Gavin’s eyes darted over, catching her staring. Desperate to explain herself, she said, “You started going gray in high school, right?”
“I’m surprised you remember.”
“Well, it was pretty weird…Um, not that you should be self-conscious about it. It looks good. You look good.”
If there were any moment to dissolve into a puddle and ooze into the cracks between the seats, this was it. “I mean—you pull it off,” she added.
“Thanks,” he said with an amused twitch of the lips.
She dropped her crocheting and made a great show of focusing on retrieving a cup of hot chocolate from the central console to avoid speaking again. The luxury car service had provided the good stuff—drinking chocolate, rich and bitter, but it had long since gone cold. She idly ran a finger along the paper rim of the cup as she looked out the window and considered the dark hills ahead.
Did the lack of snow have anything to do with the pressure of this visit? Her mother had insisted she return by the Solstice, which was a potent night to attempt big magic. The coven had been down a member since her grandmother had died, and the spell would be much less likely to succeed with only seven witches. If she were still practicing, Rowan would make eight.
They weren’t going to try to convince her to take part in some kind of spell, were they? A spell to bring back the snow?
Under normal circumstances, Elk Ridge was a popular spot during the winter holidays. Tourists from all over the Pacific Northwest flocked into town to attend their multi-tradition festival, Elk Ridge Winter Fest, and the town’s snowy locale was a significant factor in its success. She blamed Charles Dickens, whose vision of a white Christmas had become a fixture of cultural imagination. Without piles of fluffy white transforming the world, the attraction of Elk Ridge just wouldn’t be the same.
Not to mention the impact on the ecosystem if they didn’t have sufficient snowpack for the spring runoff. The amount of snowfall in a given winter naturally varied, but they’d never hadnoneat this time of year.
It was just cause for big magic, but that didn’t mean it was a good idea for Rowan to take part. Quite the opposite, in fact. She’d just mess this up too.
There was a tingling in her palm, and then the cup in her hand was steaming.
Wait. The cup in her hand was steaming?
With a jerk of surprise, she scrambled to put it back into the cupholder. Snatching her hand away, she stared at the cup before stretching out an uncertain finger to dimple its side.
Yes, it was hot all right.
There was only one explanation—she’d magicked it.
Spells became instinctual with practice, and when she’d sworn off spellcasting, it had been a monumental effort to unlearn a lifetime’s worth of magical habits. But Rowan had put in the work, because dealing in any sort of magic had felt like walking along the edge of a precipitous slope.
One that threatened to send her straight back to the worst night of her life, and to the person she never wanted to be.
“Everything all right over there?”
Gavin met her eyes briefly with a concerned knit of dark brows before returning his gaze back to the road where it belonged. Her mouth flapped, and she struggled to form an explanation.
“Oh, just stressing about the snow.”
He accepted the half-truth with a nod. “Ski season only opened last week. Slopes are high enough to have some accumulation, but conditions are not great.” Among the many pieces of real estate the McCreerys owned around Elk Ridge was a ski area half an hour up the highway.
“That’s not good,” said Rowan.
“That’s putting it mildly.” He cleared his throat, shifting in his seat and seeming to search for a way to change the subject. His lips twitched as he noted her book on the dash. “A Mistletoe Murder,huh? Let me guess—poisoning? A literal mistletoe murder?”
Rowan furrowed her brow. “Predictability is the point!”
“Of amystery?”
“There’s still plenty else to figure out,” she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest and scrunching her nose in his direction. “I suppose you spent your flight reading something ‘enriching.’Business Insider,maybe?”
He chuckled. “I watched a movie.”
“Mmm—something with Matt Damon?”
“Close. Muppets.”
