Page 20 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

I decided to let Keegan be for the night. Stella’s words stirred something inside of me.

The path back to the cottage twisted through the trees, and my shoes crunched over dry summer needles. Somewhere high above the canopy, the shadows over Stonewick still pulsed, not moving like a cloud or even like weather. No, this darkness had weight to it. Presence.

And I was walking straight back into its reach.

The cottage came into view through the trees, the porch lamp flickering weakly as if even its magic was second-guessing tonight. I walked along the drive, heart skipping the usual beat it gave when I returned home. Something was off. Not bad, not dangerous, but off.

I slipped inside quietly, the door clicking shut behind me.

No wind. No crackle from the herbs drying in the rafters.

The air smelled like damp stone and lingering lavender, and somewhere deeper in the room, a faint, steady scraping sound echoed, with a slow drag and the tap of talons across roof tile.

Karvey.

I didn’t call out. I didn’t have to.

“I heard your steps three trees back,” came the gravel-voiced rumble from above the hearth.

I tilted my head up, and sure enough, there he was, perched above the mantle, wings half-folded, glowing eyes watching me like he hadn’t moved since the battle.

Except he had. The cracks that once splintered his wings?

Gone. Veins of luminous quartz now ran through them like ancient lightning trapped in stone.

“You’ve healed,” I whispered.

“Not by will alone,” he said. “The stone helped. The Ward helped.”

I stepped closer. “Karvey… last time you could barely fly.”

“Now I soar,” he replied, and if gargoyles could smirk, he would have.

Just then, a loud bang rattled the front door, followed by a familiar voice shouting,

“Don’t just open it! It could be a shadow beast pretending to be me again!”

I snickered.

“Maeve? You’re not dead, right?”

I sighed. “Come in, Twobble.”

The door flew open, and in barged Twobble, hair even more chaotic than usual, holding what looked like a metal canister with a suspicious dent and soot marks on one side. Skonk followed, arms crossed and scowling.

“Great,” Skonk muttered. “She’s alive. You owe me a thimble of elderberry syrup and two scones.”

“You bet we’d find her incinerated,” Twobble said with a grin. “That’s not exactly a hopeful wager.”

“It was optimistic,” Skonk countered. “If she were dust, we wouldn’t have to listen to your monologue.”

“Oh, please,” Twobble scoffed. “My monologues are delightful. Award-worthy. There’s probably a goblin medal waiting for me somewhere.”

“Probably melted,” Skonk said.

“Probably not.”

“Definitely is.”

I looked between them, both already dropping muddy boots near the rug and shaking out their satchels filled with dandelion puff. “Did you come to argue in stereo or actually check on the cottage?”

“Both,” they said at the same time.

Karvey shifted slightly, his wings glinting in the light. I turned back to him.

“Karvey, seriously,” I said, stepping forward and reaching up. “Your wing was broken, snapped , and now it’s like…”

“New stone,” he said simply. “Stronger than the old. But not the same.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Not the same how?”

“It carries different energy now,” he replied. “Wild, but not unruly.”

“That’s not comforting,” Twobble offered, already poking around my herb jars like he was looking for snacks.

“Oh yes, tell her more about the mysterious ancient power rebuilding your bones,” Skonk added dryly. “Very restful bedtime story.”

“Do gargoyles sleep?” Twobble asked suddenly.

“No,” Karvey said.

“See?” Twobble turned to me, snapping his fingers and launching flames in the fireplace. “There’s your problem. No dreams. No reset. Just endless brooding.”

“I am not brooding,” Karvey intoned.

“You’re perched in shadow above a fireplace,” Skonk said as I wandered to the kitchen.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Which was a mistake, because then Twobble puffed up with pride.

“I bring the levity,” he said, following right behind.

“You bring crumbs,” I said, eyeing my countertop. “Which I think are now covered in marmalade jam.”

“Possible,” he said, hopping up onto a stool. “We had to stop for an emergency snack on the way here. Skonk tripped on his own sarcasm.”

Skonk, meanwhile, had wandered over to the window. His expression shifted.

“The sky’s darker again,” he said. “Didn’t think it could get darker, but there it is. Like tar on velvet.”

“I saw it earlier,” I said. “Even Nova said it’s worse. But the thing is… it doesn’t move like a storm.”

Skonk glanced over his shoulder. “It listens.”

That made everyone quiet. Even Twobble.

“I don’t know how I know,” Skonk said finally. “But I heard it. Near the western edge of the garden, just outside the circle of the Wards. Whispering. Not language exactly. Not words.”

“Vibration,” Karvey murmured. “The kind that lives in stone and bark and blood.”

I turned toward him. “You’ve heard it before.”

He nodded. “Once.”

“When?”

“A long time ago,” he said. “When I was stationed at the northern border of the Academy grounds. That kind of magic doesn’t just reappear.”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

Karvey’s eyes flared brighter for a heartbeat. “It means the war you think you’re fighting might only be the surface of something older.”

“Great,” Twobble said. “So it’s not just curses and ancient family trauma. It’s buried prehistoric magic, too.”

“And soup is never hot enough,” Skonk added.

“And pastry is never filled enough,” Twobble nodded.

“Focus,” I said.

But I was thinking about what Karvey said.

I turned, staring toward the garden and the woods beyond.

We hadn’t broken the curse. Not really. The surface, yes, Moonbeam, maybe. But underneath… something deeper was waking. Something tangled in stone and shadow and bloodline.

And I wasn’t sure if I was the one meant to stop it.

Or unleash it.

Karvey moved then, stepping down from the hearth with slow, deliberate grace. “It’s a test.”

I looked at him. “A test of what?”

“To see who still remembers how to listen.”

Twobble reached over and squeezed my hand. “I’d fail. I can’t even listen to Skonk for more than thirty seconds.”

“That’s because I speak in full sentences,” Skonk said, eyes still on the window. “And you speak in biscuit crumbs.”

“Language of the soul,” Twobble sniffed.

I grinned, despite the unease curling under my ribs.

The darkness outside hadn’t moved, but the stone beneath our feet?

That was stirring.

The fire crackled in the hearth behind us, casting shadows up the cottage walls that danced like specters in slow motion.

Karvey hadn’t moved from his post near the chimney, wings folded behind him like a cathedral’s stone arch.

Skonk had taken up residence in my reading chair.

He claimed it offered superior brooding acoustics, while Twobble stood on the armrest, poking through my herb jars like he was searching for rare treasure or a forgotten cinnamon biscuit.

I paced.

Not because I wanted to, but because I couldn’t not .

The dark in the sky was still curling, and Keegan was still too quiet in his hotel across town.

And now that the adrenaline from the last few days had finally worn off, dread had settled in like a low-grade fever…

constant, humming behind my eyes, wrapping its fingers around my thoughts.

I stopped and turned toward the trio of unlikely advisors.

“Tell me again,” I said, hands on my hips.

“Have you ever heard of a curse that doesn’t just hurt someone, but feeds on them?

Something that gets stronger when they suppress their power?

Or avoid shifting? Or, I don’t know, try to be a decent person and not go full wolf and bite through someone’s door? ”

Karvey’s brow, if gargoyles had brows, furrowed. “There are curses that bind. Curses that trap. Curses that twist the source of a person’s strength until it turns on them.”

“Not helpful,” Skonk muttered. “Very gargoyle of you, though.”

Karvey continued, unfazed. “But what you’re describing sounds darker. Not just a curse… a tether. Something parasitic. If it feeds , Maeve, it has a hunger. And hunger has rules.”

I blinked. “You’re saying Keegan is being… harvested?”

“Worn thin,” Karvey said with a nod. “Not all at once. Just enough to weaken his edge. Over and over. A dull blade cannot defend itself.”

I turned to Twobble. He was holding a pouch of valerian root, as if it might answer the secrets of the universe.

“Stella said something,” I told him. “That maybe the problem isn’t just the curse, it’s Keegan’s resistance to who he is. The more he fights it, the more drained he becomes. Like the curse is thriving on the fact that he won’t let himself be… all of him.”

Twobble’s head whipped around. “Oh. Oh, that’s a good one.”

He dropped the pouch, spilling only some of it, and leapt down from the chair arm with surprising grace for a creature who had once gotten stuck in a sugar barrel for three hours.

“Hang on,” he said, darting to the bookshelf. “Hang on. I read something. Old magic. Ridiculously obscure. Written by someone who was probably hexed in the head, but it mentioned that kind of feed magic.”

He began tossing books onto the rug with joyful abandon. “Nope. No. Definitely no. Ew…who gave us this one?” He tossed a book titled Romancing the Rune toward Skonk, who ducked it with the reflexes of someone used to flying hardcovers.

“Watch it!” Skonk growled.

Twobble grinned, then yelped with triumph. “Aha!”

He pulled a thin, leather-bound book from the shelf. It was bound in deep green leather, etched with curling runes that shimmered briefly under the firelight.

The Hollowing Recipe.

“I thought you used that to prop up the sugar tin,” I said.

“I did,” Twobble said. “Until I realized it wasn’t a cookbook. You should see the footnotes in this thing.”

He handed it over. I opened the cover with care as it hummed faintly, the way the oldest books did, like it still remembered who had touched it last. Inside, the script shifted as I read, rearranging itself into language I could understand. That in itself was enough to raise the hairs on my arms.

The Hollowing Recipe was about spiritual erosion. Not instant destruction— erosion . The slow wearing down of identity and power by an external force that survived not on pain, but on resistance. The more a person fought within , the more they were worn from without .

“Oh my word,” I whispered. “This is exactly what Stella was talking about.”

“Credit where it’s due,” Twobble said, smugly. “Your vampire witch is frighteningly insightful when she’s not adding brandy to her tea.”

The page beneath my fingers warmed.

When the cursed resists the truth of their form, the tether thickens. The magic binds tighter. The Hollowing does not seek strength. It seeks denial. It feeds on what is withheld.

I swallowed. “Keegan’s trying to be less of himself to protect us. And it’s literally killing him.”

Just then, the air in the room cooled…not a gust, not a draft. A presence. Familiar.

And then, in the corner of the kitchen, Miora shimmered into view.

She carried a wooden tray lined with mismatched mugs and a large, humming teapot that floated an inch above her palms. Steam curled around her in gentle spirals, brushing her cheek like a kiss.

“Tea?” she said, voice serene as always.

Twobble flinched. “You’ve got to stop doing that.”

Skonk blinked. “Where did you even get the tea?”

“Your pantry,” Miora replied, setting the tray on the table. “And the ghost of a kettle still haunts the back burner. It was happy to help.”

“I knew that kettle wasn’t done with us,” Twobble muttered.

I sat down slowly, The Hollowing Recipe still in my lap. “Miora, do you know anything about this?”

She poured the tea like she’d been part of the living just yesterday, not decades ago. “I know old magic doesn’t care how brave we are. Only how honest.”

Karvey nodded gravely. “Truth is strength. Resisting it is weakness.”

I thought of Keegan. The way his eyes always scanned the room first. The way his hands trembled after he shifted. The way he looked at me like I was the reason he kept it together, and maybe the reason he was afraid to come undone.

“I have to tell him,” I said. “I have to help him stop fighting who he is. Or this curse is going to win.”

Skonk made a rare noise of agreement.

Miora handed me a mug with a soft smile. “Then drink your tea, Maeve Bellemore. We’ll face the Hollowing together. But you, more than anyone, must understand: love isn’t what saves us. Acceptance is.”

And the fire behind us flared in silent agreement.