Chapter Twelve
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
Remember to remove the skins and seeds of your scuppernongs; the inherent bitterness will make everything else sour.
The Warlock disappears for five days, but who’s counting?
Me. I’m counting. Crossing them off on a tiny calendar in my room as we’ve approached the day I said I would reopen the Apothakery. Tomorrow.
Governess Zeen says he’s deep in research for a client, another Warlock up in Louisville, and that he rarely surfaces during these projects.
Or he’s avoiding me the way I dodge imitation butter. I’m not sure what’s worse, vanishing or hiding. Both are synonymous with fleeing in my grimoire.
Still, I keep leaving him potential remedies in the kitchen.
Bourbon butter cake, scuppernong pie (good for tempers)…
I just hope he tells me if—when—something works.
Lazlo cooks with me whenever he doesn’t owe Ms. Zeen homework.
While he sneaks more bites of food than he makes, his energetic chatter works like caffeine, and I’m able to whisk away my evenings in the Manor’s library, digging through the archives for clues.
Though with more folks in town requesting special orders and deliveries, I barely have time to hunt for that recipe that tastes right in my mouth before I even make it.
If I just had time to work harder, mine deeper…
But my woefully hopeful (wopeful?) estimate of the three weeks I would need is up and I’m no closer to cures for any ailment. I’m supposed to leave in the morning, and for the first time, the idea of returning to the Apothakery doesn’t warm my belly like hearty soup.
So rather than packing like a sensible person, I’m nestled in a leather wingback, an old cookbook from a now-nonexistent gardening club in my lap.
Hours pass. I fall into a cozy rhythm of flipping pages, listening to the sigh of leather as I burrow deeper into my chair. I put a fire in the person-sized stone hearth, and the warm pops keep me company on an otherwise quiet and chilly spring evening.
My entire life, I’ve been too busy to be bored. But when one of three other people in a labyrinthine farmhouse disappears, the extra silence echoes.
A rebellious frustration blooms inside me, like hungry yeast. Honestly, it’s been fermenting for a while. Why is the Warlock so protective of his isolation? He could stand to lose his dismal reputation, not fortify the mystery.
The folks of Foxe Holler fear the Warlock—but what is he so afraid of?
My annoyed mood and that question have me pacing the stacks, trekking deeper until I reach a darker, forgotten corner where the warmth from the hearth doesn’t venture. It’s here I find a curious thing.
A single bookcase looms in its own locked enclave behind wrought iron bars.
I jiggle the bars, searching for a door. Who locks up books? Maybe the volumes I can see through the shadows are dastardly family photo albums with pictures of Warlock Knight dressed up for Halloween. The mental image makes me smile for the first time in a week.
But I don’t have the magic necessary to break into this. If I were a Bookwitch, I could coax out a few shy volumes. My eyes catch on one with glimmering, gold lettering on the spine.
The Foxe Holler Yonder.
The town’s local newspaper. Whole issues or clippings? Then I spot the detail that makes my chest tight: The year beneath the name—it’s twenty-five years ago.
I need to see inside that book.
Pushing my entire body against the cage for leverage, I thrust as much of an arm as I can through the bars and reach, fingers wiggling. My middle finger grazes the spine. I’m so close—
The metal of the cage begins to burn.
Literally, burn, suddenly as hot as a cast-iron skillet right out of the oven, and my skin sears wherever it makes contact.
I yank out my arm so fast, I smell singed hair as my forearm grazes the bars.
A scream builds in my throat but I clamp my mouth shut, biting my cheek so hard I taste blood and flesh.
I drop to my knees, breathing through the pain.
I’ve had my fair share of kitchen burns, but I can already feel the blisters bubbling, eager to burst—
Then the pain vanishes.
It’s just… gone.
I look down at my hands. Nothing. No angry blisters, no charred hairless patches of pink and raw flesh. The only evidence of the last ten seconds is the adrenaline powering my heart.
Okay. The house’s message is painfully clear. Don’t touch the restricted books.
But… there’s not a single burn on me. That thought almost unsettles me more. I’m a Farewitch. A burn, I can handle. Even a nasty one. But an illusion that can make me think I’m burning, with no relief from the pain? Terrifying.
This magic can’t just be the house. After so many years, the Warlock’s power and personality have probably soaked through this place like marsala in tiramisu.
Unfortunately for him, this only makes me more determined to puzzle out his history.
The one memory I barely managed to grab from him my first day was clouded, murky like bad creek water.
Somehow, I feel as if the more he holds on to memories like that, the more they’ll poison him.
His past has to be the key to his illness.
What the hell is in that book?
That question is how I end up right outside the Warlock’s bedroom door at midnight.
I raise a fist. Lower it. Raise it a second time. Woman up, Frost. I switch hands, which helps, and knock.
No answer. I give him a minute in case he’s sleeping. Do Warlocks sleep? They must, that’s why he’s not answering. He has lots of… subconscious spellcasting and omens to decipher.
Another knock.
This is getting ridiculous. He can’t avoid me forever.
My third knock echoes with disappointment. I thought he must be up at all hours, like me. Kindred night owls. He seems like a personification of a brooding nocturnal strigiform.
Fine. So be it. I’ve haunted his house this long without any success; he probably thinks I’m a lousy Farewitch.
But no one can tell me I don’t give my all learning to be better.
The bitterness in my throat tastes like the sour seeds of a scuppernong.
Why do I even care if I don’t see him on my last night? I don’t need to say goodbye.
I know what I do need, though.
Ten minutes later in my bathroom down the hall, I sink into the perfect warm bath.
My sigh reverberates off the green tile. Bubbles tickle my arm hair that I swore burned off in the library. The warmth loosens a knot behind my navel. This must be what pasta feels like, steeping in its own juices, limp with leisure. No wonder it tastes so wholesome.
But my mind soon slips back to worrying.
The Warlock will become just another person I can’t cure.
Even if I were riding high on a full night’s sleep and spent half my time between here and the Apothakery, could I really make this double life here at the Manor work for much longer?
On top of helping my mom? I’m used to life yanking me in different directions, but this time, I don’t feel the satisfaction of overachievement.
Only overwhelmed, like I’ve got two cakes baking at the same time, except the catch is the ovens are on opposite sides of town.
The spiraling thoughts churn with heat under my skin, and sweat pools in my pores.
The Frosts aren’t ones for Small Wishes.
Only big moves, big confidence, big intention.
Since I’m the only heir to the Frost legacy, expectations have always been high.
I know that. So well. But it means that over the years, a single step forward feels akin to failure.
What Farewitch can’t handle her own Apothakery?
My cheeks flush, the bathwater almost too warm now. Anxious heat pumps through my veins. Jesus, it’s warm. Typical Frost, turning a relaxing soak into a stressful self-interrogation. How long have I been in the tub? Shouldn’t the water be cooling, not getting hotter?
In half a second, the uncomfortable warmth turns from stinging to a white-hot pain. My skin is on fire. Half faint, ears buzzing, I realize the water isn’t just hot. It’s nearly boiling.
I’m five seconds from passing out, but with my last ounce of energy, I flop over the side of the tub and onto the bath mat with a wet and undignified SLAP.
The relief is glorious and instant, like I’ve been dunked in an ice bath.
My skin cools, lungs open. The searing adrenaline dissipates, my pulse slows. Splayed on the bath mat, I’m a brand-new piglet, skin rosy like I got run over by a pink highlighter.
When I dare to peer back into the tub, there’s no steam, no bubbles. No waves of heat. I dip a finger in the sudsy water. Tepid.
What. The. Hell.
Just like the metal bars in the library. It’s like I’ve conjured the danger out of nothing, my imagination my worst enemy. The house is still playing tricks on me.
Antagonizing a maybe-sentient house is not a smart move in the middle of the night, so I throw a towel around myself and make a beeline for my bedroom.
Not today, house. In the drafty corridor, my misty skin goes taut in the chill.
I barely register my steps, brain on auto.
Maybe the Warlock’s illness appears as a loss of control?
What does it look like when wish-granting magic goes haywire—
SMACK.
I swerve around a corner and run right into a wall that did not exist before.
Not a wall. A man. The hard chest of a man.
“You’re here,” Warlock Knight mutters at the exact same time I blurt, “Good Lord, I thought you were a murderer.”
As my pulse slows with relief, I notice he’s looking at me with an expression verging on surprise. Or disappointment. “Careful, sir, someone might think you’re relieved.” Evidently, he was hoping I’d quit.
“Our three weeks are up, are they not? I assumed you left for good.”
“You clearly don’t know Witches very well, sir. Or me. We keep our promises to help.”
Frustration overtakes his voice. “That’s not…”
Then he does a double take, from my toes to my wet blonde hair.