She snapped the notebook shut, satisfied. Costume inspiration from ceremonial ritual woodcuts? Very on brand.
Chapter
Six
Bellwether Civic Hall was a monument to controlled chaos: equal parts courthouse, council chamber, arcane registry, and enchanted lost-and-found. From the outside, it looked like a charming colonial revival with ivy-covered brick and smug little shutters that seemed to know they’d been painted by committee.
Goldie stood on the steps, already regretting her decision to show up early. She was sweating through a floor-length chartreuse jumpsuit with a matching cloaklet that fluttered when she turned.
Fabulous? Absolutely. Appropriate? Debatable. Especially for a building currently surrounded by a buzzing crowd of protesters who swarmed the steps like a cross between an angry ant hill and a county fair.
Hand-painted signs bobbed in the sunlight:SAVE THE GREEN HOLDINGS,ROOTS NOT REZONING. One poster board, bedazzled with sequins, readFREE THE SHRUBS. Someone had brought a tambourine. Someone else had brought a goat.
Goldie adjusted her cloaklet, squared her shoulders, and told herself she looked like she belonged here. A woman of poise. A professional witch. Not someone who had nearly been brained by a protester’s papier-mâché sunflower.
She slowed her pace, taking in the scene. These weren’t the usual fringe activists; they were shop owners, parents, witches from minor covens, and old-timers whose families had lived in Bellwether for generations.
As she neared the main entrance, a young glastig with fierce eyes and a streak of green paint across her cheeks broke from the line, thrusting a crumpled pamphlet into Goldie’s hands.
“Don’t let them sell our soul!” the cryptid pleaded, her voice cracking with passion but unwavering. “They’re ignoring the signs! The destabilization! The Green Holdings are sick, and their answer is to sell it for spare parts before it collapses entirely!”
Before Goldie could respond, an older man with a long gray braid pushed a clipboard into her path. “A signature? To show the council we’re watching?”
Goldie took the offered pamphlet, her fingers brushing against the protester’s. The paper was practically thrumming with desperate, frantic energy. “Well, if Bellwether’s fate hinges on my penmanship, we are all saved.”
She signed with a dramatic flourish, dotting theiinMarigoldwith a star, then passed the clipboard back as though she’d just completed an autograph session.
The Civic Hall doors swung open and a man in a tailored slate-gray suit stepped into the sunlight, flanked by a stone-faced bodyguard in mirrored shades. He couldn’t have been older than his mid-thirties, but his hairline was already retreating like it had seen too much of Bellwether.
“That’s them!” someone shrieked. “Ashenvale Ventures!”
The crowd’s murmur spiked into a roar. Protesters surged forward, signs waving, tambourine jangling. The suited man paled, lips pinching as if he’d swallowed a lemon. He quickened his stride, the bodyguard cutting a path down the steps with sharp elbows and an iron glare.
The glastig darted in front of him. “You can’t buy what’s dying!” she shouted fiercely. “The land issick! You’ll poison it further!”
The Ashenvale man flinched, looking for all the world like he wanted to vanish in a puff of smoke. His bodyguard shoved the glastig aside, not roughly, but firmly enough to draw another wave of fury from the crowd.
“Go back to your glass towers!” someone bellowed. “Keep away from our Holdings!”
Someone struck up a ragged chant: “ROOTS, NOT REZONING! ROOTS, NOT REZONING!”
Within seconds half the crowd had joined in, clapping out of rhythm, as the tambourine jangled. A handful of people slipped past, heads ducked, eyes fixed firmly on the marble steps as if making eye contact might lead to eternal entanglement in a bake-sale committee.
Goldie tucked the pamphlet into her bag with a sigh worthy of the stage. “Alas, no time for a revolution. Civic duty calls,” she murmured, straightening her shoulders and sweeping toward the heavy oak doors.
The smell inside the hall hit her like a wall of bureaucracy: toner, floor polish, and decades of quiet government resentment. A levitating directory orb bobbed near the front desk, murmuring directions in a tone of distracted condescension.
For Ritual Oversight, follow the teal arrows until they turn lavender. If you reach the portrait that blinks, you’ve gone toofar. For Public Festivals, proceed through the Hall of Records, down the stairs, and into your sense of civic obligation.
Goldie paused, glancing back through the doors. On the curb, an Ashenvale Ventures man was being hustled into a glossy black car. The moment his bodyguard swung the door shut, a tomato splattered across the windshield in a wet, red starburst.
Goldie pressed her lips together to keep from laughing outright. Bellwether protestors never did anything by halves.
With a sigh, she turned back to the hall and gave the orb a jaunty thumbs-up before following a teal arrow. A few twists later, she found an LED sign reading BELTANE PLANNING COMMITTEE: 2PM, affixed beside to a door that suggested storage closet chic.
But when she pushed it open, the room revealed itself to be anything but modest: tall windows spilling light across a polished oak table, neat rows of chairs, and the faint scent of lemon oil and old magic. Beltane planning, after all, was a very big deal.
Goldie slipped in quietly, cloaklet swishing once before falling obediently into place. She preferred not to make a scene, not because she was shy—gods and goddesses, no—but because it was far more satisfying to be noticed than to announce. Let them catch a glimpse of the embroidery, the gleam of her bangles, the impossible shade of her lipstick. Let them wonder who she was, and why they suddenly felt underdressed.
