White Magic Christmas

Chapter 15 - December 8

On Tuesday, the weather froze good and proper. The buzz around the breakfast table picked up in fervor, and when Ivy made a trip down to the grocery store to restock Geri's eggs, the excitement hummed among the locals as well.

"How long after it freezes before they go out to drill the holes?" Ivy asked the clerk who was checking her out. She'd asked the inn's guests the same question over breakfast, but this slightly grizzled local looked like he might have first-hand knowledge.

"Depends how hard the freeze gets," he said. "If it drops to twenty and stays there, we could be out the day after tomorrow."

Ivy still hadn't seen the lake, but she figured in a couple days, she'd have plenty of rides available to choose from.

She dropped the eggs off in the inn's kitchen. She had considered finding More eggs already in the fridge, but she'd learned a long time ago that More magic ran the risk of invoking Less consequences, in the grand tradition of universal balance. Creating More for one person very often meant Less for someone else. More eggs for Geri meant less money for the grocery store, and Ivy did not think that little store racked in wads of profit. So she had been happy to go for the walk and increase Geri's egg inventory in the more traditional way, even if it meant wearing her blimp jacket and the ugly gloves.

"The weather seems to agree with you," Jeffrey commented when she let herself into the apartment to sit down while her cheeks stopped flaming from the cold. The dining table had become Jeffrey's new official residence for the duration of their stay. Brynn had spent the last two nights grilling him about tea dragon facts and history, a topic on which Jeffrey could be truly loquacious.

"And washing dishes agrees with me, and ignoring my publication deadline definitely agrees with me. The world is full of surprises this week! How goes your scandal research?"

"Oh, the Slate Estate? I haven't been able to gain access to any info about the estate itself, all that legal stuff, but the family does have quite a fascinating history! They've been in the area almost since the town was founded, and for a long time were considered the patron saints of the area, more or less. Their generosity built the library and this building, and half a dozen others in the area. In fact, it seems they still own almost all the physical buildings older than 50 years."

"There's one very good reason for the town to be so angry with Mr. Mraz. If they're all renting from the estate, they can't have much say in what becomes of the land."

"Nicely if obviously stated," Jeffrey agreed. "But there are juicier tidbits! Through most of their history, there we dozens of Slates. It was a big family. They ran the mines to start with, but eventually they were into all sorts of businesses, some of which were decidedly unsavory-"

"Ivy?" Geri called from the kitchen.

"Bookmark that," Ivy told Jeffrey. "Gonna need you to pick right back up where you left off."

Ivy entered the kitchen to find Geri leaving through the other door. "Ah! You are here. You have a visitor." Geri accompanied this announcement with a little eyebrow wiggle that left Ivy in little doubt about who she meant.

She found Shep sitting at one of the little cafe tables in front, looking mournfully at the empty pastry counter. Geri had finally turned off the lights and cleared out the four extra-stale danishes that had been haunting the case when Ivy had arrived.

"If you're here for a snickerdoodle lesson, I think the kiddo is still in school," Ivy said.

"Good memory," Shep said.

"Snickerdoodles are my all-time favorite," Ivy replied. "With extra cinnamon. So much cinnamon."

Shep chuckled. "My grandmother would approve. But no, I wanted to show you these." He picked up a manila folder and handed it to her. Ivy accepted it, seating herself in the chair across the table. Inside the envelope were several pages of black and white photos pasted to thick, black card stock. One edge of each page was creased and scuffed, as if having come unbound from some larger photo album. Each of the photos, one after another, contained images that looked like melted candles, or miniature frozen waterfalls, or - Ned had not been wrong - petrified chocolate fountains.