Chapter 16
Iwoke to the hum of electricity and the distant groan of the heating system kicking back to life. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. Everything was warm and dark and safe, and there was a steady rhythm against my ear that I couldn’t quite place.
Then I registered the fur beneath my cheek. The massive hand spread across my back. The tail still wrapped around my waist.
Oh no.
I’d spent the night wrapped around Bastian like he was my own personal body pillow, and judging by the way his arms were locked around me, he hadn’t minded one bit.
I cracked one eye open. Dawn light filtered through the window, pale and grey.
The blizzard had passed, leaving behind drifts of snow that gleamed in the early morning.
Bastian’s chest rose and fell beneath me. In spite of his claims, he was clearly asleep. Ancient winter beings actually sleep after all.
I should move, should extract myself before this got even more awkward than it already was. Instead, I let myself have one more minute of warmth and safety and pretending this was normal. His heartbeat was still steady beneath my ear. Strong and sure and strangely comforting.
This is dangerous, I thought. This thing between us. This comfort. This trust.
I didn’t care. Not yet. Not while I was still warm and his arms were still around me and the world outside was still quiet and snow-covered. But reality had other plans, and he stirred beneath me. His hand flexed against my back, claws catching briefly in my sweater before smoothing flat again.
“The power has returned,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“You are awake.”
“Yep.”
Neither of us moved.
“We should—”
“Probably.”
More silence.
His tail unwrapped from my waist slowly, reluctantly. Like it didn’t want to let go. I understood the feeling, but I forced myself upright, climbing off his lap with all the grace of a newborn deer. He watched me stumble to my feet, his expression unreadable.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the warmth. And for not letting me freeze.”
“It was practical.”
“Right. Practical.”
We stared at each other. I broke first, turning towards the bathroom. “I need to freshen up. And then we should probably get the shop ready to open.”
“As you wish.”
I fled.
The bathroom mirror confirmed what I’d suspected: I looked like I’d been through a blizzard, slept on a Krampus, and lost a fight with my own hair. All accurate.
I took a quick hot shower, then pulled on a soft cream sweater and a long plaid skirt. By the time I was ready, he had already gone downstairs. I fed Jingle, who’d finally deigned to emerge from under the covers, then carried two cups of coffee down to the shop.
“You have an unhealthy obsession with warm beverages,” he muttered, but he took the coffee anyway. He was standing by the window, looking out at the transformed town.
The blizzard had dumped an impossible amount of snow. Main Street was buried, drifts piled halfway up the windows of the shops. The world outside was hushed, muffled, beautiful.
“Nobody’s getting here today,” I said, my stomach sinking. “The shop might as well be closed.”
He turned from the window, the early morning light catching the silver in his fur. “Perhaps.”
“What does that mean?”
He ignored my question. “The blizzard was not natural.”
Of course he wouldn’t let it go. “How can you possibly know that?”
“The energy signature was wrong. The cold was too deep, too sudden. It did not grow from the natural progression of weather patterns. It was… manufactured.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Crazy does not preclude accuracy.”
I moved past him, straightening a display of snow globes that was already perfectly straight. Anything to avoid looking at him. “You’re saying someone intentionally summoned a blizzard to bury my town?”
“To disrupt your businesses at the very least.”
“Who would do that? Why?” My mind jumped immediately to the most obvious suspect. “Grinchly? But what would he gain from a blizzard?”
“To stop your recovery. Perhaps even to stop the Good Deeds Extravaganza. If it is a failure and the town can’t attract visitors, the property values decline. He acquires them for pennies on the dollar. Then he can do as he wishes with them.”
“Like tear them all down and build expensive condos for weekend visitors.”
“A logical, if uninspired, business plan.”
I leaned against the counter, the cold from the granite seeping through my sweater. “Can we prove that?”
“No, but since the blizzard was not natural…” A predatory grin crossed his face. “The removal does not have to be natural.”
“What do you mean?”
“Watch.” He raised his free hand and began waving it gently back and forth, like a conductor directing an orchestra.
Outside the window, the snow started to swirl, not violently, but gently, as if caught in an unseen wind.
The drifts against the door and windows began to shrink, not melting, but dissipating into sparkles of frost and shadow.
They were vanishing. Returning to wherever manufactured weather came from.
My jaw dropped. “How… how are you doing that?”
“I am dispersing the energy, and unraveling the spell.” He lowered his hand, and the snow settled. The entrances to the shops were now clear. The sidewalks were passable. It was still a lot of snow, but it was now just the aftermath of a snowstorm, not an impenetrable barrier.
I stared out the window, then back at him. He stood there, holding his coffee like it was the most normal thing in the world to be casually rewriting the weather with a wave of his hand.
“That’s… a lot of power.”
“I told you I had control over ice. The blizzard was crudely made. A brute-force spell. It was unwoven easily.” He looked out at the cleared street. “Your Grinchly is powerful, but he is not subtle.”
The idea still seemed too far-fetched to be real. “It can’t have been him. He’s a real estate developer, not a wizard.”
“Perhaps not. He may not be more than a tool, but there is power here. Power he is using for selfish, destructive ends.” He turned to me, and the amusement had vanished from his eyes. They were dark and predatory. “This changes things.”
“How so?”
“Whoever is behind this has escalated. This is no longer a matter of financial struggle. This is an act of aggression against the town, against the season itself.”
“Maybe he’s just trying to make money?” I suggested doubtfully.
“He is trying to crush the spirit of this place. To extinguish its light. And that,” he said, his voice dropping into a rumble I felt in my bones, “is something I cannot allow.”
A shiver went through me that had nothing to do with the cold. This wasn’t the grumpy, sarcastic Krampus who criticized my ornament placement. This was something else. Something ancient and formidable.
“So what do we do?” I asked quietly
“We investigate.” He placed his mug on the counter with a decisive click. “We find out if he’s really behind this.”
“And then?”
He met my gaze, and a slow, dangerous smile spread across his face. “And then we see how he fares when faced with consequences.”
“Right now?”
“No.” His face softened. “Right now we open the shop.”
The morning started off slow, but the steady trickle of customers became a current. People came in for a single ornament and stayed for an hour. They admired the tree, bought too many candy canes, and of course, they all stared.
“That’s him,” I’d hear, in a loud whisper. “The consultant.”
He remained a looming, silent presence near the front of the shop, occasionally righting a displaced gnome or adjusting a strand of tinsel with meticulous focus. His silence and glowering intensity only fueled the town’s curiosity. A group of teenage girls egged each other into approaching him.
“Excuse me,” one said. “We’re doing a project for our photography class. On… um… local color. Could we take your picture?”
He stared down at her. The girl gulped but held her ground.
“The human concept of ‘local color’ is a romanticized fabrication,” he said, his voice flat. “But you may photograph me. Do not use flash. It detracts from the ambiance.”
The girls were thrilled. They posed with him, chattering away, while he stood with the stoic patience of a mountain. They bought enough handmade stockings to fund my coffee habit for a month, then scampered out, already posting online.
By mid-afternoon, a line had formed at the door. I’d never seen anything like it. I was wrapping presents so fast my fingers were a blur, the paper crinkling like happy applause.
“It’s because of the tree,” Mrs. Carmichael said, watching as I carefully secured a bow on a box of ornaments. “It’s magnificent. It looks like it used to. Like it looked when your grandmother was here.”
“It’s also because of Bastian,” I said, my eyes finding him across the crowded shop. He was straightening a display of nutcrackers, an activity that required a level of focus that would have seemed absurd yesterday. “He has a certain… presence.”
“He has a certain something, all right,” she said with a wink, patting my hand. “It’s nice to see you smile, dear.”
The crowd began to die down again but there were still several customers in the store when the bells chimed again, and the door swung open with a force that sent them jangling wildly against the glass. The temperature in the room seemed to drop by ten degrees.
Mr. Grinchly entered.