Page 31 of Blood and Bells

“Postage stamps,” he says. “Miniaturized paintings with adhesive backs that enslave men to carry paper. Civilization shouldn’t hinge on glue and faith.”

Holly pokes me in the chest. “You’re an undead creature of the dark who drinks blood to live and hangs out with ghouls and monsters, and you think a car is unnatural?”

“It’s complicated.” I adjust the rearview mirror, feigning indignation. “You’re inside and outside at the same time, moving while staying still, trapped in this metal rolling box powered by explosions and dinosaur blood. Somehow, a free-floating steering rudder gives you control. It’s nonsense. With horses, you point them and they mostly go.”

“Steering rudder?”

“That’s not at all true,” Ronan pipes in from the back, presumably in an effort to be as unhelpful as possible. “Steering a horse-drawn wagon is impossibly complicated. He just hates cars.”

“Moving boxes of madness,” I mutter.

Holly is laughing so hard she can hardly breathe, and she’s lucky I find it so enchanting. If she were any of my coven, I’d be tempted to turn her into a bat.

It’s strange and a little wonderful how perfectly she fits in with our dynamic. Crinkshaw and Ronan can be a bit much for outsiders, but Holly is giving it back as good as she’s getting it. And I know my coven; they’re both enjoying themselves enormously. I don’t adore being the topic of the jokes, but she’s having such a good time that it doesn’t seem to bother me very much at all.

We approach a windswept field, and I cautiously pull the car over. A quick check of the GPS confirms it. This is the place. It’s the definition of nowhere: an open, grassy plain broken only by the occasional pile of rocks and boulders. I get out, happy to stretch my legs.

“Are we lost?” Holly asks. “Did we run out of gas?”

Everyone else piles out of the car, and Ronan retrieves his axe from the trunk.

“Nope.”

Gracefully, I leap over the low wooden fence that marks the edge of the field and move through the snow-covered grass. The portal is close. I can practically taste the magic. Burnt syrup and peppermint. It has to be here. Where⁠—

“Here, Sire.” Crinkshaw points like he’s rising from a crypt.

“I don’t see anything.” Holly hugs herself and hops from one foot to the other. Right. Humans feel the cold. Best to hurry.

Now that Crinkshaw has me facing the right direction, the outline of the portal comes into view.

“Exactly where I’d predicted it would be, give or take a few feet,” I say over my shoulder, giving her a winning grin. Four out of ten.

She blows into her hands.

My grin falters. I release a whisper of vampire power.

The portal to the Hollow of Mischief appears.

Holly screams.

It’s not the reaction I was hoping for.

To be fair, the portal is horrifying. It’s several stories tall, slick with rime and shadow, and emanates waves of monstrous evil. Twenty-four shuttered windows line its height, each marked with a number, like a row of dark, watchful eyes glaring down at us. With malevolence. One hangs half-open, and something red flutters from its edge—velvet, trimmed with pale fur, snapping softly in the wind like a warning.

It’s also quite an unflattering shade of peppermint green.

“It’s the world’s worst advent calendar,” she gasps, craning her head to peer at the monstrosity before us.

“It’s not great,” I agree. “But if we solve the riddle, we can get inside.”

“What happens if we don’t solve the riddle correctly?” Holly asks.

“Garden gnomes will materialize to pelt you with hard candy and—” Crinkshaw starts to say, but a hand over his mouth cuts him off. I beam maniacally at Holly.

“Nothing!” Slowly, carefully, I remove my hand from his mouth, ready to clap it back down if needed. “It doesn’t matter because we’ll get the riddle right. We always get the riddle right. Or at least he does. That’s why we brought him. Crinkshaw is fiendishly clever at riddles.”

“And decorating and cooking,” Holly says flatly.