Page 17 of A Spell for Midwinter’s Heart

The coven should have spent the night after the Solstice in quiet recovery, but the Midwinter house was once again full of loud voices and sloshing glasses of wassail as they gathered to celebrate the blanket of snow still deepening over Elk Ridge.

There’d been a gift exchange. Rowan had received a naughty cross stitch from Birdie, a sleep tincture from Drew, Witches of Eastwick fan art from Zaide, and a chunk of pure quartz from Naomie. Her immediate family would wait to exchange until Christmas Day for her father’s sake.

Naomie was busy reading Stephan’s cards.

The subject—his love life. The verdict—outlook not so good.

“Remember,” added Naomie in a kind voice.

“This tends to only cover the next three months. After that…” She spread her hands wide to indicate that anything could happen.

Zaide held up her phone, capturing footage, a dutiful “Gram-girlfriend.” Though the poorly veiled disappointment in Stephan’s eyes tugged at her heart, Rowan was relieved not to be the target of the coven’s thirst for romantic drama for the time being.

But her thoughts kept drifting back to the moment she and Gavin had tangled on the sidewalk, and about how hard it had been not to reach up and let her fingers brush the details of his face.

Fingers, followed by lips.

She did her best to banish the thoughts, as it would not do to have a telltale pink flush in her aura sending the hounds her way.

In the center of the room, Birdie held court, regaling the room with stories from the coven’s history.

“I remember the first time your mom took part in a circle,” said Birdie, eyes dancing.

“Oh, please don’t tell that story,” begged Liliana, her whole body shaking with laughter, hands splayed across her face. She was lying spread out on the floor—more relaxed than Rowan could remember her looking.

Well, ever.

“I’m already telling it, nothing to be done,” said Birdie, settling back in her seat with the casual satisfaction of knowing you were about to thoroughly humiliate a person.

Drew cackled and rubbed his hands together, the only other person who knew what was coming.

“Now, I will remind you all she was only ten.”

Liliana grabbed at the rug, making as if to pull it over her entire body so that she might vanish into the floorboards.

“That’s young to join, but your great-grandmother convinced us all she was mature for her age—which was, admittedly, true.”

“She was always ratting me out,” said Drew.

“Because you always needed to be ratted out,” Liliana shot back.

“Stop trying to get me off track from the story,” said Birdie with a shake of the finger. “It won’t work. Back then, we took off more than our shoes when we gathered as a coven—we went skyclad.”

She waggled her eyebrows, and Stephan glanced at Zaide. “By that, she means buck naked.”

Zaide’s mouth dropped open, and Birdie let out a booming laugh before continuing her story, “Lili understood the concept of going skyclad, but the reality was…more than she was prepared for.”

“What’d you do, Mom?” asked Stephan with a shake of his head.

Liliana covered her face with her cardigan and spoke through the fabric. “I screamed. Then I ran. And I refused to come back until everyone had put their robes back on.”

“She hid in a tree!” said Drew.

“Couldn’t get her to come down for nothing,” said Birdie, laughing so hard tears streamed from her eyes.

When the laughter subsided, Drew looked at Birdie and asked, “Wasn’t that the same night the guy showed up?”

The question chased the mirth from their faces. Naomie glanced between them and asked, “What guy?”

“A former neighbor of your family,” said Birdie. “He…took issue with our spellcasting.”

“What’d you do?” asked Zaide.

“Mom pulled every thought from his head,” said Liliana, her voice flat, “and commanded him to go home by the quickest route available.”

“You mean…magically?” asked Zaide.

“Yes.”

An awkward silence followed. Finally, Zaide broke it, murmuring, “I didn’t think that was allowed.”

“Well, it’s not as if we have a tribunal,” said Birdie. “We simply have the Charge of the Goddess, and the personal responsibility of judging whether our actions serve the highest purpose.”

“We also have the Rede,” said Liliana. Her cheeks had flushed, and her voice had taken on a ragged edge, the same way it did whenever they discussed Madeleine’s more controversial magical choices. “Do no harm. And Grandma Ruby agreed with me. Mom did harm.”

Ruby Midwinter, Rowan’s great-grandmother, had led the coven for many years, until she passed and the coven chose Liliana to lead them next. They almost always chose the witch who stood in the north, the witch aligned with earth.

The reliable one.

“I’m well aware of your grandmother’s feelings on the subject.

And yours.” Birdie gave Liliana a look. They’d had this debate many times.

“But as far as I’m concerned, the magic exists.

People can choose to wield it. Sometimes hard choices need to be made.

If the harm prevented is less than the harm done, the Rede is satisfied.

Your neighbor had violence on his mind—your mother removed it. ”

“She left him in a daze,” said Liliana. “He remembered nothing about what he was doing or where he was. He fell into a ravine on his way home. He almost died.”

“She couldn’t have known that would happen,” said Birdie, bristling.

“Which is exactly why she shouldn’t have done it.” Liliana shook her head. “There’s a line we don’t cross. People’s minds belong only to themselves.”

“Would it have been better if I’d pulled the water from his body to flood his lungs?

” asked Birdie, folding her hands together and taking on a different cast. “Suffocating him until he agreed to leave us be?” Her shadow expanded behind her as if a much larger being sat in her place.

It was a reminder that the bubbly old woman was, in fact, a powerful elder witch.

“Of course not,” said Liliana, her eyes widening. “But no one would claim that wasn’t doing harm, and all I’m saying is what Mom did was no better. And she did it all the time, in countless ways.” Drew stepped over and put an arm around his sister’s shoulder. She leaned into him gratefully.

There was a long, awkward silence.

“It’s hard to imagine her even being capable of magic that big,” murmured Stephan.

His expression was troubled, remembering Madeleine Midwinter in her last decade of life.

They all were. By the end, she’d barely been capable of the littlest magic.

She’d weighed eighty-five pounds at her death.

The official diagnosis was cancer, but Liliana swore it was the magic that had hollowed her out.

The feeling Rowan had only started getting comfortable with, of the vibrant possibilities of magic all around, diminished at the stark reminder of how easy it would be for her to go terribly wrong.

Just like your grandmother.

She got to her feet with a start and headed toward the door to the deck.

“Rowan,” called her mother.

“I need some air.” She slipped her feet into heavy boots and, without even bothering to lace them, clomped out onto the back deck.

Rowan stopped as soon as she was outside, sweeping her gaze across the glittering white expanse of the forest, and took the first calm breath she’d managed since the conversation had turned to her grandmother.

The night was brighter than expected, lit by the luster of the moon on freshly fallen snow.

It had continued to fall all day—at times in gentle showers, at others in torrents.

By evening, the streets had filled with cars, crawling bumper to bumper.

Every empty hotel room and vacation home had filled in the surge of people heading to the mountains in search of last-minute holiday memories.

It was everything they’d hoped for. Exactly what the town needed.

So why was she still so unsettled?

Every sound of the forest had been muffled, every cracked and uneven surface made smooth. Snow surrounded her boots to envelop her feet with every step across the unshoveled deck.

Joe Midwinter leaned against the railing, vanilla smoke curling from a dangled pipe.

He straightened as she came to stand at his side, giving her a quiet nod.

They enjoyed the pensive silence for a few minutes.

Finally, Rowan glanced his way. His expression was melancholy, in stark contrast with the celebrating coven inside.

She nudged him with her elbow. “You don’t look happy. Why aren’t you happy?”

“Things’re back the way they should be,” he said with a nod.

But he stopped himself there, and she got the sense it was for her benefit. Whatever was eating at him, he didn’t want it to cast that shadow elsewhere.

Not one to let things lie, even if she were better off, she prodded, “But…?”

“Your mom’s banking on this to turn things around financially, and that’s…not realistic.”

Rowan’s heart fell as he gave voice to her own terrible cynicism, the underlying logic of the intellectual rebellion she’d gone through before agreeing to take part in the spell—quashed for her mother’s sake. Quashed because the last time she’d presumed to know better, she’d been terribly wrong.

“Most of the season’s gone. Christmas is three days away. Even if people flood us till New Year’s…” His voice trailed off, but Rowan knew what he wanted to say. It wasn’t enough time. “The festival’s showing its age. Same as us. It needs an update, but we don’t have the money to do it.”

“One person does,” muttered Rowan.

“You don’t want to hear this, but that one person has put a lot of money in over the years. Far more than his share.”

“Really?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

He nodded. “Whenever an expense too big popped up for the rest of us, he forked it over. He might’ve resented it, but he did it anyway—for Sarah. Dennis has got his flaws, same as the rest of us, but he’s deeply devoted to who and what he loves—her memory, his son, the mountain.”

“The mountain?” asked Rowan.

“Sure. He stewards nearly a thousand acres of old timber. Turns down offers on it all the time—big offers.”

Rowan chewed on that for a moment. It challenged the image she’d had of Dennis McCreery.

“Do you want Mom to sell, Dad?”

Joe eased against the handrail of the deck. “?‘Want,’ no. But…I’m realistic about the fact she might need to. There’s a big meeting December thirty-first. To hear their pitch.”

“I have a feeling it might be more than the festival they’re after,” she murmured, relaying what they’d been doing at the Magick Cabinet that day.

Joe inhaled sharply, but nodded. “Unfortunately, that makes sense. Only so much they can do with that one piece of property.”

She balled her fist in frustration. “There has to be a way to stop it.”

“Oh?” asked her father, voice amused. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” said Rowan, shaking her head. “But…I’ve got an idea of where to start figuring it out.”

It had been easy enough to locate Gavin. Elk Ridge had only a few restaurants posh enough to host a business dinner, and she’d spotted him at Il Pomodoro, an upscale Italian restaurant that mostly served tourists.

Expecting him to be at one of the barn-house-style tables with the full Goshen Group contingent, she audibly gasped on spotting him at a table for two. Hayleigh sparkled opposite in a vibrant gold cocktail dress she had most certainly not been wearing earlier in the day.

They make sense. More sense than…

A high peal of familiar laughter split the night.

The pair emerged, moving with the ease that followed a dinner full of wine and rich food. Hayleigh’s dress was short, exposing shapely legs above excessively furry boots.

“Walk me back to the inn?” asked Hayleigh.

“Of course,” Gavin replied in his characteristic neutral tone.

Hayleigh slipped her arm through his as they strolled down the sidewalk, and it was like someone reached inside Rowan’s chest and wrapped a hand around her heart.

She followed at a careful distance, swearing softly to herself.

It would be harder to contrive a reason to run into Gavin near the Crescent Inn.

She’d expected them to part ways at this point— hoped they would.

What was she going to do if their night didn’t end when they reached the inn doors? If he instead followed Hayleigh in and didn’t leave for hours, possibly not until the next morning?

She stopped herself there, refusing to give the thought quarter.

They finally arrived at the Crescent Inn and Spa, the wooden mountain lodge owned and operated by the Hak family.

Zaide and Rowan had spent many long hours playing in empty rooms, stealing complimentary mints, and sneaking into the spa’s hot pools.

Mountain peaks framed the lodge from behind, and garlands wound around the raw wooden beams of the porch, woven with twinkling lights and crowned with heavy gold ribbons.

Gavin and Hayleigh lingered on the sidewalk in front of the inn, driving Rowan to hide behind a line of tall hedges. With every moment that passed, the pressure in her chest intensified.

“Just say good night,” she muttered. “Come on.”

A cracking sound from the forest caught her attention. She scanned the darkened tree line for the cause but found nothing. Probably a branch breaking off under the weight of the snow. When she turned back, what she saw took her breath away.

The couple stood, lip to lip, Hayleigh’s arms thrown around Gavin’s neck like she had no intention of ever letting go. His hands rose slowly to meet her sides.

A choked sound escaped from Rowan’s lips, and at the same moment, all the fresh snow released from the roof of the inn’s front porch, sliding in a sheet that toppled straight down onto Gavin and Hayleigh.

They looked up just in time to see it coming, and Hayleigh shrieked as it struck, leaving them both in a fine white coating.

Rowan gasped for breath and whirled away. Hand over mouth, she retreated from the scene, trying not to draw any attention while getting away as fast as possible. She ran for home, hoping to outpace oncoming grief, but she didn’t make it, and her hot tears left a trail of pinpricks in the snow.