Page 13 of A Spell for Midwinter’s Heart

Lively conversation spilled out of the Midwinter house and into the night as the coven filled the great room.

The odor of wassail—apple and fermented grapes and cinnamon and anise—permeated everything.

Rowan stood at the stove, stirring the contents of a heavy stockpot.

Tomatoes burst, spraying their juices to mix with hot oil, orange juice, and spices—Sun King soup in the making.

Her mother brushed past, singing in an upbeat way to herself. Liliana had been all smiles since Rowan announced her intention to join them for the spell circle. It had been all Rowan could do not to retract her statement at the smug sense of triumph radiating off her mother.

This is too important to let that get in the way.

“Go on,” said Liliana, ushering her from the kitchen. “Catch up with everyone. I can finish up here.”

Cooking had been a convenient excuse to avoid that exact thing.

Joe Midwinter sat on a couch with his nose buried in a book, and she stopped to squeeze his shoulder.

While he didn’t dislike the coven, their energy was not his energy, and it was only the promise of food that kept him from retreating to his wood shop to introvert completely.

He glanced up from his reading and patted her hand.

“An entire book about the Battle of Hastings, huh?” she said, scanning the title. “Where do you find these things?”

“Every major bookstore,” said her father. “The Battle of Hastings was the end of Anglo-Saxon England. It’s a significant element of the British national myth.” Then he noticed her bemused expression. “But you knew that.”

“In this house, it would be impossible not to,” she said, giving him a final pat before moving on.

She had to resist the impulse to pick up her crocheting or a book and join him on the couch instead of figuring out how to work her way into the circles of conversation. There was a time when she’d been a part of this group’s rhythms, but she was on the outside now.

An arm wrapped around her, pulling her in close and sparing her the continued stress. “Look at the big-city girl, come to join us,” said her uncle Drew. “Didn’t bring any of the crime along, did ya?”

“City girl? Suburb girl more like it,” said Rowan. “I only wish I was able to afford the city.”

Her uncle was a short, narrow man with wildly curly graying brown hair and an unfiltered way of being.

His particular use of magic came out mainly in potions and herbalism—which didn’t only mean he grew pot, but pot he grew indeed.

He sold all manner of herbs and tinctures, which were considerably more effective than anyone without the craft could have brewed.

His sixteen-year-old Kel, on the other hand, practiced magic with a fervor.

Rowan’s cousin lived in the witchy hashtags on various social media sites and was skilled at creating short-form video content.

Set to moody electronica and full of occult imagery, their videos often explored liminal spaces and frequently featured the antics of the local corvids.

Kel hovered, waifish in a long black sweater and black skinny jeans, their eyeliner so thick it could be spotted from twenty paces. Their wavy brown hair was midlength and shaggy, and they wore clear-framed hexagonal glasses.

“How’s it going, Kel?” asked Rowan.

“All right,” said Kel with a shrug, shoving their hands deeper into their pockets. That was apparently as much of a response as Rowan was going to get.

She tried again at conversation. “That video you made of the crow moot in the old willow showed up on my feed like a dozen times. Seems to have gone pretty viral. Congrats.”

They perked up at that. “Thanks.”

“You hear they got a pretty big check for that one?” asked Drew, eyes shining. “Who knew you could make money off being online too much?”

“Literally everyone, Dad,” muttered Kel. They nodded and drifted to the window, where there came a rapping. A crow peered through the panes, and Kel lifted the sill, allowing the bird to come inside and settle in the rafters.

Across the room, the LeGrands were chatting with Stephan.

Like the Midwinters, the LeGrands boasted many generations of Elk Ridge witches.

Birdie had been a childhood friend of Rowan’s grandmother, and she’d changed little in the last eight years.

Her gray hair was wild and unkempt, and she wore a long coat of many-colored velvet patches and an extravagant purple hat that seemed to be festooned with an actual bird’s nest.

Birdie’s granddaughter, Naomie, had gone to high school with Rowan, but she’d seen little of her in the intervening years. Time had only made Naomie’s pretty face even lovelier—as if an artist had done their last pass to bring a painting to full flush.

Her light brown skin was smooth, her body plump, and she had the thickest hair Rowan had ever seen; it was dark and glossy and hung from beneath a black-rimmed hat.

She looked like she was born a few decades too late in a bright green rustic sheath dress that was covered in a heavy chunky macramé wrap.

Naomie’s father and mother also practiced magic, but her parents had moved to back to her mother’s hometown of Santa Fe, opening up the spots in the coven that Zaide and Naomie now occupied.

Naomie had inherited her grandmother’s psychic tendencies and ran a string of successful social media channels where she posted tarot pulls of the day and astrological predictions.

While Kel’s videos were more niche, Naomie’s attracted a wide audience.

Her feeds were all glowing selfies and crystals on perfectly arranged altars set against clean white backdrops.

The two groups merged as Birdie migrated over to greet Rowan.

“Knew you’d come around on joining us,” said the old woman.

“Well, I should say she knew you would.” Birdie gestured her thumb toward Naomie, who trailed, cupping a mug of wassail in both hands at her center.

“And I trust her instincts. Me? I wasn’t so sure.

You’ve got that Midwinter stubborn streak.

Did I ever tell you how when we were girls, your grandma once walked two miles with bleeding feet because she didn’t want to admit the shoes she borrowed from me were too small? ”

“Sounds like her,” said Rowan, politely ignoring that Birdie had, in fact, told that story before. Many times.

Birdie chuckled fondly. “Never stopped insisting we were the same size, even if she was a full size bigger.”

“It is so good to have you with us, Rowan.” She set aside her wassail before reaching out to clasp Rowan’s hand between her own. “The circle’s complete.”

When Naomie touched her, Rowan was hit with an image—a small nook under her bed back in Orange County, where things often fell. Her ring of missing keys was down there. She’d probably set them on the bedpost without thinking, and they’d jostled off in the night.

Lost things had a way of revealing themselves in Naomie’s presence.

“So, what did I spy when I looked across the parade earlier?” asked Stephan, looping his arm around her shoulders. “Why, it was you and Gavin McCreery—looking cozy.” Across the room, their mother’s face shot up from the stove.

Oh no. If there was one thing you did not mention in a room full of witches, it was the potential for juicy sexual intrigue. It was their catnip.

“We were just watching the parade,” she said. “I helped him find some things for his cousins.”

“Seemed a little friendlier than that,” needled her brother.

“Well, I say: Good for you, dear,” said Birdie, glancing Rowan up and down. “I can tell from your aura it’s been a while.” She paused. “And even longer since it was good.”

“Grandma!” said Naomie, putting a hand over her mouth.

Rowan’s cheeks seared. Is this really happening? Did I go off the road on the way here and die? Is this my eternal punishment?

“Didn’t you have a boyfriend until not that long ago?” asked Stephan.

“Would explain why she doesn’t have one anymore,” chimed in Uncle Drew, his words half mumbled through a mouthful of bread.

Her cheeks burned hotter. “I was dating someone, but…Look, I’m busy …My work is important. It needs to come first.”

Birdie clucked her tongue. “It’s one thing for your job to come first, dear, but from the looks of it, you haven’t been coming at all.”

“ Grandma! ” repeated Naomie, shaking her head. Across the room, Kel shrank into the couch with wide, horrified eyes. The crow peered right at Rowan with its dark gaze, letting out a cackle of caws.

Great. Even the bird thinks I’m pathetic.

Birdie shrugged. “I have too little time left for artifice. It’s good to let yourself have a little fun, dear.”

“I’m not…We weren’t…” Rowan muttered, cheeks burning.

At that moment, Liliana stepped in. “You are all incorrigible. Leave her alone. It’s time to eat.”

Right as they settled at the table, Zaide burst through the door, saying, “Sorry I was late! Round one was Dongji with the family.”

She swooped in to settle a plate of red bean rice cakes on the table and grabbed a seat that Naomie had been keeping open. They exchanged a kiss, and Naomie pulled Zaide’s hand into her lap to massage it affectionately.

Wait, they were dating? The revelation caught Rowan off guard. There had been a time when Zaide’s every romantic update had prompted an immediate call or conference behind the bleachers—even when the revelation turned out to be “She offered me a piece of gum, what could it mean???”

As the coven launched into dinner, Rowan tumbled straight back into that place where she’d been at the start of the party—on the outside, looking in.