Agatha Harkness's Arc

Chapter 18 of 21

For three nights, Agatha slept. No wards woke her. No pixie leaked light through her walls. No fae king rode a carriage to her door. The manor had swallowed itself back into hiding, and the world had lost her address. On the fourth afternoon, she decided to celebrate the only way that suited her. She would go to Wanda's tea shop, sit alone at a small table, and eat pastries until she felt like a person again. The shop glowed under its striped awning. Flowers spilled from the window boxes. Inside, pixies flitted between shelves, stacking cups no larger than acorns. Wanda ran the place. She was Agatha's neighbor, the one who had once traded counsel for a favor and never softened a single word. Agatha had hunted down Wanda's runaway pixie to settle that debt. Now she wanted nothing from Wanda but a table and quiet. "Tea," Agatha said. "The dark kind. And whatever is sweetest." Wanda wheeled a cart to Agatha's table. On it sat a tiered stand of tiny cakes and painted cups. She poured without a word, then stopped and looked at the door. Snow White stood there. Agatha knew her at once. The vampire queen came rarely, and never for pleasure. Her black gown caught the light. The pixies went still in the air. "You," Snow White said to Agatha. "You broke a mirror." Agatha set down her cup. "I broke my own mirror. To free a king. That business is finished." "A second mirror broke outside this forest." Snow White crossed the room. Her steps made no sound. "Mine is cracking. When glass breaks, it lets things through. I am counting broken mirrors. Yours is one." "Mine was frost. Ursula cut the summons. Briar Rose confirmed it." Agatha kept her voice flat. "There is nothing left in it." "You buried a shard." Snow White's red eyes did not blink. "With black on it." Agatha's hand tightened on the cup. She had told no one about the corruption. She had watched it stop spreading in the dirt. She had believed the matter closed. "That was Peter's debt," Agatha said. "Not mine." "Debts leak." Snow White laid a cracked hand mirror on the table, beside the cakes. Fine lines spread across its surface as they watched. "Every mirror that breaks pulls the others faster. I need to know if your shard is still buried. If it is not, my glass will finish cracking, and every double I have ever made walks free." Wanda spoke once, flat. "Then check the ground." Agatha looked at the buried jar in her memory, the promise going quiet under her doorstep. Her peace had lasted three days. She pushed the cup away. "I buried it deep," she said. "But I did not stay to watch it." Snow White straightened. "Then we do not know it is still there." Agatha stood. The pastries sat untouched. Her afternoon was over. She had to go home and dig.