“Then I’m getting hit with amplified magical instability every time I brew.” Junie felt the pieces click into place. She’d known it was the surge, but she hadn’t fully understood the mechanism. “The ley line is magnifying whatever emotional residue is in the air.”
“It’s a working theory.” He stepped back from the ward. “I’d want to consult with experts before drawing conclusions.”
“You explained in thirty seconds what I’ve been struggling to understand for three months.”
“You were too close to see the pattern.” His voice softened again, that fractional gentling that kept catching her off guard. “It’s easier from the outside.”
They stood in the blue-lit darkness, the ley line pulsing between them. Junie was suddenly very aware of how close they were. How unexpectedly comfortable his presence felt despite the basement chill.
She caught him watching her with the same intensity as the previous night.
The ley line flared brightly, responding to the charged air between them.
Leo stepped back. The shutters slammed down.
“I should go.” His voice was rough. Wrong. “I have other interviews scheduled.”
“Right.” Junie’s voice wasn’t much better. “Of course. Other businesses to interrogate.”
“Investigate.”
“Same thing.”
They climbed the stairs in silence. The distance between them felt charged, electric—every brush of his sleeve against her arm sending sparks skittering across her skin.
What is happening to me?
Glimmer, who’d remained upstairs, hissed the moment Leo reappeared. The snake’s hostility was back in full force, scales flashing warning patterns.
“Your familiar really doesn’t like me.” Leo paused at the archway to the retail floor.
“She’s protective.” Junie didn’t have a better explanation. Glimmer had never reacted this way to anyone—not even the debt collector who’d come sniffing around in her first year of business. “She’ll get over it.”
Glimmer’s colors clearly communicated that she would absolutely not be getting over it.
Leo nodded once, all business again. “I’ll be in touch if I have follow-up questions. And Ms. Reed—” He paused at the door. “About the suit. Forget it. Consider it a casualty of the investigation.”
Before she could respond, he was gone.
Junie stoodin the middle of her shop, staring at the door he’d walked through, trying to process the past two hours.
He’d been cold. Clinical. He’d cataloged her failures with the detachment of a researcher studying a particularly disappointing specimen.
But he’d also explained her problem. Seen the pattern she’d been too close to recognize. Looked at her grandmother’s books with reverence instead of dismissal.
And that look in his eyes. The hunger he kept trying to hide. The way his voice had roughened when they were alone in the basement.
“I’m losing my mind,” she told Glimmer. “The surge has finally fried my brain. That’s the only explanation.”
Glimmer’s response was a complicated mix of agreement and irritation that Junie couldn’t quite translate.
Her attention fell on the spoon she’d been using to stir the ill-fated arthritis tincture. It sat on her workbench, next to the still-contained sentient potion, looking completely innocent.
Junie picked it up. Weighed it in her hand.
Then, with a satisfying motion, she hurled it at the door Leo Castellan had just walked through.
The spoon clattered against the wood and fell to the floor with a metallic ring.
