Jolly Jinxes: A Christmas Paranormal Cozy Mystery by J. L. Collins

Author:J. L. Collins [Collins, J. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

7

The Talk

Had the giant Christmas tree’s rampage happened in any city other than Holiday Haven, its path of devastation would have cost millions of dollars and months or even years to repair.

With an entire population of witches, elves, and other magical beings, however, the whole affair was tidied up in under an hour. The Easter Bunny demonstrated incredible speed, which made sense. After all, the guy had to deliver Easter baskets all over the world in one night.

I helped with the efforts myself, and soon the only evidence of the incident was the lime-green pool of Jell-O, which the Sleigh Bells Sanitation company was vacuuming up.

Everett sat on the sidelines, holding a cup of hot tea that someone at some point had provided him. The change of clothes given to him by the grateful elves sat next to him on a bench after he tried to politely decline. When no one was watching, I muttered a quick spell under my breath and both of us were looking just as clean as we had been before the whole festive fiasco. The last thing I wanted to do was walk around sticky for the rest of the night.

He stared at the cleanup efforts with a glum expression. Something gutted through me. I hated to see him like this.

I gestured for him to scoot over. “Hey, are you all right?” I asked, brushing my fingers lightly through his hair. “Do you need a healer to look at you?”

He looked over at me and sighed, his dark brown eyes giving everything away. “It’s terrible. I mean look at this—just look at it!” He hung his head. “So much destruction and it’s all my fault. I could’ve been responsible for the death of those elves. We were lucky to get them out in time…”

“No, no.” I wrapped my arm around his. “Chaos magic is dangerous, and who’s to say whose fault it is, really? Whoever stole it, is what I’m thinking. And we’re trying to fix this problem before it gets worse. I hardly think that means you deserve to rake yourself over the coals for it.”

Everett groaned into his hands as he pulled away. “I lost those chaos magic books, Star. No matter what Beezer did or didn’t do, I’m the one who lost them. And now I’m going to pay for it dearly. When my parents find out, they’re going to disown me. No one in our family line has ever made such a public, colossal disaster of a mistake. And I’d know—they practically have it written as rule number one on the family tree tapestry hanging up in their dining room.”

“Okay, you’re catastrophizing, sweetheart,” I said, patting his back. “I’m sure everything is going to work out just fine, and your parents will be none the wiser.”

“And the shop!” He vaulted to his feet and started pacing anxiously back and forth in front of the bench. A sheen of sweat was starting to build up along his forehead. “They’re going to take away my business license for sure.

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