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Devra shrugged. “I happen to have a lot of experience with this sort of thing.”
They jumped over the fallen snow and crossed the threshold of her house hand in hand.
“Welcome home, Devra. How was your day?”
“Not now, Squally.”
“Okay!”
They dashed over to her desk. Bradley sat down first and began typing while Devra hovered behind him, white-knuckling the headrest.
After a few minutes, Bradley stabbed at the screen. “Here it is. Available as an interlibrary loan from Salem, Massachusetts.” A few more clicks. “Done. Says it will be delivered to my local library and available for pickup in three days.”
“Three days? Really?”
“Yup.”
“That seems fast.”
“Then it’s a good thing I was the one who put the request through. I already told you, I’m extremely lucky in December.”
Devra started gnawing on the inside of her bottom lip. Everything was coming together, maybe too nicely, almost as if the curse wanted her to succeed. But that didn’t make any sense, did it?
“Okay. Okay, great. But three days already puts us at December twenty-second.”
“Which gives us plenty of time before Christmas Day.” He looked up at her, and his contagious smile was a rippling wave of comfort.
“You really think I’ll be able to do this?”
“Absolutely.”
She began to pace across the room, her surge of adrenaline having no other outlet. “So, what do we need to do next?”
“There’s nothing more to do until the book arrives.”
“But we have to do something.”
“Sure, we have to wait.”
“We just…wait?”
“Yup.”
Devra chewed on her thumbnail.
“What’s wrong? We should be celebrating.” Bradley bounced up from the chair and crossed the room to her. “We’ve done it, Devra.”
“We have?”
It didn’t feel real. Nothing about the last few days did. Seeing her mother. Her brother. Her father. Finding the witch, Gladys. Her admission—proof the curse was real. A pending resolution to the nightmare that Christmas had been for so long. The possibility of a real future, a normal life. No, nothing felt real.
Except for Bradley’s hands, rubbing her arms and stilling her trembles.
“We have the answer we’ve been searching for. An instruction manual to reverse the curse is on its way. We’ve done it, Devra. You’ve done it.”
“I…” She felt like her world was tipping sideways. Their search coming to an end. The highs and lows ending on a high. Something good in December. It was too much to comprehend, this enormous notion of…freedom.
“I am…” she started again, testing the words. “I am going to break my curse.”
