His lips quirked into a half smile. “You quoted the Sex Pistols. I’m pretty sure a few grandmothers fainted.”
She laughed at the memory and bit her lip. He kept catching her off guard with all the little things he remembered.
Gavin looked her way, and she could swear his eyes briefly darted lower than her face. “How is this the first time we’ve run into each other since high school?”
She tensed. The truth was, “needing to work” had only ever been her excuse for avoiding home. For the witches of Elk Ridge, the holidays were full of magic. Every day brought its own set of spells to close out the old, spread cheer, and bring on the new. The idea of standing to the side or, worse yet, being pressured to take part had been too much to face, and so she had spent her last many holidays alone, absorbing herself in work to forget what she’d lost.
“I don’t usually come home for Yule,” she said finally, her voice low and tense. “Or if I do, it’s short.”
His voice was light with amusement as he replied, “So, you guysactuallycelebrate Yule, huh?”
Rowan tensed harder. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I was never sure if it was just a part of your mom’s…New Age persona.”
Her tension bubbled over at the all-too-familiar McCreery condescension. Gavin’s dad, Dennis, owned several commercial buildings downtown. One of them was located where a stately old Victorian had once stood. That house had been both the home and workplace of the Midwinters for many generations. Its upper floors contained apartments, with the magic store on the first. They’d opened a new store elsewhere after a flood of community support helped get them back on their feet, but it had never been the same.
And that wasn’t even the worst thing a McCreery had ever done to a Midwinter.
She inhaled, and when her words arrived, many generations’worth of resentment came with them. “It’s not a ‘persona,’ and, yes, we do. How’s your dad doing, by the way? Tear down anyone’s ancestral home to build a strip mall lately?”
Gavin’s face was carefully neutral. “My father’s revitalization project saved Elk Ridge.”
“ ‘Revitalization,’ ” she said with air quotes. “More like commodification.”
He snorted. “I know you guys took what happened personally, but it was business. If he hadn’t bought it, someone else would’ve.”
“My grandmother was barely late.”
“Six months is ‘barely’?”
Six months? That wasn’t the number she’d heard. “It wasn’t six months.”
He waved a hand. “You can look it up. I’ve seen the records.”
She shook her head. “Whatever the exact number, they’d always given her leeway when times were thin—always. They only took it to foreclosure because your father pressured them to.”
Unbidden memories swelled up. A coven, minus one member, thrusting their arms into the sky, asking for a miracle. While Rowan stood, terribly alone, in a field miles away. The McCreery mansion lit up bright and unbothered on the hillside in front of her. There had been evidence of spellwork at her feet, but she couldn’t remember what she’d been trying to do. Only that her spell had failed, the coven’s spell had failed, and Dennis McCreery had torn her grandmother’s house to the ground.
Gavin hadn’t replied, and it was easier to direct her anger his way than to continue to sit with the unpleasant memories. “Well?” she said. “Nothing to say to that?”
He shrugged. “What’s the point? You’ve clearly made up your mind about what happened. And about him.”
“Still Daddy’s little boy, I guess.”
“Andyouare as self-righteous as ever.”
Rowan planted her eyes out the window and focused on hercrocheting as a bitter silence filled the space between them. She made no attempt at conversation for the rest of the drive, and neither did he.
It was just as well. Silence was the proper way of things between a Midwinter and a McCreery.
4
Gravel crunched beneath the tires of the car as it bumped off the lip of the highway and onto the road winding through the trees toward a small wooden house with a peaked roof that glowed softly in the night. When it rolled to a stop in front of the Midwinter home, Rowan all but leaped out. She bolted for the trunk, but Gavin beat her there, pulling the roller bag out and setting it on the ground before her.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, hoisting it up by the handle before backing away. “For my bag, but also for the rescue. It was, uh…nice to catch up.”
“Yeah,” said Gavin, hands in his pockets. His brow knit, as if he were looking for something else to say, and she dawdled, waiting to see if he might find the words. After a moment, he cleared his throat and said, “Happy Yule, Rowan.”
