Chapter 10
“A snowsquatch contest,” muttered Hayleigh, staring at where mounds of snow had been gathered in the town’s central park.
A ten-piece band was busy setting up in the gazebo at the park’s heart, with the snow stations arranged in concentric circles radiating outward.
“What’s next—a gingerbread house decorating contest? ”
“That’s next week,” he said with a grin, clapping his gloved hands together in a fluffy thump.
A vibrant yellow and orange sun hung over top of the gazebo. Hayleigh studied it, asking, “So why a sun at the top of the tree?”
His eyes followed hers, and he nodded toward it. “Sun’s about remembering ‘this too shall pass.’ When you’re in the thick of it, whether a long, dark winter or a tough period of life, it’s hard to believe you’ll ever be on the other side of it one day. The sun’s a reminder you’ll get there.”
“What if you don’t, though? Get to the other side, that is. What if something happens that changes your life forever—for the worse?”
A flash of something passed over Stephan’s face. A glimmer of some old wound, if she was reading him right, which she was quite certain she was. Whatever he was feeling, he buried it quickly beneath one of those all-too-easy Stephan Midwinter smiles.
“Then you adapt. Eventually, anything can become a new normal, and you take happiness where you find it.”
A team wandered up to the next snow pile over—one of them was Zaide, who looked at Hayleigh like she was a silverfish that had unexpectedly skittered across the bathroom floor.
The second was a man with golden brown skin and closely cropped black hair.
He was almost as tall as Stephan, though significantly leaner, with familiar-looking lines in his handsome features.
“So this is who you ditched me for, huh?” he said, grinning at Stephan. Then he reached out a hand, and when Hayleigh made to accept it, he brought it to his lips. “Arnauld Matthews-Leib.”
Matthews-Leib—that was why he looked so familiar. His face was a younger, masculine version of the pastor’s. She picked up the familiar bergamot of a Dior toilette on his clothes.
“Hayleigh Gray.” She looked from him to Stephan. “What does he mean ‘you ditched him’? I thought you didn’t have a partner?”
Stephan winked. “Well, I did, but you didn’t, and we couldn’t have you missing the fun.”
Hayleigh felt she could quite easily have missed “the fun.”
“I get it, man,” said Arnauld. “She’s way prettier than me. Definitely an upgrade. And it’s okay because now I’ve got a pro for a partner.” He slung his arm around Zaide’s shoulder.
“Stephan’s a professional too,” said Hayleigh, feeling oddly defensive.
“Unfortunately, not entirely accurate,” said Stephan. “All the most impressive stuff we sell was done by my boss. Sal trained me over the years to do a few basic designs, but I’m more the muscle.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” said Arnauld, “you’re also the face.”
“And the magic,” added Zaide.
At Hayleigh’s raised eyebrow, he explained, “I add protective charms to the statues. That’s actually what most of my magical practice is—charms.”
He raised his arm, letting the sleeve of his jacket and flannel fall away until he revealed a leather bracelet from which dangled multiple small wooden circles, each with a symbol burned inside.
“Those are charms?” she asked.
“Yep,” he confirmed with a smile. “You could say I’m…charming.”
She groaned at that, and he shook in a big, full-bodied chuckle.
“And what do you do?” asked Hayleigh, looking over at Zaide.
At first, it seemed like she might not answer, but finally the witch responded with a sigh and said, “I’m a graphic designer but also a tattoo artist. I’m about halfway through my apprenticeship. Speaking of that…” She eyed Stephan. “I need more practice. When you coming in?”
“I’m not.”
“Stephan Midwinter, are you afraid of getting a little tattoo?” asked Arnauld.
“No, I just don’t know what I want. Why would I get something on my body forever if I didn’t really want it?”
“Your sister let me do it,” said Zaide.
He snorted. “Well, acting without thinking’s kind of Rowan’s deal. Do I have to remind you about the goat?”
“The goat?” said Hayleigh, glancing between them.
“Rowan came home a week ago with a goat someone was giving away for free because she wanted it in the petting zoo at the spring festival,” said Zaide. “We live in a one-bedroom apartment. Barely room for two people, much less a bovid.”
“So it ended up at my folks’ place, who were neither prepared for it nor happy about it,” continued Stephan.
“And the only thing that kept my mom from killing her was me setting up a pen and stocking up with feed because Rowan had already moved on to her next big idea.” Hayleigh filed that away, wondering how often the younger Midwinter witch relied on her big brother to clean up her messes.
“Point is, she can be pretty impulsive, even with major life decisions. I…” He hesitated, eyes clouding, and his face growing difficult to read. “Am not.”
“So when you figure out what you want, you’ll let me tattoo you?” Zaide cackled when the question was met with silence. “Can’t believe a big guy like you is afraid of a little needle.”
He grunted. “It’s not the size of the needle; it’s the fact it stabs you repeatedly for hours.”
“So did you do that?” asked Hayleigh, pointing to the dragonfly on Zaide’s neck.
“Did I tattoo my own neck?” Zaide snorted. “No, my mentor did. I did this, though.” She pulled Arnauld’s sleeve up to reveal an image of a tree capped with a parachute and surrounded by wings.
“What is it?” asked Hayleigh.
“You want to touch it?” said Arnauld, grinning. “You can touch if you want.”
“That’s okay.” She glanced at Stephan, but if the obvious flirtation made him feel any sort of way, he didn’t show it. “Does it mean something?”
“Sure does. It’s the symbol of the smokejumpers.
I used to be a fireman here in Elk Ridge, but after the wildfires the last few summers, I felt the calling and signed on.
If climate change means we’re gonna have a ‘smoke season’ every year, I figure we need an army of folks willing to push it back.
” He hesitated before adding, “I wasn’t sure I could do it.
It meant moving away from everyone here and into an even more dangerous line of work than I was already in, but Zaide’s tattoos have a way of helping you make changes. ”
Her eyes darted between them. “You’re saying it’s a kind of…spell?”
Zaide narrowed her eyes. “Do you always have to say ‘spell’ like it’s a synonym for ‘crime’?”
“Be nice, Zaide,” said Stephan. “She’s getting used to all this.”
Zaide waved her hand and continued. “They’re alchemical tattoos. I work with people to figure out…what kind of changes they want to make. Or maybe something they want to heal and move on from. We figure out imagery that makes sense for it, and I put it down in a tattoo.”
“Got my ass in gear,” said Arnauld. “I’d been putting off signing up for six months—did it as soon as I left her studio.”
Hayleigh could not help but think that the psychological impact of committing the organization’s symbol to your skin permanently might have had something to do with it, but she kept the thought to herself.
Stephan’s eyes trailed over her shoulder, and he nodded to the group. “Everyone’s getting started. Guess we’d better break up the party. May the most dynamic duo win.”
Hayleigh watched as the other two traveled to their own station before turning back to where Stephan had crouched at their heap of snow. “Zaide doesn’t like me, huh?”
He glanced up at her for a moment with a soft smile before looking back down at his work, shaping snow with hollow thumps.
“It’s not really about you. She’s going through it. Her girlfriend moved to New Mexico a couple of months ago. She was gonna go down to join her for this Zuni Solstice festival called Shalako, but now she isn’t. The distance is…not easy.”
“Is this a temporary relocation?” Hayleigh began scooping and patting snow, having some difficulty maneuvering her hands in too-large, borrowed gloves. Not to mention, crouching in a way that kept her from toppling straight into Stephan.
“Not as far as I’ve heard.”
“And is Zaide planning to move down at some point?”
“Also, no.”
“Mmm. The ‘prolonging breakup’ flavor of long-distance relationships, then.”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Not a very holly jolly take, Miss Gray.”
She shrugged. “It’s just how it usually goes. They’re not my friends. I don’t have to pretend for their sake.”
He rose back to his feet and took a step closer, looking down at her from where he loomed overhead. “And what about hoping for their sake?”
Her mouth went suddenly tacky, and she tried to swallow, but couldn’t. “Is that honestly what you want for them? A relationship that exists over texts and video chat?”
“What else should I want for them?”
His voice had lowered to a tone that challenged, and the air thickened between them, leaving her aware of the dull thud of her heart against her chest.
“Someone close enough to hold them. To see on their face the moment they walk in the door if they’re having a bad day and get takeout on speed dial and prime the trash TV.
A plus-one when they need it, to make sure they’re never facing social jackals alone.
Someone to heat up soup when they’re too sick to get out of bed.
Not to mention, well, physical intimacy…
” He chuckled at her inability to be blunter about that point, and she scrunched her nose as she finished. “A companion, a partner.”
His voice was rough as he asked, “And was Grayson all that for you?”
She whipped away to kneel at the base of the snow mound, and the tension that had been building between them snapped like a rubber band pulled to its limits. “We’re talking about them,” she said, taking handfuls of snow and slapping them into a vague foot shape. “Not me.”
His tone of voice was difficult to read as he said, “My mistake.” As he busied himself shaping Sasquatch’s upper body, he added, “Anyone ever point out that if he took your name, he’d be Grayson Gray?”
“No one I know would make that point, because they all know that is not a thing that would ever happen.”
“Well, probably a good thing, because with a name like that, he’d definitely end up with all kinds of cozy murders happening around him.”
She paused mid–snow slap. “Cozy murders?”
He patted a scoop of snow into the rough shape of a shoulder as he said, “Yeah, I mean, it’s not the murdering that’s cozy—it’s that a hapless bystander, Grayson Gray in this case, would end up having to solve it with heart and gumption.”
A chunk of the snow he’d been working with broke free to splat on her hat, and without missing a beat, he leaned down to brush it off—not satisfied until he’d cleaned her up completely.
Her cheeks were fully flushed as she looked up at him. “The incompetence makes it cozy?”
“Gotta bumble your way into answers and hearts.”
She tried to imagine Grayson taking on the role of earnest community investigator, and her brain sputtered out at the mere suggestion. If he bumbled even once, he’d find the appropriate trainers to work it out of him. And the idea of him willingly doing the unpaid labor of it all was laughable.
With a shake of her head, she said, “This is why I don’t read fiction.”
“Wait, you don’t read fiction?” He stared down at her. “None at all?”
She shrugged. “Not much. Maybe one a year.”
“And you never did? Not even when you were young?”
“Well…” She buried her face in her work, trying to force snow into the shape of the proverbial big feet.
“Okay, what is it you’re not admitting?”
“Something that clearly isn’t for sharing.”
He sprinkled a little snow down onto her. This time, he didn’t clean it up. She growled, throwing a handful back, but he easily dodged to the other side of the snow pile. “Clearly, it was horny fan fiction,” he said.
“God no. It was just…Well, there was this series called The Saddle Club. I read all one hundred and twelve books in the main series, as well as the thirty-one spin-offs. My horse, Red, he’s named after one of the characters—Red O’Malley.”
His delight at prying this out of her was written all over his face as he asked, “Was this Red one of the main characters?”
“No.” Her voice lowered as she admitted, “He was the saddle hand they all had a crush on.”
“And did you have a crush on this saddle hand?”
She glared furiously his way. “I suppose your adolescent crushes were entirely nonembarrassing?”
“Oh yeah, totally socially normal, the same Sports Illustrated swimsuit models as everyone else.”
“Who was it?”
“Regina George.”
She stopped what she was doing to look up. “Regina George?”
“What can I say? She’d insult your shoes, date your best friend just to mess with you, and you’d still hope she noticed your haircut.”
“I’m surprised you watched Mean Girls at all.”
“I’d claim it’s because I have a sister, but I’m comfortable enough in my masculinity just to say it’s a damn good movie.
Not to mention: Regina.” As they settled back into quiet shaping and packing of the crunchy, crusty snow, Stephan took a deep breath and said, “In terms of Zaide, well, it might have something to do with you.”
Hayleigh scoffed into her snowball. “You don’t say.”
His gaze settled on her. “Rowan told us all the stuff you said last year. Like ‘our woke was making us go broke’?”
Her body itched in discomfort as she flushed all over, and she glanced to where Zaide was scooping snow with a delicate carving tool in an arched Sasquatch brow. “That was…well, a messaging tactic—I didn’t mean to be…hurtful.”
The justifications felt like marbles in her mouth, because she had been looking at Rowan, at all of them, as her competition, her opponents, and disarming them had been the point. It had felt like a good enough reason at the time.
It didn’t so much anymore.
He lowered his head to the side. “You get why it was, though, right?”
A slurry of more well-worn excuses rose to her lips, but they left a bitter taste in her mouth, and so she swallowed them back. From a distance, it had been easy to reduce people to ideas you could argue. Up close, not so much. With an exhale, she said in a quiet voice, “Yes.”
A smile turned up one corner of Stephan’s mouth, and he nodded. “You keep working on the feet. I’ll start on the head and face.”
He resumed his sculpting, humming a low song to himself, as if nothing of consequence had just been done or said.
But it had, and Hayleigh did not get back to work nearly so easily.