Page 71 of The Matchmaker
“Miss Collins?” The man on the other end introduces himself as someone from guest services at the Laketon Hotel. “I just wanted to check in and see how the festival was coming along?”
“Brilliantly,” I say. “We’re getting great interest.”
“That’s wonderful.” A polite pause. “It’s justwe haven’t had any bookings.”
“Oh?” It’s an appropriately surprised noise, even though I’m not surprised at all.
“I’m afraid not,” he continues. “And for that reason, we’ll need to release the rooms we have for you.”
“What do you mean release them?”
“Well, when we set them aside for bookings, we do so expecting there tobebookings,” he explains. “If none come in in the next day or two, we’ll need to put them back on general sale. It’s a busy season for us.”
“Butwhere will people go if they need to stay? We had a deal.”
“We had an email,” he says, not unkindly. “But tell you what. You come to me when you have someone, and I promise we’ll give them a good rate.”
We chat back and forth for another minute as I try in vain to keep him on the line, to give me time to think of a way out of this, but this is a man used to working in customer services and he smoothly, and a little impressively it must be said, cuts me off, politely putting the phone down.
“Who was that?” Gemma asks, when I drag my feet back into the kitchen.
“The hotel just wanted to check in.”
Her brows lower, but before she can say whatever’s on her mind there’s a sudden tapping of rain against the window, hinting at an approaching downpour.
“Noah’s at after-school football,” Gemma says with a curse. “I’d better go collect him, or I’ll be the worst mother in the world again. You okay here?”
“I’m fine.”
“I’ll swing by later and we can make a plan for tomorrow. I switched shifts, so I don’t need to go in until the weekend.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I want to do it. Hey.” She waits for me to look at her. “Chin up.”
I nod, mustering a smile as she leaves, and return to my work.
The room grows progressively darker as the rain continues, and eventually I have to switch on a light, one that flickers once as the electricity cuts out and comes back again, but it’s a warning sign I don’t like. I know why when, two minutes later, I try to log on to my email and the inbox won’t load.
The internet is down.
Is this my test? This feels like my test. One of those times when I have to prove what I’m made of. Stand up to the challenge.
But I am not up for the challenge.
In fact, I would like the challenge to stop.
Because surely,surelyit shouldn’t be this hard. I deserve a bit of luck, right? A bit of divine intervention. A little,hey, that girl needs a break.
The rain falls harder, and I go to the window to look out at it. As I do, I catch sight of the hawthorn tree at the back of the garden. The one I still need to deal with if I can get past Granny first.
Maybe I should give them an offering. Do fairies like offerings? Besides, like, human children? Maybe I could…
I rest my forehead against the glass, watching the world blur.
Something feels wrong.
It’s a deep, heavy kind of wrong, like a rock is weighing down my stomach. Like you know danger is coming, but you don’t know when.
