Chapter Two
A week to Samhain
“Son of a stitch,” Callie muttered, dropping the needle that had just bit her finger and nearly flinging the delicate tulle in her lap. She stuck her finger in her mouth and glared at the tiny dot of blood blooming at the tip.
Three sharp knocks had rattled the door of her shop and made her jump like a cricket. Of course. Always when her hands were full of lace. She glanced at the blood. Then at the dress. Then back at the blood now dangerously close to the whitest white gown she’d ever been commissioned to make.
“Don’t you dare ruin that hem,” she warned the universe before carefully setting the dress aside.
She rose from her sewing chair in the sun-drenched back nook, her little temple of pins, threads, and stress, to go answer whoever had dared to knock mid-stitch. But first, she stopped. Took a breath. Closed her eyes.
Channel the positive. Channel the light.
She was trying. God knew she was trying. But with Samhain this close....
Still, she wasn’t about to take it out on some poor, unsuspecting visitor. Probably just someone asking for rush alterations for the weekend.
She opened the door.
Frowned.
Lachlan Fraser, Mystic Hollow’s beloved mayor and Sorcerer Magnus, flashed her a charming smile. “Good afternoon, lassie.”
“Oh. Hey, Mr. Fraser.” She stepped aside to let him in, still sucking the tip of her finger hoping it might soothe her frayed patience.
He marched straight past her and made a beeline for the overflowing desk.
The space wasn’t really an office, not officially.
It was more like a graveyard of ribbon scraps, charm pouches, sample satins, and unlabeled buttons.
Lots of paperwork she promised to deal with at least once a month.
He didn’t see any of it, but made himself right at home and sat down.
“Ye’re never going to call me Lachlan, are ye, lass?” he asked, leaning back. “Mr. Fraser makes me feel old.”
Callie shut the door and followed him in, eyeing the mess she was about to pretend was organized chaos.
Lachlan Fraser was a very, very hot man with ginger hair and lake-blue eyes in his mid-thirties.
If taken at face value–and a great face it was–they might be the right age to even date.
The problem was that he’d been a very, very hot man with ginger hair and lake-blue eyes in his mid-thirties her entire life.
Suspicious? Absolutely. Ageless gingers were not a thing. Usually. His age was one of Mystic Hollow’s best-kept secrets, right up there with the real recipe behind the town’s moon-charmed cider.
She’d called him Mr. Fraser since she could talk. She wasn’t changing that now.
Callie sat down across from him, shoving aside a pincushion, a half-finished veil, and a plate from yesterday’s lunch. “What can I do for you?”
“You can say thank you, Lachlan,” he said with that mischievous twinkle in his eye.
“Thank you, Mr. Fraser,” she replied with a grin on her own.
“Always been cheeky, ye were. Anyway. Here.” He reached inside his heavy coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper from its pocket.
She took it, brows raised. “What is it?”
“Something I thought ye should see.”
Callie unfolded the parchment, already dreading whatever magical nonsense was about to derail her day.
Read its content.
And her blood went cold as a hot flush swamped her head.
Air Fuasgladh an Lobaidh (Releasing of the wolf - Translation from the Original Brythonic/Old Gaelic Text)
When the moon of the hunter rides high upon Samhain’s breath, and the veil lies thin as wool torn at the edges, then may the soul-cursed beasts walk free.
Not by claw, nor by cry shall they return, but by the binding of love to flesh, by the willing hand, and the broken heart.
Let the thread be laid ‘twixt spirit and skin, let the silver rise, and the name be spoken into the mist.
Only then shall the wolf be flesh once more, and the bond made whole once more ‘fore the crow’s cry at dawn.
Footnote / Scholarly Margin (modern commentary in the paper).
Believed to reference soul-binding rites among the Moon-Bonded of the Orkney Circle, circa 1st century CE.
Suggests the Hunter’s Moon during Samhain holds the unique power to break curses that bind lycanthropic souls in liminal states.
Restoration appears contingent on a fated mate’s active invocation and physical tethering—likely ritualistic or symbolic in nature (i.e. , cloth, name, blood).
“A friend of a friend from home in Stronmess found some interesting books. In one of them, he found this.” He scooted on the edge of the chair. “He remembered we had this... peculiar situation in Mystic Hollow, and sent it over.”
She was struggling to understand the meaning of the words–her brain always gave her a severe case of the stupids when an emotional earthquake hit her but to be fair, it was an emotional earthquake.
Because regardless of what those words meant, and she’d get to that part eventually, they involved Owen.
How to free him.
How to finally bring him home to her.
She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth. Swallowed. Closed her eyes shut one instant, rebooting her system. When she opened them again, Mr. Fraser was looking at her with a sweet, understanding smile. “Do ye want us to go through it together?”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” she breathed.
“Here,” he said, taking a silver flask from the same inside pocket of his coat. “I imagined it would give you a startle and I came prepared.”
She took the flask that was in no way small, looked at his coat. “No way this was in there.”
To which he winked. “Us old folks’ coats are nothing but full of surprises.”
Whatever was in that flask was not a relaxing tonic. It burned down her throat like a river of liquid fire. She felt every organ in her digestive tract come online with one blazing gulp and coughed hard, eyes watering.
“My whiskey,” Mr. Fraser said, looking proud.
“That’s—” she coughed again, voice gravelly. “That’s good,” she wheezed, surprised her vocal cords hadn’t dissolved.
He laughed, clearly delighted. “It brought back many a soul from a scare.” Then he nodded toward the paper.
“Read, lass, and tell me what you think. Start with the first line,” he nudged when she still didn’t comply.
Her vision was still watery from the whiskey’s scorched path through her body.
She wiped her eyes and blinked a few times until the words stopped floating and started cooperating.
When the moon of the hunter rides high upon Samhain’s breath...
Her eyes snapped to Mr. Fraser. “The Hunter’s Moon. A full moon,” she whispered. Head spinning, and not from the whiskey, she slumped back against her office chair’s backrest. “Could it really be just this?”
Because for ten years, every Samhain, she’d gone back to the forest where Owen had vanished.
For ten years, he’d returned flesh and breath and touch for mere hours.
For ten years, she’d devoured every shred of lore on cursed wolves and soul-binding and restoration and had tried to beat that curse.
And for ten years, she had failed.
She never considered the moon. The freaking moon. A detail, sure, but magic was a finicky little bish on a good day; on Samhain it was a moody, half-drunk raccoon with a grudge. Dared she hope? Could it really have been only this one teeny-tiny detail she’d missed?
Mr. Fraser crushed it all with a single word: “No.”
Her heart slammed.
“That was only one thing,” he said. “There’s more. If, ye know, if ye keep reading.”
“Right. Right.”
She read. Then again. Then a third time. And slowly, the threads started pulling closer.
Binding of love to flesh. Raising of silver. Blood.
New things. Things she hadn’t tried. Details she hadn’t thought of weaving in. She was a seamstress, not a spellcaster after all. And her brain was still shaking off the emotional fog.
And Mr. Fraser looked far too smug for this to just be academic. “You’ve figured it all out, haven’t you?” she asked him.
“Yes.” He perched on the edge of his seat, leaning on the desk, pulling the parchment closer and pointing to the lines with precise fingers. “We missed the full moon before. Unforgivable, considering the power it has on werewolves. We also misunderstood the silver.”
“We used silver.” She’d used it every way she could with charms, blades, just the metal. “Plenty of times.”
“Aye, but it was always still. Passive. This calls for the raising of silver. And for blood.”
“So, like, an active blade made of silver?” whatever that meant.
He nodded. “Yes. I think what it means is that blood must be drawn with a silver blade. His mate’s blood, not only the blood of the demon that cursed him.
That was our mistake. Or, another one. Your blood can call him back home.
” He didn’t even flinch when he said that because he knew there was very little she wouldn’t do to bring Owen back.
Scratch that. She would do anything.
“What else?” she asked, already calculating how and where to draw the blood.
“It’s this line in the margin notes that ties it together. Restoration contingent on a mate’s invocation and physical tethering. Likely ritualistic or symbolic in nature.”
She read the next part again. Three little bracketed words jumped off the page and grabbed her heart. “Cloth. Name. Blood,” she read out loud.
Mr. Fraser nodded. “Go on, lass.”
Forget the stupids. Her brain was in full overdrive now, ten years of desperation and obsession crashing into sudden, radiant clarity.
“What if...” she began, breath catching, “what if I make him something? A piece of cloth, or... a shirt. And I stitch it with a thread soaked in a mix of my blood and the demon’s.
Then I speak his name aloud to call him back. Under the Hunter’s Moon.”
She trailed off, because the last puzzle piece had just fallen into place with a thunderclap.
This year... the Hunter’s Moon fell on Samhain this year. Her hands flew to her cheeks, flushed and burning. “I can bring him back,” she whispered. “I’m bringing him back. Right? Right?”
“This,” Mr. Fraser said gently, “is the best chance we’ve ever had.”
“I need to make sure the knife I use to take the blood is made of silver.”
He reached once more into the seemingly bottomless pocket of his coat.
When his hand emerged, it held a small blade, narrow and elegant, forged from shimmering silver.
The hilt was wrapped in worn, midnight-blue leather etched with crescent moon patterns.
The blade itself gleamed unnaturally in the light, like it remembered the moon.
It was old, powerful, and exactly what she needed.
“Us old folks,” he said again with a wink, “are nothing but full of surprises.” He pressed it into her hand. “Bring your wolf home, lassie.”