Chapter 26
Itook a hesitant step towards him. “Bastian?”
He turned, and the exhaustion on his face was so profound it made my heart ache. The red glow was completely gone from his eyes, leaving them a dull, tired amber.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my voice soft.
He didn’t answer. He just looked at me, a strange, unreadable expression on his face, then he reached out, his touch gentle as he took my hand.
“It’s too late,” he whispered, and the raw, unadulterated fear in his voice was more terrifying than any display of power. “The binding is dissolving.”
He looked up at me, and in the depths of his tired eyes, I saw it. A flicker. Not of red, but of transparency. Like he was a window, and for a split second, I could see the Christmas lights through him.
“What does that mean? Bastian, you’re starting to fade!”
“I know.” His form wavered again, becoming insubstantial for a terrifying second before solidifying. The strain of it was etched onto every line of his face. “The price must be paid.”
“No.” The word was a desperate denial. “There is always another way. A loophole. Something.” My mind raced frantically, sifting through every fairytale, every piece of folklore I’d ever half-remembered.
The binding had been activated by a book.
A ritual. An accident. There had to be a way to reverse it.
But I couldn’t think of one. Not while I was watching the male I loved was literally dissolving in front of me.
“Think, Noelle,” he said, his voice strained, as if he were trying to coach me through my own panic. “What did you seek when you performed the ritual?”
“I wanted to save the shop,” I said immediately. “I wanted a miracle.”
“A miracle,” he repeated, a wry, pained smile touching his lips.
“And what is a Krampus, if not a miracle of a different sort? A darkness to appreciate the light.” His gaze softened, becoming unbearably tender.
“You got what you asked for. You have brought more joy to this town in the last few days than it has seen in years. You saved your shop, Noelle. Not with money, but with hope.”
“But I’m losing you!”
“Perhaps,” he said, and his form flickered again, like a faulty projection.
This time it lasted longer. I could see the sparkle of the tinsel on the tree right through his broad chest. “Or perhaps not.” His eyes lit with a sudden, desperate glimmer of an idea.
“The blood. The binding used it as a conduit. A bridge between your world and… whatever lies beyond for me.”
“What about it?”
“A bridge can be crossed in two directions.” He reached out, not to touch me, but hovering his own hand over mine. “I poured my power into this world. To punish Grinchly. To heal you. But a bond of this nature is… reciprocal. It demands balance.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I poured myself out,” he explained, his words coming faster now, fueled by a desperate urgency. “I need to… draw something in. To restore my essence. But I cannot take from you. You are my anchor. To drain you would be to destroy us both.”
“Then what do we draw from?” I asked, my mind struggling to keep up. “The air? The… the magic of the shop?”
He shook his head in a slow, deliberate motion. “It has to be something of equal measure. Something given freely. A transference of power from a willing source.” His gaze swept the shop, a wild, searching look. “Joy. Hope. All the things you have been gathering.”
The memory of the few candles on the town tree, the small crowd gathering, the defiant flicker of light against the dark, clicked into place.
“The community,” I whispered. “The Good Deeds Extravaganza.”
“Exactly,” he said, the word a ragged breath.
“It is not just a gimmick to save your shop. It is the fuel.” He looked from my face to my still-glowing palm.
“The ritual was accidental, a clumsy, desperate plea. But the anchor point,” he touched the air just above my palm, “is a perfect circle of salt and blood. It needs a… closing ritual. A formal transference.”
“A counter-spell,” I said, my mind finally catching up.
“A counter-offering,” he corrected. “An exchange. I gave my power. Now you must offer the power you have collected.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. This wasn’t just a business plan anymore. It was a life-or-death ritual. “What do I have to do?”
“You need to gather it,” he said, his form wavering more violently now. “The joy. The hope. Every smile, every laugh, every shared kindness. You need to bring it here. To the circle.”
“And then?”
“And then,” he said, a sad, exhausted smile touching his lips, “you have to let me go.”
The words were a punch to my stomach. Let him go? After everything? After we had found this? “What? No. There has to be another way. We just have to gather the joy, and then… we’ll figure it out. We’ll be a two-person army, remember?”
“The army is you now, little light,” he whispered, and he was so transparent I could see the pattern of the rug through his legs.
“The ritual was a summons. A binding. It requires a release. My essence cannot remain tethered to this plane. It will… dissipate. If the transference works, it will return to its source, to the winter. Whole. If it doesn’t… ” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.
Tears welled in my eyes, hot and sharp. “This isn’t fair.”
“Fair is a human construct. The universe runs on balance. On trade.” He lifted a shimmering, translucent hand and, for a moment, I thought he would touch my cheek. He didn’t. He let it fall back to his side. “You gave me a taste of your world. Your warmth. Your light. I will not forget it.”
The door to the shop rattled. Not with the force of a magical being, but with the frantic, insistent knocking of a panicked mortal.
“Noelle? Are you in there? We saw the lights!” Jenna’s voice, muffled but clear, cut through the heavy silence of the shop.
“Don’t answer,” Bastian said, his form wavering again like heat haze off summer asphalt. “They cannot see me like this.”
“She’ll break the door down if she has to, and you just fixed it,” I blurted out, a hysterical bubble of laughter and grief rising in my chest. I gave him a desperate, pleading look. “The corner. Please.”
With a weary nod, he moved, a phantom gliding into the deep shadows of the stockroom doorway, where the flickering candlelight couldn’t quite reach. He was almost gone.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, wiped furiously at my eyes, and went to the door.
I unlocked it and pulled it open to find Jenna and Mrs. Haversham, their faces pale and drawn with worry.
Behind them, a small crowd of people was gathering on the street, drawn by the strange, silent light show that must have been visible from the square.
“Noelle, honey, are you alright?” Jenna pushed past me, her eyes wide as she took in the state of the shop. “What in the world happened? We saw this… this blue light. And the door, it just… exploded inwards, and then…”
“It exploded back inwards again,” I finished for her, my voice shaking. “It’s… a long story.”
“Was it him?” Jenna asked, her gaze darting towards the back of the shop, as if she could feel him there. “Was it Grinchly?”
I nodded, my throat too tight for words.
“I told you he was bad news,” Mrs. Haversham said, her hand going to her pearls. “Did he hurt you? Did he take anything?”
“He… he’s gone,” I managed. “He won’t be back.”
They both stared at me, then at the floor, where the patch of glittering frost still shimmered under the shop lights. “What is that?” Jenna breathed. “It’s beautiful, but… why is it there?”
“A… a side effect,” I said, my mind racing, searching for a plausible lie. “Of the… security system.”
Jenna looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Your security system is a magical snowflake-maker?”
“It’s a new model,” I said, the excuse sounding flimsier even as I said it. “Very advanced. Very… festive.”
I could feel Bastian’s amusement, a faint, ghostly presence in the back of my mind. A weak, but still-there, thread of connection. Tell them the truth, it seemed to say. You can’t do this alone.
He was right. I couldn’t. I needed their help. Their joy. Their hope.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath and deciding to trust. “It’s not a security system. It’s… complicated. And I need your help. All of your help.”
I explained everything. Or, almost everything.
I didn’t talk about our night on the couch, or the counter, or the devastating way he kissed me.
I talked about the binding, the blizzard, the parasite in the snow globe, the darkness.
I told them Grinchly had been the source, but that he was gone, and that the immediate threat was over.
I left out the part where the man who had saved us was now fading away in my stockroom, tethered to my life force, and that the only way to save him was to perform a ritual that would send him back to… wherever.
It sounded insane. I knew it did.
But they didn’t laugh. Jenna just stared at me, her expression unreadable. Mrs. Haversham, bless her, simply nodded, as if tales of parasitic snow globes and Krampuses were a normal, if regrettable, part of the holiday season.
“The Good Deeds Extravaganza,” Jenna said slowly, her gaze finding mine, sharp and understanding. “It’s not just about raising money for the shop anymore, is it?”
“No,” I whispered. “It’s about… gathering light.”
Mrs. Haversham looked from my face to the shimmering patch of frost on the floor. “A transference,” she said softly, and the word was so precise, so correct, that my breath caught. “An offering.”
“You believe me?”
“Honey,” she said, patting my arm with a surprisingly firm grip, “I have lived in this town my entire life. I’ve seen summers that were too hot and winters that were too cold.
I’ve seen businesses fail and families flourish.
And I have never, not once, seen this town so…
grey. So joyless. If you’re telling me that an ancient winter spirit is tied to my favorite Christmas shop and that the only way to save him—and us—is to throw the biggest, most heartfelt party this town has ever seen…
then you’d better believe I’m getting my best church-lady organizing shoes on. ”
A laugh, wet and shaky, escaped me. A real, genuine laugh. I looked at Jenna, who was already pulling out her phone, her fingers flying across the screen.
“Okay,” Jenna said, her expression all business.
“The ornament drive is already a go. We expand it. Every business in town becomes a collection point. We need more than just ornaments. We need memories. Stories. People need to bring something that represents a happy Christmas memory and hang it on the tree in the square.”
“The tree!” I said, the idea sparking with sudden, desperate inspiration. “The tree in the square. That’s where we do it. On Christmas Eve.”
“Christmas Eve,” Jenna confirmed. “Perfect.” She looked up from her phone, her eyes serious. “What do you need, Noelle? From us. Right now.”
“I need…” I hesitated, my gaze drifting towards the stockroom, where a flicker of shadow was the only sign of him. “I need you to help me to bring people together, to remind this town what it feels like to hope.”
“You’ve got it,” Mrs. Haversham said, her voice ringing with a conviction that steadied my own. “The church social is tomorrow. We’ll announce it then. We’ll make it the theme of the season. A Community Carol of Memories.”
The phrase was perfect. So perfect I knew it hadn’t come from either of them. A faint, warm tendril of thought curled in my mind. The anchor must gather the offering.
He was listening. He was still here.