He broke into a tired grin. “And you thought my mother was going to be the problem.”
“Give her time,” I said with a well-timed eye roll. “I have total faith in Bunny.”
“I wish I could say the same thing about Renate and the staff of the Inn.”
My stomach clenched. “Why? Have you heard something? Renate has been very accommodating so far.” Not only was she opening the doors of the Inn to a flurry of human MacKenzies, she had issued a universal blueflame order to suspend all magick until after the wedding.
“Yeah, she’s been pretty decent, but that doesn’t change the fact that eight months ago, she was ready to throw you under the bus. I don’t like having her in close contact with my family.”
There was nothing I could say about that. Suspicion was part of being a cop. It never quite went away.
“Forbes’s mini earthquake produced a few other surprises.” I told him about the shoebox containing Oscar and the mementoes from my short time with my parents.
He pulled me toward him for one of those big, warm, very human hugs that I craved more than oxygen.
“This was in the shoebox too.” I held up my right hand and pointed toward the enormous that swallowed up my index finger. “I can’t seem to get it off.”
“Cold water?”
I shook my head.
“Butter?”
“Gross, and also ineffective.”
“Magick?”
“It wouldn’t budge.”
“And you don’t know where it came from?”
“That’s right, officer. It was in the shoebox with the other stuff.”
He gave me the patented dead-eyed cop look and went on. “Tell me exactly what happened, step by step.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m pretty sure it’s not an ordinary ring.”
“This is Sugar Maple,” he muttered. “Why should anything be ordinary?”
I told him about Laria’s fascination with the ring. “It was huge, way too big for me, but I finally slipped it onto my index finger to get it away from her. I was wondering how I would keep it from falling off when it started to blink, then began to shrink around my finger.”
“Melted?”
“Sort of. It was warm, but not hot. It all happened so quickly…”
“And now it won’t come off.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know how these things work,” he said, still in cop mode. “Is the ring magickal or did someone or something else make it happen?”
“You’re the detective.”
“You’re the sorceress.” A quick smile broke through, “Let me take a closer look.”
I scooted closer on the couch and held out my hand. He leaned forward, took my hand, then tried to spin the ring around so he could see the underside.
“Hey, Sherlock! That finger is attached to someone you love.”
Cop mode had been replaced by its scary brother, Super Cop Mode.
“Sorry,” he said. “I can see striations in the gold. I think they go all the way around but I need to take a closer look.” He glanced around the room. “Do we have any lighted magnification I could use?”
“Please,” I said with an attempted eye roll. “I’m a knitter.”
I don’t know about other knitters, but I scatter notions the way Gretel scattered breadcrumbs. You never know when you might need a needlesizer or a gauge ruler or, in this case, a handy-dandy lighted magnifying bar.
“Great,” he said, taking a look at it. “What do you use this for?”
“Following rows on a chart,” I said. “But it multitasks well with others.”
I’m not sure he heard me. He was painstakingly examining every millimeter of accessible ring.
“These aren’t scratches,” he said, looking up for a moment. “They’re designs etched into the --” He stopped, his eye apparently caught by something new. “I changed the angle of the light and now I see another image.”
The man was meticulous in his inspection. I had seen that same attention to detail at work when he first arrived in Sugar Maple to investigate the death of Suzanne Marsden.
“You say this ring was much bigger originally?”
I nodded. “Ginormous.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Somehow the picture etched on the surface retained its proportions when it shrank to fit your finger.”
“This is Sugar Maple,” I reminded him. “Anything’s possible.”
He did one more full inspection, and then leaned back against the sofa. “I see a group of curved lines, stair-stepped in a semi-circle. A cloud surrounds a figure floating in air, flanked by two other figures that seem to be facing outward.”
“All of that in such a tiny area?”
He nodded. “And there was probably more detail that was lost to time.”
“Like scrimshaw.”
“Same idea, different canvas.” He met my eyes. “Does any of this mean anything to you?”
“I wish it did.”
“Your ancestors were big on symbols. The clouds, the stair steps--none of this rings any bells?”
“Are you sure about the images?” I asked. “I didn’t see anything when I looked.”
“Neither did I at first. The magnifying light helped but I think there’s more at work than that.”
“Magick?” I asked.
“Could be.”
“How old do you think it is?”
“With gold it’s hard to tell. We would need an expert to pinpoint it exactly. This could be part of local history or a message from a UFO. Who knows?”
“You’re a lot of help,” I said with a shaky smile. “Good thing you’re a cop and not an historian.”
“Speaking of historians, Lilith might be able to help us,” he said. “Nobody knows more about Sugar Maple’s past than she does. Maybe she can decipher the images on the ring.”
I nodded. I would be there tomorrow when the library opened.
Out of nowhere, my eyes filled with tears. “I’m scared, Luke.”
“You?” He looked genuinely surprised. “I’ve seen you battle demons.”
“This is different.” I took another deep breath and centered myself. “Demons I can handle. This—“ I paused, then tried again. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we really should elope.” Get far away from Sugar Maple until we were safely married.
“What changed between yesterday and today?”
“Finding that shoebox...this ring.” The feeling that something was lurking in the shadows, ready to destroy our happiness. I was committed to Luke in every way possible, in this world and any other we might encounter. For me, this was forever. Obtaining a license and repeating some words in front of friends and relatives wouldn’t change anything. The wedding ceremony was for him and for the MacKenzies and clearly it had struck a nerve somewhere in Sugar Maple and that worried me.
Something flickered behind Luke’s eyes but was gone before I could process it.
“Do you want to call off the wedding? Is that what this is really about?” he asked.
“What?”
“I’m asking a question.” His tone gave away nothing. “Lately I’ve had the feeling you’re slipping away from me.”
This time I couldn’t control the tears. They spilled over and ran freely down my cheeks. “That will never happen. I’m yours and I’ll always be yours. Nothing can change that.”
“So you want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“I know what it’s like to grow up without parents,” I said, wiping away my tears with the back of my hands. “I don’t want that to happen to Laria.”
“It won’t,” he said, holding me tight. “I promise.”
“You can’t know that.”
“We’re going to get married and grow old together,” he said. “We’re going to be around to watch Laria take her rightful place here in Sugar Maple.”
“Things happen,” I said. “People change.”
“Not us.”
“You migh
t get tired of Sugar Maple. There’s a whole world out there waiting for you.”
“I don’t give a damn about the world,” he said, pulling me into his arms. “This is my home now and it always will be.”
I let myself melt into his warmth, his strength, his love. For me, that was the only magick that mattered. “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”
“I am,” he said.
If only I believed it too.
I waited until Luke fell into a deep sleep then I slipped out of bed and moved quietly toward the front room of the cottage. It was a moonless night and the rooms were dark but that didn’t matter. I had spent most of my life in this place and I knew the location of every squeaky floorboard. I peeked in on Laria and the sight of her hovering an inch above her mattress with her adorable baby bum sticking up made my heart burst with love. Although I couldn’t see her, the unmistakable smell of waffles told me her guardian Elspeth was nearby.
If only there were some way to freeze these perfect moments, when everyone you loved was happy and safe, no more than a heartbeat away.
But there wasn’t and that was why I needed help from the Book of Spells. I wanted to know more about the ring that had my finger in a death grip.
Legend had it that the Book was instantly accessible at any time for an ancestor of Aerynn, but I hadn’t found that to be the case. With me the Book was mercurial, just as likely to ignore my pleas for help as to grant them. Janice said it was some sort of test, a way to ensure that my magick side was finally achieving dominance over my human side, and I guess that was as good an explanation as any. From the moment my magick began to appear, I’d felt like I was being tested every second of every day.
I settled myself in the chair near my favorite spinning wheel and cleared my mind of everything but the Book of Spells. In the arcane language that was so much a part of the magicks, I called upon it to manifest in that humble room.
And then I waited. I could have knitted ten rows of the most intricate Alice Starmore pattern in the time it took to get a response.
The air shimmered. Somewhere in the distance I heard a bell ring three times then grow silent.
“We all know you’re the boss,” I said, starting to grow annoyed. “Why don’t you give me a break and manifest?”
I needed more practice in arcane begging.
“Please share your wisdom with this student of the Arts and shine the light of knowledge upon this golden ring.”
I could almost hear the Book laugh.
“Help me,” I said as simply as I could. “Show me what I need to know.”
I thought of the Book as a bitchy best friend who responded well to shameless flattery and occasional groveling.
Finally I felt a buzz working its way along my nerve endings and I took a deep breath. The Book had a mind of its own, a magickal multi-media experience that sometimes delivered more than you bargained on.
Or less.
Like I said, it wasn’t above being passive-aggressive.
The buzz turned into a syrupy feeling of warmth that made my limbs loose and lazy. I leaned back in the chair, willing to let the Book take me wherever it wanted me to go.
The chair rocked gently back and forth and then, as I was about to doze off, the roof parted to expose the starry sky. The chair rose and before I could comprehend what was happening, we soared into the summer night.
Summer turned to fall as I sailed above the grove of maples near Snow Lake.
Fall turned to winter.
A steady snow enveloped me in a curtain of white.
I saw nothing but snow.
I heard nothing but wind.
I waited for the Book to bring everything into focus but it didn’t happen.
The snow stopped.
Winter turned back into fall.
Fall retreated into summer.
I blinked and I was back in my cottage, more confused than ever.
Chapter 6
CHLOE
* * *
As promised, I was waiting at the library door the next morning when Lilith arrived.
“I need you to take a look at the ring,” I said, as I followed her inside. “We found an etching or an inscription or something and Luke thought you might be able to decipher it for us.”
“I can try,” she said. “No guarantees.”
I helped her open up, switching on lights, opening windows, boiling water for tea.
Finally we settled down in the map room where the lighting and magnification options were many and extraordinary.
“You still can’t take it off?” Lilith asked as she switched on a pair of Ott Lites and aimed the beams on my hand.
“It won’t budge,” I said. “And it won’t stop glowing. I can see it despite the spells we cast.”
“I’d love to get a look inside and see if there’s an inscription of any kind.”
“Me, too,” I said. “But I’ll settle for whatever I can get.”
Lilith slipped on a pair of serious-looking glasses, leaned forward, then got to work.
“Do you see anything?” I asked.
“Honey, I’ve barely had time to focus.”
“Sorry.”
A few more decades passed.
“Stop fidgeting, Chloe, please!”
I tried. I really did. But I was desperate for answers.
Finally Lilith pulled off her glasses and switched off the lights.
I knew before she said a word.
“Nothing,” I said. “Right?”
“I’m afraid not.”
She had seen the same symbols Luke had. “The symbols don’t match up with anything I’ve seen associated with Sugar Maple’s history.”
“No connection to the talisman?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Can you place an age on the ring?”
“Old,” she said with a rueful laugh. “Really, really old.”
“Multi-millennia old?”
“I’m not sure. Definitely multi-century.” She was quiet for a long moment. “This is just a guess, but I don’t think the figures are random and I don’t think they’re decorative. I think it’s a form of story-telling.”
“Like the cave walls in France?”
“Exactly. This is part of a story someone wanted to pass along.”
But what the story was remained a mystery.
It was still early and I was reluctant to give up so easily. Lilith had to get to work but she said I could continue going through the archive of accumulated symbols and images associated with Sugar Maple.
I had an hour until Sticks & Strings opened. Maybe luck would be on my side and point me in the right direction.
I was sick of the stupid ring. I was tired of thinking about mini-earthquakes and nosy relatives. I was done with talking about wedding dresses, wedding cakes, wedding guests. I couldn’t wait for it all to be over so Luke and Laria and I could just go back to being a family.
“I’m done,” I said to the empty room. The ring was going to stay where it was until after the wedding, even if I had to cover it with duct tape and a pair of garden gloves.
I put the files back in the cabinet, turned off the slide projector, and was about to hunt down Lilith to say thanks and see you later, when a bolt of lightning shot down from the right-hand corner of the ceiling and bounced off the mystery ring. A cloud of carnelian-red mist rose up from the ring, filling the room with a vaguely floral scent I couldn’t identify and wasn’t sure I liked.
The silence was profound yet it throbbed with energy.
The room around me no longer existed. At least not in its earthbound form. Walls disappeared. The ceiling drifted away. The floor melted at my feet. Orientation didn’t matter. There was no up, no down, no compass to guide me.
There was no choice. I inhaled deeply and gave myself over to whatever was coming my way and in that instant of surrender, the Book revealed itself.
Now we were getting somewhere.
In the far distance, thro
ugh a cloud of now icy-grey mist, a figure beckoned. A shape, really, tall and slender, wearing the unmistakable jeweled robes of a leader. Somehow I knew it was the legendary Rohesia. Her pull was magnetic. It drew me toward her, faster and faster through swirling red and orange mists and random bolts of lightning. But no matter how quickly I moved or how far I traveled, I couldn’t bridge the gap between us.
She had the answer I was seeking. I knew it in the center of my being. If I could only manage to reach her, I would understand what was happening and be able to bend circumstances to my advantage.
I was feeling hopeful that the Book of Spells was about to open its pages wide when the mist surrounding me went from icy-grey to blood red and the deep silence was pierced by screams that seemed to come from the limits of human endurance.
The mist vanished and the horrific scene before me was illuminated with brutal clarity. This was the human realm. I registered that in my own very human nerve endings. Not the era I knew. Men garbed in tunics pulled women and children screaming from huts with thatched roofs on fire from flaming torches thrown crazily into the crowd. I didn’t want to believe those ugly faces contorted with rage came from the same species of creature as half of me did, but I knew it was true.
I closed my eyes against the sight but words formed themselves deep within and forced me to bear witness.
Look, Chloe . . . look and remember!
I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to remember. I knew the stories of the atrocities humans had visited on the magicks. I didn’t need a reminder. I wanted to believe times had changed, that the world was a better, more inclusive place. The world wasn’t quite ready to embrace the Other, but we were making progress. Maybe one day a sanctuary like Sugar Maple wouldn’t be necessary.
See what is real . . . not what you wish to be real.
Evil lived. It was all around me, smothering me with the stink of flame and flesh. Soldiers dragged the terrified women and children to the center of the small town where men, chained to towering pyres of flame, were being burned alive. Swords slashed through the living, severing arms and legs, while terrified horses whinnied and dragged wagons over innocents as they tried to flee the fiery carnage.
Enchanted Page 4
