Page 41 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Spite & Spellwork

Frustrated, Saga crouched to collect the fallen photographs and letters, gathering them back into the shoebox.

She read the envelopes. All addressed to her mother from her father from different locations around the world. They spanned at least three years, going by the postmarks. “What the hell?” Saga asked the air, her hands shaking. “What the hell?” Saga dug into her pocket for her phone and for the first time in years felt the urge to call her own mother.

Her thumb hovered over the contact before she pocketed the device with a frustrated sigh. Confrontation had never gone well with Audrey Hudson, and if the woman had downplayed her relationship with Saga’s father so heavily, it was unlikely she would come clean simply because of this one box. Saga needed all the facts first, and barring that, she at least needed to find her calm. Her mother always sabotaged a conversation if she detected any sort of “emotional outburst.”

Saga pulled a letter from the previously opened envelope. She had only one sample of his penmanship—on a recipe he’d made for baked apple pancakes that she kept safely tucked in her cookbook. The recipe was like most doctor’s notes—it required a good deal of squinting or a trained eye in order to decipher it. She’d studied the handwriting so often, she could still see the similarities in the lettering. He was more deliberate with each pen stroke here, and certain letters swirled to create a more beautiful presentation, as if he could send nothing less than perfection. But the way he crossed his t’s was the same. The slope of the lettering, the spacing of his punctuation, and the extra loop he gave his o’s were the same.

“Dad…” Saga’s breath caught and her eyes began to well up, her confusion and shock overcome by this unexpected gift. It was from him. It really was from him.

My beloved,

I am counting down the hours until I see you again. If I am lucky, I will be in your arms even before this letter reaches you. Tomorrow we make our way to Ikeja, where we will at last book passage back to Europe. It has been agony being away, but I am comforted by the knowledge that with our help, the hospitals are no longer overwhelmed here.

My patients tell me my Igbo is lacking, but they admire my determination. Or at least Chetachi does—she reminds me of my own grandmother. Strong as steel even in her old age. Survived a landslide and has been treating her broken leg like it is a mere inconvenience. I think you would like her—I know she would adore you. You have a similar fire.

She wrote down a phrase for me, “A Hurum Gi N’anya,” so I could not butcher it when I passed it on. Plainly, it means “I love you,” but directly, it means “I have you in my eye.” It is meant to emphasize the idea that to love someone is to truly see them.

I feel you in those words. You, above all others, see me. I pray my love does the same for you. You, my divine, my everything, shine so brightly, it is hard to imagine anyone could not see you for who you truly are.

I am coming home, Audrey. Please pray for my safe return so that I may be blessed by your presence once more.

Yours ever,

Viggo

Saga stared at the words and reread them. She looked at the date on the envelope—the postmark was dated two years before she was even born.

“Mrow?” Riddle inquired cautiously.

“My parents were in love…” Saga answered in disbelief. She turned to the cat-síth and held out the letter. “Did you know about this?”

23The Deer Mother, or Yule Deer as she is sometimes called, is said to take the form of a reindeer on the winter solstice. At sunset, she gathers the last ray of light between her antlers and carries it through the darkest night of the year, safely delivering it to the horizon for a new dawn. She is called the Deer Mother because, unlike their male counterparts, female reindeer do not shed their antlers in winter but wait until spring when their calves are born.

24While the legend of Santa Claus and his elf heritage may vary from culture to culture and be difficult to explain simply and succinctly, what we can be certain of is if he does travel by flying reindeer, they are all female, and likely all pregnant.

Chapter 10 Avery

Evil was an intriguing mortal concept. Humans liked to use it as a noun, not a verb. It was not the actions of men but rather the men themselves, and in making such a distinction, they unintentionally absolved the villains of their lives. Villains could not help what they did. They were evil. It was all they could do.

In two hundred years, Avery had never met evil. She saw greed, she saw cruelty, she saw apathy and even malice. The actions could be described as evil, but she had never met a creature she could absolve with that word. They had all made their choices. Often daily. Even her father, in the height of his madness, did not suit that word. He was not born vicious, he descended into it.

But Susan… Susan might have been born evil.

It was not the weight of the fifty books but rather that the bags Esteri had purchased to carry them seemed engineered to dig into shoulders and palms without mercy.

No doubt Susan would have known this.

Avery should have used her hagstone on the woman. Undoubtedly it would have revealed some terrifying creature. All the best wonders were guarded by truly terrifying creatures. Most of the time, dragons. The Golden Fleece, the gates at Avalon…

She felt her upper lip curl in a sneer at the memory of Fiore picking Esteri up from the cake shop they’d walked to after the library. The dragon had opened the car door for their partner and given Avery the barest of nods.

Yes. All the best wonders were guarded by dragons.

At the side door of 221 that provided access to apartments A and B, she hoisted two bags to her shoulder—to which her shoulder complained immediately. Gritting her teeth, Avery dug her keys from her pocket, unlocked the door, and stumbled inside.

A shock of pink caught her eye as Saga’s head whipped up from her task of trying to open her own apartment door, a box tucked under her arm. Her sweater had a wide neckline and so it hung pleasantly off her shoulder, and as Saga straightened up, the muscles around her neck and clavicle tensed. “Hi.”

Well, perhaps not all the best wonders.