Huh. I’ll take the clumsy robbery as a compliment. And if a little boy lives here, the farmhouse can’t be that dangerous, can it?
Just then, a copper pot falls from its ceiling rack, landing right on top of my platter of toast. The ceramic platter cracks under the direct hit.
No harm in an informational interview, my ass.
If the house is already throwing tantrums… Well, ask any Witch: That doesn’t bode well for the mental state of the house’s owner. The half-chewed toast in my mouth goes dusty to my taste buds. I ignore the mess and take a step back from the island.
What in the world am I going to make? It for sure won’t be the toast, especially now that it’s got extra ceramic crunch. This is ridiculous. I can’t work with an agitated kitchen, and I can’t work with no patient. I’ll just wait, run out my hour. He has to show up eventually. The kitchen is the heart of the home, after all.
Heart and eyes: The kitchen’s entire back wall is all thick-paned windows and stained glass looking out onto the rear of the property. I creep closer to the back windows to peer out.
Even from here, I can tell the grounds behind the Manor aren’t just trees and shrubbery—they’re Gardens, capital letter and all. Devoted to what looks like everything from flowers to vegetables to fruit. All perfectly situated for morning sunlight instead of harsh afternoon heat. Meticulously kept. The smell of wet soil and deep earth is strongest here, too. Inside, potted vines and ferns and herbs surround me. I’m starting to feel like I’ve wandered into a farmhouse that really wants to be a greenhouse.
I brush my hand along shelves and countertops, expecting dust. Instead—soil.
That won’t do. Clearly no one’s used this kitchen to prepare anything more than a PB&J. Someone here cares very little about what strangers from town can see from the road, and an awful lot about what they can’t.
But the bones of the place are good. I can work with this.
While I wait, I clean up my food prep and fetch a few basic grocery items from the truck I brought along. The Governess said don’t wander, but I’m going to assume the front lawn is safe.
I end up staring at the frightful contents of a pantry so neglected, I didn’t even see it tucked behind a large palm tree until a second inspection of the kitchen. If I’m not hallucinating, it looks like all the spice jars are filled with plant seeds—
“Are you auditing the pantry?”
A deep voice startles me into spilling a box of Goo Goo Clusters. The chocolates are so old, they hit the tile floor with echoes that are sure to wake any vengeful spirits slinking about this odd museum of a farmhouse. I turn and find a dark-haired man staring at me by the door.
My brain is still in list and recipe mode, so the first items I notice about him are:
He’s pale except for twin patches of color on his cheeks, like the sun spots on my mom’s hands from baking too often by the window.
His age. Or lack thereof. His thick hair is long enough to fit into a hair tie. And his hairline—eleven out of ten. But gray smudges his temples like lipstick on a wineglass. He could be a sun-beaten thirty or a wonderfully taken-care-of fifty.
He’s covered in dirt.
“Oh, sorry, er—I haven’t had one of these in a long time.” I’m still holding the empty Goo Goo Cluster box. Shameful recovery. I gather up the fallen chocolates and leave them in an awkward pile on the island. Right next to the destroyed plate of toast. The man watches me the entire time, his expression a stern, unreadable mask. I can’t tell if he’s annoyed to find a random woman in hiskitchen or if he’s annoyed to learn said random woman is already breaking stuff.
On cue, he looks at the toast.
“To be fair, it was the pot’s fault,” I blurt without any context.
A bubble of silence follows. The moment I’m not trying to push my buttered food therapy out the door, my people skills dissolve. Wow. Minus ten first impression for me.
He speaks first. “You’re younger than I was expecting.” His voice is low and terse, brow furrowing. Definitely annoyed.
“Oh.” Pause. “Thank you?” Oh.Oh no. “You’re him. Warlock Knight.”You’re not what I was expecting, either, but I don’t say that part out loud.
He frowns, maybe confused. “I’m the gardener.”
My hands unclench with relief. “Ah, okay.Lord. Good to hear.” That explains the dirt. Crisis dodged. Pilfering the pantry and tossing his sweets to the floor is not how I wanted to meet the Warlock, even if he is the one avoiding the very guest he invited. “Everyone in town’s out of their wits afraid of the Warlock, and I didn’t know what to expect…”
In the following silence, which there’s a lot of, I absorb more details.
He wears gloves and practical boots, a white Henley that keeps the sun off his arms. Bandana around his neck. He’s lean in an on-his-feet sort of way, not a gym-membership way. A smudge of soil everywhere I look. Bright hazel eyes, black hair—hazel eyes.
My brain fires up like the Apothakery’s old microwave. “The boy I saw around here, is he yours?” He must be. Maybe the Warlock allows his employee to bring his son to work. That’s nice. Although that doesn’t explain why the boy was in pajamas…
“He’s just my ward,” the gardener says in a clipped tone as he steps farther into the room, leaving behind two muddy boot prints that have no place in a kitchen. No wonder the Governess is tense. “Distant family relation.”
