Page 16 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic & Murder (The Hemlock Saga #1)

Avery blinked in a stunned silence. Had the world changed so much in her absence that even the English could release their death grip on manners without leaving visible claw marks?

She studied the expression of her companion—compassionate, with a hint of amusement that crinkled her eyes.

It reminded her so much of Esteri. Then her own hubris dawned on her.

Saga was not a Mundane English citizen. Saga was a Hudson witch, and even if she were not fully aware of Avery’s circumstances, she would have been raised in the knowledge of the Otherworld and the inhabitants that lived among them.

When it came to fey, rejecting curiosity and candor in favor of the rules of polite conversation never ended well for mortals.

“No,” she finally answered. “Insomnia. Seems to be a delightful side effect of…” She gestured vaguely in the air as if she might conjure a visual of the curse for illustration.

“The case?”

Avery’s stare sharpened; the warmth she felt toward this woman frosting over instantly. Was Saga one of Gideon’s lackeys too? “You know about my case?”

“Oh gods no,” Saga admitted quickly, immediately flustered by Avery’s glare. She reached beneath the counter and unlocked a drawer with one of her keys. “But Reza swung by to drop this off for you.” She produced a file folder from the drawer. “I didn’t peek, I promise.”

Avery accepted it, raising a silver-white eyebrow. She’d used his name so casually, so informally. “How do you know Detective Lahiri?”

“He’s my uncle.”

Avery took her in and the tense muscles in her face relaxed, then her shoulders, and eventually her back.

Lahiri had said he’d married into the Hudson line.

She felt foolish for letting pride get the best of her by suspecting Saga so immediately.

On one hand, the Hudsons had volunteered to house Avery, but on the other, they had volunteered so they would be more accepted in fey society and in the eyes of the Winter Council.

This alone made any Hudson an uneasy ally at best. She would have to wait until this woman’s character revealed itself further.

Avery realized she had been eyeing Saga as if she was a puzzle to be solved, and so she coughed and looked away. Neither time nor immortality altered the rather universal truth that most creatures didn’t take too well to being stared at. “Could I…get some breakfast?”

Saga nodded and she produced a small pad of paper from the apron around her waist. “What would you like?”

Avery’s stomach grumbled, lamenting the absence of lunch and dinner from the previous day. “I would adore so much food.”

This stoked a knowing laugh from the other woman. “I think we can manage that. Is there anything you would like to avoid? Allergies? Dislikes?”

“Starvation.”

Another laugh. Less restrained this time—it softened the awkward smile on Avery’s lips into a natural one. “You got it.” Saga turned but paused. “Oh. Coffee? Tea?”

“Yes.” And with the thought of tea, she recalled her improper departure. “About yesterday—”

Saga waved a hand dismissively, already putting on the kettle. “Leigh already told me. Blackthorn is covering your room and board, yeah?”

The words had been uttered so cheerfully one would never know that ultimately Avery’s prison had just merely been upgraded to far more attractive packaging. Still, knowing the lunch crowd was likely not entirely their kind, she simply nodded.

“Then I’m at your disposal. Well, for another hour or so. Then I’m off shift and you’ll have someone else bringing you tea, I suppose. Not to worry, though. Leigh’s let everyone know you’ve got a tab here. You’re the only one who does, actually. That makes you pretty special.”

Avery wondered if Saga knew just how special her circumstance truly was, given her cheerful demeanor. She had to know, didn’t she? “I find myself at a bit of a disadvantage then. She knows me, but I’ve yet to meet her.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you will. Tall, long auburn hair tied with a bright scarf, swishy skirts, and almost always has a toddler on her hip. She can be a bit of a whirlwind, so trust me, you’ll know her when you see her.”

Saga moved about the café, not skipping a beat in writing out an order as she spoke. Avery opened the case file, but found herself watching the waitress. Her hair in particular was distracting: vibrantly swishing back and forth, held atop her head with a simple band.

It was…curious. She’d never seen something so clearly fey yet left completely unglamoured or changed in a Mundane space.

She gave the lunch crowd a cursory glance.

No one so as much glanced at Saga, even when she took their orders.

Perhaps it was a different kind of magic, or perhaps a woman with pink hair was not the anomaly among mortals it would have been during Avery’s last walk of London.

Still, her curiosity would not be left to assumption.

As Saga swept back to place both a pot of tea and a cup of coffee before Avery, she asked, “They don’t have a problem with that? The color, I mean?”

Saga paused as if considering the shade of her hair for the first time. She blew her bangs out of her eyes with an expertly pointed exhale. “As long as you do your job, Leigh doesn’t much care what you look like—as long as you’re, you know…” She shrugged. “Not exposing yourself, or whatever.”

Avery’s eyebrows raised. If Saga’s natural hair wasn’t exposing the community, then hairstyles had evolved far past 1800s aesthetics. She began to dress both beverages with sugar and milk. “That’s refreshing.”

“Innit?” Saga agreed heartily. “No one minds the tattoo either.” She displayed the inside of her left forearm where a Gothic script read, “misericordia ante gloriam” in black ink.

How had she missed that before? In Faerie, markings of artistic expression were common, even beloved, but when she last walked among the Mundane, they were only found openly on sailors and women of ill repute.

First Valentina and now Saga; it was another marker of how the world had changed in her absence, “Mercy before glory,” Avery translated aloud.

“You know Latin?” Saga’s expression was a mixture of surprise and admiration.

Avery’s shoulders involuntarily shimmied like a proud parrot. “I have an affection for dead languages.” Resentment crept in at the word “dead,” remembering Reza’s commentary the previous day.

“It was a present to myself when I left Oxford.”

“What were you doing in Oxford?”

“Attending…Oxford.”

Avery nearly choked on her sip of tea, her face feeling hot as realization hit her. “You meant the university!”

Saga laughed again. Boisterous, from the diaphragm, and utterly disarming. “Is it that hard to believe?”

“No, I mean—not that I don’t think you’re—” Avery was floundering with this surge of new information. Of course, women were now allowed in the university. It was absurd they hadn’t been the last time Avery had been there, and yet it took her by surprise. “You must think I’m… I’m…”

“Spiraling from an honest mistake?” The interjection was offered gently. “Cross my heart, I wasn’t offended. City and university have the same name. Easy mistake. And in your defense, I don’t imagine it’s typical to find Oxford graduates waiting tables at a café on Baker Street.”

Avery noted the way Saga’s gaze drifted. “What did you study?”

“Medicine.”

“You’re a doctor?” It was so delightfully unexpected.

“Was,” Saga corrected, then paused, realizing she’d only left three months prior. “Or rather was going to be. I suppose I still technically am. My license should be good for another five years before I have to revalidate, but… I’ve decided not to finish my second foundation year.”

Avery considered her tattoo in a new light. Mercy before glory. “Did something happen?”

Saga laughed again but it sounded hollow.

“Yeah, something happened.” She took a deep breath and ran her fingers over the tattoo.

“My physiology professor would repeat this during his lessons. When you’re examining someone, trying to find the solution to what’s ailing them, it can be hard to remember they’re a human being, not just data in a chart.

It was important that compassion should lead us, not scientific achievement. ”

“And that was difficult for you, to remember to extend compassion?” Avery asked. A lack of empathy for humans among the fey was unfortunately a common occurrence, but she wouldn’t have thought to count Saga among them.

“It was difficult remembering I needed to extend that compassion to myself as well as my patients,” Saga clarified.

“I never wanted to be a doctor, it just seemed like what I was supposed to do. I did really enjoy helping people, and the puzzle aspect of figuring out what was wrong and finding the solution… But I was so busy pretending to be who I thought people in my life wanted me to be, I’d forgotten everything else.

And it turns out when your life completely falls apart, everything else is pretty damn important.

” She met Avery’s gaze imploringly. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Intimately,” Avery whispered the word. It felt secret, this shared vulnerability; the kind of nakedness only shared with lovers, or strangers you knew you’d never see again.

Her mouth was dry, but the moment was too fragile to risk reaching for her tea.

Instead, she relished the sensation of connection, feeling seen and incredibly lonely all at once as the weight of two hundred years without a friend or confidant ached into realization.

A soft chime. The order bell.

Saga moved away to attend to it, and the world grew colder.