He took a step closer, close enough to absorb the heat radiating from his skin, to smell the mint of his clean shave, and he looked down at her with eyes that were a dark slit.
Of pain, she realized, snatching away her fingers from his arm.
“Iknow,” he said in a low, sharp voice. Then he gave her a nod and pushed past at a brusque clip, hunched against the dry cold.
She watched him go, recovering from the shock of the moment too late for him to hear the “I’m sorry” she said in his direction. Her heart thudded in her chest, synchronized to the rhythm of his flight, and she chastised herself for leaping to the attack—again.
And for losing control. For letting her emotions run wild.
Because when emotions took the lead, magic had a way of following.
7
The Midwinter magic shop was near the center of the main street, sandwiched between a fancy cheese shop and an antiques store, its face painted with silver moons and the wordsThe Magick Cabinet.They’d pragmatically decorated the front windows with an assortment of Yule decorations that could easily double as Christmas, given the shared DNA.
“Four to the right, two up,” she murmured before loosening a brick in the building’s face. The shop’s spare key was in the same hiding place it had always occupied.
Maybe time to talk about a new hiding spot, and probably a new Wi-Fi password too.
Slotting the key, she opened the door, revealing the interior of the shop. It was like the most cluttered parts of the Midwinter home but with even fewer concessions to livability. Shelves full of books ran high up the walls, a sliding cherrywood library ladder required to access their topmost heights. Wicker baskets of stones and crystals, small statuettes of every sympathetic deity (and some not so sympathetic), incense, and witchy paraphernaliacovered tables arranged throughout the middle of the wide-open room.
A curling wrought iron staircase led to a loft overhead, where one could find the more serious ritual items. Keeping the bottom floor light on the authenticity allowed tourists to wander in and leave with something “funky” without being confronted with evidence of witchcraft. Only the innately curious or truly interested would venture up the stairs.
As she studied the room, a few of the items in the window display righted themselves, borne upward by unseen hands, and there was a general shuffling of books in the shelves as they returned themselves to the alphabetical order that yesterday’s customers had browsed them out of. Cleanup had been so much easier with magic. Not that anyone would ever have accused Rowan of being tidy, even when she had magic at her disposal, but it had certainly helped.
The witch controlling the shop’s cleaning spells, Zaide, stood at an altar full of goddess statues with her eyes closed, whispering under her breath. A pale ceramic bowl filled with a thick red-brown porridge sat at the front of the altar—patjuk, laid out to ward off evil spirits as part of Zaide’s celebration of Dongji, the Korean winter Solstice celebration.
At the sound of the front door slamming back into its frame, Zaide’s eyes flew open, and she shouted, “Who the hell?” But her alarm gave way to a grin. “Rowan!”
“Z!” They ran across the room in a chorus of shrieking noises and collided in a tangled hug that nearly sent Rowan’s Coffee Time cup spinning to the ground, but she juggled it to the nearby countertop just in time.
Zaide had matured into herself in the last eight years. Her short black hair was cut in a side shave and tipped purple. She wore a sleeveless black tunic, revealing a tattoo sleeve featuring complex Sagittarius imagery and a triple goddess symbol that wrapped its way around her muscular shoulders and biceps.
Her nose sported a piercing tipped in a piece of garnet, and heat radiated off her skin. When Liliana had said Zaide stood in the south, the cardinal of fire, Rowan hadn’t been the least bit surprised. Creativity, passion, daring—Zaide Hak possessed all the traits of fire, and Rowan had no doubt she wielded it well.
“So you’re managing this place now?” asked Rowan.
Zaide nodded. “For the season, till your mom’s free to swoop back in. After that, who knows?” She closed her eyes. “I just don’t want to end up at the inn.”
Her extended family owned and managed a long-standing inn and spa in Elk Ridge, and it had been Zaide’s primary goal in life to never become one of its full-time employees.
Rowan nudged her gently. “Might be a good time to see what the rest of the world has to offer?”
It had been their plan to move away together—bound for separate schools in the same city—but then Zaide’s mom had gotten sick, and she’d stayed home to help take care of her siblings. But Zaide’s youngest brother was now a full year out of Elk Ridge Senior High, leaving her a free woman.
“Mmm…” said Zaide, her tone unconvinced. She picked up a utility knife and slit open a delivery box with a satisfying ripping noise.
“Not even a little tempted?” asked Rowan.
Zaide sifted through the contents of the box below without looking up. “Not all of us pick up and go as easy as you do, Rowan.”
Ouch.
Zaide continued, “It’s just…Moving for school is ‘leave-home-by-numbers.’ You already have somewhere to live, something to do…Miss that window, it gets a hell of a lot more complicated. People have zero reason to hire bar managers from anywhere other than the pool of art school burnouts already day-drinking in their front yards.”
The words came out quick and tense. Zaide had clearly thought about this plenty on her own, without estranged friends trying to nose their way in.
“Okay,” said Rowan, “but if there’s ever anything I can do to help, like if you want a couch to crash on, let me know, okay?”
