Page 60 of Blood and Bells

“I always have a plan,” she says. “Step one: finish your coffee. Step two: you go home and do something that does not involve spiraling. Step three: you decide what you actually want him to say when you’re not actively furious. If you survive steps one through three, step four is having a conversation with him without exploding.”

“I am not spiraling.”

“You absolutely are spiraling.”

“I am processing.”

“With dramatic flair.”

“That is my brand.”

Marcy grins. “Finish your coffee, Holly.”

I look down at the mug in my hands. It’s gone lukewarm, which feels, irrationally, like I’ve failed at coffee as a concept.

“Fine,” I say, and drain it with the sullen obstinacy usually reserved for teenagers. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic.”

I shove my gloves back on with more force than the situation strictly requires, which is satisfying in the limited way small acts of aggression usually are. She leans in and bumps her shoulder against mine on the way past. “Go home. Do not spiral. Do not lurk outside any Gothic architecture. Do not commit crimes.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“That,” Marcy says over her shoulder, “is exactly what people say before I end up having to bring them bail money and a muffin.”

I pull open the door before she can keep going. The cold hits me all at once, bitter and needling, and the bell above the shop gives its little jingle again, unbearably pleased with itself.

Behind me, Marcy calls, “Text me when you get home.”

I glance back. “You hate texts.”

“I hate waiting more.”

The walk back is short, which is rude. I would have appreciated more time to become a different person. Willow Creek is still busy in that determined, woolly way small towns have when something awful has happened and everyone has decided the correct response is casseroles, practical footwear, and mild martyrdom. Two teenagers are sweeping up splintered wood beside the park in matching Santa hats. Mr. Patel is rehanging garlands. Mrs. Lee is on a stepladder retying a bow the size of a small yacht.

I answer a few dozen texts and by the time I reach my street, the sky has turned a pale pewter that makes the town look both expensive and slightly doomed. My house sits where I left it, small and familiar beneath its dusting of snow, the porch light still glowing with the smug sincerity of a nativity tea towel.

And there, pinned dead center to the front door with a candy-cane striped drawing pin, is an envelope.

I stop.

It’s cream, thick, and expensive-looking, which suggests either money or menace. Possibly both. My name is written across the front in a curling hand dramatic enough to deserve its own entrance music.

Holly Frost.

For one ridiculous second, I wonder whether Marcy has beaten me home and decided to escalate from emotional support to theatrical intervention.

The envelope is scented with peppermint and woodsmoke, which is not a smell I trust in correspondence. The seal is still intact: dark red wax stamped with the shape of a sleigh.

I glance up and down the street, although I have no idea what I expect to see. A messenger in a velvet cape? A fleeing elf? Nick pretending he’s not lurking behind Mrs. Abernathy’s holly bush?

Nothing.

Just Willow Creek, carrying on around me in all its festive delusion, as if people do not regularly leave ominous stationery on one another’s front doors.

I ease the envelope off the door. Turn it over in my hands—once, twice—and let the wax seal catch the light.

I should get Nick.