Meadowfoam & Murder

Corrine Winters

Copyright © 2024 by Corrine Winters

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Preview

When You Witch Upon A Murder Chapter 1

Chapter One

“It’s a bit late in the season to be twitching like that,” Maeve Everhart murmured, eyeing the peppermint’s stiff stems as she snipped a fresh bundle from the planter box.

The winter sun was low and watery, filtering through bare alder branches that stretched like fingers over the path outside Maeve’s greenhouse, Everhart Green. A skim of frost rimmed the gravel trail and clung to the sage and rosemary borders, casting everything in a faint shimmer. Even the peppermint leaves, striped in red and cream like sugared ribbon, had a crystalline sheen.

Whim padded along the edge of the planter and flicked his tail with deliberate disdain. “Twitching is what plants do when they know more than we do.”

Maeve glanced down at him, arching a brow. “And what is it they know, exactly?”

“That they’re being invited to a toast,” he said, “but not everyone who raises a glass plans to swallow what’s in it.”

“Cheery.” She clipped another sprig, tucking it into the waxed linen pouch slung over her shoulder. “It’s just a garnish.”

Whim sniffed. “So is mistletoe. Doesn’t stop it from being poisonous.”

The peppermint had grown beautifully all season—spiked and fragrant, with a hint of cool sweetness that made it popular at the winter market. Maeve had harvested extra for the New Year’s celebratory Midnight Toast event, where it would twirl atop the sparkling cyser mead like a festive halo. This year’s batch had carried an unusual intensity though, sharp on the tongue and oddly restless in its roots. Even now, she could feel the subtle hum in her fingers as she brushed soil from the stems.

She straightened and tucked the cuttings into her basket, heading for the main part of town and the festivities to come.

Whim leapt from the planter, trotting ahead with his tail raised like a banner. “They’ll drink,” he called over his shoulder, “but not all of them will celebrate.”

The Market Green stretched in soft green curves ahead, dotted with folding tables, crates of glassware, and clusters of bundled volunteers stringing fairy lights through the trees. Lanterns shaped like cider apples swung gently in the chill breeze, their gold and crimson skins flickering as if already catching firelight.

The prep tent smelled of linen, clove soap, and something lightly yeasty—fermentation’s cheerful cousin. Maeve stepped inside, pulling off her cap as warmth radiated from a portable heater tucked in the corner.

“Oh good, you brought them,” Willa Penrose said, carefully unboxing a row of mismatched crystal glasses. “And not a moment too soon. Junie’s already come up with three drink names, none of them printable.”

Junie Bright, stationed near a folding table laden with syrup bottles and draft samples, looked up with an apologetic grin. “What? ‘Bee’s Knees, Stung Twice’ has flair.”

Maeve passed her the peppermint pouch. “That sounds like it comes with a lawsuit.”

“It might,” Junie admitted, plucking a sprig from the bundle and holding it to the light. “But these are perfect. Red like a New Year’s blush. You grew these from the heirloom starts, right?”

“Candy-cane strain,” Maeve said. “They tend to curl dramatically in cold weather.”

“Don’t we all.” Willa held a toast glass up to the tent light. The crystal caught it with a soft shimmer. “These were from my grandmother’s New Year’s set. She claimed they were part of some prohibition-era club called The Orchard Circle. Sounds secretive, doesn’t it?”

Junie leaned over the table, filling one glass with a pale, sparkling blend that smelled like honey and distant apple orchards. “Maybe they used them to pass messages.”

“Or judgment,” Willa muttered. “They’re sharp little things.”

Maeve drifted to the table’s edge, watching as Junie garnished the drink with a sugared rim and a peppermint curl that bobbed gently in the foam.

“Taste test?” Junie offered, holding one toward her.

Maeve accepted and sipped. Bubbles burst lightly on her tongue, leaving a trail of warmth that spread down her chest. It was bright, floral, and unexpectedly bitter at the finish.

“It’s good,” she said. “But maybe too complex for a midnight crowd. And when did a barista become an expert in cider drinks?”

“Since I read one of the books at the bookstore.” Junie looked pointedly at Willa, the owner of said bookstore.

Willa raised a brow. “Don’t blame my books. And I agree with Maeve. We are a town of truffle hunters and heirloom vinegar connoisseurs.”

“We’re also a town that burns its tongue on Belle’s cider every year,” Maeve pointed out.

Junie nodded solemnly. “Back to the drawing board.”

From outside the tent came a flourish of voice and footfalls. “Did someone say drawing board? Because I bring yeasts older than your ancestors.”

Whim, seated now on a supply crate, turned his head toward the flap and let out a noise somewhere between a sigh and a warning growl.

Truman Loft strode into the prep tent like he owned the soil it stood on. Tall, with a sweep of silver-streaked hair and a scarf printed in what Maeve belatedly recognized as yeast strain diagrams, he dragged a leather satchel behind him and exuded a kind of curated rusticity.

“Ah, the scent of anticipation—and is that peppermint I detect?” he said, breathing in theatrically. “Brilliant garnish choice. Cooling on the palate, energizing to the spirit. Though I’d recommend it only in moderation.”

“Everything in moderation,” Willa murmured, carefully placing the last toast glass on the table.

Truman’s gaze swept the tent like a spotlight. “Truman Loft. Fermentation consultant, flavor forecaster, yeast whisperer. And you must be the magic behind the garnish.”

Maeve opened her mouth to correct him, then saw Silas Merrick step through the tent flap.

He wore his usual soft flannel and work jeans, boots still dusted with soil from Vinehill Rise. In his arms were two labeled glass jars filled with deep amber honey, their surfaces glinting with the day’s last light. He caught Maeve’s eye, and for a moment something quiet passed between them. Gratitude, perhaps, or just a shared awareness of what they were becoming.

Then Truman clapped a hand on one of the jars.

“Ah, our golden contributor. Though I’ve noticed some… intriguing viscosity shifts in last year’s samples.” He leaned in, voice lower. “Corn syrup contamination, perhaps? Not uncommon this time of year. I’ve brought strips to test.”

Silas’s jaw tensed. “It’s clean.”

“I’m sure it is.” Truman’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “We’ll confirm everything. Integrity is everything at a public tasting.”

Maeve shifted between them. “You can always use the backup batch from Brooks & Berries if you’re worried.”

“Oh, no need.” Truman beamed. “Just a little protocol. The VIP tasting must reflect only the best.”

Whim sniffed the satchel and gave a disapproving twitch. “Even peppermint knows not to drink with ghosts,” he muttered.

Maeve bent to scoop him up. “You don’t like anyone who brags about their bubbles.”

Whim settled into the crook of her arm with a feline glare. “Ghosts always brag. Until the silence starts leaking.”

By late afternoon, Willowmere shimmered with preparation. Fairy lights flickered in the oaks overhead, and paper lanterns danced in the rising breeze. Volunteers hurried between tables, laying out programs and arranging antique glasses in small spirals.

Maeve dipped each peppermint sprig in a sugar syrup and placed it in tiny fluted vials, meant to be added to VIP glasses moments before midnight. The peppermint twitched once in her hand, then went still.

“Everything okay?” Willa asked, approaching with a spool of copper wire meant to hold the sprigs upright.

Maeve hesitated. Willa had long hinted she understood Maeve’s magic, though she had never said anything directly. Still, it wasn’t a problem to be honest around her.

“It felt… startled,” she finally said. “Just for a moment.”

Willa tilted her head. “Maybe it knows it’s going to be famous tonight.”

Junie bustled up behind them, holding a clipboard. “Has anyone seen the new branding banners? Truman was fussing about font sizes like they determine mouthfeel.”

From across the tent, a clipped voice broke through the hum of preparations. “It’s not the font. It’s the theft. No, I told you—he used it without clearance. I want my logo off the materials by five.”

Maeve paused mid-step, eyes narrowing toward the curt silhouette near the entryway. She didn’t recognize the woman, only the razor-sharp edge of entitlement wrapped in designer frustration.

As she turned to leave, Whim trotted ahead along the lantern-lined path, tail swaying. Maeve lingered for a final glance back at the tables. The crystal glasses glinted, each like a mouth waiting to speak. And the peppermint in her bag stirred once, as if bracing for something.

Whatever the year had left behind, it wasn’t finished. Not yet.

Chapter Two

“Get your elbow off the banner, please,” the woman said without looking up, her voice clipped and precise.

Maeve paused just inside the prep tent, one gloved hand still on the flap. The woman’s sleek blonde bob caught the morning light like a curtain of glass, and her trench coat looked expensive enough to have its own PR team. She was bent over a folding table littered with promotional materials—banners, pamphlets, and logo mockups printed in a precise, wine-toned font.

“I wasn’t touching it.” Daisy Penrose, Willa’s techie cousin, had just knelt beside a large, sticker-covered drone case. Her lavender raincoat had caught a corner of one of the banners, but Maeve wasn’t sure Alicia had even noticed. Daisy looked up at Maeve and whispered, “Guess who’s fun at parties?”

“I heard that,” the woman said, finally standing straight and pinning Daisy with a glare. “These are proprietary branding materials, not placemats. Please be careful.”

Maeve stepped forward. “Hi. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Maeve Everhart. I handle some of the plant contributions.”

The woman’s features rearranged into a smile that didn’t make it to her eyes. “Alicia Hartnell. Event branding and experiential strategy.” She gestured vaguely toward the table. “I designed the Midnight Toast materials. Or at least I did before Truman started printing banners with my concept and slapping his name on it.”

Maeve glanced at the bold crimson lettering on the nearest poster: Midnight Toast – Where Bubbles Meet the Moonlight. Below, a stylized glass sparkled against a watercolor sky.

“It’s lovely,” Maeve said carefully.

“It was mine,” Alicia replied. “Now it’s his.” She scooped the pile of mockups into her tote and turned toward the cider display with an air of practiced detachment. “I’m here to observe, that’s all. I’ve made my objections known.”

Whim padded into the tent from between two crates, his tail swishing low. He sniffed the base of the cider table, then glanced at Maeve and said in a gravel-soft mutter, “Something’s over-fermented. And it’s not the drink.”

“You should tell him no.”

Piper Gray’s voice, sharp and tense, drifted to Maeve as she rounded the back of the VIP tent. She paused by the canvas edge, out of sight, unsure whether to interrupt or not.

“I’m not asking for much,” came Truman’s low response. “You helped design the sponsorship matrix. I just want to align the analytics with the next round of tasting strategy.”

“You want customer data,” Piper replied flatly. “And I already said no.”

“You said maybe,” Truman countered, voice coaxing now. “Come on, Piper. It’s a single file. Metrics help everyone. You’ll still get credit.”

“Walker’s name is on that list,” Piper said. “I won’t risk dragging him into something messy.”

Maeve stepped out from behind the tent before she could hear more. “Morning,” she said, casually adjusting the strap on her basket. “Did I hear something about tasting strategy?”

Truman turned first, all charm. “Just hashing out the finer points. Piper’s insights into audience engagement are sharp as ever.”

Piper’s smile was brief and brittle. “He just wanted clarification.”

Maeve let her gaze linger, not pushing but not withdrawing either. Piper’s shoulders were stiff, the way people got when cornered.

“Everything alright?” Maeve asked.

“Peachy,” Piper said. “I’ve got to check the sponsor table.” She walked off without another word, the hem of her jacket brushing dead leaves aside with every step.

Maeve watched Piper retreat with stiff shoulders and quick steps. She wasn’t exactly a public face of the event, but Maeve knew she’d been handling spreadsheets and sponsor files for Walker behind the scenes—likely to keep his scattershot enthusiasm from turning into a full disaster. If Truman had started leaning on her for more than numbers, it made sense why she looked like she’d bitten into an underripe persimmon.

Truman exhaled dramatically. “She’s brilliant, but I sometimes forget she’s also related to Walker.”

“Meaning?” Maeve asked.

Truman gave her a smile full of implication. “Let’s just say one of them uses their brain for strategy, the other for… dramatic narration.”

Whim emerged from behind a crate shaking dust from one paw as Truman walked away. “She knows what he wants. She just doesn’t want to give it to him.”

Maeve looked down. “You're talking about the data?”

Whim blinked slowly. “I’m talking about the cost of giving something away, even when it’s already been stolen.”

The man in the dark green pea coat arrived just before noon, stepping into the sun-dappled square with a kind of studied ease. His shoes were polished, his collar sharp, and his hands gloved in supple leather. He carried nothing but a pen tucked into a slim folio under one arm.

Maeve was pinning peppermint bundles onto the garnish rack when he approached.

“Maeve Everhart?” he asked in a voice both gentle and practiced. “Your peppermint is the most elegant garnish I’ve ever encountered.”

She straightened slowly. “That’s kind of you. I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Mateo Sebastian,” he said, extending a hand. “I’m part of the fermentation panel. Truman asked me to join as a guest judge.”

His handshake was warm and firm, but Maeve noticed the faintest twitch of strain near his jawline when he said Truman’s name.

“Are you from Portland?” she asked.

“Was,” he replied. “Now I consult independently. I travel a bit. Willowmere is… quaint. In a good way.”

Truman called out from across the square, waving a clipboard. “Ah! Mateo! Just in time. We’re tweaking the pour schedule.”

Mateo offered Maeve a nod and turned away, but not before she noticed the fountain pen in his breast pocket—marbled blue and cream, with a delicate silver clip. Oddly ornate for a tasting judge.

Whim jumped to the bench beside her. “Odd tool for a toast,” he said, tail flicking once.

“Can I have everyone’s attention, please?” Truman’s voice rang across the Market Green as he stepped onto an overturned cider crate. “We’re adding a new element to this year’s Midnight Toast—a VIP tasting!”

The crowd stilled. Fern Cassidy’s hat dipped as she looked up from her clipboard, obviously annoyed that someone had deviated from her meticulous preparations. Dorian Quinn lowered his Lavender Lantern coffee mug. Even Caroline Brooks turned slightly from her truffle dog, arching one elegant brow.

“This batch,” Truman continued, gesturing toward an iced crate of bottles, “is a secret ferment, aged with Silas Merrick’s goldenrod honey and finished in my own oak-cured keg. Exclusive. Reserved for our sponsors and special guests.”

Maeve’s stomach did a small, unexpected flip. She caught sight of Silas at the edge of the square, hands in his coat pockets, face unreadable.

“Willowmere deserves something rare,” Truman added, his eyes lingering a beat too long on the crowd. “This year, we toast not just the past, but the future.”

From near the tech table, Daisy muttered, “Cue the dramatic music,” as she tapped commands into her drone controller. The machine rose with a cheerful whir, hovering above the Green before flickering into a pattern of blue lights.

“Think you could make it sparkle?” Walker called, holding his phone aloft and angling for the shot. “I want a visual for the podcast teaser.”

“It’s not a beer ad,” Daisy said. “And I’m not a lighting elf.”

“Doesn’t stop you from wearing neon socks,” Walker said. He pivoted back to his phone mic. “Listeners, I’m standing here beneath a cascade of programmable LED lights while Truman Loft reveals a mysterious ‘special batch’ of cyser that allegedly⁠—”

“Walker.” Piper stood behind him, arms crossed. “Stop narrating your life.”

“It’s for ambiance,” he said, dropping his voice dramatically. “The truth bubbles up in the least expected places.”

Whim hopped onto a cider crate beside Maeve. “Recording ghosts doesn’t keep them from lying,” he said. “It just shows you where they were last.”

Maeve glanced back at Silas, still standing apart, eyes on the bottles that now bore his name.

She shivered. The air smelled of oak and honey, but something colder lingered beneath. Like frost over ferment, waiting for someone to take the first sip.

Chapter Three

“You didn’t have to bring that,” Silas said without looking up.

Maeve set the thermos down beside the crates he was stacking near the back corner of the Market Green. “It’s not a bribe,” she said. “It’s tea. Chamomile and peppermint. For sore moods and sore backs.”

He didn’t answer at first. The wind tugged gently at his rolled sleeves, exposing the ridge of muscle just above his forearms. There was sawdust on his collarbone, caught in the weave of flannel. He fit among crates the way trees belonged to the orchard—solid, worn by the season.

“I don’t need calming herbs,” he muttered eventually.

“No,” Maeve said, watching him wedge another crate into place. “But your shoulders disagree.”

He paused then, just long enough to let the silence settle between them. When he finally turned, his face was unreadable, but his eyes held a restrained fury—not wild, just quietly banked like coals. The kind of slow burn that didn’t lash out but didn’t forgive easily either.

“He went up there on purpose,” Silas said. “Stood on a box like it was a pulpit and called it a rare gift. My honey. After implying I doctored it.”

Maeve shifted her weight. “It felt… calculated.”

“That man doesn’t say a thing without weighing the optics. Every year.” He reached for the thermos, unscrewed the lid, and took a sip. “And the taste is always just sweet enough to hide the rot underneath.”

Whim trotted past and leapt onto the nearby bench with feline agility. “Bees know when a predator smiles,” he said, tail twitching. “Shame people forget so easily.”

Silas didn’t react. Maeve offered the briefest tilt of her head in acknowledgment. She wasn’t sure how much he ever understood Whim—but sometimes she suspected he heard more than he let on.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked quietly.

He shook his head. “You’re already doing it.”

The Lavender Lantern was quieter than usual for a festival weekend, which Maeve took as a sign that Dorian Quinn was in a mood.

She stepped into the softly lit café and caught the scent of clove, cardamom, and something sharper—hibiscus, maybe, or tension. The loose-leaf tea bar had been polished to a near-glass finish, and Dorian was rearranging canisters in measured silence.

“I brought a few extra peppermint sprigs,” Maeve said, untying the bundle from her satchel. “In case the tea station needs a refresh.”

Dorian didn’t turn around. “It’s appreciated.”

Junie Bright emerged from the back with a tray of mismatched mugs and nearly dropped them all when she caught the handle on her apron. “I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Not a single chip.”

“Careful,” Dorian said without looking. “That set is irreplaceable.”

Junie made a face at Maeve behind his back and mouthed touchy before vanishing again.

Maeve stepped closer to the counter. “You’re usually more enthusiastic about the Toast. Everything alright?”

Dorian finally turned, his crisp button-down perfectly pressed even as his eyes betrayed a tightness behind the lashes.

“Truman decided to pull the tea-pairing,” he said. “Last-minute. Said the cyser should stand on its own.”

“That wasn’t the plan,” Maeve said, frowning. “You’ve been working on pairings for weeks.”

He gave a slow nod. “Junie and I crafted an entire sequence. Subtle brews to complement the floral notes in Silas’s honey, something sharper for the aftertaste. It was supposed to showcase local makers in collaboration.” He ran a hand over the teak counter. “Now it’s just about Truman’s ‘exclusive batch’ and the pageantry of it all.”

“I’m sorry.”

He met her gaze then, the irritation no longer hidden. “The Lantern doesn’t need the exposure. I’ve built this place on my own terms. But I won’t pretend it doesn’t bruise.”

Maeve understood that kind of wound—when someone dismissed your work not because it lacked value, but because it didn’t fit their spotlight.

“Let me know if I can help,” she said. “I’d still like to brew a pot with the peppermint later—just for us.”

Dorian gave a small nod. “We’ll call it a toast to the quiet ones.”

Maeve was replenishing garnish trays at the VIP prep station when the murmuring started again—low voices behind the tent, muffled but growing sharper.

She didn’t mean to listen. She was tucking peppermint stems into sugared syrup vials, but something in Piper’s tone drew her attention.

“You don’t get to twist this,” Piper said, her words crisp and barely contained. “You’re not doing me a favor by threatening to include Walker.”

“Of course not,” came Truman’s voice, calm and velvety. “I’m just suggesting that sometimes, the people closest to a problem don’t know they’re already inside it.”

Maeve moved a fraction closer to the canvas, pretending to adjust the utensil basket. The wind had died down, making the words easier to catch.

Truman continued, “I’m offering a solution. A graceful way out. All I need is a little background data. It helps me make the case to potential investors. And you get to keep your brother’s name clean.”

Piper didn’t answer immediately. When she did, her voice sounded tight. “This is a cider festival. Not a startup pitch.”

“Everything’s a pitch,” Truman said, and there was the faint sound of movement—perhaps him stepping closer. “And every pitch needs a selling point. You’re smart, Piper. You know that.”

Maeve stepped back before she was seen, heart thudding—not with fear, exactly, but with the sick certainty of watching a vine twist in on itself. She knew coercion when she heard it, even when it wore the language of collaboration.

She returned to the garnish table and picked up one of the peppermint sprigs. The leaves had curled slightly, edges browned—not with decay, but with something more immediate. Reaction. Warning.

She carried the sprig toward the prep counter, where several of Truman’s sample bottles were chilling in ice troughs. They were unlabeled—amber and gold liquids in varying hues—but the glass near the center had a faint fog on its base, like it had been opened and resealed.

Maeve brought the peppermint closer. A shimmer slowly passed down the stem.

Whim padded silently beside her and stared at the bottles. “This batch carries old bitterness,” he said. “Not every toast should be raised.”

Maeve looked down at the peppermint. Its curl had tightened, not in cold but in recoil.

She tucked the stem into her coat pocket, fingers brushing the edge of her garden shears.

Something in Truman’s table didn’t want to be celebrated. It wanted to be seen.

And maybe—just maybe—it wanted to be stopped.

Chapter Four

“Your cousin’s got a flair for the dramatic,” Maeve murmured, craning her neck to follow the slow arc of Daisy’s drone light show above the Market Green.

Willa Penrose stood beside her, gloved hands wrapped around a small thermos and a knit shawl looped over her shoulders. “She says the sparkle settings are for ‘aesthetic clarity.’ Which is Daisy-speak for ‘I like chaos, but I want it to match.’”

Maeve let out a soft breath, the cold misting around her lips. Around them, the Green was glowing. Fairy lights were looped through the oak branches, and amber lanterns swung gently on their cords, casting flickering patches across the frost-stiff grass. Even the gazebo, often plain and practical, shimmered tonight under garlands of dried citrus slices and gilded ivy.

Townfolk mingled in coats and wool hats, sipping hot cider or cupping hands around sweet buns passed from Belle’s bakery cart. A hush hung beneath the music and laughter—a tension that always accompanied the cusp of a new year. Not heavy. Just aware.

Willa nudged Maeve lightly with her elbow. “You alright?”

Maeve looked over, unsure what her face had given away. “Of course.”

“Mmm. That’s your ‘of course but maybe not’ voice,” Willa said gently. “I saw Silas earlier. He looked like someone had scraped varnish against the grain.”

“He’s still upset,” Maeve said after a pause. “Truman’s praise felt more like performance than peace.”

“Everything Truman does is performance. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t leave a bruise.” Willa took a sip from her thermos, then offered it. “Junie’s mulled apple and star anise. Good for nerves.”

Maeve accepted it with a murmur of thanks. As she drank, her gaze drifted across the Green. Junie was setting out glasses on a long linen-draped table. Walker hovered nearby with his phone half-raised, narrating softly. Piper stood several paces away, arms crossed, not speaking.

The peppermint garnish tray had been placed beside the chilled cyser. Each glass was rimmed with crystalized sugar and finished with a delicate spiral of red-and-white peppermint. Maeve recognized her own plants immediately. Their color was brighter than anything store-bought, and their shape was more irregular—natural curls instead of factory-cut spirals.

And then she saw him.

Silas, standing off to the side of the crowd, near the cider barrels. His coat was buttoned high, and his gloved hands were tucked in his pockets. The distance between them wasn’t far, but it felt shaped by more than footsteps. When their eyes met, he gave the barest nod. Not warm. Not cold. Just present.

Whim leapt up onto the edge of the table and sat beside the garnish tray like a sentry.

“The air smells like endings,” he said, voice low. “And old sugar.”

“Friends of Willowmere,” Truman Loft’s voice carried easily over the hush as he stepped onto the overturned apple crate near the center of the Green. “Makers, tasters, thinkers, and dreamers—it is my profound honor to lead this year’s Midnight Toast.”

He was draped in a dark wool coat, the yeast-patterned scarf knotted just-so at his throat. The leather satchel rested behind him on the table like a prop waiting for its cue. He lifted a single glass, the golden cyser within catching the flicker of the lanterns.

“As you all know, fermentation is the art of transformation,” he said. “From sweetness to depth, from froth to fire. It is nature’s reminder that even decay has purpose—that time itself improves the raw.”

A few murmurs of appreciation rippled through the crowd.

“Tonight,” Truman continued, “we gather not just to celebrate what was, but to welcome what comes next. We toast not to perfection, but to progress. Not to what has settled, but to what still bubbles beneath the surface.”

Maeve stood beside Willa now, close enough to see Alicia adjusting the display placards at the VIP table and Mateo stepping back into shadow near the edge of the tent. Every movement felt curated. Every bottle positioned for effect.

Truman’s hand swept toward the special glasses—the ones chilled in carved ice trays and rimmed with Maeve’s peppermint. “This batch,” he said, “is drawn from heritage ingredients, blessed by this valley’s bounty. Local honey. Ancient apples. Sparkle born of moonlight and wild yeast.”

Junie passed the VIP glasses to the selected guests. Maeve noted the sparkle on the rims—hers had been sugared earlier that day, but someone else had plated them. Alicia, likely. Truman received the last one from Junie with a practiced bow.

He raised it skyward.

“To what ferments beneath the surface,” he said. “May it rise to the light.”

The guests echoed the toast. Glasses tipped.

Truman drank.

At first, nothing happened.

He lowered the glass slowly, exhaling with a practiced sigh. His mouth curved in what might’ve been satisfaction or stagecraft. Then his hand slackened.

The glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the frost-hardened ground. The sound of it breaking was sharper than it should have been.

Truman swayed once. His scarf fluttered.

Someone laughed—nervous, unsure—and then gasped as he staggered back, one hand clutching the front of his coat. He opened his mouth as if to speak. Maeve thought she caught the beginning of a word—“clarity”—but it dissolved before it reached air.

Then he collapsed.

There was a second of silence. A single heartbeat.

And then the crowd broke into motion.

Cal Dawson pushed through first, coat unzipped and radio in hand. “Give us space!” he called. “Everyone, back up.”

Everett Kane followed close behind, already scanning the ground and waving off onlookers. Alicia let out a sharp cry and backed away, fumbling for her tote. Mateo remained near the tent, face pale but still.

Junie dropped a tray of unserved glasses and let out a shocked squeak. Walker raised his phone instinctively until Piper snatched it from his hand.

“Not now, Walker,” she snapped.

Maeve found herself moving sideways, guiding Willa behind the table as Silas stepped forward from the shadows.

“Maeve,” he said, voice low but steady. “Stay clear. Let Cal do his job.”

He stood between her and the crowd, posture firm, gaze not leaving Truman’s crumpled form.

A light breeze lifted the lantern cords. Somewhere in the distance, someone’s dog barked, unaware of the shift.

And from the far end of the Green, the first firework bloomed, set off by Daisy’s timer—silent, gold and slow against the dark sky.

No one raised a glass.

Maeve waited until the crowd thinned—until the volunteers turned away, until Cal began organizing a cordon, until Everett started logging the spilled drink containers. Then she stepped quietly to the tasting table and examined the garnish tray.

The peppermint sprigs—once bright and curled with festive color—had turned. They were no longer merely wilted from the cold. They were blackened at the tips, the red bled to bruise-purple, the leaves curled in on themselves like they'd recoiled from touch.

She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the sprig she’d saved earlier—clipped from the same batch. Its color was still clear. Pale green veined with crimson. Alive.

The contrast struck her like a dropped stone in still water.

Whim appeared beside her, silent until he wasn’t. “The plant always knows who the poison touched.”

Maeve didn’t answer. She plucked one of the blackened sprigs from the garnish bowl and folded it into a cloth square from her satchel. Her fingers, chilled now, tingled faintly at the tips.

Above her, another firework burst in quiet bloom.

Maeve stood still beneath it, peppermint curling in her palm like a secret trying to unfold.

Chapter Five

“Start with the glass,” Cal murmured, crouching near the broken shards that shimmered under the tent’s edge like crushed ice.

Maeve stood back, arms crossed tightly over her coat, the lingering warmth of Willa’s tea long gone. The festive noise had drained from the Green, leaving behind only the occasional murmur and the crunch of footsteps over frost. The fairy lights still twinkled in the oaks, but they seemed colder now—like they were shining through smoke instead of mist.

Deputy Everett hovered beside Cal with a brown evidence pouch open, his gloved hands steady as he used tweezers to lift the curved rim of what had once been Truman’s toast glass. A smudge of golden liquid clung to the edge, thickening in the cold.

Maeve recognized the scent of the cyser even now: apples and honey, laced with something deeper—oak or clove. But beneath it, she thought she caught something sharper. Not quite floral. Not quite clean.

She shifted as Cal stood and brushed off his palms. “We’re not jumping to conclusions,” he said, his voice low but carrying. “But until we know what we’re looking at, I need to treat this like a possible poisoning.”

Maeve nodded. “I know.”

He glanced down at the glass in Everett’s pouch. “There was no sign of trauma. No seizure. No bruising or swelling visible. If it’s cardiac, we’ll know soon. If it’s something else... we’ll need to isolate what went into that glass and who handled it.”

“I saw Alicia near the prep table,” Maeve said. “She was setting up the placards an hour before the toast.”

Cal’s jaw flexed. “Noted. Who else was near it?”

“Junie. Mateo. Maybe Daisy—though I think she was troubleshooting the drone at the time.” She didn’t say Silas’ name. She refused to say it.

“Alright.” He looked around the circle of packed snow and wilted footprints.

Whim threaded between the crates and sat down beside Maeve, tail curling tightly around his paws.

“They’ll test the glass,” he said, his eyes slitted against the wind. “But glass doesn’t remember the hand that filled it.”

“Tell me it’s a glitch and not sabotage,” Daisy muttered, hunched over her tablet under the green canvas flap of the tech tent. Her fingers flicked across the screen, pulling up short bursts of video—slow pans of the Market Green, a firework blooming above the gazebo, Truman’s toast beginning in golden light.

But the segment from earlier—the footage of the VIP tent setup and bottle placements—was gone.

Maeve knelt beside her, watching the playback stutter and blink. “You’re sure it recorded?”

“I queued it. Transferred it. Filed the raw backup to the SD,” Daisy said. “This morning it was there. Now it’s like someone scrubbed it with a magnetized lemon.”

Alicia Hartnell stepped into the tent’s edge, clutching her oversized tote and speaking into a headset that didn’t appear to be connected to anything. “No, I already sent the branding assets—if you can’t download the vector file, that’s your issue.”

She paused mid-step as her heel hit something on the ground—a small black memory card, nestled near a rolled blanket.

Maeve watched it happen. The shift of weight. The soft snap.

“Oh,” Alicia said lightly, glancing down. “Was that important?”

Daisy’s jaw tensed. “That was the backup.”

“Well, these things are tiny. You shouldn’t leave them lying around.” Alicia stepped back, boots clicking on frost, and turned toward the Green without another word.

Maeve bent to pick up the cracked card, turning it over in her palm. The casing was split, one gold connector exposed like a broken tooth.

“She did that on purpose,” Daisy said flatly. “Or she really doesn’t believe in gravity.”

Whim peered out from beneath a canvas table and muttered, “She doesn’t like being filmed. Especially when she’s not the one directing.”

Maeve retreated to the far side of the garnish station, unwrapping the blackened peppermint sprig from the cloth she'd folded it in earlier. It had dried slightly in the cold, curling tighter at the edges, but the color had deepened to a bruised maroon. Not rot—something stranger.

She eased off one glove, fingers stinging from the cold, and pressed the bare leaf gently between her thumb and forefinger. A thin residue transferred to her skin—sticky and bitter, with a faint shimmer like pollen dust.

She sniffed it carefully. Not her usual peppermint sharpness. Instead, there was something almost medicinal. Burnt honey. Bitter bark.

Drawing her satchel closer, she opened the second garnish tray from earlier and compared it. These peppermint curls were untouched—still pale and waxy-green, perfectly curled with the chill.

She hovered the blackened sprig near them. No reaction.

But when she brought it near the table where Truman’s drink had been poured—just the air above the bottle trays—the bitterness grew sharper again.

Her hand tingled where the residue had soaked into her skin. She rewrapped the sprig quickly, careful not to smear more.

Whim stepped lightly across the table’s corner and sat beside her. “It bruised,” he said softly, “because something else did first.”

Maeve tucked the wrapped bundle deep into her satchel. “I don’t know what touched it.”

“Not what,” he said. “Who.”

Willa found her near the cider cart, where Junie was stacking mugs in uneven towers and muttering about broken handles.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Willa said, pressing another thermos into Maeve’s hands. “I figured you hadn’t eaten. Or stopped moving.”

Maeve took a sip without answering. The tea was the same blend as earlier—apple and star anise—but it tasted flatter now. More grounded.

“You’ve got your thinking face,” Willa added, settling on the bench beside her.

Maeve turned the thermos in her hands. “The plants reacted. Not just to the cold, but to something... else. Something that passed through the drink. The peppermint on Truman’s glass is blackened. The rest aren’t.”

Willa nodded slowly. “Do you think it’s what killed him?”

“I think it reacted to it,” Maeve said. “Which means something was there. Something that shouldn’t have been.”

She didn’t mention the bitter resin, or the way it clung.

Willa reached over and rested a gloved hand lightly on Maeve’s knee. “You always notice what matters. Just trust that you’ll see it again when it does.”

Maeve looked out at the nearly empty Green. The lights still glimmered, but the warmth had gone out of them.

She stood slowly, gathering her satchel.

Whim, keeping pace beside her, flicked his tail. “Wilted peppermint doesn’t lie,” he said. “But liars always think the garnish won’t remember.”

Maeve didn’t speak. She simply pressed the bundle deeper into her bag, where the peppermint’s weight felt heavier than a sprig had any right to be.

As they walked toward the path that curved back toward Vinehill Rise, the scent of crushed frost and citrus hung in the air. A celebration gone quiet. A new year that hadn’t quite begun.

Chapter Six

“Don’t suppose you brought coffee instead?” Cal didn’t look up as Maeve stepped into the cramped front room of the sheriff’s office, but his tone was drier than usual.

“I thought you could use something without caffeine,” Maeve said, setting the thermos of rosemary-chamomile on the edge of his desk. “I also thought you’d have slept by now.”

Cal exhaled through his nose, the gesture somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. The office still held the faint smell of cedar polish and radiator heat, but it had acquired something sharper since last night: the chemical edge of cleaning solution and stress.

He gestured to the open folder in front of him. A single sheet of lined paper, neatly torn from a leather-bound notebook, lay atop it. The handwriting was exact, slanted, and underlined in red pen.

“He logged tasting impressions for each sample,” Cal said. “Mostly positive. But this—” he tapped the middle paragraph, “—this one stands out.”

Maeve stepped closer. The note was dated three days prior.

‘Unpleasant surprise in Merrick’s batch. Excessively sweet profile not matching past submissions. Unfiltered appearance a possible cover for additive viscosity. If proven, will need to address publicly. Integrity of the Toast is at stake.’

“He thought Silas doctored the honey?” Maeve asked, reading it again.

“Or wanted people to think so,” Cal replied. “He was laying groundwork.”

“Silas would never⁠—”

Cal held up a hand. “I’m not saying he did. I’m saying this is what we have. Truman’s notes. A private glass with a garnish we now know reacted to something toxic. A drink no one else tasted. And one supplier whose name is in the only written accusation we’ve found.”

Maeve bit the inside of her cheek. The words on the page weren’t evidence. But they echoed.

“We’re testing every bottle he brought,” Cal added. “And cross-referencing it with what’s left of the honey Silas submitted to the tasting committee. If there’s a match, we’ll know soon.”

Maeve nodded once and turned to leave. But she paused at the door, fingers tightening on the strap of her satchel.

“Plant magic isn’t admissible in court,” she said. “But it’s not the only thing that knows when something’s off. So do people. If you’re going to rule Silas out... do it because it’s right. Not because you want to be fair.”

Cal looked up then. The tiredness in his eyes was edged with something harder. “Right now, being fair means treating everyone like they could’ve done it.”

Maeve walked out before she could argue with that.

Whim waited on the top step outside, tail curled tight. “They’ll test the jars,” he said as she passed. “But tests don’t measure what pride poisons.”

The rhythmic rasp of sandpaper was the only sound in the workshop. Silas stood at the back workbench, sleeves pushed to his elbows, smoothing a length of oak with long, deliberate strokes. The shavings curled away like pale ribbons, scattering across the floor.

Maeve lingered in the doorway a moment before stepping inside. The scent of beeswax and cedar surrounded her, grounding and familiar.

“I read the notes,” she said softly.

Silas didn’t look up. His strokes continued, even and controlled.

“Truman wrote that your honey was compromised. That it had been cut with something. Corn syrup or... something sweeter.”

His shoulders shifted almost imperceptibly.

“He claimed he tested it,” Maeve continued. “That he was going to make it public.”

“He did test it,” Silas said at last. His voice was low, steady. “Or said he did.”

Maeve moved closer. The tension in the room was like pressure before a storm—dry, heavy, just on the edge of shifting.

“Did you argue?” she asked.

Silas finally set down the sandpaper. His fingers, though calloused, moved with the precision of someone used to shaping delicate things.

“We disagreed. That’s not illegal.” He wiped his hands on a rag and turned toward her. “He wanted me to acknowledge a ‘quality control lapse.’ Offered to help me ‘recover credibility’ if I agreed to cut him in on the sales from the VIP batch.”

Maeve stared at him. “He tried to blackmail you?”

“He didn’t call it that.” Silas leaned back against the bench, arms crossed. “He called it a brand alignment opportunity.”

“Did you threaten to expose him?”

“No.” A pause. “I didn’t want to play his game. I refused. That’s all.”

“But you didn’t deny the results.”

His jaw tensed. “Because I don’t have to defend something I didn’t do.”

Maeve opened her mouth, then closed it again. It wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t an answer either.

Whim’s voice flicked through her thoughts like a leaf on wind: You can’t prove you’re innocent by staying quiet. Only by staying honest.

“Silas,” she said carefully, “you don’t have to protect your reputation. But you might need to protect your name. And your freedom.”

He didn’t respond. His gaze had shifted back to the wood grain on the bench, as though it could offer something safer than her eyes.

Maeve left without pressing further. But the air outside felt colder than before.

Maeve hadn’t meant to pass by Town Hall again, but her route to meet Piper took her along the flagstone path behind the public library, where the street dipped toward the back steps of the Historical Society. Frost still clung to the metal railing, untouched by the pale afternoon sun.

She paused as she spotted Cal on the side lawn, speaking in low tones with Everett near the locked staff entrance. Between them, Everett held a small padded case, the kind Maeve had seen used for delicate lab samples. The words chain of custody drifted clearly on the cold air.

Cal looked up mid-sentence and caught sight of her.

“Give me a minute, Everett,” he said, already striding toward her as the deputy nodded and turned away.

“I’m not defending him,” Cal said before she could say anything. “I’m doing what I’d do for anyone. Follow the evidence.”

The heels of Maeve’s boots crunched on the salt scattered across the library walkway. “But you’re not just anyone to him. You’re family. That has weight.”

“That’s why I’m staying out of it as long as I can,” Cal replied. “Everett’s logging the evidence chain. We’re doing it by the book.”

“I’m not asking you to throw the book out. I’m asking you not to treat him like he’s already guilty.”

Cal slowed near the Historical Society steps. “You think I want this?”

“I think you’re trying so hard not to be biased that you’re pushing him harder than anyone else.”

Cal looked at her then, the weariness in his face sharpened by something darker. “You think you know Silas,” he said. “But I grew up with him. I know how long he can hold a grudge. I’ve seen him shut people out for weeks over a broken tool or a missed word. And if Truman really threatened his livelihood? His reputation? I’d understand if he was furious.”

Maeve stopped walking.

“I know fury,” she said. “It doesn’t kill a man in public with poison.”

“I didn’t say it did.” Cal adjusted his jacket and turned away. “But if I find out he had something to hide, you need to be ready for that, Maeve. Because I’m not going to soften the truth just because it makes everyone uncomfortable.”

He walked into the building, leaving her on the steps in the rising wind.

The greenhouse was quiet when she returned, save for the low creak of the glass panes and the rustle of rosemary in the corner bed.

Maeve lit a single lantern and set it on the bench near the south wall. She pulled the cloth bundle from her satchel and unwrapped the peppermint sprig with care. It was still blackened, still curled. Still silent.

She placed it gently inside a clear glass jar and sealed the lid. Her fingers brushed the rim before she pulled away, and the faint stickiness clung to her skin like guilt.

Whim padded in through the side door and leapt onto the worktable.

“You want to believe in people who don’t trust themselves,” he said. “That’s the most dangerous kind.”

Maeve didn’t answer. She stared at the peppermint until the shadows blurred its edges.

Outside, the first stars had begun to appear. The kind that don’t show up until after frost has hardened the ground. The kind that mark a new year with cold clarity.

She wasn’t sure who she was protecting anymore—Silas, or herself.

Chapter Seven

“Don’t say anything yet,” Junie called from behind the tea bar. “I want to guess what you came in for.”

Maeve paused just inside the Lavender Lantern, blinking as her glasses fogged from the warmth. The café still carried the faint aroma of cinnamon bark, dried orange peel, and toasted tea leaves. Sunlight filtered through the front windows, landing in slanted gold across the mismatched tables and the chalkboard that today read: When truth steeps too long, even sweetness burns.

Junie leaned halfway over the counter, squinting theatrically. Her copper hair was coiled in its usual messy knot, fastened with what appeared to be a dessert fork. “You look like someone in need of clarity. Or revenge. Maybe both.”

“I’ll take whichever pairs best with a slightly ruined morning,” Maeve replied, unwinding her scarf. “Preferably something warm.”

Junie turned to rummage among the tins.

Behind her, Dorian Quinn methodically polished the row of glass tea jars, his back to them both. His posture was perfect, as always—shirt sleeves rolled precisely, dark suspenders crisp against his charcoal vest.

“You’re early,” he said, voice level. “We’re not running tastings today.”

“I’m not here for a tasting,” Maeve said, stepping forward. “I wanted to ask about the Midnight Toast. About your role. Or lack of it.”

Dorian’s movements didn’t pause, but the cloth in his hand slowed. “Like I said, I had no role. So there’s not much to discuss.”

Junie reappeared with a small ceramic pot and two cups. “Earl Grey with lemon balm. Calming but focused.” She glanced between them, then offered the teapot to Maeve. “I’ll bring out a slice of the almond oat cake.”

“That’s not necessary,” Dorian said, but Junie had already disappeared into the kitchen.

Maeve sipped her tea. The lemon balm rounded out the bitterness nicely.

“You were listed as a presenter,” she said. “For a tea pairing with Truman’s cyser.”

Dorian selected a tin of oolong and inspected the label. “I was, until Truman decided the drink was dramatic enough on its own.”

“That’s not what Junie said,” Maeve answered, keeping her voice even. “She mentioned you had prepared a special blend.”

He replaced the tin with precision. “Preparation is not commitment. I experiment constantly. Not every idea needs an audience.”

“Did he explain why he pulled your tastings?”

Dorian shrugged. “He said the pairing diluted the drama of the drink.”

“That sounds like something he’d say.”

“I didn’t contest it,” Dorian continued. “The Lantern doesn’t rely on coattails. We are not a spectacle café.”

“But it still stung,” Maeve said, carefully watching his face. “Especially if you’d been preparing something unique.”

His jaw moved, just once, before settling again.

Junie reemerged, a plate balanced in each hand. “He steeped it with dried cherry blossoms and orange peel,” she said brightly. “It was delicate and a little smoky—beautiful with the honey-forward batch. I tasted it.”

Dorian shot her a look that wasn’t quite reprimand but wasn’t pleased either.

Junie ignored it. “He worked on it for three weeks.”

Maeve set down her cup. “So, when Truman cut your slot, it wasn’t just business.”

Dorian finally looked at her.

There was no fire in his expression—only ice. “Truman Loft curated events like he curated yeast. With too much attention to what he could harvest and too little care for what grew naturally. I knew that going in. I allowed myself to think this time might be different. That’s on me.”

Maeve waited.

When he said nothing more, she nodded. “Thank you for the tea.”

“Of course,” he said, turning back to his jars. “Let me know if you need a calming blend. We have several that pair nicely with impossible questions.”

The sunlight in the front window had shifted by the time Maeve rose to leave. As she turned toward the exit, a folder half-tucked under a side table caught her eye—left beside the newspaper stack and a container of raw sugar cubes.

It was the festival ledger.

The corner page stuck out at an angle, revealing neat lines and a few typed headers: Vendor Invoices – Decorative Materials and Hospitality. One column marked as “Pending.” Another with a sticky note bearing Truman’s initials.

She glanced around, then logged the details in her notebook.

At the register, Junie was reorganizing the pastry basket. “Sorry about Dorian,” she said in a low voice. “He hates feeling embarrassed. Even worse if someone notices.”

“Did he pay for all of the event supplies himself?” Maeve asked as she slipped her notebook back into her satchel.

Junie blinked. “Mostly, yeah. Said he didn’t want anyone from the committee poking around in his margins.”

Maeve nodded slowly.

That kind of control wasn’t just about aesthetics. It was about fear. And possibly protection.

Maeve cut past the bare-limbed dogwoods along Willowmere’s east path and traced the slow bend of the riverbank up to Vinehill Rise. The air had warmed slightly by mid-afternoon, but the ground still held the crisp edge of winter. Her boots left shallow marks in the silty frost, and the water murmured low and brown beside her.

Dorian’s indifference wasn’t real. She’d felt it in his posture, in the quickness of his reply when Junie spoke. His ego wasn’t bruised. It was hiding something more vulnerable. Maybe shame. Maybe loss.

And the ledger—buried beneath café sugar and gossip—told its own story. A story with incomplete payments and solitary decisions. A story someone might not want audited too closely.

Whim caught up to her near the last bend in the trail, tail swaying low.

“Not every motive is born in hate,” he said as he hopped to the wooden fence post. “Some are pressed into paper and filed under regret.”

Maeve didn’t answer. But she knew she’d be checking the numbers in that ledger before long.

Chapter Eight

“You’re wasting ginger on me,” Silas said without turning around.

Maeve paused halfway up the slope to his apiary shed, wind tugging at the waxed paper bundle in her hand. The scent of pine and crushed leaves was strong up here—sharper in the morning cold, with the bee boxes in neat rows like low altars dusted with frost.

“I didn’t bring it as a bribe,” she said. “I brought it because it’s warming, and you look like you haven’t eaten since the toast.”

He was crouched beside a cracked wooden panel, bees quiet in their winter slumber beneath the hive lid. The shed behind him was open, a lantern lit on a hook inside, casting flickers against coiled tools and jars of beeswax.

“I’ve been busy,” he said, reaching for a plane and running it across the edge of the board.

Maeve stepped closer, crouching to set the ginger packet on the upturned crate beside him. “So I’ve heard. Not about bees, though.”

Silas stilled. He didn’t look at her.

“They’re saying your honey was tampered with,” she continued. “That Truman had test results.”

“I saw them,” Silas said quietly. “He handed me a report the day before the toast.”

Maeve’s pulse quickened. “And?”

“He said it showed elevated glucose—signs of adulteration. Corn syrup, maybe. Claimed I must’ve cut it.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

She waited, but he didn’t elaborate. His sanding resumed, rhythmic and slow.

“Did you ask where the results came from? What lab? What he tested it against?”

“I asked,” Silas said. “He smiled and said, ‘A friend in quality control.’”

Maeve rose to her feet. “Why didn’t you say anything? You could’ve called him out. Told Cal.”

“I didn’t want to give him more attention than he already took,” Silas replied. “He wanted a reaction. He wasn’t going to get one from me.”

She folded her arms. “Except now you’re under suspicion. Truman’s notes accuse you directly. Cal’s looking at the jars. The town is starting to buzz.”

Silas finally met her eyes. His were tired, but steady.

“I’m not hiding anything,” he said. “I’m protecting someone.”

Maeve’s voice dropped. “Who?”

He stood, brushing sawdust from his palms. “That’s not something I can share.”

“You think that’s going to stop people from assuming the worst?”

“I don’t care what people assume.”

“You should,” she said, more sharply than she meant to. “Because the silence is doing the damage for you.”

Silas looked away.

Maeve left the ginger on the crate and walked back down the hill without another word.

As she trudged down the slope, boots scuffing frost from the packed earth, Whim emerged from the blackberry thicket and trotted beside her in silence for a few paces.

Then, lightly, “You’re not wrong, you know. He just doesn’t know how to be helped yet.”

“Should I cry or hug you for that?”

“Tears make for wet fur, which is something I avoid like bees around clover.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

Whim said nothing, simply kept pace with her as she went back into town.

Willa opened the side door of Sunshine Books with her elbow, balancing a stack of returns and a steaming mug between her hands. “Don’t ask me how long Daisy’s been in the beanbag nest. I’m only feeding it.”

Inside, the bookstore was warm and quiet, spiced with cardamom tea and the faint tang of old pages. The front lights were dimmed to “stormy reader” setting, as Willa called it, and the back room was lit with string lights looped around repurposed driftwood shelves.

Maeve followed her through, stepping around a cardboard cutout of a medieval knight labeled Staff Picks Enforcer, and paused just inside the doorway to the breakroom.

Daisy was curled up inside a cocoon of beanbags, scarves, and a tattered fleece blanket patterned with animated frogs in sunglasses. A bowl of cereal sat balanced on her knees. Over-ear headphones pulsed faintly with lo-fi beats.

“She hasn’t said a complete sentence since New Year’s morning,” Willa whispered. “She’s decompressing.”

“She deserves it,” Maeve whispered back. “Her memory card got stepped on by someone who probably charges people to breathe the same air.”

“I didn’t say I was proud,” Daisy said from within the nest, not opening her eyes. “But I’m surviving. Please proceed as if I’m not here.”

Willa led Maeve to the tea station and poured from a thermos marked Spiced Equilibrium. “I saved the good blend for you. I figured you needed it.”

Maeve wrapped her hands around the mug. “He’s still not talking.”

“Silas?”

She nodded.

“He told me Truman’s lab report accused his honey of being cut. But he won’t say anything else. He just keeps saying he’s protecting someone.”

Willa sat across from her at the work table, folding a cloth napkin into triangles. “You think he’s lying?”

“I think he’s hiding,” Maeve said. “And I don’t know if it’s out of loyalty, or guilt, or something in between.”

“The first two usually overlap.”

Maeve traced the rim of the mug with her fingertip. “He said it’s not about him. But if that’s true, then who is it about?”

Willa didn’t answer immediately. When she did, her voice was soft.

“That’s how you sound when you’ve been betrayed before,” she said. “And you’re trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Which he should know by now.”

“Men,” Willa said simply as began boxing a shipment of herbarium journals. “I had someone ask this morning if Silas was the one being investigated. They phrased it like a joke, but you know how those land in Willowmere.”

Maeve leaned against the archway beside the shop’s nonfiction display. A local author’s memoir on truffle hunting sat beside a guide to historic pickling techniques.

“It’s spreading?” she asked.

“Like woodsmoke on wet wool,” Willa said. “Slow, but it sticks.”

Maeve folded her arms. “The town loves Silas. They’ve known him forever.”

“That won’t stop them from speculating. Especially not when they can’t explain what happened.”

Maeve thought about the peppermint sprig in its jar, the bitter stain it left on her gloves. “They don’t want facts. They want a shape to blame.”

Willa glanced up from her box. “What shape do you see?”

“I see someone who won’t let me help him.”

“Sometimes people mistake being quiet for being safe. But that silence gives everyone else room to tell their version of the story.”

Maeve didn’t answer. The silence between them wasn’t painful—it was the kind that let you listen to your own thoughts.

“I want to believe him,” she said finally. “But I can’t protect him from himself.”

“No,” Willa said. “But you can keep paying attention. That’s what you’re good at.”

Maeve walked home through the path behind the library, where frost still clung to the edges of ivy and the river whispered somewhere below the ridge. Her satchel weighed heavy on her shoulder—not from contents, but from the ache of unfinished questions.

Silas’s refusal to name who he was protecting was beginning to feel less like loyalty and more like a wall. Not just to the town, but to her.

She stepped over a root that split the path, crunching gravel beneath her boots. The bare branches overhead rattled faintly in the breeze.

Whim padded beside her from the underbrush, his white-tipped tail twitching like a compass needle.

“Sometimes loyalty ferments faster than truth,” he said. “That’s when it turns bitter.”

Maeve didn’t respond. She knew he was right.

But she also knew she wasn’t ready to stop asking questions. Not when someone had slipped poison into the new year. Not when Silas Merrick was choosing silence over trust.

And not when peppermint still remembered what he wouldn’t say.

Chapter Nine

Piper didn’t look up from her screen when Maeve knocked and let herself into the sunroom.

“This is a deadline space now,” Piper said, gesturing vaguely at the chair across from her. “So if you’re here to ask if I’m coming to the committee wrap-up meeting, I’m not. I’m pretending New Year’s never happened.”

Maeve sat anyway, brushing a wisp of rosemary off the windowsill. The sunroom had once been Walker’s idea of an indoor jungle—succulent cuttings, vintage comic books, and a mystery fern that never thrived. But Piper had since claimed it, and the space had transformed into her de facto workspace: whiteboard leaning against the wall, spreadsheets taped to the window glass for natural backlighting, and a neat tray of color-coded thumb drives labeled like museum pieces.

Maeve waved her hand at the desk. “And yet, you seem to be working on festival things.”

“You caught me. I’m organizing vendor thank-you packets,” Piper said, eyes fixed on her screen. “Which would’ve gone out yesterday if someone hadn’t uploaded the address list as a PDF instead of a spreadsheet. I’m trying to pretend Truman’s not the one who made that decision.”

Maeve stepped further in, setting her satchel down by the foot of the table. “I wanted to ask you about him.”

Piper gave a half-exhale and tapped something onto her keyboard. “Here it comes.”

“You were tense around him the night of the toast.”

“I’m tense around people when they ask for files they shouldn’t have.”

Maeve leaned in slightly. “What did he want?”

“Metrics. Donor behavior. A peek at demographic cross-tabs. Things you could pull from a sponsorship survey if you knew what questions to ask.”

“And did you give him anything?”

“No. I told him the data was proprietary. That it was collected under a closed-use clause.”

“But he kept pushing.”

Piper hesitated. “He offered me... something. Consulting. Said I could help launch a ‘rural insights division.’ Sounded like a very shiny balloon with no string.”

Maeve nodded, watching the subtle tension in Piper’s posture. “You said no.”

“I didn’t say yes.”

“Piper.”

Piper leaned back, rubbing the base of her neck. Her hair was pulled into a practical twist, and Maeve noticed a small ink smudge along her left thumb.

“He wanted access to the sponsorship metrics,” Piper said. “Donor conversion data, newsletter engagement.”

Maeve tilted her head. “He wasn’t just curious.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Piper agreed, tone clipped. “He was persistent. But not... not awful. Just one of those people who thinks if he keeps asking the same thing with new words, eventually you’ll forget why you said no in the first place.”

Maeve crossed her arms. “Did he offer you anything?”

Piper’s fingers hovered above the keyboard. “He floated the idea of a consulting role. Something light. Flexible hours, remote. Help him grow a few community-focused product launches.”

Maeve raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“I didn’t say yes to that either. I also didn’t say no. Mostly I didn’t want to give him a reason to start making calls to people I haven’t told I’m staying in Willowmere.”

Piper’s voice dipped on the last sentence, and Maeve caught it—a sliver of something tender, unfinished.

“You think someone else gave him what he wanted?” Maeve asked.

“I think,” Piper said slowly, “that if someone did, they didn’t know what they were giving him. He was good at asking like it didn’t matter. Like it was a footnote.”

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it. “Fern Cassidy. She wants to talk… I don’t know what. If you need to ask me anything else, make it quick or make it tomorrow.”

Maeve stood as Piper punched up Fern’s number and waved goodbye. She didn’t get the sense that Piper was lying. But she also didn’t believe she’d heard the whole truth.

Walker’s office, technically the editorial command center of The Willowmere Weekly Whisper, occupied a tiny office above Sunshine Books complete with mismatched folding chairs, one potted fern trying its best in a sunless corner, and two ring lights leaning against a secondhand filing cabinet that still had a faint “Dentist—1993” label stuck to it. A small camcorder on a flexible tripod perched like a gargoyle on the window ledge.

Maeve pushed past the door with its sign – The Willowmere Weekly Office Hours by Appointment or Luck – to find Walker hunched over his desk, typing in fits and starts, the heels of his palms braced like he was holding the keyboard back from attacking him. He had a headset slung around his neck, one side patched with floral washi tape, and a coffee mug that read Caffeine Is My Deadline sitting untouched beside him.

“Tell me you’re here to ghostwrite,” he muttered, not looking up. “I’m about ten adjectives short of interesting.”

Maeve stepped in and closed the door behind her. “I thought you liked making things up.”

“I do. But apparently, ‘collapse,’ ‘mystery,’ and ‘community tremor’ are too dramatic for a front-page story unless someone actually sees a ghost. I’m working on the phrasing.”

She scanned the cluttered desktop. “What’s the headline?”

Walker rubbed his eyes. “The Toast That Soured. Unless you’ve got something punchier.”

“Depends. Are you reporting, or are you speculating?”

“I’m trying to thread the needle between local journalism and tourism damage control.” He leaned back in his chair. “And before you ask, yes. I know Truman was circling Piper like a vulture with a business card.”

Maeve pulled up the extra chair across from him and sat. “She told me he offered her a consulting gig.”

“He called it an insight partnership,” Walker said. “Said she had ‘market gold’ in her spreadsheets and the kind of brain that could ‘redefine rural consumer analytics.’ I stopped listening after that.”

Maeve studied him. Walker’s sarcasm was sharp as ever, but there was something dull under it. He wasn’t animated. He was unsettled.

“You worried about her?” she asked.

“I’m always worried about her,” he said, pushing back from the desk slightly. “But yeah. Truman knew how to get people to second-guess their own boundaries. Piper’s good at saying no, but not when someone’s making her feel useful.”

Maeve nodded. “Did he get access?”

Walker hesitated. “Not directly. But she was working out of my system, and I think he saw enough to extrapolate. He left a notepad here last week with metric calculations scribbled in the margins. I thought it was weird—he never took notes during meetings. Now I wonder if he was copying her phrasing.”

Maeve’s pulse ticked up.

“You still have it?”

Walker reached for a stack of half-folded newsletters and tugged a corner loose. “Here. Enjoy the ravings of a man who thought demographic targeting was sexy.”

Maeve sat by the front window, the stack of Truman’s jottings in her lap. Most of the notes were scribbles—brand taglines, wine-pairing buzzwords, reminders about bottle counts. But one sheet caught her eye: Truman’s spidery handwriting beneath the Whisper masthead, his red pen circling a line Piper had used in a grant pitch draft.

Brooks & Berries buyer behavior reflects deep psychological seasonal triggers.

Underlined twice.

Whim stretched across the windowsill, tail twitching slightly.

“Even the paper’s nervous,” he said, watching her sort through the pages. “Someone spilled ambition on it.”

Maeve ran her fingers over the corner of the note.

Truman hadn’t just been opportunistic—he’d been planning something long-term. Something with financial and strategic stakes. He hadn’t needed Piper’s files. He just needed her language, her logic, her insight. And maybe someone else to help him implement it.

She folded the page carefully and tucked it into her coat.

Walker was still at his desk, head bowed over a draft.

“Thanks,” Maeve said. “For this. And for not pretending this is normal.”

“I’m not as grumpy as I seem,” he said, glancing up. “But this? This is the first time in years I’ve seen Piper rattled. And I don’t like it.”

Maeve nodded and let herself out, boots thudding softly down the stairs.

Something about Truman’s plans was bigger than his ego. And Piper, careful and brilliant as she was, might have been closer to it than she realized.

Chapter Ten

“You can’t copyright a vibe,” Alicia said, without looking up from her phone.

Maeve stood beside the event signage bin, coat still buttoned against the wind that rolled over the Market Green. Across from her, Alicia Hartnell crouched beside a banner tube, one boot braced elegantly against the side, headphones looped around her neck like jewelry.

“I wasn’t asking about your vibe,” Maeve replied. “I was asking about the design rights for the Midnight Toast posters. Specifically, the ones Truman displayed without your permission.”

Alicia looked up, eyes cool behind dark sunglasses that reflected the early afternoon light in silver slats. “He didn’t have permission. But he had gall. That tends to work about as well.”

“You reported it?”

“To whom?” Alicia stood, dusting off her coat. “The Willowmere Chamber of Design Integrity? I made noise. I filed a placeholder trademark claim. But he’d already printed the materials by then. Ideas are fair game in the festival world, Ms. Everhart. The person who says it louder wins.”

The poster she was rolling up still bore the tagline Toast to What Rises, swirled over an illustrated apple glass surrounded by gold bubbles. Alicia had taste. That much was clear.

“And when he cut you from the announcement?” Maeve asked.

Alicia’s fingers tightened slightly on the banner roll. “It confirmed what I already suspected. He wasn’t interested in partnership—only polish.”

Maeve let the silence hang. Alicia filled it like someone accustomed to an audience.

“Don’t mistake me,” she continued. “I didn’t like the man. I also didn’t kill him. I’d rather ruin someone in plain sight.”

“By sabotaging a banner printer?”

Alicia let out a faint exhale, neither laugh nor denial. “It jammed dramatically. The timing was unfortunate.”

Maeve stepped closer, catching a faint chemical tang—printer ink, sharp and fresh despite the chill. The tote slung over Alicia’s shoulder bore flecks of gold-toned powder and paper fiber clinging to the seams.

“You said Truman borrowed your concepts.”

“He did more than borrow. He lifted the palette, the phrase, the composition structure—and then delivered it with that smug little flourish of his, like he was doing me a favor by using it at all.”

“Enough to confront him?”

“I confronted him every time he asked for a new draft. Every time he tried to pretend the ‘brand vision’ was mutual.”

Maeve studied her a moment longer. Alicia was self-possessed, articulate, and visibly unbothered. Which, Maeve had learned, often meant someone had practiced the response.

“So you sabotaged the banners. You argued with him. You were angry.”

Alicia smiled faintly. “And I left with my shoes clean and my record intact. Willowmere doesn’t have a security system, Ms. Everhart. But if it did, you’d find my movements weren’t exactly covert.”

“You didn’t stay for the toast.”

“I don’t stay where I’m not appreciated.”

Maeve nodded slowly. “And you didn’t mind that he died before launching the design he took from you?”

“I didn’t say that.” Alicia slung the tote onto her shoulder. “I said I didn’t kill him.”

The wind picked up as Alicia walked away, scattering the corner of a printed flyer that had been caught under the crate. Maeve picked it up, brushing gold ink from her gloves. A swirl of residue clung to the fabric—a shade too familiar.

She turned the flyer over. The typeface matched the VIP invitations, not Alicia’s version. Truman had modified her work.

Rebranded the rebrand.

Maeve tucked the paper into her coat and started toward Vinehill Rise, thinking she’d corner Mateo before the day got away from her. If Alicia had nothing to hide, maybe Truman’s former partner would prove less slippery.

She was halfway down the side path near the old orchard when Whim appeared.

He dropped from a split cedar fencepost with a thud too graceful for something with his midsection and turned his head sharply toward her.

“You’re going the wrong way,” he said.

Maeve stopped walking. “I wasn’t aware we’d scheduled a detour.”

“You were headed for someone who doesn’t know anything,” he said. “But I found something that remembers.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Are we talking plants or evidence?”

“Both,” Whim said. “But one’s easier to talk to.”

He turned and began trotting down the trail that curved behind the Market Green, toward the cluster of tents and bins that hadn’t yet been broken down from the festival’s final day.

Maeve hesitated only a moment.

Whatever patience she’d had for polite questioning had evaporated sometime after Alicia’s third evasion. If Whim thought something—or someone—was ready to be found, she wasn’t going to waste another hour asking permission.

The wind shifted again as Maeve turned toward Vinehill Rise, her thoughts circling Alicia’s dismissiveness like a vine around a post. The scent of printer ink still lingered on her gloves, mixing oddly with the cold sweetness of peppermint that clung to her coat pocket.

She reached the edge of the side trail near the bakery, half-considering whether she should catch Mateo at the inn before the day slipped further into dusk.

Then Whim darted into her path.

He trotted in from a row of trimmed boxwood, ears alert, tail stiff with purpose.

“Stop playing tag with suspects,” he said. “You’re looking in the wrong direction.”

Maeve halted. “Are you planning to elaborate, or is this another riddle where I guess which woodland creature you’re channeling?”

Whim didn’t blink. “You want answers? Follow me.”

He slipped back into the trees without waiting for agreement.

Maeve hesitated, hand brushing the strap of her satchel. The last time she’d followed him off a trail, she’d ended up ankle-deep in a marsh and neck-deep in trouble. But Whim wasn’t just aimless. Not when he moved like this.

She took one more look toward Vinehill, then turned and followed the cat into the frost-rimmed woods, her boots crunching over damp needles as the trees closed in behind them.

Chapter Eleven

“You could at least tell me what I’m looking for,” Maeve muttered as she stepped over a tangle of blackberry roots.

Whim didn’t answer. He trotted ahead of her through the scrub at the base of Vinehill Rise, weaving with purpose through the low firs that fringed Silas’s land. His tail flicked like a metronome, keeping time with her uncertainty.

The sun had dropped behind the ridge, leaving the air blue with shadow. In the distance, the pale roof of Silas’s workshop glinted faintly through the bare branches. Beyond it, the pickup truck sat parked beneath the alder, crusted with a rime of dried road salt and a dusting of pine needles.

“You’re going to make me open his truck, aren’t you,” she said, more to herself than the cat.

Whim reached the edge of the clearing and stopped. “I led you here,” he said. “Whether you look is your own fault.”

Maeve crossed the final stretch slowly, boots crunching on frost-stiff ground. The truck was cold to the touch, and the faintest trace of woodsmoke hung in the air from the nearby chimney. The passenger side door creaked when she opened it. The cab was clean—Silas-clean—spare gloves on the dash, coil of baling twine behind the seat, a thermos in the cup holder labeled only with a smudge.

She circled to the back.

The toolbox sat across the rear bed, bolted in place behind the cab window. It was made of brushed metal gone dull with age, the kind that looked like it had been passed down from one tradesman to another. The lock wasn’t engaged.

Maeve hesitated. Her hands, already chilled, gripped the handle anyway.

The lid lifted with a groan.

Inside, among coiled wire, beeswax sticks, and an oil-smudged wrench set, lay a manila envelope tucked beneath a folded cloth. A hand-written label marked the flap in familiar, over-confident script:

Merrick – FINAL COPY. For your peace of mind.

She pulled it out carefully. Beneath it was a second, smaller sheet—torn, folded twice, Truman’s handwriting unmistakable.

She opened that first.

Silas,

This version’s for your file. Public release says something else. You can always change the story—just depends what you’re willing to pay. You have three days to get me what we discussed.

– T

Maeve sat back on her heels, breath catching.

She opened the envelope.

Inside was a full lab report—real, crisp, bearing the seal of a reputable local testing firm. Silas’s honey sample ID was listed clearly. The results showed no sign of artificial sugars or corn syrup derivatives. No additives. No contaminants.

Clean.

Maeve reread the values twice to be sure.

Truman had lied. Not misunderstood. Not misrepresented. He’d fabricated a different report, one he could wield to force Silas into some unspoken deal. It wasn’t just manipulation. It was leverage.

The peppermint sprig in her pocket gave off a slow, rising heat.

Not a burn—more like an ember waking beneath her palm.

She reached for it, lifted it gently in its cloth wrap, and brought it near the envelope. The warmth pulsed again—steady, affirming, like a breath held too long finally exhaled.

Maeve closed the toolbox and stepped back.

Maeve sat on the low step outside the workshop, the report and Truman’s note spread across her knees.

She knew what she was looking at. A threat disguised as an offer. Leverage, not science.

The report proved Silas had done nothing wrong—at least not with the honey. But the note... the note was another matter.

It was motive. And the fact that Silas had hidden both the threat and the clean report didn’t point to guilt—but it didn’t look like innocence either.

Whim appeared beside her, tail brushing the step as he sat. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

“I don’t know what to do with this,” Maeve said softly, voice catching in her throat.

Whim flicked his ear. “You wanted truth. This is what it smells like. Heavy. Damp. With splinters.”

She wrapped the papers and peppermint again and tucked them carefully into her satchel.

Cal wouldn’t thank her for holding them back.

But showing him the note now—without context, without certainty—would only push him closer to a conclusion she wasn’t sure she believed.

“I believe Silas didn’t do it,” she said aloud.

Whim didn’t reply.

“I also believe he should’ve told someone what Truman was doing.”

Still no answer.

“And I have no idea what I’d do if I saw Silas right now, either.”

Whim blinked slowly. “That’s because you haven’t stopped thinking like someone who wants to be fair. Fairness is muddy. Try thinking like someone who wants the next answer.”

Maeve exhaled and stood, tightening her scarf.

“I’ll start with Mateo.”

Chapter Twelve

“I think you’ll find him in the parlor,” said Tamsin Oakes, wrapping a dish towel around her hands. “He’s been reading the same page for twenty minutes, so I doubt it’s the plot that has him so still.”

Maeve stepped into the entryway of the Willow Inn, brushing off the last of the wind. The ivy that climbed the eaves rattled slightly in the breeze, its roots sunk deep into the clapboard siding like the inn had grown there naturally. Inside, the tiled floor of the lobby gleamed with fresh wax, and the scent of beeswax and lemon oil hung in the air like a polite hello.

Tamsin moved behind the old oak reception desk, where a porcelain dish of biscotti sat beside a jar of dried lavender stems.

“He’s been nothing but respectful,” Tamsin continued, voice soft, “but I know practiced quiet when I see it. Polite doesn’t mean peaceful.”

Maeve nodded once and followed the warmth toward the parlor, a room stitched together in cozy disorder—mismatched chairs arranged around a low hearth, books in uneven stacks on a side table, and two well-worn rugs layered underfoot like a nest of intentions.

Mateo Sebastian sat by the fire.

He was dressed in a navy sweater and dark wool trousers, legs crossed, a small notebook open in his lap. One hand held a teacup he hadn’t lifted. The other rested lightly on the page as if to keep it from drifting away.

Maeve paused just inside the doorway.

“I hope I’m not interrupting.”

He looked up, then set the teacup down with slow precision. “You’re never interrupting. You’re investigating. Which is a different kind of invitation.”

Maeve stepped closer and took the armchair opposite his. “I came to ask about Truman. And about you.”

Mateo closed the notebook and rested it gently on the table between them. “A reasonable combination.”

“I understand you and Truman had history.”

“Everyone has history. Ours just came with fermentation tanks and lawyer fees.” His smile was slight but not guarded.

“You said you reconciled.”

Mateo nodded. “Several months ago. He reached out. I was wary. But we met for lunch in McMinnville. Talked about old mistakes. He was still Truman, but... gentler. Or perhaps just more tired.”

Maeve folded her hands in her lap. “And you came to Willowmere because?”

“I thought it would be healing. For both of us. A chance to toast a shared past without dragging its wreckage into the present.”

She studied his face—his poise, the well-groomed stubble, the clean line of his jaw. His calm wasn’t casual. It was curated.

“And did you discuss business while you were here?”

Mateo tilted his head. “Briefly. He’d floated the idea of a new line—something between mead and cyser, made with heritage apples and old varietals of yeast. He called it ‘Tradition with Teeth.’ I told him I wasn’t ready to trust again. He said he understood.”

“And you believed him?”

Mateo looked into the fire. “I believed that he meant it when he said it. Whether that would’ve held... I don’t know. But I didn’t come to sabotage him, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I don’t think you came to sabotage,” Maeve said slowly. “But I think you came with more questions than you’re admitting.”

Mateo smiled again. “That may be true.”

The fire hissed quietly as another log shifted. The sound was soft, but enough to draw attention to Mateo’s movement as he reached into his inner jacket pocket.

He pulled out a fountain pen, unscrewing the cap with delicate care.

Maeve’s breath caught—not visibly, but enough to sharpen her focus.

The pen was marbled cream and navy, the silver trim finely worked, its clip shaped like a stylized bee. Beautiful. Old. The sort of item passed down or kept close. Mateo withdrew it not with casual pride but with familiarity, as if it were more talisman than tool.

He scribbled a few notes in the margin of his notebook.

Then paused. A blot of dark ink pooled near the edge of the page.

“Damn,” he muttered, reaching for a napkin.

Maeve leaned forward slightly, gaze sliding to the pen’s tip. It wasn’t quite a standard nib. Too slender. Almost tapered, like a stylized dropper. Not conical, not broken. Something custom.

“That’s lovely pen,” Maeve said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one like it.”

Mateo dabbed at the blot, then twisted the barrel shut. “It’s temperamental. I’ve had it adjusted twice, and it still leaks in the cold.”

Maeve said nothing. But she made a note of the shape.

Whim emerged from behind a nearby armchair and settled on the rug with a sigh. Mateo didn’t acknowledge his presence.

“Odd tool for a toast,” he said, his voice quiet but pointed.

Maeve reached down and scratched Whim’s ear. “So is it custom?”

“It was my grandfather’s,” Mateo replied. “A gift from a patron when he opened his first cellar. I had the nib modified. Something about the way it pulls ink—it’s smooth, but it needs coaxing. Like yeast.”

“I guess he was in the same business.”

“More or less. We used to seal everything by hand—batches, journals, storage crates. My grandfather believed that if it wasn’t worth sealing, it wasn’t worth making.”

“Words to live by.”

Mateo snorted softly. “He was full of those.”

“And fancy pens.” Maeve rose gently. “Thank you for the time. I won’t keep you.”

Mateo stood as well. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Ms. Everhart.”

“Sometimes it’s what you’re not looking for that gives the answer.”

He bowed his head slightly, and Maeve stepped out into the hallway.

Tamsin was folding linens near the front desk, stacking them beside a bin of polished teacups.

“He’s quiet,” Maeve said softly.

Tamsin nodded. “Keeps to himself. Tips generously. Never asks for anything twice.”

Maeve lingered a moment, then stepped back into the evening.

The ivy rustled in the breeze, and the first stars were beginning to etch themselves into the navy sky.

Whim fell into step beside her on the walk.

“He didn’t lie,” Maeve said.

“No,” Whim replied. “But the truth was wrapped in silk.”

Maeve touched the side of her satchel where the lab report and Truman’s note were tucked.

Something about Mateo’s calm wasn’t wrong. But it wasn’t honest either.

Chapter Thirteen

“You’ve got fifteen minutes.” Cal was still in the prep tent, coat unzipped, tapping notes into his phone. “If it’s not labeled or tagged, you can flip through it. If it is, don’t touch it.”

Maeve nodded, though he wasn’t watching her. The interior of the prep tent had been partially stripped—no fairy lights, no glass towers of sample bottles, just the skeleton of folding tables and a few crates marked for review. Cold pooled in the corners, and the plastic walls billowed faintly with each passing gust.

Everett had already gone for the afternoon.

“I’m not asking to mess with evidence,” Maeve said. “I’m just looking for Truman’s notebook.”

Cal finally sighed and looked up. “Most of what we’ve pulled from here is in inventory already. They’re tearing it down tomorrow.”

“That’s why I’m asking now.”

He looked at her more closely. “What exactly are you hoping to find?”

“Phrases,” she said. “Language. Something Piper said about Truman stealing language from a confidential analytics file.”

Cal’s mouth twitched—almost a smile, almost fatigue. “I can’t decide if that sounds like a librarian’s murder motive or an accountant’s. Either way, fifteen minutes. If it’s labeled or sealed, don’t touch. If it’s not, skim and move on.”

“You already said that. But I get it.”

Cal turned back to his phone. “Don’t move anything.”

Maeve crossed to the prep station Truman had commandeered the night of the toast. His satchel remained, slightly open, the top flap curled and stiff with cold. A bundle of papers peeked from the front pocket, and a leather-bound notebook lay just beneath a folded festival program.

She slid it free and opened to the first filled page.

The ink was dark, nearly black. Truman’s handwriting was methodical—block letters in tight lines, no loops or flourishes. He’d used a numbered system: tasting notes, prep logistics, reminders about banner design, a to-do list that included secure quote from Silas and review cider ratios with Alicia.

Maeve turned the page.

This one was different.

Titled in all caps: BRAND LEVERAGE NARRATIVES.

The lines were looser, almost fevered. Phrases ringed in ink spirals. Terms like seasonal donor momentum, cluster-aligned messaging, and micro-demographic affinity were scribbled in the margins.

She froze.

Those were Piper’s words.

Not paraphrased. Not adapted. Lifted directly from the digital sponsorship proposal Maeve had helped Piper organize weeks before. That document had never been distributed. Truman hadn’t been on the distribution list. He couldn’t have seen it unless he’d accessed Piper’s laptop—or seen the file open on her screen.

Maeve turned another page. More of the same. Truman had used Piper’s framing as a base and annotated it with personal tweaks: emotional volatility curve, rural charm modifier, and underlined twice: “Translate whimsy into urgency.”

The peppermint sprig in her coat pocket stirred.

She shifted her weight. The cloth around the stem was still tucked safely into the inner seam of her coat, but a warmth spread lightly across her ribcage—not uncomfortable, just present. The kind of warmth that said: something here is not benign.

Junie Bright was restocking the scone cabinet at the Lavender Lantern when Maeve stepped in, notebook tucked into her satchel and fingers still tingling from contact with Truman’s pages.

Junie looked up from her pastry lineup, balancing a tray of cracked hazelnut shortbread with cheerful concentration.

“If this is about the almond ones,” she said, “I swear I made them exactly the same way I always do, and I think the weather is messing with the oven temp.”

“I’m not here to critique your baking,” Maeve replied. “Although I wouldn’t say no to a sample.”

Junie slid a small plate across the counter. “What’s the real reason?”

“Do you remember what Truman was doing the hour before the toast? Between setting up and giving that speech?”

Junie blinked. “He was... around. Definitely not helping with chairs. Oh, right—he was in the prep tent by himself for a while.”

“How long?”

“Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes? He said he needed to ‘calibrate the sample experience.’ Whatever that means.”

“Was anyone else in there with him?”

Junie shook her head. “Alicia came through once to double-check the bottle placements, but she left pretty fast. Truman was talking to himself. Not muttering—full-on performing. Like rehearsing a TED Talk for cider.”

“Did he have his satchel?”

“Oh, yeah. And he had it open. There was a notebook out—he was scribbling and flipping pages. Lots of dramatic circling.”

Maeve nodded, heart ticking upward.

Junie leaned in. “He wasn’t doing tasting math. He was doing... spin. Brand prep. The kind of stuff Walker tries to fake with thesaurus entries.”

Maeve pocketed the shortbread. “You’ve been surprisingly helpful.”

Junie offered a mock bow. “It’s the powdered sugar. Keeps the brain nimble.”

By the time Maeve returned to the greenhouse, twilight had fallen fully. The walk through town was quieter than usual—people stepping lightly, as though the frost underfoot might crack the wrong kind of silence.

Inside, the warmth hit her like a wave. She peeled off her coat, set her satchel on the potting table, and pulled out the notebook and a printed version of Piper’s sponsorship proposal. The original file lived on Maeve’s desktop from when she’d helped format it the week before the festival.

She spread the documents side by side.

It was just as she thought. The phrasing was identical. Which meant Truman hadn’t borrowed from Piper. He’d taken her language wholesale, stitched it into his brand strategy, and started rehearsing it like it was his own.

The peppermint sprig, now unwrapped and resting on the table beside the notebook, curled tightly again—just once—and then settled like a warning left in place.

Whim appeared near the rosemary, blinking at the lamplight.

“Some people steal money,” he said, stretching. “Others steal language. One is a lot easier to trace.”

Maeve tapped the phrase cluster-empathy acceleration with the back of her fingernail. “He used her voice to push his message. He turned her metrics into a pitch.”

“People like Truman believe words are currency. They forget that other people keep receipts.”

Maeve wrapped the peppermint again, slower this time. This wasn’t really plagiarism. Not legally anyway. But she needed to know what else Piper hadn’t told her. And why.

Chapter Fourteen

“Can you hand me the skinny hex wrench?” Daisy’s voice floated from under the banner printer, muffled and exasperated.

Maeve crouched beside the folding table in the back room of Sunshine Books, sorting through Daisy’s tool tray. “Define ‘skinny.’ This one looks like something you’d use to fix glasses.”

“That’s it. Except I’m using it to battle demons with ink cartridges instead of pupils.”

She passed it over and shifted the tangled power cord out of the way. The printer, a hulking beast the size of a kitchen cabinet, was currently propped open like a wounded animal. Strips of half-printed vinyl stuck out from its maw, some of them crinkled, others curled like wilted petals.

The scent of static-charged toner and aged electronics hung in the air. A roll of test paper, faded with ghost-text, lay curled beside a pile of scrap.

“Willa said you might need help,” Maeve said. “Though I think she meant moral support, not surgery.”

“She was right on both counts.” Daisy sat up, her cheeks flushed and her sweatshirt streaked with ink smudges. “This thing’s a tyrant. It doesn’t jam—it sulks. And the preview buffer keeps glitching, which I’m ninety percent sure isn’t a hardware issue. I think someone tried to modify the file queue manually.”

Maeve raised an eyebrow. “Truman?”

Daisy rolled her eyes. “He treated print like sorcery. I doubt he could find a settings menu. But Alicia? Definitely.”

They ran a test sheet. The machine chugged to life with a low mechanical hum, then whirred, flickered, and began spooling out a new banner—just a few inches before pausing mid-line. Daisy hit pause and cursed under her breath.

“Still stalling,” she said. “But we’re at least getting something.”

Maeve leaned in. A logo shimmered faintly at the lower corner of the test sheet. Unlike the larger festival branding, this was small, nestled beneath the tagline Toast to What Rises.

It was a stylized motif: a swirled thistle beside a champagne glass. Beneath it, printed in tiny sans serif letters: Trademark filed – Alicia Hartnell Events LLC.

Maeve stared at it. “This wasn’t on the final banners.”

“Nope,” Daisy said, tugging the paper free. “It’s in the queue log as a shadow watermark—meant to print faintly, or not at all, unless you ran the raw output file.”

“So Alicia embedded a trademark... into a design Truman claimed was his.”

Daisy nodded. “And dated it three days before the festival.”

Maeve folded the strip and slid it into her satchel. “She filed the mark, buried it in the file, and let Truman showcase it anyway.”

“Trademark pettiness at its finest,” Daisy muttered. “She practically branded the back of his ego.”

“And he was all about the branding.”

“He sealed some of the tasting labels with wax caps for branding flair. Thought it felt more ‘heritage.’”

While the printer re-initialized with a tired beep, Daisy pulled up her laptop and opened a folder labeled DRONE_BACKUP_WIP. The screen flickered for a moment, then filled with thumbnail previews—shifting shots of the Market Green, overhead sweeps, and grainy captures of the prep tent under fairy lights.

“I backed up the raw files before I handed off the drone to Junie,” she said, clicking one. “Didn’t trust the weather—or Truman’s handling, honestly. He kept trying to pose for the camera.”

Maeve leaned closer. The footage played in soft, muted tones—wind tugging at linen tablecloths, a slow glide over stacked glasses.

Then a jump.

Daisy froze the frame. “That.”

The timeline skipped, leaping several seconds. The view jolted, then resumed from a new angle.

“I didn’t crop this,” Daisy said. “This isn’t weather interference either—no corruption warning. The memory card was still intact when I checked the footage that night. The segment was deleted, not lost.”

Maeve’s pulse ticked upward. “You’re sure?”

“Positive. Look here—” Daisy pointed at the metadata bar. “There’s a digital skip in the encoding stream. That only happens when someone manually removes a section from the card itself.”

Maeve exhaled slowly. “And that was before the card got stepped on.”

Daisy nodded. “Which means Alicia didn’t just destroy it. She made sure it was clean first.”

The room fell quiet.

Maeve stood and paced to the back door, where sunlight filtered through the curtain in amber slats. Outside, frost glittered on the windowsill, brittle and unmoved.

“She had motive,” Maeve murmured. “Truman cut her out. She tried to own the branding. And she erased something before breaking the only record of what happened that night.”

Daisy closed her laptop. “The only question is what she didn’t want anyone to see.”

Maeve walked home along the River Path, coat zipped tight and thoughts heavier than the wind pressing at her collar.

She passed the community garden plots, now dormant for winter, rows of wire cages like ghosted outlines of last summer’s tomatoes. Overhead, the bare limbs of the willows reached toward the water, their reflections fractured in the slow-moving current.

The peppermint sprig in her pocket shifted, subtle but warm.

Alicia had erased more than footage. She’d erased context. And context was what Willowmere ran on—unspoken connections, shared assumptions, quiet histories.

Maeve slowed near the footbridge and stared down at the river’s surface.

She thought of Piper’s stolen words, Silas’s hidden note, Truman’s manufactured threat, Mateo’s too-elegant pen. Each thread pulling tighter, not toward one conclusion but toward a tangle that refused to lie flat.

Footsteps behind her barely made a sound.

Whim appeared at her side, leapt onto the bridge rail with a soft thump, and gazed down at the water.

“You’re building the frame,” he said. “Now you just need to see what it’s supposed to hold.”

Maeve pressed a hand to her coat where the folded banner sample and peppermint sprig waited.

Chapter Fifteen

“You always bring me the strangest gifts,” Bridget said, holding the peppermint sprig up to the light.

Maeve stood just inside The Wild Remedy, the narrow apothecary that bridged the space between Sweet Dough and the small gallery where local artists rotated seasonal displays. The shop smelled of rosemary and old paper, with undertones of beeswax and fennel clinging to the air. Tall shelves wrapped the walls, filled with neatly labeled jars, paper packets tied with twine, and a few suspended bundles of dried herbs that rustled faintly whenever someone passed beneath them.

“I thought you’d appreciate yet another mystery wrapped in botany,” Maeve replied, easing out of her coat.

Bridget gave a soft laugh, her gray wool shawl slipping slightly off one shoulder as she stepped into the workroom behind the counter. “Bring it through. I’ll set the stone to warm.”

Maeve followed her past the curtain and into the back, where a long wooden bench was flanked by potion jars and old apothecary scales. At the center of the table, a charm-scribed copper tray sat on a ring of river stones. A small ceramic bowl steamed gently nearby, casting up curls of lavender-scented vapor.

Bridget gestured to the stool across from her. “Now. What are we dealing with?”

Maeve laid the sprig and the paper envelope on a clean cloth. “This reacted to something during the toast. Warmed when placed near certain materials—specifically a sealed envelope and a bottle on Truman’s prep table. I don’t know what it absorbed, but it’s not from the plant itself.”

Bridget raised a brow. “So we’re in the realm of botanical memory.”

“Exactly.”

Bridget reached for her magnifying lens. “Let’s see what it remembers.”

The peppermint lay still beneath the lens as Bridget angled the gooseneck lamp over the tray. She sprinkled a pinch of powdered charcoal along the stem, then used a tiny brush to lift particles and gather residue into a small stone bowl.

As the warmth rose, a thin sheen developed on the bowl’s edge—glossy, golden-brown, sticky even after drying.

Bridget inhaled lightly. “There’s beeswax here. But it’s not your usual pressed variety. Smells faintly of propolis, but cleaner. Processed.”

Maeve leaned closer. “Could it be from Silas’s hives?”

“No. His bees make warmer wax, closer to chestnut. This,” she tapped the bowl gently, “is sharper. Filtered. Blended with something synthetic for structure.”

She scraped the tiniest edge of the envelope flap and added the fragment to the bowl. It hissed slightly when it hit the warmth, releasing a sweet-spicy note like anise and damp bark.

“Resin,” Bridget said. “And look at this.”

She motioned Maeve over. Under the magnifier, a pale thread of pollen shimmered blue at the edge of the wax, a single, almost transparent grain with a telltale oval shape.

“Is that blue thistle?” Maeve asked.

Bridget nodded slowly. “Or something in the same family. Rare this time of year. Grows high, blooms late. The wax was either sealed in a place that handled it or infused with pollen from someone who was working with thistle byproducts.”

“Is that something Truman would’ve had access to?”

“Possibly,” Bridget said. “Though he didn’t source from me or any of the local herb crafters. If this was in his materials, it came from somewhere else—or someone else.”

Maeve tapped a finger lightly against the edge of the tray. “Someone brought it in.”

Bridget looked thoughtful. “You said this reacted to a sealed envelope?”

Maeve nodded. “And not in a panicked way. Just... attentive. The way my plants sometimes shift when someone tells half a truth.”

Bridget didn’t smile, but her gaze warmed – one magic to another. “Then maybe what you’re holding isn’t proof. Maybe it’s memory.”

Maeve folded the sprig back into its cloth. “Sometimes that’s enough.”

Outside, the wind had picked up, scattering curls of bark mulch along the curb and rattling the tiny chalkboard signs in front of Sunshine Books. Maeve tucked her scarf tighter and moved slowly down Main Street, the evidence from Bridget’s shop heavy in her satchel.

It wasn’t a breakthrough, but it was a shift.

The wax on the envelope didn’t belong to Silas. That mattered. It didn’t narrow the list of suspects, but it expanded the field of questions.

Truman had planned to humiliate Silas—possibly more. Piper’s work had been lifted. Alicia had tried to trademark over Truman’s name. And someone—maybe Truman, maybe not—had used imported, custom wax infused with rare pollen for some part of the toast’s presentation.

Was it part of a seal? A label? A sample bottle Truman never meant to share?

The peppermint had reacted like it remembered someone’s intent. But Maeve still didn’t know whose.

Whim joined her halfway up the hill toward Everhart Green, leaping onto the low stone wall beside the library path. He was quiet as he walked beside her, tail swishing faintly.

Maeve paused at the garden gate near the footbridge. “I thought you might’ve followed me to Bridget’s.”

“You didn’t need me,” Whim replied. “She listens better than I do.”

Maeve turned toward the greenhouse. “She said the wax blend wasn’t from here.”

“Then it wasn’t meant to be understood here.”

Maeve stopped. “You said magic clings to people who mean what they do. Even if they don’t say it.”

Whim tilted his head. “I said magic clings to intent. Not morality. If someone used that wax with purpose, the peppermint remembered the moment—not the person.”

Maeve breathed into the cold. Her thoughts circled the same unresolved loop: Alicia, Mateo, Piper, Dorian. Truman himself.

“Maybe I’ve been asking the wrong questions.”

“Or,” Whim said, hopping to the fence post above her, “you’ve been letting them answer too carefully.”

Maeve adjusted her satchel strap, the corner of the wax-stained paper pressing lightly against her hip.

She didn’t have a suspect. But she had a scent. And something—someone—had sealed their intentions into the wax.

Chapter Sixteen

“Dorian’s not going to like me rifling through this,” Maeve said, unfastening the canvas strap around the binder.

Junie glanced up from the chalkboard menu she was refreshing. “Then don’t tell him.”

The Lavender Lantern was quiet, filled only with the soft scrape of chalk and the gentle tick of the wall clock. The midmorning sun slanted through the front windows, brushing light across the teacup display and the stacked scones under glass.

Maeve sat at the corner table with the festival planning ledger open in front of her, the one she had found on a side table, half hidden by newspapers. Dorian had tucked it away on a side shelf beneath a bundle of folded menus and a cedar box of loyalty cards. Nothing about the binder said “secret,” but it hadn’t exactly been left out for perusal either.

She turned the pages slowly, fingers trailing over line items. At first glance, it was what she expected: rental fees, vendor deposits, decoration supply totals. But on the third page, a pattern emerged.

Some of the reimbursements were doubled—once under “committee account,” again under “event fund.” A few were marked as “internal transfers.” And three of the line items had tiny initials in the margin.

T. L.

Truman Loft.

Maeve opened her notebook and pulled out a copy of one of Truman’s festival memos—an agenda page from a sponsor meeting. The handwriting matched. His presence on these ledger pages wasn’t casual.

She flipped back and found the page she’d half-glimpsed weeks ago—the one with an incomplete line for “Venue enhancement: Lantern pairing lounge.” The total was scratched out. No updated figure listed. Just a note: “Handled privately.”

Junie passed behind her, dusting powdered sugar from her apron. “He’s in the back if you want to talk to him.”

Maeve closed the binder. “Thanks.”

Dorian was reorganizing the tea canisters by varietal, lining them up by oxidation level on the shelf above the espresso machine. He didn’t look up when she entered the backroom.

“I thought we agreed to let old ledgers lie,” he said evenly.

“We didn’t agree on anything,” Maeve replied. “I just hadn’t asked the right questions yet.”

Dorian reached for a labeled tin. “You found something.”

“I found Truman’s handwriting all over your reimbursement forms.”

That finally made him pause.

Maeve stepped closer, setting the binder on the counter. “I know what he did to Piper. What he dangled in front of Alicia. What he tried to extort from Silas. So I’ll ask just once: what did Truman have on you?”

Dorian rested his hands on the edge of the counter, eyes on the tin like he was reading tea leaves.

“I moved here to start over,” he said after a moment. “After I left Portland.”

Maeve waited.

“I was a sommelier at a private club,” he continued, voice low and precise. “Downtown. Members only. Obnoxious velvet furniture. Eight-dollar water. The kind of place that exists to remind people they aren’t welcome unless they’re already known.”

“You left?”

“I was asked to,” he said, smile thin. “I flagged an internal supplier kickback scheme. The club manager didn’t appreciate my moral clarity. I lost the job. Quietly, professionally, and with a nondisclosure clause.”

Maeve softened slightly. “And you came to Willowmere.”

“I wanted something quieter. Simpler. A place where I didn’t have to serve anyone I didn’t believe in.” He glanced around the tidy backroom. “The Lantern was supposed to be a clean ledger.”

“And yet Truman found something anyway.”

Dorian exhaled, then finally looked her in the eyes. “I made some... adjustments to the event budget. Not theft. But I folded some festival funds into overdue Lantern bills. Payroll. The roof repair. I intended to repay it with January profits. But Truman saw the books. Somehow. I think he asked Junie to scan his pairing files on the office computer.”

Maeve’s voice was soft. “And he threatened to report it?”

“He said I could either remove myself from the tasting schedule and let him have solo billing, or he’d send a financial summary to Walker Gray, the Chamber of Commerce, and the grant board.”

“So you stepped aside.”

“And pretended it was my choice,” Dorian said. “He wanted the spotlight. He got it. I kept the business open. And now... he’s dead, and I’m terrified someone’s going to find those numbers and think I had more to hide.”

Maeve poured a cup of the new tea Dorian had just finished blending—smoky rooibos and something earthy, grounded, with the faintest trace of cardamom.

She passed him the cup without saying anything.

He took it with careful hands and didn’t sip.

“I didn’t kill him, Maeve,” he said.

“I don’t think you did.”

“But I didn’t stop him either. I let him push me out and pretended it didn’t hurt.”

Maeve watched the steam rise between them. “That seems to be how most people dealt with Truman. Quietly. Until he was too loud to ignore.”

He let the cup rest on the counter. “You’re not going to tell Junie?”

“No,” Maeve said. “But if this comes up again, you’ll have to explain it yourself.”

He nodded. “I’ll give you a clean copy of the budget,” he added. “With the real totals.”

Maeve picked up the binder. “It won’t be clean. But it’ll be honest.”

Whim was waiting by the front stoop of the Lantern, tail flicking against the base of the rosemary planter.

Maeve paused beside him and looked up at the gray sky, already hinting at rain.

“Did you know?” she asked.

Whim stood, stretched, and trotted alongside her. “I suspected. Guilt always tastes like burnt citrus.”

“Then why didn’t you say something?”

“Because it wasn’t murder. It was survival. And against all appearances, I like Dorian.”

Maeve pressed a hand against her coat, where the festival ledger now rested beside the peppermint sprig and her increasingly dog-eared notes. The weight of it all felt less like resolution and more like depth—like layers of sediment slowly clarifying what had been stirred.

She still didn’t know who had poisoned Truman.

But she knew now that everyone around him had a reason to want him gone.

Chapter Seventeen

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Maeve said.

Silas didn’t stop chopping wood.

She stood at the edge of the clearing by his workshop, the kindling pile to her left and the low line of stacked logs to her right. The air smelled of smoke and cedar, and the sky had that washed-blue tone that promised rain before dark. He had stripped down to shirtsleeves despite the cold, sleeves rolled to the elbow, shoulders squared to the chopping block.

“I’m working,” he said without turning around.

Maeve stepped forward, her boots pressing into the patchy frost. “You’re hiding. There’s a difference.”

He raised the axe again, brought it down with a clean, practiced swing. The log split neatly. He bent to stack it, then finally looked at her.

“You walked up here with purpose,” he said. “Let’s have it.”

She pulled the lab report from her satchel and held it out without speaking.

Silas took it. Read the heading. Turned the page. His jaw tightened, but he didn’t speak.

She waited.

Then: “Where did you get this?”

“In your truck,” she said. “Tucked under a coil of wire and an old coffee thermos. Right next to Truman’s threat.”

His hand tightened around the paper. “You shouldn’t have gone through my things.”

“And you shouldn’t have hidden this.”

She stepped closer, voice steady. “You told me he lied about the honey. And he did. This proves it. So why didn’t you say anything? Why bury it like it didn’t matter?”

Silas folded the paper once. Then again. Set it on the log beside him like it might burn if held too long.

“Because it wasn’t just about the honey.”

Maeve waited.

“He said he’d go public with a falsified report,” Silas said. “Make it look like I doctored the batch. And then he said he’d name you.”

Maeve blinked. “Me?”

“He knew about Portland. The greenhouse. The suspension. I don’t know how, but he knew. And he said if I didn’t give him a cut of the VIP profits, he’d imply you helped me cover it up. That you vouched for the honey because you’d done it before.”

Maeve’s breath caught, anger flashing hot under her skin. “That’s not what happened. In Portland or here.”

“I know,” Silas said quietly. “But that doesn’t matter if people believe it.”

She stared at him. “So you let him threaten you. Threaten me. And you just… said nothing?”

“I destroyed the version he wanted to circulate,” he said. “Kept the real one. Hoped he wouldn’t push further. Figured if I kept my head down, he’d find someone else to target.”

“But he didn’t,” she said. “He kept pushing. And now he’s dead, and you look like you had something to hide.”

“I did,” Silas said. “You.”

They stood in silence while the clouds shifted overhead.

Maeve rubbed the side of her glove, where the peppermint sprig was folded into its wrap. It hadn’t warmed since she arrived. It sat still. Waiting.

“I don’t need protecting, Silas.”

“I know.”

“And I didn’t come here to yell,” she said. “I came to tell you that the longer you stay quiet, the more you become a story someone else gets to tell.”

Silas set the axe against the woodpile. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you don’t trust the people who want to help you.”

He looked at her then—really looked. Gray eyes shadowed, the faintest trace of sawdust in his hair. “I didn’t want you dragged into something ugly again.”

Maeve’s voice softened. “Then you should’ve brought me in before it got ugly.”

He nodded once. A slow gesture. Acknowledgment, not agreement.

She stepped back and picked up the folded report from the log. “I’m taking this to Cal.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Maeve looked up. “You don’t have to⁠—”

“I do,” he said. “If I’m going to untangle this, I need to start where it matters.”

She studied him for a moment longer. Then slipped the report into her satchel.

“I’ll meet you at the sheriff’s office after lunch.”

“I’ll be there.”

Whim was waiting on the low rail that ran along the gravel path, one paw tucked neatly beneath him, tail swaying in slow rhythm.

Maeve passed him without speaking, hands deep in her pockets.

“He didn’t lie,” Whim said eventually. “But he let the truth go hungry.”

Maeve stopped.

She turned her head toward the orchard slope, where the wind had picked up just enough to stir the dry leaves at the base of the old apple trees.

“I wanted to be angry,” she said. “I still might be.”

“That would be allowed.”

She pressed her fingers to the side of her satchel. The peppermint was still cool. She didn’t know if that meant the storm had passed or just paused.

“I don’t think he did it,” she said.

Whim looked down the trail. “Neither do I.”

“But someone knew how to use the silence.”

Whim’s ears flicked. “They usually do.”

Chapter Eighteen

“You’re early,” Piper said, not looking up from her screen.

Maeve paused in the doorway of the sunroom, where half-drawn curtains diffused the light into a warm blur across the floor. Piper sat cross-legged on the upholstered window seat, a mug of lukewarm tea balanced precariously beside a teetering pile of folders and highlighters. The air smelled faintly of juniper, toast, and the herbal kind of candle Piper lit when she was trying not to overthink something.

“I figured I’d catch you between spreadsheets,” Maeve said.

“I haven’t left this seat in four hours. So technically, you could’ve picked any window and still been on time.”

Maeve closed the door behind her and stepped into the narrow room, noting the way the cords from Piper’s laptop charger snaked like roots into every available outlet. The space had once been Walker’s—she remembered the old hanging fern that used to cling to the corner hook, the battered bookshelf with its leaning mysteries—but it had long since become Piper’s domain. Clean lines, precise notes, a kind of lived-in control.

“You want tea?” Piper asked, already reaching for the kettle.

“No. Just a conversation.”

Piper sat back, exhaled, and reached for her tea instead. “That sounds even worse.”

Maeve pulled a printed page from her satchel and passed it across the low table. “This is from Truman’s notebook. I think you’ll recognize the phrasing.”

Piper scanned it. Then again.

Her fingers tensed around the ceramic mug, and she slowly set it down. “This was in the file I drafted for the sponsor re-engagement deck. I only ever saved it locally.”

Maeve nodded. “I remembered seeing it in something you were working on.”

“I had it open the morning he visited,” Piper said. Her voice had gone tight. “He dropped by to confirm sponsor booth placements. I was juggling three things at once. I didn’t log out.”

She pushed the paper aside, rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I didn’t think he’d read it. I certainly didn’t think he’d use it.”

Maeve leaned forward. “You never sent him a copy?”

“Of course not.” Piper stood abruptly and started pacing. “After that, he started hinting about bringing me on—called it an ‘informal internship.’ Said he’d be launching a new consulting wing and could use someone who ‘understood seasonal donor behavior.’”

Maeve’s breath caught. “He quoted you to sell you.”

“I know.”

“And you said no?”

“I said it sounded like a ghost job. No contract. No hours. Just vague language about incentives and growth potential. He didn’t take it well. Got cold. Clipped. Walked out before I could finish the sentence.”

Piper turned, one hand pressed to her chest. “I thought he was just a narcissist. I didn’t think he’d... lift my words and fold them into his pitch like they were nothing.”

Maeve crossed to her and touched her arm gently. “They weren’t nothing.”

“I didn’t tell Cal because I didn’t think it mattered. It wasn’t criminal. Just creepy. And I didn’t want it in writing.”

Maeve nodded. “But it does matter. Especially now.”

“I leave you alone for one afternoon and you’re running a full tribunal in the sunroom?” Walker stood in the doorway, holding a plate of toast and eggs like a peace offering he wasn’t sure would land.

“Go away,” Piper muttered, still pacing.

“She’s trying to help you.”

“She’s reporting facts,” Maeve said evenly, not rising from the armchair.

“Same thing around here,” Walker replied, stepping inside. He nodded toward the page on the table. “Is that Truman’s notebook?”

Piper snatched it up before he could look closer. “He copied my entire framework. Even kept my headers. He called it a brainstorm, but he just rearranged the margins.”

“You should’ve told me,” Walker said, more cautious than accusatory.

“I tried,” Piper snapped. “But you were too busy podcasting from the gazebo and pretending the Whisper doesn’t still run on my old templates.”

Walker blinked. “This isn’t about the newsletter.”

“Yes, it is,” Piper said, whirling to face him. “Because everything I do—every file I clean up, every contact I chase—it’s all so people will take you seriously. So when they Google your name, they don’t find a typo-ridden blog with conspiracy theories about the Farmers’ Market council.”

“That was ten years ago.”

“And people remember it,” she said, voice rising. “And if Truman had gone public with my phrasing—my formatting—it wouldn’t have just looked like I was sloppy. It would’ve looked like I dragged you down with me. And you wouldn’t have even known it was happening.”

Walker’s face tightened. “So you hid it. You let him talk to you like you owed him something and didn’t say a word.”

“Because if I told you, you’d have charged into the tasting tent with a recorder and a vendetta and made everything worse.”

They stared at each other, the weight of old fights and newer wounds hanging between them.

Maeve finally said, “You’re not enemies. But you are carrying each other’s fears like they’re secrets.”

Walker glanced down at his toast, now well on its way to cold. “Guess that makes me Chapter Three: burns the breakfast and the bridge.”

Piper huffed. “And I’m Chapter Five: rewrites the apology and deletes the original draft.”

The tension cracked. Not broken, not healed, but disarmed.

Walker turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll make more toast. No promises this batch survives.”

Maeve and Piper sat in silence for a few moments after he left, the smell of overcooked eggs lingering faintly in the air.

“I’m not afraid of Cal,” Piper said eventually. “I’m afraid of what Truman left behind. Ghost versions of files. Half-written emails. References that only exist in places I can’t trace. I don’t want to be part of this story anymore.”

Maeve shifted her weight. “You might not have a choice about the story. But you do have a choice about what part you play in it.”

Piper nodded. “I never said yes. That should matter.”

“It does,” Maeve said.

She stood and reached for her coat. “But if your name shows up somewhere it shouldn’t, let me help you explain why. Let Walker.”

Piper didn’t respond as Maeve left the sunroom and made her way to the front door.

Whim was perched on the back of the living room couch, waiting for her, tail curled around his paws, his green-gold eyes half-lidded with disapproval.

Maeve met his gaze and didn’t flinch.

“She thought she was alone,” he said. “That’s how ghosts start.”

Maeve didn’t answer.

Whim’s gaze softened, just a little. “But this one might get to come back.”

Maeve glanced once more toward Piper, who had wrapped her arms around herself, staring out the window as if calculating how far the shadows reached.

Chapter Nineteen

“This time, I’m not here to make nice,” Maeve said, more to the wind than to herself.

The folded test print from Daisy felt damp in her pocket, softened at the corners by how many times she’d unfolded it, stared, refolded. The thistle-and-toast motif stared up at her from its page like it knew more than it should. A false trademark. A visual signature that Alicia had claimed—then buried—then tried to resurrect again, with no one the wiser.

Maeve passed the old horse hitch in front of the Willowmere Inn, nodding once to the ivy-draped porch. The air was warming slightly, the clouds thinning toward a pale afternoon. The wood siding of the inn glowed under that kind of light that made things look softer than they deserved.

She stepped inside to find Tamsin Oakes at the front desk, folding a quilted shawl over her elbows.

“If you’re looking for Ms. Hartnell,” Tamsin said, “she’s in the lounge. Brought her own printer.”

Maeve raised an eyebrow. “Ambitious.”

Tamsin offered a weary smile. “She’s got a whole fleet of logos and an appetite for lemon water. I stopped asking.”

Maeve nodded her thanks and moved down the hallway toward the lounge, the scent of lemon peel and plastic laminate getting stronger with every step.

Alicia sat at a small round table near the fireplace, her tablet glowing beside a sleek portable printer that buzzed softly with activity. Several printed logos were stacked in uneven piles. Some were drafts Maeve remembered from the original tasting event. Others were altered, more streamlined—fewer flourishes, sharper fonts.

One had the same stylized watermark that Daisy had found embedded in Truman’s test banner.

Maeve pulled it from her pocket and laid it carefully on the table, sliding it across without speaking.

Alicia paused mid-scroll. Her fingers hovered over the tablet, then withdrew. “I wondered if you’d find that.”

“I figured you’d prefer to control the narrative,” Maeve said.

Alicia leaned back slightly in her chair, crossed her arms loosely. She looked more tired than polished today, and her boots had lost their showroom shine.

“Truman took the branding from me,” Alicia said, gesturing to the pile. “That tagline? The orchard-glass motif? I pitched it. In a mock deck. He smiled and nodded and told me we’d be co-listed on the poster. And then pretended he’d invented the whole thing from scratch.”

“So you filed the trademark?” Maeve asked.

“Preemptively. It was a bluff. One I wasn’t even sure I’d use unless he crossed the line.”

Maeve raised an eyebrow. “He crossed the line when he made the toast solo.”

“He crossed it when he printed my work under his name and called it a collaboration.” Alicia’s voice tightened. “So yes. I slipped the watermark into his draft. Thought maybe he’d back off if he saw it. He didn’t even notice.”

Maeve pointed to the tablet. “And the printer sabotage?”

Alicia looked away. “One jam. One line of corrupted file code. That was it. I just needed a delay. A glitch. Something to give me a chance to fix the narrative.”

“And the drone footage?”

Alicia hesitated.

Maeve waited.

Finally, Alicia said, “He was yelling at me. I was yelling back. Not... professional-looking. I figured if anyone pulled the footage, it would be all over socials before the toast even started. So I deleted the segment. I didn’t mean to crush the card. That part was an accident.”

“Convenient.”

“I panicked,” Alicia said. “But I didn’t poison him.”

Maeve leaned against the wall, arms folded. “You were in the prep tent. You were close to the glassware. You had motive.”

“I didn’t touch the drinks,” Alicia said flatly. “I was too busy trying not to be erased.”

Maeve didn’t press further. She picked up the printout and slid it back into her coat.

“I’ll tell Cal what you told me,” she said.

“I didn’t kill him,” Alicia repeated. “But I won’t pretend I didn’t want the spotlight back.”

Outside, the wind had shifted, carrying the scent of old wood and warming leaves. Maeve walked slowly down the steps of the inn, her mind retracing Alicia’s words—not just what she’d admitted, but how casually she framed it all as corrective, not destructive.

Alicia hadn’t planned to hurt anyone, just to tip the scales back in her favor. But somewhere in that tilt, something had cracked.

The peppermint in Maeve’s pocket remained still. No pulse. No warmth. Just the quiet weight of observation.

She followed the curve of the path back toward town, boots ticking against the gravel.

Truman had gathered power by taking what other people didn’t protect—Piper’s data, Dorian’s silence, Alicia’s ideas.

And when those people tried to take it back, they’d done so with erasures, deletions, and retreat.

Whim appeared beside the postbox near the green, slipping out from beneath a hedge with little fanfare.

“She sharpened her claws,” he said. “But she didn’t strike.”

Maeve nodded.

“That doesn’t mean there’s no blood.”

Maeve stopped walking.

“She said she didn’t go near the glasses again,” she murmured.

“She said a lot of things,” Whim replied. “But not the ones she rehearsed.”

Maeve looked toward the Lantern, then the slope above town. The evidence wasn’t neat. But the shape of it was beginning to show.

Chapter Twenty

“You’re still thinking like a question,” Whim said, flicking his tail across Maeve’s shin.

Maeve stopped walking. The wind had picked up again, teasing loose leaves along the footpath near the library, carrying with it the scent of damp earth and spent woodsmoke. The test print Alicia had left behind crinkled faintly in her pocket, still folded and damp along the crease where she’d clutched it too hard after leaving the inn.

Whim trotted ahead of her now, not toward Everhart Green or the River Path, but across the still-dewy grass of the Market Green, toward the section where the VIP tasting tents had stood. Most of them were half-collapsed, their stakes loosened and vinyl walls peeled back like discarded wrappers. Only the frame of the largest remained upright, metal poles rattling faintly in the wind.

Maeve frowned. “You think I missed something?”

Whim didn’t reply. He slipped between two recycling bins stacked beside the collapsed catering tent, then paused beside a lopsided trash barrel, nose twitching.

Maeve hesitated. The barrel was half-open, its black liner tugged down one side. Wrappers, napkins, bits of ribbon and tasting cards cluttered the top layer. A faint scent of spoiled cider and waxy citrus rose with the breeze.

Whim sat down beside it, tail curling around his paws.

“Fine,” Maeve muttered. “But if this gets me banned from town cleanup duty forever, I’m blaming you.”

She pushed the lid aside and gingerly reached in, shifting past a cracked plastic plate and a ribbon tangled with gold foil.

Halfway down, her fingers touched something wrapped in a napkin—linen, not paper—and heavier than it should’ve been.

She lifted it out carefully and unwrapped the folds.

Inside lay a slender, broken object. A pen-shaped cylinder, delicate, cracked down one side. The tip was not a writing nib but a hollow, tapered point, as fine as a pipette but shaped like it had once slotted neatly into something else.

Wax—faintly blue—clung to the base like forgotten candle remnants. And the tip itself gave off the slightest bitter note beneath the faint sweet of alcohol.

Maeve stared.

She had seen something like this before.

No. Not this. But something like it. In Mateo’s hand, back at the inn parlor. A marbled pen with a nonstandard nib. This wasn’t a pen. Not fully. It was a delivery system. Custom. Precise. And discarded in panic.

She folded the napkin around the object again. The peppermint in her coat pocket pulsed once—barely warmer than her own skin.

Not a warning.

Recognition.

“You’re not usually on your own,” Everett said, adjusting his desk lamp.

Maeve sat across from him at the cluttered desk in the sheriff’s office, the object now nestled in a padded evidence pouch. Cal was out on a call; Everett had been logging reports when she knocked.

“Cal would’ve run it through chain-of-custody forms,” Maeve said. “I thought maybe you’d just look at it first.”

Everett peered through a magnifying lens and rotated the object gently.

“It’s not a refill. Not for a commercial pen, anyway,” he said after a moment. “This is machined. Small batch. Looks like someone customized it to draw in and release liquid—but not ink. No filament. No ballpoint. This is a pipette, or close enough.”

Maeve sat back, hands resting lightly in her lap. “Could it be used to add something to a drink?”

Everett nodded slowly. “A few drops at a time. Nothing showy. If it were filled already, you’d just need a little pressure at the plunger to release it. Someone could do it standing still.”

“And the wax?” Maeve asked.

He scraped a trace from the seam near the base. “Same as what we found near Truman’s crate seals. Not local. Might be imported or custom blended. Looks like it contains plant material—maybe pollen.”

Maeve didn’t react outwardly, but the inside of her palm tingled.

Everett placed the pipette back in the pouch. “Want me to run a residue test?”

“Please.”

He nodded and reached for a swab kit. “I’ll compare it to the oleander profile Cal flagged last week. If it pings, I’ll call you.”

Maeve stood slowly, taking the pipette back when Everett finished. “Thank you, Everett.”

He looked up, blinking behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “Maeve... if this comes back positive...”

“I know.”

She walked out before he finished the sentence.

The clouds were thinning overhead as she stepped into the cooling air. Willowmere’s rooftops glinted faintly with moisture from the morning mist, and the wind carried the scent of sweet hay and woodsmoke and something that wasn’t quite regret.

Maeve’s boots crunched along the gravel trail as she cut through the garden path. The trees had begun to bud faintly—only the earliest tips—but it was enough to make her think about spring. About what would come next.

She ran the past few days through her mind like beads:

Piper’s stolen phrasing.

Dorian’s embezzlement.

Silas’s guilt-by-silence.

Alicia’s sabotage.

Mateo’s antique pen.

And now—a discarded pipette with blue wax and bitter residue.

She didn’t know who used it. But she knew what it was meant to do.

Whim was waiting near the herb beds beside Everhart Green, stretched out on the low garden wall, paws crossed like he’d been there for hours.

Maeve didn’t say anything as she approached. She sat beside him on the cold stone and let the silence stretch.

“You look like someone who’s found the edge of a map,” Whim said.

She rubbed the back of her hand against her coat, feeling the small bundle inside. “I found the how.”

“But not the who.”

Maeve looked across the fields. “Not yet.”

Whim’s tail flicked once. “Tools tell stories,” he said. “It’s the hands they come from that lie.”

She breathed out through her nose, slow and steady. “This one’s almost done lying.”

And this time, the peppermint sprig stayed warm.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Is he expecting you?” Tamsin asked, barely looking up from the handwritten ledger she was updating behind the inn’s front desk.

“I doubt it,” Maeve replied, brushing damp hair from her cheek. A low drizzle had started halfway up the lane, and her coat still clung with it—speckled along the hem, soaking in at the collar. “But I think he’ll talk to me.”

Tamsin reached for a bookmark and tucked it neatly into her place. “He’s in the parlor again. Been quiet all day. Bit too quiet.”

Maeve offered a nod of thanks and stepped across the tiled floor toward the lounge. A kettle hissed softly somewhere in the kitchen, and the scent of lemon balm tea and fireplace ash hung faintly in the air. The lamps in the hallway cast a soft golden light, muffled by the lace curtains that filtered the afternoon dim.

She paused at the parlor threshold.

Mateo was alone, seated in the same mismatched armchair as before, a low mug beside him and a small notebook resting on one thigh. The fire in the hearth had gone mostly to embers, but the heat still radiated gently outward.

He didn’t look up at her entrance, only turned the page with quiet precision.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said.

“You always say that,” Mateo replied. “But I suspect you don’t believe it.”

Maeve stepped inside. “Not today, no.”

He gestured to the chair across from him. “Come to ask more questions?”

“Yes.”

This time, she didn’t sit.

“I wanted to ask about your pen,” Maeve said. “The one with the marbled casing. You said it was your grandfather’s.”

Mateo turned his gaze to her fully, the lines of his face calm but unreadable. “Yes. From his early days in Córdoba. It’s old, but it works.”

“You mentioned it used custom refills. Drop-fed, not cartridge.”

He inclined his head. “A niche preference. I like the precision. The refills are made by a small artisan shop in Portland. I order once a year.”

“And you traveled with it?”

“I always do.”

Maeve reached into her coat and pulled out the cloth-wrapped parcel from her satchel. She didn’t open it—just let the bundle rest in her palm. “I found something that looks like one of those refills. Hollowed, tapered. Coated in blue wax. And pollen. Left behind in a trash bin near the prep tent.”

Mateo didn’t reach for it. He didn’t even blink.

“Did you recognize the wax?” she asked. “The pollen?”

Still nothing.

“It’s blue thistle,” she said. “Or something like it. Rare. And someone used it in something meant to be precise.”

He leaned back slowly. The notebook slid closed on his knee.

“I know why you’re here,” he said. “But I didn’t poison him.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He smiled without warmth. “No. But you’re circling the question, and I thought I’d offer you the line before you cast the hook.”

Maeve lowered the bundle to her lap. “Tell me about the yeast.”

Mateo was quiet for a long moment. The room had gone still, save for the faint tick of the old mantle clock and the crackle of the final ember collapsing in the grate.

“He sold it,” Mateo said at last. “Without telling me. Our proprietary strain—cultured over years, stabilized in oak and lavender. It was the heart of every batch we ever made. And he sold it to a startup in Eugene while I was in Spain visiting my mother after her surgery.”

Maeve said nothing. Let the words settle.

“When I came back, the tanks had been cleaned. Our shared documents emptied. The meadery closed within three months. I lost the lease. The reputation. The future.”

His voice didn’t rise. But the fire in it glowed faint, deep.

“I spent the next year fighting to stay out of bankruptcy court and trying to answer questions I hadn’t been given the right to ask.”

“Why come here?”

“To confront him. To ask for an apology. And maybe—maybe—if he had any of the money left, to ask for a sliver of it back. Not to punish. Just... to be acknowledged.”

Maeve’s voice was soft. “And did he acknowledge you?”

“No.” Mateo leaned forward now, forearms resting on his knees. “He said the strain was never mine to begin with. That I had been gifted the process, not the product. As though ten years of refinement and taste meant nothing.”

Maeve watched him carefully.

“And you left the tent after that?”

“I didn’t see him again,” Mateo said. “Not after that conversation.”

Outside the inn, dusk had come early. The hills beyond the river had turned smoky violet, and the streetlamps on Main Street had begun to flicker into life.

Maeve stood on the porch, one hand wrapped around the bannister, the other pressed lightly to the satchel at her side. The bundle inside sat warm against her palm—only faintly. Not warning. Not inviting. Just... there.

Mateo’s words had felt honest. But only part of them. The way people speak when they’ve made peace with half the story but haven’t yet decided what to do with the rest.

Behind her, the parlor lights glowed yellow and still. The teacup remained untouched on the table beside his chair.

Whim perched on the wing of the settee just inside the door, flicking his tail thoughtfully against the armrest.

“He’s not lying,” Whim said. “But he’s hiding the part that matters.”

Maeve looked back once, then pulled the door closed behind her.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“If you’re bringing me another USB stick, it better come with a cinnamon roll,” Daisy called from the back of Sunshine Books.

“I was going to ask for the same thing,” Maeve said, slipping through the curtain beside the staff shelf.

Daisy was cross-legged on a beanbag in the former poetry alcove, a blanket tossed over her lap and a laptop balanced on a folding tray that looked like it had been repurposed from a craft fair booth. The dim lamplight cast a warm glow over the mess: hard drives labeled with washi tape, a thumb drive nestled in a mug, and what might have been a drone propeller half-hidden under a crocheted hat.

Belle Nordin’s pastry box sat on a nearby stool, lid askew. One cardamom knot remained, half-flaked and crumbling beside a napkin with a map of frosting smears.

“She dropped it off on her way to restock the Lantern,” Daisy said. “Didn’t even ask for gossip. That’s how you know things are getting serious.”

Maeve set her bag on the floor and leaned in. “You said you had something?”

“Kind of.” Daisy tapped her keyboard. “One of the old cloud backups finally processed. It auto-synced right before the drone memory card went full tragedy.”

She pulled up a video window. “It’s short. Blurry. But you should see it.”

The footage was shaky, filmed through the rippling plastic of the tent sidewall. No sound. The timestamp put it about thirty minutes before the toast. Late golden light filtered across the prep station, and two figures moved inside.

Maeve recognized Truman immediately—his familiar posture, arms flung wide in some half-performance of persuasion. He held a bottle in one hand, gesturing with the other.

The second figure stood still for a beat, then stepped forward, shoulders squared. His movements were sharper, angrier—one hand cut through the air like punctuation. He wore a dark wool coat and carried a leather satchel with a distinctive cross-body strap.

Maeve didn’t need the camera to zoom in. She had seen that exact satchel across Mateo’s shoulder. The curve of it. The stitching. Even the way the strap hung slightly twisted from age and use.

The second figure pointed toward the tasting table, then turned and walked out through the far flap.

Truman stayed behind, rotating the bottle once before disappearing behind the curtain.

Then the screen went black.

Daisy clicked pause. “Well,” she said. “That was dramatic.”

Maeve sat back on her heels. The cold from the floor pressed through her coat.

“Looks like Mateo to me,” Daisy murmured.

“Mateo wasn’t lying,” she said. “He admitted to me that he argued with Truman, and this proves he was doing it exactly when he said he was.”

“So it confirms his story.”

“It confirms part of the story. But it doesn’t tell us what happened after he walked out.”

Daisy nodded, pulling the pastry box closer. “You think someone else came back in?”

“Maybe.” Maeve rubbed her knuckles, slow and thoughtful. “Or maybe Truman never expected anyone to find what he left behind.”

Daisy handed her a napkin and half of the last pastry. “That’s the problem with secrets,” she said. “They have terrible manners. They always show up late and hungry.”

Outside, the Market Green looked quieter than it had in weeks.

The tents were gone. The fairy lights had been taken down and boxed. What remained was the flattened grass, the discolored rectangle of ground where the VIP table had stood, and a few bundled paper lanterns stacked by the gazebo railing.

Maeve stood at the edge of the square, the wind tugging lightly at her coat hem.

She didn’t hear footsteps behind her until they stopped just shy of her shadow.

“Maeve,” said Mayor Suzanne Ellery, her voice polished and low. “I just saw the images Daisy found.”

Maeve turned. Suzanne wore a slate-gray coat cinched tight at the waist, her gloves the soft brown of oiled leather. Her expression was neutral, but her eyes—sharp and tired—told a fuller story.

“She showed me, too,” Maeve said.

“Then you know what the town’s going to see when it leaks.”

Maeve studied her face. “What do you want to happen, Suzanne?”

“I want the story to resolve before the story resolves itself,” Suzanne said. “Walker’s been asking questions. Real ones for a change. The committee is spooked. I have sponsors wondering if we need to take the Midnight Toast off the calendar permanently.”

Maeve’s breath caught. “You’re thinking of canceling it?”

“I’m thinking of protecting Willowmere’s reputation.” Suzanne tilted her chin toward the fountain. “And from where I’m standing, Silas looks like the only person no one can rule out. He argued with Truman. He had motive. He had means. And no one, not even you, has said definitively that he didn’t do it.”

Maeve looked toward the square. The grass was just grass now. But she could still see the empty glass, the way the peppermint had curled, the cold silence that had followed the toast.

“I don’t believe he did it.”

Suzanne’s expression softened. “I don’t either. But belief is a luxury. Right now, I need an answer.”

Maeve straightened. “Then maybe you’re asking the wrong person.”

The mayor didn’t flinch. “Cal’s going to do what’s necessary. I just hope it doesn’t split the town before we know what really happened.”

She walked away without waiting for a reply.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Daisy recovered part of the drone footage,” Maeve said. “It shows Truman arguing with someone. Mateo, probably.”

Silas didn’t look up from the plank he was sanding, but the rasp of the paper slowed.

“I believe you,” she added. “I think Truman’s own lies built the trap he fell into.”

The scent of sawdust and wax filled the air inside the barn. Afternoon light filtered through the high windows in slanted beams, catching on curls of wood and the pale grain of half-finished bee boxes stacked neatly near the back wall. Silas stood at his workbench, sleeves rolled, his movements rhythmic and focused—as if effort alone might smooth the world back into order.

“But?” he asked.

Maeve stepped closer, boots muffled by shavings on the floor. “But the town’s hungry for a name. And we haven’t given them anything else.”

Silas straightened, setting the sandpaper aside. His face was drawn, eyes tired. “That’s not on you.”

“No,” she said. “It’s on him. But that doesn’t mean they won’t come for you anyway.”

The sound of tires crunching on gravel made them both pause.

Silas turned first, stepping toward the open barn door just as Cal’s patrol car pulled up to the edge of the clearing. Everett exited the passenger side, shoulders tense, clipboard in hand.

Maeve felt the world constrict around her in a single breath.

Cal stepped out slowly, no lights, no siren. Just the silence that meant something real was about to happen.

“Silas,” he said as he approached, voice low. “I need to ask you to come with us.”

Maeve moved instinctively between them. “Wait. You can’t⁠—”

Cal stopped a pace away. He looked at her, not unkindly. “This isn’t a sentence, Maeve.”

She gestured toward the workshop. “You’ve seen the report. You know Truman lied. That he planted the results to leverage Silas.”

“I have,” Cal said. “And I’ve logged it.”

“Then what’s this?” she asked.

Cal nodded to Everett, who stepped forward and opened the clipboard.

“Silas Merrick,” Everett read, “you are being detained under suspicion of evidence tampering and obstruction of an active investigation.”

Silas didn’t flinch. “On what basis?”

Cal’s jaw worked slightly. “The chain of events. Your failure to disclose the note, the real report, and now a corn syrup profile pulled from one of the discarded tasting jars. It matches none of the others but could tie back to your supplier lot number. The lab isn’t finished yet, but I can’t ignore what we’re seeing.”

Maeve stepped closer to Cal. “You know him.”

“I do,” Cal said. “But you also know I can’t sit on a gut feeling. I need more than hunches and herbs.”

Maeve’s voice was quiet now. “So this is it?”

“For now.” Cal looked to Silas. “You’re not under arrest for murder. But I need to bring you in for questioning. Formally.”

Everett extended a hand for the satchel Silas had set beside the barn wall. Silas passed it without a word. Then he turned to Maeve.

“Don’t try to fix this,” he said. “Just find the truth.”

She reached for his sleeve but stopped herself.

Then he followed Cal back toward the car.

The barn felt hollow without him.

Maeve stood alone by the workbench, the lingering scent of pine and cedar giving the illusion of comfort. The tools were still aligned. The piece of maple he’d been sanding lay smooth and unfinished, its surface warm where his hands had worked it only minutes before.

Everett lingered near the car as Cal helped seat Silas in the back, clipboard still tucked under his arm. He looked younger today—like someone waiting for a test grade he already feared.

“He didn’t lie,” Everett said quietly.

Maeve turned toward him. “But?”

“But he also didn’t tell the truth. Not when it counted.”

Maeve looked back toward the bench. “You think he poisoned Truman?”

“I think he had every reason not to. But that’s not what this is about. This is about what the paper trail says.”

She didn’t answer.

Everett hesitated, then added, “Cal’s not sleeping. He didn’t want this. But he’s trying to do it right.”

Maeve nodded once.

Then she left the barn.

By the time she reached Main Street, word had already started to move.

Junie stood behind the counter at the Lavender Lantern, her smile too careful, the tea menu rewritten in cramped lettering. She waved when she saw Maeve but didn’t invite her in.

Walker paced in front of the bookstore, earbuds around his neck, phone in hand. He nodded but didn’t speak.

At Sweet Dough, Belle handed Maeve a scone from a fresh tray and turned back to the oven without a word.

And at the corner near Fern & Forge, two shoppers near the flower cart glanced toward her, voices low, faces unreadable.

Maeve carried the scone until she couldn’t anymore, then set it carefully on a stone planter rim and kept walking.

At the edge of the Green, where the last banner had come down and the frost had started to lift, Whim perched on the base of the sundial, tail twitching once with what might have been restraint.

“I thought you’d say something clever,” she said.

“I thought you’d want silence,” Whim replied.

Maeve looked up toward the hill where the workshop stood, just beyond the trees. She couldn’t see the car anymore.

She pulled her coat tighter, but not because of the cold.

“He trusted me,” she said.

“He still does,” Whim said softly.

Maeve didn’t move.

Behind her, a door opened—somewhere on the square. Then another. And another.

The town wasn’t watching anymore.

The town was waiting.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Maeve whispered. The greenhouse didn’t answer.

The panes were fogged over, turning the world outside to a blur of gray and pale moss. Inside, condensation clung to the metal frames, gathered into droplets that slid quietly down. The usual warmth of the space had dulled. The soil smelled cold. The air sat heavy with mint, lavender, and failure.

She dropped the seed tray before she felt it slipping.

It hit the tiled floor with a crack and a scatter—plastic shards and potting soil, young lettuce starts torn from their pockets. The sound was louder than it should have been. In the quiet that followed, Maeve sank to her knees, barely feeling the damp through her jeans.

Her hands lay useless in her lap. The peppermint sprig she’d carried for days slipped from her coat pocket, rolled, and came to rest near a mound of spilled soil.

It didn’t move. No pulse of warmth. No curl. Just stillness.

Maeve stared at it until her eyes blurred.

The greenhouse door opened with a soft chime. Footsteps padded over stone.

Willa didn’t speak. She sat beside her, not touching, not crowding, just folding her coat around herself and waiting.

Eventually Maeve said, “I thought I could do it. All of it. Solve the mystery. Protect the people I care about. Prove something about... I don’t even know anymore. Myself, maybe.”

Willa didn’t interrupt.

“I keep chasing threads, and every time I pull one, the rest unravel. Nothing ties together.”

Willa reached out and gently dusted the soil from Maeve’s glove. “Maybe you’re looking for a knot when what you need is a pattern.”

Maeve let her head drop forward, resting against her arms. “I don’t even know what I’m looking at anymore.”

“You’re looking at grief,” Willa said softly. “It makes everything blur.”

Willa stood and crossed to the little camp stove Maeve used on frost-bitten mornings. She lit the flame with one practiced flick and filled the kettle from the rain barrel spout.

Maeve rose slowly, wiping her palms against her thighs. The mint tray had landed hard, but a few of the starts were salvageable. She set them gently back into place.

“Here,” Willa said. She handed Maeve a mug of steaming tea, the ceramic mottled and cracked, the scent sharp with ginger and lemon balm.

“Where did you find this blend?” Maeve asked.

“I didn’t,” Willa said. “Junie did.”

The door opened again, this time with more flourish. Junie stepped inside with a tin of tea labeled New Roots in loopy marker and a small basket of sweet buns she’d likely bartered from Belle.

“I figured this place would need more than water today,” she said.

Maeve managed a half-laugh. “It needs a time machine. Got one of those in your apron pocket?”

Junie passed her a bun and dropped into a low stool by the workbench. “Only thing I’ve got is perspective. And some badly organized notes. Want to trade?”

They sat around the little stove, cups warming their hands, the greenhouse slowly recovering its glow.

“I don’t know where else to look,” Maeve said. “We’ve gone through every suspect.”

“Then let’s go through them again,” Junie said. “Out loud.”

Maeve nodded and reached for her satchel.

“Silas,” she began. “Truman lied about his honey. Threatened to ruin him if he didn’t agree to a profit share.”

“He didn’t go public with it, though,” Willa said. “That doesn’t sound like revenge. That sounds like someone trying to disappear quietly.”

“Still. He was the last one seen with Truman before the toast,” Maeve added. “At least until the drone footage.”

Junie sipped her tea. “What about Piper?”

Maeve pulled the copy of Truman’s notebook from her bag. “He stole her language. Used her phrasing. Offered her an internship that didn’t exist. She refused. But she didn’t tell anyone.”

“He never published the deck,” Willa pointed out. “He used the words, but he didn’t credit her or frame her.”

Maeve nodded. “She’s not cleared. But she’s not cornered either.”

“Dorian,” Junie said. “Still hiding?”

“He admitted everything,” Maeve said. “Truman caught his accounting sleight-of-hand. Threatened to expose it. Dorian pulled out of the tasting lineup and folded himself into silence.”

“Would’ve been easier to let someone else take the fall,” Junie muttered.

Maeve hesitated. “Alicia filed a false trademark. Embedded it in Truman’s banner files. Deleted the drone footage where she was yelling at him. Said she didn’t touch the drinks.”

“She said a lot of things,” Willa murmured.

“And Mateo,” Maeve said. Her voice dropped. “He confessed the theft. Truman sold their shared yeast culture, tanked Mateo’s business. Came to confront him. Admitted to the argument. But nothing else.”

Junie leaned forward. “You’ve got motive for everyone.”

“I’ve got fragments,” Maeve said. “No pattern.”

They sat in silence. Outside, the wind shifted. Inside, the greenhouse windows blurred with heat and breath.

Maeve stood and began brushing the last of the soil into a dustpan. The motion steadied her hands but not her mind.

“I keep going over what they said,” she said. “What they did. What they wanted.”

“But not what they touched,” Whim said.

He stretched out on the potting bench now, paws tucked under his chest, eyes gleaming just slightly. Neither Junie nor Willa flinched at the sound of his voice, though only Maeve heard the words.

She glanced down at the peppermint sprig, still resting on the stone shelf where it had fallen. Its edges were curled. Not blackened. Not wilted.

Waiting.

“I’m going to keep going,” Maeve said. “But I don’t know what direction that is yet.”

“We’ll be here,” Willa said.

Junie reached for the kettle. “And I’ll bring more tea.”

The greenhouse pulsed with quiet. Not stillness—but potential.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“You didn’t just stumble across this, did you?” Bridget asked.

Maeve shook her head. The workshop behind The Wild Remedy was still warm from the sun that had crept through the high window panes earlier, though the light now angled sharp and low, catching dust motes in slow spirals. The air smelled of steeped rosehips, beeswax, and dried cedar.

“I’ve been following threads for days,” Maeve said, placing the cloth-wrapped bundle carefully on Bridget’s copper-topped worktable. “This one led me here.”

Bridget untied the linen with deliberate fingers, then adjusted her charm-glass monocle—etched with six small runes around the rim—and lowered it over her right eye. She gently unwrapped the pipette and sliver of wax, placing them on a ceramic dish beside her reagents.

The broken pipette still held its shape, fractured cleanly down one side like glass split by sudden cold. A smear of blue wax clung near the base.

Bridget leaned in, holding her breath. “That’s not candle wax.”

“I didn’t think it was.”

She scraped a flake into a small iron bowl, then dropped in a pinch of powdered rose thistle, tapped from a labeled jar. A few grains of crushed dried clove followed. Then she lit a tiny taper and passed it beneath the bowl.

The wax warmed quickly. A thin shimmer of smoke rose—blue-tinted and faintly sweet, with a sharp resinous twist that reminded Maeve of scorched honey.

Bridget inhaled once, closed her eyes, and said, “This isn’t local. Not from any Willowmere apiary.”

Maeve leaned closer. “Are you sure?”

“I’d bet my best tincture shelf.” Bridget dipped a wooden stick into the melted wax and spread it across a parchment test square. She brushed a reagent powder across the surface. When it bloomed a faint violet, she smiled—not with joy, but with satisfaction.

“This particular wax blend was infused with stabilizing resin and structured pollen particles—see how they clump when disturbed?” She passed the monocle to Maeve.

Maeve adjusted the lens and peered through. Pale blue grains danced in the light like tiny spiked seeds.

“Blue thistle,” Maeve whispered.

Bridget nodded. “But not wild. This was cultivated. Controlled.”

Maeve’s stomach twisted. “Could it have come from Three Rivers?”

Bridget didn’t answer right away. She sifted through a drawer of wax samples and pulled out a long-lidded jar. Inside was a curled ribbon of old hive sealing wax—slightly darker, but with the same sheen.

“This one came from Three Rivers’ test hives—experimental batches they ran for long-storage fermentation cells. Only five sealed batches made it into use. I logged the formula five years ago because the wax held up through both summer heat and freezing damp.”

“And it matches?”

Bridget touched the edge of Maeve’s sample again. “Perfectly. Same base. Same pollen structure. This is Three Rivers wax.”

Mateo’s wax.

Maeve pressed her hand to the bench to steady herself.

Everett squinted into the microscope. “You’re telling me this is wax from a meadery that closed before Truman ever came to Willowmere?”

Maeve sat across from him in Cal’s office, the old radiator thumping faintly behind her. The space smelled like paperwork and damp wool.

“I’m telling you it’s wax only one place was known to use. And I’m telling you it turned up on a pipette discarded next to the tent where Truman died.”

Everett leaned back. He’d pulled his hair into a neater ponytail than usual, as if that might somehow compensate for how unsettled he looked.

“I also got a response from the refill supplier,” he said. “Those drop-fed units you mentioned? Only one customer with that model in the past two years—Mateo Sebastian. Ordered three.”

Maeve stared. “That’s confirmation.”

He hesitated. “Technically, no. The pipette has no serial number. There’s no direct evidence linking it to the specific pen we saw. But the dimensions, the resin type, the refill mechanism—all match.”

“And the wax?”

Everett nodded. “Same pollen content. Same resin structure. Bridget knows what she’s doing.”

Maeve pulled the peppermint sprig from her satchel. It had been quiet since the greenhouse—cool and curled. She set it on the table next to the pipette.

Everett raised an eyebrow. “You think it’ll... do something?”

“I don’t know.”

She lifted the sprig slowly and passed it over the broken pipette in one gentle motion, as if casting shadow instead of scent.

The leaves uncurled.

Slowly. Deliberately.

Color bled back into them, the red deepening, the white sharpening at the edges. And then a drop of clear sap welled from the base of the stem and fell—landing with a quiet tap on the desk beside the pipette.

Everett jerked back. “Did it just... cry?”

Maeve didn’t blink. “It remembered.”

The sap darkened slightly where it touched the wax smear still on the pipette’s tip.

Everett pushed his chair back. “That’s... not chemistry.”

“No,” Maeve said. “It’s truth.”

Everett was silent for a long time.

Then he stood, paced once to the window, then turned. “I don’t know how to log this.”

“Don’t,” Maeve said. “Just let it stay in the room.”

He nodded slowly. “This isn’t court evidence. But it’s real. I can feel it.”

Maeve rewrapped the pipette and peppermint and placed them gently back into her satchel. “He didn’t come to make peace. He came to rewrite what was taken.”

Everett looked down. “And Truman wouldn’t give it back.”

“No,” Maeve said. “Because Truman never believed he owed anything.”

Whim slipped out from beneath the file cabinet and hopped onto the windowsill. He blinked at Everett, who, as usual, didn’t notice him.

“Some people carry forgiveness like a gift,” Whim murmured. “Others mix it into the poison.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Tell me again this isn’t illegal,” Walker said, setting his tripod against the mossy trunk of a birch tree.

“It’s not illegal,” Piper replied from across the clearing, typing rapidly on her tablet. “It’s just... lightly unauthorized.”

Maeve stood between them, arms folded over her coat, eyes fixed on the far corner of the Green where the remnants of the VIP tasting tent had been re-erected earlier that morning. Piper’s files were open beside her—half-coded spreadsheets, a doctored fermentation note tucked inside a protective sleeve, and a small, borrowed vial labeled in Truman’s blocky handwriting.

The real yeast culture had been gone for years. This was powdered vitamin C suspended in filtered cider, labeled with the words: Three Rivers B-Archive, aged on lavender oak.

It looked old. It looked convincing. It looked like bait.

Maeve tucked the vial gently into a wooden crate and closed the lid partway, leaving the corner propped up as though carelessly forgotten. She placed it atop a stack of weathered folding tables and let the sun hit it just enough to gleam.

“Are you sure he’ll take the bait?” Piper asked, adjusting her coat collar against the wind.

“He won’t be able to help himself,” Maeve said. “He came here chasing something he thought Truman still owed him. This... will look like proof that Truman kept it all along.”

Walker adjusted the zoom on his drone remote. “And what happens if he grabs it and bolts?”

Maeve turned toward the ground. She knelt, brushing aside a layer of pine needles to reveal a patch of bare earth she’d softened earlier that morning with composted orchard mulch. Among the roots, she’d planted three twisted slips of charm-bound cuttings Hazel had once used for grounding spells—intended to bind spells to soil memory.

It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t obvious. But it would hold.

“If he bolts,” she said, “we’ll know where he stepped.”

The light shifted as the afternoon deepened. Maeve waited beside the prep tent, feigning disinterest, a clipboard in hand and a scarf pulled loosely around her neck. She kept the crate within view, but not center stage. The table arrangement suggested unfinished business, the illusion of a cleanup forgotten midtask.

Whim padded silently from behind a stacked chair and circled once at her feet before settling beside a half-folded tablecloth. “He’s already walking toward you,” he said. “Try not to look satisfied.”

Maeve didn’t respond.

Mateo approached from the opposite path, coat collar raised, scarf neatly tied. He carried a small leather notebook under one arm. His pace was casual. Calculated.

“I was told you had something for me,” he said, stopping at a polite distance.

Maeve gestured toward the crate. “You said Truman stole something. I thought you might want to see what he left behind.”

Mateo stepped forward, scanning her face. His hand lingered on the crate lid for only a second before he lifted it and saw the vial nestled in linen, just visible inside.

His fingers hovered above it. “Is it real?”

“I didn’t analyze it,” Maeve said. “It’s what he labeled it as. You’d know better than I would.”

Mateo reached inside the crate and pulled out the vial.

The instant his fingers closed around the glass, a sharp sting bloomed in Maeve’s coat pocket.

She flinched, not in pain, but in warning. The peppermint sprig she’d wrapped that morning—cut fresh from her own greenhouse—had darkened at the edges. The red stripes deepened. The white leached to gray.

Whim hissed.

Mateo looked up at the sound. “What is this?”

Maeve didn’t step back. “It’s your second chance, Mateo.”

He smiled, slow and bitter. “Second chances come with witnesses.”

Maeve didn’t blink. “I brought my own.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked. His hand closed more tightly around the vial. “Arrest me with your garden clippings?”

Maeve stepped forward. “I’m going to give you a choice.”

Mateo’s smile cracked. “You don’t have the authority.”

“You’re right,” she said. “But I have the ground beneath you. And it remembers.”

He dropped the vial.

It hit the table edge and rolled, clinking softly.

Then Mateo lunged—not toward her, but for the table behind her. She twisted, knocked the chair aside, and braced for the grab.

But his boots caught on the freshly dug soil.

He staggered.

Maeve whispered three words under her breath, old ones Hazel had once taught her, words meant to quiet motion, to still.

The ground shifted beneath Mateo. Just enough. His foot caught in the roots hidden under mulch and charm.

He fell hard, one knee hitting the crate, the other buckling beneath him. The vial rolled out of reach.

Maeve stepped back, breath sharp, knees flexed. Her palm hovered near the pouch where she’d tucked a second peppermint sprig—ready, watching.

Mateo didn’t speak.

The silence stretched.

Then he pushed himself upright on one hand, fingers splayed against the soil.

“What did you do?” he said, voice raw.

Maeve’s breath caught. “You’re standing on what you took for granted.”

His face changed—panic, disbelief, something hollow underneath.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” he said. “I just wanted him to feel it. To taste what he took.”

Maeve closed her eyes for a beat.

When she opened them, the peppermint in her pocket was still curling—no longer black, not yet green.

Just waiting.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“You don’t get to rewrite what was taken,” Maeve said.

Mateo was still crouched low, one knee pressed into the damp soil, one hand braced on the crate as he struggled to rise. His coat was smeared with dirt now, the tailored lines unraveling under the weight of what he’d stepped into—literally and otherwise.

“Don’t talk to me about rewriting,” he spat. “You’re standing here with a faked yeast vial and a satchel full of plants pretending they’re prophets.”

“I’m standing here because you wanted a stage,” Maeve said, voice low and calm. “But you forgot the ground listens, too.”

She stepped backward, drawing him forward—not with force, but with space. He lunged toward her, trying to grab for the crate again, but his boots caught once more in the softened patch of soil she’d worked that morning. Beneath the mulch and leaf debris, Hazel’s cuttings had taken hold, the root system shallow but stubborn.

He stumbled, went down on one knee again.

“Let go,” he snarled.

“I didn’t bind you,” Maeve said. “The land did.”

Mateo’s breath steamed in the chill air. His eyes darted toward the tree line, then back to her. “This isn’t magic,” he said. “It’s a trick.”

She crouched just out of reach and touched the soil near his left boot. The peppermint sprig in her coat began to warm again, the faintest hum along her ribcage.

“I watched you perform your grief like a polished speech,” she said. “But you didn’t come here to grieve. You came here to reclaim. To punish.”

He shook his head, mud on his collar. “You don’t understand what he did.”

“I do,” she said. “I just didn’t turn it into poison.”

He surged toward her again, muscles tense with effort, the earth clinging now—not dramatically, not with vines, but with a subtle density, a weight that slowed every movement, like wet sand.

She stood her ground.

He made it one step closer, then faltered. His boot slid in place. The crate tipped as he brushed it. The fake vial rolled again, glinting in a beam of cloud-broken sun.

He stopped.

And then—for the first time—he looked tired.

Maeve didn’t speak. The wind did it for her, curling through the trees above and lifting the edge of the tablecloth she’d draped over the tasting crate. The fabric danced like something exhaled.

“I didn’t want to kill him,” Mateo said, breathing hard. “I wanted him to feel it. Just a drop. Enough to sicken. Shake him. Enough for him to realize that not everything he took was his to keep.”

She said nothing.

“I tested it first,” he continued. “Oleander syrup, microdose. Mixed it into the reserve sample. Not the shared batch. Just the one bottle. He kept it separate. Private. He always did.”

“You still had to get close.”

He nodded, jaw clenched. “When he stepped out of the tent, I went in. Used the pipette. Resealed the bottle. Wiped everything down.”

“And the wax?” Maeve asked.

“Mine,” he said. “I brought it to mark the vial if he took it—proof that it was mine all along.”

Maeve felt the sprig pulse once beneath her coat. Her fingers tingled.

“I watched him drink,” Mateo added. “I didn’t expect him to fall so fast. I thought I’d have time.”

She stepped closer, voice steady. “You made sure no one else drank from that bottle?”

He nodded, gaze darting. “Yes. I swear. I watched every pour.”

Her pulse slowed. “And the pen?”

He shook his head. “I threw the refill away after. In the trash near the prep tent. Not the pen. I still have the pen. It wasn’t supposed to matter.”

“But it does,” Maeve said. “Because everything we touch remembers.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it again.

The soil had released him now, though he hadn’t noticed. The energy had faded, the weight dissolved. He stood, slower this time.

Maeve let him.

He picked up the crate lid and held it for a long moment before setting it back on top. The yeast vial sat inside, innocent as any lie.

“You had the truth once,” she said. “And you let it curdle.”

He turned away, shoulders rounded. “There wasn’t room for me to tell it.”

“There was,” Maeve said. “You just didn’t trust anyone would listen.”

He faced her again. “Will you tell them I confessed?”

“No,” she said. “I’ll let the plants do it.”

From the far path, a sound rose—footsteps, quiet but closing. Pine needles shifted under careful boots.

Mateo’s eyes widened. “Did you call someone?”

Maeve didn’t move. “I didn’t need to.”

The wind had shifted. The peppermint at her chest cooled, settling.

Beside her, Whim stepped out from behind a pile of canvas-wrapped chairs. His tail twitched once, deliberately.

“Should’ve buried the pen,” he said. “Instead, you let the dirt find you.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“You called them,” Mateo said, his voice thin. “Didn’t you?”

“No,” Maeve said. “But someone did.”

Footsteps approached through the undergrowth—measured, careful steps on pine duff and wet leaves. Cal emerged first, coat unbuttoned, badge clipped loosely at his belt. Everett followed, boots damp, a canvas evidence satchel tucked under one arm.

Maeve didn’t move.

The spell—the rooted hush that had held Mateo in place—was already fading. The soil underfoot looked undisturbed now, just slightly darker than the rest, as if it had been rained on more recently. The peppermint sprig tucked in her coat had cooled, its curl relaxed.

By the time Cal reached them, the air held only the tension of people and none of the magic that had moments earlier tethered Mateo like guilt to stone.

Everett’s gaze flicked over the broken crate, the false yeast vial resting gently atop linen. “What happened here?”

Maeve met Cal’s eyes. “I asked him to meet me. I told him I had something Truman left behind.”

Mateo stood, arms loose at his sides, breathing hard. He looked not combative, but cornered.

“And did he take it?” Cal asked, voice quiet.

“He tried,” Maeve said. “But he touched the wrong thing first.”

Cal glanced at Everett, who stepped forward and opened the satchel.

Mateo turned toward Cal, mouth open as if to object—but what came out instead was a threadbare confession.

“He never meant to give it back,” Mateo said. “The yeast. The credit. The apology.”

Maeve didn’t interrupt.

“I watched him prep the toast. I waited until he left the tent. I slipped the dose into the reserve bottle—just the one. It was measured. Controlled. Not enough to kill.”

“But it did,” Cal said.

Mateo shook his head. “I just wanted him sick. Unsteady. Something to make him stop smiling when people said his name.”

Silence followed.

Then Cal spoke again, voice steady. “You’re admitting to tampering with the VIP glass?”

“Yes.”

“To dosing Truman Loft with oleander extract?”

“Yes.”

Cal stepped forward. “Then I’m placing you under arrest for criminal tampering, conspiracy, and homicide pending toxicological confirmation.”

Mateo didn’t fight. He let Everett cuff him without a word.

As they led him back toward the cruiser, he paused, looking back at Maeve. “You didn’t have to use magic. You already had the truth.”

Maeve met his gaze. “I used what listened.”

Walker burst from the treeline thirty seconds too late.

“I had to reset the drone battery,” he gasped. “Did I miss… wait. Where’s the fire?”

Piper stepped into the clearing from behind a storage crate, her arms crossed and expression flat.

“No fire,” Maeve said.

“Just a confession,” Piper added.

Walker blinked. “Please tell me something glowed.”

Maeve picked up the crate lid, brushing pine needles from the top. “Not exactly.”

Walker opened his mouth to launch another question, but Piper cut in, swift and low.

“You saw nothing.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” Piper said. “You. Saw. Nothing.”

Walker squinted. “You’re threatening me with a voice I haven’t heard since you tried to convince Mom to let you skip college orientation.”

“And I’m serious this time.”

Maeve tilted her head toward him. “If this shows up in the Whisper, I’ll let Whim edit your copy.”

As if on cue, Whim slinked from beneath the table, leapt to the bench, and nipped Walker’s ankle. Not hard, just enough to make a point.

Walker yelped. “He drew blood!”

Piper raised a brow. “Prove it.”

Walker looked from one to the other, then down at the cat. Whim’s tail twitched, unimpressed.

“Fine,” Walker muttered. “It was a foggy moment. I saw two people talking, and then someone decided to go for a walk. Nothing magical about it.”

“Good,” Piper said. “Because if you breathe a word about this, I will personally hex your search history.”

The cruiser disappeared down the road with a low rumble, Mateo silent in the back seat. The wind picked up again, ruffling the edge of the tarp and sending the last few maple leaves across the grass.

Maeve stayed behind as the others walked off.

Cal returned a few minutes later, shoulders loose for the first time in days.

“He said it again, in the car,” he said. “Whole story. No hesitation.”

Maeve nodded. “Did he mention the wax?”

“Confirmed he brought it with him. Said it was the only thing he kept when the meadery closed.”

Maeve looked down at the churned soil near her boot. “It remembered.”

Cal followed her gaze. “I didn’t see anything. But I believe you.”

She met his eyes. “Thank you.”

He glanced toward the road. “You want to ride with me?”

“No,” she said. “But I need one thing.”

He gave her a look—one part curiosity, one part recognition. Then he nodded.

Silas stepped through the front doors of the sheriff’s office just as the light began to shift orange behind the trees.

Maeve stood near the end of the walkway, the peppermint sprig in her pocket still warm against her side.

He walked slowly, coat unzipped, hair a little too neat, like he’d combed it in the mirror but not for vanity. Just to feel steady.

“They let me go,” he said.

“I know.”

Neither of them moved right away.

Then Maeve turned toward the path, and Silas fell into step beside her.

Not too close. Not too far.

Just enough.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“It’s not about pretending it didn’t happen,” Junie said, tapping her pen against the rim of her teacup. “It’s about deciding what kind of story we want to tell next time.”

The committee meeting had moved from the formal folding chairs of Town Hall to the slightly wobbly oak table in the multipurpose room above the library. Someone had lit the space heater. Someone else had brought scones, though half of them were already gone by the time Maeve arrived. A crock of spiced tea steamed quietly beside the window.

“Do we really need another toast at all?” someone asked from the far end.

“We do,” Suzanne Ellery said. The mayor’s hands were folded on the table, her tone calm but firm. “But we can change how it’s offered. What it means.”

Junie leafed through her notes, then held up a page. “The Reflection Sip.”

A quiet pause followed.

“It’s gentler,” Willa said. “It sounds like something you offer, not something you demand.”

“Something you hold in your hands,” Maeve added, “instead of throwing in the air.”

Suzanne nodded. “Let’s draft the motion. A new name. A new focus.”

No one mentioned Truman. They didn’t have to.

Maeve folded her hands in her lap. For the first time in weeks, the silence around her felt like something whole, not something broken.

Later that day, Maeve followed the sound of hammering up the slope to Silas’s workshop. The barn doors stood open, and winter sun poured through the high windows, turning sawdust in the air to pale gold.

Silas was bent over a bee frame, fitting new foundation with slow, even care. A small pile of splintered wood rested on the sawhorse beside him—discarded attempts, perhaps, or pieces from the boxes damaged in storage.

Cal stood near the wall, a toolbox resting at his feet.

“You dropped this off?” Silas asked, not looking up.

“Figured it was yours,” Cal replied. “Or at least it always sat on your side of the porch.”

Silas nodded. “Still smells like varnish and lemon balm.”

Cal shifted his weight, then leaned against the wall, arms folded. “Hazel used to tell us the difference between fixing something and making it look like it was never broken.”

“She’d say the second was pride,” Silas said.

Cal chuckled. “And the first was care.”

They stood in silence for a moment, dust floating lazily in the air. Maeve watched from the doorway, her breath catching slightly at the familiarity of it. She didn’t interrupt.

“I hated arresting you,” Cal said eventually.

“I hated being arrested.”

Cal nodded once. “But I’m glad we both showed up after.”

Silas glanced at him. “We always do.”

Cal pushed off the wall, picked up the toolbox, and set it gently near the workbench. “Keep fixing things,” he said. “We need more of that.”

Then he left.

Maeve walked through town after that, boots scuffing along the gravel paths still wet from last week’s storm.

At Sweet Dough, Belle handed her a rosemary roll with one extra twist at the center. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

At Sunshine Books, Maeve found a tiny envelope tucked between the poetry journals. Inside was a pressed viola and a hand-lettered tag: Glad you stayed.

At the Lavender Lantern, Dorian caught her eye through the front window. He stepped outside in his usual suspenders and charcoal sleeves, then handed her a sealed envelope.

“It’s done,” he said. “Filed with the Chamber and the city records. The numbers add up now.”

Maeve opened the letter. It was a copy of his formal retraction and reimbursement statement—clean, precise, signed with Dorian’s tight, looping script.

“I’ve had more customers in the last three days than the three weeks before,” he said. “Turns out honesty pays. Eventually.”

She looked up. “I’m proud of you.”

Dorian tipped his head. “Don’t tell anyone. It’ll ruin my mystery.”

Across the square, Alicia Hartnell was loading her final suitcase into the trunk of a rental car. No one stood with her. She didn’t look back. Maeve didn’t call out.

Some exits didn’t require fanfare.

Upstairs in the Sunshine Books archive room, Piper and Willa were seated side by side at a pair of mismatched desks, sorting through yellowed pamphlets and digitizing everything that wasn’t too brittle to scan.

“Listen to this,” Willa said, holding up a flyer from the late 1980s. “Come taste what the orchard remembers.”

“Overwritten,” Piper muttered, typing the line anyway. “But poetic.”

Maeve stepped in quietly, cradling a tray with three mismatched mugs of tea.

“I thought you might need fuel,” she said.

Willa reached for hers immediately. “What blend is this?”

“New Roots.”

Piper set down her tablet. “Too soon,” she said, but her voice was soft.

Maeve handed her a folder. “Scanned interviews. Truman’s old press clippings. You get to decide what we keep.”

Piper ran her fingers along the edge of the folder. “You trust me with that?”

Maeve looked around the room—dusty, bright, full of old sentences and new beginnings.

“I do. Just don’t let Walker near them.”

Chapter Thirty

“I keep forgetting how quiet it gets out here,” Maeve said, her breath puffing white as she stepped onto the River Path.

The light had settled into that soft, near-end-of-winter hush, just before dusk. The river moved beside them, low and steady, its edges rimmed with reeds and last year’s grass. A hawthorn branch scraped gently in the breeze above their heads. The sky, pale and open, already held the color of lavender steeped too long.

Silas didn’t answer right away. He carried a mug of peppermint tea in one hand, steam rising and curling over his fingers. Maeve’s own mug warmed her palms, the scent familiar—sharp, green, calming. They walked without hurry. The trail wound through golden reeds and damp stone, the first clusters of moss reawakening on the northern side of the trunks.

“There’s nothing to prove anymore,” he said at last. “That’s why it’s quiet.”

Maeve didn’t disagree.

When they reached the bend near the cedar bench, she stopped. The bench was weathered but solid, the grain of the seat smooth with time and the softness of late winter light.

Maeve reached into her coat and pulled out a folded page. She passed it to him without explanation.

Silas took it carefully. The corner of the page caught the light. He unfolded it, smoothed it once with his thumb, and read.

After a moment, he said, “You kept it.”

“You should’ve had it,” Maeve said. “From the beginning.”

The real lab report. Clean. Verified. His name attached to something true and whole, without strings or lies.

“I think I didn’t want to see it,” he said. “Not until someone else did first.”

He folded it again and slipped it into his jacket pocket—not hidden, just stored. She noticed how he did it—without shame, without fear of it being seen again.

They kept walking.

He paused a few minutes later beside a bench and reached into his coat.

“I had something to give you too,” he said.

He handed her a thin envelope, unsealed. Inside was a mock-up label, printed on textured paper and flecked with beeswax.

Maeve ran her fingers over the lettering.

Winter Light. Raw honey. Bottled on still mornings.

The font was soft but upright. A small design at the bottom showed a lantern outlined in gold.

“I didn’t want to use Hazel’s blends again,” he said. “Not because they weren’t good. But because they were hers. This one came from the quiet weeks. Just after.”

Maeve stared at the paper for a long moment. “It’s perfect.”

He shrugged, suddenly awkward. “I was going to call it Solace. But that felt dishonest.”

“Solace is what you get after,” she said. “This is what you build with.”

They sat on the bench. Not close, not far.

The steam from their mugs twined in the air between them. The peppermint had cooled slightly, but the scent still lingered—brighter than the wind, deeper than the river.

For a while, neither of them said anything.

Then Maeve turned toward him. “No more secrets.”

He nodded. “Not the kind we keep from each other.”

“Just the ones we don’t understand yet.”

“Exactly.”

She sipped her tea, felt the heat bloom through her chest. “Slow?”

Silas looked out over the water. “And truthful.”

A rustle caught her attention. Among the reeds near the river’s edge, fireflies blinked once, then again, a few dozen of them bobbing like candlelight over the still water. Out of season. Out of step. But quietly insistent.

Maeve didn’t point them out. She didn’t need to.

They watched together.

Whim trotted up and sat in front of them, paws light on packed earth, tail wrapped around his legs.

“Finally. They learn to graft instead of cut.”

Maeve smiled into her cup.

The air held the promise of frost, but the ground beneath her boots felt warm. Alive.

They rose together, mugs empty now but hands no longer cold.

Side by side, they followed Whim into the deepening dusk.

For a sneak peek of Maeve’s adventures, join my newsletter: https://www.subscribepage.com/corrinewinters

Preview

Hey there Cozy Cats!

Love a little mischief with your murder? You’re in luck, sugar—because When You Witch Upon A Murder is ready to stir your cauldron.

sparkles A small town full of secrets

crystal ball A witch who’d rather sip lattes than solve crimes

bird And a talking raven with more sass than sense

Want a taste? Go ahead—flip the page for Chapter One of Corrine Winters’ latest cozy spell-fest. There’s mystery. There’s magic. And yes... there might be murder. Don't say I didn't warn you.

When You Witch Upon A Murder Chapter 1

A hush fell over Foxglove Falls as twilight settled, painting the sky with streaks of lavender and rose. In the dying light, Luna Graves arrived at Sweet Tea & Biscuits, the quaint shop she’d inherited only days ago, and pushed open the front door with a sense of apprehension that made her heart flutter. The wooden sign above—the one hand-carved by her grandmother decades before—creaked ominously in the breeze. Its lettering, faded by salt air and summer storms, still announced the same promise: Herbal Teas & Curiosities.

Inside, the air felt warm and drowsy. Luna paused on the threshold, letting her eyes adjust. Light from the stained-glass lamps spilled across old floorboards, revealing steeping canisters, vintage teapots, and tall shelves lined with rows upon rows of glass jars. The soft glow gave the entire space a secretive quality, as though it held more than the everyday comfort of tea. She felt it in her bones: a gentle, insistent pulse, a subtle buzz at the edge of her senses.

She closed the door behind her, the small bell overhead chiming once, its tone bright and welcoming. Immediately, a wave of aromas enfolded her: bergamot, cinnamon, dried lavender, and something deeper—a faint trace of magic, perhaps, lingering like a memory in the wood and stone. She set her worn suitcase down near the counter. Despite her weary limbs from the trip, her fingertips practically itched with unacknowledged excitement; she had no choice but to come home. Now that she was here, she realized just how much she’d missed this place.

Her gaze traveled from the antique cash register to the high-backed chairs in the corner. They stood just as they had when she was small, perched like vigilant sentinels. Behind the counter stood a towering wooden shelf with compartments for every kind of tea leaf, herb, and flower imaginable—Chamomile for calm, Rose petals for heartache, Mugwort for dreams. She brushed her hand across one jar’s label, spelled out in her late grandmother’s looping cursive. The delicate swirl of ink felt like a greeting, a whisper of welcome from a woman no longer here.

A flutter of wings made her jerk around. On the back of the nearest chair perched a raven—coal-black, eyes glinting with an intelligence that was almost unsettling.

“Edgar,” Luna breathed, pressing a hand to her chest. “You gave me a heart attack.”

The raven let out a clicking sound that almost resembled laughter. “Then my job here is done,” he replied. The words rolled off his tongue with a casual ease that might have startled anyone else, but Luna had long ago learned her grandmother’s secrets—and knew that not all ravens were ordinary birds.

“Still fond of dramatic entrances, I see,” she said wryly, stepping closer. She could never decide which was more uncanny: that Edgar spoke human language, or that he always seemed to know when it was time to appear.

“I learned from the best,” he croaked, tilting his glossy head. “And you, Miss Graves, have been gone too long.”

A pang of guilt tightened in her chest. She moved behind the counter, flipping on a small lamp that illuminated the row of glass jars. “I know,” she murmured, “but I’m here now.”

Edgar fluttered onto the countertop, his talons tapping against the varnish. “Yes, but for how long?”

She could hear the question beneath his words: Are you staying to claim your inheritance, or just passing through? She didn’t answer, not directly. Instead, she lifted a worn stool from behind the counter and sank onto it, exhaling. The day’s fatigue, coupled with the swirl of nostalgia, nearly overwhelmed her.

With a practiced motion, she grabbed a fresh teapot and began spooning dried lavender and rose petals into its belly. Her grandmother’s old kettle—copper-bottomed and blackened from years of use—waited on the stovetop in the back room. Making tea felt like second nature, a ritual that brought comfort. It was something she could do with her eyes closed, if necessary.

But tonight, every movement seemed charged with memory. She recalled how her grandmother had guided her small hands while she measured the leaves; how steam had curled around them in plumes that smelled of midnight gardens and hidden knowledge. She remembered a child’s awe at the swirl of scents— how each blend seemed to echo a different mood, a different intention.

She found a match, struck it, and let the small flame bloom in the quiet. The stove hissed faintly, heating water for the tea that she suspected she needed more than oxygen in that moment.

As she waited for the kettle to sing, her gaze drifted to the walls. Dried bundles of chamomile and sage hung in neat rows, part aromatic décor, part practicality. Charts depicting the properties of herbs—some commonly known, others cryptic and seldom used—covered the far corner, dotted with notes in a spiral scrawl that only her grandmother and perhaps a few other witches could interpret. The sight made Luna’s throat tighten. She wasn’t just inheriting a tea shop; she was inheriting a legacy.

Edgar watched her quietly, his head tilting side to side with a steady, knowing look. “You’ve felt it, haven’t you?” he asked, hopping closer. “Things… shifting.”

Luna swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. There was a change in the air. She wasn’t sure if it was just her nerves or something more tangible, but she sensed that Foxglove Falls was humming with possibilities—and dangers—she hadn’t felt as a child.

Before she could speak, the chime above the door jingled again. She straightened, half expecting to see a local welcome wagon or maybe a curious neighbor. Instead, a tall figure with broad shoulders and a dark, rain-spattered coat stood in the doorway. The overhead lantern’s light caught flecks of water sliding off him, and he doffed his hat with a practiced ease.

“Evening,” he said, voice smooth but carrying that undercurrent of authority that made Luna’s pulse quicken. A silver badge gleamed on his belt. “You must be Luna Graves.”

She set the teapot down and wiped her palms on her apron. “I am. Can I help you?”

He stepped further into the glow of the lamps, letting the door swing shut. Even without the formal uniform, everything about his posture and the faint lines at the corners of his eyes declared him a lawman accustomed to reading people quickly.

“I’m Sheriff Hunter Blackwood,” he introduced, scanning the shelves, the counters, the half-lit corners where shadows seemed to dance in the flickering lamplight. “I heard you were back in town.”

Luna’s heart gave a tight squeeze. Small towns, she thought. Word spreads like wildfire even when no one’s around to strike a match. She forced a polite smile. “Yes, just arrived.”

Blackwood nodded, looking very much like a man who had already formed several observations. “My condolences about your grandmother,” he said, the words quiet. “She… helped me once, when I first came to Foxglove Falls. She was a remarkable woman.”

An unexpected warmth stirred in Luna’s chest. So the stoic sheriff had known her grandmother. She wondered how exactly Loretta Graves had helped him. A remedy, perhaps? Or something less mundane?

“I appreciate that,” she replied softly.

Behind her, the kettle began to wail, its whistle startling in the hush. Luna turned off the heat, carefully pouring steaming water over the rose petals and lavender. The delicate scent blossomed, momentarily overpowering the subtle tang of the older, deeper magic that always seemed to lie beneath the tea shop’s surface.

Sheriff Blackwood watched with interest. “Smells good.”

“It’s my own blend,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt. Then, on a whim—maybe wanting to keep things cordial—she reached for a second mug. “Would you like a cup? On the house.”

He studied her, those cool eyes flicking toward the raven perched on the counter. Edgar stared back, unblinking, as though daring the sheriff to ask about him. Finally, Blackwood nodded. “Sure. Thank you.”

She busied herself assembling the tea, letting the act of pouring distract her from the knot of tension that had gathered at the base of her neck. Beneath that, however, she felt a shiver of anticipation. Why had he come to see her so late, on her first night back?

She offered him the mug, and for a moment, he simply held it, inhaling. His eyes flicked to hers. “Lavender and rose?”

“Mm-hmm,” Luna said. “For calming and clarity.”

One corner of his mouth twitched in what might have been a faint smile. “Useful.” Then he took a sip.

Edgar fluttered his wings and hopped closer to Luna’s elbow. She could sense his avian curiosity: What does the sheriff know?

“So,” Blackwood said at length, setting the mug on the counter, “I won’t keep you too long. I just wanted to let you know—I’ve been patrolling near the outskirts of town. There was some… commotion near the old caretaker’s cottage by the woods. People have seen lights, heard strange noises. Might be nothing—just kids scaring each other—but if you see or hear anything odd, let me know.”

Luna glanced at him, something in her chest going tight again. Stranger things than kids’ pranks lurked in these parts, if one believed the half-whispered rumors. Her grandmother certainly had.

“I appreciate the warning,” she said, keeping her tone polite.

Blackwood nodded, then drained the last of his tea. As he made for the door, he paused, looking back to meet Luna’s eyes. “This place”—he gestured faintly to the shelves and jars—“it has… a certain atmosphere. Try not to be too startled if folks in town talk.”

Luna gave a small, wry laugh. “I grew up here. I know how people talk.”

A flicker of something—amusement, empathy—crossed his face. “Fair enough.” He inclined his head. “Goodnight, Ms. Graves.”

“Goodnight, Sheriff.”

The bell chimed once more as the door closed behind him, leaving her alone with the swirl of steam and the soft crackle of the lamp’s flame. Edgar let out a low whistle.

“Well,” the raven commented in that gravelly tone, “that was interesting.”

Luna smirked, though a part of her remained unsettled. She moved to the front window and peered into the night. A gentle fog was settling over the main street of Foxglove Falls, blurring the edges of lampposts and casting elongated shadows against the cobblestones. The sheriff’s silhouette disappeared around a corner.

“Interesting,” she echoed softly, resting her fingertips on the windowsill. She could feel the old magic in the shop like a presence, breathing with her, waiting.

She glanced back toward Edgar. “And you— are you planning to stay?”

He cocked his head, feathers ruffling. “Where else would I go?”

A faint smile tugged at her lips. “Then make yourself at home.”

Crossing to the back room, she flicked on another light, revealing the storeroom where crates of herbs, tin containers, and jars of honey waited to be unpacked. Tomorrow, she told herself, she would organize everything: her grandmother’s records, the stock, the dusty old ledgers that probably hid secrets as old as the shop itself.

But tonight, a bone-deep fatigue weighed her down. She gathered a spare blanket from a trunk in the corner—left here since her grandmother’s time—and spread it over the worn sofa that stood near the storeroom’s window. The couch smelled faintly of rosemary and thyme, comforting in its own rustic way.

As she curled up, Edgar hopping onto a nearby table to roost, Luna let her eyes drift shut. Outside, the wind rustled leaves in a murmur that might have been voices. Foxglove Falls felt alive in the darkness, as though every breeze carried a secret.

She couldn’t quite shake the lingering tension in her chest. The sheriff’s subtle warning. The sudden weight of being the new owner of Sweet Tea & Biscuits. The quiet hum of old magic that stirred in her grandmother’s shop.

I’m here now, she thought, willing herself to breathe more slowly. Whatever happens, this time I won’t run from it.

Beyond the closed door, the night pressed in, and Luna found herself neither entirely fearful nor entirely comforted by the hush of the small town she once called home. She was caught somewhere between the realm of quiet possibility and an unsettling sense that something waited for her, just out of sight. Yet even that uncertainty carried its own kind of promise—a promise that, one way or another, the secrets of Foxglove Falls would not stay hidden for long.

To read more, find the whole book here: When You Witch Upon A Murder