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Her chin came up. She straightened her spine and caught her breath.

“I’ve always said my bedroom needed a skylight,” she said, though her voice choked when she said it.

Two streets over, the Healing House roof gave up with the same groan Turnip released when lying down.

The healer twin swore, snatched up her satchel, and ran in that direction.

I stood in the wet street.

Every bit of me that had ever grown anything was already planning how I would give Rain a new roof.

CHAPTER THREE

RAIN

By morning, the village had packed into the Silver Bell Tavern.

Other places lit candles after a disaster.

We filled the tavern.

The elder orc, Rufus, had the big hearth roaring and the chairs down off the wall. He stood behind the bar with a tea towel flopped over his shoulder, pouring for the shaken and the nosy alike.

After the storm, when Goran had left to return to his farm, I’d slept on Asha’s floor under a quilt that smelled like cinnamon, with Ginger purring on my chest. My bed was open to the sky and full of yesterday’s mess. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the yellow curtains hanging over the wall. Then I’d feel two beam-sized arms close around me and smell rain and warm ogre. I had to open my eyes again and make myself think about slate.

You sighed all through the night, Ginger said as I dropped into a chair at the tavern.

Rufus caught my nod and started pouring me a drink.

I didn’t count, because counting is beneath me. It was nine.

“I was thinking about the roof.”

You were thinking about more than the roof.

Melissant, who kept the Hollow’s library and most of its memory, had claimed the long table by the hearth and was taking damage reports.

The Healing House had lost its roof. It caved in over the north ward, beams and all. Nobody was under it when it fell, thankfully. The ward’s one patient had gone home at noon, and Aris had been at my shop.

“I was at Bellflower & Brew,” Aris said, in case anyone had missed it. “I want that recorded. Five years I’ve kept the Healing House. The building loves me. The roof waited until I was at the tea shop.”

“Noted,” said Melissant, not writing it down.

My quarters over the shop were a mess. The shop level itself had held, because it was older and better built, so Bellflower & Brew could still pour tea even if its keeper had no place to live.

Which was a strange thing to think about before breakfast. I had a shop and no home, a bowl full of ogre’s stones, and a cat with too much attitude.

And missing teaspoons.

The Puddlefoot haystacks had been distributed across five counties.

Widow Merrow’s plaque was still under sprite occupation. Ransom demands remained unclear.

Every teaspoon on Market Square had gone missing. The sprites had flown up and down the lane in the night like tiny blue tax collectors, and the village had woken unable to stir their sugar into their tea.

“My weathervane’s in the millpond,” Mr. Puddlefoot said, his nose twisting. “Pointing down.”

“At least you know where it is,” the wheelwright said from underneath a borrowed blanket. He sat in a chair near the fire, shivering. “My chimney’s in my soup pot, and my soup pot’s on the green.”