Grammar aside, even I had to admit that traipsing two hours away from home in the last few weeks of pregnancy probably wasn’t my brightest idea, but I had checked with Brianne, the Quebec healer who would help deliver my baby, and she had okayed the plan so long as we did it this week.
“There be too many of them,” Elspeth said as she peered over my shoulder at the computer screen. “I’ve seen rabbits with smaller litters.”
“Don’t you have anything that needs doing?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder at her. “You’re in my space.”
She made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a Bronx cheer, then disappeared. I was about to send up a cheer of my own when she reappeared, doll sized, on my touch pad.
“Hey!” I yelped as the cursor danced across the page.
“’Tis Samuel’s fault plain and simple,” she said, stomping across the keyboard. “I am here to see your child safely into this world of yours and then good-bye.”
It probably shouldn’t have bugged me that she didn’t want to be here any more than I wanted her to be. I mean, I would have given away all my qiviut, with a baby camel chaser, to get her a one-way ticket back to Salem, but Samuel’s last wish was immutable.
Aerynn’s mate, the man who had fathered her only child, had been a powerful sorcerer who had gathered up every micron of magick left to him at the end of his earthly life and wrapped it around me and the foul-tempered troll with the yellow hair, binding us together until the next generation of Hobbs woman had safely entered this world.
Believe me, I had tried every spell I knew (and a few new ones I invented) to send Elspeth back to the lighthouse where she had kept house for Samuel all those years, but nothing worked. Worse, they left an intradimensional trail that told her exactly what I had been up to.
Last week I did manage to conjure up a charm that afforded Luke and me a zone of privacy where Elspeth was concerned. Without it she would think nothing of marching into our bedroom at five a.m. to complain about the birds singing outside the window.
And without it, Luke might have walked into the Atlantic with Lorcan.
“You’re blocking the screen, Elspeth.” I didn’t mean to send her flying over to the caps lock key when I hit the backspace. It just happened. The fact that she also disappeared was a very lucky break.
Over time Sugar Maple had developed a system for living as magick in a nonmagick world. Many of our children ended up going away to top-notch schools in the human world. (Janice, for instance, went to Harvard.) But without birth certificates, medical records from a licensed practitioner, and valid SAT scores that education couldn’t happen, so we improvised.
Okay, so we lied. We had a close call a year ago when the powers-that-be in the state capital became very interested in our “missing” birth and death records, but with Luke’s help we had managed to dodge that bullet. But I considered it a wake-up call.
If we were going to continue to live in the world of humans, we would have to at least pretend to play by their rules. My human side might have felt guilty, but my magick side didn’t bat an eye at translating our own meticulously kept records into something viable for the world beyond Sugar Maple.
Usually we didn’t worry about this sort of thing until the child reached high school, but Brianne believed earlier was better, so I had a list of dates and info I needed to e-mail back to her. That was what I should have been doing, but you know how it is. I love me some Internet in the morning.
I logged on to Ravelry, checked for messages, then headed straight for my Gmail account.
TO: Chloe
FROM: Bunny and Jack MacKenzie
SUBJECT: brunch
We MapQuested Carole’s Lakeside Inn and it’s an easy ninety-minute drive for us. Jenny and Paul will try to make it. Kimberly and Travis are a definite. Ronnie and Deni are bringing the grandkids. Kevin and Tiffany will drive up from Rhode Island the day before and spend the night with Danny and Margo (cousins). Patrick said he’ll try but it’s his weekend with the kids. And Meghan if she can tear herself away from her latest beau.
TO: Bunny and Jack MacKenzie
FROM: Chloe
SUBJECT: re: brunch
Sounds great. We have a one o’clock reservation for sixteen people. Carole says we can push it to twenty if we need to, okay?
I knew Luke came from a humongously big family, but seeing all of those names listed in Bunny’s e-mail made me break out in a cold sweat. I was usually pretty good with names—it’s part of a knit shop owner’s skill set—but pregnancy brain had muddled up my neurons to the point where even my own name slipped my mind.
Bunny had written from a different address this time, one she shared with her husband. I reopened the e-mail, scrolled down, and noted a link to Ronnie’s real estate website. A click brought me to MacKenzie Homes and I gasped as Luke’s face filled the screen.
But it wasn’t Luke. It was an older, slightly heavier, more polished version of the man I loved. Big brother Ronnie’s hair was perfectly groomed. His fair Scots-Irish skin sported a light tan. A spray of crow’s-feet bracketed hazel eyes that leaned more toward green than blue. He looked like what he was: a happy, successful man in his early forties.
An array of links presented itself along the sidebar: Check My Listings, How Much Can You Spend, Our Towns and Why We Love Them, and All about Me.
You know which one I clicked on.
It took three seconds for the page to load. I’d seen family albums with fewer photos. In fact the only thing missing was the white picket fence. Even the family dog, a handsome golden retriever named Lucky, merited bandwidth.
I started scribbling names and basic info on the back of one of the questionnaires.
Ronnie—oldest brother
Denise (Deni)—wife m. 1978
Jessie b. 1980
Susan b. 1982
Kit b. 1983
Samantha b. 1990
Ron Jr. and Susan were both married with children. Kit was clerking for a law firm in Virginia. Sam was at Bowdoin up in Maine studying forestry. The other two were married with children.
I hunted around and found a Facebook icon on the listings page and launched myself deeper into MacKenzie mania. I bounced from Ronnie’s real estate page to his personal page, where I finally learned what TMI really meant. Here is some free advice: never visit a teenager’s Twitter account. And no, you don’t want to know why.
Sticks & Strings had its own presence on the social networking site so I knew my way around. Find one friend and pretty soon you’ve found everyone you’ve ever known. Luke’s family were heavy users, which only made my job easier. The page quickly filled up with names and basic info.
“You should print out the photos.” Bettina’s hologram blueflamed into the room. “That’s what I do before a big wedding. It makes it easier to match names to faces. People love it when the harpist knows their names.”
“Great idea.” I flipped my printer on. “What’s up?” Bettina was a Fae Luddite with an aversion to blueflame so her appearance definitely had my attention.
“Your voice-mail box is full. I need a sig faxed over ASAP on the KFI order.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“And Elspeth is here. She’s driving away the customers, telling them why they should be home taking care of their families instead of buying wool they could spin themselves if they weren’t such lazy—”
I groaned out loud. “I get the picture.” The only thing worse than making me crazy was making the customers crazy. “She loves to work. Put her in the stockroom and let her count Brown Sheep. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“No, no!” Bettina’s cheeks reddened through the blue-screen haze. “Everything’s fine. I just wasn’t sure how to handle her. I figured I’d better check first.”
“She’s cranky, not dangerous,” I reassured the gentle-natured harpist. “Just tell her what to do and be firm about it.” And then pray.
Bettina glanced around as if to make sure no one w
as listening. “She told me she hates the Fae. Can you believe she would say such a thing to me?”
Unfortunately I could. Bettina was beautiful like all Fae, but she dressed like she belonged to a magickal subset of the Amish. Her skirts were long. Her sweaters were roomy. She wore her long dark hair pulled back into a low ponytail. Her demeanor was soft-spoken and unassuming. She did nothing to call attention to herself when she sat at her harp or went about her daily chores, but nothing could dim the sheer radiance of her amazing face and luminous violet eyes. I mean, the plainest of the Fae can stop traffic anywhere in the human world.
What I’m trying to say is Bettina was everything that would make a short-tempered troll apoplectic.
“Ignore her,” I said. “That’s what Luke and I try to do.”
Try, of course, being the operative word.
Bettina’s blueflame guttered and I was alone again. Or as alone as you can be with four spoiled cats. EZ meowed for my attention, poised to leap onto my lap but puzzled because my lap no longer existed.
“Not much longer,” I told her, leaning over the best I could to give her a skritch behind the ear. “I won’t be lapless forever.”
The look she gave me was highly skeptical and who could blame her. I was at the point in my pregnancy where my feet were a distant memory and the thought of sleeping on my stomach sounded like a fairy tale.
I printed out photos of Luke’s brothers and sisters. All except Meghan, the youngest, who didn’t have a Web presence that I could uncover. I knew she was Luke’s favorite, but beyond the facts that she was single and moved around a lot, I didn’t know much else about her. I was about to start on nieces, nephews, and extended family when Luke exploded through the back door like his hair was on fire.
I shrieked. The cats scattered. At least three or four hidden pixies probably reached for their worry beads.
He was at my side so fast you would swear he had magick, pulling me into an embrace that took my breath away. Literally.
“Luke!” I struggled to put a little space between us so my lungs could inflate.
He kissed me like one of us was going off to war. “I thought—” He stopped, then kissed me again.
Silvery white sparks flew everywhere. They ricocheted off the microwave, bounced off the walls, pinged my laptop, sent shivers up my spine. We’d been striking sparks from the moment we met and I hoped it would go on forever.
I placed my hand on his chest and leaned back. “What’s going on?”
“My mother.” He was doing that cop thing he does, eyes searching everywhere for signs of danger.
I started to laugh. “Your mother?”
“She’s been trying to call you. She said she left a few messages, then got the voice-mail-full message.” Some of the tension left his voice. “She decided you’d gone into early labor and were lying on the kitchen floor alone and dilated.”
“Oh, crap.” I gestured toward the cell phone on the kitchen table. “I turned it off after the third time she called about Sunday brunch. It never occurred to me she’d worry about me.” Why would it? She barely knew me.
“World-class worrier,” Luke said, “and family is her specialty.”
“But I’m not family.”
“Yeah,” he said, stroking my hair. “Like it or not, you are now.”
I didn’t have a chance to ponder that statement because Luke’s cell emitted three long, three short, then three long beeps. Bunny MacKenzie’s SOS.
“She’s fine, Ma,” he said by way of hello. “Her phone ran out of juice is all.”
I suppressed a giggle as he rolled his eyes in response.
“She was working from home this morning ... yes, we have a landline . . . why didn’t you try that number?” Long pause. “D’you have a piece of paper and a pen? It’s—” He recited it into the receiver twice, just to be sure. “She’s got a lot to do, Ma . . . no, she’s right here ... okay.” He pushed the cell in my direction. “She wants to talk to you.”
“No!” I mouthed, backing away, but even two hundred miles away, Bunny was formidable. “Hi, Bunny ... yes, I’m fine ... sorry about the phone ... I will ... promise ... okay ... see you on Sunday.” We said good-bye and I clicked off.
I handed the phone back to Luke, then rested my head on my laptop’s keyboard. “All of this drama is exhausting.”
“They mean well, but they’re serious pains in the ass.”
I gestured toward the pages scattered across the kitchen table. “There are an awful lot of you MacKenzies.”
He picked up one of the pages and started to laugh. “Family crib notes?”
“It’s either that or make them wear name tags.”
“We don’t have to do this. I’ll tell them you have to work or something.”
“I have to do it.”
“Not for me.”
“For me,” I said. “For the baby.”
“There’s plenty of time for that after she’s here.”
“I want to do it right, Luke. I want her to have all the things I didn’t have growing up.”
“You were loved,” he reminded me. “Everyone in town parented you.”
I shook my head. “But it wasn’t the same.” Sorcha the Healer had loved me most of all, stepping into the yawning emptiness where my mother used to be, pouring all of her love and skill and wisdom into me until I overflowed. But a tiny part of me was always aware of the fact that Lilith was her daughter by blood while I was her child by circumstance.
Luke glanced around the room again. “Where’s the she-beast? I don’t smell any brimstone.”
I didn’t have to ask whom he meant. “She’s at the shop torturing Bettina.”
“So we’re alone.”
His smile was so hopeful that I fell in love with him all over again.
“Almost,” I said, pointing toward my bump. “In case you forgot, I’m extremely pregnant.”
He pressed a kiss to the side of my neck and I shivered. “In case you forgot, I’m extremely inventive.”
And for the next forty minutes he set about refreshing my memory.
8
CHLOE—THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY
“Terrible, terrible,” Elspeth muttered from the backseat. “Nobody listens to me and now the die is cast.”
Luke glanced at her through the rearview mirror. “You want to pipe down back there? I’m trying to keep us alive long enough to get to brunch.”
Not exactly words I wanted to hear as he maneuvered his way around a fender bender on the hill leading up to Carole’s Lakeside Inn. I tried not to look at the rear-ended minivan or the crying kids peering out the side window as we inched past.
“It wasn’t supposed to snow,” I said for probably the eightieth time since we’d left Sugar Maple a few hours earlier. “The forecast was for cold and sunny all the way.” So far we’d driven through at least five inches of sunny with more to come.
“Humans,” Elspeth said with a snort of derision. I had never actually heard a derisive snort before, but, trust me, you’ll know one when you hear it. “Don’t know which way is up if you stand them on their head.”
Luke grunted something unintelligible. I had stopped asking for translations before we even left the Sugar Maple town limits. Elspeth didn’t bring out the best in him.
Or anybody else for that matter.
“Remind me why she’s here,” Luke said as he adjusted the defroster.
“Because she doesn’t take no for an answer,” I whispered. “At least she promised me she’d stay away from the brunch.” I didn’t know what she would do with herself while we were with the MacKenzie clan, but as long as she stayed quiet, invisible, and in a different dimension we had a fighting chance.
“I hear ye,” Elspeth said. “I’m here because Himself wanted it that way, but there are many places between heaven and earth where I would rather be.”
Tell us something we don’t know.
“You need to work on your attitude,” I said to her over my shoulde
r. “All of this gloom-and-doom talk is getting on my nerves.” I had had a terrible nightmare the night before, not for the first time, that left me shaken and weepy. I was trapped in a dark room and I could hear the baby crying, but no matter what I did I couldn’t find her. I wasn’t a big fan of those dreams.
“Truth is like chicory,” Elspeth said. “It leaves a bitter aftertaste in an unwilling mouth.”
Luke and I locked eyes for a second, then we burst into laughter.
“’Tisn’t funny,” Elspeth declared, her rubbery round body vibrating with outrage. “You have no business being here today, I tell you, no business.”
“You know,” Luke said to me, “she’s probably right.”
“I heard that,” Elspeth said with more than a note of triumph in her nails-on-a-blackboard voice.
“It’s the snow,” I said as I tried to squeeze in one more row on the hoodie I was making for the baby. Road trips, even short ones, had dwindled in the last few months and everyone knows knitters love their road trips. “Everything was okay until it started to snow.”
“You should be home where you belong.” Elspeth continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “There be a reason for all things, missy, and the spells of containment weaken with every mile you travel away from the center.”
“Spells of containment? You’re making that up.” I’d never heard anything about a spell of containment, and I was the hotshot sorceress.
“The spells of containment nurture the babe until the time is right to be born and not before.” She gave me one of those troll looks I hated. “There be no early births in Sugar Maple, not now or ever.”
I thought back through years of baby showers and Presentation ceremonies. “She’s right,” I said to Luke. “I can’t recall any premature births.”
“And there won’t be one now,” Elspeth said. “Not so long as ye stay where ye belong.”
Which I hadn’t. We were at least one hundred miles away from Sugar Maple and those spells of containment. Despite the warmth from the heater, one of those weird chills rippled through me. I tried to shake it off, but a sense of unease lingered.
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