Page 89 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter Sixty-Two

A fter Adelaide had left for Carolyn’s, Pen went to the kitchen.

He moved out of habit, kettle on, scooping in the grounds for his much-needed coffee, pulling open the refrigerator to grab the eggs, already picturing them sizzling in the pan, yolks golden, breakfast for him and Frankie.

But his hand paused mid-reach. The egg carton was gone, and so was the milk.

In their place was a single apple, the ground beef pushed to the back.

He stared at it, unmoving, the hairs on his arms rising.

Taking a slow step back, dread curled in his stomach.

The eggs and milk had been there yesterday, had always been there, every day.

They were a staple, part of his routine, until now.

A few days ago, he would have welcomed the change; he’d longed for fresh fruit and would have given his left eyebrow to have something different, but now?

The apple didn’t feel like a gift, and unlike Adam in the Garden of Eden, he had no desire to risk trying it.

This was bad. Really bad. He shut the fridge with more force than necessary, the seal sucking closed.

From the bedroom came the soft patter of claws on wood, then Frankie appeared, tail high, weaving frantic loops around Pen’s feet, a string of chirps and chitters spilling out, his usual signal that breakfast was overdue.

“Hey, boy,” Pen said, bending down to ruffle the fox’s silky fur. “No eggs today, burger for breakfast instead, okay?”

Pen opened the fridge again and pulled out the ground beef, breaking off a small portion for Frankie. His own appetite had vanished, his stomach now full with a gnawing unease. What if all the food vanished? Would he and Frankie starve here, trapped in this unraveling pocket of time?

He placed Frankie’s bowl on the floor and wrapped his hands around a warm mug of coffee, more for comfort than anything else. His mind moved back to the journal, the one John Dee had left behind, filled with accounts of the same kind of blips in reality that Pen was now witnessing firsthand.

His gaze swept around the apartment. At a glance, nothing else had changed. And yet, there was an uneasy energy in the air, pulling at him. Drawn to the window, he walked over, hesitant to look but too afraid not to.

The view in full daylight was worse than he remembered.

More unsettling than it had been in the twilight hush of early morning, or even under last night’s eerie moon.

The colors outside were oversaturated, unnaturally vivid; the sky an unfamiliar shade of blue, too deep, too pure, almost electric.

It was like nothing Pen had ever seen before, either in real life or in the countless books he’d pored over at the Feather Thorn.

It was foreign in a way that made his skin crawl.

What he’d taken for oak trees in the moonlight now revealed themselves as something else entirely, strange hybrids, part evergreen, part birch.

And he knew that no tree in this world looked like that.

He’d read The Complete Encyclopedia of Trees cover to cover four times during his arborist phase, and nothing in those pages came anywhere close.

John Dee had believed he was seeing into another reality, and from what Pen was looking at right now, he would have to agree.

Dee had written that once the tear in time was mended, the world returned to what it had been.

If he could perform the same ritual, perhaps it would be enough that things would return to normal.

And maybe this time, the patch would hold.

He was holding onto that idea as the alternative was grim.

Turning away from the window and its unsettling view, Pen glanced down to find Frankie sitting at his feet, gazing up at him with his big, bright eyes.

“Done?” he asked, following the fox’s glance to the empty bowl. “Okay, then, let’s head down into the shop.”

Pen walked down the stairs and into the bookshop, Frankie close behind, his bushy tail swishing lightly against Pen’s leg. Lately, he’d been more clingy, as if he, too, could sense that their timeline was growing unstable.

He slipped open the trapdoor and headed down the stone stairs. But as Pen stepped into the hidden room, he froze, foot still on the last step.

The bookshelf was gone. And all the books that had once lined it. His eyes snapped to the desk. Please still be there . Relief flooded him as he spotted the typewriter, exactly where it should be, still perched atop the old oak desk like a silent sentinel.

But his breath caught again when he looked closer. The journals. There had been six. Now only four remained.

Pen crossed the room in three strides and began flipping through them, fingers fumbling in urgency. Rowland’s journal was there, along with two of the astronomy notebooks. And at the bottom of the stack, thankfully, was John Dee’s journal.

The missing ones, he realized, were the volumes filled with astrological notes and mathematical equations.

Crucial, yes, but ones he had read so many times he could almost recite them from memory.

He eased into the captain’s chair, the tightness in his shoulders giving way.

At least they still had the most important one, Dee’s journal.

He picked it up and turned to the page he’d left off, deciding to finish reading it now and take detailed notes, just in case it was the next thing to vanish.

They couldn’t afford to lose anything that might point the way forward.

For all he knew, this book might be the only thing that would help them figure out what to do next.

There was a little under a quarter of the journal that remained unread, and given his current sense of urgency, he figured he would finish it before Adelaide returned from Carolyn’s.

As he read, he scribbled notes onto an old yellowed pad of paper. According to Dee, Edward Kelley claimed to have spoken with the divine and learned that the only true way to repair the rip in time was through the help of a Nephilim, some kind of human-angel hybrid.

Pen paused at that. If he weren’t living through this madness himself, he might have scoffed.

A pocket watch that could open a portal to the heavens and manipulate time, beings descended from angels with the power to mend fractures in reality.

It sounded like something torn from the pages of a science fiction novel.

And yet, here he was, living within those pages.

The Nephilim, according to Dee, looked just like ordinary humans. The only way to identify one was by a birthmark, in the shape of the Star of Venus.

How the heck were they supposed to find someone like that? It felt like searching for a ghost in a hall of mirrors. Or worse, like trying to find a particular grain of sand in a desert where the dunes kept shifting.

On the final page, Dee had written a letter addressed to his descendants.

His tone had shifted here, less scientific, more urgent.

He begged them to safeguard the Astral Synchronum, calling it their birthright and warning them never to let it fall into the hands of anyone outside their family.

Whether it was used for good or evil, he said, it would reopen the rip in time.

Worse, if it did, it might not ever be closed again.

The letter ended with one final plea: that his descendants continue the search for the Nephilim, and should one ever be found, follow the instructions included to destroy the device for good.

A knot formed in his stomach. After all of these years, not a single person, including John Dee himself, had managed to even come close to finding one of the Nephilim. So how on earth was he supposed to?

Doing the only thing he could in the moment, Pen copied the instructions into his notes, then rolled a fresh sheet into the typewriter and began transcribing them for Adelaide. Having two copies felt like a small act of control in a world quickly slipping beyond it.

This problem had seemed challenging, but now, it bordered on downright impossible.

How were they supposed to find a biblical creature from before the time of Christ?

The thought pressed down on him. The hope he’d once clung to was fading fast, not in a slow receding tide, but a dramatic crash.

And in its place surged a dizzying fear of what would happen if they failed to stop the rip.

What the hell had Rowland been thinking?

Then, Pen thought of Adelaide, her voice, her laugh, the way she filled a room with light, and the question twisted back on him.

If she were the one slipping away, wouldn’t he have done the same?

Wouldn’t he have risked everything to save her, just as Rowland had done for Carolyn?

Pulling the paper from the typewriter with a swift flick of the bar, he replaced it with a fresh one and began typing again, this time a letter.

He worked slowly, carefully breaking down everything he’d learned from the last part of the journal, trying to cram in all the crucial details.

As he neared the end, he hesitated. There was one more thing he needed to say.

He didn’t know if it was too soon, if it would frighten her, or confuse her, or come out wrong.

But none of that mattered. Not now. If this place was unraveling, she had to know. He couldn’t leave it unsaid.

If I disappear tomorrow, I wouldn’t change a thing. The watch may have been my prison, but it also brought me to you, and I would give up a thousand timelines just to see you and hear your voice here. You have been my savior, my angel, my love.

With a final flick of the bar, he pulled the letter free and gathered it along with the copied instructions, two slim pages, but they carried the weight of everything.

Holding them tightly, he made his way upstairs, whispering a silent prayer that when Adelaide returned, the bookshop would still be waiting here in her timeline.