Finn’s lower lip trembled. “Okay, Mom.”

  Finn’s eyes were shiny, but he nodded. I leaned in and hugged him, kissing his forehead. A tear dripped onto his shoulder.

  “I love you so much,” I whispered. “And I’m so proud of you.”

  “Mom,” he started and there were tears falling down his face.

  I shook my head. “Go, Finn.”

  As he led the other children away, through the trees, Finn turned to look at me, eyes still shiny and unsure. I gave him a quick smile and a nod and he disappeared through the trees, leaving me with nothing but relief because I was fairly sure he and the children were safe.

  When I turned to face Janara, I found Wren standing in front of me, her doll-like face twisted with hate.

  “You will pay for that, gypsy!” she hissed.

  She thrust her staff in my direction and a softball-sized sphere of blue-white light hurtled toward my face.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I dove for the ground, landing face-first in a powdery snow drift. Even so, Wren’s spell only missed me by a quarter of an inch. The orb grazed my hair on the way down, and where the magic made contact, my hair was suddenly brittle, colorless straw. If the blast had made contact with my skin, I’d have frostbite, at the very least. The Winter Faeries may have been averse to hurting and killing children, but they didn’t appear to have the same qualms about adults, especially not adults who’d wronged them.

  I came up from the drift looking like Jack Nicholson’s stunt double from The Shining. I barely had time to blink snow from my eyes and rise to my feet, before Wren was on me. This time, she didn’t even bother with a burst of magic. She swung her white oak staff in a wide arc and brought it down against the side of my face. Even though the staff actually went through me (and I realized it was ethereal magic), it hit with as much force as a Louisville slugger. I fell to my knees again, and my vision swam.

  Now on my hands and knees, I spotted the rest of the battle in my periphery. It almost seemed unreal. Wanda’s hex had taken Rime completely off guard, and she seemed to be winning the fight. The Olwen glamour was wearing off, and she looked more herself, black hair trailing sleek and proud in the winter wind as she slung hex after hex at the bloodied seer.

  His eyes were finally focused on the here and now, darting this way and that, though he couldn’t seem to decide whether to focus them on the witch in front of him, or the vampire who was now flanking him on the right. And, as I watched, an angry centaur appeared on the path to the left and sasquatch stood beside him, roaring in all his shapeshifting glory.

  It turned out that the answer should have been C: Rime should have been focused on the pissed off centaur, Stanley, who’d been agonizing over his missing daughters for weeks.

  Stanley Stomper finished what Wanda started, dropping the faerie prophet from three feet away, leaving a clear imprint of a hoof on the side of Rime’s face. If Fox hadn’t assured us faeries were difficult to kill, I’d have worried Stanley had just murdered Janara’s advisor.

  And speaking of murder, Wren seemed pretty set on carrying out mine. She brought her staff down again, and I bucked, throwing her off me and avoiding her magical staff. It worked, but didn’t send her far. Then Roy appeared from behind her, coming out from the treeline. She was quick and, turning on him, threw her hands forward as a glowing blue, magical charm launched his way. The blue light sizzled as it made contact with him, dropping him to the ground instantly.

  “Roy!” I yelled while Wren turned to me. Dodging her staff and the coiled light at the end of it, I fell to the ground and as she brought the staff at me once again, I kicked out, catching her in the leg and throwing her off balance. As I watched, she tumbled to the ground and released the staff. When she landed, she rolled over the circle of toadstools that made up the faerie ring.

  As soon as she touched the ring, my fingertips began to tingle, and I dimly wondered if I was about to pass out. She’d hit me pretty hard in the side of the face, and whether or not the staff was made of magic, the blow had still hurt. But I didn’t collapse, and the feeling of buzzing grew stronger, spreading into my palms. I glanced down at my hands and gasped.

  They were wreathed in warm golden light. Magic. But, magic as I’d never seen it before. Yes, I knew I possessed gypsy magic. I felt it when I infused crystals and potions with power. Sometimes I could see it in the change of hue when the potions steeped, but I was no witch or faerie. I couldn’t draw power directly from the universe and shape it to my will, like they could. That wasn’t the way my abilities worked. And yet, for this one instant, I was staring at magic, my magic.

  The magic revealed itself to be a beautiful golden chain that wove from toadstool to destroyed toadstool, ringing around Wren in a way that could keep her locked inside the circle indefinitely, if I so chose. I could have laughed because when I’d whipped up the batch of Faerie Ring Oil, I’d only meant to break into the circle to free the children. I’d never meant to trap any of the faeries inside it. And, yet, that’s exactly what happened. And that realization gave me the beginnings of a plan.

  But, first I had to check on Roy. Head still smarting, I pushed to my feet and staggered toward him. When I reached him, I realized he was unconscious, but still breathing. And that was good enough for me to keep moving, keep fighting. But, for this next bit to work, I needed Wanda.

  I turned to face the others and saw Fox battling with Janara. I wasn’t sure where he’d come from or when, but now that he’d arrived, I was grateful. I moved slowly, both to avoid the blasts of arctic magic flying from Janara’s duel with Fox, and to keep from falling, face-first, into the snow again. The last thing I needed was to pass out, be buried in snow, and no one would find me until spring.

  It was difficult to see what Janara and Fox were doing, even when I was looking directly at them. They were moving so quickly, chucking blasts of blue-white and golden-red light at each other, they appeared as sparks of blurry light. It hurt my already aching head to try to keep track of them, so I only kept tabs in order to stay out of their way. I reached Wanda’s side a few minutes later, shaking and dizzy, but still alive.

  Wanda looked me up and down with the sort of flippancy I expected. “You look like crap. Tell me you got in a few of your own punches at least?”

  “You could say that,” I answered with a smile. “I trapped Wren in the faerie ring.” And then I explained how I thought we should do the same with Rime. I was betting that Janara would be willing to write Wren off as an acceptable loss, but I didn’t think she’d be willing to part with her sorceress and her prophet. Not when the real Olwen was still out there.

  Wanda gave me another once over, this time a little less skeptical. “Hmm, you’re not half as stupid as I previously gave you credit for.”

  She smiled and I smiled in return. “For now, I’ll take it.” Then I turned to face my vampire friend. “Lorcan, do you mind grabbing that faerie?” I pointed at Rime.

  Lorcan gave me a sharp-toothed smile and scooped Rime none-too-gently from the ground, flinging him over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes, not being mindful of the delicate wings folded across Rime’s back. At this distance, they resembled a strangely desaturated version of a blue morpho butterfly’s wings.

  “We saw Finn and Emma running for the treeline. Are the other children alright?” Stanley asked.

  He allowed me to lean against his flank as we walked. I sank against him gratefully because my head had started pounding like an SOB.

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but since they aren’t on the battlefield, I think they’re in the clear.”

  I caught another glimpse of Fox around Stanley’s flank as we made our way toward the faerie ring. Every faerie I’d seen, thus far, had been more beautiful without their glamour, and Fox had been good-looking even when he was pretending to be human.

  Like the others, he was about a foot taller than I’d originally thought. Lean and spritely, he was now dressed in shades of mottled green and brown. Instead of the sweet, syrupy golden-brown, his eyes were amber, his hair the gingery orange of Aspen leaves just turning in the fall. His features were leaner and somehow more vulpine than they’d been in his human form. He had no wings that I could see, but I could have sworn he had a fluffy orange tail. Before I could be sure, he was busily casting another spell, blurring out of my line of sight again.

  Stanley shielded me from an incoming crescent of golden-red light as we made our way back toward the faerie ring. The blast sailed over our heads and doubled back like a boomerang, landing a solid hit between Janara’s bird-like shoulder blades. The motes of light burst apart in a shower of hay and raven’s feathers. The Snow Queen shrieked as a half dozen crows swarmed her, trying to pluck the mirror pieces she called eyes.

  Janara shrieked again, more loudly this time. She clawed at the air, but for every bird she managed to blast, two more took its place, crawling from the straw innards of the scarecrows Fox had magicked while she was distracted. By the time she spotted the source of the horde, she was faring as well as Tippi Hedren had in The Birds.

  We reached the ring of toadstools just as Janara blasted the smiling cloth sack face off the flannel-wearing scarecrow. Fox dove out of the way, shrinking to avoid the blast, and hit the ground in the form of an overlarge red fox. He landed wrong, hit something hard, and yelped. Janara advanced on him, drawing something sharp from an inner fold of her dress.

  “I suppose there’s more than one way to nix a prophecy,” she muttered darkly. “I was trying to do this properly, you know, Reynard. But as always, everyone conspired to cheat me. Typical.”

  Janara ran one finger over the delicate edge of a bone dagger and leaned over the prince, a saccharine smile spreading like a thin layer of frost over her face. “We’ll do this your way, Reynard. Let the real Olwen try to retake her throne without the aid of Autumn and see how that goes for her!”

  “Get Rime in the circle now!” I hissed to Lorcan.

  Lorcan launched Rime like a floppy faerie missile over the ring of spotted toadstools. Wren yelped and danced out of the way, before her companion landed where she’d been standing only moments before. Rime didn’t so much as twitch when he landed on his side in the snow, fully ensconced in the faerie ring and, as such, trapped.

  “My queen will not let this insult to her court go unmet, mortal!” Wren yelled at me, her eyes blazing with hatred. “Ransom us if you will, but even if she decides to bend to you this night, she will not be so merciful next time. You will rue the day you crossed us!”

  The death threat was delivered in Wren’s sing-song voice, and her shiny, beatific smile never wavered. As threats went, it was one of the best I’d heard, but I couldn’t let it distract me. If I let this creepy little pixie get into my head, Fox was done for.

  I seized the Roundup Pump Sprayer, whirled around, pressed two fingers to the tips of my tongue, and blew out a sharp whistle. “Janara!” I yelled. “Look what I caught!”

  Janara’s head whipped around and when she spied Wren and Rime trapped in the faerie ring, I thought she’d burst into a furious spray of ice shards and snow. Her already bloodless face grew somehow paler, the mirror-like surface of her eyes clouding over with ice. Her free hand formed a bony claw at her side, and her nails bit into her palms until blood ran, but even that froze in a line of scarlet against her snowy skin.

  I glanced at Fox and watched him grow in size, resuming his human shape.

  “We’ve got control of your faerie ring, Janara,” I continued, facing her once again. “I’ve got plenty of potions that will do major damage to Rime and Wren, unless you do exactly as I say.”

  Janara’s lip curled. “You don’t have the stomach for violence, gypsy.”

  I stood a little straighter, and I didn’t have to feign the scorn in my voice. “You took my son. That gives me all the courage I need to destroy you and your accomplices.” By the expression in her eyes, she believed me. “Now, you’re going to step away from Fox,” I continued. “Or, you can suffer the consequences…”

  The howling wind stopped without warning, every sparkling flake swirling to the ground like forlorn circles of confetti. In the silence that followed, everything seemed too loud. I was convinced Janara could hear my heart pounding out a staccato number all the way across the clearing. If she called my bluff, we’d all be doomed.

  Meanwhile, the golden energy of the Faerie Ring Oil continued to dance along my fingers, highlighting the ring. Janara just stared at me for a few seconds as I stared back at her. Then her eyes narrowed to slits and her lips tightened as she stepped away from Fox.

  He, meanwhile, pushed to his feet and stood there, hatred burning in his eyes as he faced Janara and attempted to catch his breath.

  I glanced down at the shining golden power that curled around my fingers. When I looked up, my breath caught as I watched Fox leap forward, with his arms extended out before him. His palms met Janara’s back and thrust her forward, right into the golden chain of magic surrounding the faerie ring. My heart seemed to stop for a moment as I heard a ‘blip’ sound when Janara touched the magic and then she was sucked into the ring, landing on her side with an inglorious ‘umph’.

  I watched as the golden magic chain began to fade into the whiteness of the snow beneath it, and the three prisoners within also began to disappear. Fairly soon, I was facing nothing but a circle of red and white toadstools surrounded in white snow.

  “It won’t hold them forever,” Fox said as he came to stand beside me. “Janara and Wren’s power is too great and they’ll eventually be able to free themselves.”

  “But it will hold them for now?” I asked.

  He looked at me and nodded. “For now.”

  And that meant Olwen, the residents of Haven Hollow, the missing children and my son were all… safe.

  For now.

  ***

  At the sound of footsteps crunching in the snow, I turned to watch Wanda approaching me. She reached for the lock of hair Wren had magicked into straw. She narrowed her eyes as she studied it, and then they went wide. An expression of what appeared to be genuine sympathy crossed her face.

  “Goddess, that’s a permafrost hex! If that had hit you, it would have frozen you to the spot. You’d have become an ice statue.”

  “Well, good freaking thing Wren’s aim was off!”

  “Amen to that sister,” Wanda responded with a smile.

  “Sister?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Yeah, don’t get used to it. I’m sure I’ll be back to being the bitch you know tomorrow.”

  “Hey, better the bitch, er the witch, you know, right?”

  Wanda laughed and then turned to face Fox. “So… did we win?”

  It was the same question we all were thinking, but too afraid to voice.

  “It seems so,” Fox said, brushing a fine layer of snow from his trousers. “Against all odds, we prevailed.” His smile was beaming. “Well done, everyone.” Then he turned to face me. “Especially you, Poppy. Trapping Wren and Rime in the circle was ingenious, and I do believe you saved my life. I owe you a great debt. But, I still have a ghost to catch in the meantime. Is there anything I can do for you before I take my leave?”

  “No. Go after that ghost!” I said, adding, “Reynard the fox.”

  “Reynard the fox?” Wanda repeated, looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “Do you want to tell her?” I asked, facing the prince.

  He shook his head with a grin. “You may do the honors.”

  And with that, Fox disappeared.

  We were all quiet for a few seconds before Wanda faced me with a question in her eyes.

  “Reynard the Fox is an old folk tale my mom used to tell me when I was a girl. Even though Reynard was sly, amoral and self-seeking, he was still a sympathetic hero, whose cunning was necessary for survival.”

  “That fits Fox to a T,” Wanda muttered.

  I nodded as something else occurred to me. “The French word for ‘fox’ is ‘renard’.”

  Hmm, interesting…

  Chapter Nineteen

  When I walked up my front steps, my lungs were burning, there was a stitch in my side, and my headache had increased tenfold. I leaned into Roy, who supported me against him. After he’d passed out, owing to Wren’s charmed blast, he’d come to a few minutes later and now he didn’t seem the worse for wear. Apparently, shapeshifters were good healers.

  “I can carry you, Poppy,” he said with a smile.

  “No,” I answered, shaking my head. “I want to walk.”

  Mainly because I didn’t want Finn to see me incapacitated to such a point that Roy had to carry me.

  Before either of us reached the front door, it flung open and Marty stood there, wearing an expression of worry. When his eyes settled on me, relief flooded them. He took a step closer, throwing his arms around me as I tried to catch my breath, but he was basically suffocating me.

  “Thank God you’re alright,” he whispered.

  “Dollface!” Darla yelled as she materialized directly beside me and, trying to wrap her arms around me, floated right through me. “I thought you were a goner! When I heard you’d gone up against faerie magic, I thought: that’s as good as goin’ up against a chopper squad!”

  “I’m alright,” I said to both Darla and Marty, but my thoughts were only on one thing. “I need to see Finn.” But, then fear gripped me. I pulled away from Marty and looked up at him. “How is he?”

  Marty shrugged. “Physically? There’s not a scratch on him. Emotionally, I’m not sure.”

  I felt my stomach drop as I tried to understand the implications of his comment. “What… what do you mean?”

  “He seems a little shell-shocked. RJ, Henner, and your uncles are in the living room with him.”

  “I was too,” Darla added.

  I turned to face the foyer and then the living room. As I walked in, I could see Finn sitting in the middle of the couch, facing the roaring fire in the fireplace. Someone must have raided my linen closet because it appeared every quilt I owned was now draped over Finn’s thin shoulders.