Page 94 of Blood and Bells

“Ready, Frost?”

“Always, Draven.”

Together, we close our eyes. For a heartbeat, everything else drops away.

I reach for something solid. Something Willow Creek. Marcy, cheeks smeared with chocolate after a long day in her shop, handing me a coffee. Ronan, destroying doors with an enthusiasm that makes general contractors salivate. Wes mixing a cocktail, stylish and smoldering, still standing where he said he would.

The town—messy, loud, impossible—showing up anyway. Karaoke in pajamas. Snowstorms and shared shovels. People who argue about fairy lights and still turn up with ladders.

I hold onto that. Tight.

The globe answers.

Light bleeds out from beneath our hands—thin at first, uncertain. The tree inside twitches, its crooked branches dragging themselves toward something straighter, like it’s remembering how. The star flickers, slips—then catches.

“More voices,” Frank calls.

The square obliges.

Mrs. Lee flips the urn lid so peppermint steam billows like incense. The Scouts snap lanterns alight in a rough circle. Mr. Patel swings the gritter’s lights toward us like we’re on stage whether we like it or not. The choir finds a note and holds it, and even the vampires join in, adding a harmony that hums through bone.

The light swells. Warmer now. Stronger.

The tree pulls straighter—almost there⁠—

—and then it stutters.

The glow falters, flickering at the edges like it might gutter out entirely. The warmth thins. The star wobbles, wrong again.

A ripple of unease moves through the square.

It’s not enough.

Not yet.

I tighten my grip on the glass, cold biting deeper now, like the thing is pushing back.

Come on.

“It’s not working,” I say, the words slipping out before I can stop them.

“It is,” Nick says quietly.

I shake my head. “No, it’s…look at it. It’s falling apart again.”

“Frost.”

His thumb brushes against my hand. Deliberately. Steadily. There’s no magic. Just him.

“Don’t look at the tree,” he says. “Look at me.”

Everything else drops away—the noise, the light, the pressure of a hundred people holding their breath—until doubt slips in right behind it.

I only got this job because my mom made a call. Celeste Frost wouldn’t be standing here second-guessing herself with a cursed snow globe in her hands and half a town watching. She’d already have a plan, a backup plan, and a clipboard color-coded for festive emergencies.

And me?

I’m standing in the middle of the town square, holding a cursed snow globe that might decide the fate of Christmas, making it up as I go.