It was nice. Even if for a moment, everyone was happy.
“Yes, yes. Charlotte’s right,” Sarah chirped. “We must finish up. The boys will be back soon.”
Of course, she was referring to Edwin, the mysterious scarecrow boy made from enchanted burlap and buttons, and Mr. Třínožka, the massive spider Shape-Shifter with a great mustache and a fondness for tea and junk-collecting. The two were in the town square fixing up Brouka General Store after it had been looted during the uprising. Their grand reopening was tomorrow.
Charlotte followed Sarah back inside.
“Excuse me, but where do you think you‘re going?” Valek caught Charlotte by her sleeve, tugging her back toward him while she grinned sheepishly. “You interrupt my work—you drag me out here—” When they locked eyes, he felt his otherwise dead heart react. He stroked her cheek with the edge of his thumb, his stomach lifting.
He’d been more careful recently. He’d been staying away—keeping matters between them simpler—more platonic. He was sure she noticed, but Valek promised he’d stay out of her head. Charlotte always hated when he invaded the privacy of her mind.
“Only a few minutes…just like you said,” she murmured under a playful smile. “Ludo still needs you and we have to get ready for Yule tonight.”
Her mention of the occult holiday resulted in a few, small, exuberant cheers from the rest of the bunch. Lusian was the only one who groaned and rolled his eyes.
“Going to a lot of trouble for a bunch of people who don’t even like gingerbread,” the rugged Vampire grumbled as he skipped down the steps to help the twins with their snowman.
Sarah poked her head back outside at once. “Oh, bite me, you blood junkie!” she snapped. “Neither Charlotte nor I have ever had a big Yule. Let us have our fun!”
Grabbing hold of Charlotte by the sleeve, she yanked her into the foyer.
“Perhaps I can assist.” Valek was quick to follow, but nearly tripped on Charlotte’s heels as both she and the Witch stopped short.
“Uh…I don’t know if….” Charlotte began nervously, exchanging a questionable look with Sarah. “Maybe you should stay outside with the others. You know…enjoy the day a little longer?”
Sarah mashed her lips into a tight line and scratched the back of her head, casting a sideways glance at some worried thought. She refused to make eye contact with him now. Something was brewing and Valek had a feeling it wasn’t just another one of her bewitchments.
He searched through Sarah’s mind and then groaned laboriously. “What have you girls done?”
He dashed ahead of them to find—
Their usually spotless kitchen was now in total disarray. Valek counted three sacks of flour overturned on the counters, dusting wooden surfaces in white like the winter outside. One of the bags’ contents continued to spill out like hourglass sand, creating a heap on the floor.
There were at least a dozen bowls, some full, some only halfway, with sorts of dough that varied in scents of nutmeg, berries, and chocolate. The oven was lit. There was something inside, though, with the sensory overload, he wasn’t sure what it was exactly. The icebox was left ajar, and copious amounts of fruits, some exotic, overflowed the brim of the skink.
He gaped as Charlotte and Sarah pushed their way into the kitchen from behind him, giggling with one another.
“What in Fate’s creation—”
“Hush, Valek!” Sarah batted her manicured, little hand at him. She’d done up her nails in gold that morning. There was nothing about the Witch that lacked festivity. Even strands of tinsel winked at him through her short brown curls. “Don’t be cynical, like Lusian.”
“We’ll clean up, right Sarah?” Charlotte sniggered.
Inhaling, Valek worked to ease the tightness in his chest and rolled his shoulders back. Charlotte hadn’t seemed so happy—so carefree—in a very long while.
This moment felt so far-removed from their nights of torture and fear, he decided, messy kitchen or not, having this holiday was indeed a good idea, if not unquestionably necessary.
However, even with the joyous nature of the day, persistent worry still buzzed at the front of his skull. It begged the question…again—
“Charlotte, how are you feeling today?”
She frowned up at him. In fact, her whole face fell like he’d sucked the air out of the room. Even Sarah stopped her excitable dough-stirring.
“Valek, I’m fine. I told you.”
“Right, of course. I don’t mean to keep bringing about the topic.” He eyed the side of her throat, particularly the area where his own teeth had punctured her flesh.
While in hiding, Charlotte suffered some mysterious ailment—a terrible scorching pain resulting from his cursed kiss. Her symptoms were fleeting and had not returned since, but the memory of how she’d writhed in pain nagged at him yet. Sarah had found something written about it in an ancient text. Simply an old wives’ tale, perhaps? Valek remained unsure. He’d been a medical professional in both his human life and this one, and he’d never witnessed anything like it. Fixation, Sarah called it, but he still wasn’t sure.
“You’ll tell me if something feels out of the ordinary, won’t you, Charlotte?”
Her smile was fleeting and a bit vinegary. “Yes. For the millionth time, I promise I will tell you. Why keep secrets? It isn’t like you wouldn’t hear it in my mind anyway.” She mumbled the last bit under her breath, starting to roll the dough waiting on the counter.
Sarah did her best to seem preoccupied as well, keeping “busy” in the far corner of the kitchen, though Valek did not miss the way her eyes bulged and her lips pursed.
Valek folded his arms and sniffed. “No,” he insisted. “I’m honoring your privacy…as you so vehemently requested.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte said tonelessly and went on with her mixing.
She’d made it clear time and again she wasn’t super happy about living in a house filled with mind-readers, a family privy to her most vulnerable thought and wills. So, they all did their best to respect her and tune out. Most of the time.
Exhaling slowly through his nose, he unclenched his jaw and said finally, “When you’re through, clean it with a spell please, Sarah. I’d rather have my countertops and cutlery back to normal again before next year’s Yule, if you please.” He lifted his index claw at the girls. “And don’t get too carried away, because none of us…” Eyeing the kitchen once more, he dropped his hand and sighed. “Never mind.”
Turning, on his heel, he trudged back toward the foyer to fetch Ludo who still sipped spiked cocoa on the porch.
He thought of Francis, then, wherever he was. Valek’s creator and oldest friend made leading a coven look so much easier than this.
Yule
Charlotte watched Sarah shove the final baking pan into the oven, wiping her brow with the back of her oven mitt.
A few members of the coven still played like children out in the snow, twinkling in the muted blues of early evening. While Sarah rolled, molded, and powdered, Charlotte wandered once or twice to the bay windows at the front of the house to peak out at her monstrous family.
Lusian and the twins succeeded in sculpting a snowman that looked an awful lot like Valek, though its face was mangled in a sort of evil grimace with a dried twig pressed over the eyes for a unibrow.
Not a very flattering depiction.
They’d invited Ludo to stay for dinner, of course. He and Jorge were in the library rivaling over an intense game of Člověče, nezlob se! Valek was still locked away in his office, finishing up whatever paperwork he needed to sort out upon completing a patient procedure now that Ludo was all bandaged up.
A new normal, Charlotte mused. Not quite her old life…but maybe better.
Once again, order and peace fell over the occult the same way winter brought quietness to the world. She sighed, toeing back into the kitchen.
“Almost time for supper,” came Sarah’s voice as she pulled out the roasted duck with go
lden skin, crisped and steaming, setting the pan over the oven top. She strung the mitt back in its rightful place.
“Couldn’t you have just whipped up all this food with a swish of your magic sewing needle, Sarah?” Charlotte pulled herself up to sit over the counter.
“Pish-posh, no! That wouldn’t be any fun at all, would it? Cooking the old-fashioned so much for festive! And I am nothing if not a woman of tradition.”
She and Sarah had, in all probability, baked over twenty batches of assorted Yule cookies. They might need to pass a few around in the square tomorrow during the store opening. Or, if they were feeling selfish, freeze them and save them for summer. The massive freezer in Valek’s office wasn’t being used for the nefarious purposes it once had been, storing bodies of his drained victims until he could figure better ways to dispose of them.
Now that the Regime was toppled, there were no more ramifications to keep him from going out to hunt on his own. No more bodies to hide. Most of his corpses landed themselves among the unsolved crimes of Ceske Budejovice, the largest human city just east of where their occult city hid, nestled deep in the Bohemian forests.
The slam of the front door shook the walls and jingled the golden bells Sarah placed around the doorframes, the banister, and other house nooks.
“Home!” boomed Mr. Třínožka’s butterscotch voice. “Smells delectable in here! Someone’s been busier than a bee queen!”
Charlotte, sock-footed, skidded to the kitchen doorway and leaned halfway into the hall, finding the massive spider and Edwin hanging their scarves on the coatrack.
“Almost done. Hope you’re both really hungry, because we made enough to feed the whole town!”
“Doubt it, girly,” grumbled the aged spider-man. “We ‘ave ogres in this town. And you’d be surprised how much they kin eat. I’ve seen the improbable, I’ll tell ya that!”
Jorge emerged from the library then. “But we can’t eat yet. There’s still more decorating to be done.”
Ludo poked his head out after him, looking a tad miffed as he rocked back on his heels. He must have lost the game.
Charlotte pivoted to frown at Sarah over her shoulder. “What’s left to do?”
After all, the Witch had dressed just about everything. There wasn’t a single surface in that house left un-garlanded or un-glittered. Sparkling gold bewitchments swirled along the ceilings, enchanted lights blinking delicately in every corner. The staircase banister was covered in tinsel and poinsettia, red and white candles fluttering in every sconce.
From the room opposite the library came the baleful Sasha who looked joyful with one of Sarah’s frilly red aprons wrapped around his hips.
“Table’s set!” he announced proudly.
They’d finally made use of the home’s opulent dining room, which had mostly gone ignored over the years. With only Charlotte and Valek living in the house, there was seldom any need to use it, though she possessed a few, vague memories of Valek entertaining official-looking men in there once or twice. They’d sipped blood as normal men would sip brandy. She’d been very young. She didn’t know who they were, but she remembered their sharp, suited shoulders and their polished shoes—their long nails. They were like him. Vampires. Perhaps visiting doctors from other Occult cities. Unimportant. The memories were nothing but dreamlike pictures now and Valek never spoke about it anyway.
“Excuse me, but what about the tree?” Jorge continued, his moon-bright gaze turned to Charlotte again.
The tree!
“Oh, goodness me! Of course,” Sarah slapped her forehead.
“We pulled down yer trunk a danglies from the attic this mornin’,” added Mr. Třínožka, moving deeper into the house.
“Ornaments?” Charlotte raised her eyebrows, but couldn’t subdue her laughter.
“I w-want to h-h-help,” sputtered Edwin with a smile. He and the spider disappeared into the library, Jorge and Ludo dashing aside to make way for Mr. Třínožka’s girth.
“Well, let’s get to it, then.” Jorge rushed up to Charlotte, taking her by the hand.
“Sarah? Are you coming?” she called back to the Witch.
“In a moment!”
The study was just as festive as the foyer, with a healthy fire burning in the hearth, more garland overflowing the mantle and around the windowsills. Bewitchments resembling ivy and icicles dripped and wound haphazardly off every surface in the room, glittering gold orbs hovering in the air. More candles of every size flickered, wax melting down their edges and pooling in heaps over the floorboards.
With his arm over Charlotte’s shoulders, the boyish, blond Vampire indicated the tree standing bare in the corner between the bookshelves and the window. It was almost tall enough to scrape the ceiling—nice and fat.
“Needs your touch, Charlotte,” Jorge said gently.
“It’s perfect!” She clapped her hands in front of her face, excitement swelling in her chest. “Where did you find it?”
“Hauled it in here myself,” Dusana said proudly, flexing her tattooed biceps as she, and Lusian too, sauntered their way inside.
“After I helped you chop it down,” Lusian grumbled in an undertone.
“Could have done it myself.” She shoved him, but then he tugged her forward by her hips and planted a kiss on her that turned up the heat in Charlotte’s face. She looked away at once, thinking bitterly about how Valek kept her at an arm’s distance again.
“I do not approve of tree-chopping, I should add,” muttered Ludo and Charlotte’s heart plunged into her stomach. Oh no.
Jorge clumsily stumbled over something between an explanation and an apology, but then Ludo relinquished the smallest smile.
“However, I suppose…for an occasion like this…I might make an exception,” he said.
“We’ll plant a new one in its place,” promised Charlotte. She hoped he wasn’t too insulted.
“Excuse me! Does anybody care about my dinner table? Have you even seen it? My centerpieces are lovely,” Sasha added in his baritone from over the library threshold.
“You’ve all been very helpful,” settled Sarah as she joined the growing group in the study. Ana and Aneta filtered in as well then.
Peering inside the old crate, Charlotte found the dozens of shimmering glass globes she and Valek collected over the years. There was a small owl he’d whittled from an elm twig, a piece of twine strung through a loop at the top of its head.
“This one first. It’s my favorite.” She handed it to Mr. Třínožka who took it in one of his four human-shaped hands and strung it over the centermost branch.
Valek was last to join the coven in the den, rubbing his hands together, grinning. “Ah, you’ve all started without me.”
Poking out from behind a crystal star and a red ball, Charlotte found another wooden ornament—a sun—given to her a few years ago as a Yule gift from … Aiden Price.
The excitable chatter about the room fell hush as all the mind-readers tuned in to Charlotte’s abrupt internal upset. So much for staying out of her head.
At once, she yanked the ornament from the box and chucked it into the fire, grimacing as she watched the flames blacken its smiling face, consuming it and turning it to ashes. Tears gathered in her eyes as she clenched her jaw. Her heart throbbed.
If it hadn’t been for Aiden Price, Andela would still be alive. If it hadn’t been for Aiden Price, none of them would have endured the horrors those past weeks.
But if it hadn’t been for Aiden Price, a distant voice reminded her, Valek would still only exist in the dark, never to see the sun again.
Valek came up behind her, squeezing her shoulders. “That’s all right,” he whispered near her ear. “We needed kindling.”
She turned to the rest of her strange family again, smiling, though the dull pain lingered—a broken heart for having been betrayed by a friend. “Anyone want to help me with the higher branches?”
Sasha and Lusian jumped, diving claw-first into the box until both held armf
uls of ornaments. They proceeded to affix them, Sasha starting an argument with Lusian about arranging too many gold ones together in one place.
“The colors should be dispersed, Lusian!” was what he said but “Lusian, you idiot,” was what he meant.
Charlotte gathered a few silver snowflakes on hooks when Sarah appeared, offering a full cup of sweet, mulled wine. She was a lush during holidays.
“Cheers,” she said. “To a new beginning.” And then she pulled a few colored bells out of the box herself.
Charlotte glanced down at the deep-red liquid filling the cup. “Yes,” she mused. “A new beginning.”
A swift kiss against her temple surprised her and she looked up to find Dusana smiling broadly. If Charlotte wasn’t so accustomed to the fangs and the demonic bluish-white eyes, the grin might have been frightening.
“If I have all of you, how could I ever fear anything ever again?”
Mr. Třínožka responded by wrapping one of his long arms around her middle, sweeping her up from the floor and onto his back. She teetered for a moment, steadying herself before another one of his hands reached up, offering her a silvery star tree-topper. “We feel the same ’bout you, girly.”
She leaned forward, concentrating on her balance. Wine still in one hand, she placed the star over the tree’s very tip. Then the room exploded in exuberant applause.
“Terrific!” Ana and Aneta cheered in unison.
“Stunning,” marveled Jorge.
Mr. Třínožka placed Charlotte back on the floor. In an instant, Valek pressed her face between his hands and planted a firm kiss on her forehead, some of her wine sloshing over the brim of her cup.
“Who’s hungr—uh—thirsty?” giggled Sarah.
With more enthusiastic responses, a few of them tittering off in different various conversations while others caroled a traditional Yule song very loudly, the group left the library, filing into the dining room. It was dressed just as marvelously.
Sasha really did have a keen eye for table-decorating.
Large wine glasses filled with blood lined the long table. For Sarah, Edwin, Mr. Třínožka, Charlotte, and Ludo, there were gilded bowls over matching plates surrounded by more garland, candles, apples, cinnamon sprigs, pears, and clumps of cranberries.
Of Blood and Magic Page 6
