“Did you see that?” I asked.
Keegan nodded, jaw tight. “Yeah.”
It pulsed again.
This time, I tracked it.
It wasn’t random. It wasn’t dancing between surfaces. It was seeping.
From the cracks in the floorboards near the pantry.
Specifically, from the seam where the pantry shelves met the back wall and down the disguised entrance to the cellar in the main room.
Apart from when I first arrived, I’d rarely used it, because in old witch cottages, cellars either held potatoes and preserves or things you didn’t want to be on a first-name basis with. Sometimes both.
A thin line of white light glowed along the edge of the trapdoor, outlining it like someone had traced it in chalk.
Miora saw it and gasped.
Everyone turned toward her at once.
“Miora?” I said. “What is that?”
She didn’t answer.
Her knuckles had gone white where they gripped the arms of her chair. Her eyes were wide, fixed on that glowing seam. The color that had drained from her face earlier hadn’t come back; if anything, she looked paler, lips pressed into a thin line.
Karvey pivoted, stone feet grinding gently against the planks as he turned to face the cellar door. Behind him, I saw the other gargoyles moving along the front window, their silhouettes pacing, heads turned toward the cottage like they were listening too.
The light brightened.
It wasn’t warm. That was the first thing I noticed. It wasn’t firelight, or the mellow gold of ward glow, or even the cool blue shimmer of the Luminary. It was stark. White edged with faint, shifting lines of iridescent color, like moonlight reflecting off ice.
“Maeve,” Keegan said quietly.
“I see it,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like mine.
The light seeped up between the floorboards around the pantry base, like water under a door, except it didn’t spread. It traced. Outlining the wood. Following old, old lines in the grain. It was coming from below, steady, building.
The butterfly mark on my hip burned now, sharp and insistent. Not the jagged alarm of danger at the Ward, something else.
Recognition.
Connection.
Fear.
The cottage itself seemed to hold its breath. The fire went low, and the embers banked without being touched. The air cooled by a couple of degrees, which was enough to raise goosebumps on my arms.
Twobble edged backwards, bumping into Skonk.
“I don’t care whatthingthat is,” he said, “but if it’s another secret basement full of prophetic vegetables, I’m moving.”
“This isn’t vegetables,” Miora whispered.
It was the first thing she’d said since she’d gasped.
Her voice shook.
