He slipped back into cop mode and I tensed up. “She claims she saw Steffie at the park near our old house.”
I tensed up even more. “What do you think?”
“You’re kidding, right? I think she needs some hospital time, that’s what I think.”
“Did she speak to Steffie?”
The cop façade broke for a moment and frustration slipped in. “She said something about a phone call but she has no proof.” He regrouped. “I’m going to drive her back down to Boston tomorrow and see if I can get her some help.”
“Can’t her family take care of it?” Not that I was being territorial or anything, but wasn’t that what families were supposed to do?
“She doesn’t have any family.” A slight hesitation. “Just me.”
“You’re not part of her family anymore.” You’re part of mine.
“You saw her. She’s running on fumes. I can’t let her drive back like that. She’ll have another wreck.”
“Are you sure she didn’t actually have some kind of contact with Steffie?”
“She didn’t see Steffie.”
“You’ve seen the Souderbush family. Did you forget they died over one hundred years ago?” It wasn’t like I hadn’t briefed him on all of our villagers, especially our noncorporeal ones. I mean, there was a reason we were ranked the most popular stop on the Spirit Trail.
“My daughter isn’t a ghost.”
“But you have to admit that it is possible.” I didn’t think he was ready for the truth: all humans ended up in the spirit world, in one way or another. The afterlife had more options than any mortal could imagine and they weren’t all wonderful.
The cop mask hardened. A smarter woman might have heeded the warning. “It’s bullshit.”
“What if it isn’t?”
“I’m not going there.”
“You’re going to have to go there, Luke. Your daughter’s mother is asleep in my guest room and I don’t think she plans to leave anytime soon.”
“I told you she’s leaving tomorrow.”
“Don’t tell me. Tell her.”
He started down the hallway toward the guest room with me close behind him. Would I never learn to keep my big mouth shut? Talk about the wrong thing to say. She wasn’t going to be up for conversation until morning.
When she was conscious.
“I didn’t mean tell her now. She’s asleep. That’s a good thing. Let her—”
“Why wait?” he shot back over his shoulder. “I’ll drive her back tonight. She can sleep in the truck.”
“Luke, stop! The woman’s exhausted. Tomorrow morning’s good enough.” What was wrong with me? Wasn’t this exactly what I wanted?
“She’s going tonight.”
“What about the rental car? How will you—”
“I’ll work it out with the agency when I get back.”
“This is crazy. It’s almost three in the morning. When do you figure on getting some sleep?”
He wasn’t listening to me. My words bounced off his back like it was a trampoline. I’d seen this behavior before: the human male quit listening when he didn’t want to hear any more. He just shut down, and the more words the female threw at him, the fewer he heard.
If this was part of the human experience, they could keep it.
“Luke!” I snapped as we approached the closed door to the guest room. “I didn’t want to tell you, but I gave her a potion. She’ll sleep straight through until seven and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I’ll wake her up.”
“You’re not listening to me, Luke. You won’t be able to wake her up. An earthquake won’t wake her up until seven tomorrow morning. Not a second before.”
Nothing. No response at all. Not even a grunt.
What did I have to do to make him hear me?
For the record, I didn’t mean for it to happen, but when it comes to controlling my powers, high emotion gets me in trouble every time. Before I even realized what was happening, Luke glowed bright crimson, then shrank down into a human Ken Doll, then back again to normal size in the blink of an eye.
“What the hell!?”
This was so not the way to build a relationship.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I said, torn between embarrassment and highly inappropriate laughter.
He didn’t take his eyes off me, and who could blame him? I wouldn’t trust me either. “You mean like the time you flipped the bed when we were—”
“Exactly.”
“Except this time you were pissed.”
Which was an understatement but this didn’t seem like the right time to quibble. “Yes.”
His expression shifted. “Did you say you gave her a potion or something?”
“To help her sleep.”
“You mean, like Sominex.” He sounded so hopeful. I hated to burst his bubble.
“Well, not exactly like that.”
“You put a spell on her?” His hopefulness was fading fast.
“I added something to her tea.”
“Something you can’t buy at Rite-Aid.”
“Not without a very odd prescription.”
Any other man would have been out the door the first time his toothbrush talked back to him but not Luke. He laughed. He didn’t want to but he laughed anyway.
We stood there looking at each other for what seemed like forever, and then we fell into each other’s arms. Sparks, pale ivory and yellow, arced over our heads, and I smiled against his shoulder as we held on tight. I needed his warmth the way I needed light and air and water. The stronger my sorceress side became, the more I craved his very human touch.
Tell me the fates don’t have a sense of humor when it comes to love.
Love scrambles your priorities. It was easy to forget the big picture when you found yourself in the middle of a soap opera-worthy romantic melodrama. We were so caught up with the ex and her problems that everything else fell away.
He didn’t tell me about his encounter with Midge, and I didn’t tell him about Lynette’s earlier warning. Maybe if we had, things would have gone differently, but we didn’t. It all seemed so clear at the time. First we would get Karen back to Boston, and then we would deal with Sugar Maple.
We had no idea our time was running out.
9
KAREN
“Where’s Luke?” I asked as I entered the kitchen a little after seven the next morning. “His truck is gone.”
Chloe looked up from the laptop sitting next to her bowl of oatmeal. “He was gone when I woke up. He probably went out to see about your rental car.”
That sounded like him. It was a lot easier to deal with a wrecked car than an ex-wife.
She gave me an easygoing smile. “He found your wallet back at town hall. It’s on the counter.”
“It must have slipped out of my bag when I ran into that wall everyone said doesn’t exist.”
Her expression didn’t waver. Supermodels were like that. They could hold a pose forever. “Sleep well?” she asked.
“Actually I did. I guess it’s the mountain air.” I felt strong in a way I hadn’t in months, like maybe I was moving in the right direction, no matter how crazy it seemed.
She gestured toward the big red pot on the stove. “I made plenty. Help yourself.”
I wasn’t much of an oatmeal fan but I figured it had to be better than her scrambled eggs. Besides, for the first time in ages, I was hungry.
I helped myself to a small bowl while she watched.
“I have raisins and dried cranberries if you like.”
“Plain’s fine.” I sat down across from her and reached for the cream resting next to her open laptop. “Catching up on the news?”
She flashed a slightly embarrassed grin. “Knit blogs,” she said. “I’m addicted.”
I peered over her shoulder at Crazy Aunt Purl’s latest adventures. “Brooklyn Tweed and Franklin.”
She looked up at me. “And don’t forget Wendy, Dawn, and
Knitspot. My blogroll is so long it’s embarrassing.”
I smiled and went over to the stove to check out the oatmeal. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten anything close to a real breakfast. I wondered if my stomach would rebel from the shock of nutritious food. “So how long ago did he leave?”
“Like I said, he was already gone when I woke up.”
“He’s avoiding me, isn’t he?”
“Of course not. He’s—”
“I was married to the guy. Avoiding me is what he does best.” I know this is hard to believe, but I’m really not one of those women who get off on bad-mouthing their ex to strangers, but I couldn’t stop myself. I spewed venom all over the supermodel, ugly personal details of a wrecked marriage that would send a single woman running to the nearest convent. “Cops make lousy husbands and worse fathers. You’re lucky he doesn’t want any more kids. Married or not, you’d be a single mother.”
“That’s not the Luke I know.” She closed the laptop and stood up. High patches of color flooded her cheeks. “I have to get ready. We’re doing a Magic Loop sock workshop this morning at the store. You’re welcome to join us.”
But I couldn’t let go. “Listen, there’s a reason cops have a high divorce rate. Shutting down is what they do best.”
“This isn’t Boston. We don’t have the same problems here. The job doesn’t have the same stresses.”
“But he’s the same man.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’re the one babysitting the crazy ex-wife. What does that tell you? The cop thing always comes first. You should—”
She didn’t stick around long enough for me to finish the sentence.
CHLOE
I couldn’t get away from her fast enough. If this was what it meant to be human, I was grateful for every drop of magick that separated me from their angry, warring race.
I had spent most of my life longing to be part of them, wishing I could step across the invisible divide that separated me from the rest of the world, but hearing Luke and Karen speak about each other with so much bitterness and hatred, I wondered if maybe I had been the lucky one after all.
A few hours ago I had been bent into an emotional pretzel with jealousy over Karen, but now I felt nothing but sadness.
Was this how love ended? All those hopes and dreams they’d shared, the memories they had made together, were they nothing but ashes to be swept away? Was this where Luke and I were headed? If it was, I needed to know before I lost any more of my heart to dreams that would never come true.
The last time my cottage had contained so much anger, the roof had spun up into the night sky like a giant Frisbee. A minitornado had swept my kitchen bare in its wake as Isadora vented her rage against me. Gunnar and Dane locked in combat in midair while I clung to the counter and struggled to keep from being sucked into the twister that was destroying my house.
It seemed like another lifetime. Both Gunnar and Dane were gone now. I won’t lie to you. I didn’t shed a tear for Dane, but Gunnar’s loss will be with me forever. In a better, kinder world we might have been more than friends, but the fates had other plans for both of us.
Plans that I was beginning to question.
You’re lucky he doesn’t want any more kids.
That couldn’t be true. He knew that giving birth to a daughter was the other part of my destiny. Sugar Maple’s future depended upon an unbroken chain of Hobbs women to keep the protective charm in place.
The time wasn’t right yet, but it would be soon, and I wanted Luke to be the father of my child and I had hoped—believed—he felt the same way too. Was this the cosmic pie-in-the-face I’d been waiting for since the day we met?
I thought I’d have more time before I had to start thinking about these things. I didn’t think I’d be bumping up against reality a few short months into the fantasy. I needed more time to believe that I’d be the one who broke the curse and not only kept Sugar Maple safe from harm but lived happily ever after the way they did in storybooks.
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I felt like a mountain climber desperate for oxygen. My fingertips were tingling and that wasn’t a good sign. The last time that happened, I ended up circling Sugar Maple at five thousand feet without a plane.
I locked the door to my room and willed the Book of Spells to appear. I needed proof I was on the right path. I needed to touch the source of my powers, feel the jolt of recognition I experienced every time I moved through those pages and saw my own history reflected back at me.
What if loving Luke wasn’t enough? What if I was the reason the fabric of Sugar Maple was unraveling faster than a threadbare sock heel?
What if there was nothing I could do to stop it?
“Appear!” I commanded the Book. “Appear!”
I waited but nothing happened.
“Book of Spells, appear!”
I felt myself being pulled backward through a narrow, pulsating tunnel that flattened me like toothpaste through a tube. Lights flashed all around me. Alternating blasts of fire and ice jolted me into a state of hyperawareness as I realized the Book of Spells wasn’t coming to me: I was becoming part of it.
The world I knew, the life I’d lived, the days yet to be, raced past me faster than I could register their presence.
Luke watching me that first morning in the yarn shop, laughing at the way I snored.
Walking up Osborne Street with Gunnar, talking about love and friendship, wishing it could have been different between us.
Peering through the dining room window at the Inn, wishing I could be normal for one night, just a regular girl on a date with a regular guy.
Suzanne Marsden in her glorious naked dress.
Bad dates, no dates, lonely nights spent drinking too much wine and eating too many cookies, wanting to crawl inside the television and live with one of the sitcom families.
Gunnar smiling at me . . . so happy, so alive.
My surrogate mother, Sorcha, holding my hand when I cried for my parents.
And oh my parents! Young and tall and strong and beautiful and happy . . . See? It was possible. It could happen.
But it never lasted.
Not for Aerynn or Maeve, Fiona or Sinead, Siobhan or Aisling, or Bronwyn or Guinevere or me.
And there I was again with Luke, but it was too blurry to make out exactly where we were or what we were doing.
I strained against the image, trying to bring it into focus, trying to see what the future held, but I saw nothing.
Nothing.
KAREN
She drove like an old lady. White knuckles, shoulders pulled up around her ears. I could have walked to Sticks & Strings faster.
“Do you drive often?” I asked as she shuddered to a lop-sided stop in front of her shop.
“Not if I can help it,” she said and I could see why.
Something about her was different. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what had changed, but I had the feeling my outburst was the reason.
The Luke she knew and loved might be completely different from the man I’d been married to. And even if he wasn’t, I should have kept my mouth shut. Some things a woman in love needed to learn for herself.
Besides, it wasn’t up to me to save her. Supermodel could figure out a way to save herself.
That same uneasy feeling I’d experienced when I first drove into town returned. The streets were relatively empty except for a steady stream of customers bustling in and out of a place called Fully Caffeinated. The sky was blue and cloudless. The morning sun cast a soft lemon yellow glow. But I glanced over my shoulder when she unlocked the front door just the same.
“Okay,” she said, flinging open the door. “Welcome to Sticks & Strings.”
She flicked on the lights and I saw heaven.
“Oh. My. God.”
“Yeah,” she said with a laugh. “I think so too.”
The walls were floor-to-ceiling yarn in every color of the rainbow. Pure wools, cashmere, s
ilk, cotton soft as a whisper, alpaca, hemp, the legendary quiviut.
“You must be the happiest woman on the planet,” I said as I fondled a hank of Rowan Silk Tweed in shades of morning sunrise. “I’d pay you to work here.”
Soft, squishy couches. A huge fireplace. Baskets of yarn and roving everywhere. Pottery bowls piled high with stitch markers and cable needles and row counters scattered on table-tops. Ceramic pitchers filled with straight needles, felted bowls of circulars. Ott lamps positioned exactly where they were needed most. The place was a knitter’s nirvana.
Well, except for the cat.
“Another one?” I asked as a giant black feline entwined itself around my ankles. “Do you breed them or something?”
“You’re not a cat person.”
“How can you tell?”
“That little vein pulsing in your right temple is a dead giveaway.” She bent down and scooped the mammoth cat into her arms. “This is Penny. We don’t know exactly how old she is, but if she were human, she could smoke, drink, and vote.”
I looked at Penny, then at Chloe. “She has your eyes.”
Chloe grinned. “I know. Weird, isn’t it?”
It was more than weird. To be honest, it was a little creepy.
She placed Penny on top of an overflowing basket of roving adjacent to the celery green sofa near the front window. “Feel free to fondle the merchandise. I’m going to check my messages and get things ready for the class.”
I wandered around the shop, petting skeins of cashmere and quiviut, ogling the richly saturated colors in the Noro palette, trying to picture what her life was like. I mean, she was tall and blond and gorgeous. She lived in a fairy-tale cottage in a Norman Rockwell-painting town. She spent her workday playing with sticks and string. One look at her and you knew she was one of those women whose lives were blessed from cradle to grave.
CHLOE
The good thing about being at the shop was I didn’t have to worry about random magick breaking out the way it did at the cottage. We definitely had magick at Sticks & Strings, but it was the kind of magick that turned a great yarn shop into a legendary one. The protective charm that blanketed the town not only kept us safe from discovery but also seemed to have a soft spot for knitters.
Laced with Magic Page 9
