Page 47 of The Witch They Fear

Zeva looks at me. Her eyes narrow. She doesn't say anything—doesn't ask, doesn't comment—but her gaze lingers a half-second longer than professional protocol requires, and in Zeva-language, that's practically a wellness check.

"Goodnight, Miss Dellaby," she says. And walks back to her side of the duplex.

I close the door. Lock it. Carry the plate to the kitchen counter and set it down beside the empty fridge and the scraped-clean peanut butter jar and the three remaining crackers.

I look at the food. I look at my hands. Steady now. No sparks. But my wrist is still warm where Kage’s fingers were and I can still smell cedar and iron on my shirt and the muscle memory of his chest under my palms—solid, real, gone—is doing things to my nervous system that I refuse to examine.

"Fuck," I say to the empty kitchen.

Above all… how did he know where to find me?

How did he know I live here?

Chapter 9

The stone isn't cooperating. Or I'm not cooperating. Hard to tell the difference when your magic feels like a dog on a leash that keeps lunging at squirrels.

I'm on the couch in Aamon's underground library, the resonance stone in my palms, eyes closed, trying to channel.

Down, not out. Into the stone. The riverbed.

But the river keeps jumping its banks.

Every time I reach for the warmth behind my sternum, my brain throws me images I didn't request. Kage's hand on my wrist. The wall against my back. Cedar and iron and his breath on my neck and God, you smell like a lit fuse and the blast and the laugh and his face looking up at me from the grass like I'd just given him a gift.

Jesus Christ I’m losing my mind.

The stone whines. I clamp down. Pull the flow back. Too hard—the channel collapses and the stone goes cold in my hands.

"Again," Aamon says. He's in his chair on the other side of the coffee table, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, watching me with that steady patience that should be reassuring and instead makes me feel like a bug under glass.

I try again. Find the warmth. Push it down. The stone hums—

Kage's voice: There she is. There's the fire.

The hum spikes. I grit my teeth and wrestle it back.

"You're distracted," Aamon says. Not a question.

"I'm fine."

"Your flow pattern is erratic. You were holding clean channels for forty-five seconds on Thursday. Right now you're losing cohesion at twelve."

"I said I'm fine."

He doesn't push. Just uncrosses his legs, leans forward slightly, and adjusts the crystal arrangement on the table—a subtle shift that changes the ambient magic in the room. I can feel it: the wards tightening, the air pressure increasing.

He's raising the difficulty.

"Extended channel," he says. "Hold for sixty seconds. Focus on the stone's resonance, not your own. Let it pull from you instead of you pushing into it."

Sixty seconds. I was struggling with twelve.

"That's—"

"You can do it. You've been building to this."

I close my eyes. Find the warmth. Hold the stone. And push.