Spells and Jinglebells

by ReGina Welling

  She could just imagine the rest of the response. Her family, goodness, they would assume she was dying if they heard she’d gone to the town grove. The way they’d check on her for weeks—just the idea of it—made her flesh crawl. The antsy feeling seemed to explode inside her.

  Surely there was somewhere that she could…attempt to…find some sort of internal balance before she scratched off her own skin? She considered for a few minutes but the memory of Maeve’s present gave Harper an idea—Bridget’s trees. Maeve’s dead sister had accidentally awoken a long strip of trees near the bird reserve. Untrained druidic magic was more powerful than people realized. The trees weren’t quite a grove, but they were very, very isolated. Perfect.

  Harper avoided her neighbors until she was able to slide into her car. The tires squealed as she pulled away, but it wasn’t so fast, she couldn’t see Quinton’s shadow rise in his bookshop and look her way as she sped away.

  She wondered if he’d been messaging her. She’d left her phone in her apartment when she’d decided she couldn’t sit still any longer. It took her at least 20 minutes to reach the bird reserve. The whole time the image of Quinton’s shadow looking after her car was emblazoned on her mind to the soundtrack of the Lovejoy crone telling Harper to shake Quinton loose.

  She parked at the end of the trail and hopped out. The cold was intense as if she’d left traditional Maine and ended up in Siberia. She didn’t let the chill slow her down, trailing her fingers along the path, hoping for some peace. Maybe some guidance. Maybe she should break up with Quinton? Of course, he’d been messaging her. Leaving her phone had been on purpose. It was the easy excuse to say she hadn’t been aware he’d been trying to contact her. She’d been side-stepping him too much lately, and she wasn’t blind, so she knew it was bothering him. Maybe among the trees, she’d find a path and perhaps some solace.

  She wandered for a while and realized there wasn’t any solace to be found. She just might have to actually connect with the trees. She dropped to the ground and leaned against the first tree, opening herself to nature magic. She pressed the back of her head into the trunk, closing her eyes to breathe in the nature around her. It was chilly and the cold made her snuggle deeper into the tree. For others—it might have been uncomfortable but snuggling with a tree for a druid was rather like lying in the sun on a sandy beach for anyone else.

  She said, “Hello,” and listened to the life in the tree. It didn’t thump-thump like her heart, but the swish-swish seemed to echo her all the same.

  Harper didn’t so much curl into a nap as drop off into sleep entirely unexpectedly. When she woke, the moon was high and her feet were freezing. It had been cold, so she shouldn’t be surprised to see her breath making puffy clouds in the air, but she was. It was different somehow as if it had dropped 30 degrees cooler which was saying something. The cold didn’t just reach to her toes or her fingertips, it seemed to reach into her very heart and make her feel as though she’d turned into a block of ice.

  “Hello,” someone said in a soft voice.

  Harper jumped and then turned slowly, a little terrified, but she only found a girl standing over her. The girl was wearing a thin hoodie, t-shirt, and jeans but she seemed unaffected by the weather.

  “Are you insane?” Harper asked, shoving her hands under her armpits. She bounced up and down, trying for some warmth and failing.

  The girl simply smiled. Her long red hair and freckled nose struck Harper as incredibly familiar, but she was sure she’d never met this girl before.

  Harper wiggled her feet, trying to shake feeling back into them and said, “What are you doing here?”

  This kid needed to stop staring at Harper, or she was going to have to flip out.

  “Normally it’s just me around here,” the girl said. Her glance wasn’t unkind, but she did seem to almost melt into the trees like a tree sprite.

  “That’s what I was going to say,” Harper said, adjusting her scarf and wishing she could breathe fire into it. She was just so cold. “Usually there isn’t anyone else around here.”

  The girl smiled and said, “It’s pretty late.”

  “Yeah,” Harper agreed, thinking, yes obviously. “I suppose—”

  “But not too late.”

  Harper paused, confused. “What?”

  “It’s not too late.”

  “Ok,” Harper said. This one was a weird one, Harper thought. She shrugged and tried pulling her coat closer. If anything, it seemed to have gotten colder. She needed to get going. Make some tea, light the fire in her apartment, and face the messages on her phone.

  “You need to let him in, Harper.”

  That was too clear. And too en pointe. Harper was officially spooked. She asked, “How do you know about him? How do you know about me?”

  “I know all about you,” the girl said. “I know that you like your coffee extra sweet. I know that you’re like a dragon for the few people you love. I know that you like sparkly shoes and cat-eye makeup. I know that you eat oatmeal nearly every morning for breakfast because that’s what you got in your foster homes and even though you hated it then, it’s comfortable now.”

  Harper backed up several steps. Not even her sister, Scarlett, knew about the oatmeal. But the girl drifted closer, and Harper wasn’t able to put any distance between them. It seemed that for every step back she was that much closer.

  “Are you stalking me?” Harper wasn’t proud of the quaver in her voice, but it was very late, very dark, and she was very alone with someone who knew far too much about her.

  “No. You just matter to Maeve, so you matter to me. It’s time to change, Harper. You had it bad. We both did. But…I didn’t get a second chance.”

  Harper suddenly realized why she knew that face, those eyes, that hair. She could feel her heart freeze and then stutter to a slow, terrified start again. It wasn’t possible. “Oh…my….starry…shi…”

  She cut herself off to lean over her knees, breathing in and out through her mouth with hooting noises. She needed whiskey. And maybe a cross. She wasn’t Christian, but ghosts seemed to be a good reason to carry a cross. Puffy cloud thoughts were not going to work for a haunting.

  “Bridget?” Harper’s voice was the croak of a sick toad.

  The girl laughed and then said, “Boo!”

  Harper screamed and backed up. She tried reaching for her magic, but what could you do against a ghost? Even if she could calm down enough to use it…nothing. Probably. Harper had no idea.

  “I’m not here to hurt you, Harper. I’m here to help you.” The humor in Bridget’s voice did not make Harper feel better.

  Harper took a shaky breath, hooted it out, and told herself to think the quiet stream thoughts Scarlett preferred. Nope. That didn’t work, so Harper thought maybe she’d think fiery thoughts. Campfire thoughts. Marshmallows. Oh Hades, ghosts!

  She stepped away but Bridget just followed. Now that Harper knew she was talking to a ghost, she saw how you couldn’t quite make out Bridget’s feet. They faded into nothing. And the hollows of her cheekbones were too dark. It was as if she’d contoured her face with black powder. The closer Harper looked, the more she realized that it was obvious that she was talking to a ghost. Her eyes were dark holes, her voice seemed to echo as though it were a whisper from a distance.

  “Harper Leah Hyacinth Willow Marie Patience Oaken,” the ghost said, voice nearly fading away into ghostly howls with each name.

  Harper’s true name demanded her attention infused as it was with ghostly power. “I didn’t get to love. Not really. But you can. Take off the chains that bind you, Harper. Take them off and love fiercely.”

  Harper swallowed and said, “Just because you didn’t…”

  “It’ll never be anyone but him, Harper. His soul is tied to yours with the red thread, but you can ruin it.”

  Harper took another step back, this time leaving the path of trees for the road. Red threads were fairy tales. They weren’t real. Harper turned and ran. Bridget r
ushed after, but she stopped at the edge of the trees. Harper adjusted her keys in her pocket and darted to the car door. She’d thought Bridget had somehow been stopped by the line of trees but that had been stupid thinking. Bridget was leaning on the car opposite Harper, grinning over in the most ghastly of ways. Harper clicked the lock on the door of her car, but it wouldn’t open.

  “This is the only night I’ll look over you, Harper. I’m not your guardian, I’m Maeve’s. You remember what has happened between us—what will happen between us. Take off the chains.”

  Harper bit her bottom lip and yanked on the car door. It opened and she jumped into the seat, pushing the start button and fleeing towards her apartment. Bridget did not accompany Harper. It didn't matter, she flew down the road. You’d have thought the hounds of hell were after her. She was haunted by the words, What will happen between us. What did that mean?

  Harper swallowed and wondered just what was going on. Was this a hex? A spell of some kind? Had Mrs. Lovejoy done something when she’d stopped Harper before? Harper slowed the car when she reached the downtown area of Mystic Cove and decided to park a few blocks from her building. She didn’t want the loud muscle car to awaken Scarlett, the girls, or alert Quinton if he was still around.

  She just couldn’t…not then. She walked through the alleys behind the buildings to avoid anyone who might be out late walking. As she reached her apartment, she looked both ways before darting to the door and through it. She did not want to run into anyone. Whatever it took.

  Not after…she stopped to think and realized.

  “It was a dream. Of course, it was.”

  Something skittered along her spine, but Harper avoided it. She’d fallen asleep among Bridget’s trees—it made perfect sense that the location and what Mrs. Lovejoy had said to Harper would cause a dream like the one she’d had.

  Of course.

  Chapter Two

  When Harper awoke, it was so dark, that looking across her bedroom, she could scarcely distinguish the window. The lights of the street weren’t showing through the window as they usually did, but the howling at the window proclaimed a winter storm. One hadn’t been forecast, but the weather had been so odd lately.

  Or maybe it had been forecast and she hadn’t been paying attention. She fished around for her phone, finding it under the pillow and saw that Quinton had sent her 13 messages. She didn’t read them, but just focused long enough to make out the time. It was midnight.

  She sniffed and sat up and then looked at her phone again. Midnight didn’t make sense. She’d gotten back from her creepy dream in the woods after 2:00 am. Perhaps the satellites for the phone service were somehow blocked by the storm?

  And yet…that didn’t quite make sense either. She frowned. There was no way she’d have slept through the night and the following day. Scarlett would have shown up, banging on the door. Or Quinton. At the thought of him…she rose and crossed to the window, guilt striking her for avoiding him the previous evening and not answering his messages.

  Perhaps it was as simple as her phone being broken. She gazed down on the street and saw that fog had settled between the buildings. She felt as though she were looking down on some ethereal, mystic version of her hometown. Perhaps a night like this one was the reason Mystic Cove earned its name?

  There was no sign of life outside her window. Not so unusual for this time of night. Mystic Cove was a very small town, so there was nothing unusual about it being deserted on a cold winter’s night, but she still felt a chill. Harper went back to bed, curling into her covers and pillow and the dream of the previous evening returned to her.

  Bridget’s face had been so haunting and creepy. Harper didn’t want to think of Maeve’s sister as something so dead. Harper knew, of course, that Bridget was dead, but Harper wanted to think of her like she was in Maeve’s photo.

  The promise of Quinton being Harper’s red thread was bounding around in her mind. A soulmate for someone like her? If only…but…no…not for her. Harper couldn’t help but hear what Mrs. Lovejoy said about leaving Quinton echoing through Harper’s thoughts. There was no doubt that the old woman was a nasty piece of work these days. But she might not be wrong. Quinton was a nice man. A good one.

  Surely, he could do better than her? He could do better than someone who avoided him when she was feeling antsy and didn’t answer his messages for days before appearing in his life again like nothing had happened.

  She knew what it was, of course. There was even an official diagnosis. Harper was on the attachment spectrum. Which meant she’d been kicked around so much as a kid that she’d learned people were untrustworthy. Even with the grove, magic, and the healing power of druids for the spirit it had taken a long time for Harper to trust the Oaken women. She doubted she’d have ever trusted anyone without magic helping her. Which meant she and Quinton might be doomed.

  Her mind flew back to meeting him. A baffled man trying to find out what he was and what to do with it. He’d been a librarian. Of course, he had been. Even now he always seemed to smell of books and ink as though the scent had infused into his skin from his bookshop.

  By the stars and the root, how she loved that shop. He sold ancient magic texts and histories. But he was nerdy enough to carry comic books and board games. And he sold romances, mysteries, Sci-Fi, and fantasy simply because the people of Mystic Cove had been so excited for a bookshop and he couldn’t disappoint them.

  She loved the way he had a list of romance authors to recommend based off of interviewing reader after reader. She loved how he’d collected the full works of Georgette Heyer when some sweet little lady had talked him into trying them. She loved how his obsession was history and how that had changed with the discovery of the supernatural.

  She had it bad. But sometimes, when she was with him, she felt like just needed to run away. Bridget’s ghost bothered Harper. Massively. It bothered her that she’d dreamt up Maeve’s sister. That Harper’s subconscious had given Bridget the order to do what…maybe…to do what Harper desperately wanted?

  She did desperately want Quinton to be tied to her. She didn’t need a ghost to tell her that. Maybe if a mystical thread linked them, he would never leave her. Unlike nearly everyone else.

  She picked up her phone, checking the time again. It felt as though hours had passed. She frowned—only 45 minutes had gone by? Really? She dropped her phone and flopped her head back on her pillow. This was going to be the longest night. She was sick of it already.

  Maybe she should message Quinton back? Maybe he was up late reading? But, of course, he was. What could she say? I’m sorry that I didn’t message you and ran away? I’m just so damaged.

  She rose, if she could no more sleep than visit the moon, she might as well enjoy a long hot bath. She filled the tub, lit candles in her bathroom, and added some witchy salts that her sister, Scarlett, had given Harper for her birthday. They smelled like trees and spring and nature, and Harper loved them.

  She laid back in the tub, letting the salts work on her muscles and work away the cold. She removed her nail polish and put on a face mask, lingering until long after it was cracked and dry before rinsing it off and getting out of the water. Her fingers were wrinkled with the time she’d spent in the tub and her muscles had relaxed. She dressed in pajamas, put on her robe, slid her feet into puffy slippers, and figured a cup of sleepy tea and she’d be able to drift off again. Hopefully dreamlessly this time.

  Harper grabbed her phone, telling herself to leave Quinton alone. As she did, her breath puffed a white cloud. She frowned, glancing at the screen and saw it was 12:00 am. That couldn’t be right. It had been that time when she’d woken up. Her phone was broken. She’d have to get a new one. Oh, man, she hated having to make those choices.

  She shivered and felt a rush of cool air. The steamed-over mirror seemed to be altering in front of her. Instead of steam, clouding the glass, it was ice. She reached out a shaking hand and touched the glass.

  It was cold as ice. Her
damp fingers stuck, and she had to yank them free.

  She took a step back.

  “Careful now,” Bridget said, “I hate it when people walk through me. It makes me feel so very dead.”

  Harper spun, tripping on her bathroom rug, and fell into the counter. “Oh, my.” Harper choked and struggled upright. “What the…holy….oh my….are you here?”

  “I said I’d be looking over you. Somehow, I don’t think my warning by the trees sunk in. Why haven’t you texted him?

  “I…”

  “You were abandoned so often. I know. You don’t have to explain.”

  Harper didn’t answer. She didn’t want to answer.

  “Your past wasn’t easy.”

  Harper pressed her fingers to her lips. She didn’t like to think about those days. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Your welfare,” Bridget said. She didn’t breathe, and her feet faded into a blackness so only the top 2/3 of her body was visible. The rest floated ambiguously above Harper’s bathroom floor. “Your chance for happiness.”

  Harper shook her head. She wasn’t sure true happiness was in her future. It certainly hadn’t been in her past.

  “Come,” Bridget said. “Walk with me.”

  Bridget took Harper’s hand, and somehow it was like holding hands with one of her nieces. The hand seemed to fit so naturally. The link between them made it so pleasant.

  “I…”

  “Come,” Bridget said, and she stepped forward. Harper followed almost thoughtlessly and as she did, she was no longer in her apartment.

  Institutional walls rolled out before her, a stained and old carpet was under her fluffy slippers. Harper’s breath started coming faster. A woman was crying near the green wall. Her fingers were dirty, her hair was matted, and black mascara rolled down her face. She sniffled and Harper stepped sideways. This was a place of heartbreak and madness, and Harper did not want to revisit.