Page 10 of Sweet Silver Bells

CHAPTER SEVEN.

You won the stupid raffle. Everyone’s pissed.

Dude, are you okay?

You’ve been acting really off lately.

Sadie 8:02 p.m.

Raffle prize is two tickets to the holiday ball. No, I don’t want to be your date.

Sadie 9:04 p.m.

They’re considering redrawing since you’re not here.

Sadie 9:09 p.m.

Never mind, you won. No one else wants the prize.

Sadie 9:14 p.m.

I guess I’d go, and we could make fun of everyone. But only if I can bring my cat.

Sadie 10:00 p.m.

Don’t mind me, just sloshed in the teacher's lounge.

Sadie 10:01 p.m.

I don’t think you’ll be fired as long as you have a good fucking excuse. You’re welcome.

H unter sniffed. He felt like shit, grabbing the bridge of his nose just above his eyes as his head throbbed. With blurred vision that only cleared after a few blinks, he stared at the phone in his hand.

2:00 a.m.

The steering wheel in front of him confirmed that he was in his car. His watch, Sarah’s watch, gleamed on his wrist, the blue light illuminating the fine metal. It was cold, windows frosted over with no light outside.

This felt familiar, though. He couldn’t quite tell how or why, but what Hunter did know was that he had no clue, no indication of why he was there, and that gave him that inescapable, suffocating feeling of déjà vu.

Sarah, what is wrong with me?

Hunter turned the key in the ignition, sitting there with a headache as he waited for his windows to defrost. Once they did, the square campus of his elementary school came into focus. Even the streetlights were turned off at this hour.

Hunter picked up his phone and texted Sadie back.

Hunter 2:01 am

I’ve been throwing up all night. Thanks for covering.

This is who he was now, lying about being sick, waking up with no idea of why he was sitting in his car in the middle of the night. It felt like he had been under a spell, a haze encompassing him, a lullaby, a voice that he could almost hear, singing to him, clinging to him, refusing to let go.

There is no song.

Hunter turned his head to the passenger seat, imagining the infectious smile Sarah gave him after she’d playfully hit him in the shoulder.

He would have been making fun of her, maybe for whatever her newest hobby was.

That food scientist's paycheck had to go somewhere, and they could only travel in the summer because of Hunter’s school schedule.

Mushroom foraging it is.

Hunter liked to imagine still living in the bubble of love he had once thrived in. One that maybe he hadn’t deserved.

Go home. Just drive home.

The last thing he needed was to get pulled over by security and alert the school that he was lurking in the parking lot after calling out sick during school hours.

Hunter put his foot on the gas and began the short drive home.

If he wanted to stare out the window in the darkness, he could at least be parked in his own driveway.

Whatever was going on with him, he needed to figure it out fast. He knew he’d left the school in a panic.

He remembered something, something so important that it had been worth putting the one thing he had on the line: his career.

Not that he was a career kind of guy, but he also didn’t normally rock the boat.

He didn’t mind safe. He didn’t mind stable.

That’s why he had fallen in love with Sarah, because she was the opposite, filled with light and a healthy amount of chaos.

Why did you leave? Where were you going?

Hunter had half an urge to call his mom and inquire about their family's mental health history. A call this late would surely cause problems for him, though. He didn’t need his parents to worry, to drop their overly comfortable retirements and dote on him.

You know that they would love to.

They liked having something to do, someone to focus on. Especially his mom.

The car was parked. Hunter blinked back in disbelief that he wasn’t home. Time seemed to have skipped. He was so wrapped up in his head that his body took over, and a ten-minute drive turned into something longer.

He was in another parking lot, not the school’s, and certainly not his driveway. A large, towering estate stood eerily in the dark. He was back at their wedding venue, the trees swaying in the distance, a dark, ominous dance, twisting and bowing to the snow flurries drifting through the night air.

Vultauge Manor.

That lullaby, that haze that clouded him, urged him to step out of the car as he squinted in the dark, trying to see something, anything.

He heard a voice, one so beautiful, so heartbreaking that it felt like the world was crying, melting, then freezing back solid while encompassing Hunter’s body within it.

Sarah.

No, it wasn’t Sarah. It was a spirit of a different nature. Where Sarah had been filled with light, this one was filled with darkness, the kind that existed only in the deepest depths of the ocean, hiding secrets while life floated by at the surface.

Hunter saw a wisp of her breath, a ghost floating up over her head, but proof that she was there, proof that she was not a spirit, a hallucination.

So familiar. Even this, even her.

He walked right toward her, though he carried trepidation in his heart. His head told him something different; it told him he needed to get to the bottom of this, to figure out what was wrong with him, so he could decide if it was worth fixing.

The distance between them closed as his strides grew long and quick, stars peeking out from behind the clouds of the night sky, which moved quickly, pushed by the wind that plagued the grounds and slapped his cheeks in an unwelcoming way.

“You came back,” that voice, that song that followed him, infected his heart.

It’s you.

Hunter shook his head as if trying to clear a blockage in his ears, in his mind. Something was there, something was in the way, and he knew he knew the nude woman whose feet stood in snow at the edge of the Berkshires, dark hair wrapping around her body.

“I came back,” he replied.

She stared at him, her smile mischievous, even conniving, as if he had walked right into her plan, her trap.

Maybe he did.

“You shouldn’t be able to remember. Not this soon.”

“It looks like I do,” he lied.

“When I sing, you forget. You come to me or obey my heart's song, as does the forest, as do the plants.”

Hunter cocked his head.

“A siren,” he said.

“I don’t know that word,” she admitted after a beat of silence.

“A witch,” he clarified. “Who lives in the water, singing to sailors.”

Her smile and the ease of her posture disappeared as her eyes narrowed, the energy around them threatening.

“I am not a witch,” she said, enunciating every word clearly, quietly. He had struck a nerve. It was too obvious with the darkening of her eyes, the start of a snarl on her upper lip.

Dangerous. She’s dangerous. She’s real.

She stepped forward, moving fast, a panther jumping on its prey. Hunter flinched, leaning away, but she didn’t let him. Instead, her hands found both sides of his neck, pulling him down towards her.

Her lips pressed into his. Hunter could have collapsed into her, his body so tense, so unsure.

Trust , it seemed to be telling him, urging him.

The contact seemed to break the spell that he was under, the haze lifting as his memory came flooding back.

It crashed down hard, and his heart ached.

His body hardened while he opened his mouth to let her tongue find his.

The first time someone else's lips had touched his since Sarah.

She caressed him, both with her hands and with her tongue, as her touch fell from his neck and moved down to his shoulders.

Hunter kissed her back, but his hands were awkwardly by his sides.

She fixed that as hers slid down his arms, fingers intertwining.

His hands were so large and dominating over hers.

Despite how powerful he thought she must be, Olivia fit into him so well.

It was like she was made for him, and he was made for her.

He pulled away, gasping for breath.

“Olivia,” he said, memories trickling back in.

She smiled, not a hint of viciousness. Hunter wished he could interpret that smile, decide if there was sadness or true happiness behind it.

It was neither, but something that existed in between.

An utter mystery in the battered, powerful goddess he stood before.

A woman who was so goddamn terrifying, but also endearing.

She was in his arms. Her skin wasn’t soft, but she smelled of earth mixed with root beer, like the inner bark of a sassafras tree. It put him at ease, her scent, and he had to remind himself not to close his eyes and fall into her hair, the cold tying them together, a blanket of fate.

What her mind must be thinking, feeling, with him on her breath was something he was dying to know. One hundred years in this forest without companionship had to make her challenging.

“I call you Hunter, then?” she asked, the hint of a threat, the hint of the gaze he’d seen when he had uttered the word witch , swirled to the surface of those eyes, the color of a deep abyss, the dirt found at the bottom of ancient volcanoes.

It was easy to look past that threat this time, upon hearing his name on her lips. He nearly lost his breath, as if he had been sprinting here to get to her, sprinting to the forest only to listen to her voice do him the service of acknowledging him.

You can’t leave her here.

Hunter opened a hand to her, and she stared at it, confusion evident in her furrowed brow.

“It’s my hand,” he said. “Please take it, and I’ll guide you to my home.”

She sighed, another strike against him evident in the sudden slouch of her shoulders, the skin around her belly button pinching together, creating a cute pouch that accentuated her womanly figure.

A figure he couldn’t ignore a feral attraction toward, one that had him walking on eggshells as he spoke to her, as he looked at her.

It was the first time he had truly wanted someone, needed someone, since Sarah.

Sarah.

An overwhelming, heart-aching sadness hit Hunter, an arrow piercing him clean through.

“Sing that song,” Olivia said.

“What?” Hunter wasn’t there anymore; the fantasy had broken. The spell was overshadowed by the betrayal that now felt very real to him, his betrayal of Sarah.

That kiss.

“I will go with you,” Olivia clarified. “If you sing that song. I’ve never heard anything like that. It was so, so . . . “

“Cheery,” Hunter suggested.

Olivia just stared at him.

Cutting her off, another strike perhaps.

Despite the waves of emotions, the concussion, the arousal, the relief, the despair, Hunter wanted so badly to save her, to bring Olivia out from the forest. He took a deep inhale, and on his exhale, his voice boomed, so deep, vibrating down through the roots of the greenery he stood within.

Hunter cleared his throat, finding his voice, the voice he had lost when he lost Sarah, the voice inside him that once laughed and meant it, that nurtured students with a passion, that loved, that loved so hard it molded him.

Maybe it was finally time to have a voice like that again.

Sarah, did you send her?

It was a leap, but he had nothing else to go on. There was no other way to justify bringing along a deranged stranger, drawn in by the childlike holiday songs he hummed.

“Jingle bells,

Jingle bells,

Jingle all the way.”

Olivia’s face lit up, awe and wonder speckled her cheeks like glitter falling from the trees above her. She opened her mouth, filling herself with music, and began her duet.

“Sweet silver bells, all things to say, throw cares away.”

Hunter felt the power; he felt the forest shift, creaking and growing while his vision faded in and out. She stopped when she noticed him stumble, despite standing still, towering over her.

“I’ll come,” she whispered, putting her hand in his.

Hunter stared at that hand, at her skin so pale it looked bathed in moonlight, even though it couldn't shine through the thick clouds of forest trees.

“Your heart,” Olivia said, her eyes moving up to catch his, to keep him in her spell. “It’s beating so loud. Is that for me?”

For her.

It was because Hunter felt terror trying to overshadow his chivalry, his bravery. This woman would change his life, and he feared he might regret it, regret helping someone who wasn’t asking for help.

But maybe she can help you.

Hunter found a speck of courage. He only needed a little to convince himself that this was right. That he would do this for anyone, not just a beautiful woman who kissed him, who pulled him so far into her that he may soon struggle for air, drowning in those enchanting eyes.

“Yes,” he answered. “My heart is beating for you.”

With that, Olivia took her first step out from under the trees since she had fled there, looking for shelter, looking for safety, looking for the acceptance of the plants and the trees. Here was the first person she might be able to trust since her father had died.

Olivia's grip was crushing, tight, as if she might never again let go of Hunter’s hand.

He didn’t mind.