“I hung around my family for a while, but with me out of the way, my cousin ended up getting close to my fiancée. I couldn’t stomach it, so I started pestering your aunt.”
“How close did he get to her?” I ask, though I’m worried I don’t want the answer.
“Exactly as close as you think.”
“That’sawful.”
“There was always a good amount of rivalry between us, and he liked her, too. Always had. It was unfortunate we fell in love with the same woman.”
Desperately, I want to ask who it was. Does she still live here? Did she marry his cousin and have a family? But he hasn’t offered that information, and I shouldn’t pry further into a painful subject.
“It took a year of pestering Laverna for her to figure out I wasn’t just a friendly, precocious owl,” he continues. “Then it took her another year to find the amulet so I could communicate. Now here we are.”
“What kind of enchantment does the amulet hold?”
“It was crafted for a mute woman in the 1800s. When she passed away, her family sold the amulet to a small alchemy and charms store in Boston. It stayed in their inventory for decades.”
“The1800s?” I ask, shocked that an enchantment could hold that long.
“The magicsmith who created it was an elf.”
“Ah,” I say, understanding now. Elves are the most powerful of the fae, but their numbers are few.
Laverna probably paid a small fortune for Rowan’s amulet, but it will likely outlast him by several centuries.
“Did you go to your fiancée?”
“No. It had already been two years at that point. She’d moved away several months before.”
“What about your family?”
“Why would I go to them? I was still an owl.”
“If I lost a loved one, I wouldn’t care what shape he was in when he returned to me. I’d just want him to come home.”
“Yes, but you are…you.”
My alarm goes off, and I pull the infusers out of the cups. “I don’t think that’s unique to me.”
“I don’t know how to face them,” he admits. “Not like this.”
“Are they still”—I almost sayalive, but I cut myself off—“in town?”
“Yes.”
I set his mug on the counter, studying him, suddenly determined. “Don’t worry, Rowan. I’m going to find a way to turn you back. I promise.”
Chapter 7
The Imp is an Elf
Ihave two goals for the day. The first is the most pressing—I need to do an internet search on every tea Laverna has in stock and print out info pages to refer to when people have questions.
Then I have to try them.
All of them.
But maybe not all of them in one day.
