Page 26 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

The world tipped and refused to right itself.

The stone under us turned slick as oil and gave way entirely into what felt like a puddle of mud.

A hum went through my teeth, and for a breathless second, there was nothing but the weightless rush of falling without wind, before being spit from a wave where we landed hard enough that my knees jarred and my palms scraped across stone.

It smelled odd. That was the first thing I noticed.

I pushed my hair out of my face and sat up.

“Maeve?” Keegan’s voice, low and hoarse, was somewhere to my left. A quick scan, followed by relief that hit so sharply, I nearly laughed.

Thankfully, he was upright and braced on one hand.

Twobble rolled to his feet like a gymnast and stomped once as if checking that his joints were all present.

“Well,” he said, dusting off his vest. “I adore a dramatic entrance, but that was far too bumpy.”

Off in the distance, a cottage caught my attention.

It could’ve been mine if my world had developed a taste for secrets and shadows. This cottage was also tinier than mine, but it had the same pitched roof and the same small porch.

This one, however, had a curling iron rail with raven scrolls. The roof slats were darker than they ought to be, and the vines that should have been cheery were a tangle of something like ivy’s dangerous cousin. The porch lantern burned, but the light was wrong. It somehow dimmed in its brightness.

“Where are we?” I asked, even though my bones had already answered.

Keegan pulled in a breath, and I watched the air go through him like it hurt. “Certainly not Stonewick.”

“Oh, good. We’ve won a prize.” Twobble shaded his eyes with one hand and peered at the horizon beyond the cottage. “Captain obvious hitched a ride in the Pitch.”

My gaze landed on the garden in front of the cottage. Tufts of dusky lavender looked like I stepped into an imaginary world where the color had been rinsed.

Mint grew there too, but its leaves were narrower, edged in iron-gray, and when the wind moved over them, the scent that rose was putrid.

“It’s a cottage like mine,” I said. The words came out quietly. “But it’s not mine. It’s much smaller.”

Keegan’s eyes moved from the garden to the lane and back. “Everything’s… reversed and small.”

I followed his gaze. The path from the gate ran to a fence, which ran to a field, which should have been the lane down to the village.

It was a lane, but it simply wasn’t ours. Fence posts like bones stood erect along the property. A field furred with grass that rippled in slow, reluctant waves stretched behind it.

I didn’t need to see the village to know it wasn’t Stonewick.

It was the sense that did it. That old, whispering prickle at the base of my skull that had warned me.

“Shadowick,” I said. Saying it made it more true.

“Not Shadowick,” Twobble corrected. “But we are underneath it.”

“What’s this place called?” Keegan questioned.

“Undersoot,” Twobble answered as if we should have known. “It’s Underloam’s rival, if goblins were silly enough to have one.”

Keegan turned his head slowly, as if it cost him, and his eyes found mine. “I don’t like where this is going.”

“Charming.” Twobble shrugged. “We didn’t come this far to get cold feet.”

Two goblins had appeared near the fence, both of them in the kind of clothes that meant work: rolled sleeves, sturdy boots, and aprons dyed dark blue.

They stopped and stared, but neither of them ran. They simply watched, and in their watching was the same puzzle I felt.

“Twobble,” I said softly, “why are they looking at you like you’re not entirely surprising?”

“Because,” he said, straightening his vest with dignity that had been through a Pitch backwards and survived, “I am the kind of goblin who has rumors attached to him. Most of them are untrue. Some I haven’t lived up to yet.

Also, everyone here has cousins above and cousins below.

They’re calculating how much trouble to expect. ”

He took in the cottage with his head tilted, then followed a line my eyes hadn’t taken yet. I turned to see a small, puckered circle of darkness, where the stone throat had spat us out. But the opening was about to close.

“Grand idea, that,” he said to the air. “Leave your Pitch portal unattended and see what the cat drags in. We should send a complaint. Formally. With stationery and cross references.”

“Twobble,” I said.

“I know.” He sobered. “We’re not in danger by default. But we are in danger by proximity.”

The wind moved again, and Keegan’s hand found my elbow, polite and protective and a little too cool. “We can’t stay.”

I looked up at him. I didn’t need magic to feel what Shadowick was doing to him through Undersoot. Stonewick might lend him strength in times of need, but Shadowick and its goblin counterpart did the opposite.

“It’s like standing in a bell,” Keegan said under his breath. “Every beat echoes.”

“The mirage led Skonk out here.” Twobble’s gaze cut from Keegan to me and back to the almost-portal. His eyes were bright and hard.

“We didn’t come for him to become weaker,” he said, and it wasn’t unkind. “We came for Skonk.”

My heart did a stupid, human thing as it yanked in two directions. We had to find Skonk. And Keegan…

Keegan stood in a place that would drink him if I let it.

The goblins at the fence had moved closer by degrees, as if we were wildlife that might spook. One of them lifted a hand and called, cautiously, “Twobble?”

Twobble flashed both palms in greeting. “Present and glorious.”

The goblin snorted. “You’re not supposed to…” Her gaze slid to us. “Bring company.”

“I’m expanding our brand,” Twobble said. “This is Maeve. That is Keegan. They’re tall and mostly harmless unless provoked. We’re looking for Skonk.”

“Skonk?” The other goblin repeated.

“Yes,” Twobble said, with a smile that was ninety percent bravado and ten percent familiar fear. “Have you seen him?”

They exchanged a look that told me the answer was not simple, and my gut twisted. Before they could open their mouths, the portal behind us shivered.

“Maeve,” Keegan said, and I heard the weight under my name.

We didn’t have time for a council, a vote, or a clever plan.

There was a slit in the air that would be a seam, and then it would be nothing.

And standing between that seam and a place that was, or wasn’t, my cottage, was the man I loved who was trying very hard not to show me how much it cost him to stand.

I didn’t think.

I moved.

I put my hand on his chest, and I pushed.

It wasn’t hard. It didn’t need to be. The portal grabbed for him as much as I pushed him away.

Surprise flickered across his face, then something like understanding, then anger that wasn’t for me, not even a little. He caught my wrist on instinct and then let go, because he knew, because he trusted me even when he hated what I was right about.

“Maeve.” He reached for me with his other hand, but I stepped sideways, and the edge of the world bit across his shoulder. It took him, and the air stitched itself shut with a sound like a breath pulled in and not let go.

Silence avalanched after the seam closed, and the two goblins at the fence said nothing for a long beat.

Twobble didn’t speak either.

I think we were all shocked I’d just done that.

Twobble just stared at the place where Keegan had been, chest rising and falling too fast, then turned his face away and made an unbeautiful sound that wasn’t a laugh.

“You didn’t…” Twobble stopped.

I swallowed against the cool ache in my throat and nodded once.

“He couldn’t stay,” I said, and the words felt like rocks I had to lift with my tongue. “This place would have hollowed him.”

“Accurate,” Twobble said, voice rough. “Ten out of ten for immediate triage.” Then softer, to me, without the edges, “He’ll be furious with you, but he’ll be alive. Which is a combination I can live with.”

A shaky breath eked out of me. I let it. I also let the grief rise and sit in my chest with the worry. I could tend both. Women my age were built for that kind of impossible math.

The female goblin approached and cocked her head slightly.

“You did the right thing. If you’d tried to keep him here, you would have owed the house.”

“Owed the house?” I repeated, and felt my gaze dragged back to the not-my cottage again, the way a compass needle swings.

She nodded. “Shadow houses feast on weakness.”

“Lovely,” Twobble muttered. “Landlords with appetites.”

“Keegan is not weak,” I countered.

“But he’s dying,” the goblin said, eyeing me.

My heart stretched as if it would tear. How could she sense that?

“Insufferable language, but we can’t dilly or dally.” Twobble shook his head.

I stepped toward the garden, not onto the path yet, not claiming anything, just close enough to see the herb labels.

The stakes were there, neat little signs in a hand that very nearly looked like mine, but instead read Mourning under the lavender, Reckoning under the sage, N ightmare under the rosemary, and Revenge under the mint.

A thrill of fear and fascination braided together up my spine.

“Twobble,” I said without taking my eyes from the stakes. “Are we safe standing here?”

“Define safe,” he said. “And define standing.”

The female goblin chuffed a sound that might have been amusement. “You’ll be fine if you don’t touch anything that looks like it wants to be touched.”

“That’s a distressing percentage of things,” Twobble said.

“Welcome to living in Undersoot,” she replied.

My hand had drifted toward the rosemary without my permission. I retracted it. “We’re looking for Skonk.”

“He owes Vleppa jam,” Twobble said fiercely, as if jam could anchor a person to a map.

“Last I saw him, he was walking into his cottage.”

“I’m not going inside without…” The sentence finished itself inside my head.

Without Keegan.

But he was on the right side of the wrong place. My job was here now.

I took a breath and tasted the metallic air, but there was something underneath.

Undersoot didn’t do signs unless the signs were pretty lies, and Skonk would have known that. He lived here.

“Wait.” The chatty goblin started again.

Twobble tilted his head.

“You’ll need these,” she said, and untied two of the bundles from her waist with quick, deft fingers. She tossed one to me and one to Twobble. “Tie them to your belts. If the cottage or anything else calls for you, they’ll talk louder than it does.”

I cupped the bundle. Up close, it was simply sticks and string, a twist of dried herb, and a knot that made the air feel steadier. But the whisper it made in my ear wasn’t words.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t thank me yet,” she replied. “Bring your cousin home, and I’ll accept a pie in return.”

“Noted,” Twobble said, tucking the bundle into his vest with reverence. “But I think we should explore Undersoot briefly, in case we need to come back through quickly.”

“Your lead.”

Twobble’s steps were quick and precise. He hummed under his breath, a goblin tune I recognized as the kind of song you sing to keep your courage from wandering off to flirt with trouble.

Undersoot wasn’t empty, far from it. The further from the cottage we went, the more we saw of its life, arranged at angles that would have read as quaint if they hadn’t also read as wrong.

A well with a crank that turned itself until you touched it, and a garden gate that opened until you wanted out.

In a window, a cat stared, blinking its mismatched eyes slowly. It lifted one paw as if to wave or warn.

The path drew us toward the trees. They were not my pines, not my maples, and they were not not those things either. The bark looked like a script ready to be pressed into my palm, but I knew better than to fall for it. Whatever message it had wouldn’t be worth the pain of receiving it.

“Skonk would,” Twobble muttered, as if seeing my temptation, and I smiled despite myself.

The path pinched us to a narrow squeeze between two rocks that looked like shoulder blades. Beyond it, the ground dipped into a shallow bowl, and the whisper at my belt changed pitch. I raised a hand, and Twobble stopped immediately.

On the right side of the bowl, someone had built a waymark with three stones, then two, then one, smooth and deliberate.

Twobble’s breath caught.

“Breadcrumbs,” he whispered. “To mislead.”

We went left.

If Underloam had felt like stepping into a crooked carnival, lanterns swinging low, shop windows spilling laughter and bargains you could almost trust, then Undersoot was its haunted twin.

The cobbled street twisted, and the stones were slick with a sheen that wasn’t rain but some kind of residue the air left behind.

In Underloam, shops proudly displayed their wares in cluttered windows. Jars of jam that glowed faintly, colorful ribbons that whispered compliments, sparkling boots that promised longer strides sat proudly for goblins to admire.

Here, the windows were dark, the glass clouded. The shelves inside were still lined, but every jar seemed unlabeled, every dark ribbon bound too tightly, every boot turned heel-first and tipped just slightly.

The lamplight was different, too. In Underloam, the flames burned warm gold, fed by charmed oil that smelled faintly of cinnamon.

In Undersoot, the lamps flickered with a greenish pallor, their light stretching shadows thin and long across the facades until every doorway seemed like a mouth about to swallow you whole.

And the goblins themselves, no less busy, no less alive than their Underloam cousins, but their laughter came in shorter bursts, cutting sharp as broken glass before dying away.

They bartered in half phrases, their eyes flicking past each other as though expecting something to creep from the alleys at any moment. Even their market stalls seemed wary, one vendor selling apples with skins too glossy, another offering gloves stitched with patterns that moved when you blinked.

Twobble leaned close, lowering his voice though the goblins nearby weren’t listening.

“My parish? It’s about mischief and bargains.

This one?” His eyes darted to a stall where a goblin in a hood tucked a vial back beneath the counter.

“This one trades in secrets. Sometimes even yours, if you linger too long.”

I tightened my arms around me, unsettled.

The parish was alive, yes. But alive like something feral. Underloam’s goblins made you feel like you’d stumbled into a trickster’s living room. Here, I couldn’t shake the sense we’d walked into a trap that hadn’t quite decided to spring. Twobble’s eyes flooded and cleared in one blink.

“Finally,” he said hoarsely. “Enough of that.”

I nodded.

“I say it’s time,” he muttered, glancing at me. “To go back to Skonk’s cottage.”

And I had to agree, even though every cell in my body wanted me to run.