Spun by Sorcery

by Barbara Bretton

  “I grew up here, remember?”

  “I totally forgot,” she said. “How close are we to your old hometown?”

  “Couple of miles,” I said. “About halfway between the Target and Salem.” I worked summers schlepping tourists back and forth to Cape Ann for the whale-watching tours.

  I waited for the obvious next question but she fell silent. There was no way in hell I could explain any of this to my family, so why try? We were here to see if we could find a way to rescue Sugar Maple, not play Meet the MacKenzies.

  After my daughter Steffie died in an accident, I had stepped away from family and all of the baggage, both good and bad, that came with it. Too many memories I wasn’t ready to embrace. That was one of the things about big families: it’s a hell of a lot easier to disappear when there are five other siblings, five in-laws, and thirty-three grandchildren to keep track of. It would be Thanksgiving before they noticed I’d gone missing.

  The Target parking lot was its usual crazy mess of runaway shopping carts, crying kids, and shoppers in search of a spot near the entrance.

  “There’s one near the door,” Janice said, pointing over my shoulder.

  “This tank would take out half of the Toyota next to it.” I snagged a double spot near the back of the lot.

  “You coming, Jan?” Chloe asked as she unbuckled her lap belt.

  “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on Penelope.”

  “Is she okay?” I asked Chloe as we crossed the parking lot.

  “No,” she said, slipping her arm through mine. “She’s not okay at all.”

  She told me about Janice’s decision to pierce the veil if we couldn’t restore Sugar Maple to its Vermont footprint.

  “Would that reunite her with her family?”

  “Probably,” she said. “Nothing’s guaranteed but it probably would.”

  “Did you try to talk her out of it?”

  “I told her how I felt but . . .” She glanced toward a red PT Cruiser angling for a spot. “It won’t come to that. We’re going to bring Sugar Maple back and everyone will pick up where they left off.”

  There wasn’t anything I could say to that. She knew the odds were against us. She didn’t need to be reminded.

  Targets are like Burger Kings and Walmarts: if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. We could have been in Montana.

  “I’ll check out the cat carriers,” Chloe said.

  “Better you than me,” I said with a quick laugh. “I’ll grab some prepaid cells and meet you at the checkout.”

  She disappeared up the pet supplies aisle. I continued on to electronics, where I went face-to-face with a wall of cell phones. Nobody needed that many choices. I looked for lots of minutes for not much money and grabbed three of them just to be on the safe side.

  “Can I pay for these up front?” I asked the teenaged clerk draped over the counter, paging through a copy of Teen People with one of those vampire boys on the cover.

  “Whatever,” she said without looking up.

  I headed for the pet supplies aisle, where I’d last seen Chloe. She wasn’t there but I had a pretty good idea where I’d find her.

  I stopped a middle-aged man wearing a red smock and a badge that read SAM.

  “Wool?” I said and he stared at me with a blank expression on his ruddy face. “You know, yarn.” I mimed knitting. “Baby booties. Blankets. Sweaters.”

  He pointed toward the far corner of the store. “Over there with the sewing stuff.”

  I thanked him and took three steps in that direction, when someone called out my name.

  “Luke?”

  I would know that voice anywhere. I put my head down and kept walking.

  “MacKenzie, wait up!”

  Busted.

  I turned around and there was my old pal Fran Kelly, the admin assistant at my former station house, who had put the whole Sugar Maple thing in motion for me. She was pushing a cart filled to the brim with toys and kids’ clothing and a giant ten-pack of paper towels.

  “Frannie!” I laughed as she abandoned the cart and made a run for me. “What the hell are you doing in North Reading?”

  She flung her arms around me and gave me a bear hug a WWF contender would be proud of. “I could ask you the same thing. I thought you were still up in the Vermont wilderness.”

  Definitely not the time for full disclosure. I took a quick look around. No sign of Chloe. I hoped our luck would hold.

  “Had a little business to take care of in Salem.” I extricated myself from the hug and took a look at her. “Is there something in the water around here? You look great!”

  The tough, no-nonsense Fran I had worked with blushed bright red and looked downright girlish. “You’re not with the force anymore so you don’t have to kiss my ass.” She grabbed one of the disposable cell phones I was holding. “What the hell is this? Are you running drugs up there in Maple Sugar?”

  “You big-city types are too damn suspicious.” I took the phone back from her. “So how is the old gang?”

  She filled me in on mutual friends and I was trying to figure out a way to make an escape before she started questioning me about Sugar Maple.

  “So what happened with Karen? Did you figure out why she was looking for you?”

  If I told her what really happened to my ex-wife, Fran would run screaming for the nearest exit. Lying was the only option.

  “She called a few times but we never connected.”

  “Your brother Ronnie said he heard she headed out west to start over.”

  “Could be,” I said, feeling like a shit. “I’m not on her Christmas card list.” I changed the subject. “So what are you doing here?”

  “We sold the house and bought into an over-fifty-five complex out on Landingham Road so we could be closer to the grands. Your brother helped us.”

  “You bought from Ronnie?” My older brother was a successful Realtor with connections all over the area.

  “He hooked us up, negotiated a great price, and held our hands the whole way. Great guy.”

  This was the same guy who had specialized in Atomic Wedgies when I was growing up.

  “So tell me about life up in the boonies,” she said, a big wide smile on her face.

  “Not much to tell. You already know it’s a small town, no crime, lots of tourists in season.”

  She waved a manicured hand. “I don’t care about that. Tell me about the woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “What woman?” she repeated. “Your girlfriend, that’s what woman.”

  “Who said I had a girlfriend?”

  “You did,” she said. “Last time we spoke.”

  Where were the random bolts of lightning when you needed them? “Early days,” I said and hoped she would let it go at that.

  “Did she come down here with you?”

  “Uh—”

  Fran was no fool. She knew a yes when she didn’t hear one. “Where is she?” She did a three sixty in place, scanning the store for Chloe. “I want to meet her.”

  “You know women,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t hit me in the head with a box of Legos for the sexist statement. “Retail therapy.”

  She glanced at her watch and groaned. “It’s almost five. Jack’s waiting for me at the senior center.” She thought for a moment. “I know! Why don’t you and—?”

  “Chloe.”

  Her smile was wider than ever. “Why don’t you and Chloe stop by for dinner tonight?”

  “That would be great, Frannie, but we have plans.”

  She pretended to slap her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Going to squeeze in some family time while you’re here?”

  “You ask a hell of a lot of questions, Kelly.”

  “Still the best way to get answers.”

  “Business dinner tonight. How about a rain check?”

  Her hazel eyes teared up behind her rimless glasses. “Sure,” she said, “but don’t be a stranger.”

  I pulled her into a b
ear hug of my own and that was when Chloe showed up, arms piled high with brightly colored yarn and trailing a cat carrier behind her.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Fran stage-whispered. “You’re dating Uma Thurman!”

  14

  CHLOE

  Uma Thurman? I could have kissed Luke’s gray-haired friend. If she thought I looked like the willowy blond actress, that meant at least part of Aerynn’s protective charm was still up and working.

  “You’re a knitter, too,” she said, gesturing toward the pile of Red Heart and Lion Brand cradled in my arms.

  “I run a yarn shop back home.” It actually hurt to say the words.

  “Coals to Newcastle,” Luke’s friend said, and we both laughed. I knew she was dying to ask me what I was doing buying acrylic.

  “I’m Chloe Hobbs.”

  “Fran Kelly.”

  My eyes widened. I knew the name. “You used to work with Luke in Boston.” He had phoned her for information about Karen when his ex-wife first showed up.

  “The stories I could tell you about this boy . . .” She turned to Luke. “I’m going to hold you to that rain check. Chloe needs to be brought up to speed.”

  She said it with such affection that my normal shyness evaporated. “I’d love it.”

  The cell phone clipped to the strap of Fran’s purse began to play “It’s Raining Men.”

  “My husband is the most impatient man in Massachusetts,” she said with a fond laugh. “I’d better get a move on before he trades me in for one of those Botoxed widows.”

  “He trades you in, give me a call,” Luke said, giving her another hug.

  She shot me a look and a genuine smile wreathed her face. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  “She’s great,” I said as we watched Fran race toward the checkout lanes.

  Luke nodded but said nothing.

  “She’s really fond of you.”

  He uttered words usually reserved for cable TV shows.

  “You don’t like her?” He had seemed so sincere. This was a side of Luke I hadn’t seen before and it unnerved me.

  “She’s like a sister to me,” he said as we gathered up some cheap flashlights and extra batteries. “That’s the goddamn problem.”

  Everything I knew about traditional American families I’d learned from watching The Cosby Show and The Waltons. This did not compute. “I thought big sisters were a good thing.”

  He shook his head in exasperation. “Frannie bought a house from my brother. She’s probably on the cell right now letting him know I’m in town.”

  “Which means they’ll want to see you.”

  “And you.”

  “I guess they wouldn’t believe we’re here to see if we can bring a magick town back into this dimension.”

  He started to laugh despite his dark mood. “It would almost be worth telling them to see the look on their faces.”

  And the funny part was we could tell the truth and swear on a stack of Bibles and the Book of Spells and our secret would stay hidden right there in plain sight. There were some truths nobody believed, not even when they were being played out right in front of them.

  Janice was bursting with news when we returned to the Buick.

  “Some old chick in really unfortunate sweatpants was scoping out the car. She tried to be cool about it but I swear she memorized the license number.”

  Luke met my eyes. “Told you.”

  I clued Janice in about Fran and the gossip chain that went straight to the MacKenzie clan.

  “I’m one of five,” Janice said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” I asked Luke.

  He started the engine. “Nothing.”

  “You’re not going to call?”

  “No reason to.”

  “But they’ll know you’re here.”

  “So?”

  “Won’t their feelings be hurt?”

  “Yes,” he said with a quick smile. “My brothers will slam my voice mail with messages. My sisters will try to catch me in IM and spam my in-box with advice I didn’t ask for. If they knew how to blueflame, your hands would be on fire right now.”

  “Sounds like you know the Big Family drill,” Janice said from the backseat.

  He nodded. “I know the drill.”

  I didn’t. All I knew was that he had the chance to be with family and he wasn’t taking it.

  “It’s because of me, isn’t it?” I asked. “I saw how uncomfortable you were when I popped up while you were talking with Fran.”

  “It’s not you,” he said. “It’s because I took off after Karen and I split. I’ve been pretty much of a nonentity for the last couple years.”

  “They’re angry with you.”

  He shrugged. “Angry, confused, hurt. The whole nine.”

  That shut me up for the moment. Nothing like discovering that you’ve turned into a self-obsessed, single-minded moron. Even better if the man you loved was the one who clued you in.

  I made a mental note to quiz Janice about intrafamily dynamics. Clearly sitcoms hadn’t provided enough information for me to work with. The one thing I believed was that if I had been lucky enough to have blood relatives of my own, I would be devastated to think I’d caused them any distress.

  Then again, I also believed knitting goddesses Elizabeth Zimmerman and Cat Bordhi should be memorialized on Mount Rushmore with Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Roosevelt.

  Fifteen minutes later we drove past the ENTERING SALEM sign.

  “No flying monkeys,” Janice said from the backseat.

  “That’s always a good thing,” I said as I slipped my knitting into the plastic bag the yarn had come in.

  We were making light of it but entering Salem’s city limits was big for both of us. I kept waiting for the earthquake or blizzard or bolt of lightning that would finish us off but nothing happened.

  To be honest, so far it wasn’t all that memorable. Twenty-first-century Salem was a nice little city with a dark history and the promise of great fresh seafood. The strong sense of foreboding I experienced years ago had vanished.

  “How are you doing back there?” I asked Janice as we rolled past an auto repair shop that seemed to be enjoying turn-away business.

  “Not bad,” she said. “I’m not hyperventilating and I don’t feel like kicking out the back window and running for my life.”

  “That’s something,” Luke said.

  Probably more than he expected. Definitely more than I had hoped for.

  “Now what?” I asked Luke.

  “We get ourselves some rooms, establish a base of operations, and figure out what the hell to do next.”

  We agreed that our lodgings needed to be cheap, clean, and within the Salem city limits. The town was lousy with B&Bs, which, while no doubt charming, were way too up close and personal for our needs. We needed a place where we could come and go without attracting notice.

  “Unless things have changed, there’s only one motel in town,” Luke said. “The Windjammer out near Cat Cove. It’s off-season right now so there should be some vacancies.”

  “Speaking of cats, what are we going to do about Penny?” I asked.

  “Sneak her in,” the Sugar Maple chief of police said. “If she doesn’t start that damn yowling, we’ll be fine.”

  Penny opened one golden eye then closed it again. Whatever craziness had overtaken her earlier had played itself out and I hoped it would stay played out once we were at the motel.

  Salem was a small fishing village that had grown up over the years to be a small city with high tourist appeal. Kitsch vied for space with history, which vied for space with progress, all of which brought visitors in significant numbers. Sure, there were lots of witchy references but the town was more than a glorified theme park.

  Janice, however, saw it differently.

  “They make money off misery,” Janice said, shaking her head. “Lives destroyed and they’re offering witch tours.”
/>   “I used to drive one of the witch tour trolleys,” Luke said easily. “I felt like I was at Disney World.”

  “You thought it was a joke?” I asked, thinking about the stories I’d heard growing up. Stories that rarely had happy endings.

  “The deaths were tragic,” he admitted, “but innocent people are killed every hour of every day and always will be. To be honest, nothing about the Salem story ever seemed real to me.”

  “Because you didn’t believe in witches,” Janice said.

  “One or two of us Irish kids might have grown up believing in ghosts. But witches?” He shook his head. “Only my first grade teacher fell into that category.”

  Janice’s response was pithy and unprintable.

  “I don’t blame you,” Luke said. “If I came from that history, I’d probably hate mortals, too, but remember it was the innocent mortals who were hanged, not the witches.”

  He was right. The witches and sorcerers and vampires and sprites had all escaped to Sugar Maple.

  Janice, however, didn’t see things that way and she made her displeasure known.

  “Come on, Jan,” I said. “It was a long time ago. You know he’s right.” Besides, Janice had certainly never tried to hide her aversion to mortals.

  “We’re on the same side now,” Luke said as the Windjammer, a handsome two-story motel, came into view. “That should be all that matters.”

  15

  LUKE

  I took note of the changes that had occurred since I worked in Salem as a teenager. Some old favorites had vanished, replaced by interchangeable substitutes. The old barber shop with the red-and-white-striped pole was now a day spa and massage therapy center. My favorite pizza joint had become a sit-down restaurant that took reservations.

  The Windjammer, a little older, a tad more weathered, was still there. Our accommodations were located in the back of the building. The desk clerk had offered me ground floor near the entrance but I’d declined. I wanted our comings and goings to occur with as little notice as possible.

  Let’s face it: a single guy checking in with an Uma Thurman clone and a Julia Roberts lookalike would definitely attract attention.