Magic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 7) Read Online Free

and aspen leaves resting atop the ancient rooftop, the debris was an entire roof unto itself.
    Even in my thirties, it was hard to look at the house and not feel like running down the street, as far away as possible. The structure had a way of making you feel like a child when you stood in its ominous presence.
    Not to mention the singular fact that everybody in Christmas River, from ages one to 99, knew about the house.
    That a witch lived in it.
    I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I almost jumped out of my skin.
    “That house doesn’t get any less sad, does it?”  
    I rubbed my arms. Though I was wearing a thick down coat that was cozy in temperatures much colder than the ones tonight, I still felt a chill pass through me as I gazed at the house.
    “Funny, I never thought of it as sad,” I whispered. “I always just thought of it as… well… creepy as hell.”
    The decaying home that stood at the far end of Santa’s Nightmare Lane was the only one in the entire neighborhood that did not put up Halloween decorations. But it didn’t need any – it was by far the spookiest house in the whole of Christmas River. And it had been for as long as I could remember.
    Part of that obviously had to do with the neglected state of the structure itself. The other part had to do with Hattie Blaylock, the former piano teacher – now elderly recluse, who inhabited it.
    “You know, I saw her today,” I whispered, feeling another chill pass through me at the memory from earlier that day.
    In all the hubbub of Warren’s wedding, I had forgotten the old woman standing on the sidewalk, glaring at me.
    “Who?” Daniel asked.
    I bit my lower lip.
    “ The Witch ,” I said in a voice so low, it was hardly audible.
    “Wait, what?” he said, turning toward me. “You’re saying you saw old Hattie today… and that she was outside?”
    I nodded and bit my lip.
    “Not just anywhere, either,” I rasped. “She was outside the pie shop. She was… she was looking in. At me .”
    Daniel rubbed the stubble on his chin. A confounded look came across his face as he gazed up at the old house.
    As if on cue, Chadwick let out a short yip that sounded like a coyote howl. I felt another round of goosebumps break out.
    “But how did you know it was her? Nobody’s probably gotten a good look at old Hattie in a decade.”
    “I don’t know how,” I said, rubbing my arms again. “I just knew it was her.”
    Whether or not Hattie Blaylock was actually a witch was a matter of some debate in Christmas River – at least among the adults. No one in the small town could claim to have seen her cast a spell, mix a potion, or give anybody the evil eye. What the townsfolks did know for sure, however, was that Hattie Blaylock did not attend any church in the area. She was hardly ever seen in fact. She lived alone in the old house. People said she had once been married, but that her husband left her shortly after they were wed. Children in the area, at least when I was growing up, had said that he hadn’t really left her at all: that she’d actually turned him into a white cat, renamed him Mr. Adams, and forced him to become her familiar. Other kids said that old Hattie got sick of her husband, and murdered him one night. She hid the crime by chopping up his body and putting it in several pot pies, which she had served at the town’s annual Millworkers Christmas Ball, back when the town had an operating mill.
    The tales, of course, were just that: tales. Legends that school children told and retold and changed depending on the times. An old woman who lived alone and kept to herself was the kind of thing that always drew speculation and rumors, no matter what century it was. And once I’d grown up, I hardly gave any merit to the things kids said about old Hattie Blaylock.
    But seeing the old woman out on the street, staring at me this morning… well, it had a way of bringing back all those old feelings and fears.  
    “You know it’s all just