Chapter Twenty-Seven
Madeline’s gaze swept over me once as she leaned back into the cushions of the sofa. Her expression was unreadable but if I had to guess I’d say she looked like she was trying to decide what to tell me and where to start.
Owen had disappeared into the kitchen with no hope of rescue. I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands so I sat there, ramrod straight and waited for her to say something—anything.
“I was helping Alice,” she said finally.
That spurred me into action. I reached into my oversized handbag and brought out the grimoire, the seed catalog and the scraps of paper I’d found. The first one—the one with her initials—I unfolded and handed to her.
“I found this.”
She took it, stared down at Alice’s handwriting, her gaze sweeping across the scrawled line. Then she looked at me.
“Does Owen know?” I asked before she said anything.
“No,” she said. “And neither does my husband.”
I blinked. She’d been helping Alice and never breathed a word to either Dougal or Owen.
“Why?”
“I didn’t tell them because Alice didn’t want anyone else to know about her struggle,” she said.
“Dougal was helping her, too,” I pointed out.
She nodded. “I know about the treasures she hid in the shop.”
“Why was she hiding them there?” I asked, my heart clanging in my chest hoping for answers.
She shook her head. “I only know she was hiding them to keep them out of someone else’s hands.”
That didn’t help at all. I sank back into the cushion.
“Alice knew the Crossroads was failing. That’s why I was helping her. We patched it up,” she said. “More like covering it with a bandage than fixing it permanently. The fix only lasted one moon cycle.”
I stared at her. “You know what I need to do, don’t you?”
“I know what you can do to hold it back.” She nodded. “Stellar convergence. There’s a celestial event when the planets align—a planet parade, if you will. Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune will appear to line up. That’s when you need to act.”
“When does that happen?”
Her eyes didn’t flinch. “Tonight.”
Of course.
But something else clicked in my head. If the planet parade was happening tonight, and Voss gave me the ticking clock—then did he know it was happening? Did he know my window of opportunity was shrinking? Did he intend to remove me as Guardian no matter what?
I flipped open the seed catalog to the page I found with the note and turned it to show her. “That note was stuck between these pages.”
Madeline peered down at it for the longest time. “Moonpetal.” Then her gaze flicked up to mine. “Do you have some?”
“Yes, in the cooler in the shop.”
“Good.”
She rose and crossed the room to the bookshelf. She pulled down a weathered book with a cracked leather spine, then returned to me, flipping it open. The language was exactly the same as in the grimoire. My heart pounded so hard I thought it would beat out of my chest.
Madeline paused at one of the pages, then placed it open with care on the coffee table next to the vase of flowers.
“You need this.” She tapped the page with her fingernail.
“What is it?”
“An enchantment. And you’ll need the Moonpetal flower but I’m afraid I can’t help with the potion. Only Alice knew that.”
So there was an enchantment and a potion. But I was still lost.
Madeline looked at me, then reached for me. She placed her cold hand on mine and gave it a little squeeze.
“You don’t know what to do.”
I shook my head.
That got me thinking about the other scrap of paper I found and the grimoire. I pulled the book from my bag.
“Owen and I found this in the town archives.” I showed her the book.
Recognition flickered through her gray eyes. “The town archives?”
I nodded. She took the book from me and started flipping pages. “This belonged to Alice, though I don’t know why it ended up there.”
“Maybe for safekeeping?” I suggested.
As she flipped pages, I saw it. The torn page.
“Wait,” I breathed. “Go back.”
She flipped back and there it was, sticking out of the binding of the book like a puzzle piece waiting for its mate.
“The page is missing,” she said.
My hands were shaking when I reached into my bag once more. I opened the folded page that I’d found in the cash register and held it up. The jagged edge looked like a perfect fit to the book.
Oh.
With a shaking hand, I placed the page against the torn one.
It fit.
A perfect fit.
My pulse kicked into high gear. Madeline breathed in quick through her nose.
And then we both watched as the torn page fused with the one in the book. Gold light danced along the jagged edge leaving nothing but a faint line. The pencil marks came together, as though forming one complete sentence. One complete thought.
Relief hit first. Then annoyance because the letters might as well have been star charts.
This didn’t help me at all. But at least I knew where the page belonged now.
Beneath my hand, the grimoire warmed. As though it recognized me and the page.
“Piper,” she said slowly. “That’s the instructions for the potion.”
My head snapped up. “The potion?”
“For the Crossroads. The one you’ll use with the enchantment.”
“You can read it,” I said, still stunned.
Of course she could read it. She could read the book she showed me.
“Yes.”
“I can’t read it.”
“Then I’ll translate it for you.” She smiled then. “I’m glad Owen brought you.”
“So, am I.”
Madeline ran her finger down the page as she read it, her gaze intent as it focused on every word. I waited, holding my breath.
“The potion requires essence of Moonpetal,” she said. “Mixed with a teaspoon of vervain, a tablespoon of hickory sap, and a single drop of Guardian blood.”
“Blood?” I swallowed hard. “Mine?”
She nodded, “Yes, Piper. Yours. To bind it to you and the land.”
The realization hit me hard. Hickory Hollow wasn’t just a place I lived—it was tied to me bone-deep.
I pulled out my phone and opened the notes app, typing quickly with the tip of my finger to get down the ingredient measurements before I forgot. “What else?”
“The Sun Disk,” she continued. “You’ll need it to place at the crossing while you recite the enchantment during the planetary alignment.” She was still looking at the page as she spoke. “Then pour the potion over the roots of the tree.”
I abandoned trying to use the tip of my finger and went for both thumbs to type faster. I got it all down.
“And this will seal the Crossroads?” I asked.
“Only for one lunar cycle.” She looked up at me then, her dove gray eyes meeting mine. “Thirty days. Less if the contamination is worse than Alice realized.”
I dropped the phone into my lap. “Only thirty?”
Thirty days wasn’t enough time to mend the Crossroads, deal with the chaos living under my roof, or even find Alice’s murderer… but it might be enough time to keep the town from being obliterated.
“It’s only a temporary binding but that should buy you some time to figure out how to close it permanently. Time to discover who’s poisoning the tree. And,” she paused, took a deep breath, “who killed Alice.”
The words hung between us and her tone of voice was soft, reverent, emotional.
“You were close?” I asked.
Her eyes were watery and it was clear she was trying to hold back the tears. “There at the last we were. She was… worried. I think she knew something was going to happen to her.”
I eased back into the cushion of the sofa, my hand gripping the phone so tight it ached. “Did she… talk about me?”
That seemed to brighten her. “All the time. She loved you, Piper.”
Then she reached for me, her cool hand on my cheek. “I see her in you.”
And that nearly did me in. My throat closed. I swallowed hard. “She was my mother.”
I don’t know why I told her that. I hardly believed it myself. Her hand never moved from my cheek as she looked at me, her eyes going soft and her mouth curling at the ends.
“I know,” she whispered.
That caught me off guard. It was deeply unfair that the entire town—even Tani—could see I belonged to Alice before I did.
“You did?”
“She never told me. But I knew. The way she talked about you. Worried about you.” She dropped her hand back to her lap then.
“I wish she’d told me.” It was too much to bear.
“She was protecting you from whatever was happening,” she said.
“And that’s why you have to be the one to finish it.
” Then she turned all business. “Now, here’s what you need to do.
The planetary alignment will be visible in the western sky at 10:47 pm tonight.
You’ll need to be ready and at the Crossroads before then. ”
I picked up my phone and started tapping again making notes.
She walked me through it, step by step. The enchantment words—which she made me practice until I could say them without stumbling.
“You’ll need to memorize them,” she said.
I nodded. She kept going, giving me the order of the ritual, where to place the Sun Disk, how to pour the potion, what to expect once it was all done.
“The boundary will feel different than before,” she warned. “Stronger. But also… hungry. It will want to pull magic from you to sustain itself. Don’t let it take too much.”
“How do I stop it?”
“The Sun Disk,” she said. “It anchors you. As long as you’re touching it, the seal can’t drain you dry.”
I wrote it all down. Every word.
When she finished, I looked up. “What if it doesn’t work?”
Madeline’s expression softened. “Then you call me. And we try again.”
“You’ll help me?”
“Honey,” she said, “I’m not letting Alice’s daughter face this alone.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Owen appeared in the doorway, two glasses of sweet tea in his hands.
“Dinner’s ready,” he said, looking between us. His gaze lingered on my face. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Madeline said smoothly. “We were getting to know each other.”
She patted my leg like we were old friends. Owen didn’t look convinced, but he handed me a glass anyway.
I took a sip, grateful for something to do with my hands.
Tonight. I had to seal the Crossroads tonight.
And I had less than nine hours to figure out how to make a potion I’d never made before, using a flower I barely understood, with magic I was still learning to control.
And Owen didn’t know yet what tonight was about to ask of me.
What it might ask of us.