“Are you heading home for Christmas?” she asked, her body shimmying with Mi Young’s deft scrubs.
“Are you talking to me?” asked Hayleigh, surprised and a little offended.
“Yes?”
No doubt Hayleigh would have ignored the question if the spell had not been involved, but it was, and so the other woman turned her face toward Rowan and, not bothering to open her eyes, mumbled, “Heading out today. But I’ll be back next week.”
“More meetings related to the festival?”
The mumbling continued. “No, we’ve got that pretty well settled.”
“Meetings related to why you were looking at the downtown buildings?”
“Yes, and the resort.”
“The ski resort?”
“No, the new one.”
Rowan stalled at that. “What new resort?”
“The one we’re going to build.”
That was new. She hadn’t expected that. “Where?”
“Outside of town. Between here and the ski area.”
Between town and the ski area was all wild, untamed old growth. It must have been the land Mr. McCreery stewarded.
“So you’re trying to buy the timber land?”
“Yes. It’s part of the package.”
Rowan cursed softly. She hated that she’d been right.
“The other day,” she said, “were you looking to buy the building the Magick Cabinet is in?”
“Yes,” Hayleigh mumbled. “We have a long line of corporate partners salivating for downtown commercial space.”
“Why? What’s got them so interested?”
Hayleigh let out a yawn. The treatment was putting her to sleep. Rowan was almost out of time.
“They all want to get in on Christmastown.”
“Christmastown? What’s Christmastown?”
“The future,” mumbled the other woman, rapidly fading into sleep. “An all-up experience where you can celebrate the reason for the season and buy everything you need to go under the tree.”
“Does that include the local vendors at the market?”
Hayleigh laughed at that. “Only if they can pay what bigger vendors are willing and able.”
That was a no, then—there was no way they could afford to compete with massive corporations that used their size and influence to extract cheap materials and even cheaper labor.
Rowan inhaled. “There’s no place for the Magick Cabinet in Christmastown, is there?”
A tinkle of a laugh. “By next year, it’ll be a Starbucks.”
