Chapter 16
Maggie
The Halloween festival's last day was chaos, good chaos, the kind where kids ran wild with face paint and sugar highs while parents pretended to be in control.
Bram and I walked through it together, hand in hand, drawing stares but also smiles. Waves from people I barely knew. Nods from shopkeepers. Mrs. Carroll called out from her boutique, "That dress worked, didn't it?"
"Eventually," I called back, grinning.
We passed the pier where we'd found Lily. Someone had hung a banner: Thank You to Our Local Heroes.
Bram stopped, staring at it.
"That's us," I said.
"That's strange."
"Get used to it."
We kept walking, past the bonfire that was already being set up for tonight's celebration, past the face-painting booth and the pumpkin-carving contest, and the booth selling my soap with a sign that read: Made by Seaview's Own Maggie Doyle.
Seaview's own.
When had that happened? When had I stopped being the isolated witch making soap in her backyard and become part of the town's identity?
Maybe when I stopped hiding.
Maybe when I let someone see me.
We ended up at my workshop, the door propped open to let in the autumn air. Bram leaned against the workbench while I checked on the week's batches: rosemary, lavender, cinnamon, and nutmeg for the upcoming season.
"Can I help?" he asked.
"With soap?"
"With whatever you need."
I looked at him, really looked. At Bram, who'd been welcomed by a town that had barely noticed him a week ago, who was offering to help me make soap on a Saturday afternoon because that's what people did when they were building something together.
"Yeah," I said. "You can help."
I showed him how to cut the bars, how to wrap them in paper, how to label them with my cramped handwriting. We worked side by side, the workshop warm and fragrant, the afternoon sun slanting through the windows.
It wasn't fancy. It wasn't dramatic. It was just us, making soap, being together.
Being home.
Later that night, after the festival wound down, after the bonfire burned low, after we'd said goodnight to neighbors who actually knew Bram's name now, we sat on my porch and watched the stars come out.
"I've been thinking," Bram said slowly. "About my lease."
"Yeah?"
"There's an apartment above Mrs. Carroll's shop. Small. One bedroom. But it has a view of the harbor."
"That sounds nice."
"I was thinking about taking it. Staying in Seaview properly. Not just the outskirts."
I turned to look at him. "You should."
"And maybe," he continued, voice careful, "we could have dinner again. At The Captain's Table. Finish what we started."
"I'd like that."
"And maybe keep doing this. Whatever this is."
"Dating," I supplied. "The word you're looking for is dating."
His mouth quirked. "Dating. Right. I can do that."
"You're doing it now."
"I am, aren't I?" He sounded surprised. Pleased.
I leaned against his shoulder, his cool skin a relief against the warm night. "For the record, you're pretty good at it."
"Even with the interrupted fancy dinner and the missing child and the whole town watching?"
"Especially because of that." I smiled. "We make a good team."
"We do," he agreed.
Above us, stars wheeled across the October sky. Around us, Seaview settled into sleep, a small town on the coast where a witch made soap and a barghest managed a SuperMart, and both of them had found something unexpected.
Something like belonging.
Something like home.
Something that felt, against all odds, exactly right.