He kissed my forehead, quick and fierce, then stepped back just enough to give me space to go first, but not enough that I couldn’t feel him like gravity at my back.
I turned, put my foot on the first step.
The cellar stairs were wooden, steep, and much longer than they’d ever felt before. Each step echoed, wood complaining under my weight, the light growing brighter as I descended. The air cooled with every rung down, but it didn’t feel hostile. Just… expectant.
Halfway, the hum intensified. My mark flared. I pressed my free hand flat against my hip, breathing through it.
“Maeve?” Keegan’s voice, from above, already a little distant. “You okay?”
“Define okay,” I called back, because habits are hard to break.
My voice distorted slightly, stretched by the acoustics of the space below. It sounded like two of me speaking at once for half a second. That wasn’t unsettling at all.
I reached the bottom step and stopped.
The cellar… was not a cellar.
Or not anymore.
The last time I’d peered down here, I’d seen shelves, a pedestal, dust, some herbs, a jar of something sparkly from before I’d moved in. Now the room had stretched, dimensions warped by whatever magic had awakened. The walls were smooth stone, veined with faint glimmers of quartz and something brighter. The air shivered with lines of power, like cobwebs made of light.
In the center of the chamber stood the pedestal.
Light rose from it in steady beams, shooting up to meet the floor above, then out, tracing those patterns through the house.
And standing with her back to me, hands moving over the surface of the pedestal, was a figure.
Same height as Miora. Same way of standing—weight on one hip, shoulders slightly rounded as if used to bending over books and cauldrons. Her hair, gathered in a loose knot at the nape of her neck, was silver threaded with darker strands.
For a second, my brain tried to slot that shape into the safest option.
“Miora?” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t her. Knew, because Miora was upstairs. Knew, because the magic around this woman felt different. Familiar, but in a different key.
The figure’s hands stilled.
Slowly, as if bracing herself, she wiped her palms once more over the glowing surface, like someone finishing a spell or smoothing a tablecloth.
Excitement punched me in the sternum. Confusion rushed in after it, knocking into sorrow. Elation tangled with dread. It was like every part of me had been waiting for this without admitting it.
“Maeve,” Keegan called softly from the top of the stairs. “What do you see?”
I couldn’t answer. My tongue felt thick.
The woman turned.
Light slid across her face, catching in the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the familiar set of her mouth, the little crinkle at the bridge of her nose I’d inherited.
Grandma Elira stared back at me.
Alive.
Or something close enough to make my knees threaten to give out.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she said, and I gasped.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Well,” I said, my voice coming out faint and a little hysterical. “This wasn’t on my Bingo card for the week.”
