Her hand trembled as she clenched the cup tightly.
“Ready for grog?” Mark asked as he approached, holding two steaming mugs of the stuff. “Louise filled our cups to the brim!”
“Actually, I think I’m about ready for a refill,” Penny said with forced cheer. “Excuse me.” She wandered off, pausing to chat with guests as she crossed the room.
“Let me set down the cookies,” I said to Mark.
The solstice celebration was always a potluck, and the dining room table was covered in dishes of all sorts: casseroles, dips, platters of veggies and charcuterie, breads, a sliced ham. I added our tray of gingerbread men to the side table loaded with desserts. There was chocolate-dipped fruit, cookies of all sorts, fudge. Someone had even brought truffles. There was a tray of brownies with a little sign warning that they were cannabis-infused. At the far end of the room a little bar was set up on the buffet. There were clean glasses, bottles of wine, hard liquor and mixers of all sorts, a bucket of ice.
Mark handed me my cup of grog, then said, “I think I see Abe Young over there. I’m going to go say hi.” Abe was an English teacher at the public high school, and he and Mark both volunteered at the teen center in town. They did a poetry workshop with the kids each spring.
“You want to come with me or are you okay on your own?” He gave me a concerned look.
“I’m fine, Mark,” I snapped. “You don’t need to babysit me all night.”
I turned and walked away from him without waiting for a response, making my way toward Carmen, who was standing on the other side of the dining room, her candlelit wreath making her easy to spot. I wove through clusters of people talking, laughing, raising their glasses to toast.
“Happy Yule,” I said when I reached Carmen. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Penny’s friend, Alison.”
“Of course I remember you,” she said as she stepped forward and gave me a tight hug. “You’re the printmaker and author.Moxie Saves Christmas. You’re the closest thing this little town has to someone famous.”
I laughed. “I don’t know about that.”
“Are you enjoying the solstice celebration?” she asked.
I raised my cup of grog. “A holiday celebrating the lack of sunlight is much more my thing than one that celebrates a bearded fat man who brings presents.”
“The winter solstice is more than the shortest day of the year. We’re not focused on the darkness here,” she said. She touched the glowing candles on the wreath around her head. “We’re celebrating the coming of the light. The rebirth of the sun. Tonight we honor the stillness between one cycle and the next. It’s a time to pause and reflect on what has been, and to make wishes and plans for what will be.”
I nodded and smiled. “It makes a lot more sense to me than Christmas.”
“Christmas borrowed a lot from the ancient pagan traditions,” she said.
Except they left out Krampus, I thought.
“I was actually hoping I’d run into you here,” I confessed.
“Oh?”
“I wanted to thank you.”
“For what?”
I pulled the charm out from where it was hiding under my sweater.“Penny passed this on to me. She thought I could use it. So I wanted to express my gratitude to you.”
“Ah, the amulet of protection. I’m glad it’s helping.”
“I think it has been. But to tell you the truth, I could use some more help.”
“All right. What is it you need?”
I looked around. There was no one close to us. Mark was still in the living room, engaged in conversation with Abe. Penny came out of the kitchen, calling, “Who needs more grog?” A woman in the corner of the living room was taking a fiddle out of its case, and the man with her was tuning a guitar.
I looked back at Carmen, lowered my voice. “What do you know about demons?”
“Demons?”
“My mother,” I went on. “She’s been staying with us. She’s very ill.”
