The doors swooshed open, then closed after the woman left, sealing us inside the claustrophobic box as it glided upward. You could hear every vinyl crinkle of my jacket. The scrape of Grant’s hand as he raked his palm over his stubble. Every breath.
Didn’t they have elevator music anymore? I was trapped in a soundproof closet of broken dreams, where awkward conversation went to die.
In other words, I was standing next to my husband.
The doors slid open on twelve, and Grant waited, playing the gentleman, until I stepped off first. I gulped in air as if there had been none in the thirty seconds it took to climbto our floor.
The hallway opened into the agency’s gleaming open-concept office, decked out for the holidays with twinkle lights draped over cubicle walls and a tree glittering by the expanse of windows. Snowflakes were suspended from the ceiling, creating a winter wonderland that smelled like pine air freshener and brewing coffee.
Grant walked a few paces behind me, his polished shoes clicking against the marble as I hugged the perimeter wall. When I turned left into my office, he continued straight ahead, disappearing into his own. His door clicked shut.
A few coworkers glanced up from their computers or from the cluster around the coffee pot, and my cheeks warmed like someone had finally listened to me and turned up the thermostat. I shut my door too, the muffled buzz of conversation fading behind the glass.
Well, that was awful.
Chapter 11
Valerie
I peeled out ofmy coat and hung it on the rack beside my potted palm tree. With a heavy sigh, I flicked a silver bell ornament dangling from one of its branches, letting the silvery jingle settle over my office.
Removing the heartstones from my coat pocket, I tucked the velvet pouch into my desk drawer and locked it. Then I cleared the odd thickness from my throat and wiped away what I was sure were melted snowflakes from my eyes.
A portable heater hummed in the corner, the vents angled toward my desk. I cranked it higher and surveyed my little slice of Sunbelt tucked away inside the frigid Snowbelt fortress.
Fine. I was being overdramatic. Snowbelt had a pretty swanky gym with a sauna on the sixth floor. But I still loved my red-and-gold lava lamp, my mini sand-globe collection perched on whitewashed shelves, and the cozy fleece blanket tossed over the back of my chair.
You can take the witch out of the sunshine, but you can’t take the sunshine out of the witch.
With the last of the draft gone, I shook my shoulders to relieve their tension, banishing all thoughts of my frostbitten husband as I settled in front of my computer.
I spent the next two hours buried in the cold case file log, munching on caramel popcorn someone had left in the breakroom. There were about two hundred active cold cases in the archives, mostly miracles gone sideways, historical landmarks that had wound up in an endless legal limbo, and plenty of love stories that never stuck.
I read through the descriptions until the line items blurred, color-coding ones that seemed like a good fit. While every one of them deserved their second chance, and my full attention, I couldn’t decide between them.
A few had already been claimed by the other agents on my team, and I counted the selections, realizing I was the last one to make my pick. I rubbed my palm over my tired eyes and decided to let the universe narrow it down for me. Fate had always been my friend, and it wouldn’t let me down now.
On the corner of my desk sat an Advent calendar with twenty-four tiny drawers, each painted in bright holiday colors. Yesterday’s had held a square of chocolate. Today, it was going to hold my destiny. I shut my eyes, took a breath, and opened one at random.
Number eight.
“All right, Universe,” I said, unwrapping the chocolate square and popping it into my mouth. “Let’s make it interesting.”
I’d arranged exactly sixteen meet-cutes since joining the agency, mostly for smaller holidays, with one big Christmas match each year. So sixteen times eight equaled:Case 128.
With the taste of chocolate destiny lingering on my tongue, I scrolled the case log until I hit Case 128.
Except there wasn’t one. I squinted at the list. The numbers jumped cleanly from 127 to 129.
I frowned. “That’s weird.”
The cursor blinked where the number should’ve been, like it was daring me to look. And the only place to look was the basement, where we stored the cold case files.
I grabbed the fleece blanket off my chair, wrapped it around my shoulders, and trudged toward the elevator. When the doors slid open on the basement floor, I hesitated, staring into the gloomy subterranean level as weak fluorescent lights blinked on.
The air felt ten degrees colder down here, and it smelled faintly of old paper, ozone, and the ever-present scent of peppermint. I swore they piped the mint through the vents, or maybe it seeped up through the foundation. A whisper of sleeping magic drifted through the air, soft as static, and the buzz lifted the hairs on my arms.
“Great,” I muttered, stepping off the elevator and tightening the blanket around my shoulders. “Nothing spooky about a case graveyard in a miracle coven’s basement.”
