Wendy was wide-eyed. “Maybe she wants to be picked up,” she suggested, then held her hands up, palms outward. “Not that I’m volunteering, you understand.”
I scooped the baby from the high chair, amazed by the power behind those tiny arms and legs.
“Does something hurt?” I asked my wailing child. “Your diaper is dry. I know you ate. What’s wrong?” I cringed at the pleading tone of my voice, but I was getting desperate. “What are you trying to say?”
“I think she was talking to me.”
I practically leaped out of my skin when Gavan manifested in the middle of my kitchen in all his alpha male glory. He was built like a linebacker but in Gavan’s case it wasn’t a product of superhero padding. He had that not-quite-of-this-world aura that made his beautifully embroidered cloak seem like a fashion choice even GQ would embrace. The women of Sugar Maple had been whispering about him from the day he introduced himself and it was no wonder my human cousin Wendy had fallen under his spell.
But it was the fact that he had fallen under Wendy’s spell that had everyone talking.
Laria’s wailing stopped cold and she favored him with a look of serious satisfaction.
Wendy glowed.
I just wanted to know what the heck was going on.
“What do you mean, the baby was talking to you?”
He spread his enormous hands wide. “I have no explanation. She called to me and I am here.”
“How exactly did she call to you?” I asked, even though I was beginning to put it together.
He struggled for a moment, clearly searching for a common thread. “In Sugar Maple, you communicate with blueflame. Laria reached out to me using the earliest form.”
“You’re saying she used old magick.”
“Her magick is ancient and very powerful,” he said, “and will continue to be powerful far into the future.”
Which was his way of saying magick was magick and I’d better get on board with that fact because my daughter was way ahead of the rest of us.
He extended his massive arms toward Laria. I hesitated. Not because I feared he would harm her in any way, but because I still wasn’t sure what was happening or why.
Laria made up my mind for me. Her entire body reached out to him and I handed my daughter over to the man my parents had betrothed me to all those years ago and waited to see what would happen next.
Naturally that was when Mallory’s cell phone chirped.
Wendy was sitting closest to it and she pounced, answering it before the second ring.
“Mallory’s phone,” she said, flipping it to speaker. “This is Wendy.”
Silence. The crackle and pop of a glitchy connection was followed by the flat sound of a non-existent one.
“A hang-up,” Wendy said with a shrug, as she handed it to me.
I wasn’t so sure.
“You two stay here.” I remembered what Luke had said about the old magick possibly causing electrical interference. “I’m taking the cell into the back bedroom.”
If Gavan’s magick really was doing something to block reception, maybe a little distance would help.
I had barely stepped into the bedroom, when the phone rang again.
“Mallory’s phone,” I said. “This is Chloe speaking.”
“Can I speak to Mallory?” The voice was deep, male, and concerned.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“This is her husband. Why are you answering my wife’s phone?”
“I’m Chloe Hobbs,” I said. “Mallory and Ava attended a knitting workshop at my yarn store today. It started to snow pretty hard so we ended early. I’m afraid she left her phone behind.”
Another long silence.
“Hello?”
More tinny, scratchy sounds from the phone. “I’m here,” he said. “I’m her husband, Josh. She was supposed to call me.”
“She’s probably waiting out the blizzard,” I said, with more assurance than I was actually feeling. “I’m sure she’ll call you once she gets settled somewhere. Pay phones don’t exist any more. She’ll have to find a room first.”
“Where exactly are you? She was on her way to my parents’ place in Rhode Island.”
“Vermont,” I said. “I know she was headed for the highway.”
Gavan peered into the room with Laria happily tucked into the crook of his right arm, and the connection went flat, emitting the weird dead air sensation that cellphones specialize in. I waved him away and the connection crackled back into existence.
“Give me your number,” I said, “and I’ll call you back from a landline.”
I thanked the universe that Luke required a working old school landline for his job.
“I can’t give you a number. I’m in Afghanistan,” he said. “I’ll give you my folks’ number in Rhode Island. You give me your landline. We’ll work this out.”
We exchanged numbers. I threw in my cell for good measure.
“I don’t like this,” he said. “Mallory’s a great winter driver but she’s pregnant and—“
I felt the blood rush from my head. “She’s pregnant?”
“Early days,” he said. “We were going to tell my folks this weekend.”
I scrambled for something to say that would ease his mind. “The motels along the highway are probably filling up super fast. It might take awhile for her and Ava to get settled.”
“She’s a great driver,” he said again, “and they’ve probably lowered the speed limits to a crawl.”
“I’m sure that’s it,” I agreed.
“I’ll give the folks a call. Maybe Mallory checked in with them.”
“Great idea,” I said. “My husband’s the police chief here in town and he says—“
The connection was cut off.
I hurried back into the kitchen, followed by Gavan and Laria. My mind was sparking with possibilities.
I looked at Laria who was looking back at me from her spot in Gavan’s arms. Ava’s crocheted flower peeked out from her right fist in a flash of hot pink.
I finally knew what she was trying to tell us.
“You’re worried about Ava and her mom, aren’t you?” I asked my daughter.
I didn’t expect an answer but then again, you never know. I hadn’t expected my baby girl to fly around town under her own power either and she’s already done that three times.
Laria’s steady gaze met and held mine. I waited for some kind of communication, verbal or magickal, between us, but there was nothing.
“You’re right,” Gavan said. “Laria is very worried. She knows they are lost and in danger.”
Okay, now it was getting seriously weird, even for Sugar Maple.
“How did she tell you that?” I demanded. “As far as I know, we’re still waiting for her first word.”
Wendy’s eyes darted from Laria to Gavan to me, like we were all center court at Wimbledon.
“Her magick is like our own.” He offered me one of his devastating smiles. “Her skills are impressive. You have much to be proud of, Chloe. Your daughter will one day be the most powerful of all.”
I couldn’t deal with his prediction at the moment. Sometimes the thought of my daughter’s future scared the daylights out of me.
“So where are they? Rhode Island? New Hampshire? On the highway some place?” I could hear the hysteria building in my voice but couldn’t control it. “You can’t tell half a story.”
“That is all I know,” he said.
“Do you have more to say?” I asked my daughter. “Please, Laria, if you know where they are, help us find them.”
She started to cry again, big gulping sobs that overpowered her tiny body. I reached for her, but she clung tighter to Gavan, her baby fingers tracing patterns against the broad expanse of his chest.
Patterns, I realized, not aimless scribbles. Lines bisecting lines, overlapping circles traced across the intricate embroideries on his magnificent cloak.
I grabbed the pages she had marked u
p and shoved them toward Gavan. “This is what she’s been trying to tell us,” I said, driven by some crazy kind of maternal logic. “I think she’s drawing a map to guide us to Mallory and Ava.”
“There’s no orientation,” Wendy said, shaking her head. “No landmarks. No nothing. She might be trying to draw a map but it just doesn’t translate into anything we can understand.”
“You’re wrong.” Gavan’s sonorous voice filled the room. He transferred into the crook of his arm and spread the pages on the table before him. “She’s telling us to look in the woods.”
I stared down at the marks on the pages. I might as well have been looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls. “I don’t see anything.”
Wendy squinted at the array of drawings. “I don’t see anything either.”
“That is because this is in the graphic language of Rohesia’s forebears and beyond.” He explained how his early ancestors passed down their stories through curves and angles instead of words. After they made the change to an oral tradition, the curves and angles morphed into a method of mapping their homeland. “We were not an open society,” he said, a bemused expression on his face, “but we drew others to us with a road map as precise as those talking devices in your cars.”
Wendy leaned forward. “GPS.”
I was growing impatient. “So where are Mallory and Ava?”
“I do not know.”
I wanted to wrap my hands around his pretty neck and squeeze, but I restrained myself. “I thought you said this was some kind of wonder map that would lead us right to them.”
“I said that Laria is attempting to draw a map that will accomplish that. I do not know the terrain well enough yet to interpret the clues.”
Wendy looked at me. “You’ve lived here all your life. If anyone knows the geography, you do.”
“I can chart a three-hundred-stitch, twenty-row lace pattern, but I can barely read a map,” I said. “And besides, Gavan said that Laria is giving us old school markings.”
Which brought us back to where we started. I asked Gavan to interpret what he was looking at in the hope that something might click. Laria struggled for a better view.
“There is no storm in this rendering,” Gavan said. “It represents a different season of the earth.”
“Go on,” I said as Laria watched and listened.
“There are mountains surrounding the area.” He pointed toward a blob in the upper left-hand corner of the top page. “And trees.”
“This is Vermont,” I said, not as kindly as I should have. “Of course there are trees.”
Wendy shot me a look. I ignored it.
“Where do you see trees?” she asked him as the baby moved restlessly in his arms.
He pointed toward blank spaces scattered thickly on the page. “Some pine. Some maple. Each grove exists separately.”
I nodded. That was pretty much the way our woodlands broke down. “What else?”
“A darkness that could be a cave. Streams of water.”
I instantly thought of the waterfall that had served as a portal to different dimensions and a source of power for the Fae. “Streams like a waterfall?”
“It is unclear, but I do not think so.”
Laria was growing agitated, pulling away from Gavan as she reached down for the papers she had drawn on. She still clutched Ava’s crocheted flower in her right hand.
“That could be anywhere,” I said as my daughter made noises clearly meant to convey baby exasperation. “I don’t see anything that would say this is near Sugar Maple. Trees. Water. I mean, come on.”
“That’s the problem,” Wendy said. “It doesn’t have to be anywhere near here. For all we know, Mallory and Ava are in New Hampshire or Massachusetts or even Rhode Island by now.”
It was anybody’s guess.
“I’m going to phone her in-laws,” I said. “Maybe we’re worried over nothing. She and Ava might be sitting in front of a roaring fire, sipping hot cocoa right this minute.”
I grabbed the trusty landline and punched in the number Josh had given me.
“We haven’t heard from Mallory,” her mother-in-law said after I identified myself. “We’re very worried.”
We discussed the blizzard and the number of roads, both big and small, which had been closed down for the duration.
“Josh thinks we should call the police and file a missing persons report,” his mother said, “but with the storm and all, I told him we should wait a bit.”
“My husband is the chief of police here in Sugar Maple,” I offered. “You have my word that he will do whatever he can to locate Mallory and Ava and make sure they’re safe.”
“Your husband is the chief of police? I’d like to speak with him.”
“I’m afraid the storm has him stranded in Philadelphia,” I said, “but I’ll call him and tell him about the situation.”
“And he can ask his patrolmen to search for Mallory and Ava, right?”
She sounded so hopeful that I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Luke was not only the chief of the Sugar Maple police force, he was the entire Sugar Maple police force. “I’ll phone him as soon as we hang up.”
“We promised Josh that we would contact the highway police if they didn’t show up by eight o’clock.”
“It’s not quite six o’clock,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll know something by eight.”
“Please do whatever you can,” Mallory’s mother-in-law said, her voice betraying her fear. “They’re our only family.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll find them.”
At least, I hoped we would.
Chapter 10
MALLORY
Mallory floated in and out of consciousness, unsure how much time had passed since Ava left.
But had she really left? Mallory wasn’t sure. Maybe she had imagined her daughter climbing out of the minivan and disappearing into the storm. Her mind was all hazy and jumbled; her vision doubled like a funhouse mirror. She patted the seat next to her, hoping to find a sleeping Ava curled up next to her under the makeshift blankets.
But she was alone.
She hadn’t imagined the sound of the door sliding shut. Ava was really gone.
Without her phone she had no idea what time it was. She berated herself for abandoning her trusty old school watch. How long had her daughter been gone? She hadn’t a clue. Five minutes? An hour? A day? Panic exploded inside her chest, exacerbating the mind-numbing pain.
It didn’t matter how long Ava had been gone. It was already too long.
She had to find her.
The simple act of sliding open the door sent sharp bursts of pain through her head and chest and belly. She ignored it and pushed forward, tumbling from the minivan and landing on her knees in a soft mountain of snow.
“Ava!” she called, praying her voice carried. “Ava!”
She sounded tiny in the vastness of the storm. It would be a miracle if her daughter could hear her over the screaming wind.
Freshly fallen snow had obliterated her daughter’s footsteps. She struggled to think the way Ava would think but her own thoughts were messy and disjointed, circling around like a hamster on a wheel.
Her sense of direction was usually on point but not today. She was so dizzy that it was hard to stay on her feet. She needed to get back to the minivan and regain her bearings.
She needed a plan.
The car seemed so far away. She hadn’t taken more than a few steps in any one direction but now she had miles to go. How had that happened? She felt as if she were trapped on one of those amusement park rides where you can’t tell up from down.
She slipped twice, falling to the ground in a graceless sprawl. Distantly she noted streaks of blood on the white snow. Blood wasn’t good. She knew that. Blood meant trouble. But she was so tired and the pain kept slamming against her like an invisible battering ram.
Ava. Her daughter’s name repeated over and over in her head.
Ava.
Ava.
No matter how hard she tried, how loudly she called her daughter’s name, only the wind answered.
She was so tired. So cold. The snow beneath her feet was soft and inviting.
The lure of sleep, deep and dreamless sleep, was irresistible.
Maybe if she rested for just a minute, she would somehow figure out what to do.
Chapter 11
CHLOE
I hung up from my call to Mallory’s in-laws feeling worse than I had before. While I hadn’t exactly lied, the truth rested somewhere between what I said to them and what I meant. More than anything, I wanted to be able to find Mallory and Ava and get them back on their way to Rhode Island. Whether or not I would be able to accomplish that was anybody’s guess.
It seemed that my baby daughter might hold the key to locating Mallory and Ava but despite how much I loved her, I didn’t understand her one single bit.
I might have more than my share of magickal powers, but I don’t have ESP, and that was exactly what I needed right now. My powers hadn’t showed up until I was thirty and in love for the first and only time. Laria’s powers blossomed with her first breath and continued to grow.
Right now she was scaring the daylights out of me. Her cries grew louder by the second, heartbreaking wails that seemed to come from the center of her baby soul. Gavan tried to forge a link with her, some kind of connection that might help us understand what was going on, but so far, he wasn’t having any luck at all.
I’m not proud of this fact, but in a way, I was relieved. The thought that he might forge a deeper connection with my child than I was capable of doing made my mommy insecurities ratchet up a few thousand notches.
The realization struck me that it was all guesswork. We assumed her scribbles were maps. We thought she was worried about Ava and Mallory. We guessed that the crying was out of frustration that we just couldn’t seem to understand.
Then again, maybe she was campaigning for her next bowl of spaghetti with broccoli and butter and we were barking mad for thinking otherwise.
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