Chapter Thirty-Seven
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
If a recipe goes wrong, embrace it and eat the surprise. If a recipe goes really wrong, start over and learn. If a recipe goes disastrously and irreversibly wrong, now you have a story to share, and that’s where the meal begins.
The last of my cast-iron skillets clang as I deposit them into the bed of my truck.
The morning sun tickles my cheeks as a summer breeze blows my bangs into disarray. It’s the day after the summer solstice, I have a Spam, egg, and cheese on a biscuit for the drive ahead, and I feel good.
For a moment.
A bedraggled Warlock stomps down the Manor’s front steps, scrutinizing my loaded truck with extreme distaste.
“I get one full night of sleep, and a million things happen without me.” He plants himself in front of me, his black hair wildly disheveled, like some burnt baked Alaska monstrosity. “Why the devil are we outside at the crack of dawn?”
“Sir, it’s eleven.”
“Are you sure?”
“Everyone’s already left. You missed the succotash scramble.”
Silas, the Claywells, even Ms. Buchanan and Beauregard stayed the night in guest rooms, no one eager to return to town. Seems they bonded while we were gone.
“Everyone? I allow overnight guests one time, and now we’re a hotel…” He spots my suitcase in my pickup. His voice drops, rough. “You’re leaving.”
“That’s what happens when I finish a job. Sir.”
“For the love of—I forbid you from ever calling me sir again.”
“You forbid me?”
“If the job is done, then our contract is over and I’m no longer your employer.”
“Then you aren’t allowed to call me Ms. Frost anymore.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
His frown falters. “I—impressive work last night. With Okolona’s spell. I wouldn’t be here without it, and neither would my magic.”
Sure enough, the smell of thyme floats between us.
It’s bittersweet today. The house is behaving again.
Well, as much as it ever behaved. It’s certainly not empty the way it felt yesterday, now that its Warlock is himself again.
The man is surprisingly sure-footed this morning given he was feverish with fatigue all night as his body adjusted to the magic it was missing for weeks.
He refused any help upstairs, and there was a lot of mumbled swearing, and It’s my birthday, I shall not be handled like an unruly toddler, Ms. Frost—
I’ll cling to that rare image of a flustered Warlock whenever I need a mood boost. Like now. The part I’ve been dreading.
“Any word about Oris Webb?” I ask, delaying the next bit.
“No, but it’s been less than a day, and the Eldercraft are usually quite occupied around the solstice. All I’ve gleaned is, apparently this isn’t the first time they’ve dealt with him. I was so accustomed to being the only Warlock here, it didn’t occur to me there could be another.”
“So he is a Warlock.”
“Not as powerful a one as he would’ve liked to be, it seems.”
“Why would he hide that? For so long?”
But this is Foxe Holler, after all. Like the Widow Witch said, Webb didn’t hate magic; he just wanted to control its influence.
His behavior over the last couple months makes sense now: Demonize magic, remove those with it from the Holler, and then he’d be the only one left with any.
If his congregation found out he had magic himself…
The town has its problems, but hates a high-horse hypocrite.
The Warlock sighs. “Let the Widow Witch and the Eldercraft fight over him. As long as it’s not me.”
In the quiet wake of the commotion last night, I only realized it when everyone was gone—none of the townsfolk asked what happened to the little boy living at the Manor.
Or even mentioned Lazlo. Ms. Zeen and I remember him, but that’s it.
Almost like someone dug out a small seed of a memory with a powerfully precise spade of magic just for us, so we didn’t have to lose everything about the boy.
My heart clenches, but I remind myself this is a good thing. Lazlo is back where he belongs, and even if the town has forgotten he was ever here, soon they’ll start remembering their Warlock more and more.
“Now you can add dodged the Eldercraft to your résumé,” I say.
“You assume it’s not on there already.” The smirk he gives me falters as his gaze shifts to my suitcase. “Thank you for making Lazlo’s time here special. For… seeing him.”
“Well, my Farewitch affinity is memory magic. I don’t lose memories, I find them.”
Lord, I need to leave before my voice starts shaking. But I can’t seem to get my backside in the truck. There’s one thing I keep thinking about.
“Why did the Witch send you that memory of yourself? Why not you at sixteen, when your parents—when everything changed?”
He runs a hand through his hair, making the couch-head worse.
“Me at nine, ten—those were purely happy memories. It was before my magic manifested, when I only had to be a child. I was a demon as a teenager. Power, but no control. I can’t tell you how often I blew up the gardens, or the number of rooms that needed renovating.
Okolona wasn’t wrong. I incurred too many costs without paying anything back, and I needed a mentor. ”
A teenage Warlock terrorizing the Manor, the whole Holler? I can picture it.
“Should we be worried we did any irreparable damage to your past?” I ask.
“I’m simply going to choose to believe that the memory of me, the boy we got to know, he was just one chapter of Knight history, already finished a long time ago.”
In other words, it can’t be rewritten and change the here and now.
“And in my experience, it’s best to leave questions of time to Hedgewitches and the Eldercraft. I think they actually have a bureau for that. Though they have a bureau for everything—not important.” A fresh scowl leaks into his expression. “So are you? Leaving?”
My nerves flutter. Why is this so hard? “You’ve lived to see another birthday; your debts are balanced. We won. So yes, my job is complete. This one, at least.”
That just leaves my mom. If it’s not too late to save her.
His glower smooths over. “We can keep looking in the library. There could be something we missed.”
My silly heart leaps at that sneaky we. If the Warlock’s archives didn’t reveal an answer, does the right recipe even exist? I don’t know. But I won’t stop looking. All my time, energy, and ovens belong to Marigold Frost, and I’m due back at her bedside.
I shake my head, and it’s the nail in my heart-shaped coffin. “Back to the cutting board, as the Frosts say. I’ve been away from the Apothakery long enough.”
I’m nowhere near ready for the heat in his eyes. The misery. Hunger. “This is our goodbye, then?”
This is exactly why I wanted to slip out before he woke up. Now my stupid eyes are stinging, probably from the stupid pollen and stupid allergies. At the Apothakery, a Farewitch knows everyone only well enough to say hello, and so the goodbyes never hurt.
“We live in the same town. I’m not going off to war.” The laugh I hope comes through isn’t there. “And I can’t stay forever.” I try hard, really hard, to smile. But it won’t come.
A part of me wants him to contradict me, the fantasy at my fingertips. Why not? he would offer. If he did, what would I say?
He only crosses his arms. “I never fired you.”
“Then I quit. Keep your severance.”
“You’ve been in my pantry. You’ve seen too much for me to let you leave.”
“Sir.”
“Ms. Frost.”
“Mr. Knight.”
“Honey.”
It’s not often I find things I’m attracted to more than the smell of baking bread, but I’m losing that battle now. Losing it bad. My core buzzes with the memory of his mouth on me, his hands under my thighs—
I lean back against my pickup, trying to escape his thyme smell. It’s stronger now. As if he’s stronger, but not just as a Warlock. Happier? Does the Warlock do happy?
“I have the best shot if I’m working in my own kitchen, on my own stove.” A shitty stove compared with his. But I don’t say that. “There’s no reason for me to stay.”
His mouth purses. “No, I suppose there isn’t.”
My arms itch to surround him, but I don’t trust myself to let him go.
Everything about this feels sour. Fitting, since my Farewitch magic can rot good things from the inside out.
This man’s already lost his parents, and Lazlo, who might not have been truly here but who was real in all the ways that mattered.
He can’t watch me crumble. He can’t lose me, too.
Governess Zeen appears and saves me from the intensity of his gaze.
She’s carrying a couple of my bags I was about to go back inside for. “What?” she snaps at my flabbergasted look. “You have too much stuff. You’d never leave in time.”
And if I don’t leave now, I’m really going to cry. “Thank you, Letha.”
“We’re not that close yet, dear. Ms. Zeen is sufficient.”
“Right. Sorry.” But right before I hop into my pickup, she gives me a stilted hug and I feel like I’ve earned a rare Girl Scout badge for my apron.
The Warlock remains next to Ms. Zeen, arms crossed and face hard, the Manor a hulking, gloomy shadow behind him. When I looked up at Knight Manor for the first time, I wondered what kind of darkness a humble farmhouse could hide. What secrets. A lot, apparently.
The Dodge hums as I put it in drive. I roll down my window to holler at the Warlock one last time. “Come visit the shop, yeah? Or at least promise me you’ll leave the house once in a while.”
“I go outside—”
“The front yard.”
The Warlock’s lips twitch. “No promises.”
My useless heart shudders. “I…” What can I tell him that will change anything? What wouldn’t change anything? Or everything? “Happy birthday.”
Driving away, I watch Ms. Zeen and the Warlock in the crooked rearview mirror until I make a turn and they vanish from view.