“I know.” He didn’t move. “What did they take? Besides the obvious.”
She should tell him to go. Should retreat into the familiar armor of sarcasm and deflection. Should protect herself from whatever dangerous thing was building between them.
But she was so tired. So empty. And the way he was looking at her—not with pity, not with the gentle condescension she’d come to expect from people who thought they knew how to help her—made the armor impossible to summon.
“My grandmother’s recipe book.” The words hurt coming out. “Rosalind Reed’s personal formulations. Decades of research, family history, encoded entries, I never figured out how to decipher.” She swallowed hard. “It’s irreplaceable. Literally. There’s no backup, no copies. Just—gone.”
Leo was quiet for a long moment.
“The encoded entries,” he finally said. “You mentioned those before. When I was examining your ley line.”
Had she? The basement visit felt like a lifetime ago, though it had only been two days. Two days of trying not to remember the way he’d looked at her in that blue light. The way his breath had caught when their eyes met.
“My grandmother died before she could teach me the cipher.” Junie heard the brittleness in her own voice. “I’ve spent twenty-six years wondering what secrets she left me. And now I’ll never know.”
“You’ll know.” His voice went firm. Certain. “We’ll get the book back.”
She laughed, the sound jagged and wrong. “That’s optimistic. Whoever did this was professional enough to bypass my wards, drain my ley line, and disappear without leaving a trace. They’re not going to?—”
“We’ll get it back.” He said it the same way. Not a hope. Not a platitude.
A promise.
Junie stared at him. At this man who’d arrived in Haven Shores days ago and upended everything she knew about herself. Who’d looked at her failing magic and seen a problem to solve rather than a flaw to criticize. Who was standing on the sidewalk outside her destroyed shop, making promises he had no business making, and somehow—impossibly—she believed him.
“Why?” The question escaped before she could stop it. “Why do you care?”
That mask threatening to slip again, revealing whatever complicated thing lived underneath all that restraint.
“Because I do,” he said. “Let me help.”
The next threehours were a study in contrasts.
Wyatt worked methodically through the crime scene, collecting samples, photographing damage, asking pointed questions that made Junie realize how much she’d missed in herinitial shock. The scorch marks formed a pattern he identified as a “siphoning array”—a design meant to steal magical energy and channel it elsewhere. The timing suggested the attackers had struck between three and five in the morning, when most of Haven Shores was asleep and the ley line energy peaked.
Leo worked differently.
He didn’t ask permission. Started clearing debris. Righting shelves. Sorting through the destruction with those precise, careful hands while asking quiet questions about her inventory, her security measures, her suppliers. His notebook came out—the same leather-bound one from his shop visit—and he filled pages with notes in that immaculate handwriting.
Junie should have told him to stop. Should have insisted she could handle her own disaster, thank you very much. But every time she opened her mouth to protest, she caught him looking at a shattered potion bottle or a ruined ingredient with genuine concern creasing his forehead, and the words died in her throat.
He cared. Actually, visibly cared about her stupid, broken shop, her missing book, and her ruined life’s work.
It was the most unsettling thing that had happened all day. And this day had included finding her business destroyed.
“This cauldron is salvageable.” Leo straightened from examining her grandmother’s largest copper vessel. “The dent is superficial. Someone who knows metalwork could?—”
“I know.” Her voice came out softer than intended. “Piprick can fix it. He’s done it before.”
“The gnome inventor?” A hint of humor crossed Leo’s face. “Is that wise? Given his track record?”
“His metalwork is fine. It’s his magical inventions that cause problems.” Junie found herself almost smiling. Almost. “Besides, he owes me for the whole ‘accidentally caused a town-wide magical crisis’ thing.”
“That was him?”
“Long story. Avine was involved. It ended with a mating bond and Theo becoming marginally less terrifying, so I suppose it worked out.”
Leo set the cauldron upright, muscles shifting beneath his Henley in ways Junie absolutely did not notice. “Nothing about this town is what I expected.”
