Raven in Midwinter (Raven of the Woods)

Chapter 1

ONE

Every year, sometime in the weeks after the first of January, the snow that had been festive and evocative of joyous holidays becomes, all at once, almost spooky.

“Xander Corey,” my best friend Amanda would snap at me. “I hate it when you say things like that and make me scared to walk around outside at night.”

That was not my intention, but it was true nonetheless.

I suspected that if you lived in a city or even a suburb, accumulations of winter were more bothersome than anything else.

It wasn’t scary, just a nuisance to walk in, shovel off sidewalks, or blow out of a driveway.

But in small towns, on roads not maintained by the county, or if your land abutted a nature preserve, the blanket of white was so high that on certain days it was hard to see where the land ended and the sky began, making it effortless for people to let their imaginations run wild.

My grandfather surmised, when he used to stand in the sunroom with me, looking at the collected powder on the glass above us, that it was the way the snow insulated everything, smothering out sounds, twisting perception.

When the expected silence was broken by a noise and you couldn’t immediately pinpoint the source, it created dread.

My grandmother believed that with the world being all one color, you noticed things easier, faster, and that put one on edge. Jumping at shadows, even during the day.

My beloved, my husband, Lorne MacBain, told me it was the incessant days of winter—everything the same, cold and wet with snow, wind, and sleet—and the drudgery of it all that played havoc on the mind.

It was hard to get one’s bearings when it felt like you were in an endless loop.

It muddled the brain, anything out of the ordinary becoming cause for alarm.

I wasn’t sure what I believed, but whereas lots of people I knew were tired and even a bit depressed in the frozen landscape under the blanched sky, the sameness never bothered me.

Winter was for hibernation, simple as that.

One was supposed to stay inside and rest. The animals had it right.

It was madness to worry about what was going on outside.

Only the den mattered. Unfortunately, most of us, myself included, couldn’t afford to stay inside.

I was luckier than others as almost everything I needed could be found at home—Corvus was fairly self-sustaining—which was why I took care baskets to people in the winter, something that was always met with much happiness and thanks.

The thing that could be helped in the winter was their terrible mindset that came the second of January, it was time to kick the new year into gear and get on with putting all their resolutions into place.

They felt that big plans were supposed to be acted on immediately, especially those that required cleaning, exercise, or some massive project.

Really? In midwinter? So fighting every natural instinct to rest and conserve strength during the coldest, darkest part of the year was the right thing to do?

I was horrified by the very idea that January was the time to start anything at all. Work yes, anything else…absolutely not.

“Everyone thinks so,” Lorne chimed in, yawning. “All I hear when I’m in town is that you must start the new year off right and strong and stick to your resolutions. I feel like the time for that is in March or something. Don’t you?”

“Of course. That’s what spring is for.” I stood next to him in the kitchen, him sipping tea, me rinsing the breakfast dishes, since he’d cooked.

“A lot of people have trouble in the winter, and that’s not even counting those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder.

As a police officer, you deal with folks who are in pretty bad shape.

It’s better here, where you can deliver most of them back home to people waiting for them.

In Boston that wasn’t the case. It gets difficult this time of year. ”

“I know.”

After a moment of silence, he said, “Is it me, or does January feel like it’s two months long?”

I chuckled because it did. He wasn’t wrong.

“What day is this?”

“It’s Friday morning, a bit after eleven. And while I’m thrilled to have you home, shouldn’t you be at work?”

“To do what?”

It had begun snowing last Saturday and continued throughout the week.

At some point, the temperature dropped below zero and everything went from fluffy powder to heavy, hard ice.

Due to that, the main roads had been cleared by snowplows but not much else.

People could take the highway to the bigger cities around us where they worked, but here in Osprey, nothing was happening.

School was canceled, and the one movie theater was closed, along with all the restaurants and even the pub.

The library was shut down too, which was why I was home, and everyone was basically… hibernating.

Imagine that.

“I wish that being home, being inside, was restful for everyone,” Lorne murmured, taking a sip of the Moroccan mint tea I mixed up from an ancient recipe that had literally been in my family for centuries.

“I hate being called out for domestic disturbance because men wake up with nothing to do but beat on people they’re supposed to love. ”

I knew he did. He had a soft heart, and it was hard for him to understand wanting to hurt anyone on purpose, especially women and children.

Before schools had let out for the holidays, he’d gone to each one in town and given out his business cards to every kid, every teacher, anyone who might need him.

He’d been driving around over the break, being vigilant, and was now available as we all lived through the deep freeze of midwinter.

And even being married to the kook who lived on the edge of town, to a witch, people still called in their hour of need because they knew a knight in shining armor when they saw one.

There was a certainty that he would protect them, and he did not disappoint.

The good news was, there were not many men Lorne had to remove, but even one was too many.

“I’m sorry you’ve had to—”

“Oh look, look right there,” he almost yelled. “Did you see that? What is that?”

This had been happening for at least three days, and I’d never seen anything at all, but I still moved closer to him to try and spot what had captured his attention.

In the past, it used to be hard to see out of the cottage windows as the glass was old and rippled, hand-blown, thicker in the middle than the sides, placed in frames sometime in the sixteenth century.

But once Lorne took up residence on Corvus, the glass had changed, becoming clearer and easier to see out of.

My best friend Amanda’s kids had remarked on it the last time they were here, asking when I had changed out the glass.

The thing was, I hadn’t actually noticed, the alteration having happened over time.

Simply put, when Lorne came into my life, the cottage sought to please him, and so small things, like windows he could easily see out of, had become paramount.

Clarity, however, was not the issue right now.

I imagined he was seeing disappearing and reappearing ghosts, but…

“I don’t see anything,” I reported, dejected because I felt bad for not being able to spot what he did.

“It’s gone,” he muttered.

That too had been happening a lot. In the moment it took me to move to his side and squint out at all the white, whatever it was had disappeared.

Gently, I cleared my throat. “Yesterday, I shifted and flew the entirety of Corvus. I saw nothing of note.”

“It’s always so cool, seeing you turn into a flock of ravens,” he said with a slight smile.

“Not the point.”

“I know, but it bears repeating that it’s amazing.”

As long as he thought so, I was happy, though I tried to keep the flying to a minimum in winter. The ravens I became stood out sharply against pale winter skies, which was not the safest. “I’m not suggesting you’re seeing things. You get that, don’t you?”

“I do,” he grumbled, and put down his cup and walked toward the front door.

“Ghosts walk across Corvus quite a bit.”

“I know that.”

“So is it at all possible…?”

“No.” He was adamant. “Whatever it is, it’s lurking, and I don’t like it.” He grabbed his beanie from one of the hooks by the front door.

“What are you doing?”

“That should be fairly obvious,” he retorted, sounding a bit surly as he pulled on his parka, then his fleece-lined boots, yanking them to mid-calf and shoving his sweats down into them.

“Well, wait for me to go with you.”

“Why? You’re not seeing anything.”

“But as you suggested yesterday, maybe whatever it is hides when I look.”

“Which sounds even stupider than it did when I said it the first time.”

“Please wait,” I insisted.

“Why?” he asked petulantly.

“Because I don’t want you traipsing around outside by yourself.”

He glared at me. “You’re a witch. Our home is a magical cottage that’s practically sentient, and the land we live on is enchanted. In what realm of the imagination could I be in any danger here on Corvus?”

But the fact of the matter was, he’d been seeing something for several days, and every single time I tried to spy whatever he’d gotten a glimpse of, I was disappointed. That in itself was disconcerting.

“Let’s—”

The wind chimes on the porch started making various noise then, the bigger ones sounding like bells, the smaller ones tinkling, which startled me, as there was no breeze at all.

Lorne turned for the door.

“Don’t you dare,” I ordered, rushing across the room to stand in front of it, barring his exit. “Check and see what’s outside, but don’t go.”

He squinted at me like I was nuts. “There’s probably someone on the porch, and they bumped them when they were walking around.”

That was my presumption as well. “Yes,” I concurred without budging.