Page 92 of A Spot of Tea and Sorcery: Vol. 6

So he locked the door, tucked the key into his trouser pocket. Then, bouncing Baby Tea happily, he stepped out of the passage and into the shop, only to stop and gaze around him with surprise and delight.

Everything looked so beautiful. Luna had been hard at work ever since closing time to get the shop floor just so for theirannual Green Yule party. He’d helped with much of it, stringing up garlands and twinkling white lights wherever he’d been told. But her finishing touches were really what pulled it all together, particularly the enchanted, heatless candles tucked into every nook and cranny.

The Winter’s Heart Tree, grown specially by Garden, stood proudly by the window. The children were already there, stringing up their newly-baked ornaments. “No, Loni!” he heard his wife cry out in dismay. “You can’t eat the—Oh dear. Spit it out, sweetheart. Yes, into my hand.Ugh.”

Luna appeared from the far side of the tree and caught his eye across the shop. Making a crinkle-nose face and holding out her hand in front of her, she came toward him. Nigel watched her with great pleasure, admiring her graceful walk, the way her red holiday dress clung to her curves. Her figure had stubbornly refused to “snap back” after the third baby, something which he knew was a source of frustration to her. Butby gods, did he love seeing her with a little meat on her bones and a healthy flush to her cheeks! She was, as she always had been in his eyes, utter perfection. Even with her hand full of half-chewed tree ornament and her mouth twisted in an expression of distaste.

She hastened to the trimming sink, where she proceeded to wash her hand off. This accomplished, she turned and planted a kiss, first on Baby Tea’s soft cheek, then a more lingering kiss on Nigel’s lips. She tasted like orange blossoms, her auspicious tea of the past year. Not much longer now, and she’d be choosing the New Year’s tea. Nigel secretly hoped for a reprise of chamomile-lavender.

“My dear,” he said, smiling at her when she drew back, “you’ve worked miracles in here this evening.”

“Why, thank you, Handsome!” she replied, patting his chest and flushing with pleasure. Then she tapped his tiepin with one finger and gave him a stern look. “Now, I’m giving you fairwarning . . .itgot out. I tried to stop it! I swear I did! But it’s in here somewhere, and I have no doubt it intends to pounce at some point in the evening.”

Nigel’s face fell. He heaved a great sigh. “I could hunt it down—”

“No, no!” Luna took hold of his tie, giving him a tug so that his face came down close to hers. She planted a kiss on his nose. “I won’t have any violence on Green Yule. You’re to behave yourself. Understood?”

“Will I get pie later on if I behave?”

“You’ll get many sweet delights later on if you behave,” she said with a wink that heated his blood. Before he could take action, however, she swiped the baby and said, “I’ll just nip back to the kitchen with this one for a minute. See that some of those decorations make it to the topmost branches, won’t you?”

To the trill of baby coos, his wife darted down the passage to take care of maternal necessities, while Nigel betook himself to the front of the shop. Auntie Aurora and Auntie Arabella sat at one of the wrought iron tables, already well into toasting the season. Auntie Aurora raised her glass to him as he passed, and solemnly declared,“The Green Mother's blessing rests most readily upon the cheerful heart.”

“Amen to that, Auntie,” Nigel replied.

With a rasping cry of“Never mind!”Debbie flapped from her skull-pot at the counter, passing over Nigel’s shoulder. She snubbed him entirely, in fact, and perched instead on the top of Loni’s head. She’d taken quite a fancy to the child, and Loni was uncharacteristically gentle with the old bird. She solemnly handed her un-chewed ornaments, and Debbie fluttered up to hang them on the higher branches, rendering Nigel’s services unnecessary.

He stood back to survey his children’s handiwork. The tree was quite festooned already, positively glittering under the whitelights. But Nigel frowned. Something seemed to be missing. “Alfie,” he said, “where is Baron Von Sniffington?”

Alfie looked up from the box of ornaments, his eyes widening. “Baron!” he cried.

An answering whine sounded almost at once. Alfie dropped to his knees, crawling over to peer under one of the display tables, which had been pushed to the edges of the shop to create a dance floor. “Daddy!” the boy called out in dismay. “The tiger lilies got him pinned down again!”

Nigel crouched beside his son. Sure enough, the poor black-and-white dog cowered under one of the tables, whining pathetically, tail tucked, while a pack of vicious lilies slowly stalked him, growling with undisguised menace.

“Hey!” Nigel barked, channeling his best former-Dark-Sorcerer voice. “None of that now!”

The tiger lilies hissed and scattered at once, leaving behind a flurry of orange petals and a few stray leaves. Baron Von Sniffington crept out and hastened to his boy’s arms, still trembling. “Poor old Baron!” Alfie crooned, rocking him tenderly.

“Why don’t you take him back to Garden,” Nigel suggested. “You can stop in the kitchen on your way. I’ll bet Mummy’s got a treat or two for him back there.”

Alfie nodded and carried his canine pal away with him.

Right about then, the shop bells rang, and the first of the guests arrived. Nigel moved to greet them, surprised to find himself face to face with none other than the intrepid Miss Eugenia Lambert, travel-writer and adventurer. She was accompanied by her publisher and definitelynotboyfriend, the ever-so-dashing Mr. Bellamy of Bellamy House Press. And Sutton, of course.

“Merry Green Yule, Mr. Grimm,” Eugenia said and offered him a bottle of sparkling wine which sported the sort of price tagwhich wouldn’t make a steel heiress bat an eye, but which made Nigel perform a double-take. “Is Mrs. Witch about? I amsohoping for a reading before the party gets started. I simplymustknow if I’m to take the train to Iskaran or travel by riverboat. Sutton prefers the train, while Mr. Bellamy here says riverboat, but what does he know, the old bean?”

“Very little, I’m sure,” the good-natured old bean smiled.

“Luna is in the kitchen,” Nigel said. “She should be back shortly. I’ll just go pop the kettle on.”

He started for the back passage, but the shop bells tinkled again, and he paused to call out a greeting to Mrs. Whimsley, a vision of billowy purple which clashed rather horribly with all the green-and-red seasonal décor. She was followed closely by the street fiddler, who quietly took up residence in the corner by the Winter’s Heart Tree and began scraping out a tune almost at once.

The shop filled up swiftly from there. Too swiftly, truth be told. There shouldn’t, by rights, be enough room for all of these guests, particularly not once the Countess Claudine d’Ackerley, her husband, and their brood of six little ones arrived, each carrying a toy horse in their chubby hands. But Nigel had long ago worked subtle magic on the shop—Green Magic, not sorcery. Just enough to add a little expansion of reality here, a little warping of essential modalities there. Nothing anyone would notice, and certainly nothing that would concern the SSSD. But it created space where there should be none, and no one ended up either crowded or overheated.

Mrs. Goddard appeared with spice cake in hand and no sign of Tobias, thank the Green Mother. The boy had made good on his promise to go up north and work with his elder brother, and hadn’t been seen in Ballycastle for an age. Mrs. Goddard had kept herself quite cheerfully occupied, embroidering smocks andbaby bonnets for Nigel and Luna’s little brood, and didn’t seem to miss him too badly.

Luna appeared from the back of the shop at last, Baby Tea in her arms, and began greeting all her Silly Young Things. The dancing began soon after. Suella brought her portable, and the street fiddler seemed to take this as a personal challenge. The blend of live and thaumatic music certainly made for a merry noise. It was all quite festive and more than a little chaotic.