I didn't tell her.
I stayed outside until the shaking stopped. Until my hands were steady enough to wipe the dirt from my palms without trembling. I practiced my breathing—slow, quiet, like she taught me.
Only then did I walk back into the cottage.
She was at the table, wrapping herbs in gauze and string. Her shoulders were tense. She didn't look up.
"You left work early."
It wasn't a question.
"Stomach thing," I said. "Didn't feel right."
"Was it something you ate?"
"No."
"Then what was it?"
She finally looked at me then. Her eyes had that sharpness I knew too well. Not anger—calculation. She was searching for cracks. Trying to figure out what had changed.
I lied before she could ask again.
"Just tired. First week nerves, maybe."
She didn't believe me.
But she let it go.
I took my bath early that night. Doubled the valerian. Scrubbed the scent from my skin until it stung.
Still, I could feel it.
Not the scent—just the absence of control. A thrum in my blood, quiet but persistent, like a drip behind a wall. No one hears it at first. But it's there. And eventually, it floods the house.
I tried to read. I tried to sleep. I even tried to hum the songs she used to sing when I was little, the ones she claimed could silence storm spirits. But nothing helped. My skin still tingled like it remembered being touched, even though I hadn't been. My dreams that night were full of teeth and shadows, and when I woke, my pillow was damp with sweat.
I curled up on my mattress and opened Micah's note again, rereading the same single line.
More than you let us see.
I wasn't sure if that made me feel stronger, or worse.
In the morning, she stopped me before I could leave.
"Take the blue pouch today," she said. "Keep it in your pocket."
"What's in it?"
"Wolfsbane. Sage. A little silver leaf."
She didn't explain further. She didn't need to. The pouches were always her way of saying: I don't trust what's out there today. Be smaller.
I tucked it into my coat.
Didn't argue.
The café was quieter than usual.
Jude said the roads were slick out near the east trail—something about fallen trees and a small mudslide. "Forest doesn't like us this week," she said with a laugh.
I forced a smile.
I knew better.
The pen was gone. I looked for it, even though I shouldn't have. But it had disappeared. Maybe Jude threw it out. Maybe whoever it belonged to came back for it.
Maybe it never mattered at all, and I was just losing control.
But something told me it mattered.
I moved slower behind the counter that day. Every time the bell above the door rang, my shoulders tensed. I kept glancing toward the back corner, half-expecting someone to be standing there. Someone familiar, even though I didn't know who. The scent was gone, but its ghost still clung to the corners of my mind.
I made it through half the shift before Nia turned to me and said, "You alright, El?"
I blinked. "Yeah. Why?"
"You look like you're listening to ghosts."
I didn't answer. Just reached for the next order and kept moving.
By the time I got home, my grandmother was outside.
She rarely stood for long these days. But there she was, facing the trees.
When she heard me, she didn't turn. Just said, "You left the back door open."
I froze. "No, I— I locked it."
She still didn't look at me. "Not what I meant."
The trees swayed gently, but there was no wind.
"The forest is restless," she murmured. "Something brushed past the wards. Nothing close. Not yet. But it's circling."
I stepped closer, clutching the strap of my bag tighter. "Do you think it's them?"
Her voice was quiet, but sharp. "It's always them, Elara. Even when it isn't."
I hated the way that made sense.
She turned then. Looked at me fully. Her eyes were tired, rimmed red from lack of sleep, but they burned with that old steel beneath it all.
"You need to be careful now. I want you to redo the salt lines tonight. Use the black salt. Add rowan to the windows."
I nodded.
She moved past me and opened the shed, pulling down jars and bundles. "Tomorrow, we'll start a stronger tonic. You'll drink it before every shift. No exceptions."
"I already use the oil," I said, quietly.
"It's not enough anymore," she snapped. "You've been slipping."
I looked down at the ground, at the moss and wet leaves. I didn't deny it.
She softened, only just.
"Elara," she said gently. "You can't let it wake. Not here. Not now."
I looked up.
She stepped closer, and laid her hand lightly on my chest, over my heartbeat.
"They can smell even the flicker of it," she said. "And if they do, they'll find you."
I swallowed hard.
"I'm trying."
Her fingers curled slightly into the fabric of my coat. "Then try harder."
A crow landed on the fencepost behind her, silent and watching. Its feathers glinted purple-blue in the fading light. My grandmother's eyes flicked to it, and for a moment, something passed between them. She was like that—wired into the old world, the hidden one. Sometimes I forgot just how much she still saw.
We stood like that for a long time.
And in the quiet, with her hand resting over my chest and the forest still and watchful beyond the edge of our wards, a quieter thought settled in:
Whatever was shifting in me—it wasn't done yet.
And it wasn't mine alone.