Chapter 6 #2
Inside Spellbinders, behind the counter at the back of the shop, the owl bracket clicked twice and went still.
Phineas Grove came out of the back room and paused at the front counter.
From the inner pocket of his coat he drew a single folded sheet of paper.
He smoothed it on the counter, read the address, picked it up, and put it back in his pocket.
He crossed the dim shop to the front door. The bell rang gently. He stepped out onto the cobblestones in front of the shop in the slanting late-afternoon light, and pulled the door closed behind him.
The square was quiet. Phineas stood in the light of the bookshop for a moment.
He looked at the blue door and the wet boot-scraper.
He looked at the painted letters on the shop window, Spellbinders Bookstore & Library, and the small smile that had warmed his face when he arrived, when he had told Colin Scott it was a very fine establishment from what little he could see of it, came back one more time.
He was right. It was a very fine establishment indeed.
Then he heard the footsteps.
He did not stiffen or turn quickly. He turned with the slow measured movement of a man who had been waiting for this moment.
"I knew you would come," Phineas said.
The figure closed the distance. The hands came up precise and practiced and familiar. They closed at Phineas's throat with the soft sure pressure of a thing that did not need to hurry.
Phineas Grove grabbed the hands and tried to cast a spell. But without his voice it was useless. His arms fell to his sides. He closed his eyes and melted into the soft light of the store.
On the post outside the pub window, Baval lifted his head.
He cocked it once. He cocked it the other way.
Then he opened his beak and shrieked one harsh long note out into the square, beat his wings hard against the post, and lifted up off it into the late-afternoon sky.
He circled hard above the square once, twice, three times.
Inside the pub, a few heads turned toward the window. On the small music platform, Leahnora Loveridge tilted her head a fraction in the same direction. She did not turn. She did not change her expression. The few heads turned back to their glasses.
In The Boozy Cauldron, the meeting carried on without another incident.
Oona Pierce returned from the loo and climbed back onto her stool and ordered another whisky.
Maeve Byrne came back from the marigolds with her cheeks a colder pink than they had been and slid onto her stool beside Oona's.
Lazlo Varga came back from the gentlemen's washroom, stopped at the bar to thank Murphy for the excellent ale, and took his table again in the corner.
The yellow-scarfed warlock and the bearded warlock did not look at each other.
Leahnora spoke for a few minutes more. She made the same promise three different ways. There would be a fresh briefing in the morning.
"It can be here," Murphy said from behind the bar. "I'll have the back room ready by seven."
"We'll send word, Mr. O'Reilly," Leahnora answered.
"It'd keep the town settled to have a place to come to, Mayor." Murphy said.
"And it'll keep the town settled to be told what we know when we know it." Leahnora turned to him.
A small silence held between them. Murphy set down the glass he had been polishing.
"As ye like, then," Murphy said.
"As I like," Leahnora said back.
She assured everyone. There would be more Shifters on patrol on the lanes overnight. The Hadwins would have the town's full support, and any witch or warlock who needed to leave Cauldron Falls before the matter was resolved was welcome to do so but would not be welcome back until it was.
The town nodded. The meeting ended. People filtered out of The Boozy Cauldron slowly, leaving glasses on tables and coins for Murphy and small private words for the people they were going home with.
The lamps in the square had been lit since the meeting began.
The wind off the falls had risen. October was leaning into the late evening.
Colin waited for Clive to finish his drink and went out into the square with him. Clive turned up the lane toward the bridge to his orchard. Colin turned the other way, toward Spellbinders, to lock up.
Colin had not gone twenty paces before he stopped. The shape in the light at the foot of his step was not a shape he recognized at first. He took two steps closer. Then three faster. Then he ran.
Phineas Grove was on the cobbles in front of the shop. His coat was open. His hat was a foot from his head. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open and his throat, Colin saw it as he dropped to his knees, was darkening already at the marks where hands had been.
"Phineas." Colin's voice did not work the first time. "Phineas, sir, Mr. Grove!"
Phineas Grove did not answer.
Colin stayed on his knees on the cobbles and laid his hand on Phineas's chest. He listened. He listened to the wind off the falls and to a door closing somewhere up the lane and to his own ears ringing. Then he stood up and shouted. He shouted for Roam, Murphy, Sean, Edgar, and Clive.
The door of The Boozy Cauldron at the end of the lane swung open.
Edgar and Roam reached him first. They covered the lane between the pub and Spellbinders at a long fast stride, reached the cobbles in front of Spellbinders, and Edgar went down on one knee and saw what Colin had seen, and went very, very still.
He laid his big hand on Phineas Grove's chest the way Colin had.
Then Edgar Hadwin closed his eyes. "Aw, son," he said. His southern drawl had gone soft. "Aw, son."
Behind him, in the gathering crowd at the corner of Spellbinders, Rhoda pressed her hand against her own mouth and did not make a sound. Honey stepped close to her mother. Sean stepped through the crowd toward the body with the long professional walk of a man going to his work.
Lazlo, behind them, stopped at the edge of the crowd. His hand came up to his mouth. "No, not Phineas," he said softly.
Far up the hill, Dean Martin crooned, "Sugar, three more."