Yuletide (Matilda Kavanagh Novels Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

I finished the looks with a cast of shimmering sparkle over their fair skin.
    “Happy?” I asked as the three girls twirled around my kitchen.
    In a chorus, they said, “Oh yes!”
    “Okay.” I took the bracelets off their wrists, returning them to their usual forms. “You’ll probably get a good three days out of these. Seventy-two hours, give or take, so if you don’t wear them constantly, you could make them last for a while.”
    They squealed and danced in place. I couldn’t help but laugh as I dropped the bracelets into a different colored gossamer bag so they wouldn’t get them confused. When I turned around, they were counting out money, uncrumpling bills and laying them on the counter. They whispered to each other, but their tones had an obvious edge. I kept the three bracelets in my hand as I waited.
    Finally they lifted their eyes to look at me. Two of them were on the verge of tears.
    Lollipop said, “We’re short.”
    “By how much?” I asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
    “Eighty-five,” she said.
    Considering each set of bracelets was one seventy-five, that wasn’t as bad as I expected. I stared at the gossamer bags, the charmed silver bracelets just visible through the shiny fabric, each etched with pretty, intricate designs, all warm from the freshly laid spells.
    “That’s fine,” I said, holding out the pouches.
    “Are you serious?” two of them yelled in unison.
    How much time do you have to spend with someone to say the same thing at the same time so often? “Yeah,” I said, swiping the cash off the counter. “Merry Christmas.”
    “Oh, merry Christmas.” Lollipop rushed forward to throw her arms around me and crush me against her. She even smelled like candy. “Here, you keep this.” She pressed the all-access pass into my hands.
    I chuckled and walked them to the door, waving off their incessant thanks. Back in the kitchen, intent on making myself a nice cup of hot tea, the sight of Krampus on the counter caught my eye, sending another jolt through my body.
    I wasn’t sure I’d ever understand humans, no matter how often I was around them. Though I loved Christmastime, when I was growing up, it had been kinda scary too. Humans had their Santa Claus who brought presents to all the good boys and girls, leaving nothing or a lump of coal if they were naughty. But supernaturals? People who kept to the old faiths? We had Krampus the Yulelord who actually punished naughty boys and girls. If you were lucky, he just gave you a few switches with whip-like birch branches. But if you were especially bad, Krampus would snatch you, stuff you in his bag, and take you to his lair. There, he’d torture you or roast you and eat you. Now that would keep a kid in line. I’d take a lump of coal any day.
    It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I found out I’d never really had to worry about Krampus. After the Great Revelation, supernaturals had worked very hard to assimilate into human society to make their acceptance of us easier. Part of that meant conforming our holidays to match theirs. Luckily for us, humans still held on to magical and pagan rites—they just didn’t know it. But we did change some things about our celebrations, and we left out others. Krampus was one of the things people became very quiet about. Eventually he was mostly forgotten. The occasional warning about him coming in the night wasn’t enough to keep up true belief in him.
    As belief in him was forgotten, so was he, and his power faded. Sometime in the seventies, he tried to make a great comeback, but a group of hunters caught him before he could do much damage. So diminished was his power that they were able to trap him in a cave deep in the Bavarian mountains. Most people believed he was dead now, his power gone and his body wasted away to nothing. I liked to think so, but the little girl inside me was wary, still a little scared of the creepy devil.
    I turned the postcard over so the