“She was cute. Is probably still cute. But he was too shy to tell her—ten years of crushing on her from a distance, you know—and then he graduated and went off to college and that was the end of that.” Kendra gave him a sympathetic look that was just about to fray his last nerve.
Just then, rescue came along in the form of the Trivia Night emcee pushing through the door. He was toting all of his equipment and that caused enough distraction for Kendra that she left the three guys alone to eat their nachos and drink the beer.
Thank goodness. Ben didn’t need anymore reason to be thinking about Callie Quigley.
But when, a few hours later, he caught a glimpse of her bright hair as she walked by The Roost, his heart gave a sad little tug.
You missed your chance, dude.
Three
“So your big marketing idea is to have a wedding at the same place and time as five other weddings that ended with someone dying?” Fiona Murphy looked at Callie with a raised brow. “Like, you’re going to be challenging a curse?”
They were sitting at a corner table in Orbra’s Tea House, which was decked out for the holidays in reds, greens, and blues. Ornate Christmas bulbs hung from ribbons at the windows, a small poinsettia surrounded by candles sat in the center of each table, and the place settings were all in red, green, or gold (patrons could get blue and white for Hanukkah by request).
Orbra used only Christmas or winter-themed tea sets during the month of December, when the menu featured her Holiday Tea specials—which included, among other treats, miniature gingerbread houses, raspberry filled snowball puffs, and apricot-sized pies with savory herb stuffing and a dollop of cranberry sauce. She even did peppermint petit fours with red fondant and minuscule candy canes on them.
“Well, when you put it like that…yes,” Callie replied with a grin…which faded after a minute. The heaviness and twisting hadn’t left the pit of her stomach since last night.
Maybe she was making a mistake.
“I mean, I just assumed that this curse thing was a bunch of exaggerated old tall tales that people piled on over the last, you know, century. But then I went over there yesterday, and…” Callie huffed out a nervous breath. “There’s definitely still some strange vibes over there.”
“What do you mean still?” Fiona asked, placing tiny raspberry-filled snowballs on her small plate. They sparkled from the coarse sugar that coated their outsides.
“Well, the last time I was there—the only time I was there, really—was sixteen years ago. A bunch of us decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve in the Tremaine Tower room to prove that there wasn’t any curse—and so we could drink and smoke without our parents knowing. It was Ben Tremaine, and—”
“Ben Tremaine, the accountant?” Fiona’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Oh, crap, I forgot…I’ve got to get him my end of year projections!” She groaned and glanced out the front window of the cafe as if expecting to see Ben standing there, watching her expectantly.
Fiona had recently inherited the old antiques shop on Violet Way in Wicks Hollow1, which was how Callie had met her. It was during a visit last summer and Callie had been looking for some vintage or antique plates for one of the weddings she was planning, and the two had hit it off quite well. Callie ended up buying three sets of Art Deco candlesticks and a large serving platter and making a close friend in the process.
“Yes, that’s Ben, I guess. Does he do everyone’s taxes here in Wicks Hollow?” Callie asked, feeling a stab of pride for her old friend.
She could feel that for him, couldn’t she? Just as a friend and not a love interest—even though he’d basically blown her off last night?
Maybe he really had had work to do.
“Anyway, it was Ben and me, and Frida Acerita—you know, Juanita’s baby sister’s daughter—and Randy Johnston, Lauren Barclay, Freddie Cooper, and…oh, what was his name? I can’t remember. We were the nerdy kids that hung out and played D&D, PlayStation—never XBox—and Settlers of Catan all the time instead of going to sporting events or proms. Anyway, we were all going to hang out and play Spin the Bottle Truth or Dare, and listen to music and smoke and drink and just have a great time ringing in the new year—and none of us were afraid of any curse.”
Fiona’s lips twitched. “Let me guess. Something very weird happened.”
“Yep. It was almost midnight, and we’d been sitting around and had finished about three bottles of Asti between us—plus we’d passed around the bong a few times,” she said with a little bit of a wince. “Anyway, as you can imagine, we were all feeling pretty loose and really confident. ‘Look at this. It’s five minutes to midnight! No curse is going to scare us out of here,’ said Freddie. I remember that because about a minute later, I was—uh, Ben and I were—uh…” Damn. Callie felt her face go hot and she knew how bright the blush would be over her dead-white skin.
“You and Ben were…?” Fiona said teasingly.
“Well, we happened to end up standing under the mistletoe that Frida hung up because she wanted to catch Randy under it, but he was only interested in Lauren—I think, anyway—and anyway…Ben and I were standing there and suddenly Frida shouts, ‘Oooh! Callie, look up! You’re under the mistletoe! Ben, you’re the closest one—give her a kiss!’” Callie couldn’t believe that sixteen years later, she was still blushing over that moment.
Fiona was watching her from over the rim of her crimson teacup. Her lips curved in a delighted smile behind the cup’s gold-painted rim. “Well, did he?”
“He sure did.” Callie couldn’t quite keep the zest from her voice, and her face went even hotter when she realized how she sounded. “I mean…”
“Happy New Year to you, huh?” giggled Fiona. “So…what happened?”
“Well, we were—uh—kissing, you know—”
“So it wasn’t just an obligatory peck on the cheek,” Fiona said, still grinning.
“Um. No. Definitely not just a peck on the cheek.” Callie figured her face was so hot it would light up the entire city if she were outside at night right now. Geez. How mortifying. She was a grown woman, many years and several relationships past that night…why did she still react so strongly to the memory?
“So, anyway, you and Ben were mauling each other—what do they say in England? Oh, yes, snogging under the mistletoe, and some asshole guy has to tempt fate by saying, ‘See, there’s no ghosts here,’ or whatever…”
Callie nodded, laughing. “Yeah. That was about it. The next thing I knew, the entire room was…well, it was like we were in a tornado or a crazy windstorm or something. Everything just sort of erupted.” She shivered, and felt a little sick to her stomach as she remembered the way they stumbled and fought to try and find their way out of the room. “We couldn’t see where we were going; it was kind of dark and we only had two small flashlights—and they went out right away.
“Everyone was totally freaked out and we were shouting and bumping into each other, and then one of us—I think it was Lauren, or maybe it was the guy whose name I can’t remember—oh, Darren, that’s it—opened the door and we started to run out but it was the wrong door and suddenly we were out on the balcony where all those people had died on New Year’s Eve—”