Page 18 of Alpha Charmed

“You are. It’s unsettling. Please stop.”

I don’t stop. I finish the report, sign it, and set tomorrow’s patrol schedule to route past the apothecary twice instead of once—not because the threat assessment requires it.

Because I want the excuse.

Small comforts. I’ll take them where I find them, for as long as she lets me.

FIVE

ANOUK

Mathilda Thornwood’s cottage smells like dried flowers and grief.

The scent hits me the moment Caius opens the door—a combination of rose petals, old books, and the particular staleness of a space that hasn’t been lived in for days. The morning light filters through lace curtains, illuminating dust motes that drift lazily in the air. Everything is exactly as it should be. Exactly as Mathilda left it.

Exactly as the person who killed her wanted it to appear.

“The wards recognized you.” Caius’s voice is low, pitched for privacy even though we’re alone. “They let us in without resistance.”

“I keyed them myself, three years ago. Mathilda asked me to update her protections.” I step inside, my heels clicking against worn hardwood. “She was paranoid about security. Said she’d felt someone watching her.”

Three years. She’d been feeling watched for three years, and I’d dismissed it as an elderly witch’s anxiety.

Another failure to add to my growing collection.

The cottage is small but meticulously maintained. Hand-crocheted doilies on every surface—the same pattern Sunny Clearwater sells at the bakery for tourists who think magical doilies will improve their love lives. Photographs in mismatched frames covering the walls—decades of Thornwood family history captured in fading prints. A knitting basket beside a well-worn armchair, the half-finished project still waiting for hands that will never complete it.

Flowers bloom in the window boxes despite the season, their magic fading without their mistress to sustain them. Berry Thornwick’s bookshop sent a condolence wreath that’s started to wilt against the doorframe.

We’re here for journals, not sentimentality.

“Where do we start?” Caius moves through the space with careful precision, his large frame somehow not disturbing a single item. The economy of his movements is impressive—and distracting. I keep noticing the way he navigates the cramped room without touching the furniture.

The way the morning light catches the sharp planes of his face.

Stop that.

“Her study.” I gesture toward a door on the far wall. “If she was hiding documents, she’d keep them close to where she worked.”

The study is even smaller than the main room—barely large enough for a desk, a chair, and three floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with volumes that span centuries. Mathilda’s handwriting labels the spines of hand-bound journals, each one dated and categorized with the precision of a lifelong archivist.

Official records. Everything documented, everything in its place.

None of it useful.

I pull open desk drawers while Caius examines the bookshelves. The silence between us is heavy, charged with awareness I refuse to acknowledge. Every time he moves, I track him from the corner of my vision. Every time I reach for a new drawer, I’m conscious of his attention on me.

“She was thorough.” Caius pulls out a journal dated forty years ago, flipping through pages of careful notations. “Meeting records, correspondence archives, spell documentation. Everything a council member should keep.”

“Too thorough.” I close another drawer—more of the same. “These are the records she wanted people to find. The official version of her work.”

“You think there’s an unofficial version.”

“Mathilda survived on this council for sixty-three years. She knew how to keep secrets.” I survey the room, trying to see it through her eyes. “The question is where she kept them.”

The search stretches on without yielding anything but dust and anguish.

“There’s nothing here.” Frustration sharpens my voice more than I intend. “Either she destroyed her research before they got to her, or⁠—”