Chapter 7
Three Days until Yule
The night was rampant with dreams so vivid they made her question whether she was crossing in and out from sleep to waking.
The crone had been there, calling her name from within the trees, but there were other figures as well—peeking out from slits in the walls—short little goblinlike creatures with sharp faces, covered in dark coarse hair with goat hooves.
She woke with a start, inhaling air in great gulps as she scanned the room for intruders. But there was nothing there but yellow wallpaper blistering at the seams.
Kallikantzaros. The word whispered through her mind, attaching itself to the remembered creatures from her dreams. They were Christmas goblins who ran amok until Epiphany, when they were forced back to their homes in the bowels of the earth. Another story she’d heard from Grandfather Vasyk.
She shook her head and slipped out of bed, swiping her hand toward where she’d left her phone charging when she went to sleep.
It came back empty.
What? Where did her phone go? It had been nearly out of battery, and she’d triple-checked that it was plugged in before she let herself fall asleep.
The empty cord dangled off the bedside table, and she slid her hand down the side of the mattress, feeling where it might’ve fallen. Her fingers closed around something hard and round, and she tugged it free.
A lump of coal. She dropped it as soon as she realized what she was holding, but her fingers came away blackened in a coat of dust.
Coal in your stocking. Naughty children got coal in their stockings.
She looked up from where the coal had landed and followed a trail of sooty marks to the bathroom. They hadn’t been there last night—she was certain of it. Were they footprints? They had the distinct double-leaf shape left only by cloven hooves.
The kallikantzaros. Had they really been in her room? She followed the trail to the edge of the toilet. There, sunk at the bottom of the bowl, was her phone.
“No, no, no.” She gagged as she plucked it free.
Mischievous magic. Was this a new aspect of the curse? Was she being haunted now? By little goat people?
The early-morning cold was a shock to her system as she fled toward the motel office, throwing open the door with a jangle. Her sudden appearance startled a rangy-looking man behind the desk, who stared openly at her bare legs.
She snapped her fingers to bring his eyes up. “Rice. I need a bag of rice.”
His expression was flat. “Don’t got any of those.”
“My phone is soaked. I need it.”
“Need or not, ain’t any here.”
Hayleigh slammed her hand onto the desk with a painful slap. “My whole life is on this phone!”
The clerk was unimpressed. “Well, maybe it shouldn’t be.” Then he cocked his head to the side. “That’s quite the bold hairdo you got there.”
That brought her attention away from the phone. “What are you talking about?”
Her hand flew to the side of her head, and sure enough, close to a foot of hair was missing, its edges ragged and uneven.
“A mirror,” she said, “I need a mirror.”
The clerk held up his phone, selfie camera pointed her way.
Not only had her hair been cut in a clownish, zigzagging fringe, there were stripes of Crayola red alternating with the platinum blond to create a candy-cane effect.
“My hair,” she wailed, “what happened to my hair?”
A knowing look passed over the clerk’s face. “Anything can happen when you hit the glühwein hard. At least this’ll grow out. You know how many people pass through these doors with a tattoo they’ve got no memory of? That’s the glühwein effect.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t drunk. I didn’t do this to myself. It was them.”
“Them? Who?” The clerk was giving her a funny look, and she realized it was time to zip her mouth.
How was she supposed to explain that her primary suspects were shaggy little beasts drawn to her by a witch’s curse? Probably the same shaggy little beasts who’d bricked her phone?
She took a few deep breaths to calm her racing heart. What now? She was literally stranded; stranded looking like a nineties pop star on a Christmas album cover. Only her humiliation didn’t come with residuals.
Her brain supplied a most unwanted suggestion.
“Not him,” she groaned.
But who else did she know here? What other choice did she have?
Hayleigh whimpered. The man behind the counter watched the struggle play out on her face with curiosity.
She didn’t even have his phone number. It was locked, along with everything else, inside her now-bricked phone.
Unless.
Hayleigh straightened her back and looked the clerk in the eye. “Do you know Stephan Midwinter?”
Stephan hadn’t yet arrived when she stepped outside, feeling grimy in yesterday’s clothing and wishing she had a hat to cover her hair. At least her underthings had survived the candy coating—she’d have drawn the line at putting those back on.
Across the highway, the road gave way to a sheer cliff face, one side of a yawning chasm.
A mountain face shot up in the sky opposite the drop-off, layered in white-packed conifer and ending in dramatic peaks.
It was the same in every direction—a landscape shaped by clashing tectonics, volcanic eruptions, and glacial erosion, jagged edges smoothed by snowfall.
Clear blue skies raced beyond the mountain tops, puffs of white clouds drifting by.
A flurry of motion caught her attention. Snow cascaded down a Douglas fir, as if something had taken it by the trunk and shaken it. The same thing happened to the next tree, and then the next and the next, and on and on in a line like something was cutting a path through the forest.
Straight toward her.
Hayleigh turned to sprint back into the hotel, but then a voice, old in a way that suggested “fundamental,” not expiring, called, “Hayleigh, Hayleigh.”
She turned back slowly, guessing what she would find. The old woman with ember eyes stood in the trees, beckoning her. Ready, no doubt, to cause Hayleigh more grief on behalf of the curse.
Well, this wasn’t going down like last time. The crone had caught her off guard and cornered, but she’d been through enough of this nonsense now and was prepared to tell all agents of the curse where they could shove themselves.
Hayleigh crossed her arms as she fixed her gaze directly on the unwanted visitor. It was a gaze she reserved for hard sales. For walking into rooms full of powerful people who thought they had an advantage over her. It was a look that said, “You might be someone, but so am I.”
“I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but I’ve seen spookier things at a kids’ Halloween carnival.
If you think you’re going to intimidate me just because you show up in discount apocalypse wear wiggling your fingers, you’re as batty as you look.
So why don’t you take that Party City wig and go back to wherever it is you came from.
And tell all your weird little friends to do the same! ”
At that moment, a red pickup splattered and streaked with a mix of snow and salt bumped its way over the lip of the highway. It took Hayleigh’s attention off the crone momentarily, and in that time, the witch pulled her vanishing act again.
She expected to feel a sense of triumph at having scared off one of her tormentors, but instead she was haunted by an odd feeling of missed opportunity.
“Morning, Sunshine,” said Stephan, easing out the window as he pulled up to the curb.
His eyes widened ever so slightly as he caught sight of her hair.
“Don’t you say a thing,” she hissed, drawing herself into a hunch as she made for the passenger side.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, and then added under his breath, “Patty.”
“I will ruin you,” she said with a low growl as she climbed. Her annoyance dissipated in a surge of gratitude as he passed over a bag of rice. A moment later, a stuffed canvas bag landed with a thump in her lap.
“What’s this?”
“I swung by the festival on the way here,” said Stephan, easing the pickup off the curb. “We’ve got quite the lost and found; you’d be shocked what people leave behind. Pulled a few things that looked like your size. In case you’re worried—we wash everything. Twice.”
A mix of citrus and artificial fresh linen wafted from the bag.
Though she didn’t relish the thought of wearing other people’s castoffs, it was better than her own dirty laundry.
As she picked through her options, she was caught off guard by the fact that they were all her size.
Grayson had never gotten it right. He’d had a habit of buying one size too small, regardless of where she was in the ten pounds she banded around in.
Somehow, Stephan already had a better understanding of her body than her onetime fiancé.
Less pleasantly, every single top was garishly festive in its design. “You couldn’t find one thing that wouldn’t make me look like a Christmas card from 1987?”
He chuckled as he pulled the truck out of the parking lot and onto the highway. “Nope. People tend to get in the spirit and stay there.”
“Guess I’ll just marinate in it, then.”
She sighed and settled on the classiest of the options, a green-and-white Nordic-style sweater with flying reindeer stitched into the yoke. He did a double take as she slipped her dirty sweater over her head.
“Didn’t realize it was that kind of party,” he said.
“I’m wearing a camisole,” she said with flushed cheeks, wiggling her way into the replacement. “And my pants are staying on until I find a bathroom.”
“There’s a stocking cap in there for ya,” he said, with a look on his face that gave away how hard he was struggling not to comment on why she might want it.
She scowled but dug it out immediately. It was green knit with a puffy ball at the end and Elk Ridge All Year printed amid white snowflakes. Seeing her words again sent a dart of pride through her chest.
“I didn’t realize the festival had merchandise.”
“Didn’t use to. Mom was against it, but Rowan convinced her to give it a try. We’ve got a kick-ass graphic designer in the coven, Zaide.” The name brought to mind an alternative-looking Korean woman Hayleigh had often seen at Rowan’s side. “The first batch sold out online in one day.”
She slid the cap onto her head, tucking every bit of hair into it that she could. “Makes sense to me. Merchandise gives people the feeling of being a part of something.”
“That’s pretty much exactly what Rowan said.” His eye twinkled. “You two have more in common than you think.” She scoffed at that. “You both like the same kind of guys, for example.” His voice went a little funny—flattening, lacking his usual energy and humor.
Hayleigh looked out the window, trying to keep him from seeing the humiliation she was certain was written all over her face. “I don’t think so. Gavin was…a whim.”
“Oh yeah?” He was doing his best to sound disinterested but failing spectacularly. She had a feeling Stephan Midwinter couldn’t lie if his life depended on it.
“Yeah, I was on a break from my fiancé, Grayson, and I just…” She looked out the window, trying to decide what to say, shooting to close out the conversation without revealing more than she cared to. “Wanted options.”
“So, ‘was’ on a break? That ‘break’ over?”
Again, he failed to sound disinterested. “No. Well, it was for a bit there, but we’re broken up again. For good this time. Maybe.”
The deal she’d struck with her mother forced its way into her mind. Spending one party with Grayson didn’t mean they were back together, even if her mother seemed certain one would lead to the other.
It was true that if she was with him, all the pressure she was feeling to find a job would dry up overnight.
He made far more than enough for the two of them to be comfortable.
There was a security in that she couldn’t deny, especially as her bank balance neared zero.
But he’d already felt entitled to dictate so many of the details of their life together; how much worse would that get if he was paying for it all? How much more of her would he dictate?
Stephan glanced sideways in her direction. “What do you want to happen?”
She took a moment before answering. “What we need and want aren’t always the same thing.”
“And you think you need this guy?”
Did she? Her mother thought so. Her father thought so. Grayson thought so.
She resented him for making her consider the question, and her voice came out sharp as she said, “Why do you think that’s any of your business?”
His hands flexed on the steering wheel, the ridges of his knuckles hard. “You’re right; it’s not. I’ll shut up.”
“Please do.”
The rest of the drive was silent, and Hayleigh had to fight back the urge to consider: What if they are right about me?