Chapter Six

  Wanda’s face paled, and her expression became stony.

  “And on that note, we’ve got to get you to bed, young man,” Poppy said as she stood up and pulled Finn to his feet.

  “Do we have to, Mom? Lorcan’s about to have an episode and I don’t want to miss it.”

  “Well, I for one, do,” Poppy answered and gave the remaining handful of people a hurried and embarrassed smile.

  Marty was already on his feet and assembling all their belongings and presents as if he were well aware the time to leave had already expired. Well, damn Poppy and damn him too!

  “No one said this party was over!” I called out, slamming my palm into my thigh as an acid laugh bubbled from my lips. “Who wants to hear more about these silly traditions everyone continuously goes on about!”

  “Lorcan!” Wanda turned on me, her expression violently serious.

  “More about the goddess and… and Santa Claus—I’d like to hear all about that git who never brought me one blasted gift when I was a boy!”

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I was being an arsehole, but I couldn’t communicate as much to my runaway mouth. It kept going, and every word only made Wanda’s eyes grow colder.

  Poppy and her son were already at the front door, Marty and Henner behind them, carrying their many packages. As I glanced about the room, I watched the rest of the revelers beginning to fuss with their gifts, purses and jackets and little by little, they began to scatter like ants after the picnic’s been packed up.

  “Then that’s it?” I yelled, glaring at each and every one of them. “Everyone’s leaving? What happened to our party?”

  “You ruined it,” the behemoth sasquatch responded, his eyes burning.

  “And you’re the only bloody person I want to see leave!”

  The brute didn’t respond other than to thank Wanda for the festivities and she, in turn, escorted him to the door. When she closed the door behind him, she turned to face me and her anger was almost palpable. It was then that the blasted Yule log seemed to take on a life of its own and simply rolled out of the grate, losing its flames as it clattered to the stone floor and then lay there.

  I had a feeling such wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Wanda stood straighter as I approached the log and, extending a vicious kick, tried to thrust it back into the grate. But it only hit the wall of the fireplace and rolled back towards me as if to taunt my effort. I extended my foot to stop it from rolling further into the room, and then turned to stare at Wanda’s retreating back.

  “Sweetling?” I started as I followed her, all the while realizing I’d really made a mess of things. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did,” she answered as she turned to face me and her eyes were like burning gems in her face. “I think I’m not alone when I say everyone has had their fill of you for the evening.”

  Wanda then turned on her heel and started for the front doors again, followed by the remaining few party goers from the drawing room. A couple human-like monsters and two exotics shot me dirty looks on their way out and as their displeasure fell on me, I realized (even in my foggy state) that I’d just ruined everyone’s good time.

  I toasted those who were still on their way out with a grim, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight.”

  Of course, no one responded and when I was the only one left in the drawing room, I plucked the Yule log from the floor and followed the others into the night, hoping I hadn’t already missed Wanda.

  But, I had.

  The only creature to greet me was a beagle who fixed a bleary stare on me with deep, soulful, brown eyes. The creature had been sheltering under the porch to keep out of the cold.

  “Blast!”

  The beagle simply trotted past me and into my house as if he owned the place. Looking at the blackened Yule log in my arms, I tossed it into a clump of snow just outside my door, then followed him back inside. Closing the doors behind us, I figured the beagle’s company was better than no company at all.

  “Well, have you a name?” I asked.

  The dog looked up at me and yawned, before turning in a few circles before the fire and flopping down on the rug, immediately falling asleep.

  “I shall call you ‘Disaster’… in honor of this night.”

  ***

  It was an unfortunate reality that my metabolism could burn off damn near anything in just a few hours. By half past one in the evening, sobriety had crept up and tapped me on the shoulder, leaving the cold, unsettling feeling that I’d really arsed things up at the party. The evening had been going so well and then... well, my mother had always said my mouth got me into trouble. Years ago it had gotten me killed, and now it had destroyed everyone’s evening and caused the love of my life to storm away from me in a fit of pique.

  Not to mention the festivities tonight had not only been for Yule, but for the day Wanda had been brought into this world—the most important of days, in my opinion. And look how I’d botched it. Ruined it.

  Blast!

  At the thought of the log, for which Wanda had cared so much, just sitting out there in the cold snow, I fired off a few choice curse words and went to retrieve it. But, upon seeing it and knowing it was supposedly gifted by ‘the Goddess’, I opted to leave it there. Returning to the living room, Disaster didn’t bother to even open one eye as I sighed and dropped myself into my armchair.

  “Yule log, fool log,” I muttered, watching Disaster as he looked up at me and whimpered. “What a bunch of shite...”

  I supposed I could have been more tactful at the moment, but I’d say it all again—all that talk about tradition and belief was just a bunch of guff as far as I was concerned. The goddess was just a distant, cosmic, authoritarian arsehole. She was the frontrunner of the most elitist of clubs that would never have me as a member. Not that such mattered, because I would never want to join their ranks, anyway. No, I was happy being a pariah. I was happy to have a soul that was damned. And who was she to judge me, anyway? It wasn’t as though I’d had any choice in the matter of what I’d become.

  Still... this Goddess tripe mattered to Wanda. All of it—tradition, belief, the Yule log… I should have kept my mouth shut, if only to preserve her feelings.

  “Curse my runaway tongue!”

  Disaster looked up at me then and growled as if he were annoyed I’d interrupted his slumber.

  “Well, curse you too!”

  Maybe I ought to have Googled the insipid tradition of this Yule bunk and carried the ritual out as some sort of apology.

  But some small, bitter part of me couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

  Wanda’s goddess was part of the problem—part and parcel of the reasons why Wanda abhorred herself for what she’d become. I wasn’t about to perform some nonsensical hocus pocus to appease an entity that turned her nose up at Wanda for being something Wanda hadn’t chosen.

  Disaster whined at me again and I figured he must have been hungry. Thus, yanking my mobile from out of my pocket, I deftly maneuvered my fingers to my DoorDash application (I’d only downloaded the silly thing in order to feed Wanda when she was over and hungry) and ordered the little bloke a steak dinner.

  “Do you prefer mashed potatoes or grilled vegetables?”

  The dog cocked his head to the side and studied me as I laughed. “Of course you’d prefer the potatoes—silly question.”

  ***

  My father had been a sailor, born and bred.

  If I concentrated, I could sometimes dredge up a clear image of his face. He’d been a handsome man with a taste for adventure. I’d gotten my straw-colored hair from him and, similarly to the way I now wore mine, he’d also pulled his into a tail at the base of his neck. His hair was an even lighter shade than mine, though, bleached to a near-white from so many years in the sun. His skin was tanned insomuch as an Irishman can tan. His hands had been large and calloused. His life’s ambition had been to rope me into the family trade.

  He’d failed.

  Every time I’d set foot on a boat, I’d found myself violently ill, after only an hour at sea. Of course it’s most likely difficult to believe that I, a suave and sophisticated vampire, could have been such an abject failure at what was a fairly common trade back in the day.

  “Abject failure,” I repeated as I blinked my eyes open and tried to shake the heaviness of sleep from me. I shook my head and attempted to keep the memories from assaulting my mind, but it was too late. The memory of my father’s expression—of the slow realization that his son wasn’t the man he was—was already making itself known.

  The familiar mortification made my stomach pitch, and I tried to contain a string of choice curses. I hated this particular dream. Even today, over two hundred years later, I could still feel the boat tossing back and forth in a nauseating roll.

  No... no, that wasn’t imagination. My coffin was moving, bobbing up and down like a ship’s deck. What the bloody hell?

  I shoved at the lid of the coffin and it scraped against something solid. I pushed even harder and then spluttered when a rain of plaster pelted my face, stabbing at my eyes and filling my mouth. A cloud of fine dust settled over me, and I blinked hard at the pebbled white surface. It took me several moments to realize what I was staring at. The cellar ceiling. I was almost nose-to-plaster with it.

  But, that… that didn’t make any damned sense!

  I tried to sit up, which upset the balance of the coffin. It pitched sideways, spilling me into the cold, cloudy water and in my own shock, I opened my mouth to yell but it only filled with water. When I surfaced, I banged my head on the ceiling, and flailed in pain and confusion. Fortunately for me, the bare bulb still shone inches above the waterline, giving me a clear view of the room.

  Every single steamer trunk and coffin I kept stored in the cellar was bobbing like corks on top of a musty sea. The pipes must have burst, buoying everything in the cellar.

  “Oh, for feck’s sake,” I groused even as I wondered how a burst pipe could fill this room to the brim. It had only been a matter of hours that I’d been asleep…

  At the moment, though, the hows and whys of it didn’t matter. What did matter was escaping the room and then I’d call Marty’s mundane friend, RJ. He was a handyman, if I recalled correctly.

  And that was when I remembered Disaster, the beagle. I’d left him sleeping in the drawing room, in front of the fire, before I’d settled into the cellar. I could only hope the poor animal was alright, though I imagined he should have been because there was no way the floor above me could have flooded to this extent.

  Using a breaststroke, I managed to swim up the stairs, which were also submerged up until the third or so step. Climbing the rest of the way, I reached the door that led into the kitchen and opened it with a sigh of relief. By the time I slouched into the kitchen, I’d wrung a swimming pool’s worth of water from my hair and clothes.

  Disaster then appeared from around the corner and once he saw me, wagged his silly little tail and barked a few times—as if to tell me what had happened.

  “I’m well aware, old chap,” I mumbled.

  In response, he pawed at the ground, as though in distress.

  I swung the cellar door closed with my toes and gave the canine a pointed look. He just stood there, staring at me.

  “What?” I asked as I shook my head, and wondered why I was even bothering with talking to the dog as though expecting him to respond. Perhaps I was starting to go a bit mad? Well, madder at any rate. Considering the water level was still rising in the cellar, I figured it was just a matter of time before it completely submerged the stairs and began leaking into the kitchen. My keys to the cellar door were probably floating on the great, gray sea below, so I pushed the table in front of the door.

  “There. Now that’s you taken care of,” I muttered, checking the stove clock, I realized it was four in the morning. And that meant RJ would not be awake yet. Blast.

  A clap of thunder suddenly shook the house, and the air outside the sash windows flashed violet-white as a fork of lightning split the dark sky, striking the cherry tree in the backyard. Rain sheeted down in torrents, and the thunder continued to grumble from overhead, matching my own dark mood.

  And that was very odd because before I’d gone to bed, it had been snowing…

  I winced and reached for the landline I so rarely used these days and dialed RJ’s number, in hopes the mundane would answer at this earliest of hours. I waited, all the while casting furtive glances at the cherry tree. Another bolt of lightning hit the unfortunate thing and in response, orange-red flames licked inside the bark, but the rain was keeping the worst of the burn at bay.

  Great, now I’d have to add the fire department to my list of calls I still needed to make, Wanda being next and Poppy after her. And, blast it all, but RJ wasn’t answering.

  Chapter Seven

  “It’s really pouring out there,” Jennifer commented, peering out the back window of my dental practice at the raging storm.

  I’d finally been able to get in touch with RJ and he was at my property now, searching for the busted pipe that had filled the cellar. He was understandably quite surprised to find the cellar filled to the extent it was, and though he’d set up numerous pool pumps to evacuate the water, such wasn’t an easy feat. Not wanting to stick around and make small talk with the man (who was ardently obsessed with all things Bigfoot—a preoccupation which had, understandably, biased me against him), I’d taken advantage of the stormy conditions and I’d decided to head to the office.

  I’d called Wanda at least four times, needing to make my apologetic overture, but of course, she hadn’t picked up. And because I’d already had to push two patients to later in the morning, I didn’t have time to swing by her place to apologize in person. Poppy had been much more understanding, answering on the second ring and assuring me she forgave me for my drunken idiocy, and so did her son.

  I frowned at the raging storm outside. “Only yesterday it was snowing.”

  I’d seen some strange weather in my days, but this lightning storm was probably the strangest. According to the cute brunette on channel four, the Hollow had been due for a few more inches of snow this week, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about a freak lightning and thunder storm. Not only that, but the fat droplets pelting the ground outside were as warm as summer rain. I’d have suspected a faerie playing tricks if the storm were on a much smaller scale. A storm of this magnitude would call for a lot more juice. More than any faerie in the Hollow possessed.

  I made a noncommittal sound and turned back to Harvey Franklin’s open mouth. One wisdom tooth out, another to go. I could feel Jennifer’s hopeful gaze on the side of my face. Jennifer, one of my hygienists, was one of a few staff members who had picked up and moved with me when I’d relocated my practice from Portland to the Hollow.

  And Jennifer was… well, she was a bit of a problem. From the start, she’d been flirtatious, always dropping hints that she’d like to engage in more than a professional relationship with me. But even before Wanda, I wouldn’t have considered my hygienist as anything but. If eternal life had taught me anything, it was that one should never mix business with pleasure. Furthermore, it was a bad idea to become involved with mortals.

  “It really is the strangest thing,” she said, passing me a stack of gauze pads. “I called April in town... you know April, right? She works in that sham psychic agency?”

  I bit down on a caustic reply. Spook Society was not, in fact, a sham. To anyone in the know, it was one of the leading medium and psychic consultancy firms in the country. Due to their construction, Hollows were hospitable habitats for monsters, allowing said monsters more freedom than any other places in the world. That, unfortunately, meant that other, more spectral things flourished within its borders as well.

  If one died in a Hollow, one was ten times more likely to return as a spook. If that death were violent or accidental, coming back as a spook was almost a certainty. It was no wonder that Marty Zach and his ghostbusting gang saw so much business.

  When I glanced up from packing the gauze into Harvey’s new holes within his mouth, I found Jennifer staring at me, baby blues shining with barely suppressed hope. She was almost thirty-five, but that look practically screamed ‘schoolgirl with her first crush’. Much though I didn’t want to, I was going to have to hurt her in order for her to release this dream she’d built up in her head.

  It wasn’t as though she were unattractive, either. A petite, blonde, she kept in shape by running five miles every morning. Her lips were a little on the thin side, but her cute, upturned nose and freckles made up for it. Perhaps in another life she and I… but no, even then I couldn’t imagine Jennifer and I could have ever been anything. Before Wanda, I had not been a man who could have been characterized as monogamous or in any way fond of commitment.

  It was then that I realized Jennifer was staring at me expectantly, and I realized I’d lost the thread of the conversation somewhere along the way.

  “I’m sorry, Jen, my mind was elsewhere. What were we discussing again?”

  She giggled and batted her eyelashes a few times. “I was telling you about April, from that agency... what’s it called again?”

  “Spook Society,” I muttered. It was about time to wake Harvey up.

  “Right,” she answered with a smile. “Well, we’re in the same book club, so we talk from time to time. April said the weather girl is freaking out about the meteorological conditions in Haven Hollow.”

  That caught my attention, and I looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “Apparently, it’s snowing everywhere else, except for here, in town. For some reason, there’s like a localized heatwave that’s causing a severe thunderstorm. No one knowns why it’s here, though, or why it’s settled only over Haven Hollow.”

  I swallowed hard.

  A thunderstorm in winter was odd, but given the number of faeries, witches, and monsters who lived in the Hollow, it was theoretically possible that someone had accidentally meddled with the weather. Hell, Wanda’s status as a Blood Witch practically guaranteed that something like this would happen sooner or later.