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For a few minutes there was only the sound of the clinking bottles and Skye humming.

“Think you’ll do the same here?” she belatedly asked, then clarified, “Refinish the woodwork, I mean.”

“Oh.” Fia’s hand dropped from one of the bottles to the counter, right where her mother had once nicked the wood with an overzealous slash of a letter opener. “No, I like it as it is.”

It was the truth—each scratch, each ink splotch, each fingerprint shaped a memory—but there was more to it than that. Somehow, it felt wrong to change anything in Sable Spells, like it wasn’t her place to do so.

“I—” Skye had begun, and that was when Dermot Stone had interrupted, his boots loud on the floor and tracking mud.

He must have been gardening, Fia thought. Probably tending his mums.

“I don’t like the sound of this,” he said, waving a crumpled newssheet in his hand and all but forcing Skye to step back to avoid getting swatted.

“What now, Dermot?” Skye asked, no doubt used to his grumbling from all the times she’d waited on him at Poet’s Theory.

“See for yourself.” He tossed the paper on the counter, stabbing the latest headline while he glared at Fia. “This is what we’re dealing with.”

When Fia hesitated—certain the article was about her—Skye drew the paper closer and read the piece aloud.

TRIVORIS HERALD

REMEMBER WHERE IT BEGAN

BY DOMINIK HONESTLY

Perhaps as it was always bound to do—and with particular menace—the ruin of curses has struck Wakesend at last. Statues have been seen coming to life under the silver-eyed moon, mirrors have stolen countless reflections, and uncommonly bold spiders have infested homes, spinning their impenetrable webs in the very places babes rest their heads at night.

Terror-struck residents have turned to their so-called trusty spellwright for relief—but isn’t it convenient that one may commission protective spells from the very person suspected of causing this chaos? Remember, it all began with the theft of The Book of Ribs.

Honestly, what if this madness was the dust-fingered spellwright’s aim all along—to become indispensable in a time of great need—all the better to resurrect a failing spellshop?

Skye’s voice had grown more and more cautious as she read, and when she reached the end, she kept her eyes on the paper—as if she couldn’t meet Fia’s gaze.

“You see,” Dermot hissed.

Fia’s shoulders rounded. If she could have curled up there on the floor, she would have. It didn’t matter that Dominik Honestly’s accusations were the furthest thing from the truth, not if Skye and Dermot and everyone else believed them.

“I…” But what could she say in her own defense? They’d been coming into Sable Spells since she was a child, but she’d always hidden behind her mother’s skirts when she was younger and hadn’t grown any more outgoing since. They didn’t really know her.

And yet… Skye tore the newssheet right in two. “What utter garbage, Dermot! It’s not true.”

“Obviously,” he said, to Fia’s absolute astonishment, then predictably grumped, “But did you have to go ripping up my paper? I haven’t read the rest of it yet.”

“Sorry,” Skye said, looking at Fia when she said it, the word meant as comfort for her, too.

“Yes, well.” Dermot shuffled the torn paper into a pile, folded it once, then stuffed it under his arm. “Just thought you should know what’s going around.”

“I… that is, thank you.” For a different reason this time, Fia was at a loss for words, filled up with such an unexpected fondness for Dermot Stone that she couldn’t keep from grinning. He was one of the last people she would have thought might defend her.

But Fia knew she couldn’t expect everyone to so pleasantly surprise her, and she didn’t feel like sitting around the shop waiting for another customer—or worse, the Cloaks—to come in with pointed questions stirred up by the article. After Skye left for Poet’s Theory and Dermot went off to “read what’s left of my paper,” Fia turned the shop over to Penbrook, who was too busy playing the Mad Magician to put up any argument. With the dangled promise of dress shopping, Fia stole a delighted Andromeda away from her table of love drops.

Fia had been looking for a way to introduce her oldest friend to her newest one anyway, and so they made a quick stop at Miscellany, grabbing Grace on their way to Shears & Threads over on Cardamom Way. By the time the trio reached the shop, red-cheeked from the cold, Grace knew all about the rings around Andromeda’s neck, and Andromeda knew all about Grace’s love of antiques acquisition and had been invited to Montrose’s birthday picnic the following week.

“Everyone always says I’ll love him best when he’s old and gray and dusty,” Grace was saying.

Andromeda grinned. “Once he’s an antique?”

“Yes. They’re my favorite things. I love finding someone’s discarded objects, polishing them up, and giving them new homes.”