13. The Red Mackerel
Chapter thirteen
The Red Mackerel
Fate
By morning, I have developed a personal vendetta against mackerel.
This is not where I expected my life to go.
When I imagined romantic crisis, ancient curses, public kisses beneath snooping paintings, and a dominant wolf-warlock detective getting violently ill in my kitchen, I did not picture myself standing over leftover fish with a wand, three bowls of reactive powder, and the grim determination of a woman about to cross-examine seafood.
Yet here we are.
The mackerel sits on my kitchen counter looking innocent.
Too innocent.
I distrust it immediately.
“You are not fooling me,” I tell it.
Beatrice, my judgmental fern, droops from the windowsill with obvious disapproval.
“Yes, I am aware I’m threatening protein before coffee,” I say. “We all process trauma differently.”
Mina is still asleep on my couch after refusing to leave me alone last night. Dorian is not here. Dorian is at home, theoretically resting, probably investigating from bed with the grim devotion of a man who thinks discharge instructions should be filed immediately in the trash can.
Professionally, I had told him. Let’s just keep it professional for now.
What was I thinking? Making it so easy on him like that? When it was the last thing I wanted now that things were finally starting to get interesting.
Yet, there the word sits under my ribs like a splinter. Professionally.
I put on gloves because Dorian Wolfe may be emotionally hazardous, but I am still a woman of science when science is available and not actively insulting me.
Beside the container, I line up saltwater tincture for spoilage, silver-thread powder for toxin residue, moonlit basil ash for magical binding, and an ordinary histamine reagent.
“Let the record show,” I mutter, “that if this fish is guilty, I will know.”
First test: mundane spoilage.
I grind a sliver of fish into the saltwater tincture and watch the liquid swirl cloudy white, then clear.
No gray bloom. No rancid shimmer. No sulfur spark.
Fresh enough. Despite the fact that it sat out half the night while we were at the hospital.
Annoying.
Second test: histamine reaction.
If Dorian’s official diagnosis is right, if the mackerel had enough histamine to make a grown wolf-warlock detective collapse like a tragic Victorian heroine with better shoulders, the liquid should flare deep red.
It turns pale pink.
Barely.
Less “medical emergency” and more “fish with mild opinions.”
My stomach tightens.
“No,” I whisper.
I run the test again.
Same result.
Pale pink.
Weak. Negligible. Not enough.
Not even close.
A cold thread slips through my chest.
The official diagnosis collapses in my hands.
I wanted proof that Dorian was not sick because of me, because of the kiss, because of the thread that flared between us under a room full of painted witnesses.
But wanting an answer and holding it are different punishments.
I sprinkle silver-thread powder over another sample.
Nothing.
No toxin flash.
No poison trace.
No disguised compound waiting to become lethal through breath or touch or trust.
Which leaves magic.
Or curse.
Or something that wanted a mundane explanation to exist just long enough for Dorian to accept distance as caution and me to accept hurt as proof I should have kept my mouth closed.
I reach for the moonlit basil ash.
This test is older. Less precise. Not FDA-approved, mostly because the FDA is generally hostile toward diagnostic herbs that glow under emotional pressure.
I touch the ash to the fish sample.
For one second, nothing happens.
Then the ash curls inward. Not black. Not red. Gray.
The exact gray of archive cord. Of old warnings. Of fog over graves.
A thin line forms across the sample, then vanishes.
Not contamination.
A marker. Faint. Used up. Like something brushed the explanation into place and walked away.
I stop breathing.
Dorian’s illness was not random. It was not dinner. It was not mackerel.
Something wanted him sick.
Not dead, maybe. Not yet. The thought is not comforting.
The curse has never needed death first.
It starts with fear. Separation. Silence. It turns love into a trigger, then watches what people do when trust becomes dangerous.
Something wanted him sick exactly when he would blame proximity.
Exactly when I would hear rejection.
Exactly when both of us would step back from the bond forming between us.
The mackerel sits there, innocent and useless and deeply irritating.
I laugh once.
It sounds terrible.
“Red mackerel,” I whisper.
Not herring.
Mackerel.
Of course my life has become a cursed seafood pun.
I dump the remaining fish into a sealed evidence jar, slap a label on it, and write in block letters:
OFFICIAL DIAGNOSIS UNSUPPORTED. MAGICAL MISDIRECTION LIKELY.
Dorian was right not to trust the explanation.
I was right to test it.
And whatever wanted him sick is clever enough to use medicine, fear, and our own protective instincts against us.
I should call him.
I should tell him.
The fish was a lie, and maybe distance is too.
Instead, my gaze lifts to the walls.
To the old cottage beams.
To every silent surface that might be listening.
Speak it, and the curse shall feed.
Hide it, and the silence shall bind.
My phone stays facedown on the counter.
For now.
The mackerel has given me an evidence.
And somehow, it has made everything worse.
By nine o’clock, I have transformed my fear into a tote bag.
The tote contains salt packets, red-thread charms, ash-water tinctures, emergency ward stones, rosemary, disguised protection sigils, and a travel mug of coffee so strong it may technically qualify as a spell component.
Mina finds me at the front door of Mated by Fate, coat on, hair pinned, expression arranged into something I hope says cheerful professional follow-up and not woman one minor inconvenience away from hexing a mailbox.
“No,” she says.
“Good morning to you too.”
“You are going on a guilt pilgrimage with accessories.”
“That is an unfairly accurate description.”
She crosses her arms. “Fate.”
“I can’t sit here and wait for another thread to darken.”
“So you’re visiting every matched couple in town?”
“Not every couple.”
Her stare sharpens.
“Only the ones most publicly connected to me,” I amend.
“And how many is that?”
I lift the tote bag.
Mina looks at it. “That is a lot of guilt.”
“It has compartments.”
She sighs. “I’m coming along.”
Lucien and Isa’s house is first, because dragon fire is theoretically harder to kill, and I want to believe that means something.
Lucien opens the door barefoot, broad-shouldered and faintly smoking at the fingertips. Isa appears behind him in one of his shirts, hair tangled, eyes sharp.
“Fate?” Isa says. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” I lie brightly. “Routine follow-up care.”
Lucien looks at the tote. “Is that salt?”
“Routine salty follow-up care.”
Mina coughs into her hand.
Isa’s gaze narrows. Fae know when other magicals are bleeding fear through the seams. She lets me place a protection charm beneath their threshold anyway.
The ward takes more power than it should.
My knees soften.
Lucien notices. “You should sit.”
“I should stop being perceived,” I say. “Neither of us is getting what we want.”
His fire rises, curling protectively around Isa’s shoulder. Dragon heat. Mate heat. The kind of loyalty that turns a room into a fortress.
I leave before I can cry in their entryway.
Tala and Decker are next.
Their cabin smells like pine, coffee, wolf, and caution. Decker answers the door with the calm menace of a man who has already decided where to bury anything that threatens his mate. Tala stands beside him, one hand on his arm, eyes seeing more than I want her to.
“Routine follow-up?” she asks.
“Yes.”
Decker looks at the red-thread charm in my hand. “That’s a protection spell.”
“Routine protection follow-up.”
“Fate.”
Everyone keeps saying my name like it is a diagnosis.
I tuck the charm into the frame above their door. Wolf loyalty hums through the cabin, old and fierce. Decker’s love is not gentle, exactly. It is a locked gate. A body in front of a door. A warning growl in the dark.
I used to think that kind of devotion was dangerous.
Now I am terrified it is visible.
The spell bites into me as it settles.
Tala steps closer. “Are we in danger?”
The question lands like a blade.
I cannot answer fully. I cannot say curse. Cannot say Weaver. Cannot say love has become a beacon and I may have lit the match.
So I give her the smallest truth I can safely hold.
“Be careful with gifts,” I say. “Food, drinks, repairs, anything unexpected. Any major events planned?”
Tala and Decker exchange a look. “We might have a little one on the way,” she reveals.
“Congratulations,” Mina and I chime in unison.
"But no one knows yet," he adds.
“Your secret is safe with me,” I beam. Inside, I am screaming Not now, Not now.
“Call me if something feels wrong. Call Dorian if something looks wrong.”
Decker’s eyes grow watchful at the mention of Dorian’s name.
For once, he does not comment.
Good. Personal growth all around, apparently.
We visit three more homes before lunch.
At each door, I smile. At each door, I lie.
Routine follow-up. Community precautions. Nothing to panic about.
At each threshold, I stitch protection into wood, stone, curtains, planters, doorbells, lockplates. Every charm drains me. Every thread I touch reminds me that these bonds exist because I helped them form.
By the last house, my hands tremble so badly Mina takes the rosemary bundle from me.
“Enough,” she says.
“I have more names.”
“You also have one body, and it’s filing complaints.”
I look down at my list. Names. Addresses. Bonds. A target list in my handwriting.
My stomach twists.
“I saved them,” I whisper.
Mina steps closer.
I swallow the rest before the walls, doors, windows, and listening town can catch it. Or mark them.
The words stay inside.
The guilt does not.
By the time I reach the Everwilde Police Station, my hands smell like rosemary, salt, and bad decisions.