Page 23 of Alpha Charmed

“I try.” He releases my hand, stepping back with visible reluctance. “Now. Let’s get these journals analyzed and start building a case against the woman who murdered your elder. I believe you mentioned research.”

Right. The investigation. The conspiracy. The centuries-old secret that’s already claimed one life and will claim more if we don’t stop it.

I gather the remaining journals, my walls sliding back into place out of habit more than conviction.

For the first time in longer than I can remember, the future doesn’t feel like a series of obligations to endure. It feels like a path to somewhere worth going.

SIX

CAIUS

The journals go to Elio within the hour.

I deliver them myself rather than sending a courier, which earns me a raised eyebrow from Elio and no comment at all—which from Elio is its own kind of comment.

“Encoded,” he says, already flipping through Mathilda’s cramped handwriting. “Give me a day. Maybe two.”

“Make it one.”

“Someone’s impatient.”

I don’t dignify that with a response. He knows exactly why I’m impatient. Everyone in this building seems to know, which is either a testament to how poorly I’ve been hiding it or proof that I stopped trying weeks ago without noticing.

I spend the next three hours the way I spend most hours—patrol reports, territory disputes, a formal complaint from the bakery about a gnome who keeps arm-wrestling the display case—and think about Anouk bent over her desk, alone, carrying a murder investigation and a coven and the weight of everyone else’s expectations without once asking for help.

She won’t ask. I’ve learned that much about her.

So I stop by the apothecary on my way back—not for a reason the report would justify, no threat to assess, no protocol requiring it. I bring tea. The kind Sunny makes for people who’ve forgotten to eat.

She’s still bent over the notes when I let myself in, ink-stained fingers, eyes tired enough that she doesn’t hear the bell.

I set the tea down and leave before she notices, before she can tell me she doesn’t need looking after.

She doesn’t. She’s never needed anyone.

I stay anyway. Just longer than the tea requires, watching from across the square until her light finally goes out, and telling myself it’s vigilance and knowing, the whole time, that it stopped being only that a long time ago.

SEVEN

ANOUK

The knock on my office door comes three hours later.

I’m deep in Mathilda’s fragmented notes, piecing a timeline that spans centuries and crimes. My eyes ache. My neck is stiff. My magic keeps making the ink on the pages rearrange itself into more legible formations, which is helpful but also concerning—I’m not doing it consciously.

Discipline. I’m supposed to have discipline.

“Enter.”

The door bursts open—not a polite entrance, not a respectful interruption. Leire Firesinger sweeps into my office like a flame given purpose, her red hair catching the late afternoon light. Behind her, Sakura Tempest hovers with the apologetic expression of someone who tried to stop a force of nature and failed.

“Girls’ Night,” Leire announces it like a decree. “Tonight. Non-negotiable.”

“I’m in the middle of⁠—”

“An investigation that will still be there tomorrow.” Leire plants her hands on my desk, leaning forward with the intensity of someone who has zero intention of being refused.

“We want to hear about the investigation.” Sakura edges into the room, her weather magic responding to the tension with a subtle drop in atmospheric pressure. I can feel the barometric shift in my sinuses. “And maybe talk about other things. If other things come up. Naturally.”