Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
A giggling girl and a gaggling hen always meet a terrible end.
—Meemaw Hazeleen Frost
Warlock Knight peers down at me.
A visibly held breath leaves him as he looks me up and down. “Are you hurt? Lazlo?”
My usually steady chef’s hands are shaking. “In need of some of Ms. Zeen’s calming tea, but no worse for wear.”
“You’re in luck. She came along.”
“Lazlo first?” I ask, still in shock he’s here, he found us. Found me.
“Indeed, hand him up. I don’t think that cellar is long for this world. The stairs are nonexistent on our end. Mind the splintered wood.”
Once Arna Jean and I hand off Lazlo through the hole that was previously the cellar entrance, the Warlock gives him a quick fierce hug, though his eyes stay on me over the boy’s shoulder. He whispers something to the kid I can’t hear, then passes him off to the safety of Governess Zeen’s waiting arms.
Next goes Beauregard, Ms. Buchanan insists, and he launches right into a flustered Rett, whose glasses slide askew with a slobberylick. Then we free the old woman herself, somehow without dislocating one of her hips, and finally the Warlock and Silas haul Arna Jean to the surface.
It begins to rain.
My turn.
Before I can insist on climbing out myself, the Warlock hauls me right into his arms. Under the thick haze of thyme, he smells like wet, clean earth, and I try very hard not to press my nose against his neck. The cold drizzle has me damp to the bone, and I relish the warmth from his large palms at my waist.
“All field trips are to be approved by me, Ms. Frost,” he murmurs. The words would carry an edge if it weren’t for the teasing quirk of his lips.
“To be fair, you would’ve said no.”
He raises an eyebrow, like we’re just having a Good Old Normal Bicker, not standing in the wreckage of a tornado. This close, I notice his cheekbones, already sharp and high, jut out more than usual.
He clears his throat. “It took me longer than I intended to find you. We had to figure out where you’d gone, and I couldn’t expend magic on a tracking spell in case we needed to—no one could get here to help because the streets were impassable in the squall and the fire department was putting out other literal fires…”
He’s ranting. He never rants. He doesn’t even realize he’s still holding me.
“So everything went awry when I left the Manor. As I suspected.”
His chest expands under my hand. A fortifying breath. “Thank you. For finding Lazlo.”
The low timbre of his voice leaves my ears humming. “Thank you for the rescue.”
“Give your regards to our postman. It was his wish that moved the tree.”
Only then do I notice the massive crater a toppled oak tree’s exposed roots have left behind.My wish was for you, I want to say. After every secret I’ve wrested out of the man, I don’t want to be anywhere else. But right on time, worry crowds into my head.
The bags under his eyes are the same color as the evening sky. If he refrained from a simple tracking spell to conserve power… Now that I know his health and energy decline right along with Lazlo’s, I wonder how he even managed the magic needed to power Rett’s wish, especially after bolstering the Manor’s wards before the tornado hit. He’s pushing his body and his luck.
“I’m surprised to see you three working together,” I say, in lieu of letting my anxieties get the best of me.
“I might have gotten off on the wrong foot with them. Especially Mr. Key.”
“Oh?”
In response, his hands squeeze my waist, pulling me closer against him. Maybe my nerves are on high alert, but I can feel exactly where his thumbs press into my hip bones, moving in unconscious circles. I’m defenseless against the oncoming heat under my skin, and that’s even before his gaze tracks a brave drop of rainwater as it crests over my cheek, down to my lips—
