“The restaurant is open,” I reminded him. “As is the movie theater.” Despite being moderately sized, Madison—a left-leaning, radical, college town—had a large contingent of people for whom Christmas is just another day. In fact, I’d debated long and hard about whether or not to keep open the occult bookstore I managed but had decided to close it in deference to Sebastian’s birthday. It was winter break and my college-age staff was all at home enjoying roast turkey right about now, and I’d have had to staff the store myself. I’d wanted the day off to spend with Sebastian.
Sebastian fished through his pockets for his cell phone, but came up empty-handed. “Figures,” he sighed as we searched the car. “Benjamin must have walked off with it again.”
Benjamin was Sebastian’s resident house-ghost—well, poltergeist, really, since he had a tendency to toss things around when riled up. Still, it wasn’t like him to run off with Sebastian’s things. Benjamin was usually very loyal to Sebastian to the point of “defending” the house from all interlopers, even me. “What did you do to piss him off?”
“I’ve been thinking about rewallpapering Vivian’s room.”
“Are you insane?” Vivian was Benjamin’s wife, whom we suspected Benjamin had axe-murdered in that very room. Benjamin got especially crazy if anything in her bedroom was altered. In fact, Benjamin was so obsessed with keeping things precisely as they were, Sebastian could sometimes trick him into cleaning the place by moving some of Vivian’s things to other parts of the house.
Sebastian lifted his shoulders in a shrug barely visible through the thick down of his parka. “Why don’t we just go home?”
I would have been more excited about his suggestion if he’d sounded more “in the mood.” But I could hear the defeatism oozing from each syllable. Even so, part of me did want to just give up—the exact part being my frozen toes—but I was on a personal crusade to shake Sebastian of his birthday melancholia. He’d been carrying around this hatred of his birthday for a millennium. It was time for an attitude adjustment.
Sebastian’s farm was just about as far away from us now as Portobello Restaurant, where we had reservations in twenty minutes. We could still make it.
“I’m sure there’s a farmhouse nearby,” I said, rearranging my hat so it covered more of my ears. “We can call a cab from there.”
“For home.”
“For the restaurant.”
We got into one of those stare-downs where a normal person would just let the vampire win. The look of fierce intensity in those chestnut brown eyes with their eerie golden starburst pattern around the pupil said Back off. I, however, am a pigheaded Witch, and I’m somewhat careless with my sense of self-preservation.
“Come on.” I pasted a cheery smile on my face, despite the skin-numbing chill. Swinging the car door open, I strolled out into the frozen wasteland with a jaunty step. “It’ll be an adventure.”
For several steps I wondered if Sebastian was going to let me have this so-called adventure on my own. Then, in that silent way he had, he was suddenly beside me.
“You’re incorrigible,” he grunted, but there was the hint of a smile in his voice. Victory.
It didn’t take long for me to regret my pluckiness. Minus twenty was dangerously cold, and I was just not dressed for it. My face felt raw, and my toes had gone way past the tingly phase. I was seriously entertaining the idea of asking Sebastian to turn me into one of the living dead so that I didn’t have to deal with the prospect of freezing to death when we spotted a pickup truck heading in our direction.
Actually, at first, all I saw were two points of light, like the eyes of some huge animal. Through the still night air, I heard the snarl and spit of a working engine. I waved frantically, hoping to flag the vehicle down. My only thought was: heater.
Miraculously, it stopped.
Behind the wheel of the shiny black Ford was a woman in her mid to late fifties. The curls of hair that stuck out from an Elmer Fudd earflap hat were the color of steel wool. Her cheeks were burned red by the wind and cold. One look at her REI arctic-ready parka, insulated gloves, snow pants, and heavy-duty boots, and I knew she was a farmer.
The interior of the cab was blessedly hot and smelled faintly of stale coffee and wet dog. “Thanks for stopping,” I said, climbing in gingerly.
She nodded in that rural way that implied You’re-welcome and I-should-have-my-head-examined-for-this-act-of-kindness all at once.
“You should really stay with your car on a night like this,” the driver said as I wedged myself into the center of the bench seat. She was right, of course. Beyond the actual temperature, there was the wind chill, which could be considerably lower. A car protected you from that. Plus, out in the elements the cold hemorrhaged heat from your body. Inside a car, at least, you could build up a bit of warmth just from your own breathing. Not to mention the fact that I had no idea how far I would have had to walk to find another farm, and there’s always the risk of getting lost. Cops and snowplow drivers are trained to stop for cars with red flags tied to the antenna to look for people trapped inside.
As a native Minnesotan, I knew all that. I was about to acknowledge my failure in winter safety rules when she added, “Don’t either of you two have a phone?”
“No,” I said miserably.
Sebastian just shook his head. “I don’t suppose you do?”
She flashed a thin smile that held only a hint of self-righteousness. “Of course.” She pulled a sequin-studded flip case from the interior pocket of her parka. I raised my eyes at the shiny appliqués as I handed it to Sebastian.
He snapped it open and frowned. “No signal.” Then, “And…now your battery is dead.” Handing it back to me, he mouthed, “Cursed.”
“That’s strange,” she said when I gave it back to her. “It was working a half hour ago.”
“I’m cursed,” Sebastian said out loud this time, matter-of-factly.
The woman gave us a crook of a snow-white eyebrow and pulled back on to the road. “So,” she said, sounding anxious to get rid of us, “where are you headed?”
I didn’t take it personally. I was sure we made a strange pair—me, bundled up like some kind of accident between a Russian babushka and a Goth supermodel, and him, grumpily cryptic and ridiculously underdressed.
I looked to Sebastian for an answer to her question, but he stared out at the graying sky. I had to snap him out of this. He was being downright antisocial and rude.
“If you’re headed to town,” I tried hopefully, and when she didn’t deny it, I added, “Anywhere close to State Street would do us.”
She nodded, her eyes on the black strip of asphalt. Wind threw streaks of powdery snow across the road where it slithered like snakes, twisting and turning before merging with the drifts on the opposite side. “You kids off on a date?”
“His birthday.”
She nodded as if considering something. I braced myself for a Christmas comment or joke. Finally, she simply said dryly, “Nice day for it.”
Thunder rolled outside, strangely synchronous with her tone.
Sebastian roused himself from his brood enough to inquire, “Was there supposed to be a storm coming in?”
“Oh yeah,” said the driver, in a pitch-perfect Minnesotan accent. “National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning.”
“This just gets better and better,” Sebastian grumbled.
I gave him a punch in the arm, as if to say, “Be nice!”
“I feel terrible,” I said. “I should really have introduced myself. I’m Garnet Lacey, and my delightful companion here is my boyfriend, Sebastian Von Traum.”
She nodded her greeting. “Fonn Hyrokkin.” In the flash of a passing car’s headlight, something sparkled in her eyes like ice.