Charlaine Harris - Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

To the furry critters whove added so much to our lives,

and not just on the full moon:

poodles, ferrets, boxers, mice, guinea pigs, and large white cats.

Yummy treats all around!

We were so fired up by the good reception given Many Bloody Returns that we could hardly wait to begin assembling another anthology. Since wed given the previous contributors two elements for their stories (vampires and birthdays), we decided wed stick with a winning format. Coming up with the two elements for our second outing was a lot of fun; in fact, probably too much fun, considering that we spent entirely too much time e-mailing each other with preposterous ideas. Zombies and Arbor Day, anyone?

After wed settled on the saner combination of werewolves and Christmas, we compiled our ideal list of contributors with even more glee. To our delight, almost all of them agreed. J. K. Rowling was busy with some other series, but almost everyone else was able to fit a short story into his or her schedule.

We hope you all enjoy this collection as much as you enjoyed our first outing. We love seeing what talented writers from several genres can come up with when theyre given the same two building blocks. Read and enjoy.

CHARLAINE HARRIS

TONI L. P. KELNER

Charlaine Harris is the New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels and the Harper Connelly series. Shes been nominated for a bunch of awards, and she even won a few of them. She lives in southern Arkansas in a country house that has a fluctuating population of people and animals. She loves to read.

It was Christmas Eve. I was all by myself.

Does that sound sad and pathetic enough to make you say, Poor Sookie Stackhouse!? You dont need to. I was feeling plenty sorry for myself, and the more I thought about my solitude at this time of the year, the more my eyes welled and my chin quivered.

Most people hang with their family and friends at the holiday season. I actually do have a brother, but we arent speaking. Id recently discovered I have a living great-grandfather, though I didnt believe he would even realize it was Christmas. (Not because hes senile, far from itbut because hes not a Christian.) Those two are it for me, as far as close family goes.

I actually do have friends, too, but they all seemed to have their own plans this year. Amelia Broadway, the witch who lives on the top floor of my house, had driven down to New Orleans to spend the holiday with her father. My friend and employer, Sam Merlotte, had gone home to Texas to see his mom, stepfather, and siblings. My childhood friends Tara and JB would be spending Christmas Eve with JBs family; plus, it was their first Christmas as a married couple. Who could horn in on that? I had other friends . . . friends close enough that if Id made puppy-dog eyes when they were talking about their holiday plans, they would have included me on their guest list in a heartbeat. In a fit of perversity, I hadnt wanted to be pitied for being alone. I guess I wanted to manage that all by myself.

Sam had gotten a substitute bartender, but Merlottes Bar closes at two oclock in the afternoon on Christmas Eve and remains closed until two oclock the day after Christmas, so I didnt even have work to break up a lovely uninterrupted stretch of misery.

My laundry was done. The house was clean. The week before, Id put up my grandmothers Christmas decorations, which Id inherited along with the house. Opening the boxes of ornaments made me miss my grandmother with a sharp ache. Shed been gone almost two years, and I still wished I could talk to her. Not only had Gran been a lot of fun, shed been really shrewd and shed given good adviceif she decided you really needed some. Shed raised me from the age of seven, and shed been the most important figure in my life.

Shed been so pleased when Id started dating the vampire Bill Compton. That was how desperate Gran had been for me to get a beau; even Vampire Bill was welcome. When youre telepathic like I am, its hard to date a regular guy; Im sure you can see why. Humans think all kinds of things they dont want their nearest and dearest to know about, much less a woman theyre taking out to dinner and a movie. In sharp contrast, vampires brains are lovely silent blanks to me, and werewolf brains are nearly as good as vampires, though I get a big waft of emotions and the odd snatch of thought from my occasionally furred acquaintances.

Naturally, after Id thought about Gran welcoming Bill, I began wondering what Bill was doing. Then I rolled my eyes at my own idiocy. It was mid-afternoon, daytime. Bill was sleeping somewhere in his house, which lay in the woods to the south of my place, across the cemetery. Id broken up with Bill, but I was sure hed be over like a shot if I called himonce darkness fell, of course.

Damned if I would call him. Or anyone else.

But I caught myself staring longingly at the telephone every time I passed by. I needed to get out of the house or Id be phoning someone, anyone.

I needed a mission. A project. A task. A diversion.

I remembered having awakened for about thirty seconds in the wee hours of the morning. Since Id worked the late shift at Merlottes, Id only just sunk into a deep sleep. Id stayed awake only long enough to wonder what had jarred me out of that sleep. Id heard something out in the woods, I thought. The sound hadnt been repeated, and Id dropped back into slumber like a stone into water.

Now I peered out the kitchen window at the woods. Not too surprisingly, there was nothing unusual about the view. The woods are snowy, dark, and deep, I said, trying to recall the Frost poem wed all had to memorize in high school. Or was it lovely, dark, and deep?

Of course, my woods werent lovely or snowythey never are in Louisiana at Christmas, even northern Louisiana. But it was cold (here, that meant the temperature was about thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit). And the woods were definitely dark and deepand damp. So I put on my lace-up work boots that Id bought years before when my brother, Jason, and I had gone hunting together, and I shrugged into my heaviest I dont care what happens to it coat, really more of a puffy quilted jacket. It was pale pink. Since a heavy coat takes a long time to wear out down here, the coat was several years old, too; Im twenty-seven, definitely past the pale pink stage. I bundled all my hair up under a knit cap, and I pulled on the gloves Id found stuffed into one pocket. I hadnt worn this coat for a long, long time, and I was surprised to find a couple of dollars and some ticket stubs in the pockets, plus a receipt for a little Christmas gift Id given Alcide Herveaux, a werewolf Id dated briefly.

Pockets are like little time capsules. Since Id bought Alcide the sudoku book, his father had died in a struggle for the job of packmaster, and after a series of violent events, Alcide himself ascended to the leadership. I wondered how pack affairs were going in Shreveport. I hadnt talked to any of the Weres in two months. In fact, Id lost track of when the last full moon had been. Last night?

Now Id thought about Bill and Alcide. Unless I took action, Id begin brooding over my most recent lost boyfriend, Quinn. It was time to get on the move.

My family has lived in this humble house for over a hundred and fifty years. My much-adapted home lies in a clearing in the middle of some woods off Hummingbird Road, outside of the small town of Bon Temps, in Renard Parish. The trees are deeper and denser to the east at the rear of the house, since they havent been logged in a good fifty years. Theyre thinner on the south side, where the cemetery lies. The land is gently rolling, and far back on the property theres a little stream, but I hadnt walked all the way back to the stream in ages. My life had been very busy, what with hustling drinks at the bar, telepathing (is that a verb?) for the vampires, unwillingly participating in vampire and Were power struggles, and other magical and mundane stuff like that.