Page 31 of Disenchanted

“If it hurts Laurel or Robin or you…or anyone else, I’ll—”

“It’s not going to hurt anyone, Specs.” Casimir took hold of her hand and stroked the top of it slowly with his thumb over and over. The small movement stole her focus and slowed her thoughts. “You’re getting carried away. So far, all we’ve had is a house made of biscuits and a couple of kids who will suddenly be very supportive of their local library. Both rather positive outcomes, actually. It’s just fairy tales. It’s nothing we can’t handle, okay?”

Casimir had always been able to talk her down, make everything seem so much more black and white and manageable than her helter-skelter brain liked to calculate.

But this time, she was the one who could feel something that he could not. She could sense how the magic was bubbling at the back of her throat, hissing and fizzing and popping like fireworks behind her ribs. Normally, it was only her own she had to contend with, a skill she had all but mastered, but now there was more of it in the air than she’d ever felt before.

The new magic—Lilara’s magic—was frenzied at being held back so long and now elated to be free, to have found a force that matched its own in Sage. She could sense them dancing around each other like mischievous twins, holding hands and giggling and spinning at speed. This new combined magic felt troublesome, conspiratory, emboldened.

Sage glanced up at her best friend. “We know better than most. Fairy tales are never what they seem.”

13

Green Hands

Unsurprisingly, Sage barely slept. Reality had begun to sink in a little too deeply, and worst of all, in the middle of the night, when the grandfather clock downstairs chimed three, she sensed something.

The coven may have remained a distant, separate force for a long time, somehow blind to her existence as she wilfully slipped under their radar, but something had definitely changed. She felt a shift in the air. She had read once that a witch would always sense the presence of another, and even under the thick quilt of her warm bed, a flourish of goose bumps crept across her skin while she lay awake. It was an omen. The coven knew that something was afoot. They were looking for her.

“So,” Casimir said boldly, leaning against the welcome desk with his arms folded, “are you ever going to tell me if there’s been anything new this morning?”

This was a bit rich, given he had garbled absolutely non-stop for the past ten minutes. Sage had vaguely registered some blather about mashed potatoes, a pumpkin-cream-scented bubble bath and a new pair of trousers that were too short for him. He had probably been doing his best to keep her calm but had clearly run out of topics.

She had beaten him to the museum earlier, throwing on a tartan skirt with thick tights and an old oversized sweater for much-needed comfort, shoving back her hair with a velvet hairband. She could never think straight when her curls were in her face. After he’d arrived, Casimir had practically dragged her by the ear out of the archive, insisting that they at least have caffeine and a normal conversation before work started all over again. He’d popped a warm cup of hazelnut coffee into her cold hands, then steered her to the comfy nook in the foyer.

Sage didn’t answer the question, taking a crucial, frothy sip first. Caught somewhere between panicking and sulking at the unfairness of it all, she emptied a sachet of sugar into her cup and stirred clockwise for good luck. She caught herself leaning into the unwelcome superstition, abruptly stopped and, with a scowl, purposefully stirred it back the other way to try to balance out the magic. She couldn’t afford even the smallest of slip-ups.

Casimir rolled his wrist to encourage her to speak as he took a seat next to her.

She reluctantly obliged with a barely audible mutter.

Casimir leaned across. “Pardon?”

She mumbled her response again.

“You’re being stalked?!”

“I said, there’s a bloody beanstalk in the back garden!” she shouted. There was no missing it this time.

Casimir spluttered over his coffee, sending a fine spray of foam across Sage’s sweater.

She gave him an unimpressed look as she flicked it off.

“A what?”

“Beanstalk. You know the sort. Big, green, leafy. Generally considered to be the result of magic beans, I believe. More crucially, a very neat next step in our suspected pattern.” She brandished her left wrist at him and wiggled the leaf charm in his face.

He looked half deflated, half amazed. “You’re joking.”

“I wish I was. Either that or I’ve been more lackadaisical with the weeding than I realized. Discovered it first thing, with the morning light. Enormous thing, as well. We’re talking five feet wide and so tall that it disappears straight up into the clouds. Can’t even see the top of it. Do you think we need to alert air traffic control?” She didn’t pause to let him answer. “Before you ask, of course I grabbed some cuttings to run some tests—Maggie planted them in teacups for me. I took a couple of samples from the main body with an apple corer for the archive. You know, thought it best to keep busy. But it immediately re-sprouted on the main specimen in the very same spot, so you can bet your trousers that it’s some sort of self-renewing sentient flora, or perhaps…”

“Self-renewing?” Casimir gaped. “There goes my one useful suggestion.”

“Which was?”

“Well, just sort of…chopping it down.”

“Experienced in magical tree felling, are you?” Sage gnawed at her lip, pushing herself to tell the truth about the next part. “That’s not the worst of it either.”