Sinister Lang Syne: A Short Holiday Novel (Wicks Hollow) Read online

  “Yeah. I just saw her over at the clock tower,” he replied, keeping his voice very casual. He hoped the slight flush he felt creeping over his face wasn’t noticeable. At least the beard would help.

  “The old creepy, cursed place?” said Baxter. “What was she doing there?”

  “She’s getting married there—get this—on New Year’s Eve,” Ben told him, avoiding Kendra’s eyes. But he still felt the weight of them as they locked on him.

  “On New Year’s Eve? Are you serious?” Baxter swiveled on his stool to look at him. “That’s…brave.”

  “Why is that brave?” asked Declan, sampling the beer. “Oh, yes, this is so much better than that wildflower honey wheat beer you tried before. I think I need a veggie omelette to go with it, Kendra.”

  “How about nachos instead?” she replied. “Eggs and beer…no way. Not in my bar.”

  “Uh, sure?” Declan glanced at Ben and Baxter, both of whom shrugged. “If you don’t want to serve eggs and beer, why do you have omelettes on the menu?”

  She shook her head as she wiped up the thickly shellacked counter. “Because Andy makes the best omelettes in the county, that’s why. You just can’t have one with beer.”

  Declan gave her a confused look, then shrugged. “All right, now that we have that settled…who is Callie by the way?”

  “Callie Quigley,” said Kendra, still, apparently, feeling the need to be nosy and interfering, “is Ben’s big crush from—when was it—first grade?—all the way through senior year of high school. He made her the sweetest pink and purple valentine when he was in fifth grade. He even put butterflies on it because she had these cute butterfly ponytail holders she used to wear all the time.”

  Ben took another swig of beer. He should have just gone back to the office, dammit. “Well, I thought they were really cute,” he said when Baxter and Declan looked at him. “The butterfly things in her hair.”

  “She was cute. Is probably still cute. But he was too shy to tell her—ten years of crushing on her from a distance, you know—and then he graduated and went off to college and that was the end of that.” Kendra gave him a sympathetic look that was just about to fray his last nerve.

  Just then, rescue came along in the form of the Trivia Night emcee pushing through the door. He was toting all of his equipment and that caused enough distraction for Kendra that she left the three guys alone to eat their nachos and drink the beer.

  Thank goodness. Ben didn’t need anymore reason to be thinking about Callie Quigley.

  But when, a few hours later, he caught a glimpse of her bright hair as she walked by The Roost, his heart gave a sad little tug.

  You missed your chance, dude.

  Three

  “So your big marketing idea is to have a wedding at the same place and time as five other weddings that ended with someone dying?” Fiona Murphy looked at Callie with a raised brow. “Like, you’re going to be challenging a curse?”

  They were sitting at a corner table in Orbra’s Tea House, which was decked out for the holidays in reds, greens, and blues. Ornate Christmas bulbs hung from ribbons at the windows, a small poinsettia surrounded by candles sat in the center of each table, and the place settings were all in red, green, or gold (patrons could get blue and white for Hanukkah by request).

  Orbra used only Christmas or winter-themed tea sets during the month of December, when the menu featured her Holiday Tea specials—which included, among other treats, miniature gingerbread houses, raspberry filled snowball puffs, and apricot-sized pies with savory herb stuffing and a dollop of cranberry sauce. She even did peppermint petit fours with red fondant and minuscule candy canes on them.

  “Well, when you put it like that…yes,” Callie replied with a grin…which faded after a minute. The heaviness and twisting hadn’t left the pit of her stomach since last night.

  Maybe she was making a mistake.

  “I mean, I just assumed that this curse thing was a bunch of exaggerated old tall tales that people piled on over the last, you know, century. But then I went over there yesterday, and…” Callie huffed out a nervous breath. “There’s definitely still some strange vibes over there.”

  “What do you mean still?” Fiona asked, placing tiny raspberry-filled snowballs on her small plate. They sparkled from the coarse sugar that coated their outsides.

  “Well, the last time I was there—the only time I was there, really—was sixteen years ago. A bunch of us decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve in the Tremaine Tower room to prove that there wasn’t any curse—and so we could drink and smoke without our parents knowing. It was Ben Tremaine, and—”

  “Ben Tremaine, the accountant?” Fiona’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Oh, crap, I forgot…I’ve got to get him my end of year projections!” She groaned and glanced out the front window of the cafe as if expecting to see Ben standing there, watching her expectantly.

  Fiona had recently inherited the old antiques shop on Violet Way in Wicks Hollow1, which was how Callie had met her. It was during a visit last summer and Callie had been looking for some vintage or antique plates for one of the weddings she was planning, and the two had hit it off quite well. Callie ended up buying three sets of Art Deco candlesticks and a large serving platter and making a close friend in the process.

  “Yes, that’s Ben, I guess. Does he do everyone’s taxes here in Wicks Hollow?” Callie asked, feeling a stab of pride for her old friend.

  She could feel that for him, couldn’t she? Just as a friend and not a love interest—even though he’d basically blown her off last night?

  Maybe he really had had work to do.

  “Anyway, it was Ben and me, and Frida Acerita—you know, Juanita’s baby sister’s daughter—and Randy Johnston, Lauren Barclay, Freddie Cooper, and…oh, what was his name? I can’t remember. We were the nerdy kids that hung out and played D&D, PlayStation—never XBox—and Settlers of Catan all the time instead of going to sporting events or proms. Anyway, we were all going to hang out and play Spin the Bottle Truth or Dare, and listen to music and smoke and drink and just have a great time ringing in the new year—and none of us were afraid of any curse.”

  Fiona’s lips twitched. “Let me guess. Something very weird happened.”

  “Yep. It was almost midnight, and we’d been sitting around and had finished about three bottles of Asti between us—plus we’d passed around the bong a few times,” she said with a little bit of a wince. “Anyway, as you can imagine, we were all feeling pretty loose and really confident. ‘Look at this. It’s five minutes to midnight! No curse is going to scare us out of here,’ said Freddie. I remember that because about a minute later, I was—uh, Ben and I were—uh…” Damn. Callie felt her face go hot and she knew how bright the blush would be over her dead-white skin.

  “You and Ben were…?” Fiona said teasingly.

  “Well, we happened to end up standing under the mistletoe that Frida hung up because she wanted to catch Randy under it, but he was only interested in Lauren—I think, anyway—and anyway…Ben and I were standing there and suddenly Frida shouts, ‘Oooh! Callie, look up! You’re under the mistletoe! Ben, you’re the closest one—give her a kiss!’” Callie couldn’t believe that sixteen years later, she was still blushing over that moment.

  Fiona was watching her from over the rim of her crimson teacup. Her lips curved in a delighted smile behind the cup’s gold-painted rim. “Well, did he?”

  “He sure did.” Callie couldn’t quite keep the zest from her voice, and her face went even hotter when she realized how she sounded. “I mean…”

  “Happy New Year to you, huh?” giggled Fiona. “So…what happened?”

  “Well, we were—uh—kissing, you know—”

  “So it wasn’t just an obligatory peck on the cheek,” Fiona said, still grinning.

  “Um. No. Definitely not just a peck on the cheek.” Callie figured her face was so hot it would light up the entire city if she were outside at night right now. Geez. How mortifying. She was a
grown woman, many years and several relationships past that night…why did she still react so strongly to the memory?

  “So, anyway, you and Ben were mauling each other—what do they say in England? Oh, yes, snogging under the mistletoe, and some asshole guy has to tempt fate by saying, ‘See, there’s no ghosts here,’ or whatever…”

  Callie nodded, laughing. “Yeah. That was about it. The next thing I knew, the entire room was…well, it was like we were in a tornado or a crazy windstorm or something. Everything just sort of erupted.” She shivered, and felt a little sick to her stomach as she remembered the way they stumbled and fought to try and find their way out of the room. “We couldn’t see where we were going; it was kind of dark and we only had two small flashlights—and they went out right away.

  “Everyone was totally freaked out and we were shouting and bumping into each other, and then one of us—I think it was Lauren, or maybe it was the guy whose name I can’t remember—oh, Darren, that’s it—opened the door and we started to run out but it was the wrong door and suddenly we were out on the balcony where all those people had died on New Year’s Eve—”

  She shook her head, remembering the wild terror that coursed through her. People had died there!

  “The clock was chiming midnight and the ball was going to light up on the twelfth stroke, and the next thing I knew Ben was grabbing me and dragging me and Lauren back inside, saying, ‘Get off there! Get back inside!’ and finally all of us were back in the room, which was still crazy wild…and then it felt like it was raining inside—there was all this wet stuff flinging around. We somehow got out the right door and ran down the stairs and…” She spread her hands. Her heart was pounding hard, as if she were living the horror all over again. “When we got downstairs and outside and got a look at each other…we were all covered in specks and droplets of—of blood. I mean, it looked like blood. Like it had been splattered all over us.”

  She shivered, feeling the same ugly nausea she’d experienced that night when she looked at her friends and their terrified, blood-splattered faces.

  “That really freaked us out, and we just—ran away. Went home. It took me a long time to wash whatever that was off my face. I don’t know if it was blood, but whatever it was…” She shuddered. “I don’t think any of us wanted to talk about what happened or to admit it…and we didn’t really hang out together much after that. For the same reason. It was…crazy.”

  “And so after living through all of that, you decided it was a good idea to have a wedding there on New Year’s Eve?” Fiona asked.

  Callie sighed and bit her lip. “It was so long ago, and I never heard of anyone else having any sort of experience there. I think over the years I sort of talked myself into believing that one of the guys had set it up to freak us all out—and that we were so drunk and stoned that we exaggerated all of it. You know?” She picked up one of the miniature gingerbread houses—the size of a large muffin—its features painstakingly piped with frosting. She bit off the chimney with a sharp snap. “But after being there yesterday…” She shivered. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  “Can I just point out that this is, after all, Wicks Hollow,” said Fiona mildly. “And that kind of stuff is real here.”

  “Well, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about it. Because…didn’t you have a ghost problem or something? In your shop?”

  “I certainly did. And, fortunately, it’s been resolved.” Fiona poured a new cup of tea for each of them. “The ghost—whose name was Gretchen, by the way, has been happily put to rest.”

  Callie inhaled the delicious scent of a vanilla spice oolong that was Orbra’s signature blend for her Holiday Teas. Mmmm. Delicious. “Well, that’s the thing—maybe if we can resolve—I mean, if I can resolve whatever is going on with that place before New Year’s Eve, then it’ll be safe for Iva and Hollis to get married there.”

  “What?” Fiona’s cup clattered onto its saucer, sloshing tea all over the table. “Who?”

  “Oh, it’s this darling older couple who are just gaga over each other. The groom is an old friend of Mom’s second husband, and—”

  “Are you talking about Iva Bergstrom and Hollis Nath?” Fiona’s eyes were bugging out.

  “Yes! Do you know them? Oh, that’s right—I think they did mention Iva has a house here. Aren’t they the cutest—”

  “Callie, you can’t do that! You can’t—wait, wait, wait…how on earth did you get Iva to agree to that? She’s got serious respect for ghosts and the supernatural…I can’t see her ever agreeing to—I don’t know—disrupting a curse of whatever by doing something that’s like—like poking a bear!”

  Callie was a little taken aback by Fiona’s ferocity. She wasn’t offended, she was just surprised. But maybe someone who’d dealt with her own ghostly situation wasn’t about to play fast and loose with another one.

  And maybe Fiona was correct about that…

  “Right. Well, actually, I don’t think Mr. Nath has told Iva about the actual venue yet. I think it was going to be a surprise…?” The expression on Fiona’s face had Callie grimacing in defeat. “Not good?”

  Fiona was shaking her head. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Poor Hollis. He’s going to get himself in a crap-ton of trouble once Iva finds out he volunteered them for this crazy publicity stunt—that’s what it is, right? And how did that end up happening anyway?”

  Callie was feeling utterly miserable by this point. “Well, I was trying to find a way to bolster my off-season wedding planning services, and so I decided it would be fun to offer free wedding planning and vendor services to whatever couple was willing to tie the knot on the Tremaine Tower balcony on New Year’s Eve. Kind of like a curse-debunking contest sort of thing.

  “Mr. Nath heard about it through my mom, and he jumped on the chance—I think because he’s ready to tie the knot and it sounds like Iva’s been in not so much of a rush. Not because he can’t afford it, of course, but because I guess once Iva said she thought it would be the most romantic thing in the world to get married in the snow, outside on New Year’s Eve.

  “So Mr. Nath thought he’d kill two birds with one stone—do a favor for the daughter of a friend, me, and present his bride with her dream wedding.”

  Fiona was shaking her head. “Oh boy. It’ll be a miracle if they ever get married once Iva finds out about this. Have you ever met a woman who didn’t want to be in charge of planning her own wedding?”

  “Oh, that’s not a problem—the reason Mr. Nath wanted to do it is because I was already meeting with them to discuss doing their wedding anyway. That’s how I know how ridiculously adorable the two of them are. I got enough information from Iva to know what she likes and what she’d want—and apparently, she agreed that Mr. Nath could pick the venue as long as it’s on New Year’s Eve. So he’s making it a sort of surprise.”

  “It’ll be a surprise all right,” Fiona muttered. “All right. So. Assuming Iva doesn’t murder Hollis when she finds out about his master plan, and the wedding is going to go on as scheduled…you’re going to need to figure out how to put this curse—and its ghost—to rest. Right?”

  “Right.” Callie heaved a sigh of relief that she’d got Fiona back on her side. “But how do I do that?”

  Fiona settled back in her seat. “Well, you could do what Leslie Nakano did up at Shenstone House when she was being haunted—actually try and talk to the ghost and see what she—or he, or whatever—will tell you.”

  “I was already planning to do some serious research about Brenda Tremaine—yes, she’s some relation to Ben; that’s how we got access to the building back then because they still own the place—and the others who died. I guess that’s where I should start.”

  “Yes. And you’d better get on it pretty soon, since New Year’s Eve is only three weeks from tomorrow,” Fiona said, baring her teeth in a humorless smile. Then her expression turned crafty. “Why don’t you ask cutie Ben Tremaine to help you do the research. He’s still
single, you know, and it’s his own family’s building. And I do like his beard.”

  “I do too,” Callie said. And blushed.

  Dammit.

  Four

  December was the busiest time of the year for most people, but when you were an event planner—especially one who specialized in weddings—the craziness was off the charts. Thus Callie had Christmas-themed weddings, Nutcracker premieres, and holiday parties up the wazoo.

  That was why it was a whole week later before Callie had time to make the ninety-minute drive to Wicks Hollow from her home base in Grand Rapids.

  T-minus fourteen days till the Crazy Cursed Tremaine Tower Wedding.

  Why am I doing this to myself?

  The problem was, it was too late to change things now. Not only had she promised a gorgeous wedding event for Iva Bergstrom and Hollis Nath, but she’d booked (and paid for, nonrefundably) the photographer, musicians, invitations, flowers, and food…and aside from that, she’d had five “teaser” pieces in various midwest publications about the Breaking of the Tremaine Clock Tower Curse wedding.

  She’d been on the local television morning show in Grand Rapids, and had been interviewed on two different radio stations. Numerous blogs—both wedding planner-type blogs and ghost-hunter blogs—had picked up the story and reposted it.

  Even Baxter James, the cute and shy brewmaster who did freelance writing for some of the local papers, had done a big spread for the Grand Rapids Press—complete with photos of not only Callie and her office, but also Hollis Nath (who was a bigwig lawyer in the city and seemed to know everyone) and his bride…along with photos from the fateful night Brenda and Barclay had tried to get married.

  In short, she’d trumpeted her intentions far and wide via as many avenues as possible, so now everyone (or at least it felt like everyone) knew about the wedding that was meant to break a deadly curse.