Briar matched the sly smile with one of his own. “You’ll have to give me your measurements.”
Someone in Linden’s chat typed,DID HE JUST?Someone else said,Oh my God, are they flirting???Another person just put loads of crying emojis.
A shocked laugh bubbled from Linden. “Oh, I like you. As bold as your taste in clothes.”
Briar held his breath while watching Linden jot down his measurements.
Finished, Linden held the paper out to him. “I look forward to wearing it.” Briar ensured his hand brushed the tops of Linden’s fingers, longenough to be deliberate, brief enough to feel casual. Linden said quietly, “I’ll see you again later, then.”
He returned to filming, giving his fans one last look at the shop. Briar waved to them with a theatrical curtsy.
The doorbell echoed after Linden’s departure, leaving Briar with the sense that he’d just cheated on a very complicated exam and gotten away with it. His short-circuited mind refired with a single thought. “Did that just happen?” he asked the empty shop.
Vatii said, “He’s better without the cat. But still a ponce.”
“Did that just happen, though? I have a job.”
“Is he even going to pay you for it?”
“A job fromLinden,” Briar continued. “Half a million people just got a good look at my designs.” The significance hadn’t sunk in. He deflated into his chair, still holding the cloak that had won him Linden’s business.
This could change everything.
For the rest of the day, Briar cut patterns to the sound of rain pattering against the windows.
At closing time, the hazy sun tucked itself behind the rooftops. Gretchen poked her head through the stairwell wall. “So, do you want to see what I learned yesterday or not?”
Briar thought he should spend the evening making clothes, but he’d felt bad his conversation with Linden had seemed to scare her off. And he wanted to see what had Gretchen so excited.
He locked up and put a sign on the door, tying the curtain-cravat around his neck on his way. They walked out to the failing light and bone-cold drizzle. The street was a sea of umbrellas. The weather in Coill Darragh had taken a cold turn, wind and the nip of winter on the air. It blustered through his clothes, making him wrap his cloak tighter. A few residents cleared up litter and decorations from the festivities the night before.
In the town square, the statue wore a pile of leaf crowns. The statues of Briar’s hometown got a similar treatment with traffic cones, but the wreaths looked more dignified. Tokens of respect.
Gretchen floated over to the wall of the church. A chunk gouged from the stone pulsed with a magical scar, exuding an aura of pins and needles.
“Watch this,” she said, and touched the scar.
The question of how Gretchen could see the scars died on Briar’s tongue.
The town square transformed. A hazy vision superimposed over it, a memory made manifest. It looked so vivid, Briar stumbled into the wall to make way for the witches stampeding through. There were three, hands raised to enchant deflective shields. The wail of something high and horrifying droned in the air. Terror rendered the apparitions hollow-faced, the whites of their eyes shining wide around their irises. These visions collided with the real residents of Coill Darragh, only revealing their phantasmal natures as they phased through the living, who didn’t respond with more than a slight shiver.
With a whining, reverberant song, a wave of magic reared after the fleeing witches. It ripped through the square, stripping paint from doors and shutters, chipping the walls. Briar cringed as a fist-sized chunk of stone tore off the spot Gretchen touched and collided with the shoulder of a witch. She hit the ground on hands and knees, scrabbling away, but a glut of magic climbed over her like the vines had done to Briar in the woods. Drowning, smothering.
She evaporated like smoke. Briar knew he’d just watched her die.
The vision ended. Gretchen retracted her hand, looking gleeful despite the horror they’d witnessed. “Isn’t that cool?”
Briar felt queasy. “Gretchen, that was awful.” Clutching his chest, he looked away from the spot where the witch had collapsed. Vatii ruffled her feathers. “Did we just watch a woman die?”
“Oh, that.” Gretchen crossed her arms. “I forgot how squinchy you lot get about dying. Once you’ve done it, it’s no big deal. Besides, the dying lady wasn’t the point. The point is, I can access the history of Coill Darragh this way! We could find out more about what happened, what’s going on now with the woods, maybe even learn how I died.”
Briar touched the stone, the rough edges of the divot worn semi-smooth with rain. The magic there turned his veins icy. “I didn’t know you could see the auras of these scars too,” he said.
“See? No, I don’tseeanything, I just kind of… felt like this spot was weird? I don’t know, I touched it, and this happened. You can see something here?”
Briar nodded. He could see the scars’ auras. Perhaps Gretchen felt them because the magic tethering her was somehow linked to what had happened. Much as she insisted death hardly mattered, the hazy details around her own seemed like a thorn that needed excising.
“You said things are going on herenow?” Briar said. “What do you mean?”
