Chapter 8
EIGHT
JUNIE
The wine flowed. The candle eventually returned to white after Junie refused to say Leo’s name again. Cassia’s thunder faded to distant rumbling. And somehow, inevitably, the conversation moved from Junie’s potential mate situation to her actual crisis.
“He figured it out, you know.” Junie pulled her knees up to her ribs, making herself small on the couch.
“Leo. In about thirty seconds, he identified what’s been messing with my potions for three months.
The ley line is reacting to emotional magic from the surge.
That’s why my formulations keep going haywire. ”
“That makes sense.” Narla nodded slowly. “The surge is essentially concentrated emotional energy. If your ley line access amplifies whatever’s in the air…”
“Then I’m screwed.” Junie’s voice cracked slightly.
She covered it with another sip of wine, but from the looks her friends exchanged, she hadn’t fooled anyone.
“The surge isn’t stopping. If anything, it’s getting stronger.
Which means my potions are going to keep misfiring, and my customers are going to keep leaving, and eventually—”
She stopped. Swallowed hard.
“Eventually what?” Cassia’s voice had lost its teasing edge.
“Eventually, I won’t have a business anymore.
” The words came out small. Scared. Nothing like the confident chaos witch Junie worked so hard to project.
“Potions are all I have. All I’ve ever had.
My grandmother taught me everything she knew before she died, and I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to live up to her legacy, and now—”
Her voice broke completely.
“Junie.” Avine’s voice was thick with understanding.
“No, I—” Junie pressed her palms against her eyes.
“I know I’m being dramatic. I know it’s not the end of the world.
But when I was twelve and Grandmother died and Mom couldn’t handle it and left, the only thing that kept me sane was brewing.
The shop was my anchor. My identity. The one thing I was good at. ”
She dropped her hands, meeting her friends’ worried faces.
“Without my potions, I don’t know who I am. And I know that’s pathetic—”
“It’s not pathetic.” Cassia’s voice had lost every trace of teasing. “It’s human.”
The room went quiet. Outside, Cassia’s distant thunder fell silent. Even Marzipan stopped her eternal grooming to watch, eyes uncharacteristically solemn.
Dahlia was first. She crossed the room and curled onto the couch beside Junie, wrapping arms around her shoulders. She smelled like honey and bread and comfort—the same scent that had permeated Honey & Hex for as long as Junie could remember.
“You’re not broken,” Dahlia said firmly. “Your magic isn’t broken. The surge is affecting everyone.”
“But not like this.” Junie’s eyes burned.
She blinked hard, refusing to cry. Crying was for people who couldn’t handle things, and she’d been handling things since she was twelve years old.
“You make pastries that hit too hard. Cassia causes unexpected squalls. Narla’s candles reveal truths people aren’t ready for.
That’s inconvenient. My potions are making people fall in love with mailboxes. That’s dangerous.”
“Three unexpected squalls.” Cassia held up three fingers.
“And one of them was definitely on purpose because that tourist was being an ass about the weather prediction.” She slid onto Junie’s other side, squishing her between friendly bodies.
“My magic set off a lightning strike that nearly hit the harbor master’s boat last week.
Dahlia’s confidence cookie made Mayor Holt stand up at a council meeting and confess his secret karaoke habit to the entire Elder Council.
We’re all struggling. You just have a bigger target on your back because your shop is sitting on a magical hotspot. ”
“The Mayor does karaoke?” Junie blinked.
“Broadway show tunes. Apparently, he’s quite good.” Dahlia’s smile was slightly guilty. “The cookie was supposed to help with public speaking confidence. Not… that.”
“Lucky me.” Junie almost smiled. Almost.
“Actually, yes.” Narla’s calm voice cut through the self-pity.
She hadn’t left her corner, but her attention was intent.
“That ley line access is why your grandmother chose that building. It’s why Moonrise Mixology produces the most potent potions on the coast. The same thing that’s causing problems now is what made your reputation. ”
“Great. So my greatest strength is now my greatest weakness. Very inspiring.”
“Your greatest strength is you.” Avine’s voice was quiet but certain. She’d positioned herself on the arm of the couch, close enough to rest a hand on Junie’s knee. “Your creativity. Your determination. The way you’ve never let anything stop you from figuring out a problem.”
Her lips curved. “Remember when your Clarity Cordial accidentally made Professor Morrison speak only in rhymes for a week?”
“That was an accident—”
“You invented a counter-formulation in three days. From scratch. While running your shop and dealing with Morrison’s lawyers.” Avine squeezed her knee. “You solve problems. It’s what you do. This is just a bigger problem.”
“With no obvious solution.”
“Yet,” Dahlia added. “No obvious solution yet.”
Junie looked at her friends—Dahlia’s quiet certainty, Cassia’s fierce loyalty, Narla’s calm wisdom, Avine’s knowing compassion.
These women who’d been her family since long before she’d known the word for what they were.
Who’d held her up when her mother left, when her first shop nearly failed, when grief and fear and loneliness threatened to swallow her whole.
“What if I can’t figure it out?” The question came out barely above a whisper. “What if this is the thing that finally breaks me?”
“Then we’ll be broken with you.” Cassia’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “And then we’ll figure out how to put the pieces back in a more interesting configuration.”
“That’s not how healing works.”
“It’s how we work.” Cassia’s grin was sharp but affectionate. “I can make his week very wet if you want. The lion. Say the word. Hailstorms, flash floods, mysteriously targeted lightning—”
“Please don’t electrocute the Coalition investigator.” But Junie was laughing now, watery and hiccupping. “The paperwork alone would be a nightmare.”
“Worth it,” Cassia declared.
Glimmer slithered down from her bookshelf perch and coiled on Junie’s lap, scales easing to a contented gold. The snake butted her head against Junie’s palm—comfort, affection, belonging.
“We’ll figure it out,” Avine said. “All of us. Whatever’s happening with the surge, whatever’s happening with your magic—and whatever’s happening with Leo Castellan. That’s what we do.”
Narla’s candle, which had been sitting peacefully white, flickered orange at the mention of Leo’s name.
“I hate that candle,” Junie muttered.
“The candle only speaks truth.” Narla’s smile was knowing. “Perhaps you hate what it’s telling you.”
“Perhaps I hate everything right now.”
“That’s valid.” Narla raised her wine glass. “To hating everything. And to figuring it out anyway.”
The others raised their glasses. Even Glimmer lifted her head, tongue flickering in what might have been a toast.
“To figuring it out,” Junie echoed, and drained her wine.
“Oh—my cousin Rosemary keeps texting, asking when she can visit,” Junie added, steering toward safer ground. “She’s been on a research expedition in the South Pacific for six months. I think she’s losing her mind out there.”
“Tell her Haven Shores is always accepting applications,” Cassia said. “We have an excellent surplus of chaos.”
The night wound down slowly. Dahlia left first, pressing a wrapped bundle of pastries into Junie’s hands with strict instructions to “eat feelings, not suppress them.” Cassia followed, the thunder finally fading as her mood evened, though she extracted a promise that Junie would call if she needed “weather-related intervention.”
Narla paused at the door, her owl drifting on her shoulder with a soft rustle of feathers. The candlelight from inside caught the silver in her hair, making her look ancient and timeless all at once.
“For what it’s worth,” she said quietly, “his scent today—when he left your shop—was different from the dinner.”
“Different how?” Junie didn’t want to ask. She asked anyway, because apparently her mouth had stopped taking orders from her brain.
She patted Junie’s arm, her touch cool and grounding. “Sleep well. Try not to overthink it.”
She left. Junie absolutely overthought it.
Avine was the last to go, lingering to help tidy the wine glasses and pastry crumbs. They worked in comfortable silence for a few minutes, the kind of quiet that could only exist between people who’d known each other long enough to not need words.
“I know it’s scary.” Avine stacked glasses in Junie’s tiny sink, her movements careful and precise. “The mate thing. If that’s what it is. I remember how terrified I was when I started to realize what Theo was to me. What I was to him.”
“You fought it pretty hard.” Junie remembered those weeks—Avine pale and trembling, denying everything, pushing Theo away with both hands while her heart reached for him.
“I fought it with everything I had.” Avine faced her, leaning against the counter. “And I’m not going to tell you to stop fighting, because that’s your choice. But I will say this: the fighting didn’t change what was true. It just made me miserable for longer than I needed to be.”
“But you and Theo—that was different. You had history. You knew him.”
“Did I?” Avine’s smile was wry. “I thought I knew him. I was wrong about most of it. The man I thought was cold and dismissive turned out to be protective and worried. The distance I thought was rejection was actually restraint.” She pushed off from the counter.
“Sometimes we can’t see people clearly until we stop looking through our expectations. ”
“That’s very wise. I hate it.”
“I know.” Avine hugged her—a brief, fierce squeeze. “Whatever happens, whatever you decide—we’re here. Always.”
After Avine left, Junie stood in her quiet apartment, surrounded by Dahlia’s throw pillows and the lingering scent of wine and friendship.
Glimmer had relocated to the windowsill, watching the street below with unnerving intensity.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Junie asked the snake. “That night at the dinner. That’s why you went crazy. You recognized what he was.”
Glimmer’s scales flickered—confirmation, frustration that Junie was only now catching up.
“You could have told me.”
The snake’s look clearly communicated that she had told her. Junie hadn’t listened.
“Great. My familiar is smarter than me. That’s reassuring.”
She crossed to the window, looking out at Main Street.
The Siren’s Rest was visible at the end of the road, lights glowing against the dark.
Somewhere in there, Leo Castellan was probably writing reports in that precise handwriting, cataloging everything he’d learned about her failing business and unstable magic.
Or maybe he was lying awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about—
Stop it.
She didn’t know what Leo was thinking. She barely knew the man. Two days of disaster and argument did not constitute knowledge.
But she remembered his voice softening in the basement, bathed in ley line light. How he’d seen her problem when she couldn’t. His quiet insistence that she forget about the suit, like her finances mattered more than his expensive wardrobe.
And she remembered his eyes on her mouth. The way his breath had caught. The want he kept suppressing and failing to bury.
“This is a bad idea,” she told Glimmer. “Whatever this is—it’s a terrible, horrible, no-good idea.”
Glimmer’s scales flickered to a color Junie had never seen before. Orange layered with gold, complex and undefined.
The snake didn’t argue. But she didn’t agree either.
Junie pulled the curtains closed and went to bed, determined to dream about absolutely anything except tawny hair and gold-flecked eyes and the way her world had tilted off its axis two nights ago.
She dreamed about him anyway.