Page 32 of Bewitched By the Wicked Witch
"But is it enough?" I asked, voicing the question that had been haunting me since the moment Callum walked out the door. "Is knowing his reasons enough to overcome five years of pain and mistrust?"
"Only you can answer that, darling," Gran said gently. "But perhaps the better question is: are you brave enough to find out? Are you willing to risk your heart again for the possibility of real happiness?"
I sat in Gran's kitchen for another hour after that, letting her feed me fresh-baked cookies and hard-won wisdom in equal measure. She told me stories about my parents' courtship, about the obstacles they'd overcome and the love that had sustained them through decades of challenges. She spoke about forgiveness, not as something you did for the other person, but as a gift you gave yourself to stop carrying the poison of old hurts.
By the time I finally left her house, I hadn't magically resolved all my complicated feelings about Callum, but I had reached one crucial conclusion. I needed to talk to him properly, really talk, not just get swept up in the immediate crisis of missing girls or the overwhelmingemotions that seemed to surface whenever we were in the same room.
We needed to have the difficult conversations about trust and forgiveness, about what it meant to build something new from the ashes of what we'd lost. We needed to decide if we could work together as partners, in this investigation and possibly in life, or if too much damage had been done to ever truly repair.
But first, we had criminals to catch and a town to save from the resurgence of an ancient evil.
Because even heartbroken, confused witches had responsibilities to their communities. And maybe, just maybe, facing those responsibilities together would show us whether we could truly trust each other again, or if some bridges were too burned to ever be rebuilt.
Either way, I owed it to myself, and to him, to find out.
Fourteen
Callum
Iawoke with a violent start as the bedroom door burst open with a resounding bang that made the old hinges protest. Pale morning sunlight streamed through the boarding house's lacy curtains, casting delicate patterns across the faded quilt tangled around my legs. For a brief, disorienting moment, I forgot where I was and why my chest felt like it was filled with lead instead of lungs.
The sight of her brought everything rushing back, the missing girls, the painful confrontation last night, the devastating truth I'd never meant to tell her. My stomach clenched as I remembered the look on her face when I'd confessed about the council's threats. What had I been thinking, letting it slip like that?
"Rise and shine, Renshaw!" Sage declared with far too much energy for whatever ungodly hour this was. "We've got a case to crack and no time to waste wallowing in self-pity."
I blinked at her owlishly, my sleep-addled brain struggling to process her sudden appearance and the obvious shift in her demeanor. Gone was the wounded woman from last night, replaced by the determined investigator I remembered from our academy days.
"Sage? What are you…how did you even get in here?"
"Magic, obviously," she said with an eye roll, then yanked the quilt off me with one sharp motion. The cool morning air hit my bare chest and exposed my lower half like a slap. I yelped, clutching desperately at the sheets to preserve some semblance of modesty.
"Wicked witch!" A shrill voice screeched from the hallway like a banshee in distress. Mrs. Hensley came scuttling into the room, her gray hair in curlers and her face pinched with righteous indignation. "How dare you barge into my respectable establishment, disturbing my guests with your unholy presence! I knew you were trouble from the moment you darkened my doorway!"
Sage rolled her eyes so dramatically I feared they might get permanently stuck in the back of her head. "Oh, put a sock in it, you old biddy. I'm here on official High Council investigative business." She jerked a thumb in my direction without taking her eyes off the boarding house owner. "And trust me, there's nothing improper happening with this one. I've seen garden gnomes with more sex appeal."
"Hey!" I protested weakly, but both women completely ignored me, locked in what appeared to be a battle of wills conducted entirely through icy glares.
Mrs. Hensley puffed up like an angry rooster preparing for a fight. "I won'thave you corrupting my Christian establishment with your evil ways! Out, I say! Out this instant!"
Sage's lips curved into a smile that could have frozen hell itself. "Careful, Mrs. H. Keep screeching like that and I might just turn you into a toad. I hear they're much quieter than bitter old women." She tapped her chin thoughtfully, tilting her head as her smile turned positively sinister. "And those lovely warts would be such an improvement to your complexion."
The older woman blanched, clutching at her throat as if Sage's words had physical weight. I had to suppress a snort of laughter, torn between amusement at Sage's audacity and exasperation at the entire ridiculous situation.
"You wouldn't dare!" Mrs. Hensley sputtered, but there was genuine fear creeping into her voice beneath the outrage.
Sage's grin turned absolutely predatory. "Try me, honey. I am, after all, the town's black magic weilding witch. Now, if you'll excuse us, Agent Renshaw and I have important matters to discuss. Murders to solve, missing girls to find, that sort of thing. Unless you'd prefer I let whoever's behind this continue picking off young women?"
Mrs. Hensley opened and closed her mouth like a fish gasping for air, clearly torn between her obvious disdain for Sage and her growing fear of being transformed into something with more warts than dignity. After what felt like an eternity of tense silence, she spun on her heel and flounced out of the room, muttering direpredictions about unnatural witches and the inevitable downfall of civilized society.
Sage watched her retreat with obvious satisfaction, then turned back to me with one eyebrow arched expectantly. "Well? Are you planning on lounging around in your underwear all day like some kind of lazy tomcat, or are you going to put some clothes on and help me catch a killer?"
Heat rushed to my face as I realized I was still sitting there in nothing but my boxer briefs, having this entire conversation while essentially naked. Grumbling under my breath about impossible women and their complete lack of proper social boundaries, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up, stretching out the various kinks and knots that had formed in my back during the night.
"Has anyone ever told you that you have a uniquely aggressive way with people?" I asked, reaching for the clothes I'd laid out the night before.
She tapped her chin with one finger, tilting her beautiful head so that a few dark curls fell gracefully over her shoulder. "I believe you mentioned something along those lines once, many years ago." A wistful smile tugged at the corners of her lips for just a moment before her expression shifted back to pure business. "And yes, every single day of my life, though usually they phrase it as 'you're a menace to society' or something equally charming."
She tossed me a clean shirt from my laid out clothes, and I caught it reflexively. Her gaze lingered on my bare torso for just a beat too long before she spun away, suddenly finding the peelingwallpaper fascinating.
