Chapter 36
The night was crisp, and the sky a clear, matte black.
The rooftop bar they picked to celebrate at had been decorated pleasantly, with lights wound around every table leg.
Windows of adjacent high-rises were filled with holiday light displays, and one had been rigged to resemble digital snow falling in a cascade down its many floors.
“Do we think this is enough?” asked Rowan, waving a hand over the papers sitting on the table between them.
“It’s going to have to be,” said Hayleigh. “And if not, well, hopefully my dad does the right thing.”
“You gave him way too much credit even asking,” said Kelsey.
Had she? Maybe. But they never would have gotten to this point if Stephan hadn’t extended her credit she hadn’t qualified for at the time.
“You know, you were right about some things.”
Hayleigh blinked out of her thoughts and looked over at Rowan, who was gazing at her drink a bit sheepishly. “Excuse me?”
“Last year,” said Rowan. “A few of the ideas you had for Elk Ridge were good.”
“Oh?” asked Hayleigh, sitting up a little straighter. If there was one thing that could perk her right up, it was someone admitting she’d been right. “Elk Ridge All Year.”
“It’s a good name,” said Rowan. “But also, we need at least one large hotel, if not more—like the resort you wanted to build. Once the lodging we have fills, the only place they can spill over into is our homes. Rents have gone up way more than they should have because of so many getting turned into short-term rentals. I’m not saying we should cut down old growth to do it, but… ”
“There were other options,” said Hayleigh, the side of her brain that thought through these kinds of problems waking up from the dormancy of unemployment.
“We ended up pitching it for there, because Dennis McCreery owned that land, and it could have been a package deal with the festival plot. But we surveyed other properties. They were solid options with less environmental impact.”
Rowan relaxed visibly. “And do you think there’s anyone we could convince to build in Elk Ridge who would go with a low-impact site?”
“Of course. There’re developers out there who maintain higher ethical standards. Not to mention all the people who use green certifications in their marketing.”
“Some of those are just greenwashing,” said Rowan with a wary look.
She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s pretty obvious who’s sincere if you know what you’re looking for. Most people just don’t.”
“But you do.”
“Of course.”
The witch wrapped a white curl of hair around her finger as she asked, “Would you be willing to do it for us?”
Hayleigh blinked, not quite believing what she had just heard. “Are you offering me a job?”
“Just some consulting, but yes? We’d pay you.”
She didn’t know what to make of the offer, especially coming from Rowan. She was being offered a job.
Not a long-term job, but it was more than the nothing she had going on now. Something to tide her over while she still looked for the right long-term position. Stephan’s hand slid down her back, settling at its lowest crook, giving her a squeeze.
Her voice came out low as she asked, “You really want to work with me?”
Rowan was nodding before she’d even finished speaking. “We need you, and we want you.”
Hayleigh couldn’t hold back the warm rush of tears in her eyes, and what was more, she no longer felt the need to.
“I’m glad I failed,” she said. Everyone looked confused. “Last year, I mean—I’m glad you stopped us from buying the festival. We would have ruined what made it special, what made it great. It stayed in the right hands.”
The two women looked at each other across the blaze of a fire, and the divide between them, which had once seemed so impossibly wide, narrowed.
As they dropped Kelsey and Rowan off at Hayleigh’s soon-to-be-ex-apartment, Stephan held Hayleigh back. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
The other two women paused and gave her secretive smiles that told her they’d been briefed on his plan. “I’m not sure if I’m up for anything else tonight…”
“Rally, sis,” said Kelsey. “It’s worth it.”
His truck rumbled them through the dark night until it was winding its way down a familiar wooded strand.
She glanced at him in surprise. “How did you…?”
The sign for Emerald Trails came into view. “You mentioned the name of your mom’s stables once. I did some snooping, and maybe a bit of conniving…”
She scoffed. “I don’t think you have a conniving bone in that gargantuan body.”
“Plotting, then. I talked to the guy who manages things…”
“Gordon,” said Hayleigh, choking up. Saying good-bye to her old life meant saying good-bye to him, and, even harder, to Red.
“He agreed to let us in.”
The groom stood outside the stables, hunched up in a fluffy coat that insulated him against the frosty night. As soon as the car came to a stop, she jumped out and threw her arms around him in a hug.
“Thanks for doing this, Gordon, though I’m still not sure…” She glanced back at Stephan, whose face held no more clues than it had before. “Exactly what this is.”
“Go on, then,” said Gordon, waving them in with an affectionate grin. “You’ve got thirty minutes, then I’m going home to sleep.”
“Come on—introduce me to Red,” said Stephan, slipping his hands into hers.
“I figured you’d want a chance to say good-bye, especially if you could actually say it to him.
” Her eyes widened as she realized what he was implying.
“You might even be able to explain a bit about why you’re going, but remember—animal frames of reference. ”
“You have a spell to speak to horses?”
“I do now. I figured it out over the last few days. Kel helped a little.”
“You did it for me?”
His hand looped around her waist. “I’d do a hell of a lot more than that for you.”
She melted against his side as they approached the stall, where Red snorted and stomped at the ground.
“Hi there, mister,” she whispered to her horse, and then looked at Stephan. “What do we have to do?”
They walked through the steps of readying for the ritual, just as they had in the snow, but this time he laid out his cloth and put a small bowl in the middle.
In it he mixed dried yellow coltsfoot flowers, blue yarrow oil, and a few pieces of horsehair.
Then he arranged a clear quartz and a yellow candle beside the bowl before they took hands and closed their eyes to raise power.
The smell of horses—the smell she loved so much—meadow and leather and sweat—grew nearly overpowering as he chanted,
“Hear me now, hear me clear,
Hear my message without fear,
By the power of three by three,
As I do will it, so mote it be.”
She opened her eyes, finding that the contents of the bowl had become a paste, which Stephan dipped his fingers in and wiped along her throat.
“Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
She took a tentative step toward Red’s stall. “Red?”
The old stallion clopped forward and pushed his head against her chest with a nicker. It was a familiar greeting, but this time it felt inexplicably different. It truly felt like he’d called out her name.
The sense of knowing made blood rush to her ears. “I can understand you. Can you understand me?”
The horse pressed the disc of his coarse cheek to hers, and she knew they were connected in a way they never had been before.
She gestured to his bandage. “Are you in pain?”
From the flick of his mane, she felt sure the answer was no.
“Good. That’s so good. They’re taking care of you. They’ll make sure the pain doesn’t start again.” Growing momentarily too choked up to speak, she finally forced out, “I have to go, Red. I came to say good-bye.”
The horse’s dark eyes regarded her solemnly, and his ears perked up, high and alert, as he did when he was observing his surroundings and trying to work something out. He was wondering whether she would come back.
“I don’t think I’ll be back. Gordon will take care of you, though. And Luda. And if they don’t, I will find a way to keep you in an apartment, I swear to God.”
It was too much. She could tell by the way the words seemed to tumble past the horse. Too many unfamiliar concepts.
Then Red let out a low whinny, and the feeling that they were a herd overwhelmed her. She was his herd, and he was hers.
“We are, but…Do you remember that place on the ridge we would ride up to? Way up high, just you and me, to the place where the world expanded into something with no end?”
Again, she was sure they were thinking of the same, perfect place.
“I’ll be out there. In that endless sky. Thinking of you.” And then she threw her arms around his neck, careful to navigate away from his still-healing wound. “You’re my heart, Red. My heart and my herd. Always.”
He shoved his muzzle into her hand, and she was certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he felt the same.
“That’s the best gift anyone’s ever given me,” said Hayleigh, curling herself into the crook of his arm. “Thank you.”
They sat on a bench outside the stables, huddled under his Falsa blanket and staring into the clear sky overhead. A smattering of stars peeked through the cloaking cast by city light, their shine too brilliant to snuff out completely.
“Just so you know, I would also break him out for you,” said Stephan.
She scoffed. “And then take him where?”
“My parents have a little open land…”
“I think they have enough on their hands with that goat. They’ll take care of him here. He’ll be okay.” They lapsed into silence.
“Do you think the curse is really gone for good?” she asked.
“What does it feel like?”
She thought of the peace she had come to with Rowan, and how she and Kelsey had truly connected for the first time in years, and then how she walked away from the Gray house.
Finally, she thought of how it felt to have his body next to hers, safely ensconced in his arms. And what it would be like to walk through the door and see him there every day, to celebrate the good days and batten down the hatches on the bad.
A companion. A partner. It was getting ahead of things to think in those terms, but it felt possible in a way it never had before.