Page 80 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter Fifty-Four

P en waited anxiously for Adelaide to come down from the apartment above the Feather Thorn the next morning.

He paced between the rows of books, every creak of the floorboards beneath his feet echoing loudly in the quiet, his stomach churning as a ball of nerves took up residence.

How would she react, now that she knew he could see and hear her?

He hoped the idea wouldn’t unsettle her to the point of moving out.

He should have said more in the letter, reassured her that he wasn’t some Peeping Tom, that he would respect her privacy as much as possible.

But he hadn’t, and now it was too late to take back the silence.

The thought of her leaving, of being alone in the shop again, brought back that all-too-familiar hollow ache in his chest.

As the first rays of morning cast their golden glow across the shop, there she was, like the sun itself. Adelaide quickly made her way over to the letterbox and fished out his letter, clutching it like something precious. A smile crossed her features as she carried it to the old wingback chair.

Pen watched as she unfolded it, her fingers slow, almost reverent.

She didn’t smile right away. Instead, she leaned back in the chair, one knee bouncing absently, eyes scanning the page with quiet intensity.

He held his breath as she finished, her gaze drifting toward the window, then returning to the letter.

She began reading it over again, slower now, her lips pressing into a thoughtful line.

He searched her face for clues, an arched brow, a faint frown, a catch in her breath, but her face stayed emotionless as she read.

Then, finally, her mouth quirked into a smile, and her radiance returned.

After that, he had come up with a clever game of dropping books with titles that said the things he couldn’t.

He wished she could see him, to match her smile with one of his own. He leaned against the wall, watching through the veil of time. Her presence anchored him, and he hoped that somehow, he was doing the same for her.

That afternoon, she talked to him as she painted.

Told him about her days at university, the band she’d been in.

Her voice was steady, companionable, like she was speaking to someone across the room, and her words flowed as easily as the paint she rolled across the walls.

But then the conversation took a heavier turn as she began to speak about her husband.

As her brush moved in long, even strokes, her truths spilled out too, layer by layer.

Pen’s heart sank at her words. Her story was heartbreaking, and he ached for her, for everything Jeff had put her through, everything he had taken from her.

It was a good thing he was trapped in time, because if he hadn’t been, he might’ve driven straight to Glastonbury, wherever that was, and roughed him up a bit.

What kind of man stepped out on a woman like Adelaide?

He couldn’t fathom it. Things between men and women must have changed quite a bit in the thirty years since his own time.

He saw the sadness in her eyes, the way it dulled their usual spark, and it tore at him. When a single tear slipped down her cheek, he instinctively reached out, wanting to rest his hand on her shoulder. But his hand passed through her like a shadow, meeting only the cool air between them.

She worked long into the afternoon, painting until the light outside turned to dusk.

When she finally set her supplies aside and headed for the stairs to the apartment, Pen knocked Goodnight Moon onto the floor.

The book was one of the newer additions to the shop, a title left behind by the man he’d scared away all those years ago.

Adelaide rounded the corner and bent to pick it up, pausing as her eyes lingered on the title. She smiled, then tucked it neatly back onto the shelf before whispering, “Goodnight, Pen,” before she headed upstairs.

“Goodnight, my star,” he said, his voice echoing back to him in the stillness of the now-empty shop.

He turned around, intending to find a book and settle in for the night, but something gave him pause.

The back of the shop looked darker than it should have, even with twilight settling in. A shadowy dimness seemed to pool there, as though the light refused to touch it.

Pen frowned, unease settling in his chest like a cold fog. He moved toward it, his steps slow and hesitant. Rounding the corner, he froze.

The window that once overlooked the alleyway was gone. In its place stood a solid wall of stone.

The air felt different here, thicker, heavier. Pen stepped closer, every sense on edge. It wasn’t as if the window was just boarded up. It had vanished completely. And the two bookcases that had flanked it were gone too.

The absence of the window hit him like a missing note in a melody he’d known by heart. Pen laid his palm flat against it. Like the bench, there was a wrongness to it, a feeling he couldn’t explain, as if the energy threading through it didn’t belong to this place.

He let his hand fall away.

“What’s happening here?” he murmured, a sinking feeling settling deep in his chest like a stone dropped into still water. The small things, at first, he could have dismissed: Adelaide moving something when he wasn’t looking, his memory playing tricks. But this… there was no pushing this aside.

Something was happening here. Something he couldn’t explain. And it had all started the day she walked in.

He raked a hand through his hair and reached into his pocket for his lucky penny, flipping it between his fingers as he turned and headed for the front of the shop. The motion steadied him, but not enough.

Dread followed, close and quiet. Something in his timeline was unraveling.

Had the journals said anything about this?

He couldn’t recall. Most focused on the stars and the planets, detailing how their alignments opened portals to other realms, to the heavens themselves.

But there had been no mention of anything like this.

Nothing about objects appearing out of nowhere, about rooms rearranging themselves.

Pen dropped into the wingback chair.

The hairs on the back of his neck rose. What if this wasn’t random? What if this strange phenomenon could affect him too? What if the same force that erased the window could erase him from this timeline as well?

And if it did, where would he go?

Maybe this was what had happened to Rowland. Had the shop shifted into another plane of reality, taking him with it?