Page 18 of Strings Attached
Rachel’s studio seems alive with music, even in its silence, as warm light dances along the curves of instruments and glints off polished brass fixtures. Today it holds something else—a current in the air that has nothing to do with the wards I maintain and everything to do with the way Missy’s fingers dance across Giuseppe’s strings.
I lean against the wall, keeping my lips pressed together, my gaze distant and bored even as I fight the urge to close my eyes and let her music wash over me. Emma follows Missy’s lead, her own playing growing more confident with each measure. The magic within the young witch rises and falls like tides against the shore—volatile but not dangerous. Not yet.
Rachel makes another obscene slurping sound with her iced coffee beside me. I shoot her a glare that would send most residents scurrying. She just grins and rattles her ice. She’s always been impertinent, and given her family’s long-standing roots in Magnolia Cove, I suppose she’s earned the right.
“Emma’s pretty good, huh?” she whispers.
“Mhmm.” Her musical abilities are excellent. Her magical ones even more so. But I’m not getting caught in Rachel’s web of probing questions.
She takes another long, obnoxious slurp. “You know,”—she whispers, as though pretending to preserve the quiet actually matters to her—“glowering at everyone isn’t actually required by the council bylaws last time I checked.”
“And when was that?”
She grins like a shark around her straw. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
A music teacher makes one viral video and saves a small music program and she thinks she’s queen of Magnolia Cove now. The way Rachel always acts like she has the inside track on everything drives me crazy. But the worst part is that she’s often right and if she isn’t, she makes her goals happen, anyway.
“I’m focusing on my job,” I say. “Not everyone gets distracted by performances.”
She leans back against the wall then crosses her ankles. “Oh, I don’t know. Seems like you’ve been a bit distracted to me.”
The sheer audacity. Maybe my guard has come down too much if a Cove resident feels bold enough to speak to her Head Warlock this way. I’m about to say something to that effect when Missy looks up from where she sits in a pool of soft gray light and smiles like sunshine—eyes crinkling at the corners, joy radiating from every curve. I can almost hear her voice in my head, teasing me about grumpy gnomes.
My lips betray me, curving up without permission. One small crack in carefully constructed walls, and somehow she floods right through.
Missy turns her attention back to Emma. They begin another song, and I pull a breath mint loose then pop it into my mouth.
Rachel’s voice drops to a true whisper, so quiet even I can barely hear it standing next to her. “Alex is pretty protective of her little sister.”
I swallow. “I know.”
I do. The last person Rachel needs to convince me that my growing feelings for Missy are a bad idea is me. I’m trying to think of a response. Maybe a blatant lie.There’s nothing there to worry about.Or a full truth.It’s none of your business.Before I can respond, words die in my throat.
The magic in the room has… shifted. No—transformed. The usual chaos of Emma’s powers, the wild energy that makes her such a challenging student, such a potentially powerful witch if she ever learns to control it, has suddenly… settled.
Rachel and I both turn toward the music. Missy stands behind Emma, her hands resting lightly on the girl’s shoulders as she plays. The piece—something by Tchaikovsky—fills the space with impossible richness, as if an entire orchestra plays through Emma's violin. But it’s not just the music that’s extraordinary.
Emma’s magic has found its rhythm, flowing smooth and controlled as spring water. No surges, no sparks, just pure harmonious power guided by Missy’s presence. A presence that should have no effect on magic at all.
Rachel’s iced coffee hangs forgotten halfway to her mouth. Even I can’t maintain my carefully neutral expression. In all my years of studying magic, all my research into humans with unusual sensitivity, I’ve seen nothing like this.
The piece ends. Missy breaks into applause and jumps onto her toes as if she needs to cheer from the highest position she can attain. And then she looks at me.
Her eyes glisten and search. Always searching. Something inside me shifts like tectonic plates realigning. The magic in my blood hums in response, growls with desires I’ve spent years suppressing. It coils tight, a deep primal urge that’s thrumming with questions I’m not ready to answer.
I shouldn’t want this. Shouldn’t want her. But in this moment, even with Rachel watching, with the evidence of impossible things singing between us all, I can’t remember why.
Midnight finds me at my desk, one of Mom’s cookies forgotten beside a stack of grimoires. A single bite taken and the spices still linger on my tongue like memories of simpler days. The ward-locked journal lies open before me, its pages filling with observations that read more like confessions.
Subject demonstrates unprecedented harmonization with magical frequencies…
I pause, press the nib of my pen against the paper until ink bleeds through. Clinical language can’t capture the way Missy’s presence transforms magic itself. How does one document something that defies documentation? Something that feels less like observation and more like witness to a miracle?
When in proximity to the subject, ward stability increases by approximately…
My writing stops again. Nothing about her effect on magic can be measured in percentages and parameters. Nothing about her effect on me fits in these careful notes.
The truth hovers between the lines I can’t bring myself to write: that maybe it’s not just her presence affecting the wards. Maybe it’s the way my magic reaches for her like the tide drawn by the moon. The way power surges beneath my skin when she smiles. How everything feels more alive, more possible, when she’s near.
