1. Enoch
ENOCH
The mountain troll on my couch is crying again.
I reach for the tissue box on the coffee table, slide it toward him with one finger, and wait for the snuffle and sniffle and the inevitable declaration that, no, he can’t possibly go through with it.
“I can’t,” Horace admits, gulping air in wet, shuddering breaths. “I’d rather throw myself in the bay than climb Widow Peak. I’m not cut out for... heights.” He spits the word like it’s a curse.
I lean back in my chair, keeping my hands folded and my posture loose.
I certainly don’t tower over Horace, though at six foot and change, broad-shouldered, and, all right, bright red, I could hold my own if I tried.
The horns help. So does the reputation. But you can never outmaneuver a troll with brute force.
“You recall what we talked about last week?” I ask. My voice comes out as slow and measured as I’ve trained it to be. “The difference between fear and avoidance?”
The troll rolls his great granite head, focusing on the threadbare carpet. “I recall. Fear’s normal. Avoidance is...”
“A choice,” I finish for him. I tap my knuckles on the notebook resting on my thigh, my favorite weighted pen clipped to the cover out of habit. “Your mate, wherever she is, won’t come knocking at the base of the mountain. You have to climb. Sometimes that’s what love asks of us.”
Horace makes a face. I can’t help but mirror it, though mine comes out more as a wry twist of the mouth. I’ve never been any good at metaphors where romance is concerned. Not for lack of academic knowledge. It’s the practical application that I’ve always struggled with.
“That’s easy for you,” Horace says. “You don’t—” He stops himself, color darkening the stone of his cheeks, and dabs at his eyes with one of my embossed tissues. “Never mind. Sorry, Doc.”
“You can say it,” I assure him. “You think I can’t relate.”
He shrugs, slow and ponderous, as if even the movement might trigger vertigo. “You’re not afraid of anything,” he says. “You’re a literal devil. You live in the tallest building in town.”
Guilt is a bitter, familiar flavor on my tongue.
He’s not wrong. The old lighthouse-turned-loft suits me; I like seeing the whole of Blackthorn Bay at dusk, especially when the autumn fog coils down to the shore and the last slant of sunlight burns a hole through it.
But the heights, for me, are not the problem.
I finish my note—a bold underline beneath AVERSION IS A CHOICE—then close my notebook and stand. “You don’t need to do the whole trail at once. Next week, you can try for the first marker. That’s all.”
I offer a hand, which Horace takes. His fingers are rock-cold and leave my palm sandy.
He grumbles, “You’re relentless,” but there’s respect behind it. And maybe a sliver of hope.
“I prefer persistent,” I reply. “See you Tuesday.”
He ambles out the door, careful not to brush the low lintel with his forehead. The front office—my waiting room, decorated with thrifted armchairs and a dying fern—goes quiet.
I check the clock.
There’s a twenty-minute gap before my next client and just enough time to get through two emails, make tea, and wonder why the hell my own life is always so much simpler on paper than it is in practice.
I brew a cup of something black and bitter, stare out my rain-streaked windows at the shops across Ash Street, and try not to fixate on the solitary figure moving in and out of the bakery next door.
Hex & Honey is the only place in town open at this hour, and even from here, the rich, yeast-laced aroma of fresh bread seeps through my old oak door.
The witch who owns it—a friend, technically, though I’ve never been particularly adept at the dynamics of friendship—has a standing appointment with me every Wednesday at three sharp.
I glance at my phone, wondering if she’ll cancel again, when there’s a brisk knock at the door.
The silhouette on the other side is not Clover Arcane.
This woman is smaller and younger, her pale winter coat dusted in flour and her arms occupied with a white bakery box and a sheaf of brown paper.
I open the door partway, out of habit, and meet a pair of wide green eyes.
She’s flushed, not from embarrassment but from the briskness of the day. Her hair is the color of caramel and looks as though she wrestled it into a braid only for it to jailbreak into a host of frizzy escapees. She smiles, and I am struck—painfully, genuinely—by how unguarded it is.
I’ve spent so long parsing microexpressions for warning signs that I’d nearly forgotten how warmth looks when it isn’t a mask.
“Hi,” she says. “Sorry to barge in, Dr. Infernalis. I’m Daisy. I work next door.”
The name is familiar.
I recognize her as the new apprentice at Hex & Honey—the one I see every morning on my commute, setting out the day’s pastries with diligent, almost monastic ritual.
“Daisy,” I repeat and step aside to let her in.
The office seems to shrink around her, though she can’t be more than five-foot-nothing in her boots. Her presence has the warmth of a wood-burning stove in January.
“Clover sent me with a gift,” she says, holding out the bakery box. “She’s stuck finishing a wedding cake and didn’t want to cancel your session without at least a peace offering.”
She presents the box with sincerity verging on reverence.
I take it.
The warmth of the fresh pastry ghosts through the cardboard. I am uncomfortably aware of how long it’s been since I ate anything that wasn’t technically compressed protein and caffeine.
Inside is a neat row of what look like shortbread cookies, each one delicately scored with a pentacle and dusted with black salt.
I pick one up.
It’s still soft in the middle.
“Calming cookies,” Daisy supplies. “Lavender, sage, and a little something extra.”
Her grin broadens.
“Clover says they’ll take the edge off your... intensity.”
I break the cookie in half and try a piece.
It’s bright, floral, and utterly unlike anything I’ve ever let past my teeth. My mouth tingles as if I’ve been gently hexed.
I smile despite myself.
“Tell her thank you,” I manage, licking sugar from my thumb. “And thank you, Daisy.”
She edges between my chairs and peers around the waiting room as if this might be the most exciting place in town.
I can see the temptation to clear her throat and make a fast exit, but instead she looks me straight in the eye.
“So,” she starts, “what does a demon therapist do when his three o’clock gets canceled?”
There are a thousand responses: catch up on paperwork, finish case notes, stare at the wall and contemplate the futility of existence.
I say, “Usually? Eat cookies and enjoy the silence for a change. Would you like to join me?”
She blinks, surprised, then grins.
“I’d love to. If it won’t throw off your schedule. You seem—”
She gestures at my color-coded calendar on the wall, which is admittedly a shrine to punctuality.
I wave her off.
“I make my own hours. Occupational hazard of being the town’s only therapist.”
She sits on the far end of the couch, making herself small in that way considerate people do.
I hand her a cookie, and she bites into it with obvious delight.
For a moment, the only sounds are the soft click of rain and the gentle crumble of baked goods.
Daisy hums contentedly through her mouthful.
“You know, people say you’re intimidating, but I don’t see it,” she says finally.
“I could summon a pillar of fire,” I offer. “Or quote Dante in the original Italian.”
She laughs.
Not a polite, manufactured sound, either—a real, crinkly-nosed laugh.
It’s so infectious I feel my own face heat, which is a feat considering my natural temperature runs volcanic.
“Wouldn’t work,” she says. “I’m immune to pretentiousness. Grew up with six brothers.”
She wipes a crumb from her collarbone, then looks at me with sudden, earnest curiosity.
“Why did you become a therapist? Most... supernatural types seem to enjoy causing problems, not solving them.”
Fair question.
And not the first time I’ve heard it.
Still, it’s the first time I feel any urge to answer honestly.
“Some of us want to break the cycle,” I say after a moment. “Help others avoid the traps we fell into.”
She seems to digest this.
“That’s... really lovely,” she says, and from anyone else I might suspect sarcasm, but from Daisy, it lands like a blessing.
Then something in her expression shifts—an old, familiar uncertainty.
“Hey, Dr. Infernalis—”
“Enoch,” I correct, hoping I don’t come off as stuffy. “Please. I get enough ‘Doctor’ from insurance spam.”
“Enoch,” she repeats, testing the shape of the name. “Do you only take supernatural clients? Or would you see someone normal? Hypothetically?”
I study her for a second.
“That’s a trick question,” I say at last. “There is no such thing as normal. And I like hypotheticals. They tend to be more honest than the real thing.”
Something in her posture loosens.
She smiles, and I am hit again by the softness of her presence—like a thick quilt drawn up to my chin on a night when the wind cuts through the lighthouse searching for cracks.
I’d forgotten how it felt to be spoken to as a man rather than a monster.
“Well,” Daisy says, rising, “if you ever need a taste tester for those cookies—or, you know, company when your three o’clock cancels—I’m across the street most days. And I don’t mind being your hypothetical for a little while, if you’d like.”
She leaves behind a box of cookies and a lingering warmth that seems to follow her out the door.
I sit for a long time after she goes, the rain drumming harder against the windows, the taste of lavender lingering on my tongue, considering the possibility that I might allow myself something soft for once.