Page 88 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter Sixty-One

A delaide didn’t know what she expected to find when she opened the guest room door, but it certainly wasn’t this.

The room was a tangle of chaos and obsession; it looked like a hoarder’s den.

Books were stacked in teetering towers nearly as tall as she was; every wall was papered with articles curling at the corners and notes held in place by tape on every inch of the wall.

A dozen mismatched teacups sat forgotten on shelves, the windowsill, the floor, most stained with dried rings, some still half-full and growing a skin.

Plastic milk crates lined one wall, stuffed with papers and notepads, like makeshift filing cabinets.

The air smelled thick with burned incense and something more herbal, like sage. Melted wax pooled across ceramic saucers, candle stubs scattered around the space.

A sense of trespass crept over her. This wasn’t a guest room anymore. It looked like something out of an old detective drama, the kind where the cop becomes obsessed with the case.

Her eyes landed on the bed. Unmade. Sheets tangled. Pillows dented. A well-slept-in bed. Unlike the perfectly made one across the hall in Carolyn’s room.

“What the hell?” Adelaide whispered.

She stepped in carefully, her foot brushing aside a crumpled leaflet on eclipses.

Her gaze moved to the corner, where a towering stack of books had partially collapsed, spilling open texts on astrology and the cosmos.

A smaller pile beside it contained various religious texts in English, Latin and something she couldn’t place.

Carolyn definitely knows something.

She turned toward the wall, now close enough to make out a web of sticky notes.

Rows upon rows of them in various colors.

Carefully arranged, almost obsessively so.

It took a moment, but soon she began to discern their meaning.

The blue notes, dates mostly, some circled in red, tracked astrological events, going back a century or more, including 1932. The year Rowland had gone missing.

Next to them in a dense line, the pink notes chronicled verses, fragments of Latin, old English, possibly Gaelic. Some were shorter quotes, others full verses, scrawled in Carolyn’s neat hand.

Then she saw the yellow ones. They weren’t like the others, and there were fewer than the rest. Her stomach flipped as she began to read.

He pushed the pot over again today.

There was a flicker in the glass, his shadow, I would know it anywhere.

The basket’s lid lifted right in front of me.

Adelaide stepped back, her skin prickling.

They were about someone. Who is the “he” she’s writing about? Pen?

Her eyes skimmed over Carolyn’s notes: a shadow in the window, movement in a doorway, unexplained noises. And then. Her breath caught.

March 5th, 1978 – He moved a book off the windowsill in the guest room.

Adelaide’s heart thundered in her ears. This wasn’t about Pen. Carolyn wasn’t talking about Pen at the Feather Thorn. She was talking about Rowland.

Here.

In this room.

“Holy shit.” She spun, suddenly seeing everything with new eyes. When Carolyn wasn’t at the apothecary, she must have been spending all of her time here, with him.

A notepad lay on the bed, its pages turned up with use. She hesitated, then picked it up.

Something has changed in the past few weeks.

Rowland hasn’t been as active as before.

It’s as if the veil has thickened, and he can no longer break through as he once did.

I can feel a shift, an unease in the air ever since Adelaide opened the doors to that cursed place.

I just pray I can convince Rowland to move on, to go into the light.

It won’t be much longer for me here on Earth, and then we will finally be together.

But I fear that if he waits for me, he may become trapped in the in-between forever.

It was selfish of me to let him stay with me for so long when his soul should have been at rest, at peace years ago.

Adelaide felt like a stone sinking into a deep well. Rowland was here. He had been, all this time.

She looked around the chaotic room, at the candles, the constellation maps, the yellowed verses, and her heart twisted.

“Rowland?” she called softly. “I’m Adelaide, Carolyn’s great-niece. I need you to try and communicate with me. Are you trapped here, in some kind of time loop?”

She stood still, holding her breath, waiting. The room remained silent as her pulse pounded.

Then, thud. A book from a nearby pile toppled to the floor.

Adelaide turned toward the sound. “Rowland… does Carolyn think you’re a ghost?”

Another book slid off and landed beside the first.

“How?” Adelaide whispered. “How did you get trapped here? The watch can’t leave the bookshop.”

This time, there was no reply.

But Adelaide could feel it now, the energy, the weight of something that had been tethered to this world for far too long inside this tiny room.

She bent down, but before her fingers reached the floor, a drop of blood dripped from her nose; swearing under her breath, she twisted her arm and caught it on the sleeve of her jacket.

“Not now,” she muttered, wiping the blood away before picking up the first book Rowland had knocked off the pile.

It was a well-worn Bible. A deep green silk ribbon marked a page.

She opened it there, scanning the passage: purgatory, and the spirits trapped within.

A cold shiver ran down her spine as thoughts of Pen and Rowland flooded her mind.

In their own ways, both were trapped. Caught in something neither fully understood. The watch had imprisoned them in their own version of purgatory, separate from the living, tethered to a place, to a moment in time.

She reached for the second book. Not a Bible this time, but something altogether stranger: a heavy clothbound volume filled with spells.

The pages crackled as she flipped through them.

There were torn scraps of paper tucked inside listing the herbs needed for rituals.

The plants named were ones she recognized; almost all of them were plants she’d seen growing in the field near the cabin.

It struck her then just how desperate Carolyn had become.

She trembled as she turned another page: spells to send spirits away, to speak with the dead. And then one more: to bring a spirit back to life.

None of it would have worked, though. Because Rowland wasn’t dead. He was trapped, just like Pen.

A sharp ache bloomed behind her ribs as she imagined Carolyn alone in this room, year after year, lighting candles, whispering words into the dark, believing she was living with the ghost of the love of her life, holding on to someone who could never answer.

Adelaide wiped at her eyes, and as she did, something caught her attention, a flash of polished wood. She crouched and pulled out a Ouija board from under the bed, the letters worn from use. Carolyn had really tried everything, it seemed.

A car door slammed outside. Startled, she dropped the board, nearly missing a half-drunk cup of tea. She nudged it back under the bed and darted to the window; Carolyn was back early.

Panic surged through her as she bolted from the room, trying not to knock over anything in her wake.

Locking it quickly behind her, she rushed to the beam; fingers slick, the key slipped, once, twice, before she finally wedged it back into its hiding place.

Her socked feet thudded down the stairs, breath catching in her chest. Each creak of the floorboards sounded like thunder in her ears.

By the time the front door opened, Adelaide was standing in front of the bookshelf, back ramrod straight, notebook in hand, trying desperately to mask her ragged breaths.

“Oh, heaven!” Carolyn gasped, clutching her chest.

Adelaide forced a sheepish smile. “Oh, I’m so sorry!

I didn’t mean to startle you. I just, well, I wanted to take a look at your romance collection.

The shop’s section is slim, actually non-existent, so I thought I’d come here and jot down a few titles to order in.

” She held up a tiny notepad and pen, voice as light as she could make it.

“I was going to ask first, but when I looked in the shop window, you were busy. I didn’t want to bother you.

I figured you wouldn’t mind if I let myself in. ”

Carolyn exhaled, shaking her head with a smile. “Of course not, you just scared me half to death! I saw your car and figured you were at the cabin. I didn’t expect to find you sneaking around my steamy reads.” She let out a soft laugh. “Find anything good?”

Adelaide nodded quickly, snapping the notebook shut and stuffing it into her back pocket. “Yes, lots. I’ve got a whole list to give the book dealer on Monday.” She really hoped Carolyn couldn’t see through her act.

Lying had never been her strong suit. Her mother used to say she wore her guilt on her face. Maybe that had been true when she was a teenager, sneaking out to drink behind the cricket pavilion, but this wasn’t a white lie about curfew; this was time itself hanging in the balance.

Carolyn turned toward the kitchen and set a brown paper bag on the counter, and began unpacking it, pulling out a loaf of bread, a block of cheese, and an onion.

“You want to stay for lunch?” she asked, retrieving a cast-iron pan from the cupboard. “Nothing fancy, just cheese and onion toasties.”

Adelaide hesitated. The smell of grilled onion and cheese always made her nostalgic for winter evenings, but she couldn’t stay. Not with Pen waiting, and everything she had just discovered burning a hole in her thoughts.

“You know those are my favorite, but I can’t today,” Adelaide told her, forcing a regretful tone. “I promised Camie I’d have lunch with her at the bookshop.”

More lies. Smooth on the outside, but she felt every word stick to the roof of her mouth with guilt.

“All right, if you’re sure,” Carolyn said, already slicing the bread.

“I’m sure. But thanks. And sorry again for scaring you,” Adelaide replied, heading toward the door. “Are you going back to the apothecary, or is Jen taking over the afternoon shift?”

“Oh, I’m done for the day. It’s been slow, no need for both of us to be there.

” Carolyn smiled warmly, but Adelaide didn’t miss the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth.

“I think I might just pull one of those books down and read a little romance this afternoon, now that you’ve got me thinking about it. ”

“Sounds like a perfect afternoon.”

But Adelaide knew better. She knew that as soon as she walked out that door, Carolyn would be taking her sandwich upstairs into the guest room to be with Rowland.

“I’ll stop by and see you at the apothecary tomorrow,” Adelaide said, opening the door and stepping into the biting cold.

As she made her way to the car, a prickling sensation crept up her spine; she had the distinct feeling of being watched. She turned slowly, glanced up toward the guest room window, and there, caught between shadow and light, was the unmistakable silhouette of a man.

Rowland, it had been him all along, the shadow and the secret Carolyn had been hiding in her guest room.