Agatha Harkness's Arc

Chapter 12 of 21

Agatha's name was hers again, and her wards had snapped tight around the manor. She should have slept for a week. Instead, three nights later, the wards woke her again. A thin hum pulsed from her altar room. She rose, candelabra in hand, and followed the sound. The frost mirror stood where she had left it, cracked and pale. Peter was long gone from its glass. But the frame still hummed. Residual summoning magic clung to its surface like frost that would not melt. Every pulse tripped a ward. Every ward yanked her awake. Her peace was gone, and the mirror was the thief. She tried frost magic first, the way Icilia sealed such things. She layered ice across the glass. The hum dulled, then returned. Her frost alone could not hold it. The old summoning had bitten too deep. She needed someone who unmade enchantments cleanly, and every enchantment ended for one fae she knew. Seraphina came at Agatha's call, small and silver-haired, her gold staff tapping the floor. She was an elder fae who granted wishes with expiration dates. Nothing she touched stayed changed forever. Agatha had traded her a decade of quiet debts, and Seraphina remembered each one. "You want it undone," Seraphina said. She studied the cracked glass. "Everything I do runs out. You know this." "I want it quiet," Agatha said. "For one night. For a year. I don't care." Seraphina smiled and touched her staff to the frame. Gold light spread through the cracks. The hum thinned. The wards, listening in the walls, went still. For the first time in three nights, Agatha heard nothing. Then Wanda arrived. She had felt the summoning magic shift from her tea shop and walked straight in. She looked at the glowing mirror, then at Seraphina. "Godmother work," Wanda said flatly. "It expires." "It buys me sleep," Agatha said. "When it wears off, the magic wakes hungry," Wanda said. "Louder than before. That mirror will call something. Not Peter. Whatever hears an open door." She named it plainly and stopped. Seraphina lowered her staff. "She's right. My seal fades. The door only sleeps." Agatha looked at the quiet mirror. She had two choices. Keep it, and buy silence now while a worse call gathered behind the glass. Or destroy the frame and lose the one door she controlled. She chose sleep. She took Seraphina's seal and let it hold. "A year of quiet is a year," she said. "I'll deal with the rest when it comes." Seraphina bowed and left. Wanda lingered at the door. "When it wakes," Wanda said, "come to me first." Then she was gone. Agatha stood alone in the silent altar room. The wards held. The manor was quiet. She had her peace back, sealed in gold that would not last. Somewhere behind the frost, in the dark of the glass, something waited for the seal to fail.