Page 18 of Disenchanted

“Is that really all it is?” Robin asked, always much more difficult to convince than Laurel about anything. “There’s nothing we can do except remind you that you’re actually quite good at your job?”

“Yes.”

“Promise? It’s just the pressure of a new exhibition?” Laurel said.

Sage swallowed. “Well…”

“So it is the magic that’s getting you down,” Robin said. “But it’s popped and whizzed and banged for as long as I can remember. Octobers are always tricky, right? What’s so different this time?”

Sage glanced up at her brother and sister and felt her heart give an extra protective beat of gratitude. It rendered some kind of balance back to her world when she could see them both safely in front of her. She might not be particularly fun or funny or popular, but that was Laurel’s job. And she might not be even-tempered or approachable or maybe even all that likeable, but that was always Robin’s thing. With them nearby, Sage was just the one who kept the world turning. She simply had to make sure that they were looked after and doing okay. All of her own flaws felt a little less glaring when they were next to her.

Their childhood in Port Sylvan had been the happiest type, overflowing with beloved books and bedtime stories and small moments of tradition. There were bunk beds and pets and living room dens, patched together by two professor parents who had raised them to always be kind and curious. When the most surreal, cruel sort of loss had befallen them—aged fifteen, thirteen and eleven—their grandparents had quickly moved into the family home to raise the Hemlocks and somehow life had carried on in a messy, stumbling way. They had all left for university but found the lure of Port Sylvan welcomed them back. The Hemlock home was Robin’s house now, since their grandparents had passed away, its familiarity and fixity keeping him secure with his two young daughters, making new memories to replace the painful ones. The trio of siblings had remained close through it all, finding the real feeling of home to be among themselves.

Robin and Laurel, like Casimir, had never once blamed Sage’s magic for what happened to their parents. They were of the same supportive opinion: that it was special and something she should have embraced from the start.

Sage could see out of the corner of her eye that Casimir was trying to catch her attention, encouraging her to share the truth—that her powers were wildly fighting back like they never had before and she couldn’t be sure what had riled them.

She hated lying to her siblings, but it was the best way to protect them, as she had always tried her best to do.

“Don’t worry about me, Rob. You’re right. October hijinks are nothing I can’t handle,” Sage said, pushing her fingernails into the groove of the table.

The light from the lamp on the windowsill flickered in a mirror image of the dread that whirled in her gut, and she spotted a couple of curls on her shoulder furling up tightly, turning in on themselves, embarrassed at the scrutiny. She sensed her siblings weren’t convinced.

“Did you know that the Dap is a perfect example of gloomth?” Sage blurted out, desperate to steer the conversation somewhere else. The three faces across the table blinked at her. “Gloomth. A word with the earliest known use in the 1700s. An amalgamation of ‘gloom’ and ‘warmth’ that captures the perfect melancholy combination of eeriness and charm.” Sage glanced anywhere else except at her comrades. “An otherwise indefinably miserable cosiness.”

“You know, that’s actually a pretty fun fact for you,” Robin said with an impressed nod. “Got any more for today?”

Sage couldn’t help but smile. See, she could be fun too.

The evening passed by in the easy embrace that years of familiarity bring. While it wasn’t entirely enough to ease the tension in Sage’s shoulders, it did at least make her snort-laugh a few times. As a teacher for teenagers, Robin always had more than his fair share of unbelievable anecdotes, while Laurel usually seized the chance to share some gossip or other about friends who Sage couldn’t give two hoots about but for some reason cared immensely when her sister was telling the story. Having ruined the crisps for them all, Casimir was bullied into buying bowls of chips.

“Your favourite pub-quiz cheat is at the bar. Did you see him?” Casimir asked Sage, plopping the bowls down onto the table.

The cheat in question, Patrick Gamble, was a loud, arrogant, good-looking-in-a-rat-faced-way man who hosted the weekly quiz, relishing the spotlight and the microphone. The greatest kick of his existence came from deducting points from their team for “disruption” whenever Sage dared to question his answers and argue that, actually, she was right and he was wrong. On more than one occasion, her insistence had cost them the win. She was not one to let go of an injustice. No one boiled her blood quite as much as Patrick did—not even Casimir.

Sage, although often quiet in these situations anyway, was particularly distracted. Casimir’s mention of the uncatalogued delivery had remained on her mind, and she had been trying to work out when a socially acceptable moment to slink back to the museum to open it might be. At least, she thought, she was doing a good enough job of hiding the fact and none of the others seemed to notice her lack of attention.

“You’re thinking about that box, aren’t you?” Casimir said, thoroughly unimpressed.

Hiding thoughts and feelings from her face was evidently not Sage’s speciality.

“What? No, I…”

“No expletives for Patrick? No ranting about his deceitful dictatorship? No furious death wish aimed at him for ruining the sanctity of pub quizzes? Not like you, Specs,” Casimir said.

“Also, you’ve barely touched the chips, which means you’re either dying or distracted by work,” Robin added.

“And your foot is tapping so quickly that you’re making the table shake. You haven’t listened to a word we’ve said for the past fifteen minutes,” Laurel said.

“That’s not true!”

“Oh, really? What was I just saying, then?” Casimir asked.

Sage chewed at the inside of her cheek. “You were talking about your new shampoo.”

He glared at her. “Lucky guess. It really does smell extraordinary.”

“I just want to make sure the delivery is put away properly, that’s all,” Sage said. “Books get damaged easily, and we don’t even know where it’s come from.”