I Messed Up Christmas (A Ghost & Abby Mystery Book 2)

by Jo-Ann Carson

  The other two workers returned to their painting, ignoring me and not offering me a handshake or a bump. That didn’t bother me. I had entered the realm of the cool people and a bit of what I consider anti-social behavior was the norm. I thought such people were cold, not cool, with a side of rude, but that’s me. I walked closer to the first work table. “I’m not much at drawing, but I can staple. I’m good with a stapler. I once got my finger.”

  No one laughed. A hard group for sure.

  “You can start at the far table, folding brochures.” Chris pointed to one several feet away.

  I walked over and started folding. “Kumbaya” music, not my favorite by any stretch of the imagination, played on speakers inside. Ginger sang along. She had a nice voice. No one chatted. They were absorbed in their work, making a better world and all that.

  “So when’s our next protest,” I said after ten minutes of folding.

  No one answered.

  I stopped folding and stared at Chris.

  He shrugged. “We haven’t decided yet. It’s better to not let them know when we’ll demonstrate.”

  “Sort of like terrorists, eh?”

  Silence.

  “Hey, I was joking.”

  Chris cleared his throat. “We aren’t a joke. We’re serious about our cause. If you can’t get that, you should move on. The town has a crochet club and they chat a lot, or so I hear.” I noticed his cell phone lay on the table beside him, on top of a sock. Strange. Who leaves one sock hanging around?

  I pursed my lips. Sparky pulled my ear. “Get on with it, already. These guys are woodsy-L.L. Bean-boring.”

  “Has anyone noticed the angel missing?” I asked.

  “What angel?” said Lou.

  “The one on top of the Christmas tree in the square.”

  Chris threw his loaded paintbrush at me. Blue paint dripped all along its path. “Is that why you’re here?”

  I ducked.

  “You think we stole an angel? What kind of people do you think we are? We care about the cove. We’d never . . .”

  “It crossed my mind,” I said as my cell phone vibrated to the tune of, “We Wish you a Merry Christmas.” I had a message. I put my index finger up. “Just a sec.”

  I checked my screen. It was Joy: “Got news.” You could never accuse her of being verbose.

  I picked up the paint brush and walked it back to Chis. “It’s been, uh, fun. I wish you well with your signs, but to be honest I don’t support your cause. We can’t keep anything as beautiful as the cove to ourselves. The world is filling up. We have to share.”

  “But they don’t have to steal the waterfront.”

  “It’s private land. Some development will happen. If I was queen of the universe I wouldn’t stop it, I would manage it.”

  The others stopped and turned to me. I felt my cheeks warm. “Just sayin’.” Cuz I’m sure not the queen of the universe.

  “I know you have to go, but I hope you come back,” said Ginger. “We need cool-headed people in our group. I agree with you. We don’t live in an all-or-nothing world. Still, I don’t like rich people buying up all the prime real estate. We should save some of it for the people.”

  I nodded, looked around and smiled at everyone. “Okay, I’ll come to your next meeting, but I have to run. I have an angel-napper to catch.”

  8

  Oh Christmas Tree

  I decided to swing by home before going to the teahouse. My house is not at all what you would expect. Up to two months ago, all I could afford was a rented bungalow with bad plumbing and a leaky roof, but weeks ago a generous client changed all that.

  I now live in a big old manor, which needs a lot of work, but I love it. There’s room for my whole family, and the roof doesn’t leak. How exactly I came to own it is a long story, which, of course, involves supernatural creatures you don’t want to know about, so I won’t digress.

  Graystone manor, my home’s official name, sits on a hill on a piece of land filled with prickly blackberry bushes, Scottish broom and dead brambles, all of which I intended to tame someday. As I drove up the winding gravel road, riddled with potholes, I listened to the baleful howls of the neighborhood hounds, their voices echoed and magnified through the trees.

  The sound used to make the short hairs on the back of my neck quiver, but I’ve made friends with the two junkyard dogs whose ghastly voices could raise the dead. I smiled to myself. Slowly but surely I was accepting my crazy life. It was all about change, constant, uninvited, uncontrollable, unpredictable change, with a twist of magic.

  I kept telling myself, It doesn’t matter how abnormal a life I’m living, it’s my new normal and I need to embrace it, but not reflecting on my weirdness was easier said than done.

  My list for the perfect Christmas waited for me on my old wooden kitchen table, beside the article I had printed off the internet. Of course it would be there. There was no one else to do any of the work. Without the kids, the place felt hollowed out. I glanced briefly at my papers. Maybe I could knock one item off at a time, in between my sleuthing and janitor work. After all, this was not a “someday list.” It was far more important. It was the holiday-to-beat-all-holiday’s list. I didn’t want to mess up our first Christmas in our new home.

  My little family had been through a lot since my husband died. With me bringing in two salaries we should really celebrate. We no longer ate noodles every night—unless we wanted to—and the kids all had new sneakers. I wanted to make this holiday spectacular.

  I pulled my sweater closer around myself. I wanted to do this with Eric at my side. A shiver stole up my spine. It was impossible not to think about him. But that wouldn’t bring him back. I had to be patient.

  I made myself look at the list again. I needed a tree. If I had a tree everything else would work out, so I grabbed an axe and headed out.

  As I got to my car, a pick-up truck drove up, filled with six of the dock people I had spoken with at Margaret’s café. I waved hello and called out, “Make yourself at home. I’ll be back soon.” They smiled and headed to my front door with their arms filled with towels and clothes.

  As I drove back down my lane, I searched for the perfect evergreen. What makes a tree perfect? Well, I guessed that depended on who owned it. It couldn’t be too big, because I wouldn’t be able to handle it, or too small, because it wouldn’t seem important enough. I didn’t want one that lost all its needles overnight, or one that smelled of anything wild.

  My car hit a patch of ice and slid off the road. I was powerless to stop it and the front tires fell into the ditch. I swore a little. Okay, a lot. Sparky laughed. She has a wicked laugh, somewhere between a chortle and a full out cackle. I groaned.

  I got out of the car and looked at what had happened. The weight of all I had to do, all I wanted to do, and the missing of Eric, sucker punched me. I sat on the side of the road and looked at the darkening sky. Had I taken on too much?

  Who was I to think I could find a stolen angel? Who was I to expect a perfect Christmas? Who was I to expect a man as good as Eric to stay by my side forever? Tears flowed down my cheeks.

  Sparky tugged my ear. “Wake up, Blondie.”

  “What? I’m not asleep.”

  “You were wishing for a perfect tree.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Grrrr. You are so slow at this stuff. When a witch wishes for something, wishes hard enough . . .”

  I swiped at my tears and stood up. Sure enough, the nose of my car pointed directly at the most beautiful tree I had ever seen. It could be on the front cover of a Martha magazine!

  With my axe in hand, I jumped over the ditch and, of course, missed the other side and slid into the mucky middle. I swore again and climbed up the other side. “Shouldn’t I just wrinkle my nose and get what I want?” Sparky didn’t reply. I figured she thought she had done enough by calling me stupid.

  Pulling my arm way back, I swung the axe with all my might. It bounced off the bark. I inhaled deeply, f
ocused my energy and tried again. This time I made a dint in the bark. A dint! I danced with joy.

  “I didn’t know you danced without a moon.” His rich baritone voice flowed over my senses. It was Dante, of course, standing behind me.

  Not only was I doing a silly jig in the middle of the bush, but mud covered most of me from my sodden runners to my waist, and my hair was, as usual, messy. Nonetheless, I turned and stared at him with all the self-assuredness I could muster. “What do you want?”

  “Is that any tone to use for your rescuer?”

  “I don’t need to be rescued.”

  Mischief played in his sinfully dark-chocolate eyes, the color of fudge brownies fresh out of the oven.

  “I don’t. Seriously. I have everything under control.”

  “Mhm. You’re alone in the woods, with an axe, before sunset, and you’re dancing. You never cease to amaze me.”

  “Okay, okay. I want the perfect Christmas tree, and according to Sparky . . .” (He knows all about Sparky) “I made my car run off the road to get this one.” I pointed with my axe at the tree.

  “Give me the axe before you hurt yourself.”

  I did, thinking he would use it, but as he took the shaft our hands touched and an awareness of his maleness, his magic and his charm flowed through my system. Hot damn, I did not want this. “Dante, you know I’m with Eric.”

  “Yup.”

  “And . . .”

  He shook his head. “Carina, forget about us for a moment.” But the way he said Carina made that very hard. Deep and low, his term of endearment stirred me up and spit me out. I wasn’t sure what it meant in the Italian or witch dictionary, but I knew what it meant to my female parts. Oh, I was in for trouble. I cleared my throat. “I need you to focus on the trunk of the tree and repeat after me. . .”

  I did as he instructed and the tree fell down. Sure beat an axe.

  “Now about us,” he said in a baritone voice that made my panties want to drop.

  “I keep telling you, there is no ‘us.’”

  “Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that and you might believe it. I don’t see the Viking around, by the way. Glad to see you’re cleaning house.” He chuckled as he moved his hand in the direction of the conifer and made it disappear. “You’re welcome.”

  “You sent it to my place?”

  “You’ll find it lying on the floor of your living room.”

  I was so excited I stepped closer to hug him to thank him . . . and then I stopped. “Thank you.”

  A smile tugged at the right side of his mouth. “My pleasure, Carina.” He spun his hand around in a gymnastic maneuver, said a few Latin-sounding words, and my car reversed out of the ditch onto the laneway.

  “You gotta teach me that trick.”

  “No time today. I have to run. The winter solstice is tonight. You remembered, right?”

  “Uh, solstice?” It came and went every year, but I had no time to think about the celestial movement of the sun and stars and all that stuff.

  He rolled his gorgeous brown eyes and gave me an exasperated, man-witch sigh. “On the winter solstice our powers are stronger. It is, you might say, one of our better nights. We celebrate it.”

  “What do you mean celebrate it? Don’t tell me we dance naked in the moonlight.” The image of doing just that with him came into my mind and I threw it out.

  “Our witch-power comes from nature, from the universe. When the planets align . . .”

  “We dance.”

  He nodded. “You will feel invincible. Super-human, which you are, of course.”

  “In the moonlight.”

  “And the light of the moon will course through your blood. It is a celebration of the rebirth of the sun.”

  “Naked?”

  A wicked grin that fit too well on his finely-chiseled Casanova face slid into place. “There’s no better way, Carina.”

  “No. Uh-uh. No way. I don’t do naked dancing.” At least not in public.

  “When your blood stirs . . .”

  “My blood won’t stir.”

  Sparky started cackling in my head.

  “I don’t want it to stir.”

  “Meet me in the clearing in the woods I showed you the first night, and we will dance under the stars in the light of the moon.”

  “In your dreams.”

  “Some things I can tell you, but other things you must learn on your own.”

  “No.”

  “His grin stayed in place. “You are a virgin-witch. You know not what you say. You will come and you will dance. There’s no point arguing.”

  I sighed as a ridiculous feeling of inevitability settled into my bones. “Not naked.” I had to have some free-will left.

  “Whatever.” He shrugged. “Though I would love to see you come into your powers naked.”

  “You just want to see my boobs.”

  “There is that. But, Tesorino, I must go. I don’t have time to talk about how luscious your breasts look and how they will look more delicious in the moonlight, a sight which is inevitable.”

  I grunted in the most unladylike way I could.

  His right brow rose. “Before I go. . .”

  With man-witch speed he moved in, and, before I could say or think or do anything, his soft lips touched mine. It was the gentlest of kisses, but it was a whopper, stirring parts of me that had no business being stirred. And then he was gone.

  9

  Jingle Bell Rock

  I arrived at the teahouse ten minutes later, muddled, muddy and overwhelmed. I smelled like a cross between a bog and an evergreen tree, but I could live with that. It was my emotions I couldn’t stand. Being kissed by a man-witch isn’t like being kissed by any other man. That would be like comparing the strike a match to lightning, a controlled burn to a raging wildfire, a fire cracker to a freaking bomb. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be the same.

  And what did he mean when he called me a virgin?

  Had I been unfaithful to Eric?

  Hell no! I didn’t initiate the kiss, or encourage it. I just felt it. Boy did I feel it. I climbed the stairs to the front door and it opened.

  The teahouse in Sunset Cove had a wicked reputation for all things supernatural, and most of the real stories never left its domain. It sat on top of a portal to other realms. Or at least that’s how Azalea, its owner and my boss, explained it. Eric called them dimensions. Whatever. The old Victorian gingerbread house was magical, and it had become a sanctuary for me.

  During the day Azalea, the owner of the house, ran a tea-leaf reading business on the main floor, where normal people came to have a peak at their honey-dipped futures. It was no scam. Azalea had earned her reputation across the west coast as the best tea-leaf reader. She was also a psychic, a medium, a gatekeeper, and who knew what else, but she didn’t share those skills with the public.

  I cleaned the house at night. That was when the regulars came out, an eclectic group of ghosts who loved poker. That was how I met Eric. He’s lousy at bluffing, but great at doubling-down.

  Feeling like a frazzled frog, I bit my lower lip and walked up to Joy, who stood at the reception desk.

  Her left brow lifted. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  Lileth, the resident black cat, slinked up and sat beside me. She looked up with rounded eyes and gave me a long meow. Normally she would rub against me and I would pick her up, but my engagement with mud held her at bay. I suspect I smelled.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “You have news?”

  Azalea emerged from one of the tea rooms. She took one look at me and pulled her elegant shall more closely around her thin frame. “It’s that detective business again,” she said.

  “I could use your help,” I said. As much as I wanted to stand on my own two feet in business I couldn’t resist asking for her assistance. After all, she did know everything, or so it seemed.

  “Did someone die?”

  “No.”

  “Is someone lost or in pain?”
/>   “Uh, no.” I hesitated. “Well, sort of, if you,”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“count angels.”

  Peering over her tortoise-shell reading glasses she stepped closer to me. “You’re joking.”

  I shook my head. Not wanting to waste her time, I whispered the short version. “Someone nabbed the Sunset Cove angel that sits on top of the Christmas tree in the square.”

  She blinked. “First I heard of it.”

  “The mayor. . .”

  She shook her head to make me stop talking. “You can rule out the town supernaturals and the ghosts. Although some of them are playful, they would never steal an angel. It’s bad mojo.”

  “Okay. Thank you. If you hear . . .”

  She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “Of course.” She walked over to the first group of ladies in the overflowing reception area.

  I turned my attention back to Joy. “Okay. I’ve ruled out the SoC group, dock people and now the local ghosts and supernaturals. Who’s left?

  “Despair not,” she said in her dry tone. “I have a lead.”

  She crooked her finger to draw me closer. My heart leaped. A clue. Finally, a clue!

  “It’s one of the missing draugrs.”

  Oh poop. Not them. I stood back and tried to swallow. I had accidentally allowed three of the vampiric beasts through the portal a few weeks ago. We had managed to terminate only one of them. Not only did they smell like rotting carcasses from hell, they were rotting carcasses from hell. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  She smirked.

  “What did you hear. Tell me everything.”

  “I was out with Elif last night, and . . .”

  “You’re dating a vampire?” Elif was a Swedish vampire who considered Sunset Cove a holiday spot.

  “Hey, don’t judge. You date the dead too.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “But?” She raised a brow.

  “Yours bites.” I shook my head. “Okay. I’m sorry. Just tell me what happened.” But e-ew, a vampire? How creepy is that?