Maceo exhales heavily, already moving toward the couple with the kind of purposeful energy that means he’s ready to take action and put this behind us.
“I’ll handle getting them back to their car and pointed in the right direction,” he says, his face scrunched with concern but determined to see this through. “No one else needs to witness this part, and the fewer people involved, the better.”
“I’ll accompany you,” Lucien adds, his gaze flicking briefly to me before softening with understanding and sympathy. He steps closer, his hand brushing my arm in a gesture of comfort, his touch warm even through my sleeve.
“This will pass, Sweetness,” he murmurs, leaning down to press a brief, reassuring kiss to my temple. His breath is warm against my skin, and his familiar scent wraps around me, a soothing balm. “Don’t let this situation take root in your heart. You are not responsible for their circumstances or for the choices we’ve had to make.”
I nod wordlessly, though the knot of guilt and frustration in my chest refuses to loosen no matter how much I want to accept his reassurance.
Together, Maceo and Lucien guide the compliant couple toward the door, their movements calm, controlled, and practiced in a way that makes it disturbingly clear this type of situation isn’t entirely unfamiliar, even if incidents of this magnitude are supposedly rare. The ease with which they handle supernatural crisis management tells me more about the hidden complexities of magical community life than I think I wanted to know.
Montgomery lingers only a moment longer, his attention settling on me once more with an intensity that makes me want to shrink further into the shadows of my corner.
“Try not to worry too much about this, Miss Thorne,” he says, though the words sound less like genuine reassurance and more like a polite warning wrapped in diplomatic language. “I’m sure we’ll have opportunities to discuss the ongoing concerns with our ward network in the very near future.”
The way he phrases it makes it clear that any such discussion will likely focus on my potential role in these failures rather than seeking actual solutions. He nods politely to Toni and Lin, offers them the kind of smile politicians perfect for public appearances, then turns and follows Maceo and Lucien out into the bright morning sunlight.
Silence follows in their wake, heavy and suffocating. The quiet feels wrong after all the chaos, oppressive in its completeness.
The café feels too still now, almost haunted by the recent events. The earlier chaos has been replaced with something far worse than noise and confusion, the weight of awareness, of knowledge that can’t be unknown, of complicity in something that violates everything I thought I understood about right and wrong.
My thoughts drift, unbidden and unwelcome, back to the shop and this morning’s discovery.
The open door that should have been locked and warded. The subtle signs of intrusion that I hadn’t even had a chance to properly report before this crisis erupted. Lenora’s convenient absence from a situation that directly impacts her mayoral responsibilities and her supposed expertise in ward maintenance.
None of this feels separate anymore. The break-in, the ward failures, the perfectly timed crisis that deflects attention frommy aunt’s shortcomings, it’s all connected by threads I can see but can’t quite prove, a pattern that’s becoming impossible to ignore.
Deep in my chest, settling like cold certainty in the space between my ribs, the truth crystallizes with uncomfortable clarity.
In my experience, nothing this convenient is ever truly random. She may not have planned for the wards to fail at this exact moment, but she sure as shit wants the entire town to speculate about my involvement in the supernatural chaos that’s been escalating since my arrival. Anything to brush over the fact that I’m now absolutely certain it was she who broke into Thorne Curiosities, she who violated the sanctuary that should have been mine by right.
No doubts remain about her involvement, not anymore.
Furthermore, if she’s willing to stay conveniently hidden while everything unravels around us, while innocent people suffer the consequences of magical failures that should be her responsibility to prevent, then there’s no limit to what she might be willing to do next to protect her position and eliminate the threat she perceives in my presence.
You know what they say about cornered animals, they’re at their most dangerous when they have nothing left to lose.
I’m beginning to suspect that my aunt is feeling very cornered indeed.
Chapter
Twenty-One
OKAY, I’M CALLING TIME OUT!
Okay. I’m calling time out.
Which is how I ended up on the floor of my living room, legs stretched out in a wide V, wearing an oversized jersey that definitely belongs to Maceo and a pair of gray track pants that have seen better days. The elastic waistband has lost most of its fight, and there’s a small hole near the left knee that I keep meaning to mend but never quite get around to.
I’m staring down my Familiar like I’m about to win an argument with a cat, which, considering Sir’s track record, is a losing battle.
As with everything else going wrong in my life lately, I’m losing spectacularly.
Sir, one.
Keisha, a big fat zero.
“And this is precisely the problem.”He grumbles, tilting his head at me. Those bright golden eyes of his are practically rolling so hard I’m surprised they don’t fall out of his skull entirely.
