Breaking Her Curse Before Christmas

Chapter 1

Four Days until Yule

Hayleigh Gray was cursed. At least, that was what she had come to believe, as her life fell apart, piece by piece, over the course of a single year.

As a rule, Hayleigh did not “do” the supernatural.

She did color-coded spreadsheets, and brand-compliant slide decks, and projections backed by data in triplicate.

She trusted numbers, not vibes, and yet here she was, entertaining the kind of woo-woo notion she would have at one time laughed out of the room.

Unfortunately, she had discovered last Christmas that witches, and the magic they wielded, were real. And since then, the number of improbable, uncanny, and downright obnoxious misfortunes she had experienced was simply too high to ignore the possibility of witchcraft at play.

Take this latest data point—the nightmarish hag staring at her through the candy cane frosted glass of Nordstrom’s department store.

The old woman’s eyes were the disquieting shade of embers gone cold.

She had a hooked nose tipped with a hairy mole the size of a gumdrop, and her skin had withered atop her bony frame like the leaves of a drought-stricken vine.

A rust-red headscarf barely contained clumps of white hair, the ends of which coiled in and out of themselves like springs in motion.

When the hag smiled, it seemed to stretch the full width of her face, and she mouthed what Hayleigh could swear was her own name.

There had been a time when she could’ve dismissed this woman as just one more lost soul wandering the streets, but she no longer had that luxury.

Not after last Christmas. Not after a group of meddlesome witches had used their spells to sabotage the biggest deal of her career and ruin her life in the process.

She longed to go back to a time when witches and spells were the stuff of fairy tales, but apparently the world without them had been the well-crafted fiction all along.

“Your card’s been declined,” chirped a high voice.

“Excuse me?” Hayleigh startled, tearing her eyes away from the crone to narrow them at the cashier standing across a pale quartz countertop. Her gaze darted back to the window, but it was now empty.

Almost like the old woman had never been there at all.

“Your card. It’s been declined.” The scent of cheap vanilla body mist hung around the cashier like a cloud, causing Hayleigh’s nose to twitch. An entire department store’s worth of luxury scents to choose from, and that’s what she’d gone with?

The girl had one hand pressed firmly atop Hayleigh’s heap of Christmas gifts, as if preventing the possibility of a snatch and run.

I don’t look that rough, do I?

Her hand flitted to where her dark roots crept free from her scalp, marring the expensive platinum blond she religiously maintained.

But every appointment she’d booked with her colorist over the last two months had been canceled the morning of.

Car stall, kid with the flu, sprained wrist, electrical outage—her girl had been through every excuse at this point.

More evidence of dark magic at work.

“That’s not possible,” Hayleigh said. “Did you add an extra zero to the total or something?” The cashier waved to the screen between them, forcing Hayleigh to acknowledge that the total was correct. “Well, there must have been some kind of error. Try again.”

She tapped the platinum card to the reader and crossed her arms over the cream lamb’s wool of her sweater.

Overhead, the voices of a viral a cappella group crooned “It Came upon a Midnight Clear” from a speaker.

Their version added an uptempo pop beat, which she found nearly intolerable.

The beauty of the song came from the tranquil nature of its gentle rhythm, and soft, legato phrasing, which made you feel as though you were gazing at a starlit night as angelic beings bent their wings toward the earth—not gyrating in a bandage dress.

Transaction failed.

“Mmm, same thing,” said the cashier, all too chipper at delivering the verdict. Heat crept up Hayleigh’s neck, gathering below the dry strands of her messy bun.

“I’ll use this one, then.” She pulled out her debit card, trying not to look at the expanding line of shoppers behind her.

I’m not a vagrant! Hayleigh wanted to shout, but her mother had raised her better than to make a scene.

Most of the time. She’d had a very public breakdown after a spell that had been cast on her mind wore off at the worst possible time, causing a flood of erased memories to come back in the middle of an important meeting. It had been cited as one of the many reasons for her dismissal.

“It doesn’t seem like you’re handling the pressure of this role anymore,” her former boss, Jack Bree, had said as he showed her the door.

It hadn’t mattered that she’d been good at her job—great even—managing development after development for the Goshen Group.

Or that the projects she’d been part of had made the company hundreds of millions of dollars.

They lost one deal because of the involvement of literal witchcraft (not that Jack had believed that, of course), and Hayleigh had been ousted faster than you could say “Merry Christmas.”

Transaction failed.

What? She wasn’t exactly thriving, but it simply wasn’t possible that her cash reserves had gotten that low.

“Just put it all back.” Hayleigh avoided eye contact as she retreated through the department store doors and into the busy streets of Bellevue, Washington. As soon as she was outside, she raced away, as if the line of women might follow, ringing bells and announcing to everyone that she was broke.

She nearly collided with an enormous wooden snow crystal as she opened her phone to check her bank balance.

Every year at Christmas, the street between the two halves of Bellevue Square transformed into “Snowflake Extravaganza,” hosting nighttime spectacles with parades, costumed characters, and bubbles of fake snow lit by spotlights that fell to the rhythm of choral music.

But daylight stripped the scene of its charm, the decorations flat and mute in the sunlight.

Ducking into a Starbucks, she finally opened the banking app. Her stomach bottomed out at an unexpected wire transfer for twenty-five thousand dollars.

Who had gotten into her bank account, and how? Was it because she’d connected to that shady public Wi-Fi? Had someone made off with her account numbers?

Or…was it Grayson? Was this retaliation for having declared their relationship of five years off for good this time?

She’d woken up one morning and left her engagement ring on his kitchen counter beside the protein shake station and a small screen that displayed the status of all the major financial markets in real time—the one place he’d be sure not to miss it.

The name on the transaction—Vasorrú Bába—wasn’t his, but, as it was obviously fake, she couldn’t rule him out.

Her mind spun. If she couldn’t even pay for Christmas gifts, what was she going to do about rent?

Health insurance? Her car payment? She’d get on the line with the bank as soon as she was alone and try to dispute the transfer, but even if they ruled in her favor, it would take time to get the money back, the process slowed even more by the coming holiday break.

Ugh. Was it really necessary for the entire world to shut down for the last half of December? What was she supposed to do in the meantime?

“Welcome to Starbucks! Can I take your order?” The kid behind the counter gestured toward a sign advertising the seasonal specials. “Can I tempt you with some festive flavors?”

Ignoring the question, she said, “Tall caramel macchiato—skim milk, one pump sugar-free vanilla syrup, and light caramel drizzle. Please.”

“Sorry, that’s empty,” said the cashier, after she tried to tap her Starbucks app to pay.

He at least had the decency to look apologetic as he said it, unlike the girl at Nordstrom, who’d treated Hayleigh’s humiliation like the most interesting part of her day. Which it probably was.

A plump, middle-aged woman with apple-red cheeks said, “I can get it—put it with my order. I’ve been wanting a chance to pay it forward.”

“I’ve got it,” mumbled Hayleigh, pulling out a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet. “In fact, I’ll buy yours.”

It might have been the season for giving, but Hayleigh was no one’s charity case.

“Thank you…?” The woman smiled uncertainly as Hayleigh collected the change and stuffed it back into her purse.

She whirled away from the counter and let out a yelp.

The woman whose drink she had just purchased glanced up in alarm. “You okay?”

“Fine,” said Hayleigh. But she was not fine. The crone stood in the window again, staring directly at her. When the old woman exhaled, ice crystals formed in delicate fractals that spiraled across the glass, even though it was a good ten degrees above freezing outside.

“Hayleigh.”

This time, she was sure the old woman said her name. The temperature plunged, and her teeth chattered. The figure raised a finger, curling it toward herself, inviting Hayleigh to come closer. Shaking her head, she backed away, rubbing her hands up and down the outside of her sweater to warm up.

“I’ve got an order for Hay-lee!” Her drink was up, freeing her to flee into the mall, away from the street and the old woman haunting her steps.

A pair of teenagers pushed through the doors just as she got there, and one of their elbows caught her on the wrist, sending the macchiato splashing all the way down the front of her sweater.

“What the heck!” she shouted, peeling the now hot, sticky fabric away from her chest.

They didn’t even stop to apologize, only sped away with an “Oh shiiit, dude!”

A bathroom. She needed to find a bathroom before it stained.

Light filtered through the glass domes of the mall’s atrium ceiling, and holiday shoppers crisscrossed open balconies overhead. A towering Christmas tree stretched nearly to the roof, children slipping and skating their way across a temporary ice rink surrounding its base like a tree skirt.