Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 47894 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47894 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Xander Corey is certain that what his husband, Lorne MacBain, the chief of police in their little town of Osprey, is seeing outside their kitchen window is nothing to worry about. It’s concerning that whenever Xander looks, there’s nothing there, but really, it could be anything. Why borrow trouble and assume the worst? Besides, it’s midwinter, after all, and everything is sleeping.
Or should be.
And while during the deep, dark days and even darker nights, things can get spooky, that’s not to say that logical minds won’t prevail, even when tested at the most vulnerable time. Remaining steadfast in the face of danger is what guardians do… and staying alive would certainly help as well
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
ONE
Every year, sometime in the weeks after the first of January, the snow that had been festive and evocative of joyous holidays becomes, all at once, almost spooky.
“Xander Corey,” my best friend Amanda would snap at me. “I hate it when you say things like that and make me scared to walk around outside at night.”
That was not my intention, but it was true nonetheless.
I suspected that if you lived in a city or even a suburb, accumulations of winter were more bothersome than anything else. It wasn’t scary, just a nuisance to walk in, shovel off sidewalks, or blow out of a driveway. But in small towns, on roads not maintained by the county, or if your land abutted a nature preserve, the blanket of white was so high that on certain days it was hard to see where the land ended and the sky began, making it effortless for people to let their imaginations run wild.
My grandfather surmised, when he used to stand in the sunroom with me, looking at the collected powder on the glass above us, that it was the way the snow insulated everything, smothering out sounds, twisting perception. When the expected silence was broken by a noise and you couldn’t immediately pinpoint the source, it created dread.
My grandmother believed that with the world being all one color, you noticed things easier, faster, and that put one on edge. Jumping at shadows, even during the day.
My beloved, my husband, Lorne MacBain, told me it was the incessant days of winter—everything the same, cold and wet with snow, wind, and sleet—and the drudgery of it all that played havoc on the mind. It was hard to get one’s bearings when it felt like you were in an endless loop. It muddled the brain, anything out of the ordinary becoming cause for alarm.
I wasn’t sure what I believed, but whereas lots of people I knew were tired and even a bit depressed in the frozen landscape under the blanched sky, the sameness never bothered me. Winter was for hibernation, simple as that. One was supposed to stay inside and rest. The animals had it right. It was madness to worry about what was going on outside. Only the den mattered. Unfortunately, most of us, myself included, couldn’t afford to stay inside. I was luckier than others as almost everything I needed could be found at home—Corvus was fairly self-sustaining—which was why I took care baskets to people in the winter, something that was always met with much happiness and thanks.
The thing that could be helped in the winter was their terrible mindset that came the second of January, it was time to kick the new year into gear and get on with putting all their resolutions into place. They felt that big plans were supposed to be acted on immediately, especially those that required cleaning, exercise, or some massive project. Really? In midwinter? So fighting every natural instinct to rest and conserve strength during the coldest, darkest part of the year was the right thing to do? I was horrified by the very idea that January was the time to start anything at all. Work yes, anything else…absolutely not.
“Everyone thinks so,” Lorne chimed in, yawning. “All I hear when I’m in town is that you must start the new year off right and strong and stick to your resolutions. I feel like the time for that is in March or something. Don’t you?”
“Of course. That’s what spring is for.” I stood next to him in the kitchen, him sipping tea, me rinsing the breakfast dishes, since he’d cooked.
“A lot of people have trouble in the winter, and that’s not even counting those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder. As a police officer, you deal with folks who are in pretty bad shape. It’s better here, where you can deliver most of them back home to people waiting for them. In Boston that wasn’t the case. It gets difficult this time of year.”
“I know.”
After a moment of silence, he said, “Is it me, or does January feel like it’s two months long?”
I chuckled because it did. He wasn’t wrong.
“What day is this?”
“It’s Friday morning, a bit after eleven. And while I’m thrilled to have you home, shouldn’t you be at work?”
“To do what?”
It had begun snowing last Saturday and continued throughout the week. At some point, the temperature dropped below zero and everything went from fluffy powder to heavy, hard ice. Due to that, the main roads had been cleared by snowplows but not much else. People could take the highway to the bigger cities around us where they worked, but here in Osprey, nothing was happening. School was canceled, and the one movie theater was closed, along with all the restaurants and even the pub. The library was shut down too, which was why I was home, and everyone was basically…hibernating.