Chapter 1
The Christmas Song
Written by Mel Tormé and Robert Wells during a blistering-hot summer in 1945
“There’s a light out on the strand of bulbs above the kitchen cabinets, Halliday. Do handle it, would you, please? It throws the entire balance of the greenery and ornaments off and looks positively dreadful,” said Atticus, of the deep voice and even deeper disapproval, as we finished up the last of our Christmas decorating.
I rolled my eyes at my hummingbird, who hovered in my sightline, his wings buzzing. “Yes, Drama Queen. I’ll get to it as soon as I’m sure these pictures are straight.”
Taking a step back from the batch of vintage Santa pictures I’d just hung along each side of the fireplace, I sighed with disgust. “I have zero sense of symmetry.”
“Not if you angle your head at four o’ clock,” Atticus reassured. “Maybe five after.”
I cocked my head. “I don’t think I can ask everyone to hold their heads at four o’clock, Atti.”
“I told you to measure, Halliday.”
“And I told you I never measure.”
“And I told you it would be crooked.”
I planted my hands on my hips and ignored him as I assessed. We were almost done with decorating the house (it only took an entire week, starting the day after Thanksgiving), and my fondest wish at this point was to be able to sit and enjoy it all. I couldn’t enjoy it if the pictures were crooked.
Knowing Atti would scold me for using my magic instead of manually adjusting the frame didn’t stop me from lifting my index finger in the air, moving the frame a bit to the right and straightening the picture of Santa riding a moonbeam.
“Halliday…” Atti warned.
He didn’t like me to use my magic for something I could do with good old-fashioned manual labor. He was forever worried I’d forget and use it in front of someone I shouldn’t, and I’d be discovered for the witch I am.
Then they’d burn me at the stake in the town square, blah, blah, blah.
I grinned at him as the picture leveled out. “What? I’m just getting my fingers warmed up for Uncle Darling’s arrival. You know he’ll want to do at least one ritual altar to honor mom before he moves on to his next stop.”
Uncle Darling is actually my godfather, and my mother’s best friend she met while in college in Boston. His real name is Andrew Darkling, and on the drag queen circuit he’s known as Tia Fortew (get it?). He’s quite famous—or maybe it’s infamous—in the world of hip pads and glitter.
My first real memory of Uncle Darling is of him in a blonde wig teased to the heavens, long red nails, and a beautiful sparkly red dress, with eyelashes the size of hand fans glued to his eyelids.
Apparently, his last name, Darkling, stuck, but I couldn’t pronounce it properly and instead dubbed him Aunt Darling. At that age, I didn’t know he was a man dressing as a woman as part of his profession.
He was simply someone I adored who showed up from time to time and played trucks and dress-up with me, and took me on long walks to the beach to gather seashells and into town for double scoops of my favorite ice cream.
Anyway, he’s retired from the drag queen circuit now, but he’s been a constant in my life for as far back as I can remember and I love him as much as if he were blood related.
He and my mother were as close as two best friends can be, and now that she’s left the mortal realm, he’s made it a point to come visit me every couple of months so we’ll never lose touch.
This month, he’s doing what he calls his Christmas tour—in and out in seventy-two hours or less. The one where he drops in on friends and family for a few days during the holidays (his motto is, stay any longer and, like fish, a houseguest begins to smell), lavishes them with love and gifts and whisks off to the next place, leaving behind his biting sense of humor and the memory of nonstop belly laughs over wine.
Atti grated a sigh. “You don’t need your fingers for that, Halliday, and you know that quite well. Speaking of Andrew, when is he supposed to arrive?”
I looked at my phone. “In about an hour. He’s driving in from New Hampshire, where they just left Monty’s sister’s house. So it shouldn’t be long before they arrive.”
Monty is Montwell Danvers, Uncle Darling’s husband, who was once a lighting engineer on several of his tours. They were married four years ago in a gorgeous wedding on the beach in Bora Bora, with my mother as maid of honor and me as a bridesmaid.
Remembering it now, my portly Uncle Darling in his white shirt and crisply pleated trousers with a tall, lean Monty at his side, both of them with love brightly shining in their eyes, forced me to remember how beautiful my mother had been in her organza sea-green dress.
Backless, crisscrossed over her breasts and wrapped around her neck, the dress floated delicately in the wind as her long black hair rippled behind and her bare feet dug into the sand as the sun set and the happy couple had promised to love one another until the end of time.
Warm waves had crashed to the shore, their frothy caps slapping against the wet sand, the setting sun grazing my mother’s shoulders as she silently shed happy tears because Uncle Darling, after all those years on the road, had finally found true love.
“I hope so,” Atti said, interrupting my reverie. “I worry, with the weather being the way it is tonight, the pair of them will land teats up in a snowbank. It is quite dismal out, Halliday.”
“You say dismal, I say picturesque.”
Wandering into the kitchen to attend to the broken light above the cabinet, I looked out the windows facing the cliff my house sat on and heard the ocean crashing below. Even though the backyard was lit up at every corner with snowmen and Christmas trees, it was hazy from the snow and visibility was poor.
But did I mention Uncle Darling is a warlock? He’ll clear a path if necessary because he doesn’t have an Atti riding him like a bucking bronco and minding his magic at every turn.
Witchcraft could be a little sexist from time to time. Warlocks don’t have familiars—it’s as though the ancients thought a man could navigate this world without issue, but a helpless woman? She needed a keeper.
Not that I don’t love Atti. There was never a time he wasn’t around, and to say I wanted to do as I pleased without him breathing down my neck is to denounce the enrichment he brings to my life.
Without him, I’d be very sad. But I won’t lie. I do mind the freedoms allowed warlocks when I’m not given the same pass.
Though, times were a-changin’. Our supreme ruler—head witch honcho, Baba Yaga—was a feminist, and while the ancients may have set the standards, she was all about blowing them up.
“Picturesque, yes. Conducive to safe driving? No, Halliday.”
“It is looking pretty rough out there,” I agreed, pulling the sleeves of my mid-thigh-length sweater over my cold hands with a shiver, grateful for the warmth of a crackling fire.
Atti flew up behind me with a tsk-tsk. “Though, I’ll admit it’s rather lovely.”
Turning, I looked at my open concept kitchen/dining room in one of the biggest spaces in the house, pleased with how the decorating had gone.
With the large kitchen island behind me, I leaned back on it and smiled. I adored the long walnut stained dining room table to my left and the fireplace next to it, ten or so feet away.