A Midwinter Fantasy Read Free Page A

erased.”
    Alexi turned proudly to his entering bride. She was certainly the youth among them, Alexi not quite twice her age, but then again, where ancient prophecies were concerned, when gods were fiddling with mortal lives and taking their bodies as their own, age hardly mattered. Her fine taffeta skirts, in her favourite shade of rich blue, brushed the coarse wood of the door and rustled as she closed it.
    She received Michael’s warm expression with a radiant smile that transformed her death white face into a ray of magical starlight. There was nothing about her that was ordinary. The whole of Mrs. Persephone Rychman remained white as a spectre, even the hair piled atop her head in an elegant coif. But the light here was diffuse enough that she did not have to wear the dark blue tinted glasses that shielded her eerie, breathtaking, ice blue eyes from any harshness.
    “My husband never allows me to get to a door first, Vicar Carroll, otherwise I might abate his most startling tradition,” she said sweetly.
    “Since we’ve lost so many traditions, I suppose we’d best keep the ones remaining,” Michael chuckled in reply.
    While he had wanted an evening alone—to plan, to ruminate, to dream—he could not deny that Persephone made all disappointments bearable. She had saved them all from spectral Armageddon, and her mere presence reminded him ofhope. Even her husband, a cold and fearsome man, eased into something more handsome around his strangely beautiful wife.
    “Come then, you must sit down, now that you’ve come calling and disturbed my quiet. I see your nostrils flaring at the smell of it, Professor, so I know you’ll want a cup of your favourite brew.”
    Alexi nodded and drew out a chair for his wife. She looked up at him with fond eyes, her hand unconsciously grazing her abdomen where her corset stays were bound more loosely these days. Having almost lost what she’d hardly knew she had, under horrific circumstances Michael didn’t wish to relive, he noticed her hand now rested there often, cradling the invisible life their beloved Jane had died to save.
    Ducking into his small kitchen, he returned with a glass of wine for Alexi and a cup of steaming tea for Percy: as a parochial vicar for the Church of England, he always had a kettle of water at the ready, for he never knew when a parishioner might need guidance. It was more often that The Guard came calling. Would they still, now that they had lost their gifts?
    The pair accepted their drinks, and Alexi wasted no time in admitting the reason for his visit.
    “Michael, dear chap, now that we’re no longer arbiters of escapees from the spectral realm, I feel it necessary that Percy and I take the genuine, lengthy honeymoon we were so rudely denied by the onslaught of spectral warfare. However, I think it ill advised to leave Athens Chapel unattended, should there be . . . spiritual backlash or any other such nonsense. I’ll need your assistance to keep an eye open in case something flares up. Not that we could band together again without our powers, without our Healer . . .” Alexi’s usually firm voice faltered, and everyone lookedat the table. He cleared his throat. “I assume this is not a problem?”
    Michael opened and closed his mouth. He didn’t want more responsibility; he wanted time, now, to be a suitor.
    Alexi read the conflict upon his face. “You’ve something better to do?”
    “The good vicar does have a job, Alexi,” Percy murmured.
    Alexi looked unimpressed. “Be that as it may, I may need him to step in and assist Rebecca with goings-on at the school, too. I’m not officially an administrator, but I might as well have been. The headmistress deferred to my judgement in many things.”
    True, Rebecca often listened to him, but Alexi didn’t have to be so smug about it. His unwavering air of confidence rode Michael far rougher than usual.
    About to open his mouth and chide his friend, he stopped and considered the impulse.