Page 16 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

Were he a mortal man, he would have thought, “This is it. This is how I end up the subject of a true crime podcast about a man who was lured to a cabin and murdered by a tiny old woman with boundary issues.”

But he wasn’t a mortal man. And unless Magda was waiting in that closet with a wooden stake—actually, that didn’t matter. She’d have to stake him through his heart to kill him, which would require her to stand on a stepladder. That thought made him smile, though it was a mirthless one. Of all things. To survive a thousand years of wars, rivals, and existential dread, to be taken out by a hundred-pound senior citizen in a broom closet.

He looked into the closet, which was empty, except for a trap door that opened to reveal a staircase that led down to what appeared to be a basement. He walked down the stairs, ducking his head. He saw a queen-sized bed with an iron frame covered with a red and black quilt. There was a TV, a small refrigerator, an armchair, a desk, and a rolling chair.

“Well, what do you think?” Magda asked, her arms spread wide.

“It’s a verra nice panic room.”

She snorted. “It’s not a panic room. It’s a vault. For you.”

“For me,” he repeated slowly.

“What? You expected to win her back all the way from Seattle? Or, goddess forbid,Georgia?”

“Win her back…” Callum felt like he was back in Hank’s kitchen, where his brain was moving a half step slower than his life around him.

“Jory. Marjory.”

“Ye think I want to win Marjory back?”

“Don’t you?”

“She hates me. And I dinnae?—”

Magda waved her hand, as if shooing a fly. “Psh. The line between love and hate is razor-thin.”

Callum’s throat tightened like a vice and his voice seized before he could argue.

“She’ll forgive you. With the right incentive.”

“What incentive?”

Magda smiled, and for a moment, Callum thought she would answer him directly for the first time all night. But then she breezed past him and through the vault door.

“It’s long past my bedtime, Cal,” she said with an exaggerated yawn. “We can talk more tomorrow night.”

“But I’m going back to Seattle,” he protested, moving to follow her.

“Alright,” she answered.

“I am.”

“You said that.”

“I’m leaving now.”

“By all means.”

He started to. He wanted to. He did. But he hated missing puzzle pieces. She’d been right about that.

“Ye think she’d forgive me?”

Magda smiled, grabbing one of his hands and holding it in both of hers. It was comical-looking, like a child holding an adult baseball mitt.

“Of course she will. You didn’t mean to kill her.”

He was stunned speechless as he stood in this vault under an A-frame cabin in the middle of the woods behind the house of a woman who was—at the very least—a powerful witch.