by Nova Nelson
4
With my head still trying to wrap around the strangeness of the encounter with the Count, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and nearly bumped right into someone passing by the tent as I was stepping out.
“Nora!” she shouted.
My brain caught up. “Oh, hey, Zoe. Sorry, I just had—” I jabbed a thumb back toward the tent then decided it wasn’t worth explaining.
“Hey, you,” said Tanner, and he dropped his hand from my back and went in for the hug. Zoe Clementine’s overeager expression of delight as she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around him made me wonder two things. First, was she that deprived of human contact? I was fairly sure she and Oliver did more than studying during their tutoring sessions, but maybe not. And second, why hadn’t I thought to hug her? How was I still so bad at friending? It came naturally for Tanner, and no one refused him a hug, which made sense considering he was, like, a pro-hugger. His hugs were one-size-fits-all. Kissing him was fun, but sometimes I just wanted to be wrapped in those arms and stay there a while.
Speaking of which, the hug between Tanner and Zoe was starting to linger. I couldn’t blame her, especially if she wasn’t getting that from Oliver, but I felt a slight prickle when Donovan’s warning about his best friend surfaced in my memory: all the girls in Eastwind threw themselves at Tanner.
Ugh! Stupid Donovan, polluting my mind! Why couldn’t I get him out? He had lodged himself in my subconscious like a piece of spinach between my teeth.
Zoe was my friend. She’d shown no romantic interest in Tanner.
It was the damned connection ritual. That’s all it was. A part of Donovan’s energy must still be rattling around inside of me. There had to be some way to get it out, some way to scrub myself energetically until I was completely rid of him. What was magic good for if not getting unwanted men out of my system completely?
Would ridding myself of that energy also remove the guilt I felt every time I saw him? Probably not. That bit was on me.
And could a proper cleansing also keep him from being meaner to me than ever before?
Uh, for sure not. I would have to slip something strong and potent into his drink to have a shot at that, and I knew my mastery of potions wasn’t such that I could pull it off. More likely than not, I would slip him what I thought would make him nice to me but it would end up being a truth serum, causing him to run through the town screaming at the top of his lungs about what had happened in the Deadwoods.
“Oh my Gaia,” she said, finally pulling away from Tanner. “I’ve heard rumors about your entry, and I’m so excited for the big reveal!”
“All the credit goes to Nora,” said Tanner, grinning. “Oh hey.” He addressed me. “The Tomlinsons just walked by, and I lost a bet to little Percy, so I have to buy him this year’s cornucopia—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Do what you gotta do. I’ll catch you around.”
He took a quick step forward, sneaking a kiss before he jogged off.
When I looked at Zoe, she was tamping down a grin. “Love it,” she said. “So, what do you think of Evangeline?”
“Moody?”
“Yeah.”
I shrugged and grimaced repentantly. “I haven’t met her yet.”
“Oh.” Zoe blinked rapidly like I was speaking another language, then she said, “I guess you stay pretty busy. Here, I’ll introduce the two of you. She’s been living on Fluke Mountain, so she should be around here somewhere! Although, I suppose everyone in town is around here somewhere.” She giggled.
I followed after her as we snaked through the crowd, sprinkling brief hellos to familiar faces we passed. We doubled back toward the entry arch, and now that I wasn’t looking for the competition tent, I had a thought to spare for other things.
Like the long table of fireproof birdhouses for sale with Ted in his usual black robes standing behind it, hawking his goods. They weren’t half bad. His technique had become much more refined since the ones I saw in the Deadwoods. He’d even painted some of them in harvest colors.
I smiled at him and nodded hello, and he waved back far too enthusiastically.
A high pitched squeal erupted just ahead, and I stood on my tiptoes to see over top of the crowd to find the source. I spotted it just as an enormous bald figure emerged from the water of a dunking booth. He chuckled exuberantly and pointing playfully at a tiny leprechaun girl who stood, chest puffed up, as the crowd roared with its own joyful laughter. I had a suspicion who the man might be, based on his smooth tan skin, the sheer circumference of his biceps, and the warm glow that radiated from his wide, ivory smile. But it wasn’t until he climbed back up on the dunking platform and I glimpsed the giant ram’s horns tattooed on his back that my suspicions were all but confirmed. It was Liberty Freeman.
Liberty was a freed genie, meaning that at one point he’d been enslaved. I didn’t know the full story—not sure anyone in Eastwind did—but I did know two important things about him: his hugs could be deadly (big thanks to Tanner for the heads up on that) and the man loved freedom.
Yeah, you guessed it, Liberty Freeman wasn’t the name he was given at birth … or however genies come into being. His zest for life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness was not only the most American thing in Eastwind outside of myself and perhaps Evangeline Moody, but also caused him to be well-liked by everyone in town … except those who sat on the High Council with him. From what Hyacinth Bouquet had told me, the Council seemed to view him as a terribly inconvenient obstacle in their quest to bureaucratize everything in Eastwind.
And that’s why he kept getting re-elected. He was currently serving his eighty-ninth consecutive two-year term.
Genies had come up only once in my studies with Oliver, and after I got all the Aladdin jokes out of my system (none of which Oliver understood, but that’s fine because I knew they were hilarious), he’d explained a bit about them. They weren’t blue, first of all—I could see that plain as day when I looked at Liberty. They appeared human (he called it “standard form”) most of the time—Liberty looked like he could bench press the entire Tomlinson family at once, which seemed more superhuman to me, but okay, sure, I got his point anyway. And when they want to, genies can shapeshift. Unlike weres, they could shift into any animal they chose, but usually it was a ram.
Liberty’s preference for that was clear enough by the tattoo on his back. It was a magnificent one—I could tell that from this far away even, and I wished I could examine it up close, and not just because Liberty’s muscled physique was such that it begged for closer examination.
Continuing after Zoe, I passed right by a long table with floating displays of powerful amulets. My brain registered the energy before my eyes spotted the displays. The staurolite one I wore around my neck at all times, tucked beneath my shirt, made itself known with a light warmth against my skin.
“Nora!” Ezra hollered to me as I approached his booth. His dark, ageless face was a sight for sore eyes, though I still wasn’t sure which common theory about him to believe—that he hadn’t aged in decades due to being surrounded by so much magic in his shop or that he’d been dappling in dark magic to keep his looks so pristine.
I grabbed Zoe’s arm quickly to keep her from losing me in the crowd. She didn’t seem to mind the diversion.
“Hi, Ezra,” I said.
“How’s the new wand treating you?”
“Better than I’m treating it, I think.”
He nodded, that knowing twinkle in his eye. “Still need some practice, eh?”
“Lots. Left it back at Ruby’s for the day. I’m trying not to take it out and about until I know how to use it.”
He laughed. “The Coven will be glad to hear that. They’re not too happy with me for selling wands to untrained witches.”
“Oh no,” Zoe said. “Are you in trouble with them?”
“Nah.” He waved away the concern. “You can only be in trouble with people who would cause you trouble. The Coven needs my serv
ices too much to do much more than tell me they’re unhappy. To which I reply, ‘Sorry to hear that. While I have you, I just got a new shipment of jet that you could use to cleanse your aura …’ and suddenly they’re less upset, and I’m richer. Everybody wins.”
We all laughed, then Ezra asked, “Where are you two ladies off to?”
“Nora hasn’t met Eva Moody, so I’m introducing them.”
“Wonderful. I haven’t had that honor yet, either. So if you see her, let her know she’s overdue for a visit to Ezra’s Magical Outfitters.”
“Always the salesman,” I teased.
We said bye-for-now and slipped back into the crowd.
“I could have sworn I saw her over by the sporting green,” Zoe said, shaking her head vaguely as she squinted through the crowd. “Oh, for fang’s sake. Let’s get a better look.”
We paused at the base of a raised and empty wooden stage with a tall, vine-covered archway in the center. It reminded me of the entrance to Whirligig’s Garden Center where Ansel worked. Wondering what the purpose of the stage was—would there be performances later?—I followed Zoe up the stairs and onto it to get a good look over the crowd.
It was an ideal vantage point for the festivities, and I could have stayed there for an hour, just people watching. I spied Tanner and the Tomlinson kids grabbing popcorn from their cornucopias, tossing it into the air, piece by piece, and trying to catch it in their mouth. And back over where we’d just come from, the High Council was milling around a raised table where, presumably, the judging would take place for the cook-off. Another loud splash and roar from the crowd drew my attention to the dunking booth again, and I couldn’t help but grin as Liberty pretended to be furious, shaking his mallet-like fists at the sky as he stood up to the waist in the shallow pool below the platform and the preteen boy who’d put him there beamed with pride. At the end of the dunking booth onlookers, Landon Hawker, a nerdy North Wind witch, was chatting up Fiona Sheehan, and it was obvious he was more interested in the conversation than she was as he hunched close and intensely and she leaned slightly back, her head turning, looking for an excuse to move along.
“Oh! There she is,” Zoe said.
“Where?” I turned around, squinting in the direction where she was pointing. But no one had actually described Evangeline to me, so I didn’t know what I was looking for.
“Over there. Talking with Darius, Jane and Ansel.”
Ansel was easy enough to pick-out in the crowd. His massive werebear frame seemed to demand a large radius of space around it, and his espresso skin was the deepest and richest of anyone’s in town. Next to him stood his werewolf fiancée and easily my best friend in Eastwind, Jane, and across from him, his best friend and partner in bromance, Darius Pine, the leader of the werebears and the owner of the cabins on Fluke Mountain.
And beside Darius was a petite figure in green tights and a flowing teal shirt down to her knees. Her dark hair was done in tiny braids that fell over her shoulders, framing a mocha face that I could tell even from this distance was remarkably beautiful.
“That’s Evangeline?”
“Yep!” said Zoe.
I forced a smile and tamped down all the unflattering neuroses about how the hot new thing in town was not only hot, but also years younger than me and probably a much better witch … because she couldn’t be a worse one.
Yes, despite the fact that I was supposed to be relieved that I was no longer the newest in town, I still felt a little resentment at being replaced.
Don’t act surprised.
The welcome I received when I approached the group made me feel less concerned about my position being usurped, though. Jane threw her arms around me, and even Ansel gave me a hug, one that took the wind right out of me with its suddenness and tightness.
Wow, they were in extra high spirits. Lunasa really was something else.
Darius nodded to me in his usual stoic and emotionless way, and as Zoe ignored his clear no-touch vibes and threw her arms around him, I turned to Evangeline and introduced myself. She smiled and said hello softly, not with shyness, but as if she had some knowledge that informed her there was no need to say it loudly. “Call me Eva.”
I swallowed hard. Waves of energy pulsed off her, much stronger than the ones coming from Ezra’s booth earlier. This was one powerful witch. Was she really new? And from my world?
“How long have you been in Eastwind?” I asked.
Her eyes darted to Darius, who nodded for her to go on. “It’s fine. Nora was the one I was telling you about.”
Eva smiled. “About two months.”
“Two months?” That was much longer than I’d thought, and it only highlighted my failure to introduce myself.
She smiled serenely again. “Yep.”
I wanted to ask her all about it—how did she end up here? Did she die like I had or enter through a portal?—but it seemed a little too personal and intense for a setting like this. So, instead, I said, “I want to hear all about this, but maybe somewhere more private.”
She seemed to appreciate that, and her lips parted into a much friendlier grin. “That sounds good to me.”
Then a deep, rich voice boomed over the crowd before the conversation in our group could start back up again. “Can I have your attention please?”
I turned toward the source and saw Liberty Freeman standing on the stage Zoe and I had climbed a few minutes before.
Silence settled on the crowd like a blanket.
I couldn’t be sure if Liberty’s voice was naturally that loud or if there was some sort of magical amplification at play. But when he spoke next, it was crystal clear. “Welcome to the three hundred and forty-eighth annual celebration of Lunasa!”
The crowd cheered and Liberty tilted his head back, laughing joyously. But once he took his next breath to speak again, the cheers died instantly. Even my own. The effect was so immediate, it reminded me of the tabletop games my servers at Chez Coeur used to talk about, where players could earn charisma points. Maybe there was a magical equivalent to that. If so, Liberty had all the points. I even found myself wondering, as I stared up at his bulky form, wet towel from the dunking booth clasped in his fist, how I would make him my friend. Like, I needed him to be my friend.
Oh no, was this how Zoe Clementine felt all the time about everyone? Poor thing.
“I hope we’ll all have a fun, bountiful, and safe”—he pointed to someone in the crowd, and when all heads turned, including my own, there stood Sheriff Gabby Bloom in a beautiful harvest-gold sundress that allowed for her white angel wings to spread from the back—“Lunasa Festival to celebrate not only this summer’s harvest and the freedom we enjoy in this great realm, but also the company of those we love. Now speaking of love, before I officially announce the start of this year’s festival, we have an urgent matter of the heart to attend to.” He grinned and nodded as excited murmurs coursed through the surrounding audience.
And I had zero idea what everyone was so excited about.
A hand on my waist caused me to jump, and I turned to find myself staring into Tanner’s beautiful face. “Who do you think it’s going to be?” he whispered in my ear, his warm breath setting the hair on my neck on end.
“Who do I think what’s going to be?”
He nodded up at the stage. “The hitching arch.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
Before he could respond, Liberty interrupted. “As is tradition, I now open the stage to any and all who wish to celebrate bounty and the ones they love in the fullest way possible, through the act of marriage.”
“Oh holy shifter,” I whispered. We were about to see two people get married? Was this an impulsive thing, or …
I looked to Tanner, who grinned.
Wait, did he want us to—
I glanced back toward the stage, and that’s when I saw Jane and Ansel climb the stairs.
The crowd lost it with wolf whistles and cat calls and shrieks of jubilation.
&n
bsp; And, yeah, I was a part of that.
I had no idea. I knew they were engaged, but Jane had been evasive about actual plans. Now I knew why.
How perfect was this, though? Rather than the stress of planning a wedding—making sure everyone could make it and the decorations and food were all taken care of—you could just walk up on stage during Lunasa and all those concerns were addressed for you.
The ease of eloping in Vegas without the sleaziness and isolation.
Eastwind did a lot of things right.
As the couple crossed the stage, Liberty swooped in and gave Jane an enormous hug, enveloping her in his arms as he pressed her to his chest. Then he made straight for Ansel who, on an ordinary day, would have balked at the idea of hugging another man in front of a crowd, but today he didn’t hesitate.
The sight of the two gargantuan men hugging so firmly was something to behold. I suspected I’d never see two people of that size locked in a tight embrace ever again, unless I someday found myself in the foothills north of Eastwind and stumbled upon a couple of the fabled giants trying to increase the dwindling population.
When they let go, Liberty’s golden eyes were bloodshot, and he used the towel slung over his shoulder to wipe the mist from them. “Man, do I love a happy ending,” he said. “But even more, I love a happy beginning, and that’s what you two have today.”
Jane and Ansel clasped hands in front of the hitching arch, staring into each other’s eyes, and Liberty began a ceremony not unlike the weddings I was used to, except without Bible passages and with a much more freeform approach in general. Jane and Ansel spoke their individual vows, which Liberty referred to as soul pledges.
The words ran together for me as I started to see myself up on that stage someday. Who would be standing across from me?
I turned to glanced over my shoulder at Tanner, where he stood behind me, arms around my waist, chest pressed against my back, rough stubble of his jaw brushing warmly against my ear.
