He nodded and looked a little disappointed, even as I was relieved. “Okay, Pops.”

  It took some effort, but I managed to keep my steps even and not look like I was fleeing the room.

  Chapter Four

  Haven Hollow was beautiful under a blanket of freshly fallen snow.

  Everything looked a little too perfect, like a Christmas card. I couldn’t help but wonder if some of the supernaturals had banded together to make the town look so picturesque for the holiday tourists. Maybe things with the Winter Court of Faeries had calmed down enough that we could have a peaceful Christmas, again. Wars of succession had a way of complicating the holidays.

  The town Council had gone all out with their decorating. The entire downtown was done up with pretty garlands of evergreen boughs decorating all the telephone poles, and wreaths on the street lights. Every storefront featured painted windows with Christmassy scenes and all the trees were wound up in white fairy lights.

  There was a cluster of white wicker reindeer on the lawn outside Stomper’s Creamery, lit up from beneath with a spotlight. Sweeter Haunt’s front window was filled with fake snow and little lights to better show off the candy canes, peanut brittle, marshmallow Santas, and hot cocoa bombs that were on display there. Just walking past it had my mouth watering.

  Up the street, I could see the Half-Moon Bar and Grill, still closed this early in the day, but someone had gone to a lot of effort to flock the windows with fake snow, so they looked like something from Santa’s workshop.

  Even Wanda’s Witchery was done up for the holidays. Though witches actually celebrated Yule this time of year and weren’t necessarily big on Christmas, Wanda had always had a good instinct for what would draw customers into her store, and it had only gotten better once her cousin, Maverick, had started working for her. Maverick might have been a cantankerous grouch, but he was actually more pleasant to customers than Wanda was, herself.

  I strolled up the sidewalk, my hands in my pockets, and looked in through the windows at the mannequins on display there, each of them wearing an absolutely gorgeous holiday dress. Office parties were big business, especially when the clothing was enchanted for poise and confidence, and maybe even impressing someone enough to get a promotion out of the deal.

  My eyes drifted, and I realized with a little surprise that Wanda’s shop had actually expanded into the space next door, where a stationery store had been before. I was beyond happy to know that Wanda was doing so well in the future that she was able to expand her shop. The window display in what was once the stationery store was now taken up with beautiful and sexy satin pajamas, which were, according to the sign, guaranteed to give the wearer the best night’s sleep.

  That made me think of my own restless night’s sleep, and my stomach gave a little unpleasant twist. I had to turn away sharply at the memory of the dream in which Marty had accused me of not being in love with him.

  From what I could tell, it wasn’t like marrying Marty had ended up… bad necessarily. That morning was a perfect example of how things were cozy and comfortable between us—just like I was used to. There had been a definite feeling of peaceful domesticity, of easy familiarity. Marty was one of my favorite people and being able to spend the rest of my life with him… well, it would be nice.

  It was nice. I’d just witnessed that firsthand.

  Right?

  Yes, but…

  Something was missing.

  Something was always missing.

  Searching for a distraction, I let myself look over across the street to where my own store stood proudly. I walked across the brick expanse, eager to see if anything had changed inside Poppy’s Potions.

  The outside of my store was all done up for Christmas, with a display of delicate glass bottles and an array of candles already anointed and ready to be lit. There were garlands hung around the edges of the window, with little glass ornaments hanging from the evergreen boughs, and I made a little sound of excitement at how pretty it all was.

  My store hadn’t expanded like Wanda’s, but then, potions took up a heck of a lot less room than gowns, purses and shoes. I was eager to see any changes made to the inside of the shop, so I fumbled my keys out of my pocket and let myself in. A little gasp escaped me as I flicked on the overhead lights and stared at all the glittering displays.

  All my antique, heavy wooden cabinets were still there, which was good because I loved how they made the store look like an old-time apothecary shop. But glass shelves had been interspersed between them, along with dark wood racks towards the back of the store. The glass shelves had beautiful little fairy lights draped over them, shining straight through and making everything look like it had been carved out of gleaming ice.

  I wandered the aisles, running my fingers along a shelf here, examining a potion bottle there, and taking notes about the ideas that I absolutely loved so I could work them into my own plans as soon as possible. Was that cheating? Maybe. But some of them were just too good to pass up.

  I loved being inside my shop. There was something about all the gleaming dark wood, and the pretty glass, as well as the scents of almond oil and citrus and clove that just helped to melt the tension from my shoulders.

  One thing I noticed though, after my second spin through the rows of shelves, was the change in my stock. Well, not change exactly. More like a whole line of potions was decidedly missing. While there were still tons of different types of potions, dreamcatchers and anointed candles, and even a couple examples of wax melts that were infused, some of my more popular recipes seemed to be missing.

  I never stocked anything dangerous, or illicit like hexing type potions. That just wasn’t my style—not the sort of mojo I wanted to put out into the world. So it wasn’t the lack of dark potions that had caught my attention. More, it was the lack of love-related potions and the sexier side of the love potions like lust potions that were causing me to do a double-take.

  I’d always carried a few harmless… adult potions. Nothing dirty, no matter how many times Astrid might have accused me (just to get a rise out of me). But potions like Love’s Goddess, or Come to Me oil or Aura of Venus, all of which could be used to attract male attention. Some were excellent as massage oils with an intimate partner. And some could be used to, ah, help warm the ol’ engine up, so to say. The point was, I used to have a discrete little shelf section towards the back of the store for people who were looking to spice things up in the bedroom or to get the attention of that cute co-worker they’d been eyeing.

  But that section and those potions were now gone. In fact, as I moved around the future version of my store, I couldn’t find a single potion that had anything to do with love, lust, or really any strong emotion at all. Could it be that I was just sold out? But as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I immediately discarded it. It didn’t seem possible to have sold out of every one of them. Maybe I just didn’t carry them any longer? That seemed kind of short sighted though. Love and lust potions were some of my biggest sellers.

  So, why had I stopped carrying love potions?

  A little nagging feeling of something being off squirmed through me and even though I tried to shake the feeling away, it wouldn’t go.

  Why had I stopped carrying love potions?!

  Unless a lot of things had changed in just five years, I still had one place to check for the answer.

  My own notes.

  Potion making could be an intensely personal thing. Mostly, I followed the same recipes as my mother and her mother before her, but sometimes I made little adjustments, here and there, following my own instincts regarding what felt right to me. And I tended to keep a lot of notes of my experiments: notes on what worked, what didn’t, and what I thought might have gone wrong if something wasn’t successful. The notes helped me hone my craft, and I was fairly sure I hadn’t stopped writing them because they’d been a huge part of my potion making all along.

  It took a bit of searching, but eventually I found the little leather-bound notebook tucked under the drawer in the antique cash register. Flipping through it took some work. Quite a few things had changed in five years, after all, and one of them seemed to be how I sorted my note taking. I had to turn back quite a few pages to find the answer to my question. And when I did, my heart sank.

  From what I read in my notes, it seemed I hadn’t been able to brew any strong love or lust-based potions for the past three years. Each time I tried, the magic just didn’t seem to want to stick.

  Today I tried to brew Charlotte’s Web, I read from my notes in an entry dated two years ago. But the potion just sort of fizzled when I joined the ingredients, leaving a limp gray mess that did nothing and smelled even worse.

  That was strange.

  More than strange, actually. It was unnerving because Charlotte’s Web was one of my easiest love potions to brew and one of my biggest sellers.

  Oh, sure, I’d botched potions before. I’d let myself get distracted, or maybe I’d get the ratio of my ingredients off. It happened, especially when I was first learning. And then again after I’d joined Wanda’s coven and my magic got pretty funky for a bit. I guessed that was what happened when you melded with a group of witches, some of them Blood Witches, infected with vampire blood. Most recently, I was still trying to figure out where they ended and I began.

  At least Wanda’s inability to brew a potion hadn’t infected me. I’d never made anything explode, so there was that. But I’d also never just had potions stop working for me.

  I slipped the notebook back into its hiding place and shivered, feeling suddenly chilled in spite of the warmth of the store. There was just this uneasiness building inside me, making my stomach churn.

  I suddenly needed some fresh air, so I left the sign turned to closed and locked the store back up. It was for the best, anyway. What if someone came in who’d ordered something and I didn’t know what in the world they were talking about? It would seem like I’d lost my mind. Besides, I would need to leave for Portland in a little bit to pick up Finn. Future me would just have to deal with the loss of revenue of last-minute potion shoppers.

  And on that thought, I had another one—what about Future Me? Was I going to walk into myself five years from now? And if that happened, would the world cease to be or something? The more I thought about it though, the more I didn’t think it was possible. It wasn’t like I’d arrived five years in the future, looking like Poppy from five years in the past. As far as I could tell, I was Poppy five years from now—I just had no memory of the years that had gone by.

  I almost crossed the street to go back to Wanda’s shop. My witch BFF always had a way of putting things into perspective for me, usually with a near lethal dose of sarcasm, true, but I appreciated her brutal honesty.

  Then I remembered, Wanda wouldn’t be in her store, not while the sun was up, at least. I was assuming that, five years down the road, she’d still be pretending to have been turned into a vampire by Lorcan. That was how they’d managed to get the covens and the vampires off their backs about Wanda being a Blood Witch. I didn’t see that changing anytime soon, and that had to mean she’d still kept up her nocturnal lifestyle.

  So, really, there was no one I could talk to. It was a little disappointing, but at least the town looked beautiful in all its holiday finery. As I stood there, a gentle snow started, glittering flakes falling from the pewter clouds like something out of a fairy tale. The nice kind of fairy tale, for children, at least. But as far as the Fae went, I didn’t trust them as far as I could throw them.

  As I walked back down Main Street, looking at the lights and the trees and the red ribbon wrapped lamppost that looked like a candy cane, with the carols trickling through the air each time a door opened, I just couldn’t seem to enjoy it. Christmas was one of my favorite times of year, and yet I couldn’t seem to get into the spirit of things at all. There was this pit inside my stomach, an aching kind of hollowness, and I just couldn’t seem to shake it.

  The door to the Half-Moon opened as I was walking up the street, and Fifi stepped out into the snow, looking like a supermodel doing a winter fashion shoot. Fifi was one of the nicest people I knew. She might have been a terrible demon, but she was a great real estate agent, and she was a great friend.

  As a lust demon, it was hard for Fifi to ever look bad. She was perfectly proportioned, with glittering silver hair down to her tailbone, and a face that made people do a double take. I’d seen it happen before. One poor guy almost fell down the stairs once. But that morning, with the snow falling around her, and a smile on her ethereal face, Fifi was practically glowing.

  The reason for her extra sparkle stepped out the door behind her, bending down from his towering height to press a kiss to her lips.

  Roy, my ex-boyfriend, raised his head, but stayed hunched over so he could say something to Fifi in that low, growling voice of his that made her giggle and brought a pretty flush to her cheeks.

  You might have thought it was the sight of my ex so obviously in love with another woman that was the cause for the breath catching in my throat. Roy and I had been good together, true. He was amazing. But I’d broken up with him once I realized he and Fifi were soulmates. Literally. A witch had pulled me aside to warn me that Roy was bound by fate to another woman and that didn’t seem to be good for the longevity of our own relationship.

  I couldn’t compete with that. Heck, I didn’t want to compete with that. Soulmates were such a rare and precious thing, to find your person, the other half of your soul. Who would ever want to get in the middle of that?

  So, no, it wasn’t the way the two of them curved in towards each other that had my hand flying up to press over my heart, though it did give a little twinge. It was the little blanket wrapped bundle that Roy had tucked into the crook of his arm, a thatch of silvery blond hair poking up at the top, that had me fighting back a squeal.

  Roy passed the baby carefully to Fifi, his big hands so gentle, and she took the little bundle with a practiced movement, already rocking slightly from side to side. She said something back to him and then turned towards the SUV parked at the curb. Together, they carefully got the baby settled into a car seat, and with another kiss, Fifi got in the driver’s side and pulled away, while Roy waved before heading back into the Half-Moon.

  I could have gone over and said Merry Christmas, and taken a look at the baby. But somehow, I just couldn’t make myself take the steps. Neither of them had noticed me, and it wasn’t until the door swung shut behind Roy that I finally managed to take a gasping breath.

  I stood there for a long moment, with the snow falling all around me, not understanding why I felt like I was missing something. The lights were beautiful, and the smell of shortbread dancing on the air was its own kind of magical. The town was practically alive with the magic of Christmas and my friends appeared to be so, so happy.

  So why wasn’t I?

  Chapter Five

  I wandered through the town, past all the cheerfully decorated shops.

  But my own mood hung over me like a soggy blanket, making it hard for me to appreciate the charm of Haven Hollow at Christmas time. A car drove by, too close to the curb, and splattered gray slush across the pristine snow ahead of me.

  I tried not to take it as a sign.

  Before I could sink too far into the doldrums, my phone chirped, alerting me to a text message. There weren’t a lot of people out and about at this hour, but I stepped to the side as I fished my cell out of my pocket so as not to block the sidewalk.

  The message was from Marty.

  Pops, it read. I hope you’re having a good wander. Could pick up eggs before you head home? I thought I’d make my world-famous nog.

  As someone who’d experienced Marty’s eggnog before, I wasn’t sure how world-famous it was. But he loved making it, and it was drinkable, so I kept my mouth shut about the slightly too thick texture and the cloying sweetness that was a little off-putting.

  I fired off a quick: Of course, see you soon.

  Then I hit ‘send’.

  Curiosity gripped me, and I ended up leaning back against the gritty brick wall of a store front so I could scroll up through my past text conversations with Marty. It was odd, and a little uncomfortable, reading things that were obviously from me, but that I hadn’t written. Or, at least, that I hadn’t written yet?

  It was all very confusing to think about.

  The further back I read, the lower my mood sank. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with our conversation—no arguments or mean words. Actually, it was the opposite—we were nothing but cheerful and nice, but the conversations between us could very easily have been mistaken for that between roommates, not a married couple. They were all friendly texts, affectionate even, but there was nothing spicy about them—nothing that hinted at both people being irrefutably in love with one another.

  Not one of those messages made my heart race.

  Almost against my will, the memory of Roy and Fifi in front of the Half-Moon popped into my head. The way they’d leaned into each other. The way Roy had curved his big body down to accommodate Fifi’s smaller stature. The way she’d reached out idly to touch his chest, his shoulder, his arm, as though she couldn’t bear for even a few inches to separate them. The way they’d whispered to each other, smiling, both of them in their own little world right there on the street.

  I shoved my phone back into my pocket and turned to head back to where I’d parked the Jeep (which was the same as the one I had five years ago only decided more broken in). I couldn’t have even explained why to myself, but hot tears were pressing against the corners of my eyes, and my throat was thick when I swallowed.

  It was silly.

  I didn’t know why I was upset.

  But here I was, five years into the future, walking down Main Street with tears in my eyes.

  The town felt like it was closing in on me a little, almost suffocating me which made no sense at all. With a firm resolution, I decided the best thing to do was just to head out to Portland and wait for Finn to arrive. It was still hours before I needed to pick him up, but at least Portland would be a change of scenery. Between my store, and Finn, and the general mayhem of Haven Hollow, I didn’t get into Portland very often. It would be nice to see it all done up for the holidays.