Chapter Five
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
Do not rush your process, ingredients, or oven. You cannot bake quickly. You can only bake incorrectly.
It’s only fitting the first time I move in with a man, it’s for work.
I park my purring Dodge off to the side of Knight Manor, although there’s no one else to make room for.
An older pickup I just now notice is napping under half a tarp, hidden in the greenery.
Like everything else, it looks forgotten.
For errands? They can’t get everything delivered, can they? Have I even seen a postman—a mailbox?
I can easily imagine the Warlock’s answer and scowl. Mailboxes imply we’re open to correspondence.
Heaven forbid.
After my interview turned tribunal, I slapped a new sign to the shop’s yellow front door.
ON VACATION. BACK IN THREE WEEKS.
Even my rest is a lie. Can a Farewitch cure a powerful magical being in the time it takes to get a sourdough starter going? No idea. Sounds like a feat on par with mastering a Julia Child recipe.
How to Cure Your Warlock in a Weekend. The title of my next cookbook.
Then I spent the rest of the week at the hospital with my mom, or in the Apothakery furiously baking and replenishing stock for the more common ailments and standing orders.
I stopped counting my all-nighters. Somehow, I still managed to deliver everything for my regulars across the Holler.
Can’t leave my neighbors up a creek. I’m a Farewitch to everyone. Even if everyone doesn’t believe it.
But deprived of their usual steaming skillet cinnamon buns and biscuits for a week, my neighbors eventually connected the dots. A dash of panic ensued.
The last couple of days, whispers followed me on errands in town.
Harsh looks at the post office, upturned noses at the market, even major side-eye at the consignment shop, where my overalls addiction keeps them in business, thank you.
A gaggle of aggrieved church ladies even shadowed me, close as hungry barn cats.
For ladies who distrust magic as much as their spitfire leader Gertha Fudge, they sure do believe awful hard in it.
“One does not simply close Frost Apothakery, child!” they shouted at me across the town square. “And most certainly not for a dastardly Warlock!”
Friday came blessedly soon.
Now, as I stare up at the neglected farmhouse laid bare in the morning sunlight, the fear in town taps like Ms. Buchanan’s poodle’s claws across my mind. Inhale. Exhale. Hay, grass, horse somewhere in there. The familiar fragrance of the Holler anchors me as I enter the Manor and seal my fate.
Inside, I dump my skillets in the kitchen, away from overhanging pots.
I half expect an ambitious vine to steal something.
Farther into the room, a massive picnic-style kitchen table looks like it can seat twelve, fourteen, sixteen…
You could bowl on this thing. When it’s not throwing a tantrum, it really is a kitchen for entertaining, for family gatherings and celebrations of hearth and home.
For what people?
My favorite cast-iron skillet looks pitiful on the floor, and glares at me, rather rudely. It can sense this is not its kitchen. I glare back. We don’t have a choice, do we?
But: Who will run the Apothakery if I need to stay longer? I can handle living with a dangerous Warlock. But I cannot, under any circumstances, stop working. The residents of Foxe Holler make for some cantankerous customers, but they’re mine.
Ten minutes and a slow, clumsy ascent up two flights of stairs later—governesses apparently do not help with luggage—I stop in a narrow hall on the third floor, in an entirely new wing I don’t think exists on the outside. The farmhouse’s guts do not at all match the blueprint of its exterior.
Warlock magic has to be at play here, yet he couldn’t have magicked in some elevators?
Rows of closed doors line the narrow hall, probably bedrooms for a fuller home, with life and laughter and generations.
Again, for what people? How did such a spacious farmhouse end up so vacant?
What went wrong? Then I think of how quickly my own family shrank to two.
Death moves fast. Grief doesn’t. Empty space grows like a weed.
It’s easy to find the single open door on the floor, the room the Warlock has assigned me against his better judgment, says Governess Zeen. I drop my suitcase on the floor of my new home for the next three weeks.
Like the stairwells and halls, this room is dark, nearing frigid.
The bedroom is small but no smaller than mine above the Apothakery.
There’s a creaky writing desk and chair, and a trunk that appears to be full of vintage paper sewing patterns.
The old hardwood floors are on full display with the sparse furniture. There’s a single twin bed.
The Warlock obviously doesn’t think I’ll be having any guests.
I half wheeze-chuckle to myself. Silas would find that funny. If we were friends and told each other those sorts of things.
“Ms. Frost, if you’re winded after a staircase, this house is going to be terribly difficult to navigate. You should eat more protein.”
Governess Zeen stands like a gargoyle in the doorway, arms crossed over a brand-new cardigan set. Almost-black navy, this time. I guess the beige was too colorful.
Two staircases, I want to say. “I’ll remember that, Ms. Zeen.”
Rigid as ever, she watches me drag my suitcase into a corner. “Your washroom is down the hall. It hasn’t been used in ages. I hope that’s not too rustic for you.”
I wave a hand nonchalantly. Now that I’ve entered a new decade, I need the daily steps, and I’m no stranger to an outhouse (thank you, Momaw). I don’t mind a few dust bunnies.
Momaw’s farmhouse got its fair share of dust, but whenever she said dust bunny, I only heard my name.
From then on, my mom and Momaw and I would spend hours hunting imaginary dust hunnies, giggling until our sides hurt and we downed warm honeyed milk to calm down before bed.
A phantom warmth floods my veins as the memory hugs me tight. Too tight.
“I hope you don’t daydream when handling knives.”
I snap back to the present. The Frost women at their best, vibrant and laughing, is only a memory now. “Sorry. I haven’t slept much the last couple of nights.” At all. Never.
“If you need anything, feminine products and the like, you can find them in the cabinets underneath your washroom sink.”
I hide a smile since it might scare her off and ruin this atom-small moment of bonding. No need to mention I haven’t had a regular period in years. Stress, the gynecologist says. Or a gift from above. I don’t have time to leak when my job demands I’m on my feet all day.
She purses her lips. “The rules, Ms. Frost: Stay in the kitchen. Do not wander the house, especially at night. And whatever you do, refrain from bothering the plants.”
So far, the only areas I’ve been allowed to see except the kitchen are the stairwells and halls. As per The Rules.
“Lastly, the Warlock’s gardens are strictly prohibited.”
“Of course, why wouldn’t they be?” I mutter. Not quietly enough, based on her glower. She’d fit right in with the church ladies. Although none of them would dare work for a Warlock.
When she leaves, I unpack one thing first: a framed photo of Dolly Parton. It’s no coincidence Dolly’s hair reminds me of Momaw’s. Sometimes, it’s easier to look at than actual pictures of my Momaw.
I prop my good luck charm on the nightstand, then take a gander at the view outside the single wavy-glassed window above the desk. It looks out over the gardens behind the house.
Strictly prohibited.
A Farewitch can appreciate a tight SOP. I get it. Every kitchen has rules.
But I don’t care for his.
I immediately head for the gardens behind the house. He’s paying me to cook, and I need ingredients. Does trespassing count if you live upstairs?
Quietly as possible, I creep out the side screen door near the back of the kitchen and onto the section of the wraparound porch that looks out over the back of the grounds.
The Warlock’s gardens.
Just from the porch, I can tell these gardens didn’t grow overnight.
He’s been toiling out here for decades, yet not one rumor about him mentions gardening or herbalism.
Someone who spends this much time on a craft but doesn’t want to show it off…
Odd. Gertha Fudge will tell you how the cow ate the cabbage over her pineapple canning.
Even Ms. Buchanan gushes about her poodle, in a charming, gab-you-to-death way.
Something tells me this man’s not simply a grumpy recluse.
Between my interview and today, I scrambled to learn anything more I could about the Warlock.
Seemed the wise thing to do before making an immensely powerful magical being my roommate.
My thoughts wander back to the timing of the library fire and the Warlock’s disappearance from the public eye.
Connection or coincidence, I’m not sure yet.
A buzzing noise sounds then, too loud even for the dragonflies around here.
My phone! Given the poor state of cell service up in these hills, it must’ve finally wrestled up a signal being outside. Sure enough, one tiny bar struggles for life.
Mom.
I silence it.
There is the slight possibility I might have neglected to tell her my plan. Or that I came here at all and specifically ignored her warning. As I brainstorm how to avoid my mother, my phone rings again, like maternal clockwork. This single bar of service is really earning its rent.
This time, I mentally prepare myself for a real dressing-down, worse even than the first and only time younger me used soap to clean the cast iron.
“… Hey there, mother dearest.”
“Little miss, you best not be avoiding your pitiful mother.”
I feel lighter than angel food cake hearing her voice, the fire I know so well flavoring her tone again. But if Mom is having one of her good days, she’ll be fixing to scold the legs right off my chair.
“I hear you’ve accepted the Warlock’s offer.”