Page 19 of Jingle Spells
Delilah marched back up to the porch, her hands still crackling with barely contained power. But she was looking at Jasper now, really looking at him, as though seeing him for the first time.
“They said you’re a historian of some sort? So you must know what actually happened in Salem?” she asked quietly.
He nodded but then frowned slightly. “Well, in fact . . . I knew what I thought happened. But the Earls here explained to me about the founding of Oak Haven, so clearly the official story didn’t include everything.”
“But you understand why we can’t let that tour group turn our history into a sideshow attraction. We can’t let them make it into something it wasn’t—you get that, right?”
“I do, of course. Your ancestors’ decision to abandon the other women, while painful, is also what makes your town what it is today.” Jasper surprised himself by reaching for her hand. More surprising—she let him take it. “But there has to be a better way to fight off that tour bus than giving them exactly the magic show they want.”
“I suppose you have a point, Mr. Archivist.”
“Please,” he managed through suddenly dry lips, “call me Jasper.”
“All right, Jasper.” The ghost of a smile played at the corners of her mouth.
“Ohmigod, look at them!” one of the tourists squeaked happily. “Are they doing a meet-cute? Are they, like, Phoebe and Cooper on Charmed?”
The tour guide herded the visitors back on their bus, making one final snippy comment about “actors who take themselves too seriously.” The bus pulled away, its garish paint job catching the winter sun. And high above, the casino’s mirrored windows reflected it all: the bus, the hardware store, and the town beyond.
The Earls surrounded Delilah, forcing hugs on her as they welcomed her home and demanded the details on her travels.
Jasper moved off to the side, a little uncomfortable as a spectator to the reunion. He thought about the postcard he’d been carrying around in his pocket, about all his previous failed attempts to remember this place. About how many times he must have discovered Oak Haven, only to lose it again.
About how he couldn’t bear the thought of forgetting her.
He pulled out his phone, his fingers moving before his brain could catch up. The phone rang five times and went to voicemail.
“Hi, Toby? Yeah, it’s Jasper. Listen . . . I won’t be in tomorrow. Or the next day. Or . . . actually, I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I need to do some research. In-depth research. The kind that requires . . .” He glanced at Delilah again, then up at the looming casino. “The kind that requires a longer stay.”
Chapter 7
Walking in a Warded Wonderland
“I can’t believe you . . .” Delilah was still fuming as she and Scarlett made their way to the casino. “I should’ve shown that nitwit what real magic looks like. But no-o-o, no. You made me let that hack in the hat off the hook.”
“Whatever you say, Dr. Seuss.” Scarlett matched her sister’s furious pace, but every crunch of gravel sounded like a tiny accusation. You should’ve done something. “I get that you’re mad. But putting some kind of magical whammy on a total stranger would not have defused the situation.”
“Who said I wanted to defuse anything?”
“We need a plan, Del. We can’t just pop off without thinking it through.”
“Since when? That’s your whole brand, isn’t it, Scarlett? Shoot first, ask questions later?”
“I’m maturing,” Scarlett insisted. “I’ve evolved.”
“Yeah, right.”
As the sisters made their way out of town, the winter forest closed around them like a fretful parent. These trees were here when the first witches fled Salem, when Oak Haven was nothing but desperate women and raw magic and pure determination to survive. They’d be here long after the Melrose sisters had come and gone.
“They’re just magicians,” Delilah muttered. “Just small-time, silk-scarf-wielding nobodies.” But even she could hear the doubt in her own voice.
“Time to bury that myth. I know, our whole lives it’s been witches are real; magicians are fake. But they built a forty-story hotel in a week, Del. And I still don’t know how. I didn’t see a bulldozer. Or an excavator. Not a single dump truck, not one. Nothing. Just poof, and it was there. And I mean, just look around. Where did all the trees go?”
The clear-cut zone around the casino was like a gaping wound in the forest, raw and wrong. Even the trees at the edge of witch territory seemed to shrink away from it.
“I don’t know if witches have been simply wrong about magicians all these years,” Scarlett continued, “or if they’ve been lying to us young folks, or—”
Delilah whirled around to face her sister. “You take that back. Witches don’t lie.”
