The White Stag (Mistletoe Madness) by Jamie Freeman

Author:Jamie Freeman [Freeman, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: 2009 Advent Calendar
ISBN: 9781615813292
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press LLC
Published: 2011-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

* * *

When I finally came downstairs, the party was in full swing.

Baal met me at the base of the stairs, nuzzling my hand with his cold, wet nose and rubbing happily against my pant legs. I bent down and scratched his long black neck, talking to him softly as I surveyed the room.

The decorations that night were truly stunning. The entire house seemed swathed in great battling washes of silver-white and midnight blue. Candles and blinking lights—inside and outside the house—twinkled like a thousand glittering constellations.

Above the tumbling sound of laughter and voices that filled the downstairs rooms, I could hear Noah singing and playing piano in the parlor. I took a glass of white wine from a silver tray held aloft by a black-clad server and made my way through the crush of people in the direction of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

A group of Noah’s choir students clustered around the piano taking turns at the microphone, making their way through the holiday canon. I circulated, chatting with some people from group, people I knew from town or from the university and some of the artists I had met at weekend parties here during the summer.

I approached a cute Goth couple who stood together near the bar. They were young and skinny, black-clad and cloaked in self-conscious nonchalance. The boy, Lenny, smoked a hand-rolled cigarette. The girl, whose name I could not remember, greeted me with a quick hug and asked under her sly, Goth bangs if I had “finally rejected the patriarchy and found the goddess.”

I laughed, looking nervously at her grinning boyfriend for an exit line. His eyes sparkled at my discomfort, but he said nothing.

“Well, you know how it is,” I offered.

“No,” she said. “How is it, exactly?”

“Damn,” I said, “that was supposed to be a deflecting line. How’s your painting going? Still working on the Madonnas?”

She laughed, slapped me on the shoulder, and told me about her series of heroin-chic Madonnas. Lenny smoked and smiled and nodded.

We talked for a while and then a woman from the Harn Museum passed by and the Goth girl excused herself to speak to her. Lenny looked at me with his dark, kohl-lined eyes and winked. We clinked glasses and, having nothing more to say to one another, we parted company. I wandered off in the direction of the buffet table.

I filled a plate and then drifted to the edges of the crowd, resting the plate of food against the towering marble mantle, watching the glittering crowd and taking in bits of the conversations around me.

“You look like you can use a refill.” Valor appeared beside me suddenly, two glasses of white wine in her hands. She handed me one.

She was wearing a glittering midnight blue gown. She had retired her trademark pearls for the evening and wore a simple pendant with a walnut-sized sapphire that rested just above the cleft of her breasts, pushed up and out by the tight dress. She was stunningly beautiful.

“Wow,” I said,

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