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“So, why are you still here?” she asked.
“As I said, I’m curious to see how this whole thing plays out. I mean, what if Heather doesn’t have a mate?”
Maria considered it, but the elf had gone by the time she opened her mouth. “Sure, leave me in suspense,” she groaned and headed for the backdoor.
Before pulling the door open, she flicked on the outside light. Snow, snow, and a lot of trees, but Zoe wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “Zoe?” she called into the crisp night air. “Zooooeeee!”
When she got no reply, she ventured outside to look around. All she found were tracks leading into the woods and an empty bottle of tequila sitting on the fence post. “Oh, no,” she grumbled and reached inside her jacket for her phone.
“This is not good,” she said as she waited for Kristen to answer.
It would do her no good to follow Zoe’s tracks, but she knew a guy that could.
CHAPTER SEVEN
~
Zoe stopped, muttered to herself, and took a long, deep, frosty breath as she looked around at the snowy scene. Snow, trees, but no landmarks. She turned around, scanning the area as she went – snow, trees, but no landmarks – she was lost.
“That’s just fricking wonderful,” she muttered. “I wanted a winter wonderland, and now I’m lost in one.”
She turned a full circle and found everything looked the same. “I’ll just retrace my steps,” she said, turning the light from her phone on her footsteps. “Good plan,” she said, taking that first step, and then the light cut out and she was left in the relative darkness of the middle of nowhere.
“Ah, poop it,” she grumbled, her mouth turning down as she realised she was doomed. “The Christmas curse,” she muttered, disgusted with herself for not paying attention.
“I’m a dead witch walking,” she said and dropped to her backside in the snow.
~
“We came as soon as we heard the news,” Kristen said, eyeing Heather behind the bar, but she didn’t want to comment on the strange situation. “Where is she?”
“You missed her; she left with Maria,” Heather said.
Kristen had spotted Robert’s brother at the end of the bar and assumed where there was a mate; there would be another mate. “But Billy’s her mate, right?”
“So, I hear,” Heather said with a gleeful smile and eyes full of mischief.
Kristen turned to Robert. “Why isn’t your brother with his mate?”
Robert turned to look at Billy. “Which witch?” he asked over the noise of the revellers who had started celebrating Christmas a little early.
“Zoe,” Kristen said, seeing the amusement spread across Robert’s face.
“The mean email writer,” he said, chuckling to himself. “Well, well, this should be fun.”
“Stop crowing and go find out what happened,” Kristen said, with a magic fuelled nudge that propelled him away from her.
“That told him,” Heather said, snorting a chuckle. “You want a drink?”
Kristen was about to answer when her phone went off. She waved Heather away to get back to work when she saw Maria’s name on the screen. “Oh, please don’t say Zoe wants to make a run for it,” she hissed into the phone.
“Not exactly,” Maria said.
“Huh? Shout, I can’t hear you…”
“Zoe is missing, presumed drunk in the woods!” Maria yelled into the phone. “I need a tracker – cos there are tracks!”
“I’m on it,” Kristen said. “Stay where you are; we don’t need two lost witches.”
