Page 4 of Whispers of the Magical Forest

"We're Fae," Elowen shrugged elegantly. "Dramatics are part of the job description." I wanted to argue with that. My mate was the exact opposite of that. I thought better of saying anything. Bas was unique, and I loved his grumpy demeanor.

"Remember Rome?" Violet asked. Shegrinned as she sipped something that made her hair temporarily turn silver. "When Fiona tried to haggle with that vendor and ended up with enough pasta to feed an army?"

I groaned. "In my defense, my Italian was rusty."

"Rusty?" Aislinn laughed. "You asked for a scarf and got ten pounds of spaghetti! Proper mental, that was."

"Hey, we ate well that week!" I protested. "And none of you complained when Grams was cooking all those meals."

A group of frost sprites drifted by. They left trails of delicate ice patterns in the air. One winked at me, and my wine briefly frosted over before melting back to normal temperature. "Show-offs," I muttered with a smile. There was something rather magical about being in a place where we didn't have to hide what we were. No carefully concealed words. No pretending we couldn't see the magical creatures that lived in the margins of the mundane world. The tension that had overcome me while walking through a town of mundies eased up. We needed to let our hair down like this.

After the tasting, we decided to explore the town. The snow was falling and making everything look like it had been dusted with diamond powder. We window-shopped, admired the Christmas decorations, and managed to avoid any magical incidents. It was a new record for us.

The massive Christmas tree in the town square sparkled with ornaments and lights. The former looked like they'd been passed down through generations. They caught the light and threw rainbow reflections across the snow. "Is it just me," Aislinn said as she squinted at the tree, "or are there fairies playing chicken with the star on top?"

I looked up. Sure enough, a group of tiny lights were darting around the top of the tree. They zoomed dangerously close to the oversized star before veering away at the last second. "Ten quid says one of them crashes within the next five minutes," I offered.

"You're on," Violet replied, then immediately groaned as one of the lights bounced off the star with a tiny 'ping' and spiraled dramatically down before recovering.

We couldn’t linger because the weather turned. What had been a picturesque snowfall became something out of a horror movie. The wind picked up. Visibility dropped. Suddenly, it felt like trying to navigate through a snow globe in a tornado. We raced for my car and hopped inside.

"I thought England was supposed to be all mild winters and Jane Austen gardens," I muttered as I headed toward the Bed and Breakfast. "When did we take a wrong turn into Narnia?"

"This doesn't feel natural," Violet said from the passenger seat. She was gripping the oh-shit for dear life. Her witch senses were clearly tingling as much as mine. "The magic in the air is all wrong."

"Wrong how?" I asked. She knew more about witchy stuff because she’d practiced it her entire life. My Grams had locked my magic away to keep me from being hunted, and my parents moved us away. I had no idea I was a witch until recently. I squinted through the windscreen at what might have been a road. Or possibly just a slightly flatter patch of white hell.

"Like..." Violet frowned, concentrating. "Like when you try to mix incompatible potions. That feeling right before everything goes spectacularly pear-shaped."

"It was rather charming an hour ago," Aislinn said from the back seat. "Now I feel we've stumbled into the wrong sort of fairy tale. We cannot die in a snowstorm. We’ve faced down demons and demigods and won."

"Nobody's dying," I assured her. The car chose at that moment to fishtail like it was auditioning for Fast and Furious. "I am starting to wish we'd bought more wine. You know, for survival purposes whenwe get stuck."

"I knew we should have accepted Elowen's offer of a room at her place," Violet muttered before she cast a quick stabilizing charm on the car. It helped, but not as much as it should have. "But no, someone had to insist we stay where we’d reserved."

"We already had a room," I reminded her as I fought with the steering wheel.

Brake lights glowed ahead like evil Christmas decorations through the snow. Dammit, there was an accident ahead. We should have known this day couldn't just be about wine and relaxation. "Bloody hell," I muttered as I carefully pulled over. "Looks like we've got ourselves a situation."

"Please tell me we're not going to get involved," Aislinn pleaded. She clearly knew better because she was already pulling her emergency potions from her bag. "Just once, can we not get involved in every crisis we stumble across?"

"We're the Backside of Forty," I reminded her. "Getting involved is basically in the job description."

The scene was utter chaos. Cars were scattered everywhere like somebody had played vehicular pickup sticks. People stumbled around looking dazed and confused. We got out to help, because that's what decent people do, even when they're freezing their assets off. My magical senses picked up something else too. There were traces of magic scattered across the scene like broken glass. Fresh magic. Nothing like the ancient protective spells we'd felt at the wineries.

"Anyone else picking up on the magical residue?" I asked quietly as we picked our way through the snow.

"Yep. It feels like a spell gone wrong," Violet confirmed. "Or very, very right, depending on what they were trying to do."

That's when Aislinn yelped behind us. I turned just in time to see her go down like a tree in a forest. "What the hell did you trip over?" I asked. Something told me I wasn't goingto like the answer. Nothing good ever came from mysterious lumps in the snow.

"Please be a log, please be a log, please be a log," Violet chanted under her breath as we made our way back to where Aislinn was scrambling backward through the snow. Her face had gone pale as milk.

Aislinn's hands were shaking as she pointed at what she'd stumbled over. "Bloody hell... I think... I think I've found a dead body."

"Fan-fucking-tastic," I muttered as I looked at the shape in the snow. The dead man was wearing what looked like expensive hiking gear. However, something was off about it. It looked like he'd gotten dressed in the dark. Or like someone else had dressed him. "What's a girls' weekend without a corpse?"

I crouched down, careful not to disturb any potential evidence. Magical or mundane. My witch sight picked up traces of something familiar. "Anyone else getting déjà vu?"

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