Not that I was complaining, you understand. I was all for anything that brought in the customers.
The bad thing was I had forgotten Janice was dropping by early to help me set up for the workshop.
“Damn it, Jan!” I said as she blossomed into the storeroom in a cloud of lavender and attitude. “Just once I wish you’d use the front door.”
“What’s the problem?” she asked, tugging at the hem of her red, white, and blue hoodie. “You told me to get here before eight thirty, and I made it with two minutes to spare.”
I lowered my voice. “We’re not alone. The ex is out front petting the yarns.”
Janice brightened. “Cool. I picked up some weird vibes from her last night. I was hoping—”
“No, it isn’t cool,” I broke in. “It’s definitely uncool.” I lowered my voice even more. “She saw the blue light last night.”
Janice shrugged. “So tell her you like blue lights. That shouldn’t be hard to explain.”
“She was sitting outside in Luke’s truck while I went in to make sure everything was under control and she comes bursting into the cottage screaming, ‘Fire! Fire!’”
“All because she saw a little blue light flickering in the window?”
“You’re not listening, Jan: she shouldn’t have seen any of it. Not the blue light in the window and definitely not the blue flames she saw climbing up the front of the house.”
Comprehension dawned. “Ohmigod, she’s one of us! She didn’t look magick to me but these days you never know.”
“Luke saw it too.”
That stopped her cold. We both knew Luke didn’t have an atom of magick in his entire body. “He saw the blue light and the blue flames.” A totally inappropriate giggle broke loose. “He even saw flames shooting from Dinah’s tail.”
Janice wasn’t a giggler either but she caught the wave. “What did you say to her?”
“I told her I didn’t see anything.”
“With a straight face? I’m impressed.”
“That’s the thing, Jan: I really didn’t see anything.”
“The humans saw the blue flames and you didn’t?”
“That’s pretty much what I’m saying.”
“This isn’t good.”
“You think?”
“No, I mean this seriously isn’t good. Somebody’s screwing with the protective charm.”
“But the charm can’t be altered,” I said. “The Book of Spells states quite clearly that while it can weaken over time or disappear entirely if a Hobbs woman no longer walks the earth, the basic nature of the protective charm cannot be changed by anyone. Not even one of Aerynn’s descendants.”
“And I say that’s a load of crap.” She gave me one of those looks only a good friend can give you and not end up in intensive care. “If the powers are strong enough, anything’s possible.” We both knew she was talking about Isadora.
“Not her style,” I said. “The explosion at town hall was meant to hurt someone. This was more of a prank.”
“Flaming cat butts,” Janice said, grinning. “I see your point.”
“Oh crap,” I said, gesturing toward the front of the shop. “I left the ex out there alone with Penny.”
Which started us both giggling again like two fourth graders.
“Go out there and introduce yourself,” I said to Janice, “while I get the gift bags ready for class.”
“Can I ask her about their sex life?”
“Off-limits.”
“Can I ask her why she’s here?”
“I already know why she’s here.”
“Don’t tell me. Let me guess.” She tapped her forehead with her fingertips and grinned at me. “She’s here because Luke isn’t paying his child support and—”
“Their daughter is dead and she’s having trouble accepting the fact.” I gave her a bare-bones version of the situation. I couldn’t let her go on joking about child support. “But that’s between us, okay?”
Janice was wisecracking, flip, and generally irreverent, but she was also the mother of four children she loved dearly. “It stops here,” she said.
“He’s driving her back down to Boston as soon as he gets some paperwork straightened out. She’ll be someone else’s problem by this time tomorrow.”
“You’re that sure she’s delusional?”
I hesitated. “Luke is.”
“And how about you? What do you think?”
Suddenly the answer was clear and it scared me more than the idea of Isadora breaking through her banishment. “I’m afraid she isn’t.”
10
LUKE
I drove thirty miles to the nearest McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin fix around daybreak, then cruised back to Sugar Maple in time to meet up with the tow truck driver sent out by the rental car agency. Sometimes it felt good to be just one more warm-blooded human jump-starting his day with fat, protein, and caffeine the way God intended.
Jack was waiting for me when I reached Karen’s car.
“She did a number on it,” he said around a half-smoked cigarette. “What happened? A deer spook her?”
“Something like that,” I said. “I think it’s the axle.”
He squatted down and peered under the Nissan. “More’n likely. Can’t take the torque.” He straightened up and I could almost hear his aging joints squeak. “Got the paperwork?”
“I’ll get it.”
I walked along the shoulder to where my truck was idling. Jack stayed on my heels.
“So you’re the new chief of police,” he was saying as I retrieved the documents from the backseat. “How’s that working out for you?”
“So far, so good.”
“Think I know this car. A woman drove through last night wanting to stay at the Inn. Had to tell her they don’t rent rooms. Looked at me like I had a screw loose.”
“That’s what happens when you’re popular,” I said. “No vacancies.” I’d been around Sugar Maple long enough now to know how to burnish the image.
Jack flipped through all five pages, folded the stack, then stuffed the lot into the back pocket of his sagging jeans. “I can have a replacement brought up from Nashua by this evening.”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “She found other transportation.”
He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Hope she finds herself a square meal while she’s at it.”
He finally had my attention. “Wait a second. You met the driver?”
“Like I said, she pulled in last night for a fill-up. Wanted to know if Sugar Maple was close by.” He took another drag. “Told her she’d be better off getting a room at Motel 6, then hitting town in the morning. Guess she didn’t take my advice.”
“Guess not,” I agreed.
“Never met a woman who could let a phone ring like she did. Damn near drove me crazy.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Her cell was ringing off the hook. I told her it might be important but she wasn’t paying me any attention until the ringtone changed and you never saw such a little woman kick up such a big fuss in your life.”
“Kick up a fuss how?”
He shot me a look. “She isn’t in any trouble, is she?”
“No trouble,” I said. “I’m just filling in the blanks.”
He nodded and took a third drag on his cigarette, then tossed it to the ground. “Like I said, the ringtone changed and next thing you know she’s digging in her bag like she’s going to China and saying things like, ‘Don’t hang up, Stevie! Don’t hang up!’”
“Steffie.”
“Steffie! Yep, that’s it.” He looked at me. “Lucky guess?”
“Yeah,” I said as I climbed behind the wheel of my truck. “Lucky guess.”
CHLOE
The morning’s class, Magic Loop Socks, consisted mainly of a dozen night-shift nurses from the big medical center three towns over, and a handful of townie regulars. Given the bad blood between the Weavers and me, I was surprised that Renat
e’s harpist daughter, Bettina, still kept coming to my classes, but I was happy to see her. It gave me hope that we’d find a way to work things out. Lilith had gone off to a librarians’ breakfast in Burlington but Janice and Lynette picked up the slack with lots of knitting chatter and jokes.
Usually I was pretty good with the patter, but today I had trouble telling knit from purl. Every time I heard a car, I leaped up to look out the window, hoping to see Luke’s truck slide into the spot behind mine. How long did it take to hand over some papers to a tow truck driver anyway?
I wasn’t going to breathe deeply until Karen was on the highway headed home.
“Somebody stop this woman!” Sue, one of the older nurses, cried out. “Jilly’s planning to give those socks to her boyfriend.”
“What’s wrong with my socks?” Jilly asked, looking up from her knitting. “I know guys hate color and all that so I picked a really nice blend of black and charcoal gray.”
Sue shook her headful of brassy blond curls. “Repeat after me, ladies: knit socks for a boyfriend, then watch him walk away from you.”
“That’s a first for me,” I said, looking up from my Japanese short row heel.
“Uh-oh,” Lynette said with a laugh. “How many pair have you made for Luke anyway?”
“Six,” I said. “What’s your point?”
At least they could laugh. At the moment I wasn’t finding it funny at all.
“Knit a strand of your hair into the sock,” Janice said. “That will bind him to you forever.”
“A strand of hair? Oh great.” Jilly rolled her big blue eyes. “That means Pete’s going to run off with my cat.”
“No knots,” Karen said, needles flying. “Knots bring the recipient bad luck.” She looked up at us and grinned. “Not to mention it’s lousy knitting.”
The conversation leaped from knitterly superstitions to pet peeves and it was punctuated with lots of laughter. To my surprise, the ex was a very capable teacher with a great deal of patience and a dry sense of humor that everyone seemed to appreciate.
Including me.
“I just love Karen,” one of the nurses gushed as she served herself more coffee in the storeroom. “You should hire her full-time. I’d take a lace class from her in a heartbeat.”
It wasn’t that the ex went out of her way to ingratiate herself with the clientele; it was simply that her talent for knitting combined with the magical aspects of my shop were creating a “perfect storm” scenario that was definitely building up my bottom line. I’d never had so many workshop requests in my life, not to mention the totally obscene amount of both sock and lace-weight yarn I’d sold since we opened.
“Now that’s scary,” I said to Janice as she dashed past me on her way to the loo. “Bettina and Karen are acting like BFFs.”
“Don’t laugh,” Janice said, “but I’m ready to dump you for the ex. That woman knows her way around a pair of triple zeroes.”
I sighed. “She does, doesn’t she?” I liked to think she was getting a helpful boost from our store’s great knitting juju, but I had the feeling she was a natural.
“Too bad she’s human. I kind of like her,” Janice said.
“And you don’t like anyone.”
“Tell me about it but I like her.”
“So do I,” I admitted. “How weird is that.” Okay, so maybe I didn’t like her when she was trash-talking the man I loved, but the rest of the time she was pretty good company.
“Not that it’s any of my business, but I’m not getting any crazy vibes from her. Lots of sadness but nothing crazy.” She paused for a second. “Except when it comes to Luke. She’s not too crazy about him.”
“I know. She told me.”
“At least you don’t have to worry about them running away together.”
“There’s that.”
I went back up front and dived into the fray. Turning a heel was my favorite part of sock knitting. You didn’t need magickal powers to feel like a wizard when a piece of flat, one-dimensional knitted fabric suddenly turned 3-D with nothing more than a few artfully placed increases and decreases. And when you managed it all on one crazily twisted circular needle and a skein of yarn, it was worth applause.
Not that anyone ever actually applauded when I showed them how to turn a heel or pick up the gusset stitches, but I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if one day they did. Sock knitting is that great.
The nurses were enthusiastic students. A few of them were already Magic Loop fans, and the others took to the technique easily. Bettina was struggling painfully with the concept, and I suggested she go back to her familiar double points and not look back. Karen offered to demonstrate the two-circ method (why didn’t I think of that?), and suddenly Renate’s daughter was zipping right along like a pro.
Score another one for the ex.
Not that I minded. (Well, not much anyway.) If we were going to be trapped together in the shop waiting for Luke to show up, at least we were having a good time.
Until we weren’t.
It happened so quickly I didn’t have a chance to deflect the question away from Karen. One second we were chatting away about stretchy cast-offs and the next we were talking about kids.
“How about you?” one of the nurses asked Karen. “How many do you have?”
People say “I feel your pain” all the time, but mostly it’s a self-serving, meaningless statement meant to convey compassion you really don’t feel. But when that question landed in Karen’s lap, I swear to you I really did feel waves of pain radiating outward from her. The kind of pain I hope I never feel firsthand.
Her cheeks flushed but her expression didn’t waver. “A daughter,” she said, then reached into her tote bag and pulled out her wallet. “I only have one photo with me.” She sounded sad and apologetic and so achingly vulnerable I wanted to somehow shield her from whatever might be coming her way.
The nurses pulled out photos of their kids, which was all the encouragement Lynette needed. She whipped out her digital album, an action that sent Janice digging in the depths of her knitting bag for her youngest’s latest school photo.
“What about you?” the youngest of the knitting nurses asked. “Any kids?”
“None for Chloe yet,” Lynette piped up, “but we’re all hoping it won’t be long now.”
“We’re thinking it might be anytime,” Bettina said, continuing Lynette’s train of thought. “Now that she’s found Luke and all.” An awkward silence ensued, followed by Bettina’s muttered, “Oh crap. I’m sorry.”
“About what?” I asked lightly. Good shopkeepers kept a bright face no matter what idiotic thing their customers just said. “No problem here.”
“Chloe’s dating my ex-husband,” Karen said in a cheerful tone of voice. “I told her he’s not exactly a family man, but she’ll find that out for herself soon enough.”
How does an awkward silence to the tenth power sound?
We all threw ourselves into admiring the photos being passed around and pretending Karen had been speaking in a language we didn’t understand. I made the requisite oohs and aaahs over kids I’d never seen before and would probably never see again, nodded approvingly at Lynette’s brood and Janice’s, admired Bettina’s tribe, then felt the world slip out from under me when I saw Luke’s daughter for the first time.
I would have known her in a crowd. The big dark green eyes. The tumble of copper penny hair. The silly gap-toothed grin. She was everything you would want in a little girl: bright and funny and so full of life it spilled from the photograph and through my fingers.
My eyes burned with tears. I wanted to lower my head and cry until I couldn’t cry anymore. I wanted to cry for Luke and Karen, for Steffie, for the little girl of my own that I might never have.
I met Karen’s eyes across the table. What was there to say? Not even magick could make this right.
11
LUKE
Five minutes with a tow truck driver named Joe and everything had changed.
There was still a strong probability that Karen had some kind of mental health problem, but for the first time, doubt entered the picture. What if Karen was telling the literal truth and not just the truth as she believed it? The idea scared the shit out of me. I didn’t want to think of my baby girl out there in some other dimension, alone and reaching out for us.
Karen and I had been together when Steffie died. Not happy. Not one of those couples you wish you could be. But the three of us were a family, and right or wrong, we probably would have stuck it out together if Steffie hadn’t—
No point going there. Steffie was dead and we were still trying to pick up the pieces of our lives in whatever way we could.
I couldn’t go back to town. Not yet. Chloe expected me to drive Karen back down to Boston this morning. Karen expected me to sit down and talk. The truth? All I wanted to do was get as far from Sugar Maple as possible.
How could I make a rational argument against communication with the dead when I lived in a town that was the number one overnight resting spot on the Spirit Trail? There was a reason why the Sugar Maple Inn never had any vacancies. They really were booked up every night, every week, every month, year round, but not with happy Homo sapiens toting Amex cards and Canon PowerShots. The rooms at the Sugar Maple Inn were occupied by World War II flyboys who died over the English Channel, by Samurai swordsmen and French seamstresses from the time of Louis XIV and Egyptian scribes and Colonial farmers from Brain-tree and any other soul who needed a place to rest during his travels.
I interacted with ghosts every day in Sugar Maple. A werewolf was one of my closest friends. I shot hoops with his kids. Vampires, shapeshifters, and trolls walked through my office on a daily basis. The woman I loved was half sorceress.
Hell, I didn’t even blink anymore when I found Fae babies asleep inside my glove box.
What I’m saying is that I knew better than most humans ever could that the world was bigger and richer and more varied than any of us living in our familiar dimension could ever imagine.
Laced with Magic Page 10
