Chapter 13 #2
“Don’t make it weird,” she managed.
“Too late,” he said, grinning in a way that erased ten years and three layers of armor.
She almost smiled again before the room tipped—no, not the room. Her vision. For a second, everything blurred and swam and—
Wesley vanished.
The space where his body had been went cold so fast that the blood under her skin tried to follow it out. Maude’s stomach dropped to the floor.
“Wesley?” It came out as a bark, a stupid, desperate thing that bounced off glass.
Silence. The cauldron hummed on, very proud of itself.
“Wes—” Panic snapped a cord in her chest. Her mind flashed through all the ways magic ate: unraveling, unmaking, pinching the wrong thread and watching a person come apart like cheap knitting.
A shout cracked the night open across the street. “Maude!”
She pushed off the counter too fast and almost fell, but caught herself on a shelf and flung herself out the door with enough force to rattle the bells.
Maude stumbled into the fog, breath tearing, and there—across Blightbend Way—his shop stood where the shell had been, pastel and ridiculous and whole.
Light burned in the window like a smug sunrise.
Wesley leaned in the doorway, grinning like the cat that got the cream. His hair was a disaster. His shirt was torn at one sleeve. He looked like a painting of joy made by someone who’d sworn they didn’t believe in it.
Maude’s laugh—real this time, bright and wicked—ripped out of her so hard it bent her double.
Five strides across the narrow lane and Wesley was there, scooping her off her feet before she could pretend she didn’t want that to happen.
She went airborne—just a spin, the world a blur of crooked roofs and wet stars and the foolish, relief-drunk face of the man who’d helped her breathe tonight.
He set her down before any part of her pride could file a complaint, but not before her hands had found his shoulders and held.
“You did it,” he said, breathless, laughter threaded through his voice. “You brilliant witch.”
The street tilted pleasantly. Her mouth hurt from smiling. She felt like she’d swallowed a spoonful of Shifter’s Delight. For one slow, ringing heartbeat, it was just them and the fog and the empty street and the relief.
A bell in the distance tolled the hour.
Clarity cut through on the tail of it, sudden and uninvited. She knew he felt it too—could read it in the way his touch turned hesitant. He set her down as if she were glass and eased back a hand’s width.
They looked at each other like the first inkling of a headache, like a good dream caught by daylight.
“Well,” he said, mouth tipping crooked. “That’s that, isn’t it?”
“It is,” she said. The words felt too tidy and not true enough. She lifted her hand between them anyway, palm open for a shake. “Terms of truce honored.”
He looked at her hand, and a soft, incredulous snort escaped him. “A handshake? After all that? Saints, Harrow.”
“Take the win, baker.”
“Yes, ma’am.” His palm met hers, warm and wide, callused in ways that made sense now. He squeezed once—proper, businesslike—and didn’t let go for a beat beyond polite. His thumb twitched, as if he had to stop himself from doing something unwise—and then he released her.
She brushed a hand down her unruly curls. “Go to sleep, Wesley.”
He studied her face. “Are you heading home?”
“Not yet.” She forced her voice back into its old shape. “You go. I have a few things to wrap up.”
He looked like he might argue. Then he didn’t. “Don’t explode the town while I’m gone.” He tipped her a mock salute and jogged back across to his own door.
She watched him go, the swing of his shoulders unaccountably interesting. The Sugar High sign creaked, as if clearing its throat. He turned once at his threshold, caught her looking, and for one dizzy beat they just…smiled at each other like idiots.
Then he vanished inside.
The moment folded up and put itself away.
Maude breathed. In. Out. She turned, went back into her shop, and shut the door.
The room felt like itself again. The counter wore its scars without apology. The herbs on the wall hung with their old, ordinary gravity. The cauldron gave one last contented sigh and went quiet, runes dimming to a sleepy pulse.
Grim leapt onto her shoulder as if he’d always intended to, dug his claws in just enough to sting, then settled like an arrogant scarf.
“Yes,” she told him. “I know. You did everything. Please accept this promotion.”
He purred.
Maude returned to the counter, moving carefully, as if sudden motion might wake something.
She tidied because she needed to put her hands on tasks that ended.
Ironvine back into its jar, label facing front.
Blackthorn wrapped in oiled paper. Rosemary bundled tight with twine.
Bloodroot scraped, dried, stored. Yarrow’s pale heads rubbed between her fingers until they surrendered to dust. The moondust caps tipped into their tin with reverence, making the faintest chiming sound as they settled.
Last: shadowbell.
There were a few blooms she hadn’t needed to grind—a margin for error she’d refused to use.
She lifted each with careful fingers, the petals cool and tender as night.
Their scent rose—sorrow tempered, gentled by work done well.
She slid them into a small glass bottle, stoppered it, pressed wax into the cork, and set it on the shelf where Bailey had kept rarities.
Her hand went to smooth the shelf and caught on a burr. No—paper. Something tucked between wood and the backboard, a corner curling like a beckoning finger. Maude frowned, slid her nails in, and worried the thing free.
Vellum. Bailey’s, from the weight. The edges were singed as if he’d held it too close to a candle. Ink had bled in places where damp had found it. She knew his hand the way you know the inside of your house in the dark.
Her stomach made a slow, unpleasant turn.
She unfolded it.
Lines. A diagram she recognized and wanted to pretend she didn’t. Couplets. A rune set.
The lamplight jittered. Or she did.
She read.
Not a sabotage. Not even close. The top line named the thing without flinching, and the name sat in her mouth like ice: interlock.
Her breath thinned to a thread.
Bailey had written like a man leaving a message under a floorboard for a future version of himself he didn’t trust to remember. Notes in the margins:
Interlock, variant: for the holding of what strains to part. Temporary stabilizer only. Masks fracture, buys time. Must be severed. Left unchecked, bond will keep seeking more until all is drawn into one.
The room seemed to tilt and then tilt back. The words held steady.
He’d made the interlock as a stabilizer, something to hold fragile things together until they could be mended—a cracked wall until the mason arrived, a bridge until new timbers could be laid, a broken body held together until a surgeon could finish the work.
Pragmatic, temporary, a way to buy time.
His notes stressed it again and again: must be severed.
Left unchecked, bond will keep seeking more until all is drawn into one.
He assumed anyone using it would know how to unpick the seams.
Two spells not meant to touch had tangled—her spell meant to fracture, his meant to hold—and the result had been a runaway loop. Fracture, bind, fracture, bind. Over and over. Until it stopped being a patch and became a hunger.
That was why the street had blurred, softened, melted into nightmare. The combined spells were simultaneously trying to break Blightbend and make it one.
Her mouth went dry. She read the lines three times, then four, hoping they would rearrange themselves into a joke. A test. Anything but exactly what they were.
Maude put her hands flat on the counter because they were shaking. She shut her eyes and saw the street as it had looked an hour ago: marshmallow grass and sugared wheelbarrows, stone cracking to rot. She saw the line of shops as a mouth of crooked teeth, all of it softening under a tide.
Wesley’s laugh echoed in her skull, warm, unguarded. You did it. Her own laugh answered it, like a fool.
The cauldron ticked once as the spell cooled. The lamp over the counter hummed. In the alley, something—crow, demon, wind—scratched stone.
Maude opened her eyes.
Bailey’s hand waited on the page, neat as ever. She swallowed. Across the street, the light went out in the bakery. Wesley’s silhouette passed the window and vanished.
“Of course,” she said softly. It didn’t sound like her voice. “Of course it isn’t over.”
Grim head-butted her jaw. She didn’t swat him away.
She folded the parchment along its original crease, then folded it again because she couldn’t bear to see the words. She slid it into a drawer and closed it gently, the touch of a priest at the altar.
The shop was quiet. The quiet had teeth.
Outside, Blightbend Way slept like a beast that had only rolled over, not settled.
Maude blew out the lamp. The dark came down all at once, clean and absolute. In it, she could hear her heart and the last, almost inaudible murmur of the runes in the cauldron—like a clock ticking toward a time she didn’t like the sound of.
Not long at all.