Page 52 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic & Murder (The Hemlock Saga #1)

“Gentlemen, I beg you, just a moment longer,” she called back, feeling her heart begin to race.

She could see the word photo, and also something called video and slow-mo and portrait.

She tapped the red circle on the screen and the image shifted again—something was happening.

The circle was now a red square, the picture encircled in a yellow border.

Frowning, she clicked the square and watched a small mirror of the image shrink into the far left corner.

Avery quirked an eyebrow and clicked the red circle again. Curiously, she moved the phone over Eira Goff’s form, then carefully maneuvered the hole of the hagstone in front of the camera so she could see the large straw poppet on the screen.

Another press of the square, only this it pulled up a small display of more tiny squares: three to be exact—the two she’d taken…and a picture of Esteri.

The door began to open. “Ms. Heilman?”

Avery quickly closed the casket lid and stood, trying to regain her composure. She pocketed her cell phone carefully and turned to serve them a practiced smile. “All yours, gentlemen.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” one of the pallbearers asked.

“I did,” said Avery. And so much more. She fingered the hagstone in her palm, allowing a glamour to wash over it so it appeared as a small envelope when she showed it to them. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem,” said the other pallbearer. “Anyone asks, you had it all along.”

“Thank you,” said Avery once more, walking out the door. She waved the envelope at the receptionist and paused in her exit. “If it is all the same to you, can we pretend this never happened?”

The receptionist smiled, still not entirely sure what had transpired, but had apparently worked long enough in a mortuary to put enough pieces together. “Pretend what never happened, ma’am?”

The fake Olivia smiled and nodded, taking her leave through the front doors once more and out to Detective Lahiri’s car.

Lahiri waited for Avery to fully situate herself, but when she didn’t immediately speak, he prodded. “Do we have another stolen heart?”

“No,” said Avery, the glamour shifting from Olivia Heilman to her usual choice that merely darkened her hair, warmed her complexion, colored her eyes and rounded out both the points on her fangs as well as her ears. “The body is missing.”

Lahiri’s eyebrows shot up. “Missing? The casket was empty?”

“If only.” Avery shook her head again. “Someone has replaced it with a decoy.”

“A glamour?”

“A fetch. Not imbued with life, but a fetch all the same. The body even felt warm.” She showed him the last image on her phone.

Lahiri tapped the screen and the image began to move in the same way Avery had moved it around.

“That’s not a photograph, it captured my vision,” awed Avery.

“You took a video,” Lahiri explained, watching the recording. He raised a finger and scanned back in the footage, pausing it as the hagstone revealed the straw poppet. He remained silent for a moment. “Fetches are illegal.”

“I know.”

“No one has used that sort of magic since—”

“I know.” Avery took the phone back and attempted to rewind the same way.

Instead, the picture shifted to the first one she’d attempted to take.

This video was far less helpful. She swiped her finger again and it landed on the picture of Esteri—and Fiore.

Clearly the tulikettu had taken the portrait herself, likely before she’d had her partner deliver the phone.

She was grinning widely, the Dragon pinned awkwardly against her in a headlock masquerading as a hug.

“Would you mind dropping me off somewhere before you head home?”

***

Hygge was bustling; it was one of the few comforting London constants between this life and the before times. The warm air was a welcome embrace accompanied by the faint scent of clove and cinnamon.

Her hands in her coat pockets and her head bowed, Avery wove through the crowd.

She took note of a few key tables. A book club was nestled in the back of the autumn section.

Some sort of birth celebration had taken over all of spring.

Summer, dotted with smaller groups of friends: there were shots being taken, ice-cold mugs of ale being clinked, and a bottle of mead shared between whispers.

Avery found herself drawn to winter, sitting down at the bar itself.

Given London’s blustery and rainy weather, patrons were currently less inclined to be surrounded by this particular season, regardless of how majestic it appeared out the great windows, or the inviting blaze of the fireplace.

Winter was not entirely unoccupied, harboring two sets of couples, one by the windows, the other situated near the flames.

They spoke quietly, nestled close so they could take advantage of the section’s illusion of intimacy.

Avery allowed her body to relax into the cushioned stool, her elbows propped on the bar itself and her shoulders hunched into a comfortable slump as her face rested in her palms. She listened to the music of the crowd.

It was soothing. There was the familiar scent of what could have been wassail.

Her eyes slid closed and for the first time, she truly let herself remember.

Tilde preferred to sit by the fire. Her hands were always cold.

Thom would often sit on the floor near her feet like a loyal lovesick puppy.

Oliver insisted on getting the drinks—even though inevitably he struggled to not spill them as he brought them over.

Isabella, despite her nose being deeply buried in a book, would rise up at the perfect moment to take two of the overflowing mugs off his hands.

There was music most nights. Either from a musician playing in the corner or everyone joining in song.

Oliver was always half a second behind everyone in a carol, but he made up for what he lacked in rhythm through sheer volume.

It was all gone now. No way to bring them back. No way to bring any of it back.

“Didn’t I get you a phone so you could actually call to let me know you were coming?”

An involuntary smile. Avery dropped her hands and met eyes with the tulikettu on the other side of the bar. “Fiore neglected to give me the number.”

Esteri’s ears—her true ears—were poking out of the long radiant strands of hair that had been left to dangle freely. They perked up in amusement at this information. “Aw, they hate you so much, it’s adorable.” She reached out a hand, opening and closing her fingers in a “gimme” fashion. “Give.”

Avery reached into her coat pocket to produce the mobile. “Did you tell Fiore about Saga?”

“Mm,” Esteri confirmed, filling in her contact information. “Should I not have?”

“It’s not that,” Avery hedged. “I just didn’t realize that acquaintance was worth mentioning to the council.”

Esteri snorted and held the phone out to take a photo of herself, winking before she added that to the top of her contact page. “Fiore is not a council member to me, they are my partner.”

“I understand that,” Avery grumbled.

“I don’t know if you do,” Esteri admitted, setting the phone on the counter. “Not yet, but you will. One day you will have someone in your life you wish to tell everything to, no matter how meaningless it may seem.”

“That sounds tedious and exhausting.”

“What is this really about?” Esteri folded her arms. “You have a sadness about you.”

Avery took back the phone when it was offered to her, using the moment to collect her thoughts. “This case is weighing on me. It doesn’t feel as it used to, I’m overwhelmed and confused—I feel common. The untangling of it all is so much more than what it used to be.”

“Averoinen,46 the world is so much more than it used to be.” She folded her arms on the counter and leaned toward her friend. “Be kind to yourself, you just need time to catch up.”

“The more time I waste, the more bodies pile up.”

“Time tends to have that effect on mortality,” offered Esteri. When she received not even the hint of a smile for the joke, her ears flattened in disappointment. “Tosikko,”47 she tsked.

“I’m drowning, Es.”

It was the bare-boned admission that caught Esteri’s attention. She eyed Avery up and down with a critical appraising eye. She then vanished behind the bar, ducking down to produce two crystal mugs etched with the symbol of the oak tree. “We drink.”

“Now?”

“If booze, tar, or sauna do not help, the disease is fatal.” A wine decanter sat behind the bar on top of a copper mechanism that suspended it just above a small tea light.

The flame itself held the same blue-green glow of the tip of Esteri’s foxtail.

Revontulet; foxfire. She retrieved the decanter and poured them each a glass.

“Glühwein. We import it from a Lindwurm in Germany.”

“Here I thought you were going to pull out the strong stuff.”

Another tsk. “Don’t underestimate it. It may seem like kotikalja,48 but it will build on itself.” Esteri slid a glass to Avery.

Avery eyed it before picking it up to delicately clink her mug with Esteri’s, both of them chiming a hearty “Kippis!”49 before taking a drink. It was a welcome warmth, sweet to the taste and nostalgic.

“Fiore told me you met at the Irregulars’ grave.”

Avery’s gaze dropped and she nodded.

“You all right?”

“No.”

“They lived full lives.” Esteri tried to assure her. “Good lives.”

“That’s not the point,” snapped Avery.

Esteri took a patient breath. “Tell me.”

A simple request, yet it lit such a blaze of irritation within her. The emotion became a knot in her mouth, unable to find its way to words. She growled and frenetically rubbed her face. “They were all I had.”

“Averoinen,” Esteri repeated the nickname, and Avery resented how tender it sounded.

She may have been younger, she may have been just a changeling coming to the advice of an Archfey, but she was not a child.