1. Evangeline
Evangeline
Evangeline tiptoed down the Hollow’s stairs with a whispered “Please don’t creak.”
She took another careful step, feet barely touching the floor.
It was rather difficult to sneak up on Jacks.
As a Fate, he possessed preternatural senses, and the heart-shaped scar on Evangeline’s wrist made him ever-aware of where she was.
But, on the rare occasion when she was very careful and he just happened to be deep in thought or concentration, she was able to catch him unawares.
It was usually only for a second, maybe two, but she loved those stolen moments when he thought he was alone and he was just Jacks. Her Jacks.
The Jacks who’d rewritten history for her, who’d stolen her heart and saved her life and turned her world into a fairytale.
She liked to think he looked a little more human than when they had first met.
Not that she would ever tell him. If she said that he seemed softer now, Jacks would take it as an insult.
Although, even in his softest moments, there was still an inhuman quality about him.
It was in the liquid way he moved, the way his unnaturally blue eyes could suddenly change color.
On this particular morning, she found him sitting inside the Hollow’s tavern.
He looked as ridiculously handsome and careless as always, dressed in a slightly wrinkled linen shirt and a pair of dark brown trousers with frayed hems. Evangeline paused at the doorway with a pinprick of something that might have been nostalgia, if it was possible to feel nostalgia for something that hadn’t yet passed.
The tavern was one of her favorite rooms. She thought of it as the heart of the Hollow, with lots of wood and candles and one wall of windows that looked out on a lake.
At night, the lake seemed to be full of stars instead of water, and during the day, it reflected the clouds and the warm, buttery light of the sun.
Food appeared like clockwork whenever the clock in the hall struck a meal or a drink. Things like Dumplings on other occasions it contained fewer, as if the clock were somehow able to borrow time from the future but then always had to pay it back. Evangeline wasn’t entirely sure how the clock worked, but she knew she loved it.
This morning, the tavern smelled like cinnamon-spiced tea and warm, gooey baked toast topped with sweetened strawberries.
Because even when the Hollow made tea and toast, it was never just tea and toast. Nothing was ever just anything in the Hollow.
Everything was a little extra, a little more, or a little other.
It would be easy to say the Hollow was the place where Evangeline and Jacks fell in love, but that would not be entirely true.
Jacks had first brought Evangeline here on a cold starlit night when she was covered in blood.
He had carried her in his arms with the fortitude of a soldier who would have held her forever if needed.
Everything that night had been torture for Evangeline, but Jacks had been there with her, steady as a compass pointing north.
He had brought her to a place that he’d never intentionally brought a girl to before.
But this was not when she had fallen for him.
The Hollow was the place where Evangeline had stopped falling and was just in it: in love with him.
No more falling. Her feelings were here to stay.
Some loves, once found, are never lost. It’s an incredible gift to possess a love like this.
A feeling so deep and unwavering that no amount of time, no act of nature or man can destroy it.
The love remains, even when the person is gone.
Which makes this gift so beautiful and so treacherous.
Love like this cannot be lost, but sometimes people can be.
Luckily for Evangeline Fox, the great love of her life was not a person. Jacks was a Fate. She didn’t have to worry about him dying. He would never grow old. She would. But Evangeline did a good job of not thinking about that.
Quietly, she watched him a little longer, wanting to take just one more bite out of this perfect moment before moving on to the next and worrying about everything she needed to do before the sun went down that night.
Jacks sat on a stool at the bar, ignoring his delicious breakfast and reading something that looked like a letter, while one of the little baby dragons—which he was also ignoring—heated up his mug of tea with its sparks. Not that Jacks was paying any attention to the mug of tea, either.
He was reading carefully, his blue eyes ocean-bright and sickle-sharp, no softness in them today. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, looking for a hint of a smile or a scowl, but his lips remained perfectly flat. Evangeline could not tell what kind of news Jacks had received.
She wondered who the letter was from. Perhaps Chaos?
He was Jacks’s closest and oldest friend, but because of the whole vampire situation, Jacks didn’t really like him to be near Evangeline.
Letters made sense as a form of communication, but Evangeline couldn’t really picture Chaos writing letters.
He seemed far more likely to step out of dark shadows and offer a cryptic message, which he had actually done to her on occasion.
Curious as to who else the message might be from, Evangeline watched Jacks stare at the letter until she knew that she’d wasted enough time, she’d dallied in this moment a little too long, and finally she called, “Good morning, love!”
Jacks looked up from the letter, mouth tilting into a smile at last. It was small, just a tiny quirk of his mouth, but it grew wider as he looked her over.
His blue eyes skimmed her pale blue-and-violet dress, slowly gliding over her hips and the apron tied tight around her waist, and lit up when they reached her face.
“Are you ready for your big day tomorrow?” he asked, tossing the letter aside as if it were nothing. It fell on top of the little dragon who’d been heating up Jacks’s tea and—poof! In an instant, the note was in flames.
“Oh no! Bruce!” Evangeline cried, for that was the name of the little dragon.
You can’t have a pet dragon, Jacks said nearly every day.
She was fairly certain he only said it because Jacks didn’t like any of the names she had chosen for the dragons.
And while she had chosen a number of somewhat ridiculous names—like Princess of the Fluffikins—to tease him, she had also given some dragons perfectly respectable names, like Bruce, who was particularly fond of Jacks.
Jacks did not return the sentiment. He scowled at the little blue-and-violet dragon as Evangeline rushed across the tavern. She picked up a full mug of tea and dumped it on the burning letter. But she was too late. Only ashy scraps remained.
“Oh, Jacks! I’m so sorry. I hope it was nothing important.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “It was just a bunch of words. Not anything that mattered.”
And before she could question him, or say much of anything, he tucked his fingers into her apron strings, pulling her closer, drawing her knees between his legs.
And then he was kissing her, saying hello and good morning and a few other things that could only be said with lips and hands.
And Evangeline was kissing him back and feeling very tempted to throw away tomorrow’s plans.
This was all she needed for happily ever after.
Food, sunlight, sleep—they could be replaced by lips and hearts beating too close together.
“Anything else I can help you with?” he murmured as he pulled away.
That again, please and thank you was what she wanted to say.
But the Hollow had other ideas.
The tall glass cupboard at the end of the bar began to rattle.
It was just a tiny shake at first. The cupboard, which was as wide as two bookcases put together, was impossibly old.
There were small bubbles in the glass, scuffs on the wood, and shelves full of pies.
Cinnamon pie and clove pie, peach pie and cream pie, berry pie and shortbread pie, sugar pie and custard pie, caramel apple pie and double-chocolate banana pie with chocolate crust.
According to The Happy Innkeeper’s Guide to All Things Wonderful, you could never have too many pies.
And it seemed the Hollow didn’t think Evangeline had quite enough just yet.
The bottom shelves of the cupboard were empty, and the glass doors in front of those shelves rattled open next, as if to tell Evangeline that her work for tomorrow wasn’t done.
There was no time for kissing or cupcaking or whatever she and Jacks were doing.
And the cupboard was probably right.
For months, Evangeline had been preparing for the Hollow’s Grand Reopening and First Annual Happy Hollowfest Holiday. And tomorrow, it was finally happening.
“LaLa will be here this afternoon,” Evangeline said.
About a week ago, she and LaLa had made plans to go shopping for last-minute thises and thats.
But now Evangeline worried that perhaps they should have planned to do this yesterday or the day before, or any of the other days leading up to today.
“Before she arrives, I just need to bake about two dozen more pies. Then I need to finish all the outdoor bunting. And then if there’s time, I was thinking I could put a fresh coat of paint on the clock. ”
“The clock doesn’t need a fresh coat of paint,” Jacks assured her. “But if you want, I’ll do it.” He leaned in for another kiss.
The glass cupboards rattled again and the clock in the hall chimed Cider unnecessarily, as if warning him not to get carried away.
Although later, Evangeline would wonder if the Hollow had been warning her about something else …