Page 12

Kieran

The ride back was quiet—one of those silences thick with unsaid things, too tangled to sort out in a thirty-minute drive.

Thea gripped the steering wheel like it had offended her, her eyes on the road but her mind clearly elsewhere.

Dahlia sat beside her, half-turned in her seat, fiddling with the locket around her neck.

I sat in the back, watching the rain streak across the window and trying not to think too hard about ghosts I hadn’t buried yet.

When we pulled into the drive, Thea didn’t immediately get out. Instead, she sat for a moment, staring at the windshield like it might start whispering answers if she looked long enough.

Dahlia reached for the door handle. “You coming in?”

Thea blinked, then nodded. “Yeah. If you don’t mind. I want to go over a few more things before bed, and honestly... I don’t feel great about leaving you alone with Locket Dracula just yet.”

“Charming,” I muttered.

Dahlia smirked. “You’re staying in the guest room. Thea can sleep with me.”

“I’ll grab an extra blanket,” I said dryly. “So you don’t freeze to death from my ancient, menacing aura.”

We unloaded the groceries in relative peace, each of us slipping into our own quiet rhythms. Dahlia and I unpacked the bags while Thea poked through her notes at the kitchen table, occasionally muttering about missing archives and “how does someone erase an entire coven?”

After dinner—eggs and toast, simple and safely unburned—Thea claimed the living room table with her laptop and a growing stack of highlighted texts.

Dahlia drifted off for a shower, leaving me with a steaming mug of tea, a blanket tossed over my shoulders, and a few carefully selected books from her shelves.

Eventually, I retreated to the small bedroom that had quietly become mine.

The house was quiet, save for the creak of old wood and the occasional soft sigh from the heater. Outside, rain tapped against the windows, steady and persistent. It was a strange comfort—this new world’s version of a lullaby.

I sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a fortress of books Dahlia had pulled for me.

Half were about herbs, moon phases, or soft magic that smelled like chamomile and kitchen spice.

The rest—modern fiction, cookbooks, encyclopedias, and something called a “Beginner’s Guide to Google”—were less gentle.

The one in my lap currently claimed to be a history book. A brief overview of the 20th century, it said. Brief. As if two world wars, flying machines, and glowing rectangles that held moving pictures could be summarized in a few hundred pages

I turned another page, squinting at a photograph of a mushroom cloud rising like some apocalyptic god. My jaw clenched.

“Madness,” I muttered, dragging a hand through my hair. “All of it.”

A rustle came from the hallway. Sunny—the orange beast—slunk into the room and flopped beside me with a theatrical sigh, tail flicking like I’d somehow interrupted his schedule. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Don’t judge me. You’re the one who sleeps in a bread bowl.”

He blinked once, then proceeded to clean his paw with total indifference.

I went back to the book.

Electricity. Antibiotics. Airplanes. Satellites. Internet. I still wasn’t entirely convinced that any of those weren’t just fancy illusions. Magic had once been the mystery of the world, and now people carried the world in their pockets and argued with strangers for entertainment.

But the part that got me— really got me—was how much had been forgotten.

There was no mention of the Voss coven. No record of the rites we’d sworn our lives to.

No acknowledgement of the magic that had once pulsed through these lands like a second heartbeat.

We’d been scrubbed out, bleached from history like an ink stain someone was ashamed of.

In our place were lies and exaggerations of the Salem witch trials.

There were no true witches in Salem, just evil people punishing outcasts.

I didn’t know if that made me furious or hollow.

Dahlia had left a notepad beside me, along with a pen and a post-it that said, In case you want to make a list of stuff to ask about. Her handwriting was loopy, messy, full of motion. It made me smile, reluctantly.

I clicked the pen open and scrawled the words:

Microwave???

Internet =??

Did tomatoes really stop being poisonous??

I paused, then underlined that one twice. I still didn’t trust them.

A flicker of movement caught my eye. My reflection in the window—slouched, half-shadowed, brow furrowed. I barely recognized him. No runes. No robes. No fire or thunder. Just a man in borrowed clothes with a brain full of centuries-old rules and a heart that hadn’t stopped aching since it broke.

But in Dahlia’s home, with her books and tea and her stubborn way of making room for things that didn’t fit anywhere else, I found myself wanting to learn. To stay. To matter again.

The book slipped shut in my hands, and I let my head rest back against the bed.

“This world is loud,” I said to no one.

Sunny blinked again, unimpressed.

“But I think I want to hear more of it.”

I want more her .

I eventually wandered back into the hallway, the house dim except for the golden lamplight spilling from the living room where Thea still sat cross-legged on the floor, papers fanned out around her like a ritual circle.

Her laptop screen glowed pale blue against her tired face.

She glanced up as I passed, eyes bleary but focused.

“You’re still reading?” I asked.

“Trying to,” she said, rubbing the heel of her hand against one eye. “There’s something here, I know it. I just—” She tapped at her laptop, frowning. “I found a reference. A book. ‘The Hollow Veil: Lost Rites and Forgotten Orders.’”

My brow lifted. “Sounds promising.”

“Yeah, if it actually existed in the modern world,” she muttered, spinning the laptop toward me. “It’s cited in three separate fringe articles and one scanned letter from 1894, but there’s no ISBN, no university copy, no archive trace. It’s like it’s been scrubbed clean.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s gone,” I said. “Just hiding.”

Thea stared at the screen like she could will it into revealing something more. “Maybe. But I don’t even know where to start looking.”

From behind us, Dahlia’s voice came, slightly muffled. “Wait.”

We both turned. She was standing in the hallway in her robe, hair damp, arms folded across her chest. A toothbrush hung from her fingers.

“‘The Hollow Veil’?” she repeated, stepping closer. “I’ve seen that title before.”

Thea blinked. “What?”

Dahlia nodded slowly, brow furrowed in thought. “Henry had a copy. It’s in his locked case—y’know, the one with the weird books he won’t sell to just anyone. I remember the title because I made a joke about it sounding like a goth poetry collection.”

Thea shot to her feet. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Leather cover, cracked spine, really old. He said it gave him the creeps, but he wouldn’t throw it out.”

I stared at her. “You’ve had a copy of a possibly lost magical manuscript within walking distance this entire time?”

Dahlia raised an eyebrow. “Okay, well, I didn’t know it was lost. Or magical. It just looked cool. And smelled like mildew.”

Thea groaned, dropping back onto the floor with a thud. “Of course it’s in Henry’s shop. That place is a cursed treasure chest.”

I looked between the two of them. “Then tomorrow, we go ask him.”

“Assuming he lets us in the case,” Dahlia said, rubbing at her temple. “But yeah. It’s a start.”

Thea gave a nod, her exhaustion momentarily eclipsed by that flicker of adrenaline only a breakthrough could bring. “Alright. That’s something.”

From there, the momentum ebbed. Dahlia returned to the bathroom, muttering about floss, and Thea started packing up her notes. I stood in the hallway for a moment longer, watching the way the house settled into itself, rain whispering against the windows.