Chapter 9 #2
She found a small grocery store on a street that sloped down toward the river, the kind of place with creaky wooden floors and hand-lettered signs over the produce bins.
Nothing about it suggested a chain; it was just a local market that probably supplied half the neighborhood, with a deli counter at the back and a bored teenager running the single register up front.
Roslyn grabbed a basket and worked through her list methodically, the way she worked through anything.
Vegetables first, because those were the priority, then bread, then eggs, and then a block of cheese that wasn’t fancy but wasn’t the pre-sliced kind, either.
She added apples and oranges and some lovely-looking Anjou pears, along with a small container of honey, thinking the tea they’d been drinking could use a little extra boost.
The toiletries came from a drugstore two blocks farther down, where she bought toothpaste, a package of plain cotton underwear that wasn’t her usual brand but would do just fine, ibuprofen, and a box of adhesive bandages.
She also grabbed a cheap hairbrush because she’d been using Malachi’s comb the whole time, which still felt wrong, and she lingered in front of a display of Astoria-themed T-shirts and sweatshirts before she added a long-sleeved tee and a sweatshirt to the pile in her cart, feeling vaguely guilty about spending his money on something so frivolous.
Only it wasn’t frivolous. If she had a few things of her own, she wouldn’t have to keep borrowing Malachi’s shirts.
And although she’d never thought of herself as a clothes horse…
unlike her cousin Brianna, whose closets were always stuffed with all sorts of gorgeous and interesting things…
Roslyn still had a small wardrobe of shirts in colors she thought were best for her, mostly blues and greens and teals, along with a few pretty things for special occasions.
She thought of those items now with a kind of hunger that she tried her best to shove to the back of her mind, even as she couldn’t help wondering what Malachi would think if he saw her in her favorite dress, the dark teal wrap-style one she wore for special occasions, along with a pair of heeled brown boots.
But that ensemble was a thousand miles away, along with the rest of her wardrobe, and she knew it was silly to be thinking about it now when she had other, more important things to worry about.
The whole errand took about an hour. Years of fitting grocery runs into the narrow gaps between classes or clinic appointments had trained her to shop fast, so she didn’t linger anywhere, and she kept her head down.
Of course, there was no reason for anyone to pay any particular attention to her now, with no makeup on and her hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing clothes that had seen better days.
All she had to do was avoid the Gibsons, something that shouldn’t be too difficult.
She had no idea how many of them lived in Astoria, but a few things Malachi had said seemed to indicate they weren’t a large clan, nothing like the de la Pazes down in the southern part of Arizona or even the Wilcoxes, who covered the breadth of the state above I-40.
To her relief, no one looked at her twice in the grocery store, and the teenager at the register barely glanced up from his phone.
In the drugstore, an older woman with a fleece vest and reading glasses smiled at her pleasantly and said something about the weather, and Roslyn smiled back and agreed that yes, it did look like it might clear up later, even though she had a feeling it wouldn’t.
Predicting gray skies in the Pacific Northwest didn’t exactly require a weather-worker.
When she was three blocks from the house, though, she stopped abruptly.
Two women and a man stepped out from behind a parked delivery van on the cross street to the left, moving in the kind of coordination that told Roslyn at once that they’d been waiting for her.
The taller of the two women — she was dark-haired and in her mid-thirties, wearing a canvas jacket and jeans — positioned herself in the center of the sidewalk, effectively blocking her path.
The other woman, who was shorter and stockier, with a silver streak in her brown hair that could have been natural or just a stylistic choice, moved to Roslyn’s right.
The man, who also seemed to be in his mid-thirties, slim and brown-haired as well, hung back slightly and positioned himself near the mouth of the alley between two buildings, close enough to intervene but far enough to suggest he was backup rather than the main threat.
All three of them were witches. As soon as they’d gotten close enough, she felt the itch at the back of her neck that told her she was in the presence of witch-kind.
This definitely wasn’t a chance encounter, so she knew they must have been tracking her.
Maybe since the grocery store, maybe even since she’d left the house.
Like all witches, they would have known that if they stayed far enough away, she wouldn’t have been able to tell for sure who they actually were.
Not knowing exactly how long they’d been following was the worst part.
Stay calm, Roslyn told herself. Panicking didn’t help when a patient was crashing, and it wasn’t going to help now, either. At least they hadn’t attacked yet. Even if she was trespassing in their territory, they had to know that causing a scene in a public place like this wasn’t a very good idea.
“Afternoon,” the tall woman said. Her tone was pleasant enough, but Roslyn knew that was just window dressing. “Don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.”
She shifted her grip on the reusable grocery bags she was carrying, adjusting them so they hung from her arms rather than being clutched in her fists. That way, her hands would be free if she needed them. “Just passing through.”
“Must be a nice long visit, though,” the woman with the silver streak said. She had a smoker’s voice, low and raspy. “That house on Birch Street’s been putting out some interesting energy lately. Lot of activity for a place that’s been quiet for over a year.”
They knew about the house. Of course they did — Malachi had told her the Gibsons had been monitoring the property since his return, and the ward repairs would have only increased their interest. The dampening field he’d burned through most of his reserves to power was hiding what happened inside the house, but the outer perimeter wards had to project outward to function at all.
Every clean, careful repair Malachi had made over the past week was a signature the dampening bubble couldn’t contain, because the wards’ job was literally to be felt at the property line.
The Gibsons couldn’t see what was in the house.
But they could absolutely feel that someone had been doing skilled, sustained warding work on a property that should have been dormant.
What she didn’t know was how much they’d been able to determine about what was happening inside, whether they’d detected her healing magic specifically, or if they even knew who Malachi was.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said, keeping her voice level and vaguely apologetic, the same tone she used with patients’ families who asked questions she couldn’t answer without violating someone’s privacy. “I’m just housesitting for a friend.”
The tall woman tilted her head. “Housesitting.” She didn’t sound convinced. “That’s a lot of warding for a housesitter.”
Wow, she’d come right out and said it. Obviously, they weren’t bothering to pretend that they weren’t all witches here.
“My friend’s cautious,” Roslyn replied.
“Your friend’s using massive shielding on a residential property in our territory,” the man said, not moving from his position near the alley.
His voice was flat, not hostile but not friendly, either, and the emphasis on our territory was impossible to miss.
“No one runs that kind of protection unless they’re hiding something. We’d like to know what it is.”
This was the moment where a different kind of witch — someone with an offensive gift, someone who could throw fireballs or lightning bolts, or even who had telekinetic powers — might have been able to simply force her way past, even though it was generally frowned on to use those sorts of powers anywhere that civilians might be able to see what was going on.
Unfortunately, Roslyn didn’t have that option.
Her gift was healing, and healing magic was pretty much useless in a confrontation.
It was designed to repair damage, not cause it.
The basic gifts every witch possessed — the small, universal talents like popping a simple lock or sparking a flame from nothing — were all she had beyond her primary power, and they were barely enough to light a candle, let alone fight her way past three territorial witches on their home ground.
But they didn’t know that. They didn’t know what her gift was, and that uncertainty was the only advantage she had.
“Look,” she said, allowing a note of impatience to enter her voice, “I don’t want any trouble. I’m just picking up groceries, and I’d like to get back before my eggs get warm. If you’ve got a problem with the house, then you need to take it up with the owner.”
“We’re taking it up with you,” the tall woman said. “Since you’re the one who’s here.”
The three of them had tightened their formation slightly, the stocky woman drifting a step closer on the right, the man shifting forward from his position at the alley.
It wasn’t quite a box — the left side was still open, blocked only by the parked van — but their intention was clear enough.
They wanted answers, and they were prepared to apply pressure to get them.