadlines.”
“I thought we got you back on the right track last week? Are you struggling again?” Sage asked, still dumping layers onto her endless piles of belongings and slipping off her coat onto the stool that she always took while the other three squashed into the booth.
“Struggling, drowning, walking merrily into her own doom…All interchangeable, really,” Robin said.
“Why haven’t you called me?” Sage asked. “You could have left your last chapters with me at the weekend.”
“I’m always frazzled. It’s just sort of how I perpetually exist. I don’t want to be a broken record,” Laurel said brightly, peeling the edge of the sticker off her beer bottle. “Besides, no other way to live, if you ask me.”
Sage’s siblings had not been cursed with magic in the same way that she had and she was very glad of it.
But if they had been, she had often thought that her sister, a children’s author and illustrator four years her junior, would probably have been a will-o’-the-wisp.
Not so much in a “malevolent imp” sort of way, more like she was the human embodiment of an unpredictable, excitable enigma that would often float away mid-conversation when her mind trailed onto a story idea.
A woman who appreciated a trinket like no other, usually found wearing at least one pom-pom-based accessory and constantly flapping into a frantic flame of chaos.
An exact opposite of Sage in nearly all ways except their matching red hair, Laurel had initially wanted to make it as a very sophisticated painter but penned a kids’ book on a whim and had found runaway success, much to everyone’s delight and “yeah, that sounds like Laurel” responses.
She had even been on the telly a few times.
Laurel had long stopped taking herself so seriously and found joy waiting on the other side.
“Where have you two layabouts been, anyway? I thought we said seven,” Robin said, checking his watch.
“Oh, we did,” Sage said, nodding. “And you should know that in Casimir’s world, that means half past at the very earliest.”
“Me? You’re the one who insisted on examining yet another series of grubby old horseshoes that look as though they’ve been unearthed from the sewers.” Casimir paused, suddenly concerned. “They weren’t, were they?”
“They are not ‘grubby,’ ” Sage said, offended, before noticing that her fingernails were indeed filthy.
She shoved them into the folds of her checked skirt.
“Okay, maybe they are. But they are also branded with unique markings—maybe runes—iron-cast and with marks indicative of talismans. Fascinating.” With a pleased look, she reached for the usual cup of black coffee that Casimir had delivered.
He and her siblings regularly told her that black coffee at night from a dodgy pub was diabolical behaviour, but it was often the only warm cup she ever enjoyed.
Her coffee at the museum nearly always ran cold thanks to endless distractions.
“Fascinating,” Robin repeated with an unconvinced cocked eyebrow.
Robin, if magically inclined, would without a doubt have taken quite well to being adopted by some form of elfin clan.
He was pragmatic, calm and well-respected, an English teacher at a nearby high school with a thriving carpentry business on the side.
A single father of two, he was a gentle man of few words, but usually the right wise ones.
He was ready at any given moment to problem-solve with a bursting toolbox and thought nothing of whipping up a treehouse from scratch.
A classic middle child—always seeking fairness and compromise, steady and unshakeable, the oak tree of the family.
Since the early loss of their parents, he had become the practical hands to Sage’s serious head and Laurel’s wild heart.
“Any other fun-yet-slightly-gross deliveries this week?” Laurel asked, wriggling forwards. “How’s the new exhibition looking? I cannot wait to come and see. I’ll definitely join you and the girls, Rob. Are there pretty dresses and shiny jewels to entertain us? And by ‘us,’ I mean mostly ‘me.’ ”
“A load of last-minute old books turned up yesterday, which your dear lunatic sister will be delighted by. We haven’t sifted through them yet, but they’re probably dull as dishwater,” Cas said before taking a swig of red wine.
Sage shot him a look so venomous that Cas gulped.
“I mean, they look very interesting, actually. Just what we needed. We should order more, if anything.”
Worrying about her sister meant that Sage had momentarily forgotten about the book delivery. “We really should have catalogued that before we left…” She chewed at the inside of her cheek.
Casimir ignored her. “How about you, Laur? What have you been up to?”
“Staring into the void and calling it work. Questioning all of my life choices.”
“Is that all?” Sage asked dryly.
Laurel gave a sheepish grin. She had been struggling to write the perfect sequel ever since her successful debut and was under growing pressure to deliver it.
She really did thrive on chaos. Sage was all too familiar with the hell that was a written deadline, the constant state of drowning that her most intense years of study had felt like.
She wasn’t entirely sure why it hadn’t been enough to put her off academia forever, yet here she was, unable to leave it all behind.
She supposed that meant enough in itself.
“You know I’m here if you need help. I can make time.” She wasn’t entirely sure that she could, but she would always do it anyway for her siblings. “I could proofread everything you have so far?”
Laurel took a swig of her beer and gave a half-smile of appreciation. “It’s really not a big deal, Sagey. Calm down.”
“Do you ever contemplate the fact that we’ve all been given one precious existence in this lifetime to live life to the fullest and explore all realms of possibility,” Robin said, “yet all four of us have decided to spend so much of it between the pages of books that can’t return our love, keep us company or talk back? ”
“Oh, but we know they do talk back,” Sage said wryly with a pointing finger. “And they do keep us company. In their own weird and wonderful ways.”
“Mum and Dad’s fault,” Robin added tenderly.
Sage, Laurel and Robin exchanged warm, fond looks of understanding.
Casimir leaned in with a finger. “Speak for yourselves, spending your evenings chatting to books. Don’t tangle me up in the Hemlock family’s strangeness.”
“I’m afraid you relinquished the chance to escape that tangle the day you met Sagey.” Laurel grinned. “You’re one of us, whether you like it or not.”