“Where did you find his recipe?”
“It was buried in a journal. Forgotten. Or hidden away.”
The lines on her forehead relax, like she’s aged backward with just a bite. “I couldn’t touch his things after he…” She pushes her bowl away. “I should curse you double for rifling through my business.”
That’swhen I lose it.
My chair skids back as I stand, slamming my hands on the table. Frenetic static buzzes in my veins. The bowls of stew begin to mold right in front of us. Once the color of a perfectly browned Thanksgiving turkey, the gravy festers gray then blue with spots and chartreuse fuzz.
Decayed.
My outburst of magic is an accident, but one with pristine timing.
“That recipe is right. I choseright. If you don’t honor your side of our deal, I’ll rot that Midnight Bloom to dust.”
The Warlock gives me a heavily disapproving look through his pallid complexion. Harming plants wasn’t part of the plan.
The Witch is trembling. “Why would I care about that silly flower?”
“Because your husband was the gardener,” he says. “He grew the Midnight Bloom for you and it’s the only thing that’s lived as long as you have. I’m guessing the garden began dying when your husband did, and the decay is catching up with you.”
Her wrinkled lips squirm, as if the words want to fight their way out. “His plants were his children. I tried—I wanted to keep them alive, but I never had his green thumb.”
She takes a heavy breath, her voice turning to steel.
“But thenyouasked for the impossible. I can’t bend the rules of time so you can rewrite mistakes. Instead, I granted you what I could, and taught you a lesson about what I couldn’t.”
“But you’ve already bent the rules,” I say, trying to leash some of this fury. “Lazlo is the Warlock, just a younger version. And you conjured him out of thin air.”
If anything, Lazlo has felt more real than Warlock Knight at times. The Holler remembers Lazlo. Folks who visit the Manor recognize him. But the Warlock?
A theory itches at me, the tiniest mosquito bite begging to be scratched. Our neighbors aren’t just bad at remembering the Warlock.Written over. Erased. Butwhy? Why is the gap in their memories a canyon? Someone can’t be real and a ghost at the same time.
Just like no Witch can make a boy out of nothing.
Life and death, past and present, that’s the nature of our magic.
Past and present.
That’s it. Why I could never read Lazlo’s memories. He’s not missing them.
He is one.
“Lazlo is a memory,” I realize. “The Holler’s memory of the Warlock.”
He isn’t a boy from nowhere. He’s a thought, a feeling, a figment. Real, but not anymore. Aback then, not ahere and now.
I turn to the Warlock. “That’s why—well, whyeverything. Why your health is tied to Lazlo’s, why you’re fading just like him. He belongs here, just not… now. He—the town’s memory of you—isn’t in the right time. Which means there’s noyouin the past to grow up intoyounow. So you’re fading from the Holler’s memory. Right in front of our eyes.”
The Witch smiles. “Very good, little Farewitch.”
Bless his heart, the Warlock doesn’t have enough energy to look surprised. “I see.”
He shakes his head. “You brought him here, then gave him only a year to live, unless I cured him of his wasting illness. But if I hadmanaged to find the right cure, and he grew healthy and stayed here, it wouldn’t have mattered. The memory of me would still be absent from the past. I’d be fading away here. Gone.”
“That sounds about right.”
His shoulders straighten with the barest breath of strength. “So there was never a choice. You’ve—I’ve—been wasting Honey’s time. Doesthatsound right?”
