Page 65 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter Forty-Five

P en leaned against the doorframe, watching as Adelaide painted the children’s corner a soft shade of green. But it wasn’t the color that held him. She moved like the room belonged to her. No inhibitions. Hips swaying, brush sweeping in time with a tune she sang, one he had never heard before.

Her voice curled around the lyrics like smoke around candlelight. He still couldn’t place the song, but the line “just what I needed” echoed with unnerving precision how he felt every time she stepped into the shop.

And then he felt it. A spark in his belly, small at first, then rising, growing into a wildfire, heat spreading through his entire body.

She stirred something in him that he hadn’t known still lived.

Yet she had no idea he even existed, apart from thinking him a ghost. But he was fairly certain ghosts didn’t feel the kind of desire that was coursing through him like a raging inferno.

When she finished painting, she cleaned the tray, rinsed the brushes, still humming as she worked.

She wandered back to the desk, poured herself another coffee, and reached for a donut.

He watched as her gaze kept drifting to the journal.

Before he could nudge it closer, she’d already picked it up and sat back down in the wingback chair by the window.

She hesitated, thumb brushing the edge of the cover, as if debating whether she should continue reading.

But something in her seemed to settle, and with a sigh, she opened its pages and resumed where she’d left off.

Pen moved closer, standing just behind her, his gaze shifting between the lines she read and the changes in her expression, brows drawing together, mouth curving faintly.

He could tell exactly when she reached the part about the watch by the way she paused, her shoulders tensing, her gaze lifting as she glanced over her shoulder into the empty shop.

It was as though she sensed his presence again.

She looked right past him, through him, but it felt like she was getting closer.

She read until twilight settled in, daylight thinning to dusk in the shop.

She closed the journal, slow and reluctant, like someone not ready to leave a dream, and as she stood, Pen saw her tap her foot on the floorboards, and he knew exactly where she had left off in the journal.

She knew there was a secret room underneath the Feather Thorn.

Now, he just needed to wait until she had finished reading, and then he could lead her to it.

She set the journal on the desk, grabbed her jacket, and glanced back over her shoulder one last time before slipping outside into the dark.

He stood there, listening to the echo of the door as it settled shut behind her. The emptiness that followed felt deeper than before, but it didn’t crush him. Not this time; this was progress.

Just as he turned to go upstairs, the door chimes rang out again, bright and unexpected.

He whirled around. Adelaide had returned, arms full with a box so large she had to shift her weight to balance it.

But instead of placing it on the counter, she carried it across the shop and straight toward the stairs, straight toward him.

Cracking the door open with her foot, she nudged it, and Pen pushed it open a bit wider, allowing her to slip through and up the stairs.

She climbed slowly, breath catching near the top, and set the box down with a sigh.

Reaching for the ornate knob, she opened the apartment door, and just as she did, Frankie darted out into the stairwell.

Adelaide let out a startled scream, stumbling back. But Frankie didn’t run far. He stopped two steps down, sat perfectly still, and looked up at Pen with a soft whine. Adelaide stared at the little fox sitting obediently, like a well-trained dog waiting for a treat.

“How did you get in here?” Adelaide muttered, eyeing the fox with a puzzled expression.

Pen raised a hand, silently commanding Frankie to stay. The fox didn’t move.

Adelaide took one cautious step toward him, then one more, confusion etched across her face. Pen dropped his hand, and Frankie sprinted down the stairs and into the shop. He’d figured it was better for her to learn that Frankie was a fox instead of some mysterious creature lurking in the dark.

She watched him go, mumbling under her breath. “A fox! Well, that’s a bit mad.”

Pen couldn’t help the low laugh that rumbled out. It was mad. All of it. But if this was madness, he’d happily take it, if she were a part of it.

She turned back, picked up the box she’d left at the threshold, and pushed the door fully open. She paused, just briefly. Pen knew exactly what she was thinking. He remembered the first time he’d crossed that very same line, as though he were an intruder in someone else’s space.

But whatever doubt there was didn’t last long. Adelaide took the box to the small kitchen table and flicked on the light above her. Moving into the living room, she turned on the lamp there too.

The dim glow painted soft amber onto her cheeks and forehead.

She looked like she belonged here. Like she was home.

The way she moved made his heart thud a little faster.

What was she doing? He stayed in the doorway, hands twitching uselessly at his sides, as he watched her pause at the coffee table and pick up The Great Gatsby .

That book. He’d read it so many times he’d nearly memorized each page.

Before the Feather Thorn had become his prison, Gatsby had felt like a kindred spirit, both of them reaching for lives beyond their means, dreams too big to hold.

Even the bookstore itself had seemed too good to be true, and in the end, it had been.

Like Gatsby, he’d built his own illusion, trapping himself in a place he didn’t truly belong.

She flipped through the pages of the book, lips curling as she murmured, “Guy after my own heart,” before setting the book back down.

They were nothing, just words, but they lit an electric flutter just beneath his ribs. She loved it too. That story about a dreamer.

Adelaide turned and walked back toward the door. “Well,” she said softly, voice trailing into the quiet, “it’s just going to be you and me, old girl. And you, Rowland.”

Pen froze at her words. She thought he was Rowland.

Of course she did. He’d left her that journal, hoping it would help her understand, but all it had done was tangle the truth in a story she thought she already knew.

Her eyes roamed the room one last time before she whispered, “I promise I’ll take good care of the Feather Thorn.

I know what it meant to you, and I’ll carry on your dream. ”

Pen sank into the kitchen chair, raking both hands through his hair. He hadn’t meant to deceive her, but how could he possibly explain the truth now? That he wasn’t Rowland. That he was trapped here in time, not just some ghost haunting the history section.

His eyes drifted to the box she’d left behind.

Whatever was inside tugged at his curiosity.

It wasn’t his place to look, he knew that, and it was taking everything in him to leave it be.

He leaned in slightly, just enough to tempt a glance, then stopped himself.

Guilt rose up and pulled him back. It wasn’t his to inspect, and invading her privacy wasn’t the kind of man he was.

Minutes ticked by. The mystery of its contents gnawed at him until he finally surrendered. With a sigh, he muttered, “So much for the respectable man I used to be.” Then reached for the lid.

At first glance, it looked like nothing much, mundane things, a toothbrush, a bright pink bottle of something with a scent he couldn’t quite name, a bundle of clothes.

Then the realization struck him. This wasn’t just a collection of odds and ends. This wasn’t a delivery. It was her life in a box, her cardboard suitcase. Adelaide was moving in.

Pen sat back, stunned. She wasn’t just passing through. She was here to stay. And just like that, the Feather Thorn, which had been his whole world, was about to become hers, too.

He leaned forward again.

Toward the bottom, there were books. He took them out one by one. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, It by Stephen King, and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. None of the names rang a bell.

At the bottom of the box, his fingers brushed against something familiar. He carefully pulled it free, a copy of The Great Gatsby . Dark blue cover, eyes like searchlights staring out from the dusk. It wasn’t like his copy, but it still felt like an old friend.

Curiosity piqued, he flipped it open. His breath caught. Published by Scribner, 1983 .

He checked the others, frantically, as if the truth might change if he looked hard enough. 1982. 1986. 1988. But it didn’t. Book after book whispered the same thing: he had lost decades. Thirty years, maybe more.

His world tilted. Suddenly, the apartment felt too small, the walls pressing in as the weight of time lost settled heavily on his shoulders.

He’d known, of course he had, that time had passed.

He’d seen Carolyn, older, quieter, her light dimmed.

But thinking it and seeing it printed in black and white were two different things.

Pen pinched the bridge of his nose. The life he’d once known, the people, the places, the promises, they were all different now. Gone. He’d lost everything in what had felt like only months. Yet years had spun past, the world shifting and reshaping itself while he remained unchanged.

He wanted to hate it. All of it. The shop. Time. This country that he didn’t belong to.

But just as the grief began to rise, another thought broke through.

Helensburgh had been the first place that had welcomed him and seen him for who he was, and not what family he had come from.

Here, he had found belonging. No, he couldn’t hate this place.

It had offered him a glimpse of a future he’d never dared to dream of.

It was here that he’d found purpose, his love for books growing into a passion that defined him.

He’d wanted to follow in Ward’s footsteps, to become a teacher simply because it was easy to mimic someone else’s clear path.

But the Feather Thorn had enabled him to be more than Ward’s shadow.

It had given him his own path, and it had made him the version of Pen he wanted to be.

And now, it had brought him Adelaide.

He looked back into the box, his breath steadier now, and caught sight of something tucked at the very bottom.

A photograph. Carefully, he lifted it out and turned it over in his hands.

A couple stood behind a young girl, all three facing the camera.

The child’s smile, wide and bright, was unmistakably Adelaide’s.

He traced a finger gently along her face. How had she ended up here? Maybe she’d been sent to Helensburgh, just as Ward had once sent him, told to find her place, to figure out who she was meant to be. Or maybe it hadn’t been anyone at all who sent her.

Maybe it was fate that had drawn her to the Feather Thorn, quiet and unshakable, the way it always seemed to work when no one was paying attention. Maybe she hadn’t come to save the shop. Maybe she’d come to save him.