Owl Be Home for Christmas by Donna Andrews

Author:Donna Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Chapter 18

Sunday, December 22

Joy to the world, the Lord is come

Let earth receive her King

Let every heart prepare Him room

And Heaven and nature sing

And Heaven and nature sing

And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing

I liked Christmas carols. I really did. And “Joy to the World” was a particularly nice example of the species. But I didn’t much like being blasted out of sleep by it in the middle of the night. What time was it, anyway?

I rolled over to peer at my alarm clock. Which wasn’t there. Then I remembered that I wasn’t at home. I was at the Inn, in the Madison Cottage. Here, the alarm clock was over on Michael’s side of the bed.

And it read 9:00 A.M.

And still dark?

Well, no. Probably not still dark outside. The Inn had invested in truly top-notch blackout curtains. Not a ray of light made it past them. Odds were if I could see the light outside it would be dim and gray, assuming the storm was still raging. Still, there would be light, if not for the blackout curtains.

But they couldn’t block the joyous strains of song and pipe organ happening outside the bedroom. Apparently in the living room. Why in the world would anyone come caroling at this hour? And how had they managed the organ? And there seemed to be such a lot of them—in fact, it sounded as if the entire New Life Baptist Choir were singing in the room next door.

Of course. The 9:00 A.M. Baptist service by phone. Evidently someone had figured out how to connect a speaker to a satellite phone. Now that I realized what it was, I could detect a certain tinny sound to the music.

I stumbled to the door that led into the living room and peered out. In the living room, the volume was almost deafening. And the room was full of people. Not just family. Along with Mother, Rose Noire, and the boys, I saw at least a dozen assorted ornithologists, all sitting around with cups of coffee and plates of food, basking in the waves of sound. Or maybe bracing against them.

“The music is lovely,” I said, when the song was over, and the only thing coming over the speakers was the sound of people rustling their hymn books and coughing. “But wouldn’t it be almost as lovely a few hundred decibels lower?”

“Sorry!” Josh leaped to one of the speakers perched on the mantel and dialed down the volume. “We forgot you were still sleeping.”

I muttered something that I hoped sounded like “thanks” and stumbled back to bed.

Unfortunately, now I was awake. And likely to stay that way.

And I hadn’t seen Horace in the crowd around the speakers. That probably meant he was already up and working on the case.

“Once more unto the breach,” I muttered as I crawled out of bed again. A shower might make me feel human enough to tackle whatever was waiting for me back at the conference. A shower and a whole lot of caffeine.

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