Page 39 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A delaide staggered back, her foot catching on the edge of the stairs.

She grabbed the banister just in time. The creature’s eyes, a bright, unnatural yellow, locked on hers, unblinking.

They flicked left and then right, as if calculating an escape.

Before she could move or call out, it bolted.

A blur of motion, a rush of air, and bramble-scented musk.

She let out a sharp scream, the sound ricocheting off the stone walls.

“What in the bloody hell?” She gasped, spinning around, but whatever it had been was already out of sight.

Was it a cat?

She looked back toward the open door at the top of the stairs, her breath still coming in quick, shallow bursts. But the stillness had returned, thick and undisturbed. No glowing eyes. No movement in the shadows. Nothing waiting in the dark.

Cautiously, she pushed the door open wider, the hinges creaking softly.

The first time she’d tried, it hadn’t moved at all.

Now, it opened without resistance. She turned the knob back and forth, shut it, opened it, shut it again.

Just a door , she told herself. A stiff old door, probably swollen from damp .

But logic did little to quiet the unease sliding beneath her skin.

She opened the door again. Beyond it was not a storage room, but a flat. A whole flat. Small and self-contained. Susan hadn’t mentioned anything about living quarters.

As she stepped inside, she ran her hand along the wall, looking for a light switch but found none; however, a lamp perched on a side table next to the sofa caught her eye, and she flicked it on.

An amber glow spread through the room, revealing a space frozen in time. The sofa, tufted and deep green. A gramophone nestled beside it. Everything was straight out of the 1930s. The faint smell of stale cigarette smoke and men’s cologne hung in the air.

She drifted toward the small kitchen ahead of her. A single wooden chair sat pulled out from the table, angled toward a wide window that overlooked the street. Adelaide paused there, memory stirring.

The shadowy figure in the window.

In the quiet, she noticed the thick dust blanketing every surface, no smudges on the glass, no footprints.

Just the kind of stillness that takes decades to settle.

She frowned, the image of the figure at the window flickering in her mind again.

Maybe she hadn’t seen anything at all. Maybe it had just been a trick of the light.

Turning back toward the small living room, Adelaide noticed a narrow hallway off to the right.

Following it, she stopped in the doorway of a bedroom.

A double bed, neatly made, a pine dresser stood beside it, and a closet half-open, revealing a row of men’s coats, tweed and wool, the kind from another time.

A chill slipped down along her spine. It looked as if someone had simply stepped out for a walk one afternoon and never returned.

Dottie’s voice whispered in her mind: No one ever came to collect or remove his things .

As she turned to leave, something caught her eye. A silver frame. Inside, a black-and-white photograph, faded along its edges. A young woman in her early twenties smiled shyly at the camera, while the man beside her gazed at her lovingly. She reached for the frame with both hands.

Carolyn.

There was no mistaking the curve of her aunt’s cheekbones, the wide, intelligent eyes. The man’s face was unfamiliar, but the way he looked at her, like the world had stopped, sent a knot twisting in her stomach.

Why is there a photograph of Carolyn here?

Her heart thumped as she set the photo gently back on the dresser, fingers trembling. So Carolyn had known the man who lived here. More than known him, from the looks of it. Dottie’s warning echoed louder: “Make sure she hears it from you.”

A gust of wind rattled the loose pane in the bedroom window. Adelaide exhaled and walked back to the window overlooking the street. Carolyn’s apothecary across the road sat shuttered for the day, its moss-green door calm and still. But Adelaide’s thoughts churned.

If there was a story buried in this building, if Carolyn had once belonged to it somehow, Adelaide wasn’t sure she wanted to disturb it yet. Secrets had weight in a small town. Sometimes, you need to carry them gently until the time was right.

She turned and took one last look around the flat.

For all the questions it raised, it had solved one thing: Where she’d be living come winter.

A roof over her head, solid walls, and a story she hadn’t finished reading.

Two birds, one stone , she thought, and smiled faintly as she pulled the door closed behind her.

Back downstairs in the bookshop, she scanned the edges of the room for the critter from the stairwell, but the shop lay still.

Making her way to the front counter, she began forming a list in her head.

First: pen and paper. She rooted around, finding a dusty jar of fountain pens and a stack of weathered ledgers.

Underneath was a slim leather-bound book, its spine stamped with a name: John Dee .

The pages crackled as she thumbed through them.

Notes, strange symbols, faint smudges of ink.

Something to dig into later. She set it aside, grabbed a notepad and pen and began scribbling.

Tame the overgrown weeds in front of the shop . With the way it looked now, it was a wonder someone hadn’t gone missing in the thicket. Fix the cracked window in the stairwell. Replace the broken spindle on the loft’s banister. Toss those moth-eaten rugs.

As the list grew, she paced the shop, footsteps echoing in the quiet.

By the time she’d finished, a page and a half stared back at her, repairs, updates, curiosities. But instead of dread, she felt a quiet thrill.

She tucked the list into her pocket and decided she would stop by the hardware store before heading home.

Grab a few paint samples, maybe a new lock, and a hanging plant to cheer up the front.

The idea of adding color brought with it a quiet warmth.

The place needed it, needed life stirred back into its old bones.

Before flipping off the lights, she paused in the center of the room and turned in a slow circle, letting her gaze sweep across the shelves.

Books. Her books now. Their spines winked at her from the shadows, stories waiting to be discovered.

She inhaled deeply, old paper and something just a little sweet, like dried lavender.

“You’re just what I needed,” she sang out to the shop. The tune played in her head, “You Might Think” by The Cars, and she sang the lyrics aloud.

Just before she closed the door, she could have sworn she saw a shadow move behind the back row of bookcases. Hairs prickled on the back of her neck. It had to be another trick of the light. The door was open, the sun shifting angles. That’s what it was.

Or maybe it was the ghost Susan had spoken of, come to welcome her. She chuckled… nervously, but it rang hollow.

Adelaide stepped outside, locking the door behind her, her laugh failing to mask the uneasy feeling coiling in her stomach, the feeling that someone, or something, was watching her.

That maybe, the bookshop wasn’t as abandoned as it seemed.