“That boy is involved because of us and that infuriates me,” Gram said. Her hand held her chin and she said, “He’s a good boy. He’d have been a good choice for you.”
Scarlett blinked, glanced at Lex, and then back at her Gram.
“Shhhhh,” Scarlett hissed.
“I’m not saying you didn’t make the right choice for you and the girls. Lex is…fine too.”
Scarlett winced for Lex, made sure he wasn’t listening and then said, “But you’d have preferred Gus?”
“Did I say that?” Gram sniffed and added, “I’m going to find this druid. The one who’d dare mess with the Oaken family and teach her the error of her ways.”
Scarlett’s gaze crossed over Gram’s face. Druids were normally peaceful. Especially with each other. Their power came from their places of power, their relationship with nature, and their bonds with each other. It was why druids were considered weak. You catch a druid in the wrong place, and they were pretty weak. Oakens were potentially more powerful than other druids but only because they had become friends with the east wind.
“Ok, Gram,” Scarlett said, thinking of all she needed to do before the end of the week.
“And you’ll be helping me,” Gram ordered.
Scarlett flinched, started to object, but at the look on Gram’s face, Scarlett gave up.
Chapter 5
“Mommy,” Luna said, crawling over Scarlett’s body and wiggling into the covers to jab her cold toes against Scarlett’s legs. “How many more sleeps until Christmas?”
“Mmmm,” Scarlett said, digging her face into the pillow and jerking away from those icicle toes. “Mommy doesn’t want to get up, please.”
Luna wrapped her arms and legs around Scarlett’s body and squeezed.
“Luna,” Scarlett whined.
“Mommy, you said to wake you up because we’re supposed to go learn stuff.”
Scarlett pulled the covers over her head and wished that she didn’t remember telling Luna to get her up. It was Sunday morning, the bakery was closed, and she wanted to sleep. Instead she swung her legs over the bed and got up.
“Let’s go, Luna bean,” Scarlett said. She and the girls got dressed and headed down to her car. They were going to go down to the beach for training—nature magic didn’t get more abundant than it did on the coast, and they’d spent far too little time on the shore since they moved back to the east coast.
Scarlett parked above the steps that led down to the beach as Ella grabbed the beach toys and Luna skipped ahead. They only brought the dog with them—leaving the other animals behind—but Max moseyed behind Luna. He was so big that Luna could run, and he could wander, and they were still pacing each other.
Scarlett made a little depression in the sand and laid down in it. It was cold but she didn’t care. The sound of the waves and the birds—the feel of the east wind. She grinned and listened to her daughters play. After a while, Ella came and snuggled into one side while Luna came and snuggled into the other.
“Close your eyes,” Scarlett said.
She talked to the girls about the knowing and nature magic. They had naturally learned to tap into nature already, but she was trying to help it be more deliberate. Once you learned the feel of the knowing, it would talk to you, but it was a small, quiet thing. You had to learn the feel, then the language of it, and the knowing was so very different for each druid as if the ability had a million languages and communicated with the specific language of each druid.
Granted, the knowing didn’t speak to a druid. But if it did, it wouldn’t just be in the language of the druid, it would be with the words that meant something to that druid. The way the druid put words together would be the way the knowing communicate. So, for some druids—the knowing was a warm feeling, an idea that felt a little different inside their heads than their normal fault. For another druid, it was a tickle in their senses. For another, it was the way information added up. It made the teaching of the knowing so very difficult.
Scarlett took a few minutes to talk to the girls about the information the knowing could provide. You had to learn when you didn’t say anything. Like what Scarlett had learned the previous night about Harper and her…news.
“Now let’s see where the knowing takes us.”
They rose and walked down the beach. Scarlett handed each of the girls a thermos with piping hot cocoa to warm them up, and they hiked down the beach. It didn’t take them too long. The girls conferred and then led her from the sand into the rocks and then into the trees. The trees weren’t too thick given how they were growing in between rocks, but it was lovely to be among them.
Ella reached out and touched one and then frowned. She pressed her face against the bark, breathing deeply and Scarlett smiled without really paying attention to what the girls were saying.
“Mommy, are you listening to the knowing too?” Ella asked, her eyes were wide and worried, and Scarlett tugged her oldest daughter close to give her a hug.
“Um, no,” Scarlett admitted. “This is just like…a scavenger hunt or an adventure. It’s ok if we just wander and try to listen. It’s ok if we don’t find anything or if you don’t feel…inspired in other areas of your life.”
The concerned look on Ella’s face didn’t fade, and Scarlett had to notice how Ella’s already pale face was too-white and her eyes were wide and worried.
“What’s wrong?”
Her daughter’s fear didn’t make sense. Firstly because Ella channeled disdainful and snarky far more than fearful. When you added that Scarlett was not a demanding teacher, there wasn’t anything to worry about. Scarlett spent most of her time with her girls trying to buoy them up. She wanted them to know they were loved. Especially with the way their dad was pretty second-rate at parenting.
“I don’t feel good,” Luna said, taking Scarlett’s hand. “I feel yucky in my tummy.”
Scarlett started to take off her glove to feel Luna’s face, but it was too cold, and they’d been outside too long. Instead, Scarlett pulled her littlest daughter close. Maybe the seafood had been bad last night, but Luna hadn’t eaten that. Maybe…but no. Scarlett would have heard if anyone else was feeling off.
“I don’t feel good either,” Ella said, her eyes were blinking rapidly and then a tear slipped down her cheek, “I want to go home.”
Scarlett dropped to her knees, searching her daughters’ faces, and then pulled them close for a good, solid hug. As she did, she linked her magic into the trees and wind here. The dread her daughters were feeling hit her, and she too wanted to go back. This wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all. She hated that she was feeling this way with her babies around.
She rose and told her daughters, “Go down by the sand. I’m going to just check…”
She cut her thoughts off because Luna was frantically shaking her head with another large tear rolling down her cheeks. She’d gone whiter and whiter until Scarlett started to feel frantic with worry. Ella started crying with more earnestness.
“Girls,” Scarlett said, “Let go of the magic.”
Her girls obeyed immediately, but they didn’t calm down. Scarlett used her own magic to wrap them up in her love, letting them feel it like a warm hug, and then she took each child by the hand.
They walked out of the trees, climbed down the rocks, and were on the beach within a few minutes. Scarlett knelt in front of them again, placing a hand on each check, and called the east wind. It swirled around the girls as Scarlett pushed happiness and excitement at them. Ella squealed and Scarlett helped her daughter channel the power of the east wind to rise off the ground. She was only up for a moment, and then landed lightly.
The laughter rolled across the sand. Scarlett helped Luna next, but she’d already followed the process with Ella and it took Luna half the time to be jumping too high into the air and landing too slowly.
“I’m flying,” Luna squealed with her bark brown hair sprayed out behind her in defiance of gravity.
“Ella,” Scarlett
said, “I’m going to check out what was happening over there. You are safe.”
Ella nodded.
“Have fun. Don’t go far. Mommy will be able to see you the whole time.”
Scarlett kept her girls in her line of sight for whenever she glanced back and made her way to where the darkness was thickest. As she did, she called Lex.
“Hey babe,” Lex said as he answered. His anger from the previous night was mostly gone, but he wasn’t quite as carefree as he’d been. He hadn’t been upset to learn that her mom had stayed over at the apartment too or that Scarlett had decided to follow through with the plan to teach the girls this morning. “Are you guys frozen yet?”
“Yes,” Scarlett said. Her focus was around her, and she was searching, trying to find where the darkness was coming from.
“You on your way back? Want to meet for omelets at Mabel’s?”
“Mmmm, no,” Scarlett said. “Something’s wrong. We were following the knowing.”
“Did you find something?” Lex asked his voice sharp.
Scarlett paused. Yes. She had.
“Oh,” she gasped. She spun in a second and was running back to her daughters. She channeled the east wind and was leaping down the rocks in a way that no one would have been able to without magic. Lex was shouting at her, he knew her well enough to know that panic in her voice.
She was at full tilt until she was back to her girls. When she lumbered to a stop, she had to try to hide her panic.
The girls were still trying to channel the east wind and doing all right at it. But the east wind…was loved the word? Oh, she had to stop debating vocabulary when she was upset.
“By the stars…” Scarlett breathed into the phone finally listening to Lex again. He was shouting at her, but she hadn’t bothered to answer him.
“I’m ok,” she said. “We’re ok. Lex…”
She tried to gather her thoughts, they were pinging around her head in panic. “It’s a body. There has to be another hex bag. It made the girls sick with dread. They were channeling the knowing so innocently and I…it should have been safe! It should have been ok for them to practice using magic and not come across something so dark. Goodness, Lex…there…there was a…I…I…”
“A body?” Lex’s voice was ice cold business now. “Where are you?”
“Yes,” her voice cracked when she said it. And then she told him where they were.
“Stay on the phone with me,” he said to her and then started snapping orders at the people around him.
Sometimes she forgot he was the sheriff and not just the P.I. who’d first approached her those months ago. When she’d called him, she hadn’t been calling the police. She’d been calling the first person she needed when she’d seen something horrible. She gathered her calm before she returned to the girls and they walked back to their car together. On the way, she called Harper to come get the girls. By the time, they reached their car, Lex had reached it too.
He crossed to her before she’d finished climbing up the final step and hauled her the last few feet between them to wrap her tight. His lips were on her temple, and his warmth was heating her body, but her heart was still stuttering with the cold. With the vision of that dead hand. With the way the fingers had curled towards the root that was arched over it. With the way that it had been too gray, too lifeless, too…dead.
“Are you ok?”
It wasn’t her first body. Or even her second. But there was something about finding it on an adventure with her girls, with Christmas songs in her head, and the thought of taking her girls to a movie later. She shook her head and pressed her face to his chest.
With the safety of his love, with the presence of the other police officers, she didn’t have to be so protective of Ella and Luna. One of the ambulance drivers convinced the girls to hop into the Suburban, so Scarlett took the chance to press against his chest and shook her head again. No, she was not ok. Nothing about this was ok. She wanted to go back to the beginning of that morning and talk Luna into climbing into bed with her instead. They could have watched cartoons and ordered takeout breakfast from Mabel’s, and had cocoa. They could have had a lazy morning of snuggles.
Instead…they’d gathered up experiences to give fodder to nightmares.
She took a deep breath and looked up at him. “No. I’m not ok.”
“Are the girls ok?”
“They just felt it. They didn’t see it. But…goodness, Lex…that’s probably worse. Feeling it with your spirit and your magic…so much worse than what our eyes tell us.”
Lex cupped the back of her head and settled his chin on top of her head. It had become one of the ways he touched her. Something that was as comforting as macaroni and cheese or mashed potatoes. Something that showed that he loved her.
“They have a good mom, a good life, and a lot of good experiences with magic. Those will outweigh whatever trauma they feel today.”
Scarlett pressed her lips together and wondered if she’d made the worst decision of her life in coming back to Mystic Cove. Sure she’d fallen in love again, found the support of her family, and even got a new sister when Mom adopted Rebel, but…this was the third body she’d come across. Did fate decide it hated Scarlett and her daughters? What had they done to deserve this?
She pulled back to stare up at him and said, “I hate this.”
She glanced back to where her girls were sitting in her Suburban, chattering to each other. With the magic running high in her blood, she could see that they were bothered but not afraid. Scarlett sighed and then looked up at him.
“I hate this.”
“Are you going to be ok?” That was the boyfriend in Lex fighting with the sheriff. There was a body and a job to be done, and she was holding him back. She knew he wouldn’t leave until she said yes, and she knew she needed to say yes.
“I think there must be a hex bag. And Lex…where the body was placed…a druid did this. If we hadn’t been climbing around on the rocks in winter…I think nature would have escalated. Way faster than it would have. A druid used their magic to get rid of a body and hide it.”
The sheer idea of using the gift of her magic that way made her sick.
Lex kissed the top of her head and then asked, “Why are we involved? Why was there a hex bag in your house? Why was Gus targeted?”
Scarlett looked up at him, searching her mind for any reason that seemed likely. Nothing made sense. “I have no idea.”
Chapter 6
Scarlett waited until Harper arrived before doing anything else. Scarlett had taken a minute to message Harper before even climbing the steps back to the car. And when Scarlett got into her car with her daughters, she said, “We’ll wait for Harper. Won’t that be fun?”
Luna and Ella glanced at each other, speaking without words but they simply nodded. The haunted look had left their eyes since they’d started playing with the east wind, but they were still too tense. They were brittle as cracked glass.
Scarlett wasn’t sure she could believe that nod. But she got them to sing her Christmas carols and teased them about what horrible things Santa might bring them. She tried to keep their attention on her when two EMTs climbed down the steps with a body bag and a stretcher.
“Mommy,” Luna asked, “Do you think Santa is a druid?”
Scarlett blinked and then carefully said, “I think that makes sense. Like you said…the reindeer.”
Scarlett let her head drop against the back of her seat. She’d started the car, flipping on the seat warmers, and letting the heat rush over her feet. They were frozen. She had been cold before she found the body, but after…it was like something had prevented her from heating back up.
Scarlett listened to the girls whisper and then Luna said, “So then Santa would have the knowing and that’s how he knows if we’re good or not. And that’s how we get what we want because those guys in the stores aren’t the real Santa. Those guys are just so you can have pictures for when we’re old and moved away. He probably jus
t uses a charm to get through the chimney.”
“I don’t want to talk about the knowing,” Ella said. She shivered and glanced away from the emergency vehicles. “Can we go?”
The idea that her baby didn’t want to talk about one of the most beautiful pieces of druidic magic made Scarlett want to cry. But, she had to let it go for the moment. To be honest with herself, she didn’t blame Ella one little bit. Scarlett wasn’t too pleased with where the knowing had led them that morning.
“I think you should be at the Oaken house,” Scarlett said. “Harper is going to take you guys out there to be with Auntie Briët.”
“I don’t want to leave you, Mommy,” Luna said. “I want to stay at our house.”
Scarlett considered and then said, “What if we all go up there? I could come up tonight after I take care of things?”
“Mommy,” Luna said, “Will you find this bad guy too? And make it go away? I…I…don’t feel good. I want it to stop.”
Scarlett pressed her lips together. She hadn’t told her girls what she’d seen, but she was pretty sure that they could guess. With the knowing…that sweet whispering that warned of danger and the right choices…they had to have a pretty good idea. Especially if they could put together the fact that the cops had arrived and an ambulance but no one was worried enough to be running. It was too late to save the victim. Now they could only look for some sort of balance.
They could hear Harper’s car in the distance a dull rumble. She drove a new black muscle care, and she drove it like she was daring the cops to pull her over and give her a ticket.
Luna heard the car, frowned, and said again, “I don’t want to go to Nana’s.”
“Ok,” Scarlett said. “What about to see the new princess movie?”
Luna’s gaze brightened at that and as Harper screeched to a stop and jumped out, Scarlett grinned wickedly at her sister through the glass. Quinton followed Harper looking entirely unruffled by her driving.
Christmas and Curses Page 4