8. Freddie
Freddie
“I think this might be the worst idea you’ve ever had, Fred,” Twyla’s high-pitched voice buzzes right against my left eardrum.
She’s sitting on my shoulder, her translucent wings moving like a hummingbird’s as her miniature hands yank on a loose lock of my dark hair. She’s weaving it into a tight, lopsided braid near my temple.
Over the years, Twyla and I have had to establish some very strict, non-negotiable boundaries regarding what she is and is not allowed to weave into my hair during her spontaneous styling sessions.
Wildflowers, clover blossoms, and dried lavender stems are totally fine.
Living centipedes, sticky tree sap, and dead June bugs are a hard, definite no.
Right now, I can hear the delicate rustle of dried chamomile buds being forcefully jammed into the weave behind my ear.
“I’m with the pixie,” Stella chimes in from my couch. She’s sprawled out in her favorite spot, not even bothering to look up from her nails as she carefully applies a coat of dark plum polish. “And that’s saying something, because usually I support your chaotic nonsense.”
Beside her, my younger brother Alden—a messy tangle of dark brown hair and bright hazel eyes, currently taking up two-thirds of my other velvet sofa by sprawling out like a sunbathing lizard—nods in solemn agreement.
“Top three worst ideas, easy. Up there with the time you tried to enchant the Inn’s riding mower to cut the grass by itself and it ended up chasing all of the Mayor’s goats into the creek. ”
In the sunny patch of sunlight near the bookshelf, Jett stops licking his left back paw. “If you get executed by the High Council, I’m eating all of your leftover bacon.”
I drop down onto my living room floor, sitting criss-cross applesauce on my fluffy rug, and narrow my eyes at the whole traitorous gallery of them.
“So does no one in this room have any actual faith in me?” I ask, placing my hands flat on my knees.
“No,” Stella, Alden, and Jett say in synchronized unison. Twyla even adds an extra squeaky little nope for good measure.
“Unbelievable,” I mutter, holding up two enthusiastic middle fingers and flipping them all off. “The disrespect I tolerate in my own home.”
I lower my hands, cup them around my mouth, and direct my voice toward the hallway that leads back to my bedroom. “Grimm!”
Silence. No leather-bound tome comes floating gracefully into the room.
I narrow my eyes further, sitting up straight. “Grimmothy!”
A dramatic sigh seems to echo from my bedroom, followed by the muffled thump of a thick book accidentally bumping into the doorframe.
A second later, my ancient, brass-bound grimoire floats reluctantly around the corner.
It hovers about two feet off the hardwood floor, drifting toward me at the enthusiastic speed of a sloth.
The book lets out a dry, rasping ahem that sounds remarkably like a dusty old man coughing up a throat lozenge, its leather cover flapping slightly.
“You know I loathe being called Grimmothy, Winifred,” the grimoire rasps.
“Well, you didn’t answer to Grimm,” I snicker, catching the book as it drops the last six inches onto my lap with a satisfying thump.
Over the years, Alden and I have affectionately slapped about a dozen terrible nicknames on our family’s sentient ancestral spellbook. Grimmothy is the main offender, but he’s also answered to Grumpy St. Grimm, The Old Paperweight, and Sir Page-Turner when we’re feeling particularly insufferable.
I stroke the worn, embossed leather spine, coaxing the book open. “Okay, old man. I need you to search your dusty little archives. Is there a spell tucked away in here somewhere that could, I don’t know…hypothetically tear a tiny, temporary seam in the Veil to let a person through?”
The pages flutter wildly on their own, flipping back and forth in a frantic hurry before slamming shut again with a puff of dust that makes Twyla sneeze on my shoulder.
“A tear in the Veil?” Grimm’s voice echoes, laced with unmistakable shock. “Winifred, even if such dark and volatile magic were housed within these parchment walls, you would require an immense level of assistance to channel it without blowing yourself to Kingdom Come.”
“You’re no help,” I mutter, shoving his cover open again with my thumb and manually flipping past the index.
From the sofa, Stella blows on her nails before sweeping her loose brown ringlets up into a messy ponytail at the crown of her head.
“Fred, be honest with me. Are you sure you didn’t just get roped into a federal crime because you were momentarily blinded by a ginger mountain of beautiful eye candy? ”
“He’s not that beautiful,” Alden grumbles immediately, slumping deeper into the cushions and crossing his arms like a pouting teenager.
Stella rolls her eyes. Today is her rare day off from the paper, and since I also have the day off from Spellspin, we usually spend these precious twenty-four hours together. And where Stella goes, Alden inevitably follows.
My little brother has been hopelessly, pathetically in love with my best friend since he was nine years old. Everyone in Amberhollow knows except, apparently, Stella herself, who still treats him like the annoying kid brother who used to put garter snakes in her lunchbox.
“His looks have nothing to do with it,” I say, keeping my eyes glued to the yellowed pages of the grimoire.
Jett lets out a raspy laugh. “Riiiiight.”
Twyla leans down right against my earlobe, her tiny voice buzzing like a honeybee. “He is quite handsome, though, Freddie. Very broad. Like a big mountain bear in a brown shirt.”
“Also completely irrelevant,” I say, nudging her gently with my shoulder. “Wouldn’t any of you want someone to help you if you were stuck somewhere away from your family, having no damn clue when you’d ever see them again?”
Stella sighs. “I guess, Fred. But I still don’t see how you’re going to pull something of this scale off, even if you want to.
Nisrene told me at the news desk yesterday that Mayor Brightfang doubled the sentry rotations along the ridge.
They’ve got silver-threaded wards strung up every ten feet along the tree line now.
You so much as sneeze near the Veil without a clearance pass, and half the Council knows about it before you can wipe your nose. ”
“Yeah, and I’m not bailing you out of whatever underground cell they throw you in when you get caught,” Alden adds, grabbing a handful of pretzel sticks from the bowl on the coffee table. “Also, I hear the basement under the town hall smells like ass.”
I narrow my eyes at my little brother. “Good to know where your loyalty lies. Very comforting.”
I go back to dragging my finger down the grimoire’s index, coughing slightly as a rogue speck of dust floats up my nose.
Most of the book is filled with standard, day-to-day household charms that my ancestors logged over the last two centuries.
There’s a recipe for Aunt Maeve’s Salve for Sours and Stings requiring three drops of moon-harvested clover oil and dried yarrow; a low-level charm to keep bread from molding during damp autumns; and a remarkably passive-aggressive spell titled To Induce Mild Intestinal Distress in Unwelcome Suitors, which calls for powdered dragon-root and a pinch of dried nettle.
“The only thing I can think of,” Stella says softly, “is if you tapped into your Resonance magic.”
“No,” I say instantly, not even looking up from the page.
“Fred—”
“I said no, Stells.” I flip a thick parchment page with a little too much force, the corner crumpling slightly under my thumb. “I’m not doing that.”
Stella shifts her weight on the couch cushions. “Freddie, it was a long time ago. You have to start embracing it eventually.”
I pull my gaze up from the grimoire, my eyes landing directly on the tiny notch cutting right through the middle of Stella’s left eyebrow, a faint white line of scarred tissue that hasn’t grown hair since we were twelve years old.
Shame hits me like a bucket of ice water. I jerk my eyes back down to the dusty pages, my throat suddenly feeling like I swallowed a handful of sand.
“We were kids, Freddie,” Stella says gently. “It was an accident.”
I trace my thumb over the frayed edge of the leather binding, focusing on the rough texture of the paper just to keep my hands from shaking.
That tiny white line in Stella’s eyebrow is a permanent reminder.
It doesn’t matter that it happened nearly seventeen years ago, or that we can’t even remember what petty middle-school argument triggered it in the first place.
I just remember the suffocating rush of heat in my chest, the sudden crack of my mom’s favorite ceramic vase shattering across the room, and the horrifying realization that the flying shards hadn’t exploded at random. They’d targeted Stella.
I’ll never forget the sound of her crying, or the sight of red dripping past her eye while I stood there frozen, entirely powerless to stop the storm I’d just created. Even the menders couldn’t fix the scar left behind.
Stella is my best friend, practically a sister, and I did that to her.
My Resonance magic isn’t like a light switch I can flip on and off when it’s convenient.
It’s tied directly to whatever emotion I’m trying to keep buried.
If I let myself feel too much—too angry, too desperate, too attached—the power spikes, unpredictable and wild, and it reacts in ways I can’t predict.
Keeping my feelings locked in a vault deep down where nobody can touch them isn’t healthy, and I know that.
But it’s safer that way. It keeps my magic dormant, and keeping it dormant ensures that the people I love won’t end up being collateral damage ever again.
I flick my wrist toward the vintage turntable sitting on the cedar sideboard across the room. The needle drops with a soft, static pop, and the opening chords of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love album fill the living room, swelling until the drums echo off the exposed wooden beams.
Stella lets out a loud scoff, kicking her legs over the arm of the sofa. “Oh, brilliant, Fred. You can’t just blast Kate Bush at maximum volume and expect me to magically shut up.”
I offer her a sweet, razor-sharp smirk. “Watch me, sweet cheeks.”
Alden snorts while Stella throws a velvet throw pillow directly at my head. I duck, letting it hit the bookshelf behind me, and dive back into the grimoire’s index.
I flip through two more pages, dragging my finger past A Draft to Quiet an Unruly Hearth, which calls for crushed eggshells and chimney soot, and an ancient charm titled To Render a Rival’s Tongue Heavy as Lead, complete with a laundry list of nightmare ingredients like dried nightshade, snake shed, and vinegar harvested under a dark moon.
Nothing. Not a single useful thing about breaking high-level municipal wards or tearing holes in reality.
If I’m going to keep my word to a certain frustratingly handsome detective without turning myself into a town hazard, I’m going to need a hell of a lot more than Kate Bush and some crushed eggshells.
“The Raven’s Quill,” I say, sitting up straight as the idea hits me. “The spellbook shop has to have something on border wards.”
Stella stops blowing on her nails, glancing over at me.
“I mean, probably. There’s literally hundreds of books in there.
But Aria Ravenshade works the counter six days a week, and she’s not going to just sell a restricted tome to you.
Those high-level ward books are strictly off-limits unless you’re an elder witch with a permit. ”
“Which is exactly why I’m not going to buy it,” I say. “I’m going to steal it.”
Alden pauses mid-chew, staring at me like I’ve grown a second head. “Oh, perfect. So we’re adding grand larceny to the rap sheet today? How are you even going to pull that off? You can’t just stroll past Aria, tuck a hundred-year-old spellbook under your arm, and walk out the front door.”
“Obviously not,” I say, rolling my eyes at him. “Which is why I’m going to bring a ruggedly handsome red-headed distraction to keep Aria busy while I slip into the back archives.”
Stella lets out a snort, picking up a pretzel stick from the bowl on the coffee table and aiming it directly at Alden’s open mouth. He catches it awkwardly with his teeth, crunching down while glaring at her.
“And what’s your plan if said handsome detective fails to charm the socks off a seventy-year-old witch?” Stella asks, tossing another pretzel that bounces right off Alden’s nose.
I turn my head toward the windowsill, locking eyes with Jett. “Jett’s coming with me,” I say sweetly. “He’s my Plan B.”
Jett stops mid-lick, his eyes narrowing into tiny slits. “Absolutely not, Winifred. I am a creature of luxury, not an accomplice to breaking and entering.”
“Oh, please, Jetty!” I press my palms together, giving him my best pitiful pout. “Remember that time I pulled you out of a log in the freezing rain and saved your life?”
Jett lets out a theatrical hiss, swishing his tail against the floor. “You never let me forget it. Fine. But for the record, I hate you.”
I grin. “Good enough for me.”