Chapter 31
The Third Day of Yule
Christmas Eve
The curse had quieted down ever since she had begun to work with Stephan Midwinter, but the moment she left Elk Ridge, the agents of the Wild Hunt were right back at her heels.
Her bus between Elk Ridge and Seattle should have been a direct shot, but they’d been forced to stop three times.
Once to change a blown-out tire that caused them to go spinning out on a precarious section of mountain highway, a second time when it had clipped a deer passing through North Bend (or at least what everyone else thought was one; Hayleigh had seen a furry, horned man carrying a switch, who’d met her eyes as they passed), and finally to change buses completely when the lavatory overflowed.
By the time they finally arrived at King Street Station well after sundown, it was Kelsey who picked her up and not the other way around.
On the morning of the second day, the brand-new phone her mother had bought for her had a giant crack in its screen. The shape of it looked curiously like something had smashed its tiny rear end directly onto the screen. And when she opened her closet, all of her clothes were frozen solid.
The third morning, Christmas Eve, was the most devastating.
She walked into the bathroom and found every bottle of her extensive perfume collection, which she’d spent hours boxing up the day before so the movers her mother had hired wouldn’t handle them, spilled and broken on the tiles of her en suite bathroom.
“I’m trying!” she shouted at the walls. She’d spent every spare minute searching her apartment for the bag, but it hadn’t turned up.
Not that she’d had many of those spare minutes.
Her mother had kept her busy preparing for the Christmas gala.
As soon as she’d returned home, her father had looked at her and declared she wasn’t in any shape to attract a man, especially not “a quality man like Grayson,” and her mother had immediately booked every salon and spa service available.
Luda almost added hair extensions and coloring to the list—until Kelsey and all the women at the spa had gushed over how lovely Hayleigh’s new hair looked.
Everything else remained on the table, though—wraps to sweat off a few pounds, chemical peel, LED therapy, dermaplaning, eyelash extensions, tanning booth session, waxing, brow threading, lymphatic draining massage.
Through every appointment, she felt a sense of disconnection, as if floating outside herself watching it happen.
Just a year ago, she’d have agreed with the necessity of all the treatments, not wanting to appear before a crowd of people who kept a ledger of her faults without being certain she’d hid as many of them as possible.
But Stephan had liked the exact shape she’d been in: the shape she took when judgment neither pinched her tight nor pulled her taut. Forget liked—he’d worshipped it. The memory of his attention to her body was like a whisper under her skin.
They hadn’t exchanged many messages since she left. When she’d picked up the new phone, she’d taken the opportunity to break the silence by snapping a selfie and sending it to him.
Back in the 2020s.
Congrats.
And then,
Glad you got back safe.
She’d almost launched into a full explanation of exactly how unsafe it had been but then stopped herself. She’d hurt him. He needed space. She needed him to keep that space.
But God, she missed him. She couldn’t help but think about how much better everything would have been with him there.
And she kept replaying the moment she’d pushed him away, and it left a deep ache in her body every time. She’d used to be so good at doing what needed to be done, and then moving on, but not this time.
Not with him.
“Hayleigh?”
Kelsey’s voice tore her spirit back into her body, and she found herself on a table, getting a last-second plumping and depuffing oxygen facial, her sister on the next table over.
“I…what?” Her eyelashes fluttered as her gaze dropped over to Kelsey, who was studying her with concern.
“Are you okay? I was telling you a story about Vincent, that guy who brings his own sex doll on all the yacht trips? And you didn’t even crack a smile. You love Vincent stories.”
“I do,” exhaled Hayleigh, and then tears sprang to her eyes. “But no, I’m not okay. I’m really not okay.”
Her sister lost no time in asking, “You want to cut this short and do something fun?”
“Please.”
She told Kelsey everything. She hadn’t been planning to, but once she opened her mouth, it all simply spilled out. And even though apprehension occasionally creased her sister’s face, they got through the entire story without stopping at an inpatient facility, and Hayleigh counted that a win.
Their feet carried them briskly through the pale pallor of Seattle’s downtown before pushing through the glass doors of the Sheraton Grand just as Hayleigh finished recounting how little luck she’d had finding the purse.
She had even mentioned her suspicion. That it had something to do with the services that Gray Industrial had performed for Goshen Group on the Eucharist development.
If she expected pushback from Kelsey, she didn’t get it—only a grim set of the lips that said her older sister was not at all surprised their father might have had a shady side.
A line of people wound its way in circles through the lobby, and Kelsey touched her arm lightly, saying, “I’ll go to the bar and grab us some hot toddies. You hold our spot. Then we’re so getting back to this.”
Every year, the people behind the event built a new themed gingerbread display and raised money for childhood diabetes research.
Their gingerbread “houses” were all at least six feet in height and across the grand entry.
This year’s promised to take visitors around the world as participants used candy to produce replicas of the great cities.
With only one day left until Christmas, visitors buzzed with festive energy, decked out in ugly sweaters and Santa hats.
She brushed her fingers across her own elegant white angora top, thinking of the days she’d spent in a parade of festive acrylic statement pieces with a surprising hit of wistfulness.
No one would ever take you seriously in one of those sweaters, but that was the point, wasn’t it?
Once that was off the table, there was no reason not to just cut loose and have fun.
Embrace the cringe and be free.
Another Stephan thought. A powerful longing stirred in her chest to hear his voice, to feel his touch. To have him tickle her free of her pretenses.
She was only halfway through the line when Kelsey returned. Hayleigh took a long sip, enjoying the bites of lemon, cinnamon, and anise, balanced with the sweetness of rum and honey.
“So do you think I’ve lost my marbles?” she finally ventured to ask.
Kelsey studied her from beneath long lashes and then shook her head. “No. Shockingly.”
“You believe me?”
“Honestly, I’ve experienced some strange shit,” said Kelsey, tapping long fingernails painted with tiny green trees against her glass.
Their mother had tried to argue against the nail decorations, but as usual, Kelsey, having no approval left to lose, ignored the protests.
“I met a woman in Barbados who told me every major event that would happen to me for the next month. And you know what? She was one hundred percent on the money.”
“But have you seen any…creatures like I have?”
Kelsey shook her head, and Hayleigh’s heart dropped. She had hoped that if it was some kind of family trait, they might share it.
“Okay, so,” said Kelsey, “I know you’re reasonably preoccupied with the whole ‘Dad might be a criminal’ thing, but can we get back to the part where you met a guy? A guy with magic? A guy who apparently fucked the humbug out of you?”
“Kelsey!” said Hayleigh with a strangled gasp. She glanced over her shoulder to see if the people behind, a family of four, had heard, but they were too preoccupied with keeping the small children from running wild—thank God.
Kelsey offered back an expectant look and sipped her toddy.
“Stephan,” said Hayleigh. Saying his name caused her to feel melty and sweet.
Her sister’s eyes widened. “Oh, you just got moony.”
“What?”
“The second you said his name, you looked like you were about to float away. You never looked like that with Grayson. Not once. You’ve got it bad.”
Yes. She did. But until the words came out of Kelsey’s mouth, she hadn’t really let herself acknowledge it.
Yes, she liked him, yes, she had certainly lusted after him—those things were obvious, but they were passing things. Nothing you allowed to destabilize your trajectories. But somewhere along the way, it had started to become something different—something that could become a trajectory.
For the low cost of her parents and all they offered.
Kelsey’s arm wove through hers, and she said in a soft, warm voice, “Our turn, HB.”
HB. Toddler Kelsey had called her “Hayleigh Baby,” and it had become a pet name that stuck. At least until they became too old for such things, and Hayleigh shouted the nickname down until Kelsey put it away on a shelf with all their other childish things.
She leaned her head against her big sister’s shoulder as they drifted from display to display.
The smell of sugar and ginger and butter overlaid every sweet scene.
London was filled with candy wafer cobbles and isomalt glass towers and a London Eye made of frosted pretzels and candy canes.
Fondant children with royal icing smiles skated over a River Thames of aqua gelatin, and sugar pearls hung from frosted trees.
“Remember when we were gonna go to London?” said Hayleigh.
“Yeah,” said Kelsey with an exhaled sigh, “if I remember right, you were planning to nick the royal jewels.”
Her lashes fluttered as she searched for a memory and couldn’t find it. “How did I plan to get into the Tower of London?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean those royal jewels. Prince Harry was still single at the time.”
As they drifted on to a sugar-spun Paris, Hayleigh gazed at where a pair of molded chocolate lovers kissed beneath a mistletoe beside a wall of tiny heart-shaped locks in pastille Paris.
I wish you were here, Stephan.
The thought started in her brain but ended in her heart, where it caught and was stuck there. She sighed and said, “What am I gonna do, K?”
Her sister pressed her cheek down against the side of her head and squeezed her hands. “Whatever it is, I support you.”
“Even if it ruins the family?”
Kelsey snorted. “It won’t really have been you who ruined it if it does.”
It was exactly what Hayleigh needed to hear.