The room erupted in raucous female laughter. Bursts of light encircled my ankles and wrapped themselves around my legs, twining their way up my torso like a kudzu vine. I batted away a phalanx of lights that were trying to turn themselves into a necklace.
Don’t get scared, I warned myself. Get angry.
Fear diminished my powers. Anger made them stronger.
Strands of bright lights like a Christmas tree string with attitude slashed through the air in front of my face, leaving a trail of heat behind.
Oh, crap. I suddenly realized what they were. Fae drones acting as a scouting party for a clan leader. They were mapping my body, determining strengths and weaknesses, and reporting back.
And, if memory served, they wouldn’t hesitate to inflict a little collateral damage along the way.
One of the Scottish wheels bumped me from the back. Before I could respond, another bumped me harder. Then a third bump and a fourth.
“Knock it off,” I warned. “You really want to stop doing this.”
Which led to being knocked to the ground again by the last two Scottish wheels.
I scrambled to get up but an Ashford sailed across the room and slammed into my right shoulder. A moment later, a Louet slammed into my left. Kromskis, Schachts, Lendrums rained down on me like giant hailstones. I was crouched on the floor with my arms protecting my head like someone in one of those Cold War-era end-of-the-world movies. I never understood how your back could save you from an atom bomb but my back was doing a pretty good job absorbing the blows from the attacking wheels.
And in case you didn’t know it, wheels are ferocious fighters. Sure, they look all fragile and unassuming, but, trust me, they kicked my ass pretty good.
The only thing more embarrassing than having my clock cleaned by a spinning wheel would be getting mugged by a harp.
Where was my anger? Where was my fire? I had nothing. The more the spinning wheels pounded me, the deeper I sank into submission.
This wasn’t like me at all. Exhaustion turned my arms and legs to rubber. I was having trouble keeping my thoughts together. I felt like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz after the Wicked Witch of the West scattered him across the cornfield.
“No wonder she lost Sugar Maple,” a disembodied female voice said. “She’s utterly incompetent.”
“Stupid, I’d say.” Another female voice. “Look at her lying there like a mollusk.”
“Poor thing can’t help herself,” a third female voice added. “She lacks courage.”
“So true, sister,” a fourth female intoned. “She lacked the courage to claim her town before it was too late.”
“It’s in the blood. Look to her clan to see the reason,” said a fifth.
“She chose the side of the humans, same as her mother, and her human blood will be her downfall,” the first voice said. “And after all these centuries, we will be here to watch it happen.”
Their voices rose and fell, and new voices joined them, jumbled and filled with both scorn and amusement. I couldn’t listen. I refused to listen. They were wrong. I loved Sugar Maple. I had done everything in my power to save it from being dragged beyond the mist. I might not know exactly what did happen but I could tell you with certainty that the town hadn’t entered the Fae portal at the waterfall.
I felt a surge of anger and looked at my fingertips, expecting to see them start to redden before shooting out flames that I hoped would torch this place to the ground.
But there was nothing.
I had the sense that the life force was leaving me but I didn’t know where or how. My legs were wobbly. My vision was starting to blur. I sensed that my thought processes weren’t as clear as they’d been ten minutes earlier. I hadn’t battled demons and walked away triumphant so I could die buried beneath a pile of mass-produced spinning wheels.
If I’d had the energy I would have laughed out loud at the thought. I mean, stabbed by Addi Lace circular needles, maybe. Or trapped in a web of sticky Outback Mohair or even driven insane by dropped stitches in a five-hundred-plus-stitch bind-off. At least there would be some knitterly dignity involved.
Then get up.
The baritone voice was rich and compelling and it seemed to be centered deep inside my chest.
You can do this, Chloe. You must or Sugar Maple will be doomed forever.
My ribs vibrated at the sound.
Who are you? I sent the thought out into the universe but it bounced straight back to me.
Do it now! Trust your heart to know the truth.
Now what was that supposed to mean? If I ever became Queen of the Other Dimensions I was going to permanently ban fortune-cookie talk.
Trust my heart to do what? Quit speaking in riddles, Voice, and tell me what to do.
I felt the answer before I heard it.
You could start by getting up.
Trust me to harbor an uninvited inner wiseass.
One of the Scottish castles reared back and rolled into my side like a battering ram. Damn those fragile wheels anyway. They could really pack a wallop. What was I going to do, lie there until I finally succumbed to a vindictive travel wheel while those invisible harpies took bets on how long it would take Luke to find someone else?
Well, yeah. That was exactly what would happen if I didn’t do what the Voice said and get off my sorry butt and fight back.
I shook the pile of wheels off my back the way a dog shakes off water after a bath. They flew across the room and smashed into the walls, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. The spinner in me felt a sharp pang of regret but the sorceress thought it was kind of cool. My legs were wobbly but I managed to stay vertical as I blocked a dive-bombing electric drum carder with my forearm.
The drum carder was followed by a phalanx of niddy-noddies, which were followed by a barrage of spindles that made me feel like London during the Blitz. I swatted them away like mosquitoes. Flames shot from my fingertips. Arrows of lightning shot from my eyes.
And then it was over.
No trumpets blaring. No cheering crowds.
Wheels rolled back up the hallway. Wheels slid back against the walls. Drum carders, niddy-noddies, spindles, and combs settled themselves back where they’d come from. In the blink of an eye, I found myself standing near the Irish castle wheel once again with my hand resting lightly along the satiny wood. The heady scent of beeswax and potpourri and history was everywhere.
So was the feeling I was being watched. Suddenly I had to get out of there.
I turned toward the door but the door wasn’t there and then the wheel wasn’t there and suddenly the shop lifted up and up and up and sailed off into the blue sky like a birthday balloon and left me standing alone on a rock on an island in the middle of the ocean.
The only thing missing was the massive tidal wave with my name on it.
I looked behind me and saw a tornado of water whipping my way.
Who said you couldn’t have it all?
21
LUKE
I said good-bye to Holly a little after one o’clock and only because she had a tour group waiting for her in town.
“Take this,” she said, handing me a thick brown envelope. “I printed off some of the scans for you. Maybe you’ll put your cop instincts to work and figure this all out for me.”
I thanked her for her time and tried once more to pay her for her expertise but she was having none of it.
“I should pay you,” she said. “You’re the first person who’s ever shown the slightest interest in poor old Samuel.”
“I like a good mystery,” I said, feeling a little shitty for withholding the truth from her. “And you’re one damn fine storyteller.”
She glanced at her watch. “But not much of a business-woman. My tour awaits.” She kissed me on my left cheek and then on my right. “Let me know about a tour and I’ll block out the time.”
I owe you one, I thought as I watched her hurry off. With a little luck, I’d have the chance to pay her bac
k soon.
Thanks to Holly, I had the Sugar Maple version of the Holy Grail and I couldn’t wait to tell Chloe what I’d uncovered about Samuel Bramford and the lighthouse that bore his name. I couldn’t prove anything, not in the human definition of proof, but my gut told me I had stumbled onto the key we needed to unlock a few doors.
I was deep in thought when a small woman with long, shiny white hair appeared in my path and stopped me cold.
“Sorry,” I said, dodging around her. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
She was in front of me again.
“Sorry again,” I said and dodged the other way.
I swear she didn’t move, didn’t take a single step. She was just there.
Her eyes were light gray, so light they were almost devoid of color. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted.
“I’ve been waiting.” Crystal earrings, pale as her eyes, swung with the nodding motion of her head. “I never gave up hope.”
Apparently crazy wasn’t limited to big cities. I nodded politely and tried again to get around her. She was a little old for the goth thing and I was a little old to care.
“Tell her.” A slender alabaster hand snaked out from under one enormous sleeve and gripped my forearm. “Tell Chloe he’s waiting.”
She was gone before I could say a word, which was probably a good thing because I couldn’t have come up with anything coherent if I tried.
Except: “Who the hell is he?”
Kind of took the edge off being right about Salem.
We’d agreed to meet at noon and I was over an hour late already. I jogged back to the motel and let myself into the room I shared with Chloe.
“Chloe!” I called out. “You here?”
Not many places in a room-plus-bathroom to hide.
I rapped on the connecting door to Janice’s room. “Anyone there?”
The lock clicked and the door opened.
“I hope you brought food,” Janice said as Penny the cat burst into the room. “I’ve been eyeing the Fancy Feast.”
“I thought you could go days without eating.”
She ignored my comment. “Any bagels left over from this morning?”
I pointed to the desk. “Help yourself.”
She grabbed one and tore into it. “So where’s Chloe?”
“I thought she was with you.”
I shook my head. “We were going to meet back here.”
“No sign of her.”
“She didn’t call?”
“I would’ve told you.”
I raised my hands palms outward. “No problem. I’m just asking.”
“Sorry,” she said, looking as contrite as it was possible for the redoubtable Janice Meany to look. “I get cranky when I’m hungry.”
“No luck working the phones?”
She tore off another piece of bagel. “I tried to link into the Wiccan and pagan communities but I kept getting voice mail. I left messages but no call-backs.”
“Why not try blueflame?”
“If I blueflamed a human I’d be arrested for arson.”
I kept forgetting the difference between magic and the Wiccan religion.
She popped the bagel into her mouth, chewed, then swallowed. “How’d you do?”
I gestured toward the thick brown envelope on the bed. “I’ll tell you when Chloe gets here. Too much to go through twice.”
“Not even a hint?”
“How about a couple of questions instead?”
She nodded.
“Was Aerynn pregnant when she left Salem?”
Janice gave a bark of laughter. “That was over three hundred years ago! How would I know?”
“I thought you knew all the old stories and legends about Sugar Maple’s early years.”
“Lilith is the real expert,” she said modestly, referring to the beautiful Norwegian troll who served as town librarian and historian. “But I can hold my own.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered who fathered Aerynn’s children?”
“I never much thought about it.”
“It wasn’t an immaculate conception.”
“And it wasn’t happily ever after either,” Janice shot back at me.
“And you know that how?”
“The fact that Hobbs women are notorious losers when it comes to love. That’s part of their heritage.”
They loved only once and not always wisely. Janice didn’t say those words but I heard them just the same.
“It’ll be different for Chloe and me,” I said.
Janice just gave me a we’ll see kind of smile.
“So was Aerynn’s first child born in Sugar Maple?”
“First child?” Janice’s look changed subtly. “You mean, her only child.”
“I didn’t know she only had one child.”
Now she looked downright uncomfortable. “Hobbs women always have only one child,” she said. “A girl.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Historically proven fact.”
“Is it something biological?”
“That would be one hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?” She had me there. One child. Always a girl. The link remained unbroken.
We dropped the subject by unspoken mutual agreement. I put the information aside for some other day.
Janice applied herself to the task of eating her way through the remaining bagels. I dialed Chloe’s cell phone but it flipped immediately to voice mail.
“I’m at the motel with Janice,” I said. “It’s twenty after one. Call me.”
I checked for messages. Returned a few. Ignored the rest. The ice-eyed woman’s message repeated itself on an endless loop inside my brain. Better than an endless loop of Janice’s revelation about the Hobbs women and their reproductive pattern. I turned on the television then turned it off again. Janice was standing by the window, looking out at the water.
Penny the cat was—
“Where’s Penny?” I asked.
“Asleep on the bed,” Janice said.
“Not on this bed.”
“She was there a minute ago.”
“Check your room,” I said. “I’ll check the bathroom.”
Janice was looking under her bed when I walked into her room.
“Shit,” I said. “She’s gone.”
“She can’t be gone,” Janice said as she stood up and brushed dust off her jeans. “The doors are closed and so are the windows.”
“She’s still gone.”
“Chloe’s going to kill me,” Janice said.
“Probably,” I said, “but Chloe’s not here either.”
“You think there’s some kind of connection?”
“We’re in Witch City looking for a way to bring a magic town back into our dimension. I think everything’s connected.”
Her gaze drifted to the sliding doors and her brown eyes widened.
“What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
She dashed across the room and bent down in front of the doors. “Do you see that?” she asked, pointing toward the metal runner that held the doors in place.
“The floor? The door frame?”
“The glitter.”
“Shit,” I said. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding. The floor is thick with spruce green, chartreuse, and burgundy glitter.” She stood up and ran over to the closet. She flung the door open. “More burgundy. This place is infested with Fae.”
“With talk like that, it’s no wonder there’s a problem between you.”
“You don’t really think you’re being funny, do you?”
I did, but this didn’t seem like the time to explain my family’s penchant for black humor. “Can you identify anyone?”
She shook her head. “These colors are all new to me. It has to be locals.” She stood and tugged at the hem of her hot pink T-shirt. “You know what this means.”
Hell, yeah. I was a cop, wasn’t I? “Either the Fae reestablished here after th
e witch troubles faded away—”
“Or some of them never left to begin with,” she finished for me.
“And now Chloe’s gone.”
“And Penny,” Janice added.
“I don’t give a—”
“Yes, you do.”
She was right. I did. Penny the cat was inextricably linked with Chloe and Sugar Maple and probably to Salem as well.
“Grab your stuff,” I said. “We need to find them now.”
“I’m not going out there.”
“You can’t stay here alone.”
“You can’t force me. In case you forgot, I have magick.”
“Go for it,” I said. “Like it or not, we’d better stick together.” I softened my tone. “You know I’m right, Janice.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I don’t know anything.”
I rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment. “Me neither,” I said.
We agreed that we needed to concentrate our efforts on finding Chloe. It wasn’t like Penny had shimmied through a pet door or slipped out while we were getting the mail. The cat had made an escape worthy of Houdini. She’d be found when she wanted to be found and not before.
And unless I missed my guess, she’d be with Chloe.
“You’re the detective,” Janice said. “How do we start detecting?”
“Try blueflame,” I suggested. “See if Chloe answers.”
Janice cupped her hands, focused deep, then yelped as blue flames shot up her arms all the way to the shoulders.
I didn’t know whether to pour water over her or arrange an exorcism.
“That’s a first,” she said, waving her arms around like a windmill.
“On to step two,” I said to Janice. “Clock’s ticking.”
She dashed into her room, gathered up a big bag full of stuff, then slung the bag over her shoulder. “Ready.”
Except there was one problem: I couldn’t open the door.
“Shit,” I said, jiggling the doorknob. “The damn cat locked us in.”
Janice struggled to suppress a grin. “You don’t really think the cat did it.”
“The hell I don’t. We’re here. She’s not. Do the math.” Another thing your average dog would never do.
“Let me try.” Janice grabbed the doorknob, jiggled it, then let loose a string of curses.
Spun by Sorcery Page 13
