Turning my attention back to the mantel, I cast a long, critical glance toward the fireplace, where a roaring fire danced to keep the well-below-freezing temperatures of the night at bay, and noted Atticus was correct. We were out one light.
The fireplace itself is almost as tall as I am and spans the better portion of one wall in our farmhouse living room. We’d just had it updated, revitalizing the gray and blue stonework to an antiqued rustic white, and I loved how it looked with the red and white ornaments nestled in the evergreen swag, with bits of holly berry and cinnamon sticks.
Stepping back, I eyed the vignette of chunky whitewashed wood candleholders and candles in varying heights set against a tall picture of Santa Claus, in turn propped against the creamy beige wall.
The ex-interior designer in me couldn’t help but mentally calculate the width and height.
“We need more candles, don’t you think? Maybe a wooden snowman or two for a more layered effect? We had some cute ones from Switzerland this year.”
“You’re the interior designer, Halliday. I bow to you and your expertise. However, that expertise better shake a tail feather if you want to be ready to receive your guests at half six.”
I’d forgotten all about that. “Oh, shi…take mushrooms!” I yelped, catching myself before I let the expletive escape my mouth. “I forgot all about tonight. We’re making cookies, aren’t we?”
I couldn’t remember exactly what festivity we’d planned. I only remembered it was with my best friend Stiles and Digby Dainty—who’s middle name was Hobbs, and how, he’d informed me, with his charming smile, he preferred to be addressed.
Hobbs rented my cottage out back, and we’d struck up a friendship of sorts these last several months. He hadn’t been around a whole lot—which he’d explained was due to his demanding job in Boston.
But now he was here in Marshmallow Hollow full time, having finally made the leap to leave his job and live here permanently about a month ago.
I hadn’t asked a lot of questions about what he did in Boston, or what he does all day long now, but he was awfully young to have the means to leave his fancy corporate job.
Or at least, I think he’d had a corporate job.
Still, he paid his rent on time without fail and cleaned up after his dog, Stephen King, without needing a reminder. Bonus? He didn’t mind shoveling snow—of which we’re granted a lot of, living in Maine by the ocean.
“So, Christmas cookies…”
“Yes. You’re making Christmas cookies with Stiles and your handsome gentleman tenant, Don’t Call Me Digby.”
My cheeks got hot and my mouth went dry.
Yep-yep. Hobbs was an attractive man. Big, strapping, raven-haired, with a neatly trimmed beard and hazel eyes. But he’s not mine, thanks a heap. Nor had I given any thought to him being anything other than my tenant.
Not really, anyway…
“He’s not my anything, Atticus. He’s my friend—but just barely. Maybe close acquaintance is a better term. Anyway, we’ve only chatted a dozen times since he moved back here permanently. But I thought I’d invite him tonight so he feels included. He’s a single man with no family in a town where everyone knows everyone, but above all, he’s our neighbor. I figured it would be a nice way to give him the set of skills he’ll need for the time when old Mrs. Hartman invites him over under the guise of a slice of her famous apple strudel, and somehow manages to talk him into fixing her antiquated plumbing for free. Besides, you know, Mom and Nana Karen would have done the same.”
Atticus chuckled his rumbling chuckle. “A half dozen of those conversations were easily two hours each, Halliday. In this day and age of instant gratification, doesn’t that make you halfway down the altar? Or at the very least, picking out a venue.”
In my defense, Hobbs was an ace conversationalist—when you added in his slight Southern drawl, it made for a good time for my ears when we shot the breeze.
And Stephen King, his English bull dog rescue? He can ride a sled. Need I say more about the coolness of a dog like that?
Rolling my eyes at Atticus, I pulled my phone from my back pocket to note I had but twenty minutes until my fellow cookie makers arrived.
I scratched Atti under his chin. “Aren’t you a laugh riot hummingbird tonight? Look, I’m only being neighborly. Also, he already knows Stiles. They’ve had a beer or two together at the tavern. So I thought this might be a nice way to inspire a friendship between them.”
“Mhmmm,” he drawled.
“All of Marshmallow Hollow is celebrating the coming holidays with tons of fun activities and neighborly get-togethers. We wouldn’t want to exclude a new member of the community with no family to speak of, would we? Not at this time of year.”
Almost the second I said those words, everything around me became a bit hazy, the beautiful, fresh greens on the mantel warbling in and out of focus before my eyes to reveal a scene as if in a movie, of crunchy, hard snow under a night sky and reindeer hoofprints.
And…and blood.
A whole lot of blood…
Chapter 2
It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas
Written by Meredith Wilson, 1951
My body stiffened and my heart rate slowed to a crawl before there was one last scene—a flash of a…a frying pan? A cast-iron one, at that.
Yes, that was definitely what I’d seen.
For anyone curious, I’m not just a witch who casts spells and repeats incantations and occasionally freezes up when her emotions get the best of her.
I’m also a psychic witch. I have past, present, and even future visions. But good luck figuring out which is which. I’ve had them all my life, and on occasion, they don’t always churn out a pleasant end result.
What I’d just experienced are the signs I’m having a vision. My heart rate slows, my skin gets clammy, sometimes I get a throbbing headache, other times I feel like I’m underwater and the vision traps me into immobilization.
The good folk of Marshmallow Hollow, after much training from my mom and nana so I don’t turn into the town science project, all think I have debilitating migraines, and they’re always on board to help me through them.
Now, to be clear, there’s always been a bit of talk in town where my mother Keeva’s concerned. I did get my rebellious streak from somewhere, you know. Though she was described as more of a free spirit than disobedient, sometimes her free spirit slipped up and mortals saw things they shouldn’t.
She’d always managed to explain away her goofs, but speculation is what it is. Still, the occasional whisper didn’t stop the people in town from embracing my mother—or all of us, for that matter.
Except for one person…and I try not to think about her.
Hessy Newman lives on the outskirts of town and mostly hates our guts. When I was a kid, she scared the pants off me; as a teen, she made me angry. As an adult, I just feel sorry for her.
She’s in her late sixties, and she’s convinced I’m a demon born of a family of demons. I take exception to that because I’m no demon, but she’s been a boil on my backside for as far back as I can remember.
She doesn’t show up in town as often as she once did. Hessy’s always been the town recluse, but there’ve been several times her crooked finger has been firmly under my nose, wagging her clear malcontent where I’m concerned, and nothing I’ve ever said has been able to change her mind. She thinks I’m evil incarnate. But then, she also thinks Rayvonne Melnick sprays the tomatoes he sells at his farm stand with mind-altering drugs.
“Halliday? Come back to me now, would you please?”
As the vision cleared, pulling me from my deeper thoughts, I heard my faithful familiar calling my name.
“You’re to listen to me now, Poppet. Take deep breaths, please. In and out as you listen to my dulcet tones bring you back to us. Note, you’re in front of the mantel. Please take hold.”
As I said, when a vision occurs, the aftermath is like emerging from a fog where I’
ve been submerged underwater and have to slog my way through the sand of the ocean’s bed.
It’s helpful if someone’s around to keep me from falling or hurting myself, but I know the signs well and know how to prepare to avoid disaster. Mostly, anyway…
I stumbled forward a bit, reaching out to curl my fingers into any available surface, finding the edge of the mantel was indeed still in front of me.
Blinking, I popped my eyes open and did as Atticus instructed, taking deep breaths to reacclimate myself.
“Poppet?” Atticus drawled, deep and low. “What was it this time?”
Pinching my temples, I squinted, calling up the colorful vision and decided to omit the part about the blood. Atti would only fret if I told him that little detail.
“Reindeer hooves.”
“Pardon?”
“Reindeer hooves. I saw a bunch of reindeer hoofprints in the snow under a night sky. Oh, and a frying pan. A cast-iron frying pan, to be specific. In what world do those two things even go together? Weird isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.”
Atticus flew in front of my face, using his beak to push my hair from my cheek. “Certainly not your weirdest, but undoubtedly curious. Though, it is Christmas, who can say if reindeer aren’t on your mind?”
“I’ll take that explanation, kind sir.”
But even as I said those words, I shivered. The reindeer prints in the crunchy snow felt menacing; adding in the blood—which, for all I know, might not turn out to be blood at all—made it that much more ominous.
Some visions come and go and I don’t always get an answer for why they happened or what they’re even about. Though, to my credit, I’ve been a participant in solving a few mysteries, mostly missing objects, and even a missing animal or two.
But some are much darker, and I always have this exact feeling I’m having right now when they are. Meaning, I’d likely seen blood.
The doorbell chimed “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” pulling me out of my thoughts, and as I glanced up at the big bleached-white clock with black Roman numerals on the wall above the fireplace, I realized it was almost six-thirty.
Throwing down the strand of lights, I ran my hands over my jeans and red flannel shirt (have I mentioned I’m no fashionista?), brushing away some of the greenery while I headed to the double doors we’d just had installed.
Made of a light cedar wood, the doors featured stained-glass windows of colorful hummingbirds and our initial V interwoven. I noted there appeared to be more people than just Hobbs and Stiles on the other side.
I pulled off my Santa hat and gave my messy ponytail a quick once-over in the entryway mirror, noting the ends needed a trim in the worst way. I could probably use a dye job to give some shine to my almost-black hair, and I’d have plenty of time to do that with a month off.
Pulling my lip gloss from the pocket of my jeans, I dragged the applicator across my lips with a quick flick, smiling at the peachy color with a bit of sparkle.
Reaching for the door, I flung it open, the arctic air hitting me smack in the face, and cocked my head in confusion to find not only Stiles, Hobbs, and a snorting Stephen King…but also a serious-faced Sheriff Ansel Peregrine.
He eyed me with granite-hard muddy-brown eyes from beneath his gray campaign hat, his hands in his police-issued jacket, the lights surrounding the door making his badge particularly shiny.
Stiles and Hobbs stood to his left, looking a little hangdog under the bulbs hanging from the eaves. Stiles’s dirty-blond hair was tucked under his hat, and he was using BFF signals I didn’t recognize with his hazel eyes, making them really stand out.
“Hey, Hal,” Hobbs said almost uncertainly, his baritone voice resonant in the cold night. “You have a light out over there on the twirlin’ Christmas trees by the pathway to the backyard.”
It felt like there was always a light out somewhere. There were probably ten thousand of them outside alone. Sighing, I acknowledged him with a smile then crossed my arms over my chest and raised a jaunty eyebrow at Ansel, unsure why everyone looked so…hesitant, I guess was the word.
So I decided to lighten things up.
“Okay, what have these two done now, Sheriff Peregrine? Joy riding? Throwing snowballs at unsuspecting cars off the overpass? Wait,” I said with a mock gasp. “It wasn’t graffiti, was it? Or are you just here to make cookies with us? I’m always happy to have an extra cookie maker in the kitchen, but won’t Emmy take exception to you skipping out on your low-carb diet? I think we both know Emmy wields a mighty sword.”
Stiles, my gorgeous, handsome, burly best friend, made a grim thin line with his lips as his eyes connected with mine. “Hal, shush. Now might not be a good time to try out your standup routine.”
Um…
I understood that look. We’ve been best friends since middle school, when Stiles moved here from New Hampshire, and we had all sorts of ways to communicate that didn’t involve words—partially because he said I had too many of them, and his brain sometimes needed a rest from my chaotic stream of thoughts.
We called it the “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!” look. He’s an old-school Lost in Space fan. I’m not, in case you’re speculating, but best friends take the hit in the interest of friendship solidarity.
When I saw his eyes squint just a bit, I motioned for them to enter the house. “So, come in then. It’s freezing out there. We can’t have the head of Marshmallow Hollow’s finest get hypothermia. How will you achieve world domination if you lose a toe?”
No one laughed—not even Hobbs, who laughed often and easily.
All three men knocked their boots free of snow before they came inside, and I shut the door on the icy wind blowing fiercely from the ocean. They positioned themselves on my enormous braided throw rug, where Sheriff Peregrine attempted small talk.
Stephen King, my favorite dog ever, snuffed his way over to me and plunked his wiggle butt on my feet.
“Regards of the evening, Hal. Gearing up for the holiday, I see,” Ansel said, making pleasantries that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
He made a fuss of looking around at the mess of totes and lights strewn from one end of the living room to the other, while I knelt on my haunches to reach for a snorting Stephen King, whose butt wiggled harder in delight. I gave him a hug and dropped a kiss on his head.
“Just like we do every year. Christmas from head to toe. So what’s up, guys. Why so serious?”
Sheriff Peregrine cleared his throat, his square face red from the bitter cold. “We have a problem, Hal.”
I gave Stephen King one last scratch on his ears before I rose and eyeballed him. “Meaning?”
“It’s Karen, Hal,” Stiles said. His soft, melodic voice, so uncharacteristic for his size, sounded a little concerned. “She’s at animal control right now.”
Instantly, my brain called up the vision of the hoofprints and blood. What if those had been her hoofprints and her blood?
I couldn’t lose her again…
But before I had a chance to peel my tongue off the roof of my mouth and ask, Sheriff Peregrine took off his hat and held it in his big hands, tossing it back and forth as though he had a bad case of nerves.
“We need you to come with us to identify her, Hal.”
“Identify?” My heart hammered in my chest and the blood drained from my face.
“It’s not what you think. She’s okay, Hal,” Stiles soothed, grabbing my hand with his calloused one.
Planting my other hand on my hip, I honed in on Ansel’s clean-shaven face, my stomach in turmoil. Whenever Karen was involved, I always got a stomachache. “So then how do you mean, identify her? You know what Karen looks like, Ansel. She’s the only reindeer in town. And then there’s the fact that she wears a collar with a tag that literally says, ‘Hi. My name is Karen’ and our address, clear as day.”
Ansel rocked back on his heels, the material of his jacket crinkling. “Sorry, Hal. What I meant is, we need you to pick her up from animal control and ide
ntify her as yours. It’s just procedure for the books.”
Animal control? Procedure? Those words made me a little jenky.
Now that I knew some errant hunter hadn’t killed her, thinking she was a deer, and that’s why I saw blood and reindeer prints, I was going to throttle her when I got my hands on her. She wasn’t only facetious, she was a daredevil, and whenever the mood struck, she took off out of the barn to do as she pleased.
Once, Howard List found her in his backyard, eating his prized English Ivy (you try growing that in Maine) because she said she liked how it made the inside of her mouth feel all tingly.
Cold shards of ice slithered up my spine, but I forced myself to stay collected. “Why is she at animal control, Ansel?”
Ansel ran his tongue over his dry lips. “Because she was at the scene of a crime, Hal.”
Well, that explained the protocol bit.
Before I go on, let me explain my reindeer Karen to you. Like I said, she’s a troublemaker if there ever was one. A mouthy-mouth, reckless hooligan.
She’s also my nana.
Reincarnated in the body of a talking reindeer.
Planting my hands on my hips, I looked him in the eye. “A crime? What kind of crime?”
We didn’t have a lot of crime here in Marshmallow Hollow. We had the occasional burglary, which usually turned out to be some kids who were bored and needed redirection, and every once in a while, someone shoplifted.
But Ansel looked so grim, and so did Hobbs and Stiles.
When no one answered, I asked again. “What kind of crime, Ansel?”
He rocked on his heels and rasped a sigh. “A murder, if you want specifics.”
So my talking reindeer, run amok, had been found at the scene of a murder.
A.
Murder.
Jingle all the Slay: Marshmallow Hollow Mysteries Book 1 Page 2