It took a joint effort from six covens worth of witches to craft an effective enough memory charm to wash away the spectacle. Clara and Mag had been offered control of the coven on the spot, and while they would rather not have had to deal with Hagatha, the idea of starting over someplace new appealed to both.
And so, that is how it came to be that Mag and Clara now found themselves staring down at the very dead, red and green clad elf lying in the snowbank in front of their new home.
“See. Dead elf. What’d I tell you? Toss it in the trash before someone sees it. I thought you two cared about appearances, and if anyone else discovers a rotting elf carcass on your lawn, you’ll have a bigger mess to clean up than a dead body.” Heart of gold, that Hagatha.
The poor creature lay sprawled over the back side of the freshly plowed snow which was the only reason passersby had not yet noticed the tragic figure.
“Yes, well.” Clara searched for the appropriate response, while Mag, who had more experience with magical creatures, hunkered down to check for a pulse. Looking up at her sister, Mag frowned and shook her head.
“It’s not dead,” came the solemn pronouncement. “Close, but not entirely.”
“We’d better take it inside before it freezes to death out here.” Raised in a traditional witch household, and one of the most powerful witches in a handful of centuries, Clara Balefire had not the first clue how to tend to a sick Christmas elf. Still, her tender heart would only be satisfied once she had made an effort to save the poor thing.
“Cold won’t hurt it. Snow is one of the main ingredients when it comes to making Christmas elves.”
“Making?” Clara slid gentle hands under fragile shoulders while Mag laid hold of the ankles above the curled tips of bell-laden shoes. A cheery jingle sounded when the sisters heaved the elf’s body off the ground.
“It’s gonna die and stink up the place. Dead elves smell like candy canes.” Hagatha predicted darkly and then cackled out a laugh as she shuffled back inside and let the door slam behind her.
“Thanks for all your help, Haggie,” Mag muttered.
“Do you think her parents knew what she’d turn into when they named her?” Clara used a touch of power to turn the knob, and nudged the door open with her butt. “Can you make it up the stairs? Or should we just put him on the floor behind the counter? Away from prying eyes.”
Only eight years separated Clara and Mag by the calendar, but to look at them, you’d swear it was ten times that number.
“I can carry it up there by myself and don’t you think I can’t.” Mag blew a fluff of white hair out of snapping dark eyes. “Just because I look like I could have dated Methuselah, doesn’t mean I’m decrepit or incapable of doing things.” A couple of centuries spent tracking rogue magic had taken its toll on Margaret Balefire’s appearance. A choice she’d made knowing the consequences, and for that, Clara respected her sister even if she liked to tease from time to time.
“Pyewacket, Jinx!” Clara called, and two cats immediately jetted into the room with a flurry of fur, took a good look at the elf cradled between their masters, and raced back out of the room with their tails puffed out to three times their normal girth.
Every witch has a feline familiar—a companion with a plethora of knowledge whose life is inextricably linked to his or her charge. Each familiar is blessed with nine lives and nine corresponding witches. Pyewacket belonged to Clara, and Jinx to Mag.
“What’s that about? I guess they’re not going to be any help to us in this situation. I’ll make sure to hide all the smoked salmon before breakfast tomorrow.”
“Kitty kibble it is. Can’t wait for that argument. If they ever decide to switch back to human form, of course. We don’t need them anyway; we got this. Grab its feet.”
“Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” Calling the elf an it all this time seemed like a form of disrespect to Clara.
“Not by its feet, if that’s what you're asking. And I'm not exactly in a position to see anything else at the moment. Besides, I wasn’t planning to check and see if it had any jingle bells if you know what I mean.”
Clara suppressed a smile as she made an effort to take more of the elf’s weight. Despite her sister’s assurances that the aged look went only skin-deep, Clara had seen Mag leaning heavily on her cane at times and knew there was more physical damage than her sister wanted to admit. “I wasn’t asking you to, and you know it. Let’s hurry; one of us needs to go back down and see to Hagatha. I don’t like leaving her in the shop by herself.”
“She’s a keg of dynamite waiting on a fuse,” Mag agreed. “Someone ought to tie a bell around her neck, so they know when she’s escaping.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure that niece of hers is the one holding the door open. Wouldn’t you do the same if you had to deal with her all day?”
“You do have a point.”
Hagatha’s voice tinkled from below, “You know I can hear you, right? And the elf is a boy, obviously.” Clara and Mag shared an eye roll and a wry grin as they made their way up the stairs.
“Saw that too,” Hagatha’s assurance rose up behind them.
Chapter Two
“Here, in Hargraven’s Guide to Mythical Creatures, it says: Christmas elves, a creation of the wizard known as Santa Claus, require a constant supply of Christmas spirit to survive, and rarely venture far from the North Pole, where their source of energy is most potent.” Mag paced the upstairs spare bedroom with the helpful volume two inches from her face, deftly sidestepping piles of boxes still waiting to be unpacked without taking her eyes off the page.
Clara’s brow furrowed, “I wonder what he was doing so far away from home. Poor little thing.” The tenderest of hearts, she couldn’t bear to see anyone or anything in pain. “Let’s see what we can do to make this room more festive. Maybe that will enhance the elf’s Christmas spirit.”
“It can’t hurt,” Mag agreed, tucking Hargraven’s into a nightstand drawer and pulling out her wand.
Clara did the same, and with a flick of her wrist an old phonograph wheeled across the floor, the merry notes of Christmas music emitting from its weathered brass horn, “That ought to get us started.”
Humming along, and allowing holiday cheer to fuel their magic, the sister witches summoned every Christmas decoration—and anything red, green, silver, or gold that could qualify as such—into the bedroom.
No fewer than four ornament-laden trees filled the room with a riot of color.
“I really like the pink and white lights, but can you kill the blinkers? The flashing gives me a headache,” Clara grumbled.
“This one needs more tinsel.” Mag gestured, and an absolute avalanche of the stuff fell over the blue spruce clad in red and green plaid ornaments. “Oops, too much.” Half the tinsel faded, and she surveyed the results with a tilted head. “That’s better.” In fact, Clara liked it so much, she made a complicated gesture, and the tree zoomed into the living room where it took up space in the center of the bay window overlooking the street below.
“It looks like a craft store sale two days after New Years in here,” she looked around doubtfully, “Shouldn’t we at least try to make it less gaudy?”
“I don’t think the aesthetic makes much difference, and besides, this is probably what it looks like at the North Pole. Santa’s not exactly known for keeping things low-key. You think it’s a coincidence that before the Halloween costumes have gone 50% off, you can already buy tinsel and twinkle lights? The gaudier, the better, I’d wager. Now, let’s sing.”
“Sing?”
“Yes, to activate the magic. Sing, and think about Christmas Eve when we were kids.”
Clara closed her eyes and, with the lilting lyrics to “Silent Night” rolling off her tongue, joined in Mag’s recollection. Scents of cinnamon, sugar, and butter filled the air as Clara recalled pulling sticky globs of yeasty dough from the tower of homemade monkey bread their mother, Tempest, constructed each year. One portion always ended up
tucked into a cache near the chimney, a treat for the reindeer who always managed to avoid detection no matter how hard Clara tried to catch a glimpse.
For Mag, the magic of Yuletide rested in reciting traditional spells and reading the omens for the coming year. Hanging holly and mistletoe over each threshold and above the fireplace for protection made her feel safe. And, of course, there was the Christmas pudding. Making a wish while she stirred, always clockwise in the direction of the sun.
With each happy memory, magic bubbled and churned and grew into a visible haze of sparkling motes that coalesced into a stream of festive, multicolored glitter. It snaked through the air, and finally made a beeline for the prone elf, shooting into his nostrils with a resounding boom.
The little guy stirred, some of the color returning to his cheeks. His eyelids fluttered once and then stilled again, but a tiny smile remained on his thin lips.
“Well, it sort of worked. We just need more juice.” Mag pronounced.
“Look, there,” Clara pointed toward the ceiling where a faint glimmer sparkled against the age-darkened paint, “It’s another trail of Christmas spirit, and it’s headed downstairs. Let’s see where it leads us.”
“Good catch, little sister.” Mag’s tone was entirely complimentary, but it still made Clara feel like a child. But there were more important things than a temper tantrum, and giving in to the temptation to throw one wouldn’t go far in proving herself otherwise.
On her way by, Clara tossed a blanket over the elf. Sick people, in her experience, tended to do better when cuddled up and comfy.
Reclaimed by her niece during the decorating extravaganza, Hagatha was nowhere to be seen, and for that small mercy, Clara felt thankful. The woman reminded her of a geriatric pit bull. Taking the lead, she trailed the magic essence out the door and down the street with Mag following close behind.
Harmony homeowners apparently viewed decorating for Christmas as a prime competitive sport. That was the only explanation Mag could find for the absolute glee and abandon with which the town had embraced the many manifestations of the twinkle light. They glittered, and flickered, and chased roof, door, and window outlines. They dripped from eaves, blanketed shrubs in glimmering webs, and that was just the start of the madness.
Each house, Clara was happy to note, in the row leading to the single-street shopping district known as downtown, was different from the next. No cookie cutter neighborhood, this. And the houses had some breathing space between them.
“Oh Mag, look at that one.” Rigged up on a metal structure, the tableau of Santa’s sleigh taking off without him inspired a chuckle. The manikin of the jolly old elf carried an expression of consternation as he reached toward the runaway sled. Gifts spilled from his bag; his hat set askew on his head. “It’s so very clever.”
“You’re already planning something. I can see the wheels turning, but let’s not get distracted. The trail is stronger now, do you see it?”
It wouldn’t have taken a crystal ball to predict which house the spirit trail would lead to, the sheer magnitude of decorations gave it away. If there were fewer than a thousand strings of lights winding up tree trunks, and along the eaves of the gingerbread trim, Mag would lick a stinkbug.
Plastic candy canes and lollipops festively fenced the property on three sides. Every window sported a wreath, the door was wrapped up like a gift, and the porch held an entire scene made from brightly-painted wooden cutouts. A herd of lighted, wire-framed reindeer frolicked behind a fence wrapped in glittering gold garland on the left half of the lawn. An entire workshop’s worth of plastic and wooden elves danced across the right. There was more than the eye could take in all at one go.
All of that showed an unparalleled dedication to the art of decorating for the season, but it was the thick blanket of Christmas spirit that had called Mag and Clara to this place.
“Holy Hecate, would you look at that?”
“The name on the mailbox says Granger, and there’s the coven symbol etched into the front door frame. This is Gertrude Granger’s house.” Clara pulled the details from her steel trap of a memory, having read through the list of coven members prior to accepting the position in Harmony.
“Anything sketchy on her record?” Mag asked.
“Nope, she’s older than us—I believe she’ll celebrate her quincentennial this year—and not a black mark to speak of. Coven secretary, and once upon a time she was second in command to old Haggie. But, Gertrude stepped down for unrecorded personal reasons about a century ago. Seems an odd thing to do. Maybe there’s something to it. She missed the whole Thanksgiving parade debacle, too.”
“You know how easy it is to step over to the dark side. It’s not out of the question. She had to get all this Christmas spirit from somewhere, and I don’t believe in coincidences. Put on your high priestess hat and let’s find out what’s been going on here.”
Clara straightened her shoulders and approached the front walkway, snow crunching beneath her feet. Christmas spirit virtually poured out of the chimney like wood smoke, and when Mag jabbed the doorbell, they could hear Jingle Bells chiming from inside.
The woman who opened the door looked nothing like what either Mag or Clara expected; five hundred years isn’t all that long for a witch to live, and Gertrude Granger looked more like a toned-down fifty-something cougar than a grandmotherly old spinster. With less than thirty-six hours to go before midnight on Christmas Eve, she was dressed in a modest yet hip-hugging version of Mrs. Claus’ outfit, complete with a cotton-trimmed velvet skirt and matching Santa hat.
“Merry Christmas!” Gertrude boomed as she welcomed the sisters into her cinnamon and balsam-scented foyer. “You’re the newest members of our coven, aren’t you? Balefire witches?” Her aqua blue eyes sparkled with excitement.
Both women nodded in assent. “I’m Mag, and this is my sister, Clara.”
“Nice to finally meet you, would you like a cup of cocoa?” A twirl of her finger conjured three mugs and a doily-lined plate of peppermint-speckled fudge. “Candy cane white chocolate, have a taste.”
It might have been all the Christmas spirit zinging around the place, but suddenly white chocolate candy cane fudge and hot cocoa sounded a lot like the nectar of the gods, and it was a full fifteen minutes before the poor, unconscious elf crossed Clara’s mind again.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Gertrude, but we didn’t come here to eat you out of house and home.” Clara began, keeping her tone friendly and non-threatening.
Mag interjected before the poor woman had a chance to answer, brisk and to the point, “Just where did you happen to come across such a high volume of Christmas spirit?”
Clara sighed; this was Mag’s way, and probably always would be. A big bulldozer, Mag would raze an entire field trying to pick a single flower.
Gertrude looked between the two as though questioning their sanity and replied, “What do you mean, come across? The holidays are my favorite time of year, and I work quite diligently to spread cheer. In fact, I’d call it a full-time job, considering the state of the world we live in today. Do you know how many children don’t believe in Santa Claus nowadays?”
“Well, yes, it’s quite sad, really, but…” Clara’s response got lost in Gertrude’s excitement.
“Just last night, in fact, I managed to make believers out of half a dozen kids, thanks to a gentleman friend of mine, a simple glamour, and a chimney engorgement charm. You should have seen the looks on their faces. I never had any children of my own, you know, but I volunteer at the community center and the children’s hospital over in Charleston.”
“You sound like a regular good Samaritan,” Clara said pointedly, shooting dagger eyes at her sister.
“Yes, she does,” Mag agreed, but she returned Clara’s glare with a raised eyebrow and exaggerated side-eye motion which pulled Clara’s attention to the wall of bookshelves and to the fireplace mantel where a veritable army of Elf On a Shelf dolls cavorted.
Bearing a
n uncanny resemblance to the elf currently riding their spare bed, the little dolls were arranged into a series of amusing vignettes.
“Do you mind?” Clara crossed the room for a closer look. “However did you come up with all these ideas?”
In one scene, three elves clustered around a half-finished snowman made from marshmallows. Another featured an elf stranded on a beach after a sleigh crash, complete with palm trees and HELP spelled out in tiny sticks and stones. A closer look at the upturned face revealed an expression of fear that was a little too realistic.
“So creative, and such attention to detail. How do you make them look so life-like?” Doing her level best to maintain a curious tone, Clara pried. “It’s uncanny.”
Could Gertrude be capturing real elves, harvesting their Christmas spirit, and turning them into dolls? The idea was enough to make Clara shiver and reconsider her love of the porcelain-faced beauties. Never mind that the elf on their sofa seemed more likely to melt into the ether than to shrink to doll stature, the notion of him being trapped and forced into one of Gertrude’s theatrical displays lodged like a splinter.
“Mag, you have to come look at this, it’s the cutest thing.” Anyone who knew Clara well would recognize the false cheer in her tone as a warning of some type. Mag certainly did and joined her sister while Gertrude practically beamed.
“Look at those little faces. How did you find dolls with such varied expressions? I’d love to get in touch with the manufacturer, we could carry these in our shop next Christmas,” Mag followed Clara’s lead and practically gushed, but her hand slid into the pocket where she kept her wand and a few handy defensive potions. Mag might be out of the dark hunting game these days, but some habits never die.
Spells and Jinglebells Page 22