A steady wind blew in from the water. I shivered and wished I had worn one of the sweatshirts I’d picked up at Target. I had spent most of my life feeling lonely but the sensation of actually being alone was a new one. Where were the tourists? I had expected to see scores of them dashing up and down the streets and alleyways, snapping photos and filming videos and generally soaking up all of the witchy lore they could.
And, while I was asking questions I couldn’t answer, where were the townies? The place seemed—no pun intended—more like a ghost town than a tourist mecca.
Then again, so did Sugar Maple much of the time. It was only the beginning of April, I reminded myself. Most of New England was still looking over its collective shoulder, waiting for the last snowfall. If Salem was anything like Sugar Maple, tourist season wouldn’t kick into high gear for another month or so.
I followed the Red Line (which really was a red line painted down the middle of the sidewalk) deeper into the heart of town. The homes ranged from magnificent two-story brick edifices to clapboard cottages badly in need of fresh paint and roof repairs. They had been laid out haphazardly over the centuries. Some were a sneeze away from their neighbors. Some had been set kitty-corner on their tiny lots. Others nestled gracefully atop a small rise. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t relate any of this to the plight of Sugar Maple.
Did you ever dream that you were naked at the supermarket and all of your neighbors had picked that day to dash out to buy milk? I felt more self-conscious than I had as a gawky twelve-year-old and that was saying something. It wasn’t that I felt like I was being watched exactly, but a vague prickly feeling settled itself between my shoulder blades and wouldn’t leave.
I spotted a café on Washington near Lynde. It wasn’t that I was hungry exactly but the thought of a butter and sugar transfusion was irresistible.
The first problem was I couldn’t get through the front door.
The other problem was nobody seemed to notice.
For a moment I wondered if I was invisible but an old man with a walking stick glared at me as he pushed his way out of the shop. I grabbed for the door but yelped as an electric shock knocked me back a step.
Are we having fun yet?
Luke thought I had a combustible temper but I really didn’t. Those flames that suddenly shot out from my fingertips were just a coincidence.
Kind of like the fact that every shop in Salem seemed to be turning its back on me.
I was starting to feel like a five-foot, ten-inch ant at a picnic.
So far the Red Line hadn’t been working out too well so I veered off down another side street where I hoped the welcome would be a bit friendlier. I strolled past a hair salon, a kitschy tourist shop that specialized in sparkly glass witch’s balls in every color of the rainbow, three candle shops, and a quilter’s paradise and was about to continue on past a dusty-looking antique shop, when I saw it.
There in the window was a late-seventeenth-century wheel. Tall, graceful, originally created to spin flax and look utterly beautiful while it did. It looked so much like the wheel that had been handed down from Aerynn that I had no doubt it had been made by the same craftsman.
The modern wheels were wonderful—fast and quiet and unfailingly efficient—but I was a sucker for the moody, romantic wheels of the past.
You didn’t see an Irish castle wheel every day. I was lucky enough to have learned to spin on one but most spinners wouldn’t know where to start.
I had to see the wheel up close. I had to touch it, run my fingers along the smoothly polished wood, see it do what it was made to do: spin floss into gold just like magick.
I braced myself for involuntary electrotherapy and reached for the door handle. It didn’t shock me, bite me, or turn me into one of those kids on Jersey Shore. It actually opened the door.
Now here was where it might get dicey. An invisible tidal wave might rise up and throw me back into the street on my bony butt. Or maybe I would be turned into a giant ice cube. And there was always the chance that I could be struck dead.
Scratch that. No use putting ideas into people’s heads.
Again nothing happened. I stepped into the quiet shop and breathed in the wonderful scent of beeswax, potpourri, and history. I’m a big fan of clutter but this place was crowded even by my seriously deranged standards.
Fancy-schmancy antiques vied for space with kitschy 1950s throwaways. A pair of cigar store Indians flanked the archway to the next display room. A wax figure of Teddy Roosevelt leaned against a player piano across from me. Cups, saucers, teapots, and china display plates saluted from row upon row of maple shelving that blanketed the wall to my left. A ratty-looking basket the size of a Mini Cooper occupied the center of the room and it was piled high with knitting needles that were clearly from centuries past.
I had found my people.
“Hello,” I called out. “Is anyone here?”
No answer.
“Anyone?” Leaving a glorious antique wheel unattended wasn’t a bright idea. A roaming band of knitters just might spirit it away.
Still no response. Was Salem so devoid of crime that the owner would take off on a coffee break without locking the doors behind her? As far as I knew, only Sugar Maple had that particular demographic and even I locked the doors of Sticks & Strings against knitters in search of Wollmeise.
But there was no law against touching, was there?
I had a Sleeping Beauty moment when I drew my hand along the satiny wood. Sugar maple, to be precise. What were the odds? I felt a lump in my throat as I absorbed its essence and felt the pull of home. I half expected to prick my finger (I never did figure out exactly what a fairy-tale girl could prick her finger on, but it definitely moved the plot along) but I didn’t expect to see lemon yellow glitter pooled at the base of the wheel. Or the small infinity symbol carved on one of the legs. How had I missed them?
I think I might have stopped breathing for a moment or two. My heartbeat was so fast and deep that my chest hurt.
Glitter was the Fae equivalent of human fingerprints. No two glitterprints were alike. The subtle variations in color might not be perceptible to the non-Fae population but they identified areas of origin, clans, and families within clans more precisely than DNA.
One more thing. Glitterprints had the shelf life of a ripe banana.
In other words, those prints were new.
And that meant the Fae community was alive and well and living in Salem, Massachusetts.
And that I’d walked straight into a trap.
19
LUKE
I was getting nowhere fast. This whole Bramford Light thing was a dead end. It was time to move on again.
I checked the time on my cell. A little after ten. According to the brochure, Holly’s Day Tours should be open for business. I walked west on Derby, past In a Pig’s Eye, then spotted the tiny store front.
The biggest part of detective work was asking questions; the most important part was asking the right questions of the right people. At that point I would have been happy if Holly just talked to me. So far I hadn’t found Salem residents to venture past monosyllables.
A bright blue OPEN sign was turned face outward. I took it at its word and swung open the door. A bell tinkled somewhere in the rear of the storefront as I stepped over the threshold.
So far, so good.
A calico cat watched me from the top of a bookcase situated against the back wall. The shelves were crammed with obviously old volumes, some cloth bindings, some leather. They were jammed into any available spot. Spine out. Straight up. Flat on their backs. Whatever worked.
Clearly Holly of Holly’s Day Tours was interested in information, not the antiquarian value of the books, which, considering the proximity to the ocean, was probably a good thing.
“Just be a second,” a very young and feminine voice called out. “Don’t go away!”
The cat leaped to the ground and glided over to check me out. The calico pressed its nose
against my left ankle, my right ankle, then turned and stalked back to its perch atop the bookcase.
I wasn’t sure if that was a pass or fail.
“Just another second,” the musical voice rang out. “Please don’t go!”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I answered.
Waiting isn’t always a bad thing. It gave me a chance to check out the photos and paintings on the walls, the awards, the framed clippings. Holly’s Day Tours didn’t follow the usual Salem paradigm. From what I could see, there was little or no emphasis on the Witch Trials and the usual paranormal stuff that was the town’s bread and butter. Holly’s specialized in history, architecture, and seafaring lore.
Holly was at least forty years older than her voice led me to believe. She was a tall, handsome woman with an abundance of white-streaked red hair, broad shoulders, and the kind of smile that transcended age.
Cops never like anyone immediately but for me Holly was an exception to the rule.
“So what can I do you for?” she asked. “The One-Hour Overview, the Gilligan Three-Hour Special, or Holly’s All-Day Extravaganza?”
I laughed out loud. There was no escaping Gilligan today. “How about the ten-minute Getting to Know You Offer.”
She laughed with me. “I come on strong, don’t I? It’s just that there’s so much to see around here that doesn’t have to do with a pointy witch’s hat. Not that there’s anything wrong with the pointy witch’s hat, but when I get a live one in here, I can’t help myself.” She extended her hand. “I’m Holly.”
“Luke.”
“So what’s on your mind today, Luke?”
“Not the usual Witch House tour. The people I want to impress have seen just about everything.” No lie there if you included magical anacondas, enchanted waterfalls, and flying Buicks.
“That’s excellent because I don’t do the usual Witch House tour. I pride myself on revealing new facets of the rare diamond that is Salem, Massachusetts.”
If anyone else had said that, I would have run for the exit. From Holly, it seemed sincere.
“So you don’t believe in all that witch and sorcery stuff.”
“Now don’t go misquoting me, Luke. I never said I don’t believe. I just said the story is a whole lot more interesting than wax museums and animatronic witches would lead you to think.”
I decided to take a chance. “So you probably know about Bramford Light.”
Her eyes widened. “You know about Bramford Light?” Finally someone who didn’t look at me like I was nuts. “My friend heard about it from a business associate who grew up around here.”
She narrowed her eyes in my direction. “How much do you actually know about the light?”
“Not close to enough.”
“Honey, I can’t give you a tour of Bramford Light. It’s been gone since the War of Independence.”
Fifteen minutes and fifty dollars later, I was standing with Holly at the edge of the dock near the motel, looking toward the area where I’d seen that eerie glow.
“It was situated one hundred yards out,” Holly was saying as she pointed to the same spot I had calculated earlier that morning. It just kept getting better and better. “They say the old man built it himself on a little spit of rock then tore it down in grief after he lost the woman he loved. Now even the spit of rock is gone.”
“One man built a lighthouse?”
Holly gave a little shrug of her impressive shoulders. “Legends have a logic all their own.”
“So how much of this legend do you believe?”
“All of it; none of it.” She sighed. “The lighthouse was first mentioned in contemporaneous accounts some five years before the first hanging. It disappeared somewhere between 1776 and 1780.”
I took a leap of faith. “I saw a beam out there last night.”
“Join the club,” Holly said. “Sailors have been seeing that light from Marblehead up to Rockport since the old man took it down. But come daylight, there’s never anything there.”
“So how do they explain it?”
“They don’t. I could show you hundreds of captains’ logs that mention a strong beam of light that appeared just in time to save them from disaster then disappeared.”
“Divine providence?”
“Or just plain good luck.”
“Kinda makes you believe in magic, doesn’t it.”
“Honey,” Holly said, “if you live in this world long enough and you don’t believe in magic, there’s something wrong with you.”
“So who was the guy? Does he have a name?”
“The man who built the lighthouse was called Samuel.”
“No last name?”
“Think about it,” she said with a wink.
I groaned. “Bramford.”
“Bingo.”
“What else do you know about him besides the tragic love affair?”
“I know he came under scrutiny during the worst of the persecutions.”
That caught my attention. “They thought he was a witch?” “He was a healer,” Holly said carefully. “That alone was enough to attract considerable attention during perilous times.”
“But there’s more.”
She nodded. “There’s more. I have a hard drive filled with more.”
We drove back to her storefront in her faded blue Jeep. She locked the door behind us and flipped the sign to CLOSED.
“I’m taking up a hell of a lot of your time,” I said. I tried to hand her another fifty but she refused. I was right. Holly was the real deal.
“This one’s on me,” she said. “My own private obsession, if you will. I’d like somebody else’s take on it.”
We sat down behind her desk and she booted up her computer.
“I have everything scanned,” she said. “Some of the originals are in my possession; some are public domain; others are the property of various museums and private collections.”
“You have my attention,” I said.
“I thought so.” She clicked a few times and a faded line drawing of a young man filled the screen.
I leaned closer. “Samuel?”
She nodded. “Around the time he began constructing the lighthouse.”
She clicked the screen again. An oil portrait, good but not great, appeared.
“Samuel,” I said. “Maybe fifteen years later.” And they hadn’t been good years. His eyes held a look of almost unbearable sorrow. I knew that look. I saw it in my mirror for years after Steffie died.
“You have a good eye.”
“I’m a cop,” I said. “I get paid to notice things.”
“That would explain the questions.” She distanced herself slightly from me. “Is there anything official about this visit?”
“No,” I said. “Strictly personal.”
She relaxed noticeably. That was the thing about being a cop. Guilty or not, most civilians immediately put up their defenses when we’re around. Holly was no exception.
She clicked forward to another line drawing pulled from a newspaper published in early 1750. “Notice anything?”
I leaned as close to the screen as I could without distorting the image. “He hasn’t aged.”
“Now here’s where the ride gets interesting.”
Holly set a slide show in motion that took us through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. There he was on the docks with a group of fishermen and their daily catch around the time of Lexington and Concord. And there he was in the crowd celebrating a bank opening right after the Civil War. A church social around the turn of the twentieth century. A World War II bond drive.
Forrest Gump was alive and well and living in Salem.
“Anything more recent?” I asked.
“His image showed up in a tourist’s blog post a few weeks ago but it’s still in my To Scan file.”
“We both know it can’t be the same guy.”
“Of course not,” she said, “but there he is anyway.” She aimed a smile in my direction. �
�You’ve already made the Forrest Gump analogy, haven’t you?”
“About ten seconds ago.”
“Logic says it’s coincidental but my eyes tell me something else.”
“How about your gut?” I asked.
“My gut says it’s Samuel Bramford in all the pictures.”
“Which is impossible.”
“Honey,” she said, patting my hand, “when you reach my age, you’ll know nothing is impossible.”
20
CHLOE
Most spinners agree that different wheels have different personalities. Some are smooth. Some are slow. Some fight you every inch of the way but produce sublime yarn.
But I never once heard about a wheel that hauled off and knocked the spinner off her feet.
I didn’t see it coming. I was so busy staring at the yellow glitter and the infinity marking that everything else in the room faded away. The walking wheel in the far corner saw an opportunity and hit me in the head with its flyer.
Fortunately for me it was only a glancing blow but damn. You just don’t think a spinning wheel is going to turn on you.
“Not funny,” I said, refusing to rub my temple where the flyer made contact. “I saw the glitter. I saw the carving. I might as well see you, too.”
I heard a scratching noise and turned to see the walking wheel moving in my direction. And it wasn’t alone. Wheels of every era and style dropped from the ceiling, popped out of the walls, marched in from the hallway.
“Knock it off,” I said, feigning more courage than I actually felt. “I’ve got matches and I’m not afraid to light them.”
I turned around. Six Scottish castle wheels were lined up behind me like prison guards.
“This is old-school,” I said, striving for a blend of scorn and laughter. “What’s next: the poison apple?”
A long exasperated sigh filled the room. “Snow White bit the apple, child. Didn’t those people of yours teach you anything? Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on the wheel.”
“Didn’t your people teach you any manners?” I shot back. “Anonymity is the coward’s way out.”
Spun by Sorcery Page 12
