Lazlo is.
PART TWOthyme
Chapter Twenty-One
SUNDAY, MAY 22
30 DAYS UNTIL THE SUMMER SOLSTICE
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
If their love language is food, seek forgiveness in flour, not flowers.
My universe has careened right off its tilted lazy Susan.
I’ve discovered being furious at the Warlock follows the exact emotions a Frost woman battles when a recipe goes wrong:
First, naïve determination. The food will right itself with some salt. Surely, Lazlo’s curse-illness-problemis fixable. Next, hopeful substitution. I can trade one ingredient for another without ruining the flavor. With my Farewitch magic and the right spell… Then, sour despair. If the recipe’s already cooking, it’s too late to fix. The chemical reaction has started, hot as the fury now in my core. Lastly, avoidance. Stuff the dastardly results into the freezer “for later” but never look at them again.
I don’t become angry very often. And when I do, I get sugary, syrupypolite. Whenever the Warlock and I cross paths over the next week—unfortunately, it is possible to run out of places to hide in this funhouse farmhouse—I give him my best dead-eyed, saccharineYes, sirand monosyllabic answers. Only when a nod won’t suffice.
I half expect him to corner me, to renew his efforts to explain. He never does. He gives me my space, the menace.
You are worse than your rumors.
Those words shadow me, tumbling around my head. I don’t feel guilty, do I? Surely not. He probably thinks I would’ve crumbled under the pressure of healing a child if I knew. A really cute, funny, warm firework spark of a kid. Hence the secret. So I might slightly, kind of understand why he hid the truth.
But I’ve finally memorized where everything lives in the kitchen, the house has stopped sending me up staircases to nowhere, and my cast-iron skillets even have their own section of the pantry. I’ve actually gotten snug in this house.Comfortable.
Just in time for me to realize I might be doomed.
That’s what makes me most furious of all.
While I’m an anger-soaked tiramisu, the energy has to go somewhere, so I get right back to work. My mom and the Warlock and Lazlo are depending on me. Especially Lazlo. Luckily, we haven’t wasted time. Now I understand why the Warlock made sure Lazlo always ate whatever I made. Always. (How did I miss the signs?Foolish, foolish.)
At least that frustrating enigma of a Warlock kept his word and unlocked the restricted bookshelf. So when I’m not in the kitchen tossing new dishes at Lazlo, my butt print in my favorite wingback in the library gets deeper every day. A week after my worst date on record, Governess Zeen finds me in the library, still tired and determined as ever.
She’s wearing a robin’s-egg-blue cardigan set this morning that reminds me of Ostara and blooming flowers and bunnies. My bad mood resurfaces at the cheery color.
“Tell me your secret, Ms. Zeen. How do you manage to always look put together?” I gesture at my own stained apron, hiding pajamas from Thursday. Wednesday? “I guess you’ve had more time to adjust to informationeveryonewas aware of but me.” My fake politeness doesn’t extend to her. She probably dislikes me enough it wouldn’t matter.
“Don’t be petty. It’s unbecoming.” She halts next to where I’m folded like clumsy croissant layers in my usual armchair.
“I’m owed some petty. You let me run around naïve and oblivious.”
“You would do that anyway.”
“Ouch. I thought you and I were making progress, Ms. Zeen. Bonding.”
“I don’t bond, dear. And it was not my secret to divulge.”
My cheeks go pink. She knows exactly how to manipulate a Farewitch. But isn’t her world crumbling around her, like mine is? “Right, because you owe the Warlock a debt or loyalty or whatever, but that’s a secret, too. Am Ikeeping upnow?”
“I warned you about growing attached.”
“Everyone isalwayswarning everyone else with vague, moody threats. It’s the brand and it’s getting old. I’d appreciate a little more specificity next time, if we can manage that.”
