Page 27 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

We circled the cottage slowly, as though one wrong step might cause it to vanish.

Salt lines glimmered faintly at the threshold, braided like jewelry into long curves that tightened around the doorway.

The salt wasn’t sprinkled. It was deliberate, woven, as if it had been carefully knotted into protective runes.

Whoever had done it knew what they were guarding against. Or, more unnervingly, what they were keeping in.

At the back of the cottage, I paused. In Stonewick, where my cottage perched, the back garden was small but lively. A herb patch had thrived there, fennel and thyme competing for sunlight, with a crooked bench tucked beneath the pines where I’d often sat with tea.

This Undersoot twin had a patch too, though the herbs grew bent and stiff, leaves curled as though they’d whispered too many secrets.

And the bench? Not wood and comfort, but a slab of slate with grooves carved deep across its surface.

At first, I thought it was a script, a language too tiny for my human eyes. I bent low, tracing with my fingers.

Not letters. Marks. A grid of notches, each line cut hard into the stone.

“What’s that?” I asked, already uneasy.

Twobble’s voice dropped, carrying the kind of weight he usually reserved for jam emergencies. “The years until the Academy would open.”

The words trickled down my spine like a piece of dripping ice. I looked again at the stone, at the endless rows of lines cut until the slate was almost worn thin. Years. Counted. Not days. Not seasons. Years.

Someone had been waiting here.

Skonk? Or even someone before him?

A shard of glass sat balanced atop the railing, sharp side up, glittering dully in the dim light.

On the porch rail itself hung a chipped button, dangling by a loop of frayed thread.

It swung once, weakly, as if stirred by a hurried hand and then abandoned.

The cottage had been touched recently. Lived in.

I closed my eyes, trying to listen.

Under my belt, the bundle whispered faintly. It wasn’t a warning, but it wasn’t comforting. It was merely listening.

When we stepped into the doorway, it felt like stepping onto the stage of a play that had been running without us for years. The air knew its lines. The walls held their breath, waiting for me to speak mine.

The ceiling arched above as light pooled along the walls from oil lamps shaped like curled seedpods, their flames whispering with steady patience.

To my left, water dripped somewhere deep inside the pipes, rhythm slow and deliberate, like a clock that had grown wise enough to stop measuring minutes.

“How is this possible?” I whispered.

Twobble’s gaze slid past me, out the window toward the lane where shadows and lamplight braided over cobblestones. His voice was low, but sure. “Balance.”

“You’re telling me this,” I gestured at the eerie twin cottage, “is a form of balance? Why would a town need that?”

He tilted his head, his expression surprisingly sober.

“Most places do. Suppose they’ve been loved long enough to grow roots.

Stonewick’s goblins built ours where warmth collects.

Shadowick’s goblins built theirs where the cold doesn’t forget to bite.

Balance. One would get too hot without the other or one would get too frigid. ”

It sat heavily on me.

“Balance,” I repeated, softer. “But… why keep it? Why not leave? Why not run from this place instead of forcing yourself to live in darkness?”

Twobble’s mouth softened, and he looked older. Not just older, ancient. Like his face carried memories he usually tucked away behind jokes and jam.

“Because somebody has to stand at the seam and keep count,” he said.

He whipped a finger toward the ceiling. “Goblins above collect stories, fix what humans break for sport. Goblins below guard the bad things tightly enough that they don’t learn too much about themselves.

Evil left alone gets clever. Evil under watch stays predictable.

Most days.” His inhale was sharp. “That’s the way I learned it, anyway. ”

His words landed with the clarity of carved stone. I could feel it in the air, the watchfulness of the place, the deliberate smallness. This wasn’t hiding. This was surgical precision to mirror.

“And Skonk?” I asked. The worry that had been gnawing at me since I first noticed his absence sharpened in my chest. “Why was he here?”

Twobble’s eyes slid to the woods outside, their shapes hunched into shadows. “Because he was the stronger twin.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe that.”

“Come,” he said simply. We walked through the tiny kitchen, surveying everything as it had been left.

As I followed him, my eye caught on stones lining the windowsill. Smooth, ordinary river stones, except each one had a notch cut into it. “What are those for?”

“Listening,” Twobble said. “They tell us where the floor gives and where it holds. Where a step echoes wrong. Stones up top tell stories. Stones down here count breaths.”

The hair on my arms prickled. “And right now?”

He paused, searching for the right word. “Accounting.”

The word settled in me like lead.

We reached the front room again, and it was hard to reconcile everything I was seeing.

Skonk’s cottage was like mine had been, if mine had been dragged through a storm, wrung out, and left to sulk.

The roof sagged just slightly, not enough to break, but enough to look perpetually defeated.

Drapes hung ragged as though straining to eavesdrop.

Even the houseplants that climbed up the walls seemed hesitant, curling downward as if ashamed.

Twobble puffed up beside me, hands on his hips, surveying with the gravity of a goblin judge. “See? Twins.”

I arched a brow. “Twins? This place looks like mine got caught in a thunderstorm and decided to brood about it for thirty years.”

“Precisely.” He preened. “You’ve got the cheerful twin. Skonk’s is the mysterious one. Every family needs balance.”

“Balance,” I muttered. “I’d prefer the kind that doesn’t look like it wants to devour me in my sleep.”

The beams stretched across the ceiling, darker than mine, almost black. The hearth was thick with soot, as though something had clawed its way through flame instead of warming by it. The table by the window wasn’t littered with books or candles. It was lined with jars. Dozens. All jam.

I leaned close. “Vleppa’s jam?”

Twobble nodded proudly, hopping onto the bench. “Yep. Skonk swears it tastes better eaten in the dark. Says the sugar has more bite.”

I picked up a jar. The jam shimmered faintly as if it wanted to wriggle free of the glass. My stomach flipped. I set it back down carefully. “Why does he have this much?”

“Emergency rations. Or bribes. Depends on the day.”

Charming.

My gaze pulled back to the hearth. The soot wasn’t scattered like ash from a fire. It was piled, freshly disturbed, and smeared across the stones as though something had dragged itself through. The smell was sharper than smoke, the tang of air not meant to be breathed here.

“Twobble,” I said slowly. “What exactly are we looking at?”

He crouched, sniffing with exaggerated seriousness, then straightened. His mouth twisted. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh?” My stomach dropped. “That is not the word I wanted.”

He pointed a tiny finger streaked with black. “Fresh. Which means someone, or something, used the fireplace.”

A tremor threaded through me. “For what? It doesn’t even smell like wood. More like…” I swallowed the word bitter. “Like it was used as a door.”

Twobble didn’t argue. He dusted his palms and looked at me with the kind of gravity that made my breath shorten.

“Looks like we might have to go up.”

“Up?” My eyes shot to the loft.

“Up,” he confirmed.

Somewhere above us, in the thickness of soot and shadow, something was waiting.

“Up,” Twobble repeated, his grin too wide, his teeth catching the lamplight like he’d just said something delicious. He tapped the soot with one stubby finger, then pointed toward the beams lost in the dark.

“Be specific, Twobble,” I said, crossing my arms. “Up as in a loft? Up, as in an attic? Or up as in… the kind of ‘up’ that makes me regret not writing a will?”

He rocked back on his heels, eyes glinting. “Yes.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s every answer!” He spread his arms dramatically, smudges of soot on his vest. “Look, fireplaces are tricky things in places like this. Sometimes they’re for warmth, sometimes for cooking, sometimes,” he dropped his voice into something between reverence and sales pitch, “for travel.”

I frowned at the heavy layer of soot. “Travel? You’re telling me Skonk turned his hearth into a goblin elevator?”

“Not Skonk.” Twobble’s grin faltered just a hair. “It’s ancient travel. And if it goes up, then what we need will be waiting for us. Above. Always above.”

A shiver threaded through me. “And by waiting, you mean…?”

He tilted his head. “Well, Maeve, that’s the fun, isn’t it? Might be a clue. Might be a trap. Only one way to know.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re trying to entice me into this like it’s a carnival game.”

He gave a little bow. “That’s because it is . It’s one of the grandest games filled with mystery. And don’t you want to win before the shadows do?”

The soot shifted slightly, as though stirred by a draft. Against my better judgment, my breath hitched.

And still, of course, I glanced up.