Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Holly is easy to spot when I walk into the Knit and Kettle.
I invariably notice everything because I’m a vampire.
For instance, there are six customers in the café, four women, two men.
Behind the counter, two teenage girls. Wool coats steam by the radiator; mittens drape like sleepy animals.
A retro radio crackles with carols, and someone’s scarf smells of pine.
Mr. Patel, the town’s salt truck driver, sits by himself, doing a crossword puzzle and blowing on a hot mug of tea through his four remaining teeth. He took over this winter and drives the gritter like it’s a sacred duty.
At the table over is Meribel, a reserved and elegant siren who runs the vinyl shop.
She came to Willow Creek a few years ago, and there’s a rumor that she’s lost her voice over some mishap with an enchanted microphone.
That doesn’t stop her from trying to teach everyone else about the magic of harmony.
Most folks in Willow Creek are like that. Charming, eccentric, and a little out of place, until they end up here.
I notice that Holly has a slight sag under her eyes today.
Not enough sleep after her Christmas tree was stolen.
Her hair has more than its usual slight fray at the edges.
One of her fingernails is ragged. She’s exhausted—poor thing—and the Fair Isle sweater looks like it lost a minor skirmish with static.
She’d be devastating in strong colors. Navy. Claret. Even plum. Today’s pale green tries its best. She’s still—infuriatingly—radiant. I wonder what magic she uses.
Holly Frost doesn’t act like other humans.
Most are…intrigued by me. Curious. Sensibly impressed and occasionally wary.
She isn’t.
Since that first meeting, she’s barely tolerated me. I’ve offered advice. Assistance. Insight. Dashingly charming jokes. All of it, apparently, unwelcome.
Vexing.
And now she sits there, biting her fingernail, while her friend looks at me exactly as mortals should. Marcy understands the situation perfectly. Holly does not.
Not that I care.
This is about securing our place here before anyone has the bright idea to reconsider it.
Marcy waves at me, and I give her my three-out-of-ten smile. I’ve developed a scale, one I really should have patented. A one or two handles most humans. I save anything higher for when I want something.
Four would be enough to make every woman pay attention, and anything higher requires a fainting couch and smelling salts. A ten would knock the socks, and every other item of clothing, off whoever I aimed it at. I’ve rarely had cause to use it.
My heightened senses do a second sweep of the room, catching every detail: the hum of the espresso machine clashes with the gentle scrape of a spoon against porcelain, the faint tang of cloves mingling with the scent of old wood and spilled cream.
A headless gingerbread man floats in Holly’s latte, which feels pointed.
These small things used to bore me. Lately, they’ve become oddly comforting. Perhaps immortality makes a hobby of the mundane.
Holly sips her coffee and checks her phone, pointedly ignoring me. I swallow a fresh wave of irritation, and I wonder what that’s all about.
“May I?” I ask, gliding towards the empty seat.
“Please,” Marcy gushes.
Holly grunts at me.
It’s typical. It’s impolite at the very least. And despite this behavior that borders on rudeness, I will remain a gentleman. Polite charm costs nothing, so I turn my attention to Holly’s friend. I dip my head, take her hand, and bow over her knuckles—old-world manners, not a bite.
“I don’t believe we’ve seen each other in a while.”
Holly’s friend turns bright red and stammers out, “I’ve been doing chocolates. Making chocolates. For my store. The chocolate store. It’s the one with the chocolate.”
I murmur encouragingly at her, quite pleased by how flustered she is, and turn up my smile by one notch.
Marcy blushes with enough intensity that it’s possible her heart might explode.
This is an appropriate response. It’s how any normal human being should respond to a vampire as old and important as me.
Holly continues to pointedly ignore me. I cough at her. It gets her attention, and she raises her head.
Finally.
“Yes?”
“How are you, Holly?”
“Peachy,” she says, though she obviously isn’t. “Where are we on the elf problem?”
I clear my throat and adjust the napkin over my lap while gesturing at the teen behind the counter.
I catch the barista’s eye and mime a cup.
She nods—table service appears to be a seasonal miracle—and I turn back to Holly.
While the stimulant effects of caffeine do nothing for me since I turned, I still rather enjoy the taste.
Technically, the Knit and Kettle doesn’t do table service, but I am a vampire, and so the girl will inevitably do as I ask.
“You seem particularly intense this morning.”
“I suppose for an immortal, human trivialities like days and weeks are barely worth noticing,” she snaps. “But to us, they matter. The festival is in a week. We have no tree. You said you’d help. So fine. Help.”
It’s impossible to miss how the light filtering through the frosted window plays on Holly’s face, and I once again note that the weariness she carries seems heavier than usual, as if it’s woven into the loose threads of her sweater or the way her hair rebelliously frizzes at the ends.
I’ve seen humans unravel before, but with Holly, it stirs something unfamiliar—a tug, faint and persistent.
Marcy’s eyes widen at Holly’s demeanor, and I struggle to keep the smile glued to my face. Thankfully, the server comes over with my coffee and places it in front of me. I thank her, and she scurries off, and I pick up the steaming hot coffee and take a sip.
“Ah,” Marcy exclaims. “Careful, you’ll burn your mouth.”
“I can’t be hurt. At least not by coffee.” I set my drink down and raise an eyebrow at her. “And you’d be surprised how much heat I can withstand.”
Marcy melts under my attention and innuendo, which is as it should be. Another useful reminder that Holly’s continuous wall of disdain is the anomaly, rather than the rule.
Of course it is. I’m delightful.
This is a Frost problem, not a reflection of me in the slightest.
Holly punctures that thought with a cough.
“That is the worst line I’ve ever heard in my life, and a man once asked me if I was a fruit because I look like a fineapple,” she says.
“To business, then,” I say. “It’s not quite that simple. Rogue elves are a tricky business. Anyone can chase one or two off, but making them stay gone—that’s the trick.”
“How long will it take? I can’t have them flitting around while I figure out what to do about the tree.”
“Ah.” I raise a finger. “Which brings us to an important distinction. What’s the priority: getting rid of the elves, or getting the tree back? We likely can’t do both at once.”
Her brow wrinkles quite wonderfully as she considers the question, and it becomes obvious how much this matters to her.
I can’t recall the last time I cared about something enough to worry over it.
How interesting. Perhaps I’ve spent too much time buried in paperwork.
Mortals and their dilemmas are far more entertaining.
“Tree first,” she finally says. “I can’t risk its absence. The whole festival is anchored around it. It would look stupid when the dancers I’ve hired to perform ‘Dance around the Christmas Tree’ don’t have an actual Christmas Tree.”
“Smart choice. And finding it will likely solve the other problem. The elves appearing at the time that the tree disappeared is hardly a coincidence. I suspect they have it. We can do both.”
“So why,” she says through gritted teeth, “did you ask me to pick one or the other?”
“Oh,” I say, waving a hand. “It sounded more dramatic.”
“I knew it!” She bangs the table, earning a frown from the married couple at the table by the window. “You’re not serious about this at all. This is a diversion for you. Something to occupy your time.”
Holly’s voice is blade-sharp and cutting. Her words are not particularly scathing—I’ve heard worse over the centuries—but they carry a heat, a spark of passion that my kind rarely gets to experience.
I shouldn’t want to stoke that fire.
And yet, I do.
I find myself wanting its heat, drawn to it as if I were a moth. Perhaps this is part of what I find so thoroughly confusing about Holly Frost. She’s like oil to my water, the heat of summer when all I want is winter’s cool, and I cannot stay away from her.
“That’s all life is,” I say, wondering if philosophical musings might impress her. “Doing things to occupy your time. Opening a bar. Sitting here having a coffee. Would you prefer it if I helped by making more time appear or something? How would that even work? I’m not a wood sprite.”
“Wood sprites can make time appear?” Marcy asks. “Since when?”
“They’re distantly related to genies. They’re a bit like a cross between a stopwatch and a photocopier. Terrible at parties, by the way.”
“You’re going to need to circle back on all of that.”
Humans know so little of the supernatural world.
It’s complicated, and the lineages and classes of creatures can be difficult to understand and recall, even for someone as old as me.
The problem of human lore and their silly books and movies has only made this worse, and I hope I won’t have to explain all of it.
There are better things to do.
Like figure out why Holly is so cross with me, when all I’ve done is try to help.
Before I can explain further, Holly interrupts. “This is a waste of time. You were never going to be serious about this.”
She rummages through her purse, muttering under her breath at me, until she emerges with a crumpled bill, which she throws on the table. As she stands up to leave, I grab her wrist. Her frustration radiates off her in waves, palpable even to the humans around us.
I rise and step into her path, close enough to catch the faintest trace of her scent—citrusy, warm, alive. It shouldn’t affect me the way it does. Nothing about her should. And yet, here I am, grasping at any excuse to keep her from walking out of the Knit and Kettle and out of my life.
“Holly. Please. I want to help. I’m sorry I tried to be funny.”
She snatches her hand away and puts a wool beanie on her head, preparing to exit.
“I have to go. I have things to do. Including finding a new tree and cleaning up the town. Then I see if has any elf repellent. You never know. They have Nicholas Cage pillowcases.”
There’s something about that last bit that causes her voice to break, and I feel a stab of sympathy. When was the last time I felt anything even close to that for a human? Several centuries, at least.
“Stop.” I edge a little nearer to her. She is really very close to me, and her scent deepens. Oranges. Blood oranges too. Lovely. “Holly, let me help. I can help you get your tree back. Let’s at least try that first before you resort to panic buying merchandise.”
“You still haven’t told me any ideas you have to help.” She looks up at me, and I find the smallest glimmer of hope in her eyes. I very much want to turn that glimmer into something bigger.
“I don’t know where the elves have taken your tree.” She scoffs and forces me to pivot to stop her from walking out the door. I try again. “Wait. I said I don’t know where the elves took it, but I know someone who does.”
“Who?”
“Mímir.”
“What?” She stomps her foot in frustration. “That’s your answer? That’s your great vampire solution? An ancient, severed head?”
“I wouldn’t go near that thing, Holly,” Marcy says.
“Well, duh, Marce,” Holly replies. “There’s no chance that thing’s coming near me.”
Holly perfects the art of unimpressed, and I have to confess that I’m unsurprised.
Mímir has a reputation, and it isn’t good.
He’s not nearly as bad as everyone thinks he is, but he likes people to believe that he’s unpleasant because it keeps them from bothering him.
I can understand and empathize with that, especially when most humans are utterly infuriating.
Admittedly, he’s got a bit of a temper, and he doesn’t have an exactly cheery disposition, but I don’t imagine many would when they’ve spent an eternity living the way he has.
“He’s fine,” I say, smoothly, using every ounce of my vampire charm. “I’ve known him for ages. He knows…well, everything. He knows literally everything. We’ll ask him who took the tree.”
“I don’t feel like losing parts of my memories, thanks,” Holly says.
“Oh, that.” She’s referring to the price Mímir demands for his information, and she seems rather hung up on it. “We’ll work something out.”
I flash her a two-point-five grin.
Nothing.
“I said no theatrics.” Her voice is low and threatening. “And the first thing you suggest is a desiccated old head who spits out riddles in exchange for memories. This is your idea of a sane, sensible approach to the elf problem?”
“Holly,” I keep my voice gentle. “Your town is seemingly plagued by mythical creatures from the beyond. Its inhabitants are invariably supernatural or connected to them in some way. Given the context, this is a remarkably measured approach.”
“He’s got a point,” Marcy says. I give her a four-point-five smile, and she gasps a little, gripping her cup as if it’s the only thing tethering her to reality.
“Whose side are you on?” Holly asks.
“His. Oh my god. His.”
Holly makes a sound that suggests deep regret before turning her attention back to me.
Her gaze is steady, but there’s a flicker of something in her eyes—hesitation, maybe, or the barest trace of trust she doesn’t want to admit.
Holly has a way of looking at me like she’s sizing up an enemy on the battlefield, one eyebrow quirking slightly as though she’s daring me to prove her wrong.
It’s as frustrating as it is fascinating.
And I have to admit, I like it.
“Fine.” The word comes out attached to a frustrated breath. “We’ll try it your way. We’ll visit Mímir, but if this doesn’t work, I’m trying something else. But no more theatrics and weird, supernatural mumbo jumbo.”
“Scout’s honor.” I quip, happy to return to the running joke again.
Holly doesn’t look reassured.
“Let’s get going.”