A Very Mercy Christmas: A Witch Squad Holiday Special (A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery Book 5)

by M. Z. Andrews

  My eyes widened as I scanned the rest of the faces in the car. “That’s it. You can’t go now!”

  Alba rolled her eyes. “Newscasters are never right. They’re always melodramatic. They said the biggest brunt of the storm is here, which means once we get out of Aspen Falls, we’ll be fine. We’ve only gotten a couple of inches so far. We can make it out of here if we leave now.”

  Sweets looked at Alba like she was crazy. “You heard what the weather guy said. He said to stay put!”

  “Do you want me to drive?” Alba asked Sweets, unbuckling her seatbelt.

  Sweets shook her head uneasily. “No. I – I’ve driven in snow before.”

  Alba stared at her angrily.

  Sweets swallowed hard and nodded. “Ok, right. Well, we better get moving then.”

  Jax’s jaw dropped. “You’re really going to drive in this?”

  Holly nodded. “Alba, I want to get home too, but maybe Jax and Mercy are right. Maybe we should just wait it out.”

  Alba turned around and looked at Jax and me in the backseat. With a low simmering anger, she growled, “Will you two please get out of the car?”

  I looked up at Sweets sadly. “Please be really careful Sweets. If you can’t see the road, you need to come back,” I begged.

  “Get out Red, we gotta go,” Alba grumbled. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Ok, well text when you get there,” I instructed.

  “We will,” Sweets said with a tiny nervous wave.

  Jax hugged Holly, then reached into the front seat and hugged Sweets and even Alba. I waved at everyone as I stepped out.

  “Bye!” Jax called. “Be careful.”

  “Bye, Merry Christmas, drive safe!” I hollered into the car before Jax slammed the door shut.

  Sweets pushed on the gas, and in seconds the red glow of their taillights disappeared into the whiteout.

  “I sure hope they know what they’re doing,” I hollered over the sound of the wind, fear heavy in my heart. I really didn’t think it was a good idea that they left in such conditions, but I could understand them all wanting to get home for Christmas.

  Jax threaded her arm through mine. “Come on, let’s get inside. It’s cold out here!”

  5

  With my feet up on my desk, I twirled a long red strand of hair around my finger as I stared out the window.

  Standing next to me, Jax followed my gaze uneasily. “They’re going to be ok, right?”

  I shrugged. “I sure hope so. Hopefully, the highways are better once they get out of town. Like the announcer said, the storm is centered over Aspen Falls. I’m hoping that once they get out of town, things will calm down for them.”

  Jax straddled her desk chair and turned her big blue eyes on me. “Have you heard from Aunt Linda or Reign? Are they stuck in this?”

  I looked down at my phone. “I just texted Reign. They just got to Akron. I told him about the storm. He said it’s not snowing there yet.”

  Jax nodded and looked down at her hands. “Maybe it will stop snowing by the time they’re closer.”

  I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to tell Jax, but I had a sneaking suspicion that the storm wasn’t going to be getting any better any time soon. I gave her a tight smile. “Maybe.”

  “So what are we going to do now?” Jax asked me with a tiny voice.

  “I don’t know. I think we just wait here until we’ve heard that the girls are alright and until Mom and Reign can pick us up. What else can we do?”

  Jax’s eyes were glossy. “What if the girls get stuck in this? They could die.”

  I scooted my chair over closer to her and put my hand on hers. “They aren’t going to die, Jax. Don’t worry.”

  Jax sniffed back her tears. “What if Aunt Linda and Reign can’t make it home? It’s Christmas Eve. What are we supposed to do without anyone for Christmas?”

  I sighed and gnawed on my bottom lip. I didn’t have the answers. “We’ll figure something out Jax. Let’s just give it some time, ok?”

  Jax nodded.

  The two of us sat silently for what seemed like an eternity. Lost in our own thoughts. I couldn’t believe our Christmas was turning out like this. Mom and my brother were going to wind up stuck in Akron or somewhere between there and Aspen Falls. My friends had all gone home to spend the holidays with their loved ones. My boyfriend was gone. And I was stuck with just Jax. For Christmas. I groaned. “You want to go see if the coffee shop is open? I could use some caffeine.”

  She smiled brightly. “Sure. We can get a hot cocoa!”

  “You can get a cocoa. I need a macchiato. Badly,” I grumbled. “Let’s go.”

  The hallway was frigid. I hadn’t noticed it before because the weather had been so unseasonably warm, but the oversized stone building either lacked a good heating system or was having furnace problems. “Brr,” I said as we raced down the stairs to the glass doors of Paranormally Delicious, the small coffee shop in the lobby of our dormitory.

  Jax wilted the minute we saw the darkened coffee shop. “Aww, they’re closed!”

  I looked at the sign. “Closed all day. Let’s try the cafeteria. They’ve got to stay open. All the kids couldn’t have possibly left already.”

  “Yeah,” Jax agreed. “Let’s go check.”

  The two of us walked to the cafeteria where Denise, one of our favorite cafeteria ladies, was flicking off the last of the lights.

  “Wait! Denise, are you closing the cafeteria for break?” I asked her quickly before she could disappear out the back door.

  The sound of our voices caused her to stop moving. She spun around quickly, her face covered in shock. “What are you girls still doing here? I thought all the students left for the holidays! Sorceress Stone said everyone was supposed to be out of the dorms by noon.”

  “My mom and brother are supposed to pick us up, but they’re in Akron. We don’t know if they are going to make it back or not. Is everyone else gone?”

  Denise nodded. “Most of the kids left yesterday.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at Jax closely. “Jax, why don’t you just go to your family’s house?” she asked, hitching her thumb backwards towards the Black Witch’s house.

  Jax shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. The Stone’s really don’t do Christmas. I was going to spend the holiday with my cousins and my Aunt Linda.”

  Denise smiled softly. “I’m sorry, Jax, but I think you’re going to have to take Mercy home with you for the holidays. I’m going to try and make it home myself before the roads are impassable. You should go now too. They say this storm is only getting worse.”

  Jax’s shoulders sagged. “But I don’t want to go to my house for Christmas. My mom and my aunt and uncle don’t celebrate,” she said with her bottom lip stuck out.

  Denise looked at the two of us sympathetically. “Sorry girls. You don’t have many other options if you want to eat over Christmas break. The cafeteria won’t reopen until school resumes in January.”

  “Ugh,” Jax groaned.

  My insides turned anxiously. There was no way I was staying with Sorceress Stone and her batty family over Christmas break. Being stuck with Jax was bad enough, but that would just be too much to handle. “Thanks, Denise. Drive home safe.”

  “Bye girls. Merry Christmas,” she said, grabbing her purse from the counter by the back door. With a tiny wave, she disappeared out the back door.

  The minute she was out of earshot, Jax’s meltdown began. She pounded one witchy, black, pointy-toed boot down on the tile floor. “Gah! Christmas is going to be ruined! Ruined I tell you!” she pulled the sides of her wide-brimmed hat down over her ears as she paced the floor in the cafeteria. “No Aunt Linda. No Reign. No Holly. No Sweets. No Alba. No Tristan. No food. No presents. No decorations. No board games. No hot cocoa. No marshmallows. No mistletoe. AND THERE’S NOT EVEN ANY HEAT IN HERE!” she ranted.

  My eyes were wide as I watched her little tantrum unfold before me.

  “What are we supposed to do Mercy?
We have nowhere to go. We can’t go to my house. You don’t get along with my family. And I don’t want to go there anyway. My mom won’t let me celebrate Christmas. So now what?”

  I sighed. I had no answers, and Jax’s little tantrum wasn’t helping me think. “I don’t know, Jax. You’re not letting me think!” I barked at her.

  She groaned and stormed out of the cafeteria and back towards the lobby. I followed behind her slowly as she pounded her boots on the stone floor with every step. When she got to the front doors of Paranormally Delicious, she stopped abruptly and let a noise escape her throat.

  “What now?” I asked her as I caught up to her.

  She pointed to the front doors. Through the whiteout, we could barely see a car pulling up outside. It parked along the curb; only the red glow of the taillights was visible.

  “Who is that?” I asked Jax.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s Reign and Aunt Linda coming to pick us up!” Jax suggested hopefully.

  We walked to the front doors and smashed our noses against the icy cold glass.

  I shoved my glasses further up my nose and narrowed my eyes to peer out into the blizzarding mess. “That doesn’t look like Reign’s car. Wait. Is that…?”

  “Oh my gosh Mercy! That’s Holly!” Jax cried excitedly as we saw a blonde figure bailing out of the car and running towards the front doors.

  “Open the door for her! Hurry!” I called out, helping Jax push the heavy glass door open in the wind storm.

  The wind nearly whipped the door off its hinges, but we managed to get Holly inside safely and pulled the door shut behind her. With her hair covered in snow, she visibly shivered.

  “Holly!” Jax cried. “What happened?”

  “S-s-so c-c-cold,” she said, her teeth chattering frigidly.

  “Here comes Sweets and Alba,” I called out. “Jax, help me get the door!”

  Together Jax and I shoved open the heavy door one last time, allowing Sweets and Alba to get blown in as a huge gust of cold wind and snow followed them inside. Once they were safely in, Jax and I pulled the door shut behind them.

  “It’s so cold out there!” Sweets cried.

  “What happened? Why are you girls back? Where have you been?” I asked.

  “The roads were drifting already,” Sweets said, her teeth chattering.

  Holly rubbed her arms. “We could barely see the road.”

  “And then this one,” Alba grumbled angrily, pointing at Sweets, “went off the road and right into a drift.”

  Sweets sighed. “It wasn’t my fault! I couldn’t see the road!”

  “I told you I should have driven!” Alba complained, blowing warmth into her cupped hands.

  “You would have done the same thing, Alba. Quit making this Sweets’ fault!” Holly exclaimed angrily.

  “So you guys got stuck in a drift?” Jax asked incredulously.

  Sweets nodded. “Yeah, and we tried rocking the car, but nothing happened. We were totally stuck.”

  My eyes widened. “Did someone pull over to help you out?”

  Holly laughed. “Are you kidding? There wasn’t a single soul out there on the road. All the people with brains in their heads stayed home like that announcer said to do! If it had been up to Sweets and me, we would have stayed home too!”

  “So Sweets getting stuck in the snow drift was my fault?!” Alba asked, furrowing her eyebrows angrily.

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact, that whole thing was your fault. I wouldn’t be freezing my butt off right now if it wasn’t for you!” Holly hollered at her.

  “If it wasn’t for me, we’d still be stuck in the snow drift!” Alba insisted. “I was the one that got us out of there!”

  Sweets nodded. “Alba’s right about that. She had to use her powers of telekinesis to lift the car out of the drift. It was amazing. I had no idea she could lift something that heavy.”

  Holly turned her back to Alba so as not to let her think that she was thankful for that important detail.

  “So you decided to come back after that?” Jax asked.

  “We had to. The road was just completely covered. We would have just gotten stuck again and again. There are no plows out right now. Visibility is terrible. We are lucky we were able to make it back at all. Thankfully we hadn’t gotten very far, or I don’t know that we could have made it back, and we would have been stuck on the road,” Sweets explained.

  “Wow,” I said, shocked at all they had just endured. “So now what?”

  All eyes turned to look at Alba. The one that had insisted they all leave in the first place.

  Alba let out a ragged breath. “We have no choice. We stay.”

  6

  “Yay! They get to stay with us!” Jax cried excitedly.

  Alba shot Jax an evil glare. “I don’t want to hear ‘yay, we get to stay.’ We don’t get to do anything. If we got to do something, we’d be safely on our way home to see our families right now. This is not a happy time for us, Shorty. And I don’t want to hear you happy we are staying!”

  Jax wilted.

  “She’s just thankful that you’re alright. Cut her some slack,” I told Alba.

  Alba looked at me angrily. “I don’t want to hear anything from you either. This is all your fault, you know.”

  My eyes widened. “My fault?! How is this my fault?”

  Alba stomped towards me and got in my face. My heart did double time in my chest as her tanned face got nose to nose with me.

  “Because you and your little boyfriend had to go and mess with the weather. You like fall temperatures – so Mr. Cowboy had to give his lil darlin’ fall temperatures. He caused there to be a glitch in Mother Nature, and then he takes off and leaves town, and now Mother Nature has to play catch up!”

  My heart dropped. I hadn’t thought of it like that. It was very coincidental that the moment Hugh left Pennsylvania, the weather changed. “How was I supposed to know that this was going to happen?” I demanded.

  “Are you an idiot? Have you ever heard of Newton’s laws? For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s just bad juju to mess with Mother Nature and you two idiots have been messing with her since September. The way I look at it, this storm is just getting started. And it’s all your fault. I don’t get to see Tony, and I have you to thank.”

  Sweets wedged an arm in between Alba and I. “Ok, ok. You can’t go blaming Mercy for this. She isn’t the one who can control the weather. She certainly had no idea that this would happen. If anyone should have known, it’s Hugh, and he’s not here to defend himself. So we can’t place blame anywhere.”

  “Yes, we can. It’s Red’s fault just as much as it is Hugh’s fault,” Alba said.

  “Regardless of whose fault this storm is. We’re here now,” Sweets said rationally. “We need to figure out our next move.”

  I let out a deep sigh and rubbed a hand across my face. “Sweets is right. We need to figure some things out. We can’t stay here.”

  Holly looked up at me in surprise. “What? Why can’t we stay here?”

  “They closed the cafeteria, and this place is freezing. I don’t know if they turned the heat way down or if it’s just the storm blowing through or if the heater is broken, but our rooms are getting colder. We can’t stay here,” I explained to the girls.

  “Where are we supposed to go?” Sweets asked, confused.

  “We have to get to the b&b. We can stay there,” I said. “There’s heat and plenty of food.”

  Sweets shook her head. “There’s no way my car is going to make it back into town. The roads were already completely drifted over. I guarantee if we go back out again we’re getting stuck.”

  I shrugged blandly. “Well, then Alba will have to get us ‘unstuck.’ We can’t stay here.”

  Alba shook her head and looked outside. “I barely got us unstuck the last time. I don’t know if I could do it again. I don’t think we can chance it. If I can’t go to Jersey for Christmas, I certainly don’t want to
be stuck in a car on the side of the road with you four and no food. Talk about worst Christmas ever.”

  I rolled my eyes. “We have to do something. We literally can’t stay here. That would be the worst Christmas ever.”

  “So how are we supposed to get to the b&b?” Holly asked.

  “Follow me,” I said as an idea formed in my mind.

  Alba let out a deep breath but followed behind me as I led the Witch Squad up the wide stone staircase to the second floor. I tromped down the hallway and threw open my dorm room door. Once the five of us were inside, I picked up my broomstick from the corner of the room and turned around, holding it up to show them. “We fly.”

  Sweets’ eyes widened as panic flooded her face. “No! Absolutely not!” she cried when she heard what I had in mind.

  Alba smiled. “We could fly,” she nodded. “It might be our only way to get out of here.”

  “I can barely fly when it’s nice outside. I doubt I’ll make it in a blizzard!”

  Holly shook her head firmly. “No way. Not happening. We won’t be able to find our way there! We’ll get separated!”

  “And Jax can’t even fly!” Sweets added.

  “Jax can ride with someone,” Alba told us swiftly.

  I nodded. “She can ride with me. And we can tie all of our sticks together, so we don’t get separated. I think it’s our only choice.”

  Jax smiled excitedly. “I’m in.”

  Sweets crossed her arms across her chest. “I’m not! Why can’t we just stay here and see what they have in the kitchen? I can cook.”

  “We talked to Denise in the cafeteria. She said we need to go somewhere. She said if we can’t find somewhere else to go we have to go to the Black Witch’s house with Sorceress Stone and Merrick,” I explained. “I’m not spending Christmas at the Stone’s!”