Honey followed her gaze to the picture on the nightstand. “When you’re a witch, that can go badly.”
“She loved magic,” Marlene said. “Spells for everything—laughs, luck, love. She never stopped to think about the consequences. Not until it was too late.” Her voice was flat, but there was pain beneath it.
“What happened to her?”
“One day the bureau came knocking. Just took her. Vanished like smoke.”
Honey’s eyes widened. No wonder Ethan hated her on principle. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Even if someone broke regulations, there were hearings, steps, structure. She shouldn’t have just disappeared. Honey should look into it—pull the records, follow the paper trail, see if anything had been missed.
Then she stopped herself.
It wasn’t her jurisdiction, and it certainly wasn’t her place.
The silence stretched between them until Marlene looked at her again. “I don’t know what your story is, Honey, or why the bureau sent you, but I can see that you’ve got a good heart. That’s rare. Just...be careful. This family’s seen a lot of hurt.”
She nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”
Marlene stood, brushing invisible dust from her pants. “Don’t thank me yet,” she said, heading for the door. “Just do right by them.”
Honey sat there while Marlene left. She placed the stuffed unicorn back into the arrangement and straightened a bear that had toppled over. She heard Marlene’s voicefloating in from the window. She resisted the urge to get up and look, but she simply couldn’t help but listen in.
“You going out again this weekend?” Marlene asked.
“Don’t start,” Ethan said.
“You know what I think. The girls have one parent and you?—”
“Look, Marlene.” Honey leaned forward as if she could hear the end of the sentence better. “I appreciate what a help you’ve been with the girls. But I got it.”
“You can’t do it all alone.”
“I’m managing,” he replied. “Ain’t my first time juggling bowling pins with my shoelaces tied.”
Marlene snorted. “One of these days, those pins are gonna fall.”
There was a pause. Then Ethan’s voice again, softer this time. “Yeah, well. I’ll catch them.”
Chapter 12
Honey
The well was a disaster.
Honey crouched beside the stone rim, her knees damp from the morning dew, and her audit ledger open across her lap. The sun had barely cleared the hills, but she'd already been at it for hours, sifting through a fresh batch of wishes that made her want to throw her clipboard straight into the well.
She used a coin picker to retrieve the coins—basically a long pole with a wire basket on the end. She extended it into the well, maneuvering it blindly until she felt the slight weight of coins dropping into the basket.
She dumped them onto the grass beside her, soaking the ground with brackish water until the earth turned to mush. Picking a coin from the pile, she dried it on her pants, and inserted it into her computer’s coin reader. The screen flickered.
I wish the baby Gala trees would bear fruit a year early.
Already approved. Honey read off the screen incredulously.
That wish had no business being approved. She noted itin her ledger and put the coin in the growing pile of erroneously approved wishes.
None of these should have gone through. Wishes were supposed to go through a strict review by an auditor prior to being granted: ethical impact, magical sustainability, emotional necessity.
And that’s just the first few categories.
