Luke turned and looked at me. I felt the heat rise to my cheeks as his expression shifted from relief to downright wonder.
“You did it,” he said and I nodded.
I did it.
Nobody had ever looked at me like that. I felt embarrassed and proud and totally disconnected from what was passing for reality today.
“You did it,” he said again, a crazy smile breaking across his face. “We didn’t have a chance in hell but you made it happen!”
“I did,” I said with a crazy smile of my own. “My mind was blank, then all of a sudden the words popped out.”
The beautiful flowery language of magick. I’d never let anyone poke fun at it again.
Something happened to you when you cheated death. Maybe it was all that adrenaline still racing around with nothing to do once the danger was over, but my senses were on high alert and, judging from the look in his eyes, so were Luke’s .
He leaned my way.
I leaned his.
An explosion of white and silver sparks filled the space between us like our own private Fourth of July celebration.
Our lips touched. Our breaths mingled. Tears of relief and joy ran down my cheeks and he brushed them away with his fingertips. We had come so close to losing it all that I wanted to hold on to him and never let go.
“Oh, come on!” Janice settled back into her seat and closed the car door behind her. “I feel like I’m in high school again.”
We kissed once more just because we could. I could look at his face forever and—
“Your bruises are gone,” I exclaimed. “The cuts are healed! You’d never know you’d been in a fight.”
He shifted position a few times. “The ribs don’t hurt anymore.”
We both turned toward Janice. “Hold the applause,” she said with a smug but happy smile. “You can thank me when this is all over.”
“We’ll have dinner at the inn,” I said, feeling wildly optimistic. The Sugar Maple Inn was owned by Renate and Colm Weaver, Fae friends who had become enemies thanks to Isadora’s influence.
I missed my old friends. I wanted to go back to the way things used to be.
Of course, in order for any of that to happen we had to find the town first.
We sat for a little while in comfortable silence while our pulse rates returned to normal. I guessed that we had finally outrun the storm because the blizzard was no longer a blizzard but an accumulation of semiserious flurries. The county snowplows were probably out in force clearing the highways but it would be awhile before they reached small feeder roads like the one we were on.
The storm might have stopped but the road ahead was still a snowy, icy accident waiting to happen.
Janice and I were in favor of sitting tight until the road was at least salted but Luke disagreed strongly.
“The clock’s ticking,” Luke said. “We only have a few miles to go until we hit the highway. If we can push through this, the worst will be over.”
He readjusted his mirrors. I don’t know about Janice but for a second there I considered making a break for it. I caught her eye. She shrugged and picked up her knitting. Good choice. It was either that or a tranquilizer dart. The soft yarn, the bright colors, the slippery slickness of my beloved Addis brought me immediately back to center.
“You really need to rethink the whole toe-up issue,” Janice said. “Not only is this way more intuitive, you never have to worry about not having enough yarn to finish the pair.”
“I’ve heard the arguments,” I said as I whipped along, “and I agree they make sense but when it comes to everyday socks, I’m cuff-down, heel flap, and gusset all the way.”
“I do a gusset with my toe-ups.”
“I don’t think they look as elegant.”
Janice slipped off her shoe and rested her right foot on the console. “Tell me that’s not a gorgeous sock.”
“Of course it’s a gorgeous sock,” I said. “You’re a fabulous knitter. I just like cuff-down better.”
Penny the cat, who had been tracking the conversation from a spot by my feet, apparently reached her limit on knitting conversation and emitted an unearthly yowl.
“Thanks, Pen,” Luke said. “I couldn’t have said it better.”
I ignored him but I couldn’t ignore the cat’s obvious discomfort.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “I think she needs the litter box.”
Which, all things considered, was probably not something anyone in the car wanted to hear.
“Why don’t you set it up in the backseat?” Luke suggested.
“I don’t think so.” Janice sounded highly put out and who could blame her.
“I hate to say it, Luke, but we need to pull over again.”
There was a scenic overlook a half mile ahead and Luke pulled into the tiny rest stop adjacent to it so Penny could take care of her needs.
Janice and I exchanged looks after I set the improvised litter box down behind the car.
“It’s probably gross in there,” I said, gesturing toward the shack that called itself a “Unisex Restroom.”
“Most likely.”
“Still, it’s probably not a bad idea.”
Janice nodded. “You never know when opportunity is going to strike again.”
I reminded Luke to make sure he put Penny back in the car the second she was finished and said we’d be right back.
“Just hurry up in there. It’s coming up on eleven and we’re not even at the halfway mark yet.”
The inside of the bathroom shack was worse than the outside. I found myself wishing I’d worn a hazmat suit.
“Good thing you’re a healer,” I said as I washed my hands in a sad little trickle of icy cold water. “This place is a bacteria incubator.”
Janice was staring at her reflection in the dingy mirror. “Why didn’t you tell me about my hair?” she muttered then set to work.
“Can’t you do that in the car?” I asked as she ran her fingers through her long wavy hair. “Luke’s waiting.”
“Be right there,” she said, but I knew her idea of being right there was very different from mine.
I rearranged my ponytail and wished once again that I had been born with curly auburn hair instead of stick-straight blond, then hurried back out to Luke.
Who, as it turned out, was up a tree.
9
LUKE
I’m a dog guy. I grew up with dogs. I get dogs. I know what it means when a dog wags his tail or when the ridge of fur at the top of his spine lifts like a line of porcupine quills.
Dogs are simple and direct. Dogs don’t mess with your head.
Cats are a mystery to me. Cat signals are like animal cave drawings better left to a student of the species.
You would think the fact that the woman I loved was a sorceress-in-training would be enough to deal with, but fate wasn’t through with me yet. She had cats. Lots of cats.
And one of them talked.
Yeah, it freaked me out, too. There really was no way to adjust to a cat that could explain quantum physics to you or turn you into a catnip mouse if the spirit moved her.
The truth is, except for the talking and the magick and the litter box thing, I liked Penelope. She was a mellow cat. No diva hissing or scratching. No pouncing or swinging from the curtains. She slept, she ate, she slept some more. She was a house cat who’d been a house cat since before we were a loose collection of colonies with an English accent.
In other words Penny the cat wouldn’t know the great outdoors if it bit her in her hairy butt.
So what the hell was she doing up a tree?
And the bigger question was, what the hell was I doing up the same tree trying to lure her down with an Egg McMuffin?
“Okay,” I said, scrabbling for a foothold on the snow-covered branch, “so I dropped the ball. I shouldn’t have turned my back on you.”
Penny the cat stared back at me with those unnerving golden eyes.
“C’mon,” I said, extending the
morsel toward her. “You know you want it.”
She didn’t say screw you out loud but she might as well have. Clearly the cat expected better than fast food.
“Now I remember why I didn’t become a firefighter,” I mumbled as she inched farther up the tree. Cops didn’t do this crap.
For that matter neither did dogs. You wouldn’t find a poodle up a tree or a rottweiler. Ground level was good enough for a dog.
“Luke!”
I looked down and saw Chloe looking back up at me. “Your cat’s up the tree.”
“Impossible! Penny doesn’t do trees.”
On cue Penny the cat gave another of those yowls she’d been unleashing all morning.
“Damn, I wish she’d stop that.”
“Penelope,” she said, “come down here.”
I swear I didn’t see the cat move. One second she was looking down at me from the uppermost branch. The next she was wrapped around Chloe’s neck like a boa.
And I was still up a tree.
“Are you coming down on your own,” Chloe asked, “or do you want me to magick you down?”
I did my best lumberjack impression and landed on my feet next to her.
You wouldn’t think a cat could look disdainful but Penelope managed it.
“The cat hates me,” I said as we trudged back to the car through the snow. “When was the last time she climbed a tree, sometime around 1712?”
“It’s not you,” Chloe said. “It’s the Sugar Maple thing. She’s homesick.”
“The cat told you that?”
“The cat will tell you a few things if you don’t stop.”
Which would have been funny in my old life but in my new life it wasn’t funny: it was true.
CHLOE
I settled Penny on the floor near my feet. Luke turned on the heater and she was asleep by the time we exited the parking lot.
“You should’ve bought one of those cat carriers at Walmart,” Janice said as she worked on her sock in the backseat. “Or a leash.”
“I’ll definitely buy one when we get to Salem.”
Until then Penny was staying in the car.
I had trusted that Penny’s unusual history made her immune to crazy cat behavior but I hadn’t factored in the effect a change of landscape might have on her. Different sounds, different sights, different smells. She was probably as lost without Sugar Maple as I was.
I was halfway down the leg of my sock when we finally reached the entrance to the highway. The sun was shining. The road ahead was clear and dry.
“How long until we reach Salem?” I asked Luke as he merged with traffic.
“Another two and a half hours, give or take a blizzard or runaway cat.”
I’d be able to finish the first sock and take a big bite out of the second. With a little luck I’d fall into the knitting zone where there was nothing but color and texture and the gentle rhythmic click of my needles as they formed stitch after stitch. I definitely didn’t want to think about what lay ahead. I’d rather think about the way turquoise bumps up against royal purple.
Luke finally managed to tune into a sports talk station and I tuned out the chatter. In the backseat Janice was already in the zone and was casting on for her second sock.
“Are you knitting for Munchkins?” I asked over my shoulder. “You can’t possibly be knitting for adult feet. I still haven’t turned the heel on my first.”
“Toe-up, baby,” she said with a wink. “I told you it rocks.”
We chatted back and forth about elastic cast-offs for a while then fell into companionable silence. A radio caller was going on about Opening Day. Luke seemed riveted.
Go figure.
I knitted along in silence for a while. Behind me Janice dropped off into a nap, her head cushioned by a mountain of Manos and Araucania. The heater proved too much for Penny and she arranged herself on the console between Luke and me. She didn’t seem any worse for the wear after her adventure in the great outdoors. She did, however, seem unusually fixated on Luke.
“What’s up with the staring?” he asked as a big brown UPS truck passed us on the left. “She hasn’t taken her eyes off me.”
“I guess you two bonded when you were up that tree.”
“She made a horse’s ass of me up that tree. If you hadn’t come along, I’d still be up there waving that stupid Egg McMuffin at her.”
Penny stretched out her front paws and inched closer to Luke. She rested her chin on his thigh.
“Too late, cat,” he said. “I ate it.”
She stretched again then eased her upper body into his lap.
“This isn’t going to work,” he said. “Not that I don’t trust her or anything.”
I reached over to pluck Penny from his lap but she was too fast for me. Hard to believe an aged, sedentary cat could move that fast in such a confined space but she went from his lap to his shoulder in an eyeblink.
A cat person wouldn’t flinch. A driving non-cat-person definitely would.
“What’s going on?” I said as I unbuckled my seat belt; I leaned over to extricate Penny from her new perch but she pressed her face against his neck. “It’s like you used a catnip aftershave or something.”
“You want to get her off me?” He sounded a little tense. “The cat breath is getting to me.”
Funny how I’d never had to use magick with Penny until I had magick myself. She seemed to up the ante with every new skill I acquired. I cast the same spell I’d cast beneath the tree but this time to no effect.
“No joke,” Luke said. “My eyes are getting scratchy and I think I’m going to sneeze.”
“From cat breath?” I didn’t mean to sound so skeptical.
“Just get her off me, okay?”
“Since when are you allergic to cats?”
“Chloe, come on. Help me out. Use a little of that magick of yours. I feel like someone’s pouring salt in my eyes.”
“I’m trying,” I said, “but the spell is bouncing right off her.”
“She’s licking my face, damn it. My skin’s on fire. Just pull her off me.”
I made another effort at prying her from his shoulder but she was stuck like Velcro.
He yelped. “Those claws are sharp.”
This was no time to be a wiseass. I bit back my comment and concentrated on how best to reason with a stubborn cat and a ticked-off human.
“Janice bought some Cheese Nips,” I said with as much optimism as I could muster. “That might do it.”
I knelt on the console and reached into the backseat to rummage through the bags at my sleeping friend’s feet for the salty snack.
“I know she bought them,” I said, muttering to myself. “Must be in the other bag.”
I heard a scuffling sound, a sharp intake of breath, then Luke’s voice saying, “Take the wheel.”
I scrambled back to my seat. “What?”
“Take the wheel!”
“I don’t—”
“Now!”
I grabbed the wheel and held it steady. “What’s wrong? What happened? A second ago—”
“I can’t see.”
I heard the words but my brain couldn’t process them through the screaming inside my head. “Start slowing down. I’m going to guide us onto the shoulder. I’ll tell you when to stop.” We were already in the right-hand lane, which helped our odds.
“What’s going on?” Janice poked her head between our seats. “Is something wrong?”
“Luke’s eyes,” I said, keeping my own eyes riveted to the road ahead of me. “I think he’s having an allergic reaction of some kind.”
Janice said something unprintable.
“Take Penny,” I said. “Keep her away from Luke.”
Damn her hide. The cat leaped gracefully onto the swell of yarn next to Janice and settled herself down.
His arms were rigid at his sides. Beads of sweat poured down his face.
“Slow down some more,” I said. “No, not the gas pedal! The brake! The
brake!”
I wouldn’t say my life flashed before my eyes but a few key scenes definitely made an appearance.
The shoulder was wide and clear. I eased the Buick over. Now all we had to do was stop before we hit the thick row of pine trees that marked the point where the shoulder ended and the woods began.
Luke’s breathing was raspy, labored. I had the feeling he was on autopilot, relying on muscle memory rather than conscious thought.
“Okay, now more brake,” I said. “Easy . . . full stop . . . that’s it. We did it. Great!”
We were safe. I turned my full attention to Luke and a chill iced its way up my spine. His face was red and mottled. His eyes were swollen shut. His breathing sounded raspier and more labored than before.
He was in trouble and my magick was utterly useless against whatever was doing this to him.
10
CHLOE
“He’s not breathing right,” I said to Janice as I struggled to push down my growing panic. “I think he’s in real trouble.”
“Don’t worry.” Janice was an oasis of calm. “I’m here. Let’s get him out of the car so I can work.”
Penny ignored us while we struggled to pull Luke from the car then stretch him out on the grass adjacent to the shoulder. It was like moving one hundred eighty pounds of deadweight.
He was slipping away from us. I felt it in every cell of my body. I wished with all my heart Suzanne Marsden had never shown up in Sugar Maple. If she hadn’t drowned, Luke wouldn’t have been given the job as chief of police and we wouldn’t have met and fallen in love. And if none of that had happened, he wouldn’t be balanced on the knife’s edge between worlds right now.
Janice knelt down next to Luke and moved her hands over his chest and along his neck. She splayed her fingers over his face, speaking softly in a language I would never know. Luke lay there motionless. His face was no longer red and mottled; the ghastly pallor of human death was washing the redness away.
I held his hand in mine, grateful for the warmth. His pulse was weak but it was still there.
I had seen Janice work miracles. Her healing powers were strong. If anyone could turn this around, she could. But I was still terrified.
Spun by Sorcery Page 6
