Page 41 of Strings Attached
The magic responds anyway. Of course it does. The wards strengthen with each note, humming in harmony with her music like they always do. Like they shouldn’t. It eats at me—the lack of explanation.
Missy’s eyes remain fixed on some distant point, never meeting the audience. It’s like she’s not really here at all. When I’d imagined her taking the stage, it was nothing like this. I’d envisioned her as she was twirling in circles beneath my magic in the planetarium. Alive and vivid. Instead, she seems like a husk. My fingers itch to halt the performance, to stride onto that stage and break whatever invisible chains bind her to this pristine prison of perfection. But I have no right. No reason. The magic flows smooth and strong, and my own selfish concerns aren’t grounds for intervention.
When they finally finish, relief floods through me like high tide. Emma rushes forward to hug Missy, and despite everything, I smile. This is the Missy I know—the one who nurtures young talent, who sees past Emma’s struggles to her potential. The one who might leave next week without warning, taking her light and her music and leaving me with memories that won’t be enough.
I turn away, pushing through the crowd toward the nexus point. The wards need checking with so many humans present, even if Missy’s music has somehow stabilized them again. Another mystery I’ll never solve if?—
“Wearing your extra-grumpy-council-member face today?”
Her voice stops me like a spell. When I turn, starlight catches in her hair, and for a moment, I forget every reason I shouldn’t reach for her. I tuck my hands into my pockets instead. “We all have our roles to play.”
Something flickers across her face—pain, maybe—before her expression clears. “Really? What’s mine?”
Beauty. Grace. Joy. The woman who makes my magic stronger and my walls weaker. The normal human who somehow sees too much and feels too deeply. The one I’m fool enough to love.
I shrug, swallowing truth for safer words. “Somebody has to be the favorite.”
She scrunches her nose. “Jules has already taken that spot and anchored himself onto it. I’ll need something else.”
I drift closer, pulled into her orbit as always. “No desire to steal the spotlight from him?” She could take it if she wanted. Jules is brilliant, polished, perfect. But Missy has something wild and untamed that even she doesn’t seem to fully understand. Jules may have mastered every technical aspect of the performance, but he’ll never have what Missy has. That spark that makes magic itself lean in to listen.
She only smirks, though. “I wish I could chuck it at him and knock that charming smile off his face.” A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “But no,” she says softer. “No desire for that, I don’t think.”
“Well, then…” My fingers flex in my pockets, fighting the urge to touch her. The festival lights paint her skin in amber and gold, making her look like a fairy in a children’s book, beckoning humans to wander into her enchanted ring and never leave. “Perhaps your role could be the woman who trips over council members when she visits new towns?”
“Hey!” Her laughter rings into the cooling air, genuine and warm in a way her performance smile never is. The sound draws me closer, like magic responding to her music. Like a moth to flame. Like a fool to fate.
“Or woman who doesn’t pay attention to weather reports?”
“That was an accident!” Her hand lands on my arm, and warmth spreads through me like summer sun. Her touch burns through my jacket’s leather, through my carefully constructedwalls, through every reason I’ve given myself why this can’t work.
The festival fades around us. The nexus point I’m supposed to be checking, the wards I maintain, the duties I’ve built my life around, all of it recedes until there’s just this. Just her eyes catching starlight, her fingers grazing my bicep, the way she sways slightly closer as if she can’t help herself either.
I should step back. Should remember I’m the Head Warlock, should maintain appropriate distance. Instead, I find myself fixed on the curve of her smile, the glimmer of her lips.
“I seem to recall,” I say, voice dropping lower, “that you’re the one who chose to practice in a storm.”
She tilts her head, and god help me, but I want to brush back that strand of hair falling across her cheek. “If I knew who would rescue me—and what that night would lead to—I’d do it again.”
The certainty in her voice undoes me. This is how we keep happening—these small moments that feel bigger than magic, these quiet conversations that make me forget why I’ve spent years keeping everyone at an arm’s length.
“Dean?”
The voice hits like ice water, snapping me to attention. I whip around to find my mother standing before us, my father beside her. Both are staring at us with mouths agape and brows furrowed. Both staring at Missy’s hand on my arm. At how close we’re standing. At what they must recognize as history preparing to repeat itself. Because they’ll know she’s non-magical. She has no aura at all.
They’re not the only ones staring, either. Grammie Rae watches from her booth, wearing that knowing smirk that makes me want to add sound-blocking wards around her house out of spite. Others are trying to appear like they’re not looking our way. We might as well have been dancing in the street.
“Mom?” The word scrapes my throat.
Missy takes a step back from me and produces that perfect performer’s smile that never reaches her eyes. “Oh, hello, I’m Missy.”
She extends her hand. They stare at it like she’s offering them poison. After an incredibly awkward moment where even the festival itself seems to have gone quiet, she withdraws and wipes her palm against her blouse. A shaky laugh spills from her as she speaks. “I’ll excuse myself. See you later, Dean.”
“Missy, wait—” I reach for her, but she’s already gone, swallowed by the festival crowd.
My parents’ stares weigh like stones.
“I just need to check over the wards once more,” I manage. “Let me finish up and we can go to my house.”
