Page 50 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter Thirty-Five

T hat night, Pen tossed and turned, his thoughts a tangled mess of doubt and hope. What if the letter had come off wrong, too abrupt, too strange? What if it scared her and she fled like the others?

The hours crept by, his mind void of sleep even in the stillness of the apartment.

Shadows crept across the walls, their edges softening with the faint glow of dawn as it approached.

Sunlight crested the edge of the windows, sending golden beams across the plaster ceiling and pooling into the quiet dark corners of his bedroom.

With a yawn, Pen swung his legs over the side of the bed, and the chill of the floor met his feet.

He shuffled into the tiny kitchen, the scent of stale cigarette smoke and the old carpet settling around him.

Frankie stirred in a corner of the living room, his rust-colored tail flicking, as he stretched.

He padded over with a soft chitter, his bright eyes gleaming with the expectation of breakfast as he settled himself in front of the stove.

Pen, however, barely noticed. He drifted to the window, gaze falling on the apothecary door, its weathered facade a stark reminder of the time that had passed. The vision of Carolyn’s aged face lingered in his mind still. Decades. She had aged decades, while he remained untouched.

He leaned closer to the glass; his own reflection stared back, his breath fogging the pane.

Twenty-five, same as the day time stopped.

No gray in his hair, no lines at the corners of his eyes.

A phantom suspended in time. Behind his image, the street bustled on.

He felt unmoored, neither part of the past nor part of the present but lost somewhere in between.

Frankie let out a sharp chitter, jolting Pen from his trance. He blinked, the image in the glass disappearing as he turned away from the window.

“Okay, I hear you,” he relented, managing a tired smile.

He opened the refrigerator. Always the same.

It didn’t matter if he used the food or not, they always replenished overnight.

No matter how many new dishes he tried to come up with, he was utterly sick of the combination.

He longed for something different. A fresh apple.

One of Dottie’s cinnamon-sugar donuts. Anything other than ground beef and eggs.

Shaking off the thought, Pen heated a frying pan, cracked the eggs, and whisked them together. The kitchen soon filled with the smell of breakfast. He split the scrambled eggs between his own plate and a smaller bowl for Frankie.

“Here you go, sir,” Pen said, bowing with mock formality.

Frankie bounded over, his soft yips brimming with delight as he dove headfirst into the bowl, tail wagging. Pen knelt to scratch behind his ears. “You don’t know how lucky I am to have you,” he murmured.

With a pot of coffee brewing, Pen dressed quickly and poured himself a steaming cup. Mug in hand, he made his way into the bookshop. Behind him, Frankie stretched lazily before curling back into his bed in the corner.

He felt a flicker of relief at the fox’s choice. He didn’t want to risk Adelaide seeing Frankie again, not yet.

Pen headed straight for the letterbox as soon as he stepped into the shop.

His hand hovered over the paper, doubt creeping in.

Maybe it was too much. Too soon. What if she thought it was creepy?

The last thing he wanted was to make her afraid of the place.

He couldn’t afford to get this wrong. Not this time.

He bent down, fingers just grazing the edge of the letter, when the bells above the door rang.

The door creaked open beside him.

He froze.

Adelaide stepped inside, the chilly air following her in, a bucket swinging gently from one hand.

Pen pulled his hand away slowly, deciding a floating piece of paper might be enough to send her running. He stood motionless, caught between the impulse to run and the reality that it was pointless; she couldn’t see him. Still, he held his breath as she walked in.

His heart did aerobics as she breezed past him, cheeks flushed pink from the cold. Setting the bucket down, she shrugged off her coat, then crossed to the thermostat and dialed up the heat. Though her smile, bright and effortless, seemed to warm the entire shop on its own.

Then she turned and spotted the letter. Pen’s heart thundered in his ears, drowning out everything around him.

This was it. The moment of truth. She reached for the note, unfolded it slowly, and time seemed to snag.

Then she smiled. Wide, radiant. Her cheeks deepening in color as she refolded the letter and tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans.

Pen finally exhaled, tension draining from his shoulders. She hadn’t been frightened.

He followed her silently into the front of the shop, a shadow behind her. She flipped the switch to the stairwell light a few times with no result. Pen winced. That switch hadn’t worked in years; it was the one at the top that controlled the bulb.

Unbothered, Adelaide moved to the paintings, removing them from the wall one by one. There was a grace to her movements, a fluidity, almost like a dancer, as she carefully lifted each frame and set it aside.

At the painting of Carolyn in the rain, she paused.

Pen saw it, the recognition flicker across her face.

He remembered that same jolt when he’d first understood its significance, and felt a strange pull of shared understanding.

Her brows furrowed as she removed the frame from the wall and placed it alongside the others.

Drawn by something deeper than curiosity, Pen ascended the stairs and sat quietly at the top, his eyes fixed on her.

She returned for the last painting, the one of John Dee. It was large, and her petite frame struggled to lift it off the hook on the wall. Without thinking, Pen moved to her side. He leaned in, close enough to almost brush her arms, and eased the painting from its nail.

Lavender and honey.

He caught the faintest trace of it in her hair, and it nearly undid him. Not because it was strong, but because it was real. It was the first new scent he’d breathed in for as long as he could remember.

He hadn’t realized how much he missed the presence of another person. The creak of floorboards under someone else’s weight. The soft rustle of clothes that weren’t his. The sound of another’s voice. He’d been alone for so long, he’d almost forgotten what closeness felt like.

He clenched his jaw, trying to steady the flood of emotion, relief, sorrow, yearning, and awe. It wasn’t just her presence. It was everything he hadn’t let himself feel in years, breaking open at once.

She had no idea, of course. No idea how this small moment had knocked the breath from his lungs. He lingered in the warmth of her presence for as long as he dared, helping her balance the frame once or twice as she descended the stairs before letting go.

A sharp clatter broke through his thoughts. He blinked. At the foot of the stairs, something gleamed on the floorboards. The key.

He’d forgotten he’d returned it to the back of the painting. He watched, powerless, as she bent to retrieve it. Watched as she turned it over in her hand, curiosity already sparking in her eyes. Watched as she tucked it into her back pocket.

Pen paced back to the top of the stairs, his thoughts racing.

Now that she had the key, it was only a matter of time.

He knew how this would go. A mysterious key, hidden behind a centuries-old painting?

No one could ignore that. She’d start searching, hunting for answers.

It wouldn’t be long before she stumbled upon the hidden room, just as he had.

With shaking hands, he lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall, the soft glow of the ember punctuating the dim light.

Below him, Adelaide moved about the shop, unpacking painting supplies.

Pen watched, a thousand thoughts pulling at him as she pried open the paint can.

Then she paused. Her eyes lifted, right toward him.

For one breathless second, he thought she saw him.

But just as quickly, she turned back to her work, not giving a second glance in his direction.

Pen let out a sigh of relief, or disappointment, he wasn’t sure.

Then he saw it: the color of the paint as she poured it into the tray, a rich emerald green.

His color. He smiled, but it was a fragile thing, trembling at the edges.

He watched as she dipped her roller into the paint, laying down a bold stripe across the wall, the deep green blooming against the aged white.

She hesitated, the roller hovering mid-stroke as though second-guessing the color.

Pen’s gaze shifted to the light switch beside him.

Closing his eyes, he concentrated, focused, and flicked the switch, willing it to respond in her time.

When he opened them, Adelaide was looking up, startled. But then her face softened into a smile. The glow in her expression began to unravel him, one heartbeat at a time.

His pulse quickened. How had he just done that? He must have flipped the switch the day he was trapped, but the other lights hadn’t responded this way. The question looped in his mind. Was it her?

Adelaide rolled another stripe of emerald green across the wall.

She began to hum, a tune he didn’t recognize, and soon her voice joined in, light and sweet, like rain on a hot summer’s night.

There was something different about the shop since she’d arrived, a current in the air, like static before a storm. Could he have tapped into that energy to turn on the light?

The possibility sent a shiver through him.

He stayed there for hours, watching her paint, unable to pull away. When she propped a ladder against the wall to reach the highest points, he moved without thinking, steadying it from below, her invisible guardian.

He didn’t know if it was helping in her timeline, but he had a strong feeling it was.

Something was shifting, he could feel it, as though her presence was expanding his abilities to influence things in the shop, beyond what he had touched the day he became trapped.

But how? A flicker of hope ignited as she made the final stroke upon the wall.

When she finally stepped back to admire her work, a smile spread across her face that sent a crackle of energy rippling through the room. It wasn’t just the shop that felt charged; it was him.

Adelaide packed away her paint supplies, still smiling, and headed for the door with the bag from the hardware store. Pen watched from the top of the stairs as she left the Feather Thorn.

He went to the window, his heart racing with the possibilities as he watched her walk down the street toward the hardware shop. There was something undeniably magnetic about her, some kind of presence that seemed to shift the very gravity of the Feather Thorn.

Turning away from the window, something caught his attention; the top row of books in the first aisle of the fiction section was missing.

His brow furrowed. Had Adelaide moved them when he wasn’t paying attention? No, he would have noticed. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her the entire day. A wave of unease rippled through him, but he pushed it down. He wouldn’t let it ruin the happiness she’d stirred in him. Not today.

He glanced down at the portrait of John Dee.

He couldn’t let her find the hidden room, at least not yet.

If she discovered the watch, she might get trapped in this cycle with him.

And while a selfish part of him thrilled at the thought of not being alone, he wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone. Especially not her.

Pen turned toward the stairs, ready to head back to the apartment, when the sound of the bells from the door rang out.

Adelaide stepped back inside, accompanied by a rugged-looking man.

She pointed out the locks on the front and side doors, then smiled at him.

A warm, easy smile. He envied that connection, that freedom of exchange he was no longer part of.

A sharp frustration bubbled to the surface.

Pen watched as the man began tinkering, tools scraping against the wood. He told himself he wasn’t spying, just observing, but he couldn’t look away. Adelaide leaned on the counter, finger twirling in her hair as she chatted easily. There was a spark between them, and it gnawed at him.

Forcing himself to turn away, he wandered back to the apartment.

Frankie trotted up, tail swishing, but Pen barely noticed.

His thoughts were once again a tangled mess.

What just happened? What is this feeling?

This had been the best day he’d had in a long while, yet there was a deep ache in the pit of his stomach.

He heard the shop door close, then the clean click of a new lock engaging. He didn’t look. Didn’t dare. For all he knew, they were a couple and he was just a ghost lingering at the edge of something real. He had no business watching. No right to care.

But the thought scorched through him like fire.

Pen knew, in that moment, this woman might be his salvation.

Or his undoing.