Chapter 16 #2
She set her palms over the seam and began.
It wasn’t Bailey’s cadence. It wasn’t neat.
Her magic rose the way it always did since Bailey died—like ink spilling too fast across paper, tangled and uncontainable, the taste of storms that refused to be scheduled.
She whispered the unbinding line she’d stitched from three different dead languages, laced with the memory of how Bailey had once said her name when she was small and mean.
Oli caught her rhythm fast, breathing in on her in-breath, out on her out. When she tipped her head, he poured a narrow trickle of wolfsbone salt into the pinch of the figure-eight—the tight throat where both loops met—so the spell would have grit enough to catch.
The air changed. It always did when big magic bent its head to look at you. The runes in the beams ticked like a dozen clocks all deciding on one time. Somewhere outside, a nightjar called and then didn’t. The cottage floor lifted half a hair, or maybe it was the skin on her arms.
She felt it come: not a thing, not a mind, just a pressure with intentions. Hungry to belong. Hungry to bind.
“Don’t say hello to it,” she muttered, eyes on the seam. “It gets attached.”
“I hate that,” Oli whispered.
The first nudge pressed along the figure-eight like a palm sliding across a banister.
It found the throat, slipped, found it again.
Maude pressed her hands inward, crimping the space just enough to force the current through the narrow.
It pushed. The glasswort held. The night-apple muffler did its work, dampening the flash, funneling the pressure.
Her jaw ached. Oli tipped in another pinch of bone and salt at her jerked nod.
He didn’t flinch when the resin hissed like a candle taking a breath.
The singing started then—a thin thread of sound not heard with ears. Bailey had called it the seam-note. Maude called it the warning. It meant the thing was choosing. She leaned closer, smelling heartmire and old rain, and said, “Here,” to the spell in the voice she saved for cats on ledges.
It listened.
It flowed.
Not all of it—she didn’t expect mercy—but enough.
She felt the pull in the boards under her boots, in the chalk of the circle, in her spit and her spine.
The cottage air cooled. Her scalp prickled.
The runes went from ticking to a low, satisfied hum.
The seam-loom’s narrow throat brightened one breath and then settled to the dull glow of something that would work as long as it was fed.
Her knees trembled. Oli slid his hand closer—not touching, but close enough to catch her.
She did not fall. Excellent. Character growth.
The pressure eased by degrees. Maude waited until she could taste her tongue again, then lifted her hands. The singing faded into the background. The coins in the dishes did not rattle. She looked at the loom until the room sharpened.
“It’s grounded,” she said, voice low.
“How grounded?”
“Enough to start drinking,” she said. “Enough to keep the seams from wandering while I build bigger teeth.”
Oli exhaled a breath that probably had five unprintable words braided into it.
He rose stiffly, poured coffee that could have removed paint, and handed her a mug with both hands like she might refuse and bite him.
She didn’t. She sat and let the steam hit her face and tried to look like a person instead of a badly concealed runic fire.
“And after this?” he asked when the coffee was half gone. “When this holds?”
“I’ll need to set three more,” she said.
“At Mistwood’s cardinal edges. Weave them into Samhain’s warding net.
” She watched him over the rim of her cup.
“That night the veil thins, and magic moves like quicksilver. The only time the veil leans toward us instead of away.” Her lips curved, not quite a smile.
“Which means I fucked the town up at the most opportune time possible. We’ll need bodies.
People who won’t faint and ruin my geometry. ”
“I can get you that,” he said. “If the vote goes my way, I can get you the city watch to keep the curious off your chalk. If the vote doesn’t go my way, I can get you Lydia as a brass band and a scandal—both distract nicely.”
“And Wesley,” she added before her brain could stop her mouth. “My magic runs cleaner through his process, and I hate it, and it’s true.”
Oli’s mouth did the slow, feline thing again. “Noted.” He paused. “But the magistrate’s seat—there are promises attached. I’m not proud of all of them. Some are…less than noble.”
“I assumed,” she said, dry as bone. “You’re you.”
He huffed a laugh that was only one-third performative.
“And after Samhain?” she asked, because she liked to ruin conversations with reality.
“After Samhain,” he said, looking at the seam-loom instead of her, “I find out if I became part of the machine I hate, or if the machine made the mistake of letting me in. Either way, I’ll be loud about it.”
She stared at him, cataloging the dust along his jaw like war paint, the neat bite at his thumb from where the thorn had caught, and the stubborn light in his eyes.
Irritatingly heroic. Her best friend.
The loom purred. Somewhere in the town, a single bell rang once. Not a duet. Clean.
Maude stood. The room wavered and then behaved. She picked up the seam-loom and felt the hum climb into her palms, travel her arms. Not cured; held. It would have to be enough for now.
“Congratulations,” she told Oli, deadpan. “You’re hired.”
“For what?”
“Assistant. Bone-sifter. Political fox. Whatever. Don’t die.”
“I’ll pencil that in between committee meetings.”
She snorted—small, involuntary, almost a laugh. He looked like he’d frame it and hang it in the foyer.
“Go,” she said, because the hour had gone cobalt at the edges of the window. “Sleep before you charm yourself into a stroke. I’ll set this one in the foundation and watch it for an hour.”
He hesitated at the door, one hand on the frame. “Maude.”
“Yes?”
“If you need me before Samhain,” he said, “need me. Don’t decide I’m part of the problem because it satisfies your brand.”
She made the face again. He grinned at having earned it, kissed the top of her head, and slipped into the dark.
Maude set the seam-loom into the shallow niche Bailey had carved under the hearthstone “for later” and warded it in with three slow words and a press of her palm.
The cottage shivered like a dog settling into a new bed.
The runes hummed. The air became easier to breathe.
She leaned both hands on the mantel and let herself feel the smallest slice of relief a witch was legally allowed.
Then she straightened, pulled a clean sheet of paper toward her, and began writing the list for the other three looms. Names of corners. Names of volunteers she didn’t want to ask and would anyway. A single word underlined twice: Samhain.
She blew the lamplight thinner, and the cottage watched her work like it had from the first night she slept within its walls. She pretended not to notice that it was proud.