A Midwinter Fantasy Read Online Free PDF

yes,” Michael interrupted. “All your bickering must be attended in good time, and your various requests. But for now leave a vicar in peace, will you?”
    His friends made their farewells, some of them eyeing him with surprise. Michael shut the door Elijah couldn’t manage to shut for himself, returned to his table and sat. The tumult was out of his house. “Good riddance,” he murmured. Then he stood back up. He went for his wine cup. It needed refilling.
    He stared at his empty home. It was too bare. While never the lavish sort, he wanted something just a bit grander, as he could never imagine Rebecca Thompson in anything less than a well-appointed town house with windows and fireplaces in every room. It embarrassed him to dream ofmaking a home with her here: how could he even presume? And it was terribly hard to entertain guests in so small a space. And he enjoyed nothing so much as guests.
    His grumbling was a show; he’d delighted in company. Always a social creature; he was, after all, the Heart of the group. Or at least he had been. Yet for all the activity, the one person he wanted present was off somewhere else, likely tucked away at the top of Athens Academy in her small and cozy attic apartments, possibly pondering the same questions as he: Could they start anew? What would come next?
    Pouring the last of his batch of mulled wine into his tankard, he sat with a common book of prayer, hoping a bit of Gospel could set his soul at ease. Tomorrow he would call upon her, right after his rounds. It was a man’s duty to call upon a woman. They’d indulged for years in behaviours hardly common, excusing themselves each breach of etiquette, always allowing the Grand Work to take precedence over custom, but it was high time they began acting like the upstanding citizens of the Queen’s great England that he wondered if they could ever become.
    His hands shook slightly, so he set down the book of prayer and placed them on the table. The fleshy edges of his palms vibrated against the wood. He was a man in his late thirties, and he wasn’t any surer of how to address a woman than he’d been at fifteen, when he’d first wanted to tell Rebecca Thompson how lovely and interesting she was. His tongue had been shackled then, and two decades had done nothing to unlock it. And, what opportunity would there be? It wasn’t as though The Guard had seen one another every day, back when they’d had their powers, but Rebecca’s recent absence worried him. There was no Pull to bring them all together, no spiritual call to arms that would assure him of seeing his beloved and thus being fed on her presence for yet another day.
    Her presence. He’d subsisted on that meagre portion for just over twenty years, so how could he now ask for more? What was to be done about it, and what if he did something wrong? She was so tender, so raw and so utterly not in love with him. He was paralyzed with fear, and the feeling was unprecedented. For years he’d been the great Heart, so named by the goddess on that first day the Grand Work brought them together. Now he was a mortal man, a simple vicar. And a doubting one, at that.
    He did not believe that heaven would cater precisely to his whims, so he prayed that whatever Percy and the spirits intended would indeed help. He could no longer open locked doors, and one heart had always remained shut to him, even when he could. Thus, though it went against years of instinct, Michael would accept a bit of ghostly intervention.

Chapter Two
    Headmistress Rebecca Thompson sat curled upon her bed, hugging her long and slight frame and stroking Marlowe, Jane’s familiar, a white cat as sullen as she. She peered into the beast’s green eyes, hoping to see the luminous quality that once resided there, a sign of an otherworldly power. But that luminosity had vanished when the cat’s mistress breathed her last, when the possessing spirits of The Guard vacated them all in a rush of wind leaving only a