Page 27 of A Spell for Midwinter's Heart
“Uh-huh, and who was going to be making money on that sale?” He didn’t reply. “That’s what I thought.”
They both laughed, and his face relaxed. “Good night, Rowan.”
“Good night, Gavin.”
And then his eyes were back on the sign, bathed in its pale luminescence. She left him that way, trying to shake off the uneasiness that followed.
But whether it was the unintended magic or his imagined touch that brought it out, she did not give herself time to wonder, only fled the unwelcome questions that either might force her to ask.
12
Lively conversation spilled out of the Midwinter house and into the night as the coven filled the great room. The odor of wassail—apple and fermented grapes and cinnamon and anise—permeated everything. Rowan stood at the stove, stirring the contents of a heavy stockpot. Tomatoes burst, spraying their juices to mix with hot oil, orange juice, and spices—Sun King soup in the making.
Her mother brushed past, singing in an upbeat way to herself. Liliana had been all smiles since Rowan announced her intention to join them for the spell circle. It had been all Rowan could do not to retract her statement at the smug sense of triumph radiating off her mother.
This is too important to let that get in the way.
“Go on,” said Liliana, ushering her from the kitchen. “Catch up with everyone. I can finish up here.”
Cooking had been a convenient excuse to avoid that exact thing. Joe Midwinter sat on a couch with his nose buried in a book,and she stopped to squeeze his shoulder. While he didn’t dislike the coven, their energy was not his energy, and it was only the promise of food that kept him from retreating to his wood shop to introvert completely. He glanced up from his reading and patted her hand.
“An entire book about the Battle of Hastings, huh?” she said, scanning the title. “Where do you find these things?”
“Every major bookstore,” said her father. “The Battle of Hastings was the end of Anglo-Saxon England. It’s a significant element of the British national myth.” Then he noticed her bemused expression. “But you knew that.”
“In this house, it would be impossible not to,” she said, giving him a final pat before moving on.
She had to resist the impulse to pick up her crocheting or a book and join him on the couch instead of figuring out how to work her way into the circles of conversation. There was a time when she’d been a part of this group’s rhythms, but she was on the outside now.
An arm wrapped around her, pulling her in close and sparing her the continued stress. “Look at the big-city girl, come to join us,” said her uncle Drew. “Didn’t bring any of the crime along, did ya?”
“City girl? Suburb girl more like it,” said Rowan. “I onlywishI was able to afford the city.”
Her uncle was a short, narrow man with wildly curly graying brown hair and an unfiltered way of being. His particular use of magic came out mainly in potions and herbalism—which didn’t only mean he grew pot, but pot he grew indeed. He sold all manner of herbs and tinctures, which were considerably more effective than anyone without the craft could have brewed.
His sixteen-year-old Kel, on the other hand, practiced magic with a fervor. Rowan’s cousin lived in the witchy hashtags on various social media sites and was skilled at creating short-form videocontent. Set to moody electronica and full of occult imagery, their videos often explored liminal spaces and frequently featured the antics of the local corvids.
Kel hovered, waifish in a long black sweater and black skinny jeans, their eyeliner so thick it could be spotted from twenty paces. Their wavy brown hair was midlength and shaggy, and they wore clear-framed hexagonal glasses.
“How’s it going, Kel?” asked Rowan.
“All right,” said Kel with a shrug, shoving their hands deeper into their pockets. That was apparently as much of a response as Rowan was going to get.
She tried again at conversation. “That video you made of the crow moot in the old willow showed up on my feed like a dozen times. Seems to have gone pretty viral. Congrats.”
They perked up at that. “Thanks.”
“You hear they got a pretty big check for that one?” asked Drew, eyes shining. “Who knew you could make money off being online too much?”
“Literally everyone, Dad,” muttered Kel. They nodded and drifted to the window, where there came a rapping. A crow peered through the panes, and Kel lifted the sill, allowing the bird to come inside and settle in the rafters.
Across the room, the LeGrands were chatting with Stephan. Like the Midwinters, the LeGrands boasted many generations of Elk Ridge witches. Birdie had been a childhood friend of Rowan’s grandmother, and she’d changed little in the last eight years. Her gray hair was wild and unkempt, and she wore a long coat of many-colored velvet patches and an extravagant purple hat that seemed to be festooned with an actual bird’s nest.
Birdie’s granddaughter, Naomie, had gone to high school with Rowan, but she’d seen little of her in the intervening years. Time had only made Naomie’s pretty face even lovelier—as if an artist had done their last pass to bring a painting to full flush.
Her light brown skin was smooth, her body plump, and she had the thickest hair Rowan had ever seen; it was dark and glossy and hung from beneath a black-rimmed hat. She looked like she was born a few decades too late in a bright green rustic sheath dress that was covered in a heavy chunky macramé wrap.
Naomie’s father and mother also practiced magic, but her parents had moved to back to her mother’s hometown of Santa Fe, opening up the spots in the coven that Zaide and Naomie now occupied.
