The Proof

She lost her husband, her savings, and a pregnancy she didn't know she had — all in the same Tuesday.

The inheritance arrived on Thursday. One Victorian house. One operational bakery. One very small town in the Oregon forest. And one brass key that refused to stop being warm.

Nora Voss is forty-three, freshly divorced, and apparently a fire witch. She'd find that more alarming if her lower back wasn't finally — inexplicably — better.

She came to Duskpine to start over. She didn't expect to become a murder suspect. She definitely didn't expect the silver-haired bookshop owner who hasn't blinked in four hundred years.

But the channel is open. The body is real. And the key in her pocket won't let her leave.