Page 18 of A Spell for Midwinter’s Heart

Many hours later, Rowan remained awake, tangled in her bedspread, eyes aching and nose stuffed.

For all her brain tried to mount a logical defense, nothing could slow her tears.

Though she’d been reluctant to face it, she’d truly started to believe there might be something growing between them.

Her body had certainly made its stance known, even if her mind might have tried to deny it.

Had it all been a painful delusion—a by-product of the manufactured romance of the season?

Aches of longing washed over her in waves, only to be pushed out by hot flashes of shame.

Shame that she had imagined that someone like him might be into someone like her, and even more shame that she had abandoned her actual mission, her important work, over stupid feelings for an even stupider guy.

And what had that business been with the avalanche? She had lost control again, allowed instinct to overwhelm intelligence again.

She shook her head. It was time to stop fixating on this. With a rough wipe of tissue across her eyes, she forced her brain out of the realm of silly romantic fantasies and back to where it belonged—Elk Ridge, the festival, her family. Things that mattered. Things that were real.

Things that make sense. He and I don’t make sense.

With a deep breath, she fidgeted, running her thumb over her fingertips, as she said, “The plan, Rowan. We need a new plan.”

Her old plan had been to find Gavin and recruit him—to ask him about Goshen Group’s interest in the commercial building, and to find out whatever else he might know.

Three days ago, she’d never have imagined he’d divulge the details of his father’s business, but their run-ins had led her to believe he was a potential ally.

Funny how quickly that had crumbled away.

Perhaps he had a sincere attachment to the festival because of his mother, but it clearly wasn’t enough.

Not when it came in conflict with his loyalty to his father, his pragmatic evaluation of the town’s financial future, and a sense of obligation to his, to his—her breath shook as she tried to complete the thought.

His what? His date? His girlfriend? His future tradwifey who’ll cook his every meal and bear him beautiful children whom she dresses in outfits as improbably tidy and stylish as her own?

Rowan almost spiraled back out on those thoughts but stopped herself. It didn’t matter why that door had shut, only that she would need to figure out how to do this without him.

A quiet, hurting voice inside whispered, But I don’t want to.

“Too bad,” she replied.

A spell emerged from the recesses of her mind like a dusty book nudged off a high shelf. It was one she’d used for focus in high school. A Spell for a Clear Mind.

Though her nervous system throbbed in warning, she lowered herself to the floor, excavating her spell chest. As she searched its contents for what she needed, she couldn’t help but think about how different college would have been with the spell.

Maybe she wouldn’t have failed out of engineering, and her life wouldn’t have become an endless string of failures.

Maybe she’d have made some kind of difference by now, instead of simply torpedoing the efforts of others.

With a petite mason jar in hand, she breathed in deeply.

As the air filled her lungs, she pictured Gavin’s face, and then Hayleigh’s, and finally the image of the two of them kissing in front of the inn.

Placing the jar against her lips, she exhaled, sending the thoughts with the air.

When she’d blown out as much as possible, she capped the jar in a swift twist. Crossing to the window and throwing open the sash, she chanted,

Clear my heart, clear my head,

Banish distraction, worry, and dread.

By the power of three by three,

As I do will it, so mote it be.

Then she removed the cap and released the thoughts into the night where they wouldn’t be able to trouble her until they found their way home.

The spell wouldn’t last forever, but she’d have a few hours of respite.

Her mind cleared, and though the dull ache remained, she no longer fixed on replaying the scene.

Able to examine the situation from a distance now, she realized this turn of events had been for the best. Even if Gavin had been attracted to her, where would it have gone from there?

A vacation hookup? With the son of the man conspiring to drive her family out of Elk Ridge? Talk about a conflict of interest.

No, this was for the best. It changed the plan, but that meant she needed to come up with a new plan. One that did not involve annoyingly handsome former rivals with kind eyes.

“Okay, Rowan,” she murmured. “Where to go from here?”

She relaxed, and her mind traveled, tripping across lines of thought until one of them vibrated clear and bright.

There had been a flaw in her old plan. It relied on Gavin knowing everything the Goshen Group was up to—which was a lot to presume.

It was possible not even Dennis was fully aware of what the company had planned.

The only people party to that information were the corporate reps, and they would not be eager to give up the truth.

“So, what do I do, then?” she asked, worrying her thumbnail between her front teeth.

Truth. Her grandmother had been notoriously impossible to lie to.

A memory bubbled up—young Rowan gazing in horror at a ragged scratch in the polished runners of her grandmother’s stately old Victorian home.

At dinner, Grandmother Madeleine had asked who was responsible, and Rowan kept her mouth shut tight.

When no one spoke up, the old woman had gone around the table, asking each person directly if they were responsible.

Rowan had rehearsed an alibi, but when Grandmother Madeleine’s eyes landed on her, she’d opened her mouth and a full confession tumbled out, as if caught in a gale.

A Spell for the Whole Truth. It was impossible to lie if you were under its effects. If she cast it on a Goshen Group representative, they would be forced to divulge their plans.

The spell would be in her grandmother’s grimoire, stowed in the attic since the funeral. Before she could think better of it, Rowan was on her feet, stealing into the night.

The attic floor creaked. Her grandmother’s oak hope chest stood at the far end, lit by a spill of moonlight. She ran her fingers through the grooves of carved vines on its surface, recalling with a stab of melancholy the first time she’d opened it.

“Take whatever calls you,” her grandmother had said. Young Rowan’s hand traveled straight to a pendant: a chunk of quartz with three other stones embedded in its front—fire opal, aquamarine, and cat’s eye.

Her grandmother had snatched it from her hand, saying, “You are every bit my heir. With this, you won’t depend on anyone.” Then the old woman folded up the pendant and stowed it back away. “But you can’t have that till I’m gone.”

In the present, the pendant sat on top of the trunk’s contents, its rough-spun fiber cord stretched out as if someone had intentionally put it on display.

It wasn’t what she had come for, but it had been waiting for her all the same, and so she pulled it out and slipped it over her head.

The stone landed with a tingle atop her breastbone.

More items came into view, bringing with them a fresh wave of grief.

She lingered on the glass Coke bottle that had always sat on her grandmother’s windowsill, a fresh flower or two stuck inside.

It had come from her first date with Rowan’s grandfather, Samuel.

Rowan hadn’t known him—he’d died in a forestry accident when she was a baby—but he’d lived on, larger than life, in her grandmother’s stories.

After another moment of shuffling things about, she found her grandmother’s grimoire, a thick leather book emblazoned with the Green Man. She’d never seen its contents. Her mother had forbidden it, insisting that Madeleine never teach mind-affecting spells to Rowan.

But though Grandmother Madeleine had respected the letter of Liliana’s law, that hadn’t stopped her from dropping hints, which altogether formed a trail of breadcrumbs for Rowan to follow to get a basic understanding of mental magic.

Rowan stuck to little spells. Tricks to affect her own mind. Nothing that affected anyone else. Nothing that crossed the line her mother held so dear. The truth spell, though, would definitely cross that line.

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

Birdie’s arguments rang clear. Ignoring these spells when there was so much at stake would also do harm.

She opened the grimoire.

Its pages were filled with her grandmother’s messy handwriting and decorated with all manner of objects—pressed flowers, dried leaves, ticket stubs, invitations, newspaper clippings, and so very many photographs.

Everything from black-and-white images surrounded with lacy borders to blurry, blown-out digital photos printed on a LaserJet.

She’d wondered why her mother hadn’t simply destroyed the grimoire if she found its contents so repulsive, but this was more than a book of spells—it was the record of a life.

Rowan’s grandmother’s life. Liliana’s mother’s life.

It was difficult to let go of a thing like that, even if you might’ve been better off for its absence.

“Where is it?” Rowan murmured, licking a finger to flip the pages.

The book opened to a page titled A Spell to Do as I Say.

Her stomach turned. This was the spell her grandmother had used on the man who’d threatened the coven.

For all that Rowan could justify the truth spell to herself, she had to give it to her mother that this one was wrong.

The idea of reaching in and overpowering someone’s will, turning them into her puppet, was twisted, and it made her feel a little sick to think her grandmother had done it with no hesitation.

She continued on, passing more spells that her grandmother and mother had fought over. Spells like A Spell to Steal a Heart.

“The goddess will judge me” was all Grandmother Madeleine would say.

To which her mother replied, “Yes, she will.”

Rowan agreed with her mother on love spells. At least you might use A Spell to Do as I Say as an act of self-defense, but there was no just cause for forcing someone into a relationship that went against their own instincts.

She paused on a page titled A Spell for the Uninvited Guest, and she smiled.

A series of strikethroughs and scribbles revealed the experimentation that had led her grandmother to the spell’s final shape.

Madeleine had taped a ticket to a dance at the Elk Ridge community center on the opposite page.

The story of the ticket had always been one of Rowan’s favorites.

“When I was young,” said Madeleine Midwinter, taking Rowan in her lap and coiling one of the girl’s curls around a finger, “we weren’t so welcome around town.

In fact, it had been only a few decades since they’d hanged a Midwinter woman for witchcraft—my great-aunt.

A blight got into the timber stock, and we were easy to blame.

“They’d stopped hanging us by the time I was a girl, but they didn’t invite us to community gatherings.

There was a big dance happening for all the men home from the war, and I wanted a ticket.

Samuel Cartwright, you see, was going to be there, and I had bought myself a snappy red dress and was determined to catch his eye.

“So I dreamed up a spell to get me an invitation, and it worked, and once I found my way onto his dance card, I never left. There was no other magic at work that night—nothing but the power of a red dress.”

The memory left Rowan smiling as she turned the pages to press on to what she was really looking for—something that would prevent certain individuals from lying if she asked what they had planned for her town. She already knew who she was going to interrogate.

There it was— A Spell for the Whole Truth.

She passed her finger along the instructions.

It was a simple spell. No wonder her grandmother had cast it with such ease.

As it was Rowan’s first time casting it, she would go through the full ritual to ensure it went off how she’d planned.

She would need her athame, chunks of clear crystal, either a white or purple candle, and, most challengingly, a poppet doll that bore some bit of Hayleigh’s person.

But how to guarantee she ran into Hayleigh while under the effects of the spell?

And if she did, how would she get the Goshen Group rep to stick around long enough to get all the information she needed?

A truth spell would be useless if Hayleigh simply walked away—which she would, because they weren’t exactly buddies.

Rowan’s head ached in rebellion, reminding her how late it had gotten, but she couldn’t let herself go to sleep until she figured this out. Hayleigh was heading home tomorrow, and by the time the Goshen Group came back, it would be too late.

As the pressure mounted, the nausea she’d suppressed earlier roiled back up.

This was a bad idea. It could go wrong in so many ways.

There was a price to pay with magic like this, and she’d pay it whether or not the spell made any difference to the fate of Elk Ridge.

The problem was too big, and she was too small.

The grimoire in her lap slammed shut, startling her out of the spiral. Wind swept through the window and hit her in the face in a shock of cold. She stared at the intricate face of the Green Man and pressed her fingers into the lined leather of the book’s cover.

Maybe she was too small, but she wasn’t alone. She picked up her phone, summoning Zaide’s contact card.

Zaide, she typed. I need your help.