Chapter Thirty-Eight
ONE WEEK LATER
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
Like the traditional Southern apple stack cake, there are some recipes best made with other folks, where the magic happens because it happens together.
The Apothakery is hollering.
I sold out of biscuits by nine, apple butter by ten, and cornbread by eleven.
There’s a rush on our newest menu item, huckleberry sonker icebox cake—fitting for the start of a typical Southern July—and with the holiday weekend coming up and kids out of school, the other favorites today are lemon elderberry turnovers and Fluffernutters.
Since the solstice, the Apothakery’s never been busier. It doesn’t just open, it wakes up.
With Arna Jean officially managing the business side of the shop, I can spend my free hours doubling down on my research to find a cure for my mom.
I admit, the noise of bustling customers, coffee percolating—it’s a soundtrack I’ve missed.
Just like the hand-chalked signs, Momaw Frost’s favorite yellow everywhere I look. And yet.
Something about the shop doesn’t fully taste like home anymore. Even my apartment upstairs feels more like a way station. Less permanent than the room I had at the Manor.
Taking a much-needed deep breath, I shake the farmhouse from my thoughts just as I catch a whiff of perfume under the nutty smell of browned butter and molasses muffins.
Well, look at that. Even the church ladies came back.
Through the gossip-scuppernong-vine, word’s spread fast that the Widow Witch won’t be bothering the town anymore.
All week long, customers have given me either a thank you or a real sorry depending on how well they liked Pastor Webb. Former pastor.
As if sensing my thoughts, my phone dings in my back pocket.
kentucky fried coven
Carolina Vázquez
Does anyone know if the new pastor is single
Arna Jean Claywell
no but if you find out will you tell Beulah
she keeps asking me like I would know??
…
honey do you need more yeast from the store
Ms. Marrow
Oh Arna if you’re there can you check if they have arsenic?
Sorry, typo. Aspic.
Arna Jean Claywell
that’s worse
also RIP to oyster happy hour with Honey
Carolina Vázquez
Does anyone even do oysters in town?
Maybe you can pick up a man for Beulah at the store
Or for Honey :)
A hive of bees takes up immediate residence in my head, and my neck grows warm, itchy.
I haven’t heard from Warlock Knight in a week.
Not a single, drastically formal text message.
I can’t help but feel silly. With his power back, he’s got his own priorities, a million Warlock-y things to do.
Deaths to revenge. Ravens to send. Feuds to reignite. Plants to… plant.
Signaling to my customers I’ll be back in five, I duck into the back.
Alone in the kitchen, I slide down the nearest fridge until my butt hits the floor. The peace and quiet back here isn’t helping like I thought it would, and the silence tastes stale. I rub a palm over my chest, like I might be able to restart whatever’s short-circuiting in there.
Something in my apron pocket crinkles.
I pull out a square of paper.
The Warlock’s letter. With his name. The one I so badly didn’t want, that I completely forgot about it. I was so frazzled packing to leave the Manor, did I ever wash this apron?
The man’s taunting me still. He knows how nosey I am, how irresistible a folded letter is to me.
But if he really wanted me to know something, he’d come tell me himself.
Wouldn’t he? I lived with the man for three months and he can’t text me once.
Not that he’s great at texting. But still. He’s on my mind but I’m not on his?
Maybe I was always just his hired Farewitch. Nothing more.
So I don’t want this letter and I definitely don’t want to know his name. It’s too big a promise, too big a wish to ever come true.
Jumping up, I switch on a burner on the stove and hold the letter inches away, the flame licking at my fingers.
Just burn it.
Although… burning a Warlock’s handwriting feels like the recipe for creating a curse.
We don’t need that.
I flip off the burner and open the letter.
Dear Ms. Frost,
Your first day trespassing in my house, I asked if you could save me. If your healing magic would give me more time on this earth, but ill days. Or if it would give me better days, if numbered ones. You told me the secret to health is time.
I believe you now. You saved me, no matter what happens with the Widow Witch. But I still wish we had more time. With a lifetime of you, I would be better. A better Warlock. A better neighbor. A better friend. A better man. For you. For me.
I am so sorry we didn’t have more time.
Regretfully Yours,
Verne Knight
The Warlock of Foxe Holler
My mind shudders, like a faltering heartbeat. Or maybe that erratic thumping is my heart, trying to catch up.
His name—his name—sounds like a combination of vine and fern.
It’s perfect.
The first tear finds my cheek. I came so close to losing him, and after all that, after we made it to the next sunrise, I left. But would I have made a different choice if I read this earlier?
My eyes blur with wet, and before I can hold it in, a half sob contorts my face. I’m dangerously close to completely falling apart right here on the kitchen floor.
No. This wouldn’t have made a difference. Not when I’m responsible for everyone else’s happy endings first. That’s the curse of a Farewitch.
Somehow, my brain is functional, and I gather myself. My heart? Who knows.
I stuff the Warlock’s letter into my apron and head back to the front counter just as the shop door dings. Another customer.
A new customer.
I go still as Warlock Knight approaches the counter.
Alert hazel eyes. A soil-free Henley. He looks good. Too good. Ms. Zeen is with him, standing off to the side. When the shop grows oddly quiet, I hardly notice, and stay protected behind the display cases. My heart isn’t going to be able to handle this. Handle him.
“How can I help you?” I squeeze out when he reaches the counter.
“I’ve been told the biscuits here are decent.”
Heavens above and devil below, I’ve missed the low rumble of his voice. Warm and deep as the sun on the summer solstice.
“They’re better than decent. They’re stellar.” I start bagging a few, hoping the task will distract me enough to keep my voice even.
“I’ll take a dozen. How much?”
“How much do you have?”
“Do you accept apologies?”
All right, I admit it. I’ve missed all of him. I suspect my eyes would find even the mere shape of his shadow in a parade. “Those are a bit weak to the dollar right now.”
He swallows. Twice. “I knew if I saw you, or even texted you, I’d say too much. And I couldn’t. Not without knowing for sure I could find it.”
My nervous fingers tap the countertop. “What are you talking about? Do you want the biscuits or not?”
Slowly, he slides a folded square of old paper across the counter.
“On the solstice, my mother—or, her memory—gave me an idea, a clue of where to look. Not a precise location, but it was enough. I finally went through all of my parents’ personal belongings, and there it was, just packed away.”
I suck in a breath as my fingers grasp the grimy paper. Stained. Fatty butter splotches. A well-loved thing if I’ve ever seen one.
“Your grandmother, Ambrosia, lent this recipe to my mother ages ago. A simple neighborly kindness.”
I finally unfold the paper, my fingers shaking so badly I’m worried I’ll tear it and the recipe inside. As I read through the ingredients and instructions, in Momaw Frost’s handwriting, my chest flutters with a delicate hope.
Of course of course of course.
A gift from a Frost Farewitch to the young Ms. Knight, shared freely, asking nothing in return. Like a laugh. A seat at the table. A Warlock’s name.
This is it. I know it.
The Warlock holds up a set of car keys. “Tell me what you need. I drive now, you know.”
“With an adult,” Ms. Zeen calls from the side. “You only have a permit.”
He raises an affronted eyebrow, jiggling the keys. “Where are we going?”
Where aren’t we going is the better question.
The Warlock and I knock on a dozen doors by suppertime.
We visit neighbors across the Holler to borrow flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, butter, eggs, oil, vanilla, walnuts, pecans, bananas, powdered sugar, and cream cheese.
I’ve already got these items in my own kitchen, but Momaw Frost’s note makes it clear, the ingredients don’t matter as much as where they come from.
The trick to curing a wasting disease that develops and worsens with isolation and burnout isn’t about the final product at all, but how the baking comes together.
The magic is the process. The process is the magic.
A herald of a Southern summertime, hummingbird cake is not ungodly popular or secretly obscure. Its flavors aren’t out of the ordinary, if a little odd grouped together, like a small town of eccentric personalities.
Foxe Holler, this community, is the key.
This means explaining to my neighbors why I’m visiting them in the first place: Marigold Frost is dying. The Frosts can’t hide anymore. If we never ask for help, no one knows to give it.
By the time the sun sets, there’s only one ingredient missing.
Once again, I find myself on the porch of Gertha Fudge’s immaculate little white house. Except this time, I’m not alone.
“Fudge?” I ask for what’s probably the fourth time. “Our Gertha Fudge offered to take you in?”
Next to me, Warlock Knight nods. “Sixteen-year-old me was equally as stunned.”
I swallow my disbelief. “Why?”
A sigh settles deep in his chest. “After the library fire, I didn’t have another guardian, so the Eldercraft wanted to relocate me to live with other young Warlocks.
But Gertha offered to take me in so I didn’t have to leave the Holler.
It was the only home I’d known. Instead, I hid in the Manor and avoided the Eldercraft until I was eighteen. That was the end of it.”
“What in the world did you say to Gertha?”
He grimaces.