Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Arna Jean’s cheeks bulge with a stifled snort, and I even have to flash A Look at the Warlock for smirking. Though I’m barely holding it together myself.
“I feel like I should be offended somehow. He must get his bluntness from you, Mr. Knight,” Silas retorts.
The Warlock huffs, interrupting the chatter. “Okra, Ms. Zeen?” He snaps and the dish of okra floats through the air over to the Governess, even though Silas has his hands extended. He does the same thing with the wine, another snap sending the bottle to Arna Jean, conveniently out of Silas’s reach.
I raise a What the hell? eyebrow at him.
Thyme dusts my tongue. The flavor will, frustratingly, go well with the cornbread.
But as the taste dissolves, so does my irritation.
I don’t think I’ve seen him use magic since the Widow Witch destroyed the foyer.
The minute there’s a chance for peacocking, he’s tossing it about to levitate side dishes?
Has he been conserving his power for some reason?
Putting the thought out of my head, I turn to Silas. “So, Silas,” I begin in my sweetest voice. “I may have promised a neighbor you’d take a meeting.”
Empty-handed, Silas turns to me. “You did not.”
“Don’t hate me. We’re trying to be friends, remember?”
Silas heaves a sigh. “Which scheming neighbor did you trade my time to?”
I take a large bite of cornbread. “A truly conniving fellow.”
Rett sinks down in his seat as Silas mutters, “Can’t be worse than Samson. Or any ex of mine, really.”
The Warlock perks up at that, glancing between the two men.
“Say hello,” I tell Silas, nodding at Rett.
And dammit, Silas’s smile is as charming as one can expect from a person with media training.
The man dodges social blunders like biscuits.
He really would make a good mayor for the Holler.
If anyone might be able to wrangle Oris Webb’s fanaticism and public smearing of magic, besides my mom, it could be Silas.
Rett fiddles with the napkin tucked into his collar. “I asked for some direct engagement but I didn’t think Honey would take me this… literally.”
“How did you think you’d reach him?” Arna Jean asks her brother.
“A… letter?”
Silas stares at Rett with sincere curiosity. “Old-fashioned. I like it.”
“What’s wrong with letters?” the Warlock asks. When his eyes meet mine, his lips twitch once before he glances away from me.
“How about we meet in the middle with an email,” Silas says. “Unless you’d like to meet over coffee?”
“No!” Rett catches himself. “I mean, that won’t be necessary. I just wanted to… uh, start a conversation. We need to expand the mail routes. Folks living farther out want to stay involved with the community, but some can only trek in once a week to the post office.”
Silas’s expression sobers, the mayor-in-training taking over. “Can you add those houses to your own routes now?”
“I’ll need a second mailperson,” Rett admits, like he isn’t happy about it. I get it: Asking for help is as tricky as Julia Child’s paté de canard en cro?te. “This Manor isn’t even officially on my route. But it’s on my way most days, so I make the stop.”
“It’s not on your route?” the Warlock asks, his expression matching Ms. Zeen’s when Silas gave her flowers and pulled out her chair.
Rett looks offended, as if the woes of the postal service are a personal burden on his soul. “Everyone deserves access to mail.”
“The town council votes on something like that, so you’ll face resistance from Pastor Webb,” Ms. Zeen says to Silas. “He likes the town to orbit close, and around the church.”
“How do you know Oris Webb so well?” Rett asks her.
I nod. “And Gertha Fudge.”
Ms. Zeen purses her lips. “Believe it or not, the Holler existed before the lot of you were born. Gertha hasn’t always been angry. And Webb hasn’t always been a preacher. He wanted to be mayor, you know. But Marigold got there first.”
“So his pissy vibe isn’t just because he’s anti-magic,” Arna Jean says. “He’s also anti-Honey.”
Great. “I get the sense the man is just afraid of women in general.”
Ms. Zeen huffs. “As he should be.”
My skin starts to itch. This crap heats my blood like a sous vide. Why does every grudge in this town have to be personal? “Webb can’t claim to protect the safety of his neighbors, then pick and choose who that means. He can’t tolerate a Witch but hate her magic.”
“Can’t he?” The Warlock’s expression hardens. “Gertha Fudge despises magic. But Webb wants to control it. They have two different agendas, but both are a good example of why, for some, the edge of the Holler is the safest place to be. Isolation is often the best protection.”
In a town where folks like to remember Warlocks—and if Webb has his way, Witches, too—only for the bad, maybe it is better to be out of sight. But if I really believed that, I wouldn’t still be here after all these weeks at the Warlock’s kitchen table.
It’s why I’ve invited my friends tonight in the first place.
“I would like to know why Webb has chosen to act on his clearly deep-rooted obsession with magic now,” the Warlock adds. “The previous mayor had no magic and might not have posed as much resistance to an anti-magic town council.”
“And I don’t remember his congregation ever being so vocal,” Arna Jean says. “Why would his followers have their come-to-Jesus moment now and go after magic while we’ve got a Witch in office?”
A Witch who is, lately, never actually in the office. Our home is changing right out from under my mom and she’s not well enough to stand up and fight it.
Which is the perfect time for a man like Webb to weave doubt and make his move.
“Webb and Fudge have folks scared,” I say. “Even a cure can look like poison to folks who don’t understand magic.”
Silas’s tone is harsh. “I won’t stand for exclusion, because of magic or otherwise. Even if his church ladies would sell their pearls to help him finance his own ark, Webb is just a man.”
I wipe my hand down my face, despising Silas’s confidence but also immensely grateful for it. No wonder my mom keeps him around. “Just a man is plenty dangerous.”
Arna Jean snorts. “Especially one who says things like, We’ve always done it this way.”
A dark promise hangs in the Warlock’s eyes. “I’ve handled my fair share of bigoted fools over the decades. New face, same soul. I’m not afraid of Oris Webb.”
At that, Lazlo finally comes up for air after devouring his dinner. “Can we visit your shop soon, Honey? RJ promised she would give me free desserts.”
“Hey, I said one free cookie, kid.”
Ms. Zeen stands, folding her napkin. “On that note, I believe it’s time for bed for those of us too young for small-town politics.”
With much protesting from Lazlo even as he’s yawning, Ms. Zeen escorts him from the kitchen, leaving me with a Bookwitch, the postman, the mayor’s number two, and one stiff Warlock, his unreadable scowl back in place.
Eventually, the clink of forks hushes. That’s when I tell them everything.
The Widow Witch, her curse, Lazlo’s illness. How we have mere weeks until the solstice. All of it. The Warlock doesn’t interrupt, even to fill in any gaps, and instead just scrunches his face as if he’s getting a cavity filled.
When I finish, my friends’ mouths are open.
The Warlock levels a stare at me. “So this dinner wasn’t for idle chitchat, then?”
Mid–slice of cornbread, I point the butter knife at him, golden glob of fat dangling on the end. “Hey, I told you we were getting help. And the Holler runs on chitchat. If you don’t appreciate that, then that’s how you end up thinking isolation is safer than friends.”
His voice is sharper than my knife. “Is that why you hide your mother’s illness?”
Silence. The wine on my tongue turns to pond water. Even Arna Jean doesn’t have a sarcastic remark.
Then, Rett, quietly: “Mayor Frost is sick?”
My cheeks warm and I force-swallow my cornbread.
“If the town knew I couldn’t cure my mom, how long would they trust their Farewitch?
Folks are already in a tizzy because I’m helping a Warlock.
And now, if Webb found out, he’d just use that to prove that Witches and their magic don’t do the Holler a bit of good. ”
“How would Webb find out, though?” Arna Jean asks. “Carolina, Silas—we haven’t said a word. I’ve never held a secret this long.”
“He might’ve seen me leaving the hospital,” I admit, an encounter I was trying to forget.
The Warlock goes eerily still, which is impressive, since he’s usually part statue anyway. “This man was watching you? In what way?”
“Like he knew I wasn’t just there bringing cookies for the nurses? I don’t know, it’s a small town, people accidentally follow each other all the time—”
“This man was following you?” The Warlock looks ready to float a wine bottle right into someone’s skull.
Thankfully, Silas jumps in. “One thing at a time. If Webb knew the truth about Honey’s mom, why would he be spreading his latest rumors about her?”
Right. I’ve been getting updates from the Kentucky fried coven group chat all week. “Oh, you mean the fun ones about how Warlock Knight is now hunting Farewitches?”
The Warlock chokes. “What.”
Silas cringes. “At the last town council meeting, Webb suggested the mayor’s lack of public appearances is because you’re blackmailing Honey into helping you in exchange for her mom’s life.”
“Christ,” he groans.
Arna Jean chortles into her wine. “I know, ridiculous. Marigold Frost doesn’t have the patience to be kidnapped. Especially by a Warlock.”
Silas steeples his hands, elbows on the table.
“So the Widow Witch renovates your foyer—very MoMA, I don’t hate it—but still hasn’t come after anyone in town.
Why? Why is Webb taking action the one spring the Witch isn’t causing trouble?
If he and Fudge are all in for a war against magic, the Witch’s behavior would be their greatest ammunition. ”