Love it, she typed as she headed toward her front door, gravel crunching under her boots, but that better not be my Christmas bonus!
*Yule* bonus, came the immediate reply, followed by one word:
Knife?
Smirking, Tamsyn lifted the knife and the phone at the same time, snapping a quick selfie complete with duck lips and an awkward peace sign around the hilt of the dagger.
She was about to slide her phone into her back pocket when it buzzed again with Bowen’s reply.
Good lass.
The evening air was chilly, but the heat that rushed through Tamsyn at those two little words made her feel like she was glowing, a bright beacon of lust in the December twilight.
“Like a horny Christmas star,” she muttered to herself as she slid her phone into her back pocket before unlocking the front door of the Airstream trailer she’d been calling home for the past year.
She’d lived in better places, but she’d also lived in worse, and as she made her way into the kitchen—which meant taking four steps from the front door—Tamsyn bent down to plug in the little Christmas lights she’d strung up before leaving for Italy.
They sprang to tacky, multicolored life, and Tamsyn smiled before setting the dagger down on the counter and opening the cabinet on her left.
Pushing past plastic cups and plates, she reached for the false back of the cabinet and traced her fingers over the rune Bowen had taught her to make for just this purpose.
It was weird, using magic when you weren’t actually magic yourself, and Tamsyn still hadn’t gotten used to it, that little zip of heat, the way her hand always tingled for a few seconds afterward.
The back of the cabinet popped open, revealing stacks of bills in various currencies, a leather folder that contained multiple IDs and passports, and a handful of magical coins she’d picked up on a job four years ago and hadn’t worked out what to do with yet.
Tamsyn gently set the knife down inside her safe, then pushed the hidden door back into place and traced the rune again, this time in reverse. Another tingle rushed up her arm, stronger this time, and she flexed her fingers absently as she looked around her.
The Christmas lights cheered the place up, and the velvet pillows, brightly colored throws, and various non-magical knickknacks she’d picked up from her travels—a framed piece of folk art from Iceland, a teak candleholder from Bali, a mirror she’d bought in a Paris thrift shop for three euros—made things homey, but it still had the same vaguely neglected air every house, apartment, duplex, or camper van she’d ever lived in seemed to develop, something she decided she didn’t want to think about too hard at the moment.
Right now, what Tamsyn needed was a hot shower, soft pants, and about three hours of mindless scrolling on her phone before she slept for the next twelve hours.
“And food,” she said out loud, turning back to the kitchen cabinets.
Unfortunately, her cupboards had been fairly bare before she’d left on this last-minute trip to Italy, and while Bowen had certainly worked some magic on this place for her remotely, he had not, it seemed, given her Magically Replenishing Groceries.
“Now that would be a Yule bonus,” Tamsyn said, pulling out a plastic container of microwavable noodles.
While those heated up, she grabbed a quick shower in the trailer’s minuscule bathroom before putting on a pair of sweatpants and an oversize T-shirt she’d gotten from Gwyn Jones’s store, Something Wicked. Tamsyn was pretty sure Bowen’s brother’s girlfriend would turn her into a newt on the spot if she ever stepped foot in the store these days, but when she’d done that job in Graves Glen a few years ago, she’d stopped in a few times.
Her favorite purchase was a heavy piece of amethyst that she always threw in her carry-on bag, but this shirt with its grinning black cat and the words “Maybe You’re Bad Luck, Ever Think About That?” underneath was a close second.
Although she might need that Krampus sweatshirt Bowen had been modeling in his selfie just for the WTF? of it all.
Pulling out her phone, Tamsyn opened his text and looked at the picture he’d sent again.
His dark curly hair was overly long, brushing his shoulders now, and his beard was thick as ever, but she could see the hint of a smile, and there was something in his expression, a warmth that Tamsyn felt even through the screen.
Groaning at herself, Tamsyn shook her head and closed the text app, connecting her phone to the Bluetooth speaker on the counter and pulling up her holiday playlist. Christmas carols were exactly what she needed to jolt her out of this swooning teenager thing, and while she grabbed her dinner from the microwave, the Ronettes sang their perky hearts out about sleigh rides and ring-tingle-tingling.
Tamsyn sang along, fishing a clean fork out of the silverware caddy by her sink, and then she carried her dinner and her laptop to the kitchen table, settling in on the leather banquette seat before looking around her.
The lights twinkled, the little Christmas tree she’d picked up last week stood proudly in its corner, and the music was so festive Tamsyn half expected Santa himself to come bursting through the front door. And with Bowen occupied with family stuff for Yule, she was technically on Christmas vacation now.
Practically a whole month to herself to . . .
Sit alone and eat Cup O’ Noodles.
Except it wasn’t even Cup O’ Noodles. It was the off-brand one she’d grabbed the last time she’d remembered to go to the store.
Lifting the steaming bowl, Tamsyn inspected the looping yellow font spelling out “Noodz 4 U” and shook her head with a sigh.
“This is a new low, kid,” she muttered, before blowing over the steaming contents and shrugging. “Still gonna eat it, but just need to acknowledge this moment.”
Not for the first time, it occurred to Tamsyn that maybe she needed a pet. Or at least a houseplant, something she could say she was talking to instead of just talking to herself like that.
But she traveled so much, and that wasn’t fair to a pet. Or to a plant, to be honest.
“Nope, just me and the Noodz,” she said out loud now, and even the Ronettes sounded a little sorry for her as they launched into “Winter Wonderland.”
It was stupid, though, this little spike of self-pity. She didn’t have to sit here with microwave dinners and cheap Christmas decorations. Her parents had a condo in Florida they’d bought last year, and her brother and his husband always did a huge dinner on Christmas Eve. Tamsyn knew she’d be welcomed at either—both!—with open arms if that’s what she wanted to do. Her family may have never really understood her, never gotten her restlessness and itchy feet, but they loved her in their way, and she definitely owed everyone a visit.
So yeah.
That’s what she’d do first thing tomorrow. Call Mom, call Michael, spend the holidays like a normal person sipping eggnog, and watching bad movies, and eating her weight in sausage balls and fruitcake.
She was absolutely going to do that. One hundred percent.
Tamsyn was still telling herself that as she opened her laptop and, with a few clicks, found herself back in her old hunting grounds.
