Be My Spell

Chapter Four

Phoebe swallowed her nerves and took it. His grip was firm, his skin cool. "Thank you, Mr Ross," she said, offering a friendly, slightly nervous smile that caused her features to shift with open emotion. "It’s... even bigger than the photographs."

Calder remained perfectly serious, his grey-green eyes locked onto hers. "It’s easier to maintain if people stop commenting on the size."

Phoebe blinked, her smile faltering as she tried to decipher his tone. There was no malice in his face, but no humour either. She couldn't tell if he was joking, and a heavy, thick layer of cold friction settled between them.

"Right," Phoebe managed, clearing her throat lightly, her brown eyes flashing with a sudden, stubborn spark. "Well, I'll try to keep my metric measurements to myself then."

If Calder was bothered by her mild sass, he didn't show it. He simply turned, his structured coat swirling slightly. "Follow me, please. I’ll show you to the archive. We have a strict timeline, and I prefer to begin without delay."

He led her through a labyrinth of quiet, grand hallways. Blackthorn House was immaculate. Fresh flowers sat in silver vases on antique credenzas, undoubtedly placed by staff, but they looked unnoticed, like props in a staged home. Every antique clock ticked in perfect synchronisation. It was beautiful, but it felt as though time had frozen.

Calder stopped before a set of double iron-reinforced doors at the back of the estate. He swiped a sleek security card through a digital scanner, a jarringly modern touch against the old stone and the doors clicked open.

"The private library," Calder announced, stepping inside.

Phoebe stepped past him, and for a moment, her breath completely left her. The room was massive, rising two stories high with wraparound dark wood balconies. Thousands of leather-bound volumes lined the walls, smelling of old paper, binding glue, and history. But in the centre of the room sat a climate-controlled glass pod, inside of which were several long oak tables covered in preservation boxes.

"My grandmother, Eilidh, spent the last decade of her life acquiring these specific botanical manuscripts," Calder said, his voice dropping slightly in volume.

Phoebe, highly attuned to shifts in vocal tone, noticed the subtle change immediately. The robotic tech billionaire cracked, just for a millisecond, revealing a profound, deeply buried grief.

"She was obsessed with the idea that folklore medicine held data that modern synthesis was missing," Calder continued, his face smoothing back into an unreadable mask. "She wanted it catalogued systematically. I intend to see her wishes fulfilled."

Phoebe walked toward the glass pod, her eyes shining with genuine reverence as she saw the edges of centuries-old parchment peeking out from a preservation tray. "She was right, you know," Phoebe said softly, looking back at him over her shoulder. "Folklore isn't just old wives' tales. It’s centuries of trial, error, and survival. It’s data written in the language of the earth."

Calder watched her, his grey-green eyes tracking the way her face lit up, the genuine warmth she exuded. "Data requires verification, Miss Axel. Not sentimentality."

"Sentimentality is often how the data survived long enough for you to buy it, Mr Ross," she countered gently, completely unbothered by his wealth.

A heavy silence descended. Calder looked at her for a long moment, a subtle shift in his posture suggesting he was entirely unaccustomed to being corrected in his own home.

"You have six weeks," Calder said, his voice clipped, reinforcing the boundaries with transactional efficiency. "The terms of your contract are explicit. Half the payment has been wired to your account as of this morning. You will work independently. I do not like to be disturbed while I am managing my firm's operations from the east wing."

"Six weeks," Phoebe repeated, the words tasting like a reminder of her own impermanence. "Understood. I'll be a ghost."

"Ghosts don't leave mud in my foyer, Miss Axel," Calder said dryly. And this time, just before he turned to leave, Phoebe could have sworn the corner of his strict, defined mouth twitched upwards by a fraction of a millimetre.

Later that evening, the grand house swallowed Phoebe whole.

Her bedroom in the west wing was larger than her entire flat above the apothecary. It was elegant, decorated in muted creams and dark walnut, with a massive window that looked out over the sweeping, desolate grounds. It was entirely temporary. She hadn't even fully unpacked her suitcase, leaving her clothes folded neatly inside, terrified to take up space in a world that wasn't hers.

The house felt enormous, foreign, and entirely silent.

Phoebe walked to the expansive glass window, resting her forehead against the cool pane as the Scottish dusk began to bleed into ink-black night. The rolling hills in the distance were fading into shadows, the wind audibly whistling through the ancient stone gargoyles on the roof.

Then, something caught her eye.

Far out on the eastern edge of the grounds, past the manicured lawns and buried partially against the dark pine woods, sat a structure. It was an old Victorian greenhouse, its domed glass roof catching the very last, dying rays of the evening light. It was partly covered in wild, untamed ivy, looking entirely separate from the cold, clinical perfection of the main estate. It looked forgotten. Alive. Wild.

Something deep within Phoebe’s chest tugged, an inexplicable pull toward the distant glass structure. It was the very first thing at Blackthorn House that felt like it spoke her language.

She stared out into the dark, her brown eyes reflective in the glass. Calder Ross was a fascinating, terrifyingly controlled enigma, and his house was a beautiful cage of grief. But as she watched the distant greenhouse vanish into the night, Phoebe smiled a small, stubborn smile.

Something in this house had been asleep for a very long time. And as she looked out into the cold, silent dark, she realised she might be the first person capable of waking it up.