Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series) by Amber Jaeger Page A

it was just Martha and Minnie.
    Viola grabbed my hand. “Minnie mustn’t know about any of this. I’m not sure how, but it didn’t get passed down to her.”
    I bit my lip, entirely aware of how it didn’t get “passed on to her”. I waited to make sure the girls weren’t coming into the house before asking my next question. “How could the original Gatekeeper just make that happen? Wasn’t she a normal human?”
    Viola nodded fervently. “Yes, she was. But she was held captive by him, in his world. Being there, being around him, sort of rubbed off on her.” I thought of Jordan’s explanation of how my looks changed. “No human could just devise away to detect thin spots and guard against them, let alone pass that down through generations. But he accidentally gave her that power by forcing her into his world. We don’t know if what she did was intentional but I don’t think so. Humans don’t intentionally change their looks or become stronger when they spend time around them or in their world, it just happens.”
    I nodded slowly, my coppery curls swinging around my face. That explained how well I was able to throw that basin at Jordan’s head.
    Viola sat back and gulped her tea down as if that were the end of the conversation.
    “Wait, that explains the Gatekeeping, but what about the curse? What is it and what does it have to do with us being pretending to be Amish?”
    Viola shushed me as the girls came in the door and mouthed the word “later.”
    I gritted my teeth in frustration but kept my mouth shut.
    “Ooh, tea!” Minnie exclaimed, rubbing her hands over the hot kettle.
    I spent the rest of the day trying to catch Viola or Hazel alone but couldn’t. All of us finished mucking the barn out together and I fumed while I picked up more horse crap. Minnie actually thought it was fun and Martha made it look as easy as dusting. Every stall I came to was a fight between me and the horse who didn’t want to get out so I could clean out his poop. Martha took pity on me and led each animal out with a few gentle words and a pet on the nose. When I tried that I got snorted on.
    Just as I was beginning to wonder if mucking out stalls was a form of torture meant to wear me down into compliance, the aunts declared the barn “clean” and led us back into the house to get cleaned up. I did my best to get Minnie into the shower ahead of me so I could have a chance to ask my questions but Martha pushed me into the other bathroom.
    I couldn’t stay mad at her for long, not with all her rose scented soaps and fluffy towels.
    Leaving the bathroom with a wet head was a bad idea. The house was freezing.
    “It always this cold in here?” I asked Martha in the kitchen. I rubbed my arms to warm them up.
    She smiled apologetically. “It’s a pretty old house, it gets drafty.” She disappeared and returned with a mauve cardigan. “I knitted it myself,” she said shyly.
    Of course you did, I thought. What I said was, “It’s pretty, thanks.”
    Martha left again to build a fire in the fireplace and I stood at the window in the kitchen, waiting for everyone to come down. The wind had picked up while I was in the shower but this time actual snow was falling. It wasn’t the gentle fluffy flakes that I was used to but rather sharp, glinting flakes that cracked against the windows. The sky was darkening quickly and to my surprise the ugly cat clock on the wall showed it was only four o’clock even though it had felt like I’d been in that smelly barn for an eternity.
    The aunts came into the kitchen whispering furiously. Minnie was nowhere in sight.
    “Quick,” I hissed, rushing over to them. “Tell me what the curse is—”
    Hazel shushed me. “Not now.”
    Viola said quietly, “I think she may know sooner than we think.”
    “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, more frustrated than ever.
    Hazel shushed me, her eyes darting to the stairway Minnie and Martha were noisily making their way down. She