Page 74 of Rewitched

“Well, how the bloody hell am I meant to do that, then? That’s nuts.”

“Now, Belle…”

“No, I’m sorry, Arty. But hanging out with the cat, fine. Done. Transference, I’ll get there. Three benevolent potions, challenging but manageable. And now, suddenly I’m supposed to be harnessing all the elements at once? This bloody book is off its rocker.”

“I don’t know why your first instinct is always to assume that you can’t do something,” Artorius said, distinctly unimpressed.

Belle frowned back.

“I just…I just don’t think I’m ready for that.”

Bonnie and Artorius glanced at each other across the table and sighed in unison. “We’ll return to Alchemy on a later occasion,” Artorius said, sounding forlorn.

The morning’s orange October light was splitting the sky like golden repairs for broken pottery. Another moon shrank back shyly, leaving Belle with only eight remaining before her return to Hecate House.

24

An Element of Chaos

IN A STRANGE and entirely unexpected turn of events, the twenty-fourth moon of October ended with her second glowing grimoire page.

Bonnie had finally decided that she needed to return home. Since there had been no further signs of danger, and now that she was back to full health, her little house filled with charmed treasures and trinkets was calling to her (although she confessed that Artorius’s apple crumble and velvety custard may have been enough for her to move in permanently).

Having reluctantly said goodbye to her mother and Wolfie as they vanished into the night, Belle took a quick snack break with Artorius, each armed with a bowl of chocolate cereal. Belle had almost choked at the sight when the grimoire page lit up before them, mid-mouthful. Evidently, the batch of flourish potion that she had spent the previous night bringing to a perfect simmer, along with a concoction of simple infatuation and the healing potion she had crafted for Bonnie, had scraped through the boundaries of acceptable as a trio of benevolent Alchemy work. The grimoire radiated the welcome warm light that she’d forgotten she was even waiting for. She and Artorius seized each other in a ridiculous hug, throwing cereal across the kitchen, and jumped up and down on the spot in a circle, clutching each other and whooping.

Artorius had sent Belle home a little early, deciding that a few precious hours off were well earned. A late evening at home, the rarest of treats, was so welcome that she almost cried when she shut the front door on the world and spent the hours with only Jinx and an enormous bowl of pasta for company. The one bittersweet note was the lack of Ariadne, who had packed her social calendar to stay busy. They were still avoiding spending their usual time together, each side overtly aware that things hadn’t fixed themselves just yet. Thinking of the current gulf between them sparked a deep-seated pang of sadness in her chest that Belle tried to squash down.

There was a knock at the front door. In her last resort Christmas-print pyjamas, Belle shuffled to answer it in her slippers, with the cat balanced on her shoulder like a parrot.

“I went to Artorius’s place, but he said you…Oh wow. Truly your best look yet.”

Belle felt her face heat and the not-unwelcome pull of something at the pit of her stomach as Rune’s dark eyes took her in from head to toe. She placed Jinx on the ground. The cat collected her head scratch dutifully from Rune and went on her way.

“Yeah, well, I felt festive.”

“As is your right,” he said with his usual tone of faint amusement.

“It’s not like you to knock and wait patiently on a doorstep. Are you sure you don’t want to launch through my window in the dead of night or appear at the foot of my bed without announcing yourself?”

“If that’s what you’ve been waiting for, you should have only said.”

She rolled her eyes, hand still gripping the door handle. “What do you want, Rune?”

“Well, I was going to give you these.” A quick snap of his thumb and forefinger, and he pulled a bouquet of enormous butter yellow sunflowers from nowhere, a trail of golden sparks hanging at their stems like a ribbon. “Heard you passed your Alchemy challenge and wanted to congratulate the EquiWitch. But with a welcome like that, a man should probably take his congratulations elsewhere.”

“Oh…” That was not the answer she was expecting.

“It was a stupid idea. Forget about it. I’ll just see you—”

“Do you want to come in?”

Rune turned back, eyebrows raised, as surprised as she was that she’d blurted out the invitation. “Do you want me to come in?”

The silence crackled between them for a moment. Belle gave a quick nod, which earned a subtle but definite ghost of a smile as he headed inside. He offered the flowers to Belle.

“They’re beautiful. Thank you. Wow, they smell like…”

He shrugged casually, returning his hands to his pockets as he followed her into the living room. “Toffee apples. It’s nothing. Just a little incantation while I was on my way over. Not sure why I did that.” He scratched at the back of his head awkwardly, letting out an uncharacteristically self-conscious laugh. “Where’s Ariadne?”