Page 14 of A Spell for Midwinter's Heart
Her mother reached out and put a hand over hers. “Weneedyou, Rowan. Trust me, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency. All our spells have…fizzled. The magic’s too big for seven. Someone new should’ve come by now and taken her place, but no one’s come. Just you.”
Just you. The coven never stayed incomplete for very long. There were always eight. Four to stand in the cardinals, and four in the ordinals. When they lost a member, someone always seemed to be waiting in the wings, ready to assume the mantle, or if not already there, soon after. But it had been months now, and no one had come.
It wasn’t normal. None of this was normal.
Her heart picked up speed and her breathing went ragged at the edges as her nervous system readied for a storm.
“I can’t,” said Rowan.
“Try,” said Liliana, her voice strained. “Please.”
Rowan searched for the words to explain but fell short, shaking her head. “I can’t.”
Her mother’s eyes pried. “Can we finally talk about what happened that night, Rowan?” Her expression was one Rowan remembered her often directing toward Grandmother Madeleine. It was a look that said,You deal in magic I don’t approve of.“Did you…compel someone to do something?”
“No! How could you think that?”
“What am I supposed to think? You refuse to explain!”
Shame, cold and undeniable, dragged Rowan back to that night. She should have joined the coven for their spell, but it was nothing but a vague request for good fortune. No one in the Elk Ridge coven had any spells to manifest money—had they, their lives would have looked quite different. But money had a power of its own, and that power was the antithesis of what they dealt in.
Rowan had thought their spell would make no difference, and she’d told her mother as much. They’d fought, and she’d decided it was time for direct action, with or without her mother’s approval. She’d gone for her grimoire, her spell chest, and then—
The memories cut out. Whatever spell she’d attempted to save her grandmother’s house, it had failed.
Rowan looked away and shook her head. Her mother’s eyes bored into her, trying to extract the story Rowan wouldn’t tell.
When Liliana finally spoke again, it was to say, “We’re doing maybe half of normal business. The festival’s failing. Dennis is pushing us to sell. He even has a potential buyer.”
Rowan’s head snapped up. Dennis McCreery wanted to sell the festival? Did Gavin know? It seemed impossible that he didn’t, and that meant he’d spent that entire car ride hiding this from her.
All of her earlier guilt at her behavior in the car vanished, replaced with righteous anger.
Sarah McCreery, née Larsson, mother to Gavin and late wifeof Dennis, had been one of two starry-eyed twenty-somethings who’d founded the Elk Ridge Winter Fest during the late 1980s. The second was Liliana Midwinter. The idea of Sarah and her mother as bosom buddies had never seemed real, but the evidence was clear in the photo hanging over her mother’s desk. The pair of them stood at the gate of the inaugural festival, arms wound around each other.
When Sarah had died, her half of the festival’s ownership had passed to Dennis, and he’d been making Liliana Midwinter miserable ever since.
She sighed. “You think bringing back the snow will stop the sale?”
“Snow will bring back the tourists,” said her mother, her voice ringing with conviction.
Rowan chewed her lip. “Seems like a lot to expect. There’s, what, eleven more days until the New Year? And then—”
Liliana slapped the ball of dough onto the counter hard, cutting Rowan off.
“Do you always have to assume I’m wrong, Rowan?”
“I’m not ‘assuming you’re wrong,’ I’m only saying maybe we should think about—”
“I have thought about it. All of it. Many times, while you were off…” Her mother waved her hand, dismissing all of Rowan’s work with a gesture. Seeing technology as the primary source of the world’s problems, Liliana Midwinter would never concede that more technology was the solution. “I understand what we’re up against. I know Elk Ridge. You don’t—not anymore.”
The accusation hit like a smack, and the air was heavy between them.
Finally, Rowan spoke, careful to control her tone and word choice. “You’re right. I don’t, and no matter what, the mountains need the snowpack. It’s a solid plan.”
“Thank you,” said her mother with a heavy release of breath.Liliana returned to her kneading, her movements restored to a consistent rhythm.
Pushing back from the counter with a scrape, Rowan said, “I need a coffee. Taking a walk into town.”
