The Warlock disappears for five days, but who’s counting?
Me. I’m counting. Crossing them off on a tiny calendar in my room as we’ve approached the day I said I would reopen the Apothakery. Tomorrow.
Governess Zeen says he’s deep in research for a client, another Warlock up in Louisville, and that he rarely surfaces during these projects.
Or he’s avoiding me the way I dodge imitation butter. I’m not sure what’s worse, vanishing or hiding. Both are synonymous with fleeing in my grimoire.
Still, I keep leaving him potential remedies in the kitchen. Bourbon butter cake, scuppernong pie (good fortempers)… I just hope he tells me if—when—something works. Lazlo cooks with me whenever he doesn’t owe Ms. Zeen homework. While he sneaks more bites of food than he makes, his energetic chatter works like caffeine, and I’m able to whisk away my evenings in the Manor’s library, digging through the archives for clues. Though with more folks in townrequesting special orders and deliveries, I barely have time to hunt for that recipe that tastesrightin my mouth before I even make it.
If I just had time to work harder, mine deeper…
But my woefully hopeful (wopeful?) estimate of the three weeks I would need is up and I’m no closer to cures for any ailment. I’m supposed to leave in the morning, and for the first time, the idea of returning to the Apothakery doesn’t warm my belly like hearty soup.
So rather than packing like a sensible person, I’m nestled in a leather wingback, an old cookbook from a now-nonexistent gardening club in my lap.
Hours pass. I fall into a cozy rhythm of flipping pages, listening to the sigh of leather as I burrow deeper into my chair. I put a fire in the person-sized stone hearth, and the warmpops keep me company on an otherwise quiet and chilly spring evening.
My entire life, I’ve been too busy to be bored. But when one of three other people in a labyrinthine farmhouse disappears, the extra silence echoes.
A rebellious frustration blooms inside me, like hungry yeast. Honestly, it’s been fermenting for a while. Why is the Warlock so protective of his isolation? He could stand to lose his dismal reputation, not fortify the mystery.
The folks of Foxe Holler fear the Warlock—but what isheso afraid of?
My annoyed mood and that question have me pacing the stacks, trekking deeper until I reach a darker, forgotten corner where the warmth from the hearth doesn’t venture. It’s here I find a curious thing.
A single bookcase looms in its own locked enclave behind wrought iron bars.
I jiggle the bars, searching for a door. Who locks up books? Maybe the volumes I can see through the shadows are dastardly family photo albums with pictures of Warlock Knight dressed up for Halloween. The mental image makes me smile for the first time in a week.
But I don’t have the magic necessary to break into this. If I were a Bookwitch, I could coax out a few shy volumes. My eyes catch on one with glimmering, gold lettering on the spine.
TheFoxe Holler Yonder.
The town’s local newspaper. Whole issues or clippings? Then I spot the detail that makes my chest tight: The year beneath the name—it’s twenty-five years ago.
I need to see inside that book.
Pushing my entire body against the cage for leverage, I thrust as much of an arm as I can through the bars and reach, fingers wiggling. My middle finger grazes the spine. I’m so close—
The metal of the cage begins to burn.
Literally,burn, suddenly as hot as a cast-iron skillet right out of the oven, and my skin sears wherever it makes contact.
I yank out my arm so fast, I smell singed hair as my forearm grazes the bars. A scream builds in my throat but I clamp my mouth shut, biting my cheek so hard I taste blood and flesh. I drop to my knees, breathing through the pain. I’ve had my fair share of kitchen burns, but I can already feel the blisters bubbling, eager to burst—
Then the pain vanishes.
It’s just… gone.
I look down at my hands. Nothing. No angry blisters, no charred hairless patches of pink and raw flesh. The only evidence of the last ten seconds is the adrenaline powering my heart.
Okay. The house’s message is painfully clear. Don’t touch the restricted books.
But… there’s not a single burn on me. That thought almost unsettles me more. I’m a Farewitch. A burn, I can handle. Even a nasty one. But an illusion that can make methinkI’m burning, with no relief from the pain? Terrifying.
This magic can’t just be the house. After so many years, the Warlock’s power and personality have probably soaked through this placelike marsala in tiramisu. Unfortunately for him, this only makes me more determined to puzzle out his history. The one memory I barely managed to grab from him my first day was clouded, murky like bad creek water. Somehow, I feel as if the more he holds on to memories like that, the more they’ll poison him.
His past has to be the key to his illness.
