Lydia joined us then, along with her friends from the night before, and I said how nice it was to see them again as Emery stepped around me, bumping my side, my shoulder, my back and then drifting over to the other side as I shivered, not at all from cold.
“That jacket isn’t going to cut it too much longer,” he said, tucking a long strand of hair behind my ear. “We need to get you a heavy scarf too.”
“And a beanie,” Olivia said, putting her arm around my shoulder before pointing. “Lookit, April wants us.”
I followed where she was pointing. “Yeah, she does. Excuse us,” I said, tipping my head to Emery, including him, not wanting to leave him with Lydia.
“We’ll return shortly,” he said with a smile at his fiancée, hand again at the small of my back, easing me forward.
April looked sad as we joined her and her friends and a woman—had to be Lucy’s mom—who appeared uncomfortable as we reached them.
“Donna,” Emery greeted her, his hand between my shoulder blades. “I’d like you to meet Brann Calder. Brann, this is Donna Bailey, Lucy’s mom.”
We shook hands, and then I met Lucy herself and another girl named Kate.
“What’s wrong?” Emery asked April.
Before she could answer her father, Donna chimed in.
“She wanted to go to the Wiccan tent, but it’s Sunday, Emery, so I didn’t think you’d want her there on the Lord’s Day,” she said indulgently, nodding. “I mean, I would never let my kids go anywhere near anything with devil worship, but—”
“Wicca’s not devil worship,” Emery replied smoothly, his tone indulgent but firm as April moved forward, leaning into his side. “I taught a whole unit on it last year before Halloween. We had a great speaker from the university come out and talk with my class, and a couple of my kids are doing projects with that same professor, with an emphasis on pagan studies.”
Donna stood there in front of him, mouth open, utterly floored.
His smile was warm when it curled those lush lips of his. “I mean, really, when Christmas originated as Yule, we have to keep an open mind, don’t we?”
She nodded.
“It’s important for us to model tolerance,” he professed before turning to his daughter and taking her chin in his hand, lifting her gaze to his. “You know, at the farmer’s market where your mother and I used to live in New York, there was this amazing Wiccan booth that sold essential oils and a really great organic beeswax lip balm.”
April smiled tentatively up at him.
“What did you see at the booth you found?”
“I didn’t get to look around,” she told him, glancing at Mrs. Bailey and then back up at her father.
“Maybe we should go check it out,” he offered, grinning at her.
Her whole face lit up. “That’d be awesome.”
He turned to me. “Sound good?”
“Absolutely,” I assured him. “I could use some stuff.”
April leaned around her father so she could see me. “You wanna go?”
“Yeah, I wanna go,” I said, noticing that the smile I was getting from Emery warmed his rich brown eyes. I put Olivia down and then took her hand. “Show us where the booth is, kid.”
“Are you certain you should—”
“You don’t have to come, Donna,” Emery said over his shoulder, letting April lead us.
“Well, if you’re going, we should all stay together,” Donna said quickly, she and Lucy and an excited Kate trailing after us.
At the deserted booth, there was a tall, willowy woman with long, golden-blonde dreadlocks piled up on the top of her head, and a lean muscled man with straight black hair that fell to his shoulders, pulled back from his face with a leather cord. They looked like college students to me, and from their expressions, were happily surprised to see us.
“Afternoon,” I greeted them both.
“Hello, welcome to Kitchen Witchery,” she said brightly. “I’m Miranda and this is Ben, and we’re so happy to see you all.” Even as she spoke, she offered all four girls a small red velvet drawstring bag. “Go ahead and pick out five stones to put inside your mojo bag.”
“Oh, that’s so nice of you,” Emery said quickly before he turned to the kids. “What do you think, guys?”
There was a chorus of quick thank-yous, but none of the girls moved.
“Hey, look,” I said, pointing to one of the baskets full of rocks. “Do you guys know what this is?”
It was cute how all four girls shook their heads at the same time.
“This is tigereye. A buddy of mine had a bracelet made of this that he wore the entire time we were deployed. He always said he felt safer with it on.”
All four girls grabbed one as Ben gave me a wide smile before explaining to the girls about hag stones and then the geodes and the raw amethyst.