Page 26 of Blood and Bells

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she asks.

Her face is buried in my chest and her breath tickles against my skin, but she doesn’t tell me to put her down. I’ll be damned if she doesn’t like this too, and even though there’s no need for me to breathe, my chest puffs out a little.

“This isn’t what I’d imagined working with you would be like,” she whispers.

Her low laugh hums through me, almost intoxicating. This absurd adventure is becoming something remarkable. It’s been centuries since anything made me feel this alive, and I’m beginning to care, far too much, about what happens to Holly and, by extension, to her Winter Wonderland Festival. That is as spectacular as it is surprising.

With a touch of vampire-assisted speed, I carry her toward the coven, glitter absolutely everywhere, and the puzzle of Holly Frost light in my arms.

Chapter Nine

Morning light blares through the curtains, and I groan. I screw my eyes shut and dive under the thick, warm covers, trying to forget about being dunked in a snowdrift by rogue elves. A twinge of pain catches in my thigh as I stretch out, while my cheeks burn from the humiliation of remembering my arms and legs flailing uselessly in the snow. Right in front of Nick ‘Tall, Dark, and Infuriating’ Draven, and as if it wasn’t already embarrassing enough, the vampire carried me to his mansion like he was some knight in shining armor.

By the time we arrived, the agony in my leg was horrible, and delirium hovered at the edges of my consciousness from both exhaustion and pain. I remember being whisked through the mansion to this room, where Nick bandaged my leg and handed me some generic pajamas. Sleep arrived almost immediately after that.

How very, very mortifying.

I inhale, trying to calm myself, and catch the smell of cinnamon, cloves, and something else. Something like warm sugar cookies. It’s not at all what I expected from a vampire’s mansion. Shouldn’t there be dust and despair? Gloom? Instead, the room is downright cozy—if a little over-the-top.

The sleigh bed curls at head and foot and is dressed in winter-white linen with a soft cream quilt, an ice-blue knit throw that spills across the end, and pillows stitched with tiny snowflakes. A crackling fire fills the room with flickering light, garlands wrapping around the carved wooden beams of the ceiling. I blink, sitting up slowly, wincing as my leg twinges again. The bandage there reminds me that while the surface events are absurd, the danger is real.

Elves. Rogue elves. Seriously?

I groan once more, pushing the covers back, only to find them embroidered with poinsettias. Of course they are. The whole room looks like Santa’s workshop collided with a gothic estate. It’s strange and surreal and completely right. It shouldn’t work, and yet it does.

There’s a gentle knock at the door, and after an appropriate pause, Nick walks in.

“Ah, Sleeping Beauty is awake,” he says, holding a steaming mug in one hand and an entirely too smug expression in the other.

“Where am I?” I ask, swinging my feet on the fur-like rug.

“One of the spare rooms in my home,” he says, like it’s obvious. “And before you get any ideas, there’s no need to thank me for carrying you here last night. Yes, it was heroic. No, I don’t expect anything in return, though if you’d like to bake me a fruitcake, I wouldn’t say no. The coven is particularly fond of it at this time of year.”

“You’re impossible,” I mutter, standing up carefully. “Why does your mansion look like the North Pole exploded in it?”

Nick glances around, as if seeing it for the first time. “You don’t like it? Our resident ghoul’s display usually pleases everyone, and he went all out this year. Personally, I thought the life-sized nutcrackers were a bit much, but he has a vision, and it wasn’t my place to deny him.”

I follow his gaze to the doorway, where, sure enough, two wooden nutcrackers stand guard, their painted faces somehow managing to look both festive and faintly menacing.

“I don’t even know what to say.”

“How about ‘thank you for not leaving me in a snowbank to be rogue elf bait?’”

“Fine,” I grumble. “Thank you for not leaving me in a snowbank to be rogue elf bait. Happy?”

“Ecstatic.”

He hands me the mug, and I sniff it cautiously. Hot coffee, bitter-smelling with hazelnut and frothy milk. The first sip hits, and it’s scandalously perfect.

“I have some bad news, I’m afraid.” He frowns. “I had a few people head back into town after the attack. It was a diversion. While we were busy fighting them off, they made off with some more of your Christmas bits and pieces.”

I take in the news with a sigh and stare at the cup, wondering how bad the damage is going to be. I’m already up against it with the mystery of the missing Christmas tree, and having to tackle another problem feels like it might just break me.

“They ransacked the cookies and Christmas goodies you’d had stored in one of the barns. They’re either gone or turned to crumbs now, Holly.”

This is a disaster.

The Christmas tree is important, but it’s the Christmas treats that make the gala really stand out. Everyone in Willow Creek looks forward to it. Mrs. Christie has spent hours rolling spice-dark dough, hand-piping cuffs on every gingerbread sleeve, tucking orange-scented mincemeat beneath neat lattices, and sugaring the stollen until it looks like fresh snowfall. She even shaped a tray of marzipan fruit—pretty enough for the shop window and guaranteed to divide opinion.