AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hey,” I replied, then moved out of the way so he could step inside. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
“It smells amazing.”
I smiled up at him, even as I wanted to shake my head. “I’ve made pot roast for you before.”
“And it’s been great every time.”
Was there another woman in the world as lucky as I was? I honestly didn’t think so. Calvin was so perfect, I wondered sometimes whether I’d just hallucinated our relationship, that someone so wonderful couldn’t possibly exist.
But he was very real, thank the Goddess. The only real fly in the ointment was the ongoing friction with his parents over our relationship. Yes, it seemed as though they’d settled into an uneasydétente— he’d been invited to the little get-together at his sister Anna’s house after she came home from the hospital with her third child — but I also had the feeling it was only because Anna had put her foot down and let it be known that the rift between Calvin and Raymond and Delia Standingbear wasn’t going to keep her brand-new daughter from getting to meet her uncle for the first time.
Unfortunately, as much as I would have liked to figure out a way to fix the situation, so far I hadn’t been able to come up with a single solution that sounded at all workable. And with Calvin unwilling to even discuss the problem — I loved the man to death, but I also knew he wanted to avoid conflict at all costs — I realized I had to let it go.
Still, I hated the idea of him and his parents heading into the holiday season with no resolution in sight. The San Ramon Apache had their own traditions, of course, and yet it seemed as though they also celebrated Christmas, just like the rest of Globe.
After we’d sat down to eat and made the ritualclinkof our wine glasses together, I said, “Josie wants me to find the missing baby Jesus from St. Ignatius.”
Being Calvin, he absorbed that statement for a moment before saying, “Someone took it?”
“Apparently,” I replied. “Unless you think it might have beamed itself up to heaven or something.”
He gave me a pained glance at that comment, but his tone was even enough as he said, “It’s been stolen before, right?”
“I guess so,” I said. “I mean, Arch — ”I broke off there as I realized I still hadn’t told Calvin about the teeny tiny fact that the stray cat I’d taken in was actually a man who’d been laboring under a witch’s curse for the better part of seventy years. “That is,” I went on quickly, “Josie made it sound as though it’s happened before. High school kid stuff. But Henry Lewis hasn’t been able to find out anything so far, and I took a quick peek on Facebook and didn’t see any evidence of kids posting selfies of themselves with the missing Jesus.”
“Most high school kids don’t use Facebook,” Calvin remarked as he reached for a biscuit.
Maybe I rolled my eyes just the tiniest bit. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice, since he was focused on smearing some butter on the edge of his plate. “I guess not,” I said. “So anyway, now I’m trying to figure out who could have possibly wanted to take it, if it wasn’t some high school kids.”
“Elementary school kids?” he suggested after a bite of biscuit.
I guessed that was possible. Globe’s school system was so small that the elementary school went all the way up to eighth grade. Maybe some enterprising seventh- or eight-graders had decided it was time for them to pull a prank. If that was the case, I had to hope their consciences would get the better of them and they’d quietly return baby Jesus once they’d decided they’d had their fun. Since there hadn’t been any mention of the prank on Facebook, I wouldn’t bother to check again.
“At this point, I’m open to anything,” I said. “I guess I’ll just have to hope the universe guides me in the right direction.”
Calvin smiled. Since he knew that listening for signals from the universe was how I tended to live my life most of the time anyway, he had probably guessed that was my way of saying I’d just have to wait and see…
…and hope for a miracle in the meantime.
2
Trip the Light
Although I decidedto refrain from wandering the streets with my pendulum, I actually did get out my Tarot cards the next day before I headed downstairs to open up the shop. If nothing else, they might give me an idea of where I should be focusing my energies.
The first card I flipped over was The Fool.
Now, The Fool didn’t necessarily mean that I was an idiot for agreeing to find our unknown baby snatchers. No, it was trying to tell me that I shouldn’t worry about taking a leap of faith, that sometimes you just had to go with your gut.
Or possibly, it was letting me know that I’d already taken that leap of faith by realizing I needed to allow the universe to guide me where I needed to go, and therefore trying to push things probably wasn’t a good idea.
After that, I pulled the Knight of Swords. In a typical reading, that particular court card often represented a younger man, someone who didn’t always look before he leapt. And if it turned out the nativity’s baby Jesus actually had been taken by a kid from one of Globe’s schools, then it made sense that the card would show up now.
But even though logic suggested the card had a great deal to do with this particular case, it still didn’t help me much when it came to figuring out exactly who that one individual might be.
The final card in the spread was the Seven of Pentacles. It often showed up as a reminder that the seeds had already been planted, and therefore all you had to do was wait for a particular plan to come to fruition.
Right now, however, I didn’t see how it could possibly have much bearing on the baby Jesus–napping. After all, I’d barely gotten started with trying to sort out the puzzle.
