Chapter 12
TWELVE
JUNIE
Wyatt called for backup. Made phone calls. Cordoned off the shop with caution tape that felt absurdly cheerful against the backdrop of destruction. Junie watched from the sidewalk, arms wrapped around herself, Glimmer tucked against her collarbone.
Main Street was waking up. Dahlia emerged from the bakery next door, her face going pale when she saw the tape, the broken window, Junie standing hollow-eyed in front of it all. She was across the street in seconds, wordlessly pulling Junie into a hug that smelled of cinnamon and yeast.
“I’m okay,” Junie said automatically.
“You’re not.” Dahlia pulled back, honey-brown hair escaping her bun, sharp eyes cataloguing every detail. “You’re allowed to not be okay.”
Cassia arrived next, storm petrel circling overhead, her wild dark curls crackling with static electricity that made the streetlights flicker. “Who did this?” she demanded. “I’ll drown them. I’ll call down lightning so precise it—”
“Cassia.” Narla appeared from her own shop, calm and grounded as always. “That’s not helpful right now.”
“It’s a little helpful,” Junie managed weakly. “For my spirit, if nothing else.”
Avine pushed through the gathering crowd, Theo a solid presence behind her. The Alpha’s pale eyes swept the scene with predatory assessment before landing on Junie with concern. Protection.
“The pack’s resources are at your disposal,” Theo said. “Whatever you need.”
“I need my grandmother’s book back.” The words came out sharper than she intended. “I need this not to have happened. I need—”
She stopped.
Because Leo Castellan was walking down Main Street with the kind of focused purpose that made people step out of his way without being asked. He wore dark slacks and a charcoal Henley that probably cost more than her weekly grocery budget.
But his face wasn’t controlled. For once, that careful mask had slipped.
He looked furious.
“This fits the pattern.” He stopped in front of Wyatt, not quite ignoring Junie but not looking directly at her either. “Sable Acquisitions. The businesses on ley line intersections. They’re escalating.”
“Castellan.” Wyatt’s voice carried the weight of professional acknowledgment.
Leo’s lips pressed into a thin line. A muscle jumped beneath his stubble. “I know Moonrise Mixology rejected their offer three weeks ago.”
Junie stared at him. “How do you know that?”
He finally looked at her. Those dark amber eyes—the ones she’d been dreaming about despite her best efforts—swept over her face. Her bandaged hands. The dried tear tracks she hadn’t wiped away. His features softened, the hard mask cracking.
“I’ve been researching and tracking them since the Wolf Moon meeting.
” His voice dropped. Rougher. Less clipped.
“Your shop was always going to be a priority target. The ley line intersection, the rejected offer—” He stopped.
“I should have warned you. Should have anticipated they’d move this fast.”
He was blaming himself. The realization cut through Junie’s fog of grief and shock. This man who controlled every variable, planned every contingency—he was standing here taking responsibility for events he couldn’t have predicted.
“You couldn’t have known,” she heard herself say. “I threw away the buyout letter. Didn’t tell anyone. If you want to blame someone for not seeing this coming—”
“Don’t.” The word was quiet but absolute. “Don’t do that.”
Their eyes held. A current passed between them that Junie didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to examine. Glimmer’s scales shifted from crimson to that complicated amber-gold she’d started showing whenever Leo was near.
Wyatt cleared his throat. “I need to interview witnesses. Document the scene. Castellan, you said you have information on these attacks?”
“Everything I’ve compiled.” Leo didn’t look away from Junie. “I’ll send it to you within the hour.”
“Appreciated.” Wyatt turned to the gathered crowd—Junie’s friends, curious neighbors, the inevitable seagulls circling overhead to carry gossip to the rest of town. “Everyone who isn’t directly involved needs to step back. This is an active crime scene.”
The crowd dispersed reluctantly. Dahlia pressed a wrapped pastry into Junie’s hands. Cassia squeezed her shoulder hard enough to leave bruises. Narla looked at her with those knowing eyes and said, “Call if you need anything. I mean anything.”
Avine was last to leave, her embrace fierce and prolonged. “Come stay at the inn,” she murmured. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”
Avine pulled back, glancing at Leo with an expression Junie couldn’t read. “Let people help you. You don’t have to do everything alone.”
Then it was Junie, Wyatt, and Leo standing in front of the broken shell of her life’s work.
Wyatt disappeared inside to continue his investigation, leaving her alone with the man she’d been trying desperately not to think about.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said.
“I know.” He didn’t move. “What did they take? Besides the obvious.”
She should tell him to go. Should retreat into the familiar armor of sarcasm and deflection. Should protect herself from whatever dangerous thing was building between them.
But she was so tired. So empty. And the way he was looking at her—not with pity, not with the gentle condescension she’d come to expect from people who thought they knew how to help her—made the armor impossible to summon.
“My grandmother’s recipe book.” The words hurt coming out. “Rosalind Reed’s personal formulations. Decades of research, family history, encoded entries, I never figured out how to decipher.” She swallowed hard. “It’s irreplaceable. Literally. There’s no backup, no copies. Just—gone.”
Leo was quiet for a long moment.
“The encoded entries,” he finally said. “You mentioned those before. When I was examining your ley line.”
Had she? The basement visit felt like a lifetime ago, though it had only been two days. Two days of trying not to remember the way he’d looked at her in that blue light. The way his breath had caught when their eyes met.
“My grandmother died before she could teach me the cipher.” Junie heard the brittleness in her own voice. “I’ve spent twenty-six years wondering what secrets she left me. And now I’ll never know.”
“You’ll know.” His voice went firm. Certain. “We’ll get the book back.”
She laughed, the sound jagged and wrong. “That’s optimistic. Whoever did this was professional enough to bypass my wards, drain my ley line, and disappear without leaving a trace. They’re not going to—”
“We’ll get it back.” He said it the same way. Not a hope. Not a platitude.
A promise.
Junie stared at him. At this man who’d arrived in Haven Shores days ago and upended everything she knew about herself.
Who’d looked at her failing magic and seen a problem to solve rather than a flaw to criticize.
Who was standing on the sidewalk outside her destroyed shop, making promises he had no business making, and somehow—impossibly—she believed him.
“Why?” The question escaped before she could stop it. “Why do you care?”
That mask threatening to slip again, revealing whatever complicated thing lived underneath all that restraint.
“Because I do,” he said. “Let me help.”
The next three hours were a study in contrasts.
Wyatt worked methodically through the crime scene, collecting samples, photographing damage, asking pointed questions that made Junie realize how much she’d missed in her initial shock.
The scorch marks formed a pattern he identified as a “siphoning array”—a design meant to steal magical energy and channel it elsewhere.
The timing suggested the attackers had struck between three and five in the morning, when most of Haven Shores was asleep and the ley line energy peaked.
Leo worked differently.
He didn’t ask permission. Started clearing debris.
Righting shelves. Sorting through the destruction with those precise, careful hands while asking quiet questions about her inventory, her security measures, her suppliers.
His notebook came out—the same leather-bound one from his shop visit—and he filled pages with notes in that immaculate handwriting.
Junie should have told him to stop. Should have insisted she could handle her own disaster, thank you very much.
But every time she opened her mouth to protest, she caught him looking at a shattered potion bottle or a ruined ingredient with genuine concern creasing his forehead, and the words died in her throat.
He cared. Actually, visibly cared about her stupid, broken shop, her missing book, and her ruined life’s work.
It was the most unsettling thing that had happened all day. And this day had included finding her business destroyed.
“This cauldron is salvageable.” Leo straightened from examining her grandmother’s largest copper vessel. “The dent is superficial. Someone who knows metalwork could—”
“I know.” Her voice came out softer than intended. “Piprick can fix it. He’s done it before.”
“The gnome inventor?” A hint of humor crossed Leo’s face. “Is that wise? Given his track record?”
“His metalwork is fine. It’s his magical inventions that cause problems.” Junie found herself almost smiling. Almost. “Besides, he owes me for the whole ‘accidentally caused a town-wide magical crisis’ thing.”
“That was him?”
“Long story. Avine was involved. It ended with a mating bond and Theo becoming marginally less terrifying, so I suppose it worked out.”
Leo set the cauldron upright, muscles shifting beneath his Henley in ways Junie absolutely did not notice. “Nothing about this town is what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
He considered the question seriously. “A simple investigation. Surge-related incidents, standard containment protocols, back to San Francisco within two weeks.” His gaze found hers. Held it. “I didn’t expect any of this.”
Any of this could mean a lot of things. The sabotage. The conspiracy. The complicated, confusing, increasingly undeniable thing happening between them every time they occupied the same space.
Junie chose to interpret it safely. “Welcome to Haven Shores. Where simple doesn’t exist and containment protocols are suggestions at best.”
“So I’m learning.”
Silence stretched between them. Not uncomfortable. Charged. Heavy with things neither of them was saying.
Glimmer, who’d been suspiciously quiet since Leo started helping, raised her head and tasted the air. She didn’t hiss.
Junie wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“The book,” Leo said finally. “Tell me about the encoded entries.”
She sighed, sinking onto an overturned crate because her legs refused to hold her anymore.
“There are maybe thirty pages throughout the book where my grandmother used some kind of cipher. Different from her regular handwriting. More deliberate.” She rubbed her face with her bandaged hands.
“I always assumed they were experimental formulations. Things too dangerous or valuable to write plainly.”
“And you never cracked the code?”
“I tried. For years. I’m good at puzzles, but this was—” She shook her head. “My grandmother was brilliant. Whatever cipher she used, it died with her.”
Leo crouched in front of her, bringing his face level with hers. This close, she could see the individual flecks of amber in his eyes. Could smell him—expensive cologne layered over a deeper, wilder scent that made Glimmer’s scales ripple.
“We’ll find the book,” he said. “And when we do, I have resources. Code-breakers. Analysts. People who specialize in exactly this kind of problem.”
“Why would you—”
“Because the encoded entries might be why they stole it.” His jaw was set rigid. “Someone knows what’s in those pages. Someone who wanted the information badly enough to burn through your wards and drain your ley line to get it.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to her. She’d been so focused on her grandmother’s memory, on the personal violation of losing Rosalind’s book, that she hadn’t considered why someone might specifically want it.
“You think they targeted the book,” she said slowly. “Not the shop.”
“I think whoever’s behind Sable Acquisitions is playing a longer game than simple property acquisition.” Leo’s voice went hard. “The ley line intersections. The encoded recipes. There’s a pattern they’re trying to complete. A goal.”
“And my grandmother’s book is part of it.”
“Maybe.” He reached out, and for a breathless moment Junie thought he might touch her. But he adjusted a loose strand of her hair—tucking it behind her ear with a gentleness that made her breath hitch.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “I promise.”
She should make a joke. Should deflect, distract, do any of the thousand things she normally did when people got too close to the soft parts of her.
But she was too tired. Too raw. Too aware of how much she wanted to believe him.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”
Leo stood, offering his hand to help her up. She took it without thinking, and when his fingers closed around hers—strong and surprisingly calloused for a businessman—her heart gave a traitorous stutter.
Trust. Dangerous and unexpected.
Wyatt emerged from the basement, his expression grim. “I’ve got what I need. The siphoning array is identical to one used at Piprick’s shop back in May. Same signature, same methodology. We’re definitely looking at a coordinated operation.”
“Sable Acquisitions,” Leo said.
“Most likely.” Wyatt nodded toward the street. “I’m going to need a full statement from you, Junie. And Castellan, I want everything you have on these shell companies.”
“Done.”
Junie looked at her shop—the splintered shelves, the broken glass, the empty space where her grandmother’s book should be—and felt the grief harden into resolution.
Anger. Slow, burning, and absolutely certain.
Someone had violated her home. Stolen her heritage. Tried to break her.
They had no idea who they were dealing with.
“Wyatt.” Her voice came out steadier than she expected. “Whatever you need from me. Whatever it takes. I want these bastards found.”
The sheriff’s lips twitched. Almost a smile. “Noted.”
Leo caught her eye across the wreckage.
He’s dangerous. This thing between us is going to hurt.
But for the first time since she’d walked into the ruin of her shop, Junie didn’t feel alone.
And that, more than anything, terrified her.