Wonder: A Soul Savers Collection of Holiday Short Stories & Recipes (19 page)

Beverages

Fairies Faithful Hot Chocolate to Hit the Spot...

Submitted by Stacey Nixon

Since I love hot chocolate at Christmas and I’m a naughty faerie, I thought I’d put my fave things together.

1 large shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream

A little over 5 oz (or150 mls) of heavenly Cadburys or Suchards Hot Chocolate

Topped with lots of Whipped Cream

Sprinkle the top with chocolate shavings, and maybe a flake for good measure.

Daemoni Christmas Morning Punch

Submitted by Stacey Nixon

In a flute, pour 1 shot of vodka, add cranberry juice, then champagne or cava to the top.

And add a little sprig of mint.

Vanessa’s Blood Red Drink

Submitted by Sue VanNort and Shelly Fenner

Vanessa may very well need this after her attempts at trying to figure out Christmas and her “secret admirer.” This is very Christmassy because of the coloring and people really need a drink after dealing with shopping!

Ingredients:

1 gallon Hawaiian Punch Fruit Juicy Red

2 liters of 7-Up

½ of a fifth of vodka or whatever strength you like your fruity mixed drinks!

Any sliced fruit you like in it

1. Mix liquids together and add fruit.

2. Allow to chill before serving.

Peanut Butter Sasha Snacks (Dog Treats)

Submitted by Jill Cruz

Tips:

Spray your spoon/spatula with Pam to keep the peanut butter from sticking to it.

Store your treats in the fridge to extend their shelf life. They also freeze well.

Recipe can be halved easily.

Ingredients:

2 cups wheat flour

1 cup chunky peanut butter

1 cup 1% milk or non-fat milk

1 tsp. baking powder

1. In a large bowl, combine flour and baking powder.

2. Add in the milk, then peanut butter.

3. Knead all ingredients together in bowl.

4. On a floured surface, roll out the mixture until about ¼-inch thick.

5. Cut out shapes using cookie cutters or cut into strips.

6. Place on ungreased baking sheet and bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

NEW YEAR’S STORIES

RESOLUTIONS

This first short story for New Year’s,
Resolutions
, is a silly little tale giving a glimpse into the lives of witches on both sides of the Good and Evil line. There are a couple of characters you’ll recognize from other holiday stories, but otherwise, these are new to the Soul Savers world. It was written with tongue-in-cheek, something fun and pointless to get you in the celebratory mood. It has absolutely no place in the main series.

Chapter 1

Christina stared out the apartment window, where a naked tree stood covered in snow, but she didn’t see it. The city bustled below, car horns honking and people yelling “Happy New Year” at each other, but she didn’t hear it. Her mind was elsewhere: Back on a warm, sunny beach in Florida where she’d had the pleasure of celebrating Thanksgiving with part of the royal family. The food had been great and the company amazing—thinking of Tristan made her lick her lips—but her mind had been stuck ever since on one little thing. Miss Alexis had referred to her as a warlock.

She was a witch.

She tapped the pen against her lip, her elbows on the table in the dining area of the apartment she shared with another witch, and contemplated why Miss Alexis would think she was a warlock. Her magic was strong, but she descended straight from the Salem witches, one of the strongest covens in the world. Her family had converted to Amadis in the centuries since then, but their magic never weakened. Did Miss Alexis sense her strong power and assume that made her a warlock?

“It certainly wasn’t my fighting ability,” Christina muttered out loud. That day had been the first time she’d ever truly fought the Daemoni, and she wasn’t exactly the greatest warrior. She’d never been trained to use magic as a weapon. That’s what warlocks did, not witches and wizards. Warlocks were the fighters, and she most certainly wasn’t one. So why did Miss Alexis believe she was?

That had been the question on her mind for over a month, and she couldn’t help but wonder if Miss Alexis saw something in her that she’d never seen in herself. She’d always avoided conflict in the past. She’d only jumped in that day because everyone else had been fighting for their lives, and she couldn’t simply stand back and watch. She’d used instinct and the bit of knowledge she had to defend herself and the other Amadis. But what if she could have done more?

War with the Daemoni was coming, Christina knew, and the Amadis needed all the soldiers they could get. Could she be a soldier? Is that what Miss Alexis saw in her? Could she be more than a bystander in this war? Few Amadis would be able to get away with no fighting at all. The coming war would require them all to contribute, but Christina had always imagined she and Kate, her roommate, and the rest of their coven would be more involved behind the scenes. Doing things like enchanting weapons and protective gear, helping with communications, concocting potions and special brews—those things that kept you safely off the battlefield. She’d never imagined herself on the front lines.

But what if she could be?

“What are you doing?” Kate asked from the doorway into her room. She leaned against the frame and detangled her dirty blond hair with her fingers as she studied her roommate.

“Writing my New Year’s Resolutions,” Christina answered.

“Oh! That sounds like fun,” Kate said, and she bounded over to Christina’s bed and plopped onto it. “So what are they?”

Christina made a face as she looked down at her paper. “Um ... well ...”

Kate sprang to her feet and crossed the room to stand behind Christina and look over her shoulder. “Well, those should be easy to accomplish. At least you’re not setting yourself up for failure.”

The page remained blank. Christina thought about saying she used invisible ink so no one could see them—weren’t resolutions supposed to be kept private otherwise they wouldn’t come true? Wait, those were birthday wishes. She was pretty sure you were actually supposed to share your resolutions so someone could hold you accountable. And if she couldn’t trust Kate, a close friend and her roomie for three years, who could she trust?

“So do you want to lose weight and get into shape?” Kate asked as she moved back to the bed.

Christina spun around in her chair and shot daggers at her roommate from her brown eyes. “Are you calling me fat?”

Kate’s blue eyes widened. “Oh, no. Sorry. I was just trying to think what resolutions the Normans usually make. Isn’t that one of them? You need ideas, right?”

“Yeah, but ... not like that.”

She hadn’t told Kate about Miss Alexis thinking she was a warlock and how her thoughts always went back to that day on the beach, but she finally spilled. She told her all about the battle and even how a thrill had run through her belly when she went one-on-one with a Daemoni wizard and beat him.

“I want to learn to fight,” she finished.

Kate’s face brightened up. “It’s about time! I’ve been wanting to do the same but ...” She trailed off, her attention suddenly diverted to something on her jeans. Her fingers picked at it for a long moment before she finally looked back up at Christina. “I was kind of afraid to do it on my own. Our coven hasn’t been into that for over a century.”

“Some of them had seen enough violence during the trials,” Christina defended before adding, “But war is coming. It’s time we remembered who we are.”

She felt more empowered already simply by sharing her true feelings with someone else. And Kate’s reaction had certainly helped.

Her roommate straightened her back and nodded. “So what do we need to know to be Amadis soldiers?”

“Well, of course, we need to learn the best spells to use in a fight.”

“Obviously.” Kate flicked her hand toward the paper in front of Christina. “Write that down.”

The pen lifted and began scrawling across the paper on its own.

“We need to look for potential converts,” Kate said. “That’s part of being a soldier—getting Daemoni to convert, right?”

Christina nodded, and the pen wrote out that resolution.

“We need to stop avoiding conflict all the time and depending on others like the vamps to defend us,” she said. “We need to be willing to stand up and fight whenever and wherever.”

“But we need to learn the fine line of mercy, too,” Kate added. “That’s the Amadis way.”

“Right.”

The girls reviewed their list of resolutions.

“We can add to it if we think of anything,” Christina said. “It’s not quite New Year’s yet.”

Kate glanced at the clock. “Seven hours and three minutes to go. Plenty of time to help me decorate for the party.”

“I can’t believe you waited until the last minute,” Christina grumbled as she pulled her light brown hair into a ponytail.

“Oh, please. It’s only five o’clock. Eight fifty-nine would be the last minute.”

Christina followed Kate out the door, and they walked down the block and onto the university campus where they both attended Norman college. It was important, their elders said, for them to learn all about Norman ways, especially people in their generation. They had to know who they protected and why. So after many years in mage school, here they were, taking more classes they didn’t need while learning how to blend in and live among the Normans.

They weren’t the only mages—or Supernaturals—to attend college there. And not all who did were on the good side.

“Maybe we should invite those witches from chemistry class,” Christina suggested as they entered the student union where Kate’s party would be held. “Kath and Inga, I think their names are.”

“The
Daemoni
witches?” Kate asked, her voice a bit screechy, which happened when she freaked out. “Are you crazy?”

“Aren’t you the one who said we needed to learn mercy? And I think it was also you who said we need to look for potential converts.”

“It’s not the New Year yet,” Kate pointed out.

Christina peered at her friend. “Are you serious about all of this? Are you going to do it with me or not?”

Kate blew out a breath, sending a stray lock of hair up into the air. “All right, all right. Fine. We’ll invite them to the party.”

“They can’t be all bad anyway, right? I mean, they go to
college
. If they were deep into the Daemoni, they wouldn’t bother with such mundane stuff, would they?”

“We can only hope.”

Chapter 2

Kath pushed one hand through her brown curls as she paged through her spell book, looking for something interesting. She didn’t know what, just ... something. Interesting. She was bored out of her damn mind and needed a distraction. Her best friend and roommate had disappeared a week ago, on the eve of anti-Christmas. She’d heard from Claire since then, of course, but
what
she’d heard had Kath’s insides all twisted up.

“Okay, I admit it. I envy Claire,” she said as she slammed the book shut. No potions or spells or other magical mayhem caught her interest.

Inga looked up from the pot of boiling brew on the stove and blew a blond strand out of her face. “Me, too. I want a man like that.”

Kath laughed. “Yeah, a sexy one like that were-bear would be just fab. But I envy her boldness, too. How she ignored everyone else and did what she wanted. I want to do more of that!”

Inga stirred her concoction, and Kath thought her other roommate and best friend was ignoring her, but then Inga waved the wooden spoon in the air and pointed it at Kath. “You should make that a resolution.”

“A what?”

“A New Year’s Resolution. You know, like the Normans do. They make these promises to themselves that they’ll be better people, lose weight, manage their money better, blah, blah, blah.”

Kath let out an exaggerated yawn. “Sounds utterly boring. Why would I want to do that?”

“You don’t have to make yours boring. You do whatever
you
want to do. Whatever you want to accomplish in the New Year.”

“So ‘do what I want to do more often’ is a resolution?”

“Sure. Why not?” Inga dropped the spoon in the pot and opened the junk drawer in the kitchen. She pulled out a scrap piece of paper and a pen and tossed them to Kath. “Here. Write them down so you don’t forget. I’ll do them with you.”

Kath wrote down their first resolution, then a second. “Number two: Find a man who lasts all night.”

She read it out loud as she wrote, and Inga snorted.

“All night? Is that realistic?”

“According to the last I heard from Claire, yes, totally realistic. She and Tony apparently can’t stop.”

Inga let out a sigh. “Life is so unfair.” She turned the burner on the stove off, then came around the counter to join Kath at the little round dinette table. “So what’s number three?”

“Do a Random Act of Evil at least once a day. They shouldn’t be only for anti-Christmas, right?”

“Good one,” Inga agreed. “And how about ‘torture more Amadis’? We don’t give them near enough hell. They dare to hover over us right on our own campus.”

“It’s not like they’ve even tried to stop us,” Kath pointed out.

“We’re just too good at hiding ourselves.”

Kath drummed her fingers on the table. “That’s part of our problem, you know. We’re Daemoni. Claire’s right. We need to be more evil, especially with Lucas calling for war. I think he has something big planned, and we need to be ready.”

She wrote down “Torture more Amadis” and then added another: “Bring more Normans to the vampire nest.”

“It’s time to up our game,” she explained. “We miss half the house parties around campus where there are prime targets for the vamps. They’ve already told us they need new recruits to turn. It’s the only thing we can do to help boost the Daemoni’s numbers.”

“We could have babies,” Inga suggested, but then she shuddered. “Ugh. I’m so not ready for that.”

“I could do it,” Kath said, and her eyes glossed over as she fell into a daydream. “I’d be good and grouchy while pregnant. I could get away with casting all kinds of hexes and blame it on hormones. And I’d be the best witch-mother after it was born. I’d teach it magic as soon as it could hold a wand.”

Inga chuckled.

“Are you laughing at me?” Kath asked.

“Maybe. Did you hear yourself? We hardly ever use wands. Babies aren’t its. And first, you need a man.”

“That goes all night,” Kath reminded her, and her mind went back to Claire. She missed her other roommate. It was easy to admit her envy because that was something to be proud of. But missing someone meant she was too attached.

“Don’t worry,” Inga said with a sigh. “I miss her, too. Who cares if it’s not very Daemoni like? We can’t cut off all our emotions. We’re witches, not vamps. We have a lot of human in us.”

Kath clucked her tongue. “Don’t say such horrid things! We have to overcome that if we’re going to be the best damn Daemoni we can be.”

“The
best
damn Daemoni?”

“Yes, the best! In fact,
that
should be our resolution. Just that one covers everything.”

Inga snatched the scrap paper away before Kath could scratch out their resolutions or ball it up. “These give us ideas on how to do that. Reminders so we stay on track.”

She got up and walked over to the refrigerator, where she stuck the resolutions with a magnet. Then she put her hands on her hips, cocked her head and grunted.

“What?” Kath asked.

Inga grabbed the paper off the fridge, scrunched it up and tossed it in the trash can. “I realized just how ridiculously Norman that was. As if we need to be reminded how to be bad.”

“It was your idea,” Kath said.

“I deserve to be spanked for such stupidity. I wonder if there are any were-bears up for the job?”

“Claire did mention brothers ...”

Inga spun, her hands still on her hips, and glared at her roommate. “And you didn’t say this before because—”

Kath didn’t have a chance to boast her selfish tendencies, because an envelope appeared in the air at that moment right in front of her and fell to the table. Inga rushed over as Kath snapped it up and tore it open. Then she let out a howl of laughter before handing the card that was inside to Inga.

The other witch read the writing and broke into laughter, as well.

“Those Amadis witches ... are inviting ...
us
... to their
party
?” Kath gasped between hoots. “What ... the hell?”

Inga straightened up and tried to control her giggles as she shook her head with befuddlement. “No idea.” Her turquoise eyes widened and a glint of mischief passed through them. “We should go, though.”

“Seriously? Can you say
boring
?”

“I bet it won’t be. Not if we make it exciting.”

Kath bolted upright in her seat. “Oh, I like your thinking! Unless ... do you think it’s a trap?”

Inga tapped the invitation against her lips as she considered this. “It could be, but I doubt it. Knowing them, they probably invited a bunch of Normans, too, so they wouldn’t dare blow their cover. But we’ll let our vamp nest know, just in case.”

“What if they attack the party?”

Inga shrugged then grinned evilly. “What if they do? That will just make it all the more interesting for us.”