Page 30 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

The silhouette appeared tall and wrapped in a dark coat that made the shadows hang right.

My stomach fell through me.

“Don’t,” Twobble said under his breath, in a tone I had only heard once, the first night Malore crashed my window and we made light do things it wasn’t ready for. “Don’t say his name. Not here. Gives him too much power.”

The figure tilted his head.

“You’ve been playing house in my woods,” he said pleasantly, and the willow’s branches stirred not with wind but with attention.

Gideon.

He looked at me. At the bundle tied at my belt. At the goblin by my side. At Skonk, trussed like an inconvenient thought.

“Return what’s ours,” I said, surprised at how level my voice was. “He doesn’t belong to you.”

“Belong,” he repeated, tasting the word. “I dislike it when others use it.” His gaze moved to the willow’s limbs securing Skonk’s feet. “The Keeper prefers trade.”

“We’ve already made a trade,” I assured him, feeling my skin prickle.

Twobble edged half a step in front of me, as if his body could be a ledger that balanced all my debts.

“What price?” he asked the tree, ignoring the man-shaped shadow as if he were furniture. “State it.”

The willow made that bucket sound again, deeper now, resounding enough that it pressed on my ribs. Something tugged at my bundle; the whisper shifted to a low, steady note.

Careful. Careful.

The figure smiled with his eyes. “Not good enough. The goblin twin must make a trade.”

“What kind?” I asked.

“A secret,” Gideon said, nearly cheerfully. “One you don’t want.”

“Unfair,” Twobble snapped. “That’s all of them.”

I felt my heartbeat climb up my throat like a frantic animal. My mouth went dry again.

“What kind of secret?” I asked again.

“The kind that sticks.” Gideon tipped his face to me, inviting and curious.

He extended a hand as if we were about to dance, but I refused.

“Tell the Keeper who lives in this pretty cottage not so unlike Maeve’s.” Gideon’s eyes stayed on Twobble’s.

The willow’s branches lifted all at once, every tip intent to hear Twobble’s response.

A cold slid under my skin, the exact temperature of the air when I first signed the divorce papers while thinking my life had ended.

And it had, as I knew it.

But my mind flashed to the list on the desk, and Twobble’s reluctance to tell me who called the cottage home.

If Gideon wanted Twobble to voice the name, it was only to hurt, cause turmoil, or start something we couldn’t stop.

Twobble’s hand found my sleeve, and he stepped forward.

“No,” I said softly. “You don’t need to reveal.”

Skonk thrashed once as the branches tightened.

“Doesn’t he?” Gideon asked, tipping his head slightly. “Don’t you both want your goblin back?”

I lifted my chin as my bundle hummed, reminding me there were protectors in every realm from Undersoot to Shadowick.

The Hedge in me steadied, stubborn as always.

“Keeper,” I said, ignoring Gideon. “I have a recipe that breaks the power of consumption and control.”

Its leaves shivered as the writing under the bark brightened.

The tree listened. Even Gideon’s gaze stopped smiling for one careful heartbeat. He no longer held the control in this moment.

I didn’t know the recipe. Not the whole of it. But I knew the ingredients by heart because it just occurred to me what I’d been looking at in the book with the four of us listed. The start of a recipe, a spell, another way to exist…

“Four under Hedge and Flame,” I said, voice low and sure. “A wolf who won’t bow. A shadow who forgot his first name. A broken fang who loves too loud. A witch who planted her grief and watered it until it grew a bloom.”

The willow quivered. One band around Skonk’s ankle loosened and fell with a soft hiss into the leaf-pool at the base of the trunk.

“No.” Gideon turned to scold the Keeper. “You do not trade for recipes like this in Shadowick.”

Twobble made a sound that was halfway to a sob and halfway to a laugh.

Gideon’s wicked smile sharpened by a degree as he turned back to face me. “Clever. But incomplete.”

“I’m not finished,” I said, and now my voice did not sound like a voice that had ever doubted it belonged to me. “Add roots that know the taste of fire. Add a village that stands whether anyone sees it or not. Add a promise that isn’t a trap.”

The band across Skonk’s mouth loosened a fraction. He spat it down and gasped, voice ripping through the quiet.

“Took you long enough,” he rasped. “I hate poetic recipes.”

“Not poetry,” Twobble said raggedly. “Cooking spells.”

“Worse,” Skonk croaked, and then, softer, “But thank you.”

The last bands held. The Keeper waited. So did the man who wore the shadow like a good coat.

My bundle thrummed once.

“Here,” I said. “A secret that pretends it’s a fact.”

I closed my eyes and let the thought rise to the surface in silence, only for the Keeper to hear.

You control what Gideon cannot see. You’re more powerful than he.

The tree considered the shine of my words. The writing brightened, then softened. The last bands slid open, and Skonk dropped into Twobble’s arms with the gracelessness of a sack of flour that had learned swear words.

They clung to each other like two halves of an argument, finally meeting in the middle.

“You betrayed me,” Gideon seethed at the Keeper.

But I noticed something I’d been too scared to see.

This Gideon didn’t move forward. In fact, he barely moved.

The Keeper’s branches swayed as if laughing at all of us, and the bundle at my belt went quiet.

“Move,” Twobble said to me out of the corner of his mouth, already half-hauling, half-dragging Skonk backward. “Now, before the tree decides it wants us all.”

Skonk squinted at me as he panted.

We backed away together, step by careful step, our eyes remaining on the Keeper, and we were almost to the woods’ edge when Gideon cleared his throat.

“Maeve,” he said, and my name in his mouth sounded like it had never belonged to me. “We have business to discuss. I know you want me to break Keegan’s curse. I can do it with a snap of my fingers.”

My heart stilled, and my body froze. I turned slowly to see Gideon standing and nodding. “I can help him.”

“It’s a trap,” Twobble whispered. “He’s giving you what you want to hear, and next, he’ll show you what you want to see.”

We ignored him and turned away.

And that was when I realized something was wrong.

Extremely wrong…but possibly right.

Even with Skonk finally beside us, muttering under his breath about being rescued by amateurs , I couldn’t shake the stiffness in my shoulders. Shadowick had a way of worming under your skin, making the air feel heavy enough to drag you down.

The three of us moved toward the cottage, my eyes flicking over the skeletal trees and the gnarled shadows that stretched along the ground. No wind, yet the branches swayed like they were aware of us. I hated that here, the woods didn’t feel indifferent. They felt watchful.

“Almost there,” I told myself, though I wasn’t sure if I meant the cottage or the moment we’d be gone from this place entirely.

Twobble stomped ahead, clearly on a mission, while Skonk trudged along at my side, still brushing bits of curly willow bark from his coat. Every now and then, he’d glare at the trees like they’d personally offended him.

By the time we made it to the garden, Twobble sank to the bench.

“Next time,” Twobble said thickly, “don’t fall for the oldest trick in the book.”

Skonk winced, grinned, and grimaced again, sitting next to him.

“Next time,” he rasped, “don’t take so long to find me.”

The question I’d set aside uncurled at last, the one I had promised the Keeper I would not pay with: Who lives here?

Gideon obviously wanted to delight in the answer.

A cottage window clouded on the inside as if someone had breathed against it, and a neat finger traced a single word in the fog before it disappeared.

Soon.

And that was when I realized that Gideon was a mirage. That was why he didn’t come after us and why he offered something he couldn’t provide, but he knew that I wanted.