Page 86 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter Fifty-Nine

P en stared at the wall of notes, scanning each one as if they might rearrange the chaos building in his head.

He began ripping down anything that mentioned changes in the loop, things disappearing, new things showing up.

Journals were shoved aside, pages fluttering to the floor as he cleared a space on the desk.

One by one, he arranged the notes in chronological order, and as he did, the pattern became clear.

At first, the changes had been slow, spaced apart by many moon cycles.

But from the moment Adelaide arrived, the pace had accelerated.

He’d known this, sensed it, but seeing it mapped out in front of him hit him like cold water: the loop was unraveling.

Gone were the days of missing books and mysterious scraps of paper. Now, half the shop’s bookcases had vanished, and the northeast side of town was simply gone, replaced by a landscape he didn’t recognize.

He leaned on the edge of the desk, breathing through the tightness in his chest. The more he looked, the more his impending fate became impossible to ignore. If things continued at this pace, he feared that the next astrological event, on the twenty-first, might be too late.

A cold fear coiled inside him, threatening to strike at his usual calm. Then, the shop door chimes rang out, their sweet, familiar melody breaking him free of his dark thoughts.

“Adelaide,” he whispered. Just her name on his lips eased his mind, but the next sound shattered any relief: her scream, sharp and panicked.

“Adelaide?” he shouted, already halfway to the stairs. He took them two at a time, shoes thudding up the narrow passage. His shoulder grazed the frame of the trapdoor as he vaulted through, palms planted on the wooden edge, the momentum carrying him into the shop.

He stopped. Dead in his tracks.

Right in the middle of the bookshop stood a post, thick as a tree trunk, rising from the floorboards to the ceiling.

And tied to it with a coarse rope was a goat.

Its amber eyes blinked at him slowly, chewing something with the kind of unbothered calm only animals seemed to manage, even in the middle of something utterly impossible.

It let out a single long, loud bleat that rang across the shelves, grounding him in the reality of the moment.

It wasn’t the sight of the goat that startled him most. It was the fact that Adelaide was seeing it too, in her timeline. This wasn’t just about losing himself anymore; it was about losing her, losing everything they knew.

“Pen!” Adelaide’s voice jolted him back to movement. He knocked a book off the nearest shelf, the heavy thud letting her know he was there.

“Pen, what’s going on?” she asked, her voice trembling.

He walked to the trapdoor and slammed it as hard as he could, hoping the sound would carry through to her side. She flinched and turned toward him. Knowing his meaning, she hurried down into the hidden room.

Pen moved to the typewriter, fingers hovering briefly before he slid a fresh sheet of paper in, and the Underwood rattled to life.

Go upstairs and look in the John Dee book on the counter.

Adelaide was up the stairs in a heartbeat. Pen listened as she moved across the shop to the front counter, pausing where the book lay. A moment later, her footsteps echoed above, then she reappeared in the hidden room, letter in hand.

She rounded the desk and sat, unfolding the letter with shaking hands. He watched her read the words he’d written only days ago, when the first cracks had widened into something he could no longer ignore. The muscles in her face tightened as she finished.

“Pen… why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she whispered as she set the letter down, the color draining from her face.

He let his hands speak for him again.

I didn’t want to scare you. I thought it was only happening to me. I didn’t know your world was changing too.

She swallowed hard. “It’s been happening for a while now.

I should have said something, but I thought I was just…

forgetting things, misremembering things.

I couldn’t remember the color of the back door, or where I’d placed a book.

” She shook her head. “I kept blaming myself, thought I was losing it, but this—” She gestured toward the shop above them.

“A giant post and a goat? That’s not just me being forgetful. ”

Pen hesitated. Then, he carefully responded through the keys.

Don’t be mad, but I read ahead in the journal. After seeing half of Helensburgh was missing in my timeline, I had to know what was happening. Read the next three entries.

She picked up the journal and turned to the entry she had left off on. As she scanned the pages, her expression shifted with every word. Her fingers tightened on the book, and when she finally closed it, she looked straight to where he stood.

She couldn’t see him, but she could sense him.

He could feel it. Twice now, her gaze had landed right where he was, as if she could almost see the shape of him in the air.

The divide between them was thinning. He didn’t know what it meant yet, only that their connection seemed to be getting stronger.

“The watch… it ripped a hole in time,” Adelaide mumbled. “And when Rowland used it to save Carolyn, it broke the mend John Dee placed on it.”

Yes , Pen clicked.

Adelaide’s fingers hovered over the journal, her brow drawn tight. “Pen, this isn’t good. We need to figure out how to stop this.”

He pressed the keys in slow, deliberate strokes, each one heavy with what he already feared.

Rowland must have known the risks. He was the one who hid the journal. He knew the whole story and what could happen if the watch was ever used again. He risked time itself to save her.

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she bit her thumbnail, a far-off look in her eyes, before she finally spoke.

“I think Carolyn knows something. She’s hiding something from me…

something about you and Rowland.” Then she leaned forward and picked up a scrap of paper from the desk, its surface covered in scribbled dates. “What are these?”

Pen’s breath caught.

You can see my notes?

That wasn’t possible, was it? Other than Frankie and his letters to her, nothing physical from his timeline had ever crossed through the veil. Everything from his world had always remained locked away with him.

“Yes… What are they?”

I’ve been tracking everything. I wrote down everything that disappeared or suddenly appeared in my timeline.

Adelaide nodded, flipping through them. “Smart.” Her hand stopped on one marked September 8th. “That’s around the time I bought the Feather Thorn. Looks like things started happening more often after that.”

They did. I don’t know why, though.

She rubbed her forehead, a slow, weary motion. “Pen, we need to finish reading this journal. And… I need to get into Carolyn’s guest room. She’s keeping something in there that’s connected to this place, I just know it. It might help us.”

Pen hesitated. Her face was pale, the dim light catching the shimmer of sweat on her temple.

She winced as each clack of the typewriter echoed in the quiet room.

Are you okay?

“I’m fine… just a headache, that’s all.”

There was a hollow beneath her eyes that hadn’t been there earlier. Then, as she leaned forward, a single drop of blood slipped from her nose and fell onto one of his notes, leaving a bloom of red.

Adelaide… your nose.

She wiped it with the back of her hand, eyes widening as she stared at the red streak across her knuckles. “God, I haven’t had a nosebleed since I was a kid.”

Panic tightened in his chest.

GO TO BED.

You need to rest.

We can pick this up in the morning.

Adelaide sighed, folding her arms. “Okay, fine. But… what am I supposed to do about the goat?” A small, weak laugh escaped her. “I can’t believe I’m even asking that question.”

Just let it out the back. It’ll wander over to the field, and I’m sure some farmer will be glad to find it roaming around in the morning.

“Good idea,” she said, already rising. She reached the foot of the stairs, then stopped, glancing back over her shoulder.

“Pen… will you come up and sleep on the couch tonight?”

Three soft clicks sounded from the old Underwood, but she didn’t turn around to see what he’d written. She just smiled, knowing the answer, and walked up the stairs.

Pen stood still for a breath, the lamplight flickering over the desk where her blood stained the edge of his note, a small, vivid mark that should’ve been impossible. But it was there. Real.

Proof that the barrier between their worlds was thinning.

It should’ve felt like a breakthrough. A sign they were getting closer. But instead, it knotted up something deep inside him. The more the veil thinned, the wider the tear grew between their realities, letting in a world that was neither hers nor his.

He moved toward the stairs, toward her. The space between them had never felt so close. Or so dangerous.

They were running out of time. Not just to save him, but to save her. To save everything.