CHAPTER 1: THE BRUTAL TRUTH BUSINESS

The crystal ball was dimmer than yesterday, and Willa Bumbles had been staring at it long enough for her tea to go cold. The light inside the glass sphere had faded from its usual steady glow to something that looked like a lamp struggling through its last few minutes before giving up entirely. She'd been standing in the back room of her shop for twenty minutes now, waiting for the brightness to return, but the ball remained stubbornly dim. Willa wrapped both hands around her mug, took a sip, and immediately regretted it. The tea tasted like disappointment and the passage of time.

"Come on," she said to the ball, leaning closer like proximity might help. "I have customers today, and some of them are emotionally fragile enough without you looking like you need hospice care." The ball remained silent, offering no explanation and no comfort. Crystals, as a rule, did not answer back, though Willa had developed the habit of talking to this particular one anyway after ten years of working with it. Her grandmother had done the same thing, although her grandmother had been far more respectful about it and had never once accused the ball of having an attitude problem. Willa set the mug aside and touched the crystal with her fingertips. A faint warmth answered her, but barely. That worried her more than the dim light.

The crystal ball was not merely decorative, and it certainly was not one of the mass-produced glass spheres sold at tourist shops beside novelty broomsticks and glow-in-the-dark rune stones. It was an oracle crystal, passed through the women in Willa's family for generations, showing people the futures they desperately didn't want to see. It did not show vague clouds and convenient symbols like those tourist trap balls. It followed probability. Every choice created another choice, every decision created another possibility, and somehow the ball sifted through them all until it found the future most likely to happen. Then it told people what they usually wished it had kept to itself. That was how Willa had ended up in the brutal truth business.

Her shop, Bumbles' Bureau of Fates, sat halfway down Marigold Street in Bellweather Bay, squeezed between Chlorophyll Dreams, a vegan café that smelled like cinnamon, lentils, and somebody's very specific political statement, and TarotTech, a startup founded by three men under thirty who had somehow taken fortune-telling, added an app, a monthly subscription, and dynamic pricing, and managed to make divination less trustworthy than a weather forecast. Across the street stood a potion dispensary, a secondhand broom shop, a laundromat specializing in cursed fabrics, and Mrs. Pickett's bakery, where the cinnamon buns were excellent and the owner knew everybody's business before they did. Bellweather Bay had never made up its mind about whether it wanted to be picturesque or ridiculous, so the town had settled comfortably into being both at the same time.

The Bureau fit right in. The walls were painted teal because Willa had once read that teal encouraged emotional calm, though ten years of telling people about affairs, bankruptcies, disastrous engagements, surprise pregnancies, and one memorable lawn mower obsession had convinced her that the article had been written by someone who had never actually met another human being. The shelves were crowded with books, bundles of dried herbs, jars of charms, two velvet chairs that had seen better days, a brass kettle that whistled whenever someone lied within six feet of it, and the crystal ball sitting on a carved walnut table near the window. Willa hated the kettle. The kettle knew it.

She had just finished checking the appointment ledger when the front bell chimed and Marjorie Pike hurried through the door in a mustard-yellow coat that looked like it had been purchased during a particularly optimistic period in her life. She looked like a woman who had spent the entire morning rehearsing one specific answer.

"Tell me I'm getting the promotion," Marjorie said without preamble, without greeting, without the basic courtesy of saying hello first. She dropped into the chair opposite the reading table and placed both hands flat against the wood like she was trying to anchor herself to something solid. "I have been waiting seven years for Dennis Harper to retire, and if you tell me he has changed his mind again, I am going across the street and buying every pastry Mrs. Pickett has. I don't care if it costs two hundred dollars."

Willa glanced at the clock on the wall and then back at her overeager customer. "Good morning to you too," she said mildly. "Would you like some tea before we start, or should I just dive straight into crushing your dreams?"

"Executive reading," Marjorie said, ignoring both offers. "I have exact cash. Sixty dollars. I know it's sixty dollars."

"That is correct," Willa said, pulling the crystal closer and settling into the familiar ritual of a full reading. "It includes career probability, financial movement, significant interpersonal changes, and one follow-up question. It does not, however, include me telling you what you want to hear just because you arrived with exact cash and desperation."

Marjorie narrowed her eyes and leaned in so close that Willa could smell her perfume, something floral and expensive that suggested she'd dressed for good news. "I know all of that," Marjorie said. "Read the ball, Willa. Please."

Willa placed her hands around the crystal and waited for the familiar warmth to answer her. Normally, the response was immediate and unmistakable. Warmth would run through her fingers, the light would strengthen, and images would rise from beneath the cloudy surface like pictures developing in water. But this time, nothing happened at all. Willa pressed her palms more firmly against the glass, concentrating harder than she usually had to, and after several long seconds of nothing, the crystal finally brightened.

An office appeared inside the glass, familiar and mundane. Dennis Harper stood beside his desk holding a cardboard box filled with framed photographs, a coffee mug, and a tiny ceramic frog he had kept beside his telephone for as long as Willa could remember. Marjorie sucked in a sharp breath and grabbed the edge of the table. "He's leaving," she whispered. "He's actually leaving. I knew it. I knew it was going to—"

"Wait," Willa said, placing one hand on Marjorie's wrist to keep her focused. "Keep watching."

Another image came into focus, and this time the desk remained but Dennis was gone. In his place sat Marjorie, wearing what appeared to be Marjorie's own face but with the confidence of someone who'd won something important. Her name was printed on the brass plate at the front of the desk in clean, official letters. Marjorie slapped both hands over her mouth and made a sound that was part gasp, part laugh, part disbelief. "I knew it," she said through her fingers. "Oh my God, I knew it was going to happen this year."

"Keep watching," Willa said again, because the image was wavering strangely now in a way that made her deeply uncomfortable. For a moment, another figure appeared behind the desk, then another, and the scene blurred in ways that didn't make sense. Marjorie seemed to be wearing a crown made of actual dollar bills while half the permits office applauded enthusiastically, and a white horse walked calmly through the room carrying what looked suspiciously like a tray of champagne. Willa frowned at the absurdity of it.

"What did it say?" Marjorie practically bounced in her chair when the picture finally vanished. "What does it mean? Am I getting the promotion? Tell me I'm getting the promotion."

"Dennis is leaving," Willa confirmed. "That part looked reliable."

"And?" Marjorie prompted eagerly.

Willa leaned closer as words formed beneath the crystal's surface, appearing in letters that looked like they'd been written in light. She read them carefully, then read them again to make sure she hadn't misunderstood what the ball was trying to tell her.

MARJORIE PIKE WILL RECEIVE GREAT WEALTH BEFORE THE FIRST SNOW.

Willa stared at the words. Marjorie stared at Willa. The silence stretched between them like something alive.

"What?" Marjorie finally asked.

"Nothing," Willa said, which was absolutely a lie and her tone made it obvious.

"That is not a nothing face," Marjorie said, standing up excitedly. "That is a something face. That is a face that has read something. Tell me what the ball said."

Willa sighed heavily. "It says you are going to receive great wealth before the first snow."

Marjorie screamed so loudly that a pigeon outside on the windowsill jumped straight up and flew away in absolute panic. Willa winced and rubbed her ear. "You are not rich yet," she said loudly to cut through Marjorie's excitement. "That is not necessarily what it means. That could mean anything."

"I am going to be rich," Marjorie squeaked, already digging through her purse for her phone. "My sister said buying those scratch tickets was stupid. Wait until I tell her. She is going to choke when she finds out I was right all along."

"Do not buy more scratch tickets," Willa said firmly, standing up in an attempt to cut this conversation short. "Do not make any financial decisions based on this reading. Crystal ball readings don't always mean what you think they mean. They're layered. They're complicated."

"I am calling my sister," Marjorie announced, already typing as she headed for the door.

"That was not the same sentence," Willa called after her, but Marjorie was already gone, leaving the front bell jangling behind her like punctuation on a sentence that had gotten away from her.

Willa looked down at the crystal. Its light had faded again, returning to that dim, sickly glow. "That," she said to the empty shop, "was absolutely weird." The ball offered no defense, no explanation, no acknowledgment that it had just done something it had never done before in its entire history of existence.

Her second appointment was stranger. Her third was somehow worse. By eleven-thirty in the morning, the crystal had predicted an unexpected inheritance for a man whose only surviving relative was a ferret named Mr. Whiskers, twins for Agnes Whitlow who was seventy-two years old and had undergone a hysterectomy in 1987, and an engagement between Carol Beecham and Howard Dunwoody, two neighbors who had spent the previous month communicating exclusively through their lawyers because Howard's gazebo was apparently six inches over the property line and Carol had threatened to feed it through a wood chipper if it didn't move.

Willa stopped taking appointments at noon. She flipped the sign on the door from OPEN to TEMPORARILY CONSULTING THE UNIVERSE and locked it behind her. Then she returned to the reading table and crouched until she was eye level with the crystal ball, trying to look as stern as a person could possibly look while talking to a piece of glass.

"You told Agnes she was having twins," Willa said. "Agnes does not have the necessary equipment for that, and we both know it."

The ball flickered, offering no response except that small pulse of light.

"You predicted Marjorie is about to become wealthy," Willa continued, speaking to the ball like it could understand her and was just choosing not to answer. "You told Carol Beecham she is going to marry a man whose gazebo she threatened to destroy. You have lost your mind."

The ball brightened slightly, which Willa chose to interpret as sarcasm. "Oh, do not get sarcastic with me," she said, straightening up. "You have never done any of these things before. Ever. This is not your personality. This is not how you work."

Someone knocked on the front window with enough force to make Willa jump. A tall man stood outside holding a broken mirror. Dark hair that looked like it had been cut with kitchen scissors and anger. Flannel shirt with patches on both elbows. He knocked again, harder. Willa pointed at the sign. He pointed at the mirror. She pointed down the street with what she hoped was a dismissive gesture. He tried the door handle anyway, as if a locked door was just a suggestion he was free to ignore.

Willa closed her eyes for half a second before going to unlock it, already resigned to whatever conversation was about to happen.

"We are closed," Willa said, opening the door just wide enough to block entry. "The sign says so. Very clearly. In multiple languages if you look carefully enough."

"I need this fixed." The man stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, moving past her with the casual confidence of someone who expected doors to open for him. He was tall enough that the little shop seemed to shrink around him. His dark hair looked as though he had cut it himself, grown annoyed halfway through, and decided that symmetry was a government conspiracy not worth his time. A faded flannel shirt covered broad shoulders, and both elbows had been patched with brown fabric that had been carefully stitched. His boots were dusty from walking, his expression impatient verging on hostile, and the broken mirror in his hand looked like it had personally victimized him in some profound way.

Willa glanced at the mirror and then back at him with what she hoped was an expression of absolute neutrality. "I read fortunes," she said, speaking slowly like he might not understand English. "I do not fix things. I do not repair magical objects. I do not solve technical problems. I read crystal balls and tell people about their futures. There is a magical repair shop down the street called Arcane Maintenance. Go left at the pumpkin patch."

"I own Arcane Maintenance," the man said flatly.

Willa paused mid-breath. "That feels like information you could have led with instead of just walking into my shop unannounced."

The man lifted the mirror slightly, tilting it so the broken glass caught the light. "I was told the crystal ball here was an oracle," he said. "I was told it can locate people. I need to find the person who sold this."

Willa folded her arms across her chest. "Why?"

"Because they sold something that does not work," he said, his voice flat and matter-of-fact in a way that suggested he'd practiced this explanation multiple times and had perfected it into maximum efficiency.

"So you bought a broken magical mirror from someone you cannot find, and now you want to pay a fortune-teller to locate them so you can complain," Willa said. "When you say it that way, it sounds petty."

"It sounded petty before you said anything," Willa replied. She watched his mouth move, almost becoming a smile but not quite making it all the way there. There was something underneath all that irritation and hostile body language. Not fresh anger. Something older. Something worn smooth from being carried too long.

"I paid good money for something that was supposed to work," he said, his voice changing slightly on the last two words. "It did not. That is a broken promise."

Willa looked at him more carefully, reading the tension in his shoulders and the tired line around his eyes. "You believe in magic," she said.

"I repair enchanted objects for a living," he said.

"That was not the question I asked," Willa said. She kept her voice steady and level. "That was you giving me a job description instead of an actual answer."

His eyes met hers. They were gray-blue, the color of storm clouds, and they looked genuinely tired in a way that suggested they'd seen things that disappointed him thoroughly.

"Yes," he said finally. "I believe in magic."

"But not fortune-telling," Willa said.

"I believe most fortune-tellers tell people what they want to hear," he said, shrugging slightly. "That seems like a poor service if you're marketing yourself as someone who tells the truth."

Willa smiled despite herself. "Then you have definitely never been here."

"I have heard about you though," he said. "Hasn't everyone in this town heard about you?"

"That sounded ominous," Willa said, rolling her eyes. "Let me guess. You heard I told a bride that her future husband would become emotionally attached to a lawn mower. You heard that story and thought it was a warning sign about my credibility."

"I heard you told a bride that her future husband was going to become emotionally attached to a lawn mower," he said, his expression shifting slightly. "And that sounds ridiculous. But then I also heard it came true."

"He did," Willa said, nodding. "John Deere. Model X350. He calls her Cynthia. They spend more time together than he spends with his actual wife. It's really quite sad if you think about it."

The man stared at her for a long moment, and then he laughed. It was brief and reluctant, as though the sound had escaped without his permission, sneaking out of him before he could stop it. His whole face changed when he did it, softening in a way that made him look younger and less angry. Willa found this development deeply inconvenient for reasons she didn't want to examine too closely.

He set the broken mirror down on her desk with deliberate care, treating it like it was evidence in a trial he was documenting. "Everett Moss," he said. "In case you need to warn people."

"That is considerate," Willa said. "I will definitely let people know that Everett Moss came in here with a broken mirror and a hostile attitude."

He glanced toward the crystal ball, and Willa saw his eyes track the light inside it. The light flickered just then, dimming and brightening in a way that wasn't natural. Both of them noticed it at the same time. He stepped closer to the reading table, leaning toward the crystal with the intensity of someone studying something that had suddenly become professionally interesting.

Willa instinctively placed one hand over the ball. "Do not touch the ball."

"I was not touching it," Everett said defensively.

"You were thinking about touching it," Willa said. "You have the subtlety of a raccoon near an unlocked trash can. Very aggressive. Very singular in your focus."

That almost-smile appeared again, brief and reluctant. He picked up the mirror and headed toward the door, and the bell chimed as he left. Willa watched him cross the sidewalk through the window, watched him disappear down the street in the direction of his shop, and then she turned slowly to face the crystal ball.

"You liked him," Willa said to the ball, speaking quietly like someone might overhear her confessing this to a piece of glass.

The crystal pulsed, brighter for just a moment.

"No?" Willa asked. "That was a yes, wasn't it?" She was getting an answer from a ball that had never answered anything, and she wasn't sure if that was comforting or deeply disturbing.

The front door flew open so hard the bell nearly struck the ceiling, and Daphne Quill swept inside carrying two coffee cups and wearing a cardigan the color of cotton candy. Glitter sparkled in her dark hair in a way that suggested she'd either been to a party or had decided that Tuesday morning required the aesthetic of celebration.

"Crisis coffee," Daphne announced, setting one cup on the desk beside the crystal ball. "Whose life are we destroying today? Yours or mine? Tell me it's mine because my life is already a disaster and I would love some professional consultation on how much worse it could possibly get."

"Does it have to be one?" Willa asked. "Could it be neither?"

"I like options," Daphne said, sitting down in the chair Marjorie had recently abandoned and crossing her legs with the confidence of someone who'd always sat there. Her gaze landed on the crystal ball and stayed there for a long moment. "Oh, honey."

"What?" Willa asked, already bracing herself for whatever Daphne was about to say.

"Your magic ball looks like a sad disco ball," Daphne said, pointing at the dim crystal. "It looks exhausted. It looks like it needs a vacation. It looks like it's going through an existential crisis."

"It's been having problems all day," Willa said. "Don't ask what kind of problems because I don't fully understand them myself."

Daphne picked up the hot coffee she'd brought and took a sip. She closed her eyes like the coffee was important, like it was telling her something true. "The readings are wrong," she said, opening one eye to look at Willa. "You have a face on right now. That's your 'something bad happened' face."

"It's thinking happy thoughts," Willa said, which was a terrible way to describe what was actually happening but seemed like the fastest explanation. "The ball is somehow predicting good futures instead of probable ones."

Daphne nearly spit out her coffee. "That bastard," she said, pointing accusingly at the crystal. "That absolute bastard ball. You're telling me the crystal ball has developed optimism? Like it woke up this morning and decided to become one of those motivational poster people?"

"It told Marjorie Pike she is getting rich," Willa said, sitting down across from Daphne. "It seems to have a personality of its own now. It's got opinions. It's got attitudes. It predicted twins for Agnes Whitlow, who is seventy-two years old and had a hysterectomy performed in 1987."

Daphne lowered her cup slowly, her expression shifting to one of absolute mortification. "No," she said, and it was not a question.

"Yes," Willa said. "And Carol Beecham is apparently going to marry Howard Dunwoody, the man whose gazebo she threatened to put through a wood chipper because it's six inches over the property line."

"No," Daphne said again, more firmly this time. She leaned toward the crystal and addressed it directly like it could understand her and might respond if she asked nicely. "Are you drunk? Did someone enchant you drunk? Is that what's happening here?"

The ball flickered.

Daphne's eyes widened to approximately the size of dinner plates. "It answered me. See? You did see that, right? Tell me you saw that because I swear on everything that crystal just answered me."

"It did not," Willa said, shaking her head firmly.

"It absolutely did!" Daphne pointed at the ball. "I am completely serious! I asked a question and the ball responded! That is communication!"

Before Willa could argue any further, the front bell chimed again with the kind of finality that suggested something important was about to happen. Everett Moss walked back into the shop, and he was still holding the same broken mirror. Willa's coffee stopped halfway to her mouth. Daphne looked at Everett, then at Willa, then back at Everett like she'd just solved a puzzle nobody had asked her to figure out. Her expression brightened in a way that Willa absolutely did not like at all.

"Ohhhh," Daphne said slowly, drawing out the word like it contained multiple syllables and several layers of meaning.

"Don't," Willa said quickly. "Don't say whatever you're about to say."

"I didn't say anything," Daphne said, smiling widely in a way that made it absolutely clear she had several things she wanted to say. "Well, maybe. Eventually."

Everett stopped beside the desk, and Daphne's grin sharpened as she looked him over with the unmistakable interest of someone who had just found fresh material to annoy him with forever.

"That's Everett," Daphne announced. "My cousin or something. It's complicated. Genealogy is a nightmare."

Willa looked between them. "You know him?"

"Second cousin," Everett said, already sounding tired of this conversation before it had properly begun.

Daphne waved one hand dismissively like genealogy was beneath her concern. "Close enough. He owns Arcane Maintenance. He fixes enchanted objects. He complains about literally everything. He cuts his own hair when he's angry, which based on his appearance means he's been angry approximately seventy percent of the time since his last successful haircut."

Everett's face flattened into an expression of absolute neutrality. "I'm standing right here," he said flatly.

"I know," Daphne said with unmistakable pleasure. "I'd hate to waste a perfectly good insult when you weren't around to hear it and appreciate it."

Willa pressed her lips together, but the laugh still threatened to escape anyway. She tried to cover it by drinking coffee but Everett noticed and looked at her directly.

"You can laugh now," he said, not unkindly. "I give you permission."

"I'm not laughing," Willa said, which was not technically true but felt like the right thing to say in the moment.

"You're trying not to," Everett said. "I can see you. You're physically trying to prevent laughter from happening."

Daphne looked delighted by this entire interaction.

Everett placed the mirror on the desk again with the same careful deliberation as before. "I have a customer with a broken scrying mirror," he said. "They need it fixed. I'm going to need to understand what's wrong with it before I can figure out how to repair it."

Willa looked at him, and her confusion must have shown on her face because he continued without waiting for a question. "I thought you bought it," she said finally.

"I simplified the explanation," Everett said, which was a polite way of saying he'd lied through omission.

"You lied," Willa said.

From the back room, the brass kettle shrieked loudly enough to startle all three of them.

Everyone looked toward the sound simultaneously. Daphne burst out laughing at the cosmic irony of it all.

Everett closed his eyes. "I hate that thing," he said. "I have hated it since I walked in here fifteen minutes ago."

"Get in line," Willa said. "It hates you too. It has opinions about your semantics."

Everett rested one hand on the mirror frame and took a breath before continuing his explanation. "The customer bought this from a traveling magical-goods dealer who came through town last month," he said. "They brought it to me because it does not work. Repair spells will not hold. Standard diagnostic spells don't work either. That means either it was defective when it was sold or somebody interfered with the enchantment on purpose after the sale."

Willa studied the crack running across the glass. "Why would anyone do that?" she asked. "Why would someone deliberately break a magical mirror?"

"That is what I am trying to find out," Everett said. "That is why I came back here. The ball was mentioned as a locating oracle. I need to locate whoever sold this and understand what they were really selling."

The crystal ball pulsed.

Brightly. More brightly than it had all day except for that moment with Marjorie when it had been making ridiculous predictions about crowns made of money.

All three of them stopped talking and moved into absolute stillness.

The light grew stronger until a pale blue glow filled the reading room, washing everything in cool, electric light. Everett turned toward it and leaned closer to the table. Daphne put down her coffee with deliberate care. Willa felt the magic before she understood what was happening. A low vibration ran through the walnut table, strong enough to make one of the charm jars rattle against another, creating a sound like wind chimes made of fear and confusion.

The mirror answered.

A thin blue line raced through the crack in the glass, following the path of the break like it was lighting a circuit. Everett grabbed the frame instinctively. "What did you do?" he asked, not accusatory but genuinely confused.

"Nothing," Willa said. "I didn't touch anything. I didn't do anything. I was just sitting here talking to Daphne."

The crystal pulsed again, and the mirror flashed in response. For less than a second, a symbol appeared in the broken reflection, visible in the blue light despite the shattered glass. Three circles intersected around a crooked vertical line, geometric and purposeful and somehow significant in a way that made Willa's stomach clench.

Then it vanished.

Everett stared at the glass, at the place where the symbol had been. "Did you see that?" he asked, his voice careful and controlled.

"Yes," Willa said.

Daphne stood slowly, moving with deliberate care like she was afraid sudden movements might break whatever had just happened. "I also saw it, which is unfortunately because I was really hoping this could remain none of my business."

She headed for the door without waiting for anyone to stop her.

"Where are you going?" Willa asked.

"Chlorophyll Dreams," Daphne said, already halfway out.

"You already have coffee," Willa said.

"I need a muffin," Daphne said, like that explained everything.

"Why?" Willa asked.

"Emotional carbohydrates," Daphne said. She opened the door and looked back at both of them. "Everett, stop being emotionally weird. Willa, do not use the crystal ball as a weapon."

"That is my job," Willa said.

"Exactly. Be nice about it," Daphne said, and then she disappeared onto the sidewalk, leaving the door open behind her.

Silence settled over the shop like something alive and waiting.

Everett looked at the mirror. Willa looked at the crystal ball. The light inside it faded back to its dim, sickly glow, like it had exhausted itself with that display.

Everett broke the silence first. "I should go," he said, but he didn't move. He stood there holding the broken mirror, looking at the spot where the symbol had been.

"Probably," Willa said, but she also didn't move. She remained seated in her chair, watching him.

Everett looked down at the cracked glass. "The mirror never worked properly," he said slowly. "It was supposed to be a scrying mirror, but all it ever showed were ordinary reflections. Broken ones. Even before the glass cracked, the enchantment behaved like it never understood what it was supposed to do. Like someone had designed it with a fundamental misunderstanding of its own purpose."

Willa studied him, hearing something underneath the words. "Like everything here," she said.

His gaze met hers. "Yeah."

He placed the mirror beside Daphne's abandoned coffee, treating it with the same careful respect as before. "You said something is wrong with it," he said, still looking at the ball rather than at her.

"I think so," Willa said.

"What exactly?" Everett asked.

"It is lying," Willa said simply.

Everett looked at her, genuine confusion crossing his features. "Crystal balls lie?"

"This one doesn't," Willa said. "That is what makes it so wrong. That is what makes this a problem."

"Apparently it does now," Everett said.

"That is the problem," Willa said. "That is exactly the problem."

He studied the oracle without touching it, keeping his hands to himself like he understood somehow that touching it might make things worse. "How long has it been doing this?"

"Since this morning," Willa said.

"Anyone handled it besides you?" he asked.

"Not that I know of," Willa said.

"Did you move it?" he asked.

"No," Willa said.

"Change anything in the shop?" he asked.

"No," Willa said.

"Change the wards? Add new spells?" he asked, running through a checklist of possibilities.

"No," Willa said. "And before you ask, I don't have a new boyfriend. I don't have an old boyfriend. I don't have any boyfriend at all."

He hesitated, looking almost embarrassed by his next question. "Personal magic can interfere with enchanted objects," he said quietly. "I had to ask."

The kettle shrieked from the back room, and Everett glared toward it with the focused intensity of someone who wanted to personally attack kitchen equipment. Willa laughed before she could stop herself, and when Everett looked at her, his expression softened in a way that made her realize how much tension he'd been carrying.

Then the crystal ball pulsed.

Bright. Brighter than before.

Willa's laughter died immediately.

Everett turned slowly toward the table, and letters began forming beneath the surface of the crystal. Pale strokes that looked like they'd been written in light, twisting through the glow with purpose and intention.

Willa leaned closer, trying to read what the ball was attempting to communicate.

The words vanished before either of them could read them completely, disappearing like they'd never been there at all.

Everett looked at her with something like concern. "Was that normal?"

"Nothing about today has been normal," Willa said. "Nothing about this entire situation makes any sense."

He nodded toward the ball. "I fix things," he said. "That is what I do. I repair magical objects. I understand how they work. I understand what goes wrong."

"I know," Willa said.

"You read fortunes," he said.

"I know," Willa said.

"Something is wrong with your oracle," he said. "Something is wrong with this mirror. They just reacted to each other like they recognized something familiar in the other."

That was the part Willa liked least. The part that made her stomach clench and her mind spin with possibilities she didn't want to consider.

She looked at the cracked mirror. Then at the crystal. Then at Everett, who was standing in her shop holding a broken magical object and making implications that suggested they might need to work together.

"Tomorrow," Willa said. "After I close the shop. You can come back and look at it properly."

"You will let me examine it?" Everett asked, sounding surprised by this development.

"I will let you look at it," Willa said carefully. "That is not the same thing as examining it. There are rules. There are protocols."

"That is not the same thing," Everett said, nodding like he understood the distinction.

"Correct," Willa said.

A faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth, barely visible but definitely there. "Tomorrow then," he said.

He picked up the mirror and started toward the door, and Willa watched him move toward the exit.

"Everett," Willa called out.

He turned back immediately. "Yes?"

Willa nodded toward Daphne's second coffee cup, which was still sitting on the desk untouched. "Your coffee. Daphne brought two."

Everett glanced at the cup with something that might have been consideration or might have been confusion. "Not mine," he said.

"Daphne brought two," Willa said. "One for me, one for you. That is how she operates."

"Then apparently it is yours," Everett said, and the smallest smile played at the corner of his mouth before he turned and left the shop.

The door chimed behind him.

Willa sat alone in the reading room for several seconds, surrounded by the weight of things that didn't make sense. The crystal ball glowed softly on the table, pulsing gently like it was breathing. She looked at the abandoned coffee, which had already grown cold from sitting too long. She looked at the door where Everett had disappeared. She looked back at the crystal.

"This is not romantic," Willa said firmly to the ball, speaking out loud to make sure she heard it.

The ball pulsed, brighter this time.

"I mean it," Willa said. "Whatever you are thinking, whatever you are implying with your pulsing and your brightness and your sudden development of optimism, it is not romantic. It is a problem. It is a situation that requires solving."

The light brightened again, defiant and cheerful and absolutely infuriating.

"Oh, shut up," Willa said. She stood up, covered the crystal with its velvet cloth, and decided she was going to close the shop for the rest of the day. Some problems were better handled after coffee and a long walk and time to think about things that didn't involve mysterious mirrors or repair mages with sad eyes.

By six o'clock, Willa had closed the shop, covered the crystal with its velvet cloth, locked the door, and convinced herself that she was not thinking about Everett Moss at all. She was thinking about the mirror. She was thinking about the symbol and the blue light and the way the objects had responded to each other like they were having a conversation in a language she didn't understand. She was definitely not thinking about his gray-blue eyes or the way he'd almost smiled or the casual way he'd asked about boyfriends like it was something he genuinely needed to know for professional reasons.

Outside, Bellweather Bay had settled into evening. Shop windows glowed along the street, casting warmth onto the sidewalks. Someone in the town square was testing floating jack-o'-lanterns for the upcoming autumn festival, and three had already escaped their moorings. Children chased one toward the fountain while it shouted insults at them in a surprisingly educated vocabulary. The pumpkin patch behind the cafe glowed beneath golden bulbs, and cinnamon drifted from the bakery on the breeze. Somewhere down the street, a broom backfired loudly enough to frighten a flock of enchanted pigeons off a rooftop.

Magic was impossible almost everywhere else in the world.

In Bellweather Bay, it was simply Tuesday.

Willa locked the shop and took three steps down the sidewalk toward home. A flash of light behind her stopped her dead in her tracks. She turned, and through the front window of her shop, she could see the crystal ball glowing. It was blazing. The velvet cloth she'd so carefully placed over it was lying on the floor.

She knew she had covered it. She distinctly remembered placing the cloth over the sphere, taking care to make sure it was properly arranged.

She unlocked the shop and went back inside.

The crystal shone brighter than it had at any point during the entire day. The light was so intense it cast sharp shadows across the walls, making the teal paint look dark and ominous rather than calming and safe. Willa approached the table slowly, approaching the ball like it might bite her.

"Okay," Willa said, keeping her voice steady. "What exactly is your problem?"

The ball pulsed, and words began to appear beneath the surface of the crystal. Letters forming like they were being written in real time, one after another.

TOMORROW.

The letters faded.

Another word replaced them.

BEGINS.

Willa's stomach tightened into a knot. The implications of those two words crashed over her like a wave.

"Begins what?" she asked the ball, already knowing it wasn't going to answer her question directly.

The crystal flickered, hesitated, and the words disappeared completely.

For several seconds, nothing happened at all. The ball sat there glowing softly, offering nothing, explaining nothing.

Then an image formed inside the glass.

A man's hand, holding something broken.

A cracked mirror.

Gray-blue eyes.

Everett.

Willa took one step back away from the table.

"No," she said. "No, that's not what is happening here."

The crystal went dark.

Not dim like it had been that morning.

Dark. Completely dark. Like the light inside it had been switched off entirely.

For ten years, that ball had predicted affairs, bankruptcies, marriages, divorces, pregnancies, reconciliations, career changes, three house fires, one spectacularly unfortunate tattoo that involved a dolphin and regret, and one grown man's complete emotional collapse over a lawn mower named Cynthia.

It had never lied. Not once. Not even a little bit.

Until today.

Now somebody had interfered with a magical object that should not have been easy to interfere with, a broken scrying mirror had reacted to the oracle with intent and purpose, and Everett Moss had landed directly in the middle of both problems like he was supposed to be there all along.

Willa stared at the dead crystal ball, trying to understand what it was trying to tell her.

Tomorrow suddenly felt like a terrible idea. Unfortunately, she already wanted it to come.