Page 12 of Alpha Charmed

We’ve been doing this all morning. Four interviews so far. Four different people who saw Mathilda in her final days. Four variations on the same theme.

“Did she mention what was troubling her?” I keep my voice gentle. Meredith startles at loud noises—I noticed her flinch when the kettle whistled—and pushing too hard will only make her retreat into platitudes.

“Dreams.” Meredith sets down her cup with trembling fingers, the porcelain rattling against the saucer. “She kept talking about dreams. Said they felt more real than being awake. Said she was remembering things that happened before she was born, which makes no sense at all, does it?”

“What kind of things?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Old stories. Witches and shifters being different than they are now. Being… paired, somehow? Partners?” Meredith waves a vague hand. “I assumed it was just her mind wandering. You know how it is. When we get to a certain age, the magic starts to…”

“Deteriorate?”

“Wander.” Her smile is sad, apologetic. “My grandmother used to talk to people who weren’t there. Near the end. I thought Mathilda was just… wandering too.”

But Mathilda wasn’t wandering. The letter she left me proves that. She was terrified, and she was trying to tell anyone who would listen what she’d discovered.

No one listened.

“Did she mention anyone paying particular attention to her?” Caius’s voice cuts through the stuffy room, quiet but commanding. “Anyone who seemed… unusually interested in her condition?”

Meredith’s brow furrows. “Well, there was… no, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“Anything might help,” I prompt.

“Elder Ashworth stopped by several times that last week.” Meredith twists her teacup in her hands. “Mathilda mentioned it. Said Cordelia was being ‘too kind.’ That’s an odd way to describe kindness, isn’t it? Too kind. As if kindness could be suspicious.”

I don’t glance at Caius. I don’t need to. I can feel the slight shift in his posture, the tension that enters his frame at Cordelia’s name.

We thank Meredith for her time. She walks us to the door with trembling steps, pressing a packet of shortbread into my hands because “you’re too thin, Coven Leader, you need to eat more,” and I accept it with the grave courtesy the gesture deserves.

Outside, the mist hangs dense over The Hollow. I read it instinctively—an old skill, learned from my grandmother before she passed. This particular thickness means powerful magic stirring nearby. Or danger approaching.

These days, both seem equally likely.

“That’s the fourth person who assumed Mathilda was losing her mind.” I flip through my notes as we walk. The cobblestones are slick with morning dew, and I have to watch my footing in these impractical heels I insist on wearing because a coven leader should look the part.

We’d tried to find the apprentice first. Whoever she was, she’d left Mistvale two days after Mathilda’s funeral—no forwarding address, no word to the coven registry. Suspicious timing, duly noted, no thread yet to pull.

“Convenient.” Caius’s voice is pitched low, for my ears only. “If everyone assumes she was confused, no one examines what she was actually saying.”

“Someone wanted her dismissed. Someone who knew exactly what those dreams meant.”

“Cordelia visited her three times that final week. According to everyone we’ve spoken with.”

“To ‘check on her welfare.’” I tuck the journal back into my coat. “Or to assess how much she remembered. And to decide when she became too dangerous to let live.”

The words settle between us, heavy with implication.

We pass Moonpetal Bakery, where Sunny Clearwater waves enthusiastically through the window. Her toad familiar, Biscuit, perches on her shoulder with an expression of profound disapproval—whether for us or for existence in general, it’s impossible to tell.

“Coven Leader!” Sunny pokes her head out the door. “I’ve got fresh scones with mood-enhancing properties! You look like you could use some joy!”

“Perhaps later.” I manage a smile that probably doesn’t reach my eyes.

“I’ll save you the best ones! The cranberry-orange have been especially effective for melancholy!” She beams and ducks back inside. Biscuit continues to stare at us with amphibian judgment.

Caius’s arm brushes mine as we navigate around a cluster of pixies swarming a flower box. The contact is brief, accidental—and sends heat racing across my skin in ways that have nothing to do with magic.

I don’t pull away. I should. I don’t.