Mac pulled into a gas station parking lot and turned off the ignition. I looked out the windshield at the leaden gray sky releasing a few small snowflakes. Channel 8’s weather guy hadn’t said there was going to be a bad storm. Maybe we could take another flight. The high-pitched ping of the rapidly cooling engine broke the silence. I immediately tried to pull up the airline’s website on my phone.
Mac leaned back and rubbed his jaw, staring out the window. “I was really looking forward to getting away from this.” His gesture encompassed everything outside of the car. “And having a break from your family,” he said quietly.
I looked away from my phone and put my hand on his shoulder. “I know. Me, too. I’m pretty sick of snow. And I know my family has been a handful. I’m tired of them, too.”
Living in Crystal Haven, a town full of psychics, had its unique set of drawbacks. And so did growing up in a family that made its livelihood off of psychic messages and tarot cards.
“I’m checking to see if there are other flights. Hope is not lost.” I waved my phone at him. I was waiting for the website to load when Mac opened the door and startled me.
“Let’s go inside and regroup,” he said.
I followed, thinking that it was typical of our luck that our vacation would consist of diet soda and popcorn in a roadside gas station. I thought I heard the fates giggling.
2
The balding, chubby proprietor smiled at us as we entered. Mac made a beeline for the cheddar popcorn, his go-to stress indulgence. I grabbed a diet soda and a package of almonds.
“Did it say when they might reschedule?” Mac asked. He put an arm around my shoulder, leaned down, and squinted at my phone as we walked to the counter.
I shook my head. “No, and I can’t load the airline website.”
We placed our items on the counter and the man began scanning them into the register.
“I hope you two are headed home before the storm hits,” he said.
Mac and I exchanged a worried glance.
Mac handed over a twenty. “Storm?”
The man looked at us over his glasses. He turned his small TV to face us. The sound was muted, but we saw the news crawl along the bottom of the screen: BLIZZARD WARNING.
“They say Chicago’s already socked in. Airport’s closed and the roads are packed with people trying to get home. It should be here in a couple of hours.” His voice held a note of excitement at being able to break the news.
I was leaning into Mac and felt him go very still. My own shoulders slumped as I saw our vacation dissolve.
The man smiled kindly at me. “You were headed to Chicago?” He slid Mac’s change across the counter.
I nodded, and swallowed hard.
Mac pocketed his money, slung an arm across my shoulders, and steered me out of the store. As the door closed behind us, he leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I have a plan.”
I stopped walking, which forced him to turn to look at me. “A plan?” I asked. Mac definitely had a romantic side, but I expected romance along the Mexican seashore, not along Route 131. When did he come up with a plan?
He moved his arm down to settle around my waist. “Just relax, I’ve got this.”
He opened my door for me and swept his arm out to gesture me inside. He bowed slightly before swinging the door closed. I grinned and sat back in my seat, excited now by the new adventure.
I opened the weather app on my phone and scrolled through the many warnings and alerts caused by the snow currently pounding Chicago. A storm in Chicago would often head across Lake Michigan and slam into the west coast of Michigan. So while Chicago was digging out, we would be hunkering down to wait out the weather.
“They’re saying we should start seeing serious snow by later this afternoon.” I shut my phone off.
“We’ll be safe and dry by then but not in Crystal Haven,” Mac said.
I sat back and watched the white landscape scroll past my window. My attempts at questioning were met with off-key humming. Even though I’d grown up in Crystal Haven, I didn’t know the Kalamazoo area very well and had no idea where he planned to take us.
Twenty minutes and miles of white fields and forests later we were nowhere near anything that looked like a city. We passed a sporting goods store touting the exciting sport of ice fishing and snowmobile rentals. Mac pulled down a dirt road that headed into dense woods. I hoped he wasn’t planning to camp, even if a cozy cabin was involved. We routinely lost power during storms even in Crystal Haven; I could imagine what a cabin in the woods in February would be like.
“Mac . . . ,” I said, and couldn’t quite hide the nervous quaver.
He steered the car around a corner, the trees gave way to a wide clearing, and a beautiful snowcapped castle appeared. Its windows glowed gold in the afternoon gloom. Big wet snowflakes had begun to fall and added to the charm. It sat on a hill above us and as Mac followed the road that took us around to the back parking area, I leaned forward to get a better look out the front window.
It was big, but not enormous like some of the European castles I’d seen in books. It sported a large tower turret on the front and smaller turrets sticking off the side of the bigger one—with a wraparound porch and pointed roofline.