1. Freddie #2
Grimm—full name Grimmswell, though also affectionately called Grimmothy or Grumpy St. Grimm by me depending on how cooperative he’s feeling—is our family’s ancient grimoire, passed down through generations of Rowley witches spanning thousands of years.
Since I’m my father’s only daughter, the heirloom naturally wound up in my care.
I’ve been training out of his dog-eared pages since I was seven years old, back when I had just picked out my very first pint-sized broomstick with neon-pink bristles.
He’s older than the inn, older than Amberhollow itself, and older than the Witch Wood, if you believe what he says.
And he never lets you forget any of it. His pages hold thousands of spells, sitting comfortably on a very wide spectrum of utility.
Half the spells in there are exactly what you’d expect from well-respected witches—wardings, healing salves and potions, weather-calling charms that have saved this town’s harvests more than once.
Practical stuff. The bones of what any Rowley witch needs to know.
Then there are the hyper-specific life hacks nobody else would ever think to codify into a sacred text, like a charm to keep a mug of tea or coffee at a scalding temperature through a double shift, or a locator spell that works exceptionally well for rogue car keys lost in the couch cushions. I know those ones by heart now.
Grimm also talks. Not out loud, the way Jett does. It’s more like a voice that lands directly into the back of your skull, dry as a bone and twice as smug.
“Because you know why,” Delphi says, expertly pulling her side taut and tucking the elastic under the mattress corner with practiced ease, “there are some things a witch needs to learn how to do without magic, and making a bed is simple enough.”
“Is it, though?”
She lets out a short laugh at that, and between the two of us, the sheet’s on in no time flat—corners tucked, no wrestling required. She’s got a gift for making things look effortless that took me half an hour of profanity to almost accomplish.
“Grab the other sheets, the big quilt, and the pillows,” she says. “I’ll stay, since this task is apparently so tragically insurmountable.”
I let out a sarcastic ha ha and get to work.
She stands guard, as usual, with her arms crossed, eyes tracking my every move, missing nothing.
It’s the exact same posture she’s used since I was a child, watching to make sure I didn’t cut corners when scrubbing the copper pots or cheat by using one of my dusting spells.
The Everfall Inn isn’t just a business to her; it’s Delphi’s absolute pride and joy, her firstborn child in every way that counts.
It’s been in the Rowley family for generation upon generation upon generation—a rambling, timber-framed sanctuary of creaky floorboards, roaring hearths, and hallways that smell permanently of beeswax and woodsmoke.
Technically, the deed had once belonged to my father and Delphi’s older brother, Atticus Rowley.
He had never wanted the place to begin with, even though his parents stubbornly insisted on handing it down to him anyway.
So instead, Delphi took it over, grabbing the place by the scruff of the neck when she was barely out of her teens and pouring every ounce of her stubborn soul into saving it.
Now, it’s easily one of Amberhollow’s most beloved, heartbeat-of-the-town spots. People don’t just stay here to sleep; they come back year after year for the cozy atmosphere, the legendary blackberry scones, and Delphi’s no-nonsense hospitality.
I pull the ginormous quilt out of the old cedar chest at the foot of the bed, the deep green one with the gold thread stitched through it in a pattern of climbing vines and little crescent moons, heavy enough to trap in every ounce of body heat on a night like this.
It smells faintly of crisp laundry detergent and the lavender sachets Delphi tucks into all the linen chests.
She suddenly clears her throat. “Alden told me you turned down another apprenticeship. With Sabine Blackwell.”
My hands freeze on the stack of pillowcases next to the quilt for a microsecond before I force myself to keep moving, smoothing the fabric down over the bolster.
Damn Alden. My younger—though only by exactly one year and one month—brother couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut if his life depended on it.
When I don’t answer right away, Delphi tilts her head. “Is that true?”
I let out a slow breath, staring down at the bed. “I guess.”
“Why?” She steps a little closer, her voice dropping just a smidge into a tone that always makes me feel like a stubborn teenager getting caught sneaking out all over again.
“Sabine is one of the most powerful witches in Amberhollow, Winifred. This is serious. It’s a massive privilege that she’s even willing to take on an apprentice.
This is the third one you’ve turned down and quite frankly, it doesn’t make any sense.
There aren’t many witches in this town who are as uniquely equipped to help train Resonants the way Sabine is. ”
Resonants, a.k.a, me. I mentally gag at the word.
In Amberhollow, most witches worked with energy at a surface level to some degree—shaping it into fire or water, twisting it into roots to grow herbs and plants, or casting spells with neat, visible borders.
But energy isn’t something you can keep packed up inside of a neat little box; it’s the raw undercurrent of everything.
Every emotion a person feels, every spell that starts to fray, every building and street in this town vibrates on a constant, shifting frequency.
As a Resonant, my entire existence is wired into that underlying current.
Energy dictates everything—how a room feels when tension chokes the air, or how a volatile spell cascades when someone loses their grip.
Because I can process energy at a foundational level, I can catch those stray frequencies, absorb them, and anchor a stable vibration into a space or an object to force things to calm down.
To someone like Sabine Blackwell, this made me a goldmine.
Resonance was rare, and a trained Resonant was basically a walking force multiplier for the town—someone who could stabilize the Veil that separates Amberhollow completely from the outside realm, neutralize volatile magic, and keep half of the town from accidentally hexing themselves into oblivion on any given day.
Sabine looked at me and saw a vital civic asset that was currently going to waste, someone she could train to harness and control the town’s collective disarray.
There are days when my magic feels…okay, and even a little meaningful. Being the person who can quietly dial down the stress or tension in a room, knowing you’re keeping someone from drowning inside of their own head—there’s power in that.
The problem is what happens outside of those controlled moments. Energy isn’t just a tool you pick up and put down at will; it’s alive, and it is extremely reactive to me.
If I get annoyed or angry near a fireplace or a burning candle, the flames could spit right across the room, sending a cascade of hot embers towards anyone standing in their path.
A bad mood on a rainy afternoon could turn a quiet drizzle into a howling storm, shattering glass right out of their window frames before I even realized I was doing it.
My emotions didn’t stay tucked safely under my skin like everyone else’s; they bled straight out into the physical world, and I couldn’t always control what happened when they did.
So when Sabine Blackwell saw me as some sort of fun, sick little science experiment, my stomach nearly dropped to my ass.
The thought of digging deeper into my magic—of letting someone mess with the already paper-thin control I had left of it—was a hard pass.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to learn how to master it; I was just scared of the amount of wreckage it would take to get there.
I’ve hurt people I love with my magic before, and I refused to let it happen again.
I finally move on to the quilt, grabbing the folds and shaking it out so it billows into the air before settling in a comforting sprawl across the mattress.
I keep my hands busy by smoothing the edges of the fabric, refusing to look Delphi in the eye.
“I just don’t want to. I finished my formal witch training, and that’s good enough for me. ”
And that’s partially true; coven instruction and I were a match made in hell.
I had the attendance record of a fugitive and about three minutes of usable focus on a good day.
Put me in a hard wooden seat for more than ten minutes while an elder droned on about ancient bylaws, and my brain completely checked out.
I skipped every lecture I could get away with, only bothering to show up when a class actually involved field practice, flying or something mildly destructive.
Honestly, it’s a miracle I even formally finished at eighteen.
The only reason I passed at all was because my practical exam scores were high enough to carry the disaster of my written theory.
That, and I’m pretty sure the elders were so tired of dealing with me that they signed off on my certification just to get rid of me for good.
Delphi crosses her arms a little tighter.
“You never went to any of the universities in Amberhollow following your training, even though you were offered guaranteed apprenticeships at two of them. Why? Why is it that you tuck your tail between your legs and bolt the second someone tries to give you just a little bit of structure?”
I open my mouth to fire back, but Delphi lifts a single finger, cutting me off before another word can leave my lips. “And I don’t want to hear a single word about how that little secondhand record shack you work at during the day constitutes as your career.”
“I love Spellspin!” I say.