Why was I pacing like someone in solitary? It was my house. I didn’t have to stay locked away in the bedroom like a prisoner. I could stroll back into the kitchen, take my seat at the table with the man I loved and the woman he’d married, and find out what was going on.
If I didn’t, there was the distinct possibility that I might go crazy.
I smoothed down my hair, wished for the thousandth time that small boobs would come back in style, then casually ambled toward the kitchen.
They weren’t there.
They also weren’t in the living room.
Or (insert loud sigh of relief) the guest room.
The familiar sound of the truck’s engine turning over grabbed my attention. Okay, it didn’t grab my attention exactly. What it did was grab me by the throat and practically throw me to the ground. I raced out onto the front porch and straight into the ex, who was sitting on the top step, knees under her chin, smoking a cigarette. Relief almost knocked me flat.
“He left,” she said before I had a chance to say a word. “He said he had to fill out a report at town hall or something.”
“Did he say when he’d be back?”
“Hello,” she said. “This is Luke we’re talking about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He hasn’t pulled the disappearing act yet?” Her bitter tone unnerved me. “Well, give him time. He will.”
She was grieving her daughter’s death, and blaming Luke was one of the ways she eased her pain. I understood that, but it didn’t mean I liked hearing it. Their marriage wasn’t any of my business. I intended to keep it that way.
The night was moonless and foggy. The glowing reddish orange tip of her cigarette punctuated the darkness like a beacon. She was the stranger, but suddenly I was the one who felt like I didn’t belong.
“The guest room’s at the end of the hallway,” I said. “I left some towels and an extra toothbrush on the bed.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
That was the best she could do?
“Sorry about the eggs. There’s a stash of Chips Ahoy in the cabinet over the fridge if you get hungry.”
“Thanks.”
I had one last thing to say, and after that, I was through with polite conversation.
“I’m sorry about your daughter.”
She tossed the cigarette down, and it made a soft sizzle when it hit the mud. “So am I.”
“Okay then,” I said. “Good night. I have an early day tomorrow but if you need anything—”
“No problem,” she said, not bothering to look up at me. “I’m fine.”
I turned to leave, and from the corner of my eye I saw a shimmering silver thought probe slithering through the mud toward the ex. To be honest, I wouldn’t have minded watching her expression when the nasty little gizmo started nibbling at her ankle like a thought-hungry piranha, but there was no way I was going to let the entire town find out her story before I did.
I held my hands up and out in the stop position and racked my brain for the words to halt the probe’s progress. I knew that defensive spell inside out. I had used it at the town hall. And how many times had I deflected thought probes as they tried to sneak in my bedroom window while Luke and I were—well, you get the picture. Let’s just say more than my yarn shop would be an Internet sensation.
“Come on,” I muttered. “You knew it a few hours ago.”
The ex turned slightly in my direction. “Did you say something?”
I ignored her. I could hear the rhythm of the defensive charm but couldn’t assemble the words in the right order.
“ . . . walls of stone, walls of fire . . . ” I waved my arms in the air.
The ex turned all the way around. “What are you doing?”
I finally had her attention exactly when I didn’t want it.
The thought probe was winding its way through the mud toward her right ankle. I had maybe five seconds before it made contact. A vision of the Book of Spells danced before my eyes. The pages flipped and a beam of golden light landed on the Doomsday quick-and-dirty solution for blocking thought probes.
I threw myself on the probe a split second before it made contact with the redhead, covering the prickly, glittering missile with my body like a bomb blanket.
I don’t even want to think about how I looked, sprawled at her feet. You know that dream where you’re naked at your high school reunion and everyone else has had liposuction and spa treatments while you’re standing there with your cellulite shimmering under the spotlight?
This was worse.
The probe was nipping at my thigh, but I didn’t dare move or it would slip away and sink itself into the redhead’s memory bank.
The redhead rushed over to me. “Are you okay?” She looked different, stronger somehow. She even sounded different. More engaged. More sure of herself.
I tried to talk, but like I said before, magick didn’t come easy to me and it was taking all my powers of concentration to shut down the probe. I had nothing left over for conversation.
For some reason this seemed to worry her.
“Don’t move,” she said. “I’m a trauma nurse. I’m going to see if you have any injuries.”
It kept getting better and better. Just my luck that the incredible fainting woman turned out to be a trained medical professional.
“Don’t touch me!” I warned as I struggled to wrangle the probe into submission. If she touched me, the probe would use me as a conduit to get to her.
“I won’t hurt you,” she said in a soothing tone of voice. “I just need to see if you broke anything.”
“You’re the one who keeled over in the church,” I reminded her. “Maybe you should be checked for a concussion.”
“I’m fine.”
“So am I.”
She moved closer. I pinned my knees more tightly together. Thought probes had the nasty habit of gaining power just before they went dormant, and I was feeling the heat.
“I’d feel better if you let me check you out,” she said.
“I’d feel better if you’d pretend I wasn’t here.”
“That would be a lot easier if you’d quit twitching.”
“I’m not twitching.”
“Yes, you are. In my line of work, twitching isn’t a good thing.”
The probe unleashed its last burst of energy, sending sharp arrows of heat through my body, then went dormant. I breathed a long loud sigh of relief.
Which, as it turned out, was a big mistake because the redhead thought I was having respiratory problems. She flipped me over on my back and started doing weird things to my chest. Unfortunately I’m insanely ticklish and she hit one of those spots on my rib cage and I started laughing and then she started laughing and the next thing I knew she lost her footing and ended up in the mud next to me.
Who knew mutual embarrassment could be a bonding experience?
“I’m Chloe,” I said, extending a muddy hand.
“Karen.” She had a strong grip.
Too bad she was my human boyfriend’s totally human ex-wife. I was starting to like her.
LUKE
Karen’s arrival had knocked me on my ass, but that was nothing compared to the way everyone else in town was freaking out. I stopped by the town hall on the way to take another look at the rental car. I figured I’d lend a hand with the repairs, but there was nothing a human male could do that a sprite couldn’t do a thousand times faster and better.
Midge Stallworth and her husband were there, brewing coffee and making sure the collective blood sugar didn’t drop. Renate and Colm. Lilith and Archie, Frank and Manny and Rose from Assisted Living. Paul Griggs and his clan. I sensed rather than saw the spirits, a pulsing heartbeat hanging in the heavy air. With the exception of Renate and Colm, I had come to think of them all as friends. People I could turn to if I needed something. People who knew they could turn to me.
Okay, so maybe “people” wasn’t the right term, but when it came to Sugar M
aple, my vocabulary was still limited by my human experience.
I hadn’t expected the conversation to stop cold the second I entered the vestibule or the literal icy wind blowing in my direction when I said hello.
“You gotta get rid of her.” Aging vampire Frank never minced words. Usually I found that trait admirable. “The dame has bad news written all over her.”
“Pay your back alimony!” The usually cheerful Midge glowered at me. “Maybe then the woman can afford some food.”
“One human’s enough around here.” Coming from Archie, the troll who ran the electronics repair shop near the bridge, this was no surprise. “Two is going to tip the balance. Mark my words.”
Renate from the Inn fixed me with one of those chilly stares the Fae specialized in. “We need to consider our options.” She paused. “Without strangers in our midst.”
Even I knew what that meant. They wanted me gone.
“See what you did,” Midge chided the others. “You’re making Luke uncomfortable. Tell him you don’t consider him a stranger. He’s one of us now.”
“The hell he is.” So Deno from Pizza Haven was on the other side of the issue too. “No human has ever been one of us and we’re not about to start now.”
“Hold on a minute!” I didn’t have to take this crap. “Chloe’s father was human. He was one of you.”
“Never!” Renate swelled to full-size human form and stared me down from across the room. “We were born of the need to escape human treachery. That will never change.”
“This is no life for a man like you.” Colm was turning on the one-of-the-guys charm. “You’re a police detective in a town without crime. You can’t be happy here in our quiet little hamlet forever.”
“Of course he’s happy here.” Midge sprang to my defense. “He’d be happy anywhere with Chloe.”
“I don’t give a fig if he’s happy or not,” Frank chimed in. “Just knock her up, pal, and let’s get on with it before Isadora grabs the whole shebang. We’re not getting any younger. We want security.”
Midge sidled closer to me. “You don’t have a”—she lowered her voice—“problem in that area, do you?”
I knew bearing a child was part of Chloe’s destiny but it wasn’t something we had discussed. I had been hoping to postpone the conversation indefinitely.
“I won’t be in my office tomorrow,” I said, tamping down volcanic anger. “If anyone needs me, call me on my cell.”
I strode toward the door, hoping I’d reach the street before I blew.
“Wait a second, Chief,” Wayne, one of the itinerant house sprites, called to me as I pushed open the door. “Grayson found this in the back and figured it belonged to your ex.”
He tossed a worn navy blue leather wallet to me from the top of the extension ladder where he had been working.
“Thanks, Wayne. I’ll see she gets it.” Karen had had that wallet for as long as I could remember. I pocketed it and took one last look around the meeting hall. “Great work. You guys could revive the housing industry single-handed.”
Wayne’s grin was infectious. He looked like George Cloo ney circa ER, and I had to remind myself he was a house sprite revealing himself in a form that my human brain could process.
At least that was the way Chloe had explained it to me.
If I’d learned anything these last few months, it was not to ask too many questions because sometimes the answers were more than you could handle.
The ex-husband might have kept his hands off Karen’s wallet, but the cop wasn’t about to let any clues to her mental state get by. Besides, I needed her car rental receipt to get the repair in motion so she could go back to Boston.
Lucky for me, she was still a pack rat. I found the rental car receipt neatly folded behind her cash. I tossed it on the seat next to me and continued searching. Her Stop & Shop frequent shopper card. An ATM card from Bank of America. Health insurance card. A receipt from Golden Wok. Nothing that gave me any idea what the hell had pushed her over the edge.
But something had. After two years of silence she’d driven up to Vermont to find me with a crazy story about Steffie and some special ringtone only the two of them knew. And where were all the photos she used to carry? She carried her life around with her on a daily basis. Our wedding day. The day we brought Steffie home from the hospital. Her first Christmas. And her second. And her third.
But now there was only one photo. Steffie and Santa taken the Christmas before she died.
“What do you want from me? I’m working on a case and I can’t break away.”
“It’s Christmas Eve, Luke. Steffie’s all excited about seeing the mall Santa. You promised you’d be there. She’s counting on you.”
So was the eighteen-year-old kid we found beaten half to death on campus. I switched the office phone to my other ear so I could tap info into the computer. My mind was fully engaged. I had nothing left for anyone but the young girl who was clinging to life in the ICU.
“Twenty minutes,” Karen urged. “You know how much Steffie misses you when you’re working all these hours.”
“I’ve gotta go,” I said, already gone. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I didn’t make it back in time for Steffie’s visit with Santa. I wasn’t there when she opened her presents Christmas morning. I missed the first grade Valentine’s Day pageant.
The girl in the ICU? She was a junior at BU and doing great.
That was our daughter’s last Christmas.
It never got easier. I kept waiting for the day when it wouldn’t hurt so damn much but so far that day hadn’t come. Our marriage had been on shaky ground before Steffie’s accident. After her death there was nothing left but anger and guilt.
I disappeared into my work. On the job nobody asked me how I felt. Nobody monitored my emotional temperature on an hourly basis. I did my job and I did it well, and if there were days when I felt like driving the squad car into a brick wall, that was my business and nobody else’s.
Karen had it tougher. She took a sabbatical from nursing and spent her days watching old movies on AMC. She didn’t have brothers or sisters to turn to. Her father died when she was in her teens; her mother lost her battle with cancer early in our marriage. She had one cousin that I knew about, a teacher in Natick who showed up every Christmas like clockwork to criticize.
It was a long shot but maybe the cousin could shed some light on what had been going on. I drove back to the office, where I kept a Bankers Box filled with old contact info that I’d brought with me from Boston.
The storefronts were all dark. The streetlamps gave off an old-fashioned yellow glow that washed the sidewalk with nostalgia. It was so quiet you could hear an owl hooting in New Hampshire. I tried not to think about all the things I couldn’t see or hear.
What can I say? The place unnerved the hell out of me after dark. I let myself into the station and flipped on the low-wattage fluorescent overhead. It flickered twice, then came to life.
The police station was a renovated pet shop that still smelled like the monkey house at the zoo, but I was slowly getting used to it.
I dug through a stack of old Rolodex cards and found the cousin’s number. Like everyone else on the planet, Nancy screened her calls and I didn’t make it through the net. I’d be surprised if she phoned me back. I’d never been one of her favorites.
I tried calling a couple of old friends. They answered their phones but neither had seen or heard from Karen in months.
So I did what I’d done a thousand times when I worked for the Boston PD and needed help. I called Fran, the chief of police’s right-hand and my good friend.
“Are you drunk dialing,” she asked, “or did you forget how to tell time?”
“It’s ten thirty, Frannie. Your grandchildren are still awake.”
“I guess there’s no morning shift up there in Sugar Maple.”
“I need your help.”
That was the best thing about old friends. When you needed them
, they were there for you. And as it turned out, they didn’t gossip about your ex-wife until you asked them to.
“You didn’t know any of this?” Fran said after she’d finished. “Sorry to dump it on you but you asked.”
I’d asked and now I knew. Karen had quit her job at the hospital, let her friendships go to the point where the few that remained were on life support.
“I don’t know if this means anything,” Fran said as we were saying goodbye, “but she called me about two weeks ago. She wanted my cousin Noreen’s phone number.”
“Noreen the psychic?”
“She prefers to be called a transdimensional therapist.”
I let it pass. “Did Karen tell you why she wanted Noreen’s number?”
“I didn’t ask and she didn’t volunteer.”
The reason wasn’t hard to figure out.
“So don’t be a stranger,” Fran said after we’d exhausted the Noreen/Karen connection. “If you won’t come down to Boston, maybe I’ll drive up to Sugar Maple to do some shopping. We can catch up.” She laughed knowingly. “You can introduce me to your new girlfriend.”
There’s a great idea, I thought. I hadn’t intended to tell my old pal about Chloe, but when she asked if I was seeing anyone, I couldn’t hold back. She’d grilled me like I was the prime suspect in a murder investigation and I was lucky I’d stopped short of telling her that Chloe was a sorceress-in-training. There wasn’t a protective charm in the universe strong enough to keep Sugar Maple’s secrets safe from Fran.
There was nothing more I could do for Karen. Her problems weren’t my problems anymore. They hadn’t been for a long time now. Whatever it was she was looking for, she’d have to find it someplace else.
I logged off the computer and was stuffing the Rolodex cards back into the file when I heard the front door open.
“Hello, hello,” Midge Stallworth’s cheery voice rang out. “I saw your lights on and wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
“Everything’s fine, Midge.” I shoved the file back into the closet and smiled at her. “I had a few calls to make.”
Laced with Magic Page 7
