Feast of Stephen (A Charm of Magpies)

By KJ Charles

A free Charm of Magpies Christmas coda. Stephen and Crane have finally got away on their long-awaited Christmas break, along with Crane’s henchman Merrick and Jenny Saint. A promised gift is made, and a request unexpectedly and magically fulfilled... This story comes after Flight of Magpies and is not a standalone read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: KJ Charles
• Release date: Dec 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311771964

KJ Charles

KJ Charles is a writer and editor. She lives in London with her husband, two kids, a garden with quite enough prickly things, and a cat with murder management issues. Find her on Twitter @kj_charles for daily timewasting and the odd rant, or in her Facebook group, KJ Charles Chat, for sneak peeks and special extras.

Book preview

Feast of Stephen

KJ Charles

A Charm of Magpies 3.5

Copyright KJ Charles 2014

Cover by Susan Lee 2014

For all the lovely people in the KJ Charles Chat group,

because I’d dedicate a book to each of you but I can’t write fast enough

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Feast of Stephen

Other books by KJ Charles

Author’s Note

This story comes after Flight of Magpies. Not only does it contain spoilers for that book, it will make no sense at all if you haven’t read the Charm of Magpies series. In that case, I recommend checking out my less seasonal but still free story Butterflies instead.

Feast of Stephen

26th December – St Stephen’s Day

They arrived at Rothwell after dark.

It had been a very long journey, made worse by their late departure. That was thanks to Stephen’s job, of course. Mrs Baron Shaw had taken advantage of the catastrophic events of the last few weeks to manoeuvre Stephen’s old enemy John Slee off the Council for good. He couldn’t regret that, but the resulting chaos had kept him working eighteen-hour days for a week, despite his best intentions.

He could, frankly, still be working: there was enough to be done, God knew. But Esther had become vocal on the subject, Merrick had begun giving him meaningful looks, and Stephen had finally put his foot down before Crane did it for him.

A little too late. The long-threatened snow began to fall while they were still travelling, and the roads were soon rutted and icy. They had been forced to spend Christmas Day in an inn some miles from Crane’s hunting box—not a great hardship, since Crane’s lavish hand could purchase luxury under almost any circumstances, but not what any of them had wanted—and it had

Reviews for Feast of Stephen (A Charm of Magpies)

[jorgeousjotts · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I love this group of interesting people sitting around swapping stories.