19. The Larger Web #2
I pause for a moment. Then shake my head until I am brought back to the matter at hand.
“Knots.”
“In the threads?”
“Yes. Black knots.”
His expression sharpens into detective focus. “Where?”
“The playhouse. Lilissa and Rafe’s. Tala and Decker’s.”
His jaw tightens. “Attack sites.”
“Yes.”
But even as I say it, the answer feels incomplete.
There are older knots too. Dimmer. Buried deeper in the web.
Near the cemetery. Near the old prison channel Anneliese described. Near streets where I have never made matches and houses whose names I do not know. Some knots are ancient, almost fossilized into the town’s emotional architecture. Others are new enough to still bleed shadow into nearby threads.
“It’s not only my matches,” I say.
The admission should comfort me.
It does not.
Dorian hears that. Of course he does. “Explain.”
“I thought the curse was targeting what I made. The couples I matched. The bonds I touched.” I press a hand to my chest, where the purple thread hums too brightly to be ignored. “But some of these knots are older than me. Older than my shop. Maybe older than my grandmother.”
Dorian goes very still.
I follow one of the black knots with my sight. It is not wrapped around love exactly. It is wrapped around fated love. Love that cannot be denied. Love that comes to the attention of the curse for some reason.
"Like the couples we saw in the cemetery."
I swallow. “I think it attaches to places where love has been stolen.”
Dorian’s eyes darken. “By whom?”
“That I don’t know.”
His eyes shift upward. I can almost see the detective calculation unfolding. “How is love a threat?”
“Jealousy. Blame. Vulnerability. The triggering of past traumas. Perhaps, wanting what someone else has.” My laugh comes out small and humorless. “Basically Everwilde’s emotional pantry.”
“That is a disturbing metaphor.”
“It is a disturbing town.”
“And that’s why it’s always listening…to discover the greatest amount of love.”
The black knot over the playhouse pulses again, and for one second, I smell dust, stage paint, false poison, and applause turning rotten.
My mother’s voice echoes through memory. Where death wears many faces.
A chill slides over my bare skin despite the warmth of the bed.
Dorian’s gaze holds mine.
The knots are not proof love kills.
They are proof of something else. What? Of that I am not quite sure.
Dorian gets out of bed like a man preparing to arrest the sunrise.
This is unfortunate for several reasons.
First, I am still naked.
Second, he is also still naked.
Third, both of those facts are making it very difficult to maintain a productive magical thought process.
He reaches for his pants from the floor, then stops, glances back at me, and clearly reconsiders whether clothing is more important than containment.
“You’re doing that face again,” I say.
“What face?”
“The one where your brain puts on a badge.”
“My brain always has a badge, and right now it’s telling me I should arrest you and cuff you to the bed.”
His mouth barely curves.
So does mine, until I see the real concern in his eyes.
He sits back on the edge of the bed instead, close enough that his knee brushes mine still beneath the sheet. “Tell me specifics.”
“I’m trying.”
“You are staring at the wall.”
“I’m staring through the wall. It’s different. More invasive.”
“Can the wall tell?”
“I sincerely hope not. I did not ask permission.”
His gaze flicks toward the bedroom walls.
I catch his wrist before he can stand and inspect the crown molding for treason. “Not like the ears. This is my sight. I think. Probably. Unless the cottage has developed opinions.”
“Fate.”
“I know. Specifics.” I drag in a breath and point toward the window, where morning light looks innocent and therefore suspicious.
“There are colors now. Not only red. Green feels like healing. Blue is loyalty or trust. Pink is desire, which is frankly everywhere in this bed and should consider modesty.”
His eyebrow lifts.
I wave a hand. “Do not look so pleased with yourself. This is science.”
“This is not science.”
“Magical science, which is science with worse peer reviews.”
He studies me, and the tenderness in his face almost hurts more than the fear. “And the black knots?”
My humor thins.
“An absence.” I press the heel of my palm against my sternum. “But not always evil. That's the strange part. Some of the black knots feel like complete and total loss.”
Dorian absorbs that.
Of course he does.
This is what he does beautifully when he is not trying to protect me by becoming emotionally remote furniture. He listens like every word is evidence, but every tremor beneath it matters too.
“Do you feel them,” he asks, “or only see them?”
“Both.” I wince. “And before you ask me to quantify the bothness, I cannot. It’s like tasting weather.”
“That is deeply unhelpful.”
“I know. I am doing my best not to sound like I licked a ley line.”
His eyes warm despite himself. “Did you?”
“Not today.”
“Fate.”
“Kidding. Mostly.”
He takes my hand and turns it palm up, as if expecting colored thread to be visible there. To him, maybe it is not. To me, the purple bond arcs between our hands, bright and steady, refusing to knot no matter how fear tries to curl around it.
My throat tightens.
He sees that too.
“What can you safely say?” he asks.
The question is careful. Not because he is withdrawing. Because he is learning the shape of my danger.
That nearly breaks me.
“The curse still hears,” I whisper. “Maybe not here. I do have some warding. Maybe not through every wall. But enough that naming too much feels like opening a window at night with blood on the sill.”
His jaw tightens. “Colorful,” he says.
“Accurate.”
“Then we do this without naming it.”
I blink. “Do what?”
He reaches for the notebook on my nightstand. It is pink, floral, and says LOVE NOTES across the cover because I make excellent brand choices.
Dorian looks at it.
Then at me.
“Evidence notebook,” he says.
I laugh before I can stop myself. “That notebook has seen things.”
“So have we.”
He hands it to me, then grabs a pen from beneath a stack of romance novels with titles he very deliberately does not read aloud.
“We document what you see,” he says. “Locations. Colors. Knots. Emotional impressions. No forbidden names. No speeches into listening walls.”
I stare at him.
The naked detective standing next to my bed has just turned my impossible magic into procedure.
It should not be sexy. It absolutely is.
“You believe me,” I say.
His expression softens.
“I choose you,” he says. “That includes believing you even when the evidence is invisible.”
I open the notebook. “All right, Detective,” I whisper. “Let’s make a map.”
We get dressed and relocate to the kitchen because naked cartography is apparently where Dorian draws the line. This is disappointing but practical.
Also, the kitchen has coffee.
Dorian makes it with his shirt off while I sit at the round table in his shirt and my favorite fuzzy socks. The pink LOVE NOTES notebook lies open between us.
Dorian has already drawn columns.
Of course he has.
LOCATION. COLOR. THREAD TYPE. KNOT. POSSIBLE EVENT. HUMAN EVIDENCE.
I stare at the page. “You made my mystical awakening into a spreadsheet with handwriting.”
“It is not a spreadsheet.”
“It has columns.”
“It is a field log.”
“That is a spreadsheet wearing boots.”
He sets coffee beside me. “Drink.”
“Bossy.”
“Commanding.”
I drink because, unfortunately, commanding is just what I need when the inside of my skull feels like someone has released a basket of enchanted yarn.
The colors still shimmer at the edges of my vision. Softer now, less overwhelming, but present. If I look out the window toward town, the threads bloom again in layers, weaving through walls, streets, hearts, secrets.
Dorian sits across from me, pen ready, expression focused.
Not skeptical. Not indulgent. Focused.
That almost breaks something tender in me.
“All right,” he says. “Start with the strongest black knot.”
“The playhouse.”
He writes.
“Color around it?”
“Black at the center. Red fragments. Silver memory. Gold performance, maybe. The whole place feels like people pretending endings are always safe and happy.”
His pen pauses. “That is useful.”
“It sounds like I licked a metaphor.”
“Better than a ley line.”
I close my eyes and follow the next knot. “Lilissa and Rafe’s house. Black knot smaller than the playhouse, but fresh. Green around it now. Healing. Blue between them. Loyalty. Stronger than the knot.”
Dorian writes quickly. “Attack survived. Poison delivery failed to complete.”
“Or love fought back.”
His eyes lift to mine.
I flush. “That sounded less embarrassing in my head.”
“It is going in the notes.”
“You don’’t have to—”
“Yes. It’s important.”
“Detective Wolfe, I forbid romantic evidence.”
“That is an impossibility when ou are the evidence.”
I open my mouth. Close it.
His mouth curves.
The purple thread between us gives a satisfied little pulse, as if it approves of banter as investigative foreplay.
I point my pen at it. “Do not encourage him.”
Dorian looks around. “Are you speaking to the bond?”
“Possibly.”
“Should I be concerned?”
“Probably.”
He writes something.
I lean over. “Did you just write bond responsive to teasing?”
“Field log.”
“I’m going to throw this notebook into the sea.”
“You won’t. It has fox stickers.”
Damn him.
I look back toward the town web. “Tala and Decker’s house. Black knot fresh. Red protection thread around the doorway. Gold wolf-bond, very intense. Decker’s thread has teeth.”
Dorian’s pen stills. “That tracks.”
“It does?”
“He also has teeth.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. For a moment, this is almost easy. Me seeing impossible colors. Dorian translating them into case structure.
My gift, his logic. My chaos, his lines. Not opposing forces. A working system.
I look at him over the notebook, and the realization lands so gently I almost miss its weight. This is what partnership feels like when neither person has to become smaller.
Dorian must see something change in my face because his voice lowers. “What?”