The thought made bile rise up in her throat. Why would someone with access to a dragon egg be using it against Roan and the tavern? What else were they doing? And how long before they brought attention to the Northlands for illegal magic use?

  Before she could continue to think about all the ways everything could go wrong, Roan stirred with a groan. “Roan,” she exclaimed, leaning over him. Was he going to wake up?

  Her hair fell over her shoulders and into his face, the blonde a strong contrast to his brown beard and short hair, and she immediately backed up—she hadn’t meant to be that close to him. His nose twitched as her hair tickled him, and he opened his eyes, confusion filling them. This close, the dark brown she’d always thought they were appeared more hazel. “What happened?” he asked, struggling to sit up.

  Abigail scrambled to get away from being uncomfortably close to him before offering a hand to help him sit.

  He waved her away, using Beastie to help himself up instead, his gaze unfocused as he stared at the door. “I almost had him,” he said suddenly, turning to her just as fast, wincing at the movement. ““Where did he go?”

  “Where did who go?” Abigail asked. “I didn’t see what happened.”

  “There was a troublemaker,” he said, growling again. Did he realize how scary his voice was when he did that? “Where did he go?”

  “I didn’t see him,” Abigail responded patiently. He’d already asked that. Had he hit his head when he landed?

  “I need to sit down,” Roan said, reaching out and putting his hand on her shoulder.

  That was new. Abigail wasn’t sure if he had ever touched her before.

  “You are sitting down,” she pointed out.

  Roan looked down at his feet with a glare. “What did he do to me?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Abigail replied quietly, “but you’re not the only one.”

  Roan’s head turned around so fast he might have given himself whiplash, and when he saw the tavern full of sleeping men, he swore under his breath.

  “I’m going to find him and make him undo it,” he said, staggering to his feet with Beastie’s help.

  “The thing is, I don’t know how you’ll find him,” Abigail said, getting up and reaching for his arm. He shook her off but then faltered, and when she reached for his arm again, he allowed her to take it and offer him support.

  “I don’t like it,” he growled again.

  “I don’t, either,” Abigail pointed out evenly, “but perhaps it would be best for you to sit down for a moment before we try to figure out where he went.”

  “I don’t want to sit down,” Roan grumbled.

  Abigail nearly rolled her eyes.

  Of course, he didn’t want to sit down. He never wanted to sit down in the front room, but in this case, he didn’t have much choice.

  She helped him to the closest empty booth, Beastie sticking to his side, ignoring all the men sleeping in the rest of the tavern.

  This was certainly more than she had expected to deal with today, but her upbringing had prepared her for this.

  Maybe.

  She could help somehow…but how, she wasn’t sure.

  She’d never really discovered where her talents lay, and without a dragon egg to draw power from, she didn’t know that she would be powerful enough to attempt to undo whatever spell this was—not that she knew how to do that, even if she did have a dragon egg.

  She sighed and slumped onto the seat across from Roan, who was staring at the table, his eyes unfocused even as his hands ran through Beastie’s fur. Abigail turned her attention to him.

  “Does your head hurt?” she asked quietly.

  “Of course my head hurts,” he snapped. “I ran into something when I was trying to catch him.”

  That didn’t sound good.

  “You ran into the door?” Abigail asked.

  “No,” Roan said shortly. “It was before the door. I don’t know what happened.”

  Abigail thought she might know—and it wasn’t a good sign.

  But whether there had been a spell placed to keep them in the tavern or not, the fact that this many men had been put to sleep and were still asleep didn’t bode well.

  Whoever had cast this was playing with a powerful magic and had far greater power than she did.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said.

  “I don’t need your help.” Roan’s words were gruff, and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

  “Of course, you need my help,” she said. “We’re in the tavern with everyone around us asleep. Surely, you don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m still awake.”

  Roan muttered something under his breath, and Abigail sighed. He wasn’t going to make this easy.

  “Whether we like it or not, we’re going to need each other’s help to figure this out.”

  He did not seem amused. “We shouldn’t be in this position,” he muttered.

  “And yet we are,” Abigail said with forced cheerfulness. “So we’ll have to make the best of it.”

  “How exactly do you suggest making the best of this?” Roan asked, gesturing to the men sleeping around them. “Should we throw a party while my business goes under?”

  “You’re not going to go under,” Abigail said, as patiently as she could. “But we should try to figure out what’s going on here, so we can decide what we’re going to do next.”

  Roan grunted and staggered to his feet. “Gonna go find him. Make him make it stop,” he said. His steps faltered as he made his way toward the door with Beastie beside him.

  “Roan, be careful,” she called out, the words barely leaving her mouth before Roan bounced backwards. Somehow only his head landed on Beastie, who yelped.

  Abigail sighed.

  “What is that?” Roan asked, sitting up and turning to her with a glare.

  As if any of this was her fault. “It looks like we’re stuck here,” she said as cheerfully as she could. “We’ll have to figure out what we’re going to do now, without being able to leave. Do you remember if he said anything before he left?”

  Roan shook his head, carefully rubbing the side of it. “I don’t remember,” he said, panic lacing his voice. “I don’t remember anything.”

  Beastie leaned up against his side as if to lend him comfort, and his hand moved to rest on her honey-colored head.

  He’d never been the most pleasant man, but seeing him reduced to this was nothing she would ever wish upon a man. “It’s okay,” Abigail said in the same way she might soothe a panicked child, letting warmth infuse her voice. “We’ll figure it out. You’re not alone.”

  Roan glared at her. “I’m an adult,” he said. “I don’t need to be coddled.”

  “I know you don’t,” she said in a rush, “but you just hit your head and it’s okay if you don’t remember things, I’m sure it’ll come back to you eventually, and even if it doesn’t, that’s okay, we’ll figure it out and—”

  “You’re talking too much,” he said, interrupting her nervous stream of thought. “My head hurts.”

  Abigail sighed.

  Hitting his head hadn’t changed him, apparently.

  He looked around the tavern, and she could hear the mostly hidden fear in his voice as he said, “What if they never wake up?”

  “They will,” Abigail said, her voice carrying a confidence she didn’t feel. “I know they will.”

  Roan gave her a sideways glance before getting to his feet and stomping away. Beastie looked between her and Roan as if she wasn’t sure whether to stay with Abigail or go with her master.

  “Go with him,” Abigail said to Beastie, nodding in the direction of his office. “He needs you.”

  Beastie promptly followed Roan, and Abigail sighed, planting her hands on her hips as she surveyed the tavern. There was no way of knowing how long it would take to break this curse, especially if Roan couldn’t remember the conditions of it.

  Most curses had a failsafe woven into them, and it was only a matter of time until they figured out what this one’s was, but until then, things might get sparse.

  While there was no way of knowing how long it would take them to break this particular curse, she had heard of curses that lasted years. And if they couldn’t leave the tavern, she and Roan would have to become self-sufficient.

  She made her way to the kitchen and reached for the back door carefully. She didn’t want to bounce off a barrier the way Roan had. But as she carefully opened the door, she was delighted to find that she was able to step through it into the back garden.

  While they hadn’t used it for much, it wouldn’t be hard for her to plant a couple more things, in case the curse lasted longer than she wanted.

  Not that there was too much time left in the short growing season of the Northlands…but anything would be better than nothing.

  Abigail took a deep breath of the fresh air and turned to enter the tavern in search of seeds, but stopped when a ball was thrown over the back fence.

  She made her way over to throw it back, picking it up and hefting it in her hands.

  It looked familiar.

  Too familiar.

  It looked exactly like the homemade ball made of fabric scraps that had been thrown over the back wall a few days ago. She remembered it because Beastie had brought it to her, shredded into many pieces.

  But how could that be?

  The only way the same ball could have appeared was if whoever had cast the spell was dabbling in much stronger magic than they ought to, and an involuntary shiver raced down her spine at the thought.

  Surely they hadn’t been sent back in time. Was that even possible without using dark magic?

  But it fit with everything else she knew about this curse.

  Abigail left the ball where it was. Beastie would find it later and destroy it just as she had the first time, and hopefully Roan would remember what had happened before the time ran out on this curse.

  She didn’t want to think what it meant if he didn’t.

  Chapter three

  Roan

  Roan paced back and forth in his office, struggling to remember anything past the moment when the man had pointed the wand at him. He hadn’t thought magic was real until today, but now it was plain to see.

  Not only was it real, it was dangerous.

  What had happened, and how was he going to break the curse that held him trapped in his tavern?

  What was he going to do if the doors never opened again?

  Would he and Abigail die of starvation?

  What would happen to the sleeping men in the tavern? Would they wither away in front of him? Would he be forced to watch as the few people he knew and liked, the few people who didn’t hate him, remained forever trapped in a sleeping curse?

  He fought the urge to retch as Beastie flopped into the corner and watched him silently, no longer putting in the effort to try to keep up with him.

  Would she be able to go into the back garden, or would he end up with a pile of dog excrement in the corner of his office?

  He should have checked if they could get into the garden or not. Maybe he could scale the fence and get out that way.

  Or maybe this was all a bad dream, and he would wake up soon.

  That made much more sense than a ruffian with a magical stick attacking him in his own tavern.

  Perhaps that was the answer, and this would all disappear shortly. Yes, that had to be it.

  It was only a dream.

  Roan reached for the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a hammer. If he was dreaming, he might as well get the enjoyment of accomplishing a few things from his never-ending list of things to do, like fixing the booth that was separating from the wall.

  He made his way out of his office, walking past a surprised Abigail, who glanced down at the hammer in his hands.

  “Gonna fix that booth,” he said, gesturing with the hammer.

  She raised an eyebrow at him, seemingly surprised by his decision to accomplish something. He shrugged. “Might as well make something happen while I’m dreaming.”

  Not that he owed her an explanation. She should know better than to expect one from him, but she’d been helpful when he’d been stuck on the floor, so perhaps he should at least clue her in on the fact that they were stuck in a dream together.

  Or maybe she wasn’t even aware of it. Maybe it was simply his dream, and she was only a character in the story.

  It didn’t matter.

  He was going to fix the booth to pass the time until he awoke.

  He made his way over and used the hammer to pull out the nails that had started to slide out of the wall. He carefully pounded them straight again and put them in a new spot before hammering them through the back of the booth into the wall.

  This was satisfying, at least.

  He tried not to glance over at all the men sleeping around him, because when he did, he had the feeling that this might not be a dream after all—and that was far too unsettling an idea for him to entertain for long.

  But they hadn’t woken up when he’d started banging, so it wasn’t that they were really asleep.

  He couldn’t think about it, so instead, he hammered all the nails back to where they should have been in all the unoccupied booths. When he got to the booth where Tom and Edgar lay slumped over a table, he stared at the exposed nails for a moment, then stuck his hammer into his pocket and walked away.

  No sense in going through the effort of moving them if this was a dream, and he’d wake up in the morning with nothing done. He glanced at the empty booths, their backs firm against the wall again, and smiled in satisfaction at a job well done.

  Even if he hadn’t fixed everything, he’d made one thing better.

  He looked around the tavern, taking in the dim, cozy room that he spent the vast majority of his time presiding over.

  The Lucky Goat was his home, and someone had come into it and turned his sanctuary into a prison.

  Beastie let out a whine as she made her way toward the kitchen, and Roan turned to follow her. Abigail was probably there and would let her out, but he was curious if whatever had stopped him from leaving through the front door was also effective on the back. He walked through the swinging door just in time to see Beastie head out the back.

  Abigail looked back at him, her eyes bright, and she smiled. “Did you get the booths fixed?” she asked.

  “I did.” He nodded toward the door. “That one works for you?”

  Abigail nodded in confirmation. “I haven’t tried the gate in the fence, though. I suspect it’ll be the same as the front. I’m just glad that we can let Beastie out.”

  Roan grunted. “I’ll try the back gate.”

  As he made his way toward the door, Beastie came bounding back with a brightly colored ball in her mouth. Roan knelt as Beastie dropped it at his feet and picked it up to inspect it, dread filling his gut. “This is…” he began, turning to Abigail, who nodded again.

  “The same ball,” she said quietly.

  Roan stood and tossed the ball back to Beastie, who settled in the corner and began to tear it to shreds.

  “I knew this was a dream,” he said.

  “I hope it is,” Abigail said quietly.

  “You don’t think so?” Roan said. It wasn’t really a question.

  “I’m afraid it’s a curse,” she said, the words barely a whisper.

  “But magic isn’t real,” Roan said.

  Abigail simply raised an eyebrow. “I’m glad that you think that,” she said, “but I’m afraid it isn’t true.”

  “How could it not be true?”

  Roan didn’t want the answer, so he simply stomped out through the back door to inspect the garden.

  This was a dream. Magic wasn’t real. He was simply dreaming about the ball that Beastie had destroyed last week.

  He leaned down, picked up a stick, and threw it over the back fence, muttering a curse under his breath when it hit some invisible wall and bounced back toward him.

  That wasn’t what he wanted to see—he wanted to see it sail straight over.

  And the ball was here, and it was the same ball that Beastie had destroyed last week.

  Had the owner of the ball made a second one to throw over his fence and lose again?

  Things couldn’t be repeating like this in real life—this had to be a dream.

  He marched indoors and informed Abigail it didn’t work before making his way back to his office.

  He could have tried the gate, perhaps, but he didn’t feel like using his body to discover if the barrier existed there, too. He’d already gotten hurt too many times.

  His head was beginning to hurt again, whether from the magic that had been pointed at him or the effects of being knocked unconscious, he wasn’t sure. But he didn’t usually feel pain in his dreams, and Abigail seemed so certain that it wasn’t one.

  If it was a dream, it was a beastly dream.

  He clenched his teeth as he glanced around his office.

  What did he need to do if this was, in fact, real, and he wasn’t going to wake up in the morning with all of this behind him?

  What steps were important to make sure that he and Abigail would make it through this experience?

  First, he needed to get all those sleeping men out of his tavern. He didn’t want to stare at them for however long this might take—the idea of them sitting there in a peaceful slumber while he and Abigail lived and worked around them was entirely unappealing.

  But he couldn’t shove them outside, and he couldn’t put them through the front door. He could maybe put a couple of them into the pantry, but then Abigail would have to see them.

  In the storage room, however…that could work.

  How many men had been in the tavern? There had been seven or eight, perhaps.

  They would fit in the storage room, and if they woke up, it wasn’t as if they could do too much damage there.

  Yes, the storage room would work.

  He marched out of his office and poked his head into the kitchen. “Can you help me move them?” he asked.

  “You want to move them?” Abigail’s eyes widened in surprise. “Are you sure that’s a good decision?”

  “I don’t see any other option,” he said, “unless you want them sleeping around us the whole time we’re trapped here.”