Page 38 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

Twobble pressed both palms to the window glass. “The sky looks like it swallowed an eggplant.”

I reached for Keegan without looking, and his fingers found mine like we’d practiced it under another life. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. When he moved to the door, I went with him, and Nova, already in motion, fell into step.

We opened the door together.

The air outside wore the weight of weather that hadn’t earned its thunder. The property’s woods had a gray wash over them, not unlike Shadowick.

Keegan’s whole posture changed. Not the pain and stiffness from earlier. This was hunter-readiness and wolf-sense rising. His breath deepened as his jaw set.

Nova didn’t look away from the horizon. She shook her head and closed the door.

“It’s thicker than the last pass,” she said quietly. “And lower.” She tilted her head, as though listening for a frequency only she could hear. “It moves like purpose.”

Bella stepped to the threshold, nose testing the air. “It doesn’t smell like Gideon.”

I looked at them both. “It’s not Gideon. It’s something far worse.”

We stood and watched as the darkness rolled down like fabric laid with great care.

It didn’t lash; it didn’t rage. It covered.

It claimed. The geese in the marsh beyond the woods fell quiet.

The wind forgot its job. My herbs trembled once and then stood their ground, every leaf lifted like a small brave hand.

Keegan set his cup down. “I need to…”

“You need to breathe,” I said, matching the edge in his voice with the part of mine that has had enough of arguing about peril with men built like answers. “Look at me.”

He did. The gold in his eyes wasn’t the fever-light of the curse; it was the clean heat he’d always carried, banked and ready. But as the dark blanket unrolled, I saw it taking more from Keegan.

“We have to stop it,” he muttered.

I cupped his face again, my thumb finding that same small orbit. “If you run into a wave, it pulls you under. We wait. We watch. We learn the shape before we throw spells.”

His mouth twitched. “You say we, but you mean you .”

“I mean us ,” I answered, and the word had weight enough to make the cottage perk up, proud of our vocabulary choices.

Something pattered against the glass, but it wasn’t rain. This sound had intention. We all fell silent as the world measured how much noise it wanted to make.

“Maeve?” Nova’s voice again, pitched thinner, clipped. “Don’t open the door.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I said, and then realized I was lying because my body had already tilted toward the latch.

Stella set her palm flat against the wood. “Let it knock until it gets bored.”

Twobble had gone very pale. “It’s looking for an answer it can use.”

“What happens,” Skonk whispered, “if we don’t answer at all?”

“Then,” Stella said, “we go on being who we are until it hates us for the inconvenience.”

I think we all wished it were that simple.

A hush fell that felt unlike the other hushes.

Keegan’s head turned toward the door again. His entire body reacted before his mind could as the shadow reached the woods. Our Ward had shivered, not weak, just…agitated. I felt the tug of the cottage as if it were a thread tied around my ribs.

Keegan moved to the front window, shoulders rolled forward, every inch of him drawn toward the edge of a fight he wasn’t allowed to reach. The wolf in him didn’t pace. It held very still, watching and waiting.

I crossed to stand beside him. He closed his eyes on a breath that sounded like surrender and relief, refusing to choose.

“You should sit. We aren’t going anywhere. You won’t miss anything,” I teased.

His eyes met mine, and he nodded.

He sat down, and I glanced at Nova, who was measuring his steps, his breaths…his exhaustion.

Twobble squeaked. “Unwelcome! Unwelcome! We have no room at the inn! We’re full of opinions and bad taste!” He darted from window to window, staring outside.

Stella set a mug in my free hand, then a second in Keegan’s. “Sip. And if you can’t sip, pretend.”

He obeyed just to please her, which earned him a kiss to the top of the head he pretended not to appreciate.

Nova waited, kneeling slightly so her eyes were level with his. The others leaned in, silent, listening. My heart thundered.

The scrape of a chair against the wood floor shattered the moment.

Keegan shoved back from the table so abruptly that his mug rattled, sloshing across the worn oak. His hazel eyes, usually steady, burned with a raw intensity.

“I see them,” he said, already half out of his seat. “My parents. Outside the window.”

The words hung there like a lightning strike.

Twobble and Skonk froze mid-fidget. Then, slowly, their gazes slid to me.

“Your… parents?” I echoed, my voice unsteady, the air around us thickening with something I didn’t yet understand.

The room tilted around that sentence. They looked like two owls who’d flown smack into the same tree. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“Your… parents?” I repeated, and the word slid out of me thin and wrong, as if it didn’t trust my mouth to carry it without breaking.

Keegan’s jaw worked. Anger had climbed into his face like heat. He was still and shaking at the same time, a contradiction only a man who has practiced restraint can manage when it finally fails him.

“They’re at the edge of the woods,” he said. “Past the rosemary. My mother’s shawl. The way it always…” He cut off, throat bobbing. “They’re looking for me.”

Twobble and Skonk moved as one, scrambling onto the bench and then onto the couch, trampling a cushion. They glanced at Keegan again and moved to the window, pressing their faces to the glass pane on either side of Keegan’s shoulders.

Twobble cupped his hands around his eyes to cut the glare. Skonk squinted so hard his whole forehead became a question mark. They were silent for three long heartbeats.

“There’s no one there,” Twobble said.

“Only the sky being rude,” Skonk added, solemnly.

Keegan flinched like they’d slapped him. He didn’t look away from the glass. “Don’t play with me.”

Twobble blinked. “I wouldn’t dare. Not with that face.”

“Wolf face,” Skonk murmured in uneasy admiration.

I crossed the room, the boards creaking with a familiar creak. All I could see was Keegan’s reflection in the glass, with eyes darker than the storm, and the two goblin silhouettes bristling with concern.

“Nothing,” Twobble repeated quietly. “Dark skies. Darker woods. Rosemary thinking brave thoughts.”

Skonk’s throat clicked as he swallowed. “And something that wants to be looked at.”

Twobble cut him a look. Their elbows bumped. Some exchange passed between them in the minute glances only very old cousins can read.

Twobble nudged Skonk’s shoulder with his own, not gently.

“Tell them,” Twobble said. “Tell them how you got into trouble. What the mirage you saw truly was.”

Keegan tore his gaze from the window long enough to give Twobble a look that could have cut stone.

“I don’t have time for your stories. They’re outside.” He set his hand on the latch. “And I want to give them a piece of my mind.”

My heart stuttered, then steadied on something older than panic.

“No,” I said, and my voice landed harder than I expected.

He stilled. I slid in front of him, palms up in truce, and felt the heat coming off his skin like banked coals. “Keegan. You can’t. It’s a mirage.”

His eyes, those beautiful, stubborn, dangerous eyes, snapped to mine.

“Don’t do that,” he said softly.

“It’s the same thing that trapped Skonk,” I reminded him, and the truth in the sentence gave me a place to stand. “That Keeper Willow didn’t snatch him at random. It lured him with something he wanted to see. The mirage, Keegan.”

Skonk’s ears went pink. He stared at his boots with great fascination.

Keegan’s fingers flexed on the latch. His voice dropped to a growl edged with pleading. “I saw my mother’s shawl. The one from when I was a child, and I heard...”

“You saw what it wanted you to see,” I said. “That’s what mirages do when the shadow is hunting. Remember?”

It was as if the mirage had twisted Keegan’s memories and made him forget what we’d tracked yesterday and why.

Skonk had fallen prey to a mirage less than twenty-four hours ago, but none of that mattered. It felt too real to Keegan.

“The shadow,” he echoed, as if tasting the claim for sourness.

“Keegan, we know what you’re seeing is as real as what you see inside this cottage. Skonk fell for his favorite pastry so hard that it led him into Shadowick.” I tried again.

Skonk scuffed his toe against the rug.

“In my defense,” he said, “it was a very convincing pastry.”

Twobble groaned. “You told me it was a sound.”

Skonk winced. “The sound of me eating the pastry.”

Keegan blinked as if that somehow jolted him awake. “A pastry?”

“Not just any pastry,” Twobble informed him. “A jam twist. The exact jam twist Skonk pretends to hate but eats with the eyes of a poet.”

“Do you just enjoy embarrassing me?” Skonk scowled. “Could you not have made it sound a little more perilous and mysterious?”

“Mirages pull from memory,” I said, gentler now. “They use what you already carry. Your parents,” I watched Keegan carefully, “are bittersweet bait for you. The shadow knows your shape. It’s throwing what sticks.”

He closed his eyes. Not to shut me out. To steady something that was listing. When he opened them again, the anger hadn’t vanished. It had changed.

“I can’t not look,” he said, looking out the window.

“You can look away because you’re wise enough to wait until the truth knocks like itself. This is not how your parents would make their entrance.”

Twobble made an approving hrumph.

Keegan’s shoulders relaxed, and he nodded. “No, you’re right.”

But I caught something worrisome in his gaze, something akin to secrets.

“I have a confession.” Skonk toyed with his next pastry. He spoke around crumbs, and the words tumbled out fast. “It didn’t start with pastry. It started with…” He glanced at Twobble, small and apologetic. “It started with you.”

“Me?” Twobble’s head snapped around. “You said pastry.”

“I lied to save face,” Skonk hissed. “I didn’t want to sound all sappy about chasing you into the abyss.”

“I’m speechless.” Twobble’s cheeks blushed.

“But you were holding the pastry, taunting me with it.” Skonk scowled. “None of it makes sense now, but it did at the time. It felt like you and the pastry were in grave danger.”

“Yes, pastries have been known to fall into predicaments like that,” Twobble said dryly.

“And on my journey, it just turned into chasing the pastry.” Skonk shook his head.

“I won’t judge you for chasing after me.” Twobble shrugged.

“It judged me,” Skonk said, giggling. “It judged me delicious.”

He rubbed his wrists as if the Keeper memory still lived there.

Twobble put his forehead against Skonk’s with exaggerated casualness.

“You are a cautionary tale,” Twobble announced. “And I will use you well.”

Keegan’s eyes blinked.

“My mother sang,” he said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear it. “When I was small. That tune, through the glass. Just there. It made my stomach hiccup.” He blew out a breath that hit the pane and vanished.

And finally, his fingers left the latch.