She could think of a thousand why-nots but none of them mattered. “I have a big family,” she warned.
“How big is big?” he asked.
“Osmond family big.”
“Do they wear name tags?”
She started to laugh. “We should. That would make life a lot easier for the newcomers.”
She gave him the basics while he pretended to listen.
“It’s not that bad,” she said. “Besides, we won’t stay too long, I promise.”
“Do they know you like this?” He drew his index finger along her rib cage, long, voluptuous strokes that sent shivers through her body.
“No.”
“Or this?” The strokes grew longer, more intimate.
“Not that, either.”
He gripped her by the waist with those powerful hands and rolled her on top so she straddled him. “Don’t worry,” he said as he guided her movements. “I won’t leave any more marks.”
But she wasn’t worried. She wasn’t thinking about her family any longer.
She wasn’t thinking at all.
20
CHLOE
It seemed like I blinked and Laria was one week old.
The days and nights were a blur of diapers and Snuglis and nursing bras and mini comas that tried to pass for sleep. I was tired in a way I couldn’t have imagined eight short days ago.
And happier. The fact that I was a mother, that this tiny little being was a part of my blood, overwhelmed me. When I thought about the series of random events that had brought Luke into my life and how those events resulted in the creation of this perfect baby girl—well, if I hadn’t been so tired I probably would have cried, but crying took way more energy than I had at the moment.
Fortunately for all of us, Luke was a natural at fatherhood. He didn’t just pick up the slack where the baby was concerned, he did everything short of breastfeeding Laria.
The morning of the Presentation ceremony I sent Luke out to get some bagels and other goodies for his family while Janice came over to do something with my hair, which hadn’t seen shampoo or a brush since forever.
“You’re wearing that?” Janice said, pointing toward the charcoal gray pants and ivory handknitted sweater I had laid out on the bed.
“What’s wrong with it?” I demanded, instantly alert. “It will all be hidden under my coat anyway.”
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I just thought you should have something special.”
And with that she made a quick gesture with her right hand and suddenly a magnificent wrap floated toward me.
“Oh, Janice!” I whispered. “It’s incredible.”
When it came to knitting skills I liked to think of myself as up there near the top, but this surpassed anything I had ever done.
“I’ve been working on it since you told me about the baby.” The wrap was a generous rectangle worked in soft ivory lace-weight silk and spangled with tiny crystals that made the wrap look like it was lit from within.
“I don’t know what to say,” I said and burst into tears.
Which, of course, made Janice burst into tears, too.
“Get a grip,” she ordered, sniffling. “There’s more.”
A baby blanket as soft as a whisper and worked in the same ivory lace (but without the crystals) appeared and I totally lost it.
“I want to make sure the fashion police don’t do a number on my heartdaughter today,” she said, grinning through happy tears.
Heartdaughter was our term for goddaughter.
“If they do,” I said, “they’ll answer to me.”
“By the way,” Janice said, “it’s baby-barf resistant.”
Leave it to Janice to think of everything.
“You know who should be here,” I said, clutching the precious knitted garments to my chest.
She met my eyes. “Gunnar.”
I nodded. “It doesn’t feel right without him, does it?”
“Not even close,” she said. “He’d be so happy for you and Luke.”
“I dreamed about him the last few nights,” I admitted. “I keep trying to tell him about Laria, but I never seem to get the words out.”
Janice sighed. “I dreamed about him a lot after it happened but not so much anymore. I miss that. It felt like a way of hanging on to him.”
“I hope he knows about her,” I said as I opened my blouse and flipped open the cup on my nursing bra. “I like to think he does.”
“Who knows what goes on in the other dimensions?” Janice said. “I guess anything is possible.”
Last year he had communicated with me through Penelope, the feline companion who had been by the side of every Hobbs woman since Aerynn. Somehow he had reached beyond his dimension to help Luke’s ex-wife and daughter find happiness away from the constraints of the mortal world. If I lived a thousand years I could never repay the debt I owed him. Without Gunnar’s original sacrifice, Luke and I would never have created the baby girl I held in my arms.
While Janice worked on my hair I nursed Laria and tried hard not to stare at the tiny red dot on top of her perfect little head.
“Will you stop that?” Janice said as she wrapped a chunk of hair around the curling iron. “It’s just one of those little angioma thingies like Brianne and Lilith said, and it’s totally normal in human babies. When her hair grows in you’ll forget it’s there.”
“That’s what I keep telling Luke, but I don’t think he’s listening.”
“He’s a worrier same as you. Worriers need to have something minor to worry about so they don’t totally freak out.”
“He e-mailed a jpeg of it to his mother.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” she said, laughing. “I have a dangerous weapon in my hand.”
“There’s more,” I said, as I switched Laria from my right breast to my left. “He thinks Elspeth did it.”
Janice burst into hysterical laughter. “I thought she was gone.”
“She is gone,” I said, “at least as far as we know. There hasn’t been a sighting since Luke kicked her out on Sunday.”
“But he thinks she came back to put a strawberry angioma on his daughter’s head?”
“That’s pretty much exactly what he thinks.”
Janice wound another chunk of hair around the curling iron. “I know Elspeth’s a pain in the ass, but why exactly would she do that?”
“Because he threw her out.”
“Nobody throws a troll out,” Janice reminded me. “She left because it was time for her to go.”
“I wish you’d tell Luke that because he’s convinced she’s lurking in the shadows.” I started to giggle. “He said he keeps smelling stale waffles.”
Janice made a choking sound. “What is it with trolls and that baked goods smell anyway?”
“Lilith has a nice ginger cookie kind of scent.”
Now Janice was giggling. “But her Archie is uncooked pizza dough.”
Laria’s eyelids were at half-mast and fading fast and we struggled to rein in the laughter. I bent my head and inhaled her amazing baby smell. “I never believed all that talk about newborns, but they really do smell incredible.”
“That’s a human thing,” Janice said with a shrug. “My babies just smelled like milk.”
“You have no idea what you’re missing.”
“By the way, you have a red mark on your head, too.” She met my eyes in the bedroom mirror. “Almost in the same spot.”
“I do not.”
“Actually you do. It’s been there as long as I’ve been doing your hair, which is pretty much forever.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s your head. I figured you already knew.”
“How could I know? Are my eyes on stalks?”
“Well, now you do,” she said, clearly amused by my reaction. “Whatever it is, both you and Laria have it, so I wouldn’t worry too much.”
I tried to laugh, but a sudden, unexpected rush of fear raced throu
gh me.
“What?” Janice demanded, winding yet another chunk of hair around her trusty curling iron. “Did I say the wrong thing?”
“It’s not you. It’s just—” I struggled to find the words. “I don’t know. This is all so perfect that I keep expecting something terrible to happen.”
“Hormones,” Janice said over the baby’s adorable snuffling noises. “Things will even out in fifteen or twenty years. I promise.”
Who else but your best friend could make you laugh when your maternal hormones were running amok?
“I needed that,” I said as she put the finishing touches on my more presentable hair. “I was starting to feel like that Peanuts character, the one who walks around with a dark cloud over his head.”
“You want something to worry about?”
I shot her a look. “Have we met?”
“Elspeth is back.”
“You’re kidding, right?” She had to be. “This is just to make me quit bitching about red dots and Luke’s family.”
“She showed up last night while I was outside practicing the moon worship dance she taught me.”
“She taught you a dance?” The thought of the beachball-shaped troll teaching anyone to dance made me giggle.
“I’ll ignore that.” She couldn’t, however, suppress the sheepish grin. “Anyway, she’s back, so don’t be surprised if she shows up at the Presentation.”
“It makes perfect sense. The Presentation is the baby’s welcome to the community. Samuel would want her to see it through.”
Janice put the finishing touches on my hair. “Now I’m the one who’s surprised. I thought you’d totally freak.”
“Talk to me after the ceremony,” I said. “If she’s not gone before the MacKenzie clan arrives, then you’ll see me freak.”
LUKE
Per instructions, we were the last ones to arrive at the green for the Presentation ceremony. It was probably the first and last time a crowd would ever part to let me pass, but it happened that day.
Chloe, cradling Laria against her chest, smiled nervously as Lilith, Janice, and the other townswomen glided toward us with arms outstretched.
Nothing prepared me for how I felt when Chloe and Laria stepped into that circle and I felt the love flowing toward them from the entire town. Chloe was their link to Aerynn and Samuel and the past that forged Sugar Maple. Laria was the promise that the Hobbs link would remain strong for another generation and Sugar Maple would thrive.
Chloe was their present, but Laria was their future.
It seemed like everyone in town had shown up for the Presentation. The village green was crowded with familiar faces, entire families who had bundled up against the winter cold to mark the occasion. Arranged in a circle in front of the lighthouse stood the women most important in Chloe’s life: Janice, Lynette, Lilith, Renate, Midge Stallworth, Verna Griggs, and Bettina. They were all dressed alike in flowing burgundy velvet robes with hoods trimmed with dark fur. If I didn’t know better I would have thought I had stepped back in time to another century.
Janice glided forward and motioned for Chloe and Laria to join her at the center of the circle.
Chloe’s expression was simultaneously solemn and joyous as she and Laria joined her friend. Janice said something I couldn’t make out. Chloe nodded, then placed Laria in Janice’s arms.
Janice smiled, placed a kiss on the baby’s forehead, then took her place in the circle between Lilith and Lynette while Chloe watched from the center.
A choir began to sing from somewhere behind the gazebo. The tune was plaintive, their voices sweet and hopeful, and I choked up despite my best efforts not to. It was tough to be cool when that was the woman you loved being honored and your baby daughter being welcomed into the community with so much genuine affection and caring.
“Waste of time, if you ask me,” a grating male voice intoned a few rows behind me. “The kid’s more human than magick. She’ll never fulfill her promise.”
“Darn right,” a female voice agreed. “Sugar Maple’s about to get screwed all over again.”
There’s an asshole (or two) in every crowd. I turned around to glare at the big mouths, but the voices were unfamiliar so I didn’t know where to direct my ire.
I took a deep breath, counted to fifty, and then redirected my attention to the Presentation ceremony. The singing stopped and Janice turned toward Lynette, who opened her arms and accepted Laria into them. She whispered something that made Chloe wipe her eyes with a swift swipe of her right hand, then placed a kiss on the baby’s forehead same as Janice had done.
One by one the women who were important in Chloe’s life took our baby into their arms with whispered words and a gentle kiss. Not a bad way to start life. I had half expected Laria would sleep through the whole thing, but she was awake and very still, watching the proceedings with interest. Being passed from woman to woman didn’t seem to bother her a bit. Most infants would be screaming their lungs out, but not my kid. She was a trouper.
Finally Lilith held out her arms for the baby. She whispered something to Laria, same as the others had, but this time the baby seemed to pull back. Lilith didn’t react. She smiled sweetly and placed a kiss on Laria’s forehead, then returned her to Janice’s arms with the words, “A wise woman sees the future in the eyes of a child.”
Janice nodded and held her heartdaughter close to her chest and if I didn’t know better I would think the wisecracking hairstylist was crying.
Hell, I practically was myself.
Music started up again from behind the gazebo and the sound of the children’s voices raised in song joined in. I didn’t understand a word, but nothing new about that. There was a common language among magicks and it definitely wasn’t English.
I sneaked a peek at my watch. Not because I was bored but because my folks were due to arrive around noon. We still had time, but they needed to move this thing along so I wouldn’t have to explain it to my staunchly Irish Catholic family.
The music stopped again. The children’s voices faded away.
I was half expecting a Lion King moment, but Janice continued to hold Laria close against her chest as she spoke to the crowd assembled on the green.
“A new soul is a blessing to us all and in return we bestow our blessings on Laria, child of Aerynn through Chloe. May she know only joy. May she live in the light of love and peace.”
Janice turned toward Chloe, whose beautiful face beamed with pride.
“Come forward, Chloe, and be mother to the child Laria.”
Chloe looked toward me, and damn, it was hard to see her through the sudden tears that filled my eyes. Whatever residual longing I might have still had for the world outside Sugar Maple faded away. I was where I was meant to be.
I nodded. Chloe smiled and took a step toward Laria and Janice. Before I could grasp what was happening, she let out a sharp cry of surprise and flew backward into poor Midge Stallworth and the two of them fell to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs.
I was halfway to Chloe when she suddenly leaped to her feet, brushed the snow from her black coat, then helped Midge up from the snowdrift they had landed in.
“Well,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh, “it’s not like you guys don’t know I’m a klutz.”
The assembled crowd laughed with her in sympathy, but the buzz of whispered comments began to spread through the crowd like a virus. My fists clenched at my sides as I steeled myself for some snarky cracks about Chloe, but what they said shocked the hell out of me.
. . . the baby has magick . . . one week old . . . it’s a miracle, that’s what it is . . . no child has ever shown so much power so early . . . and she’s three-quarters human . . . can you imagine what a force she would be if only Chloe had mated with one of us? . . .
Didn’t they remember their own history? Laria didn’t have magick. Serious magick didn’t flow into a Hobbs woman until she fell in love and that was a hell of a long way away.
I turned around an
d shot my best cop look at the crowd in general. This was my home, too. Whether or not they liked it, mortals were here and we weren’t going away. Chloe was half human. I was full-blooded. Our daughter was more human than magick. Those were the facts and I was getting a little tired of the constant jabs at our shared lineage.
The buzz faded away and I focused back in on what was happening within the circle.
I figured we were almost at the finish line and was surprised when our newest residents, the Fae contingent from Salem, made an appearance. At least that was what Paul Griggs told me, since as a mortal I couldn’t see them at all. They gathered overhead like a giant cloud of glitter in every color of the rainbow, then swooped down, swarming Chloe and Laria, knitting a lacy pattern of pink and yellow and blue and violet glitter chains around them. Chloe’s eyes were damp with tears and she looked deeply moved by the gesture. Hard to believe that less than one year ago we had been engaged in a battle to the death with these same creatures.
“And now we have reached the end of our festivities,” Lilith said, her lovely face aglow with happiness for us. “Let’s all join hands and raise our voices in the Sugar Maple anthem.”
I don’t sing. And I’d heard Chloe in the shower so I knew she didn’t sing, either. But we launched into a rousing version of the anthem anyway, which was followed by “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which was followed by cheers and applause and more happy tears from this crazy gathering of faeries and sprites and witches and werewolves and vampires and shapeshifters and trolls and one very happy sorceress.
And the best part? So far there still wasn’t a MacKenzie in sight.
21
MEGHAN
James pulled onto the shoulder a few feet in front of the “Welcome to Sugar Maple” sign.
“This is as far as I go.”
Megan heard his words through the heavy fog of sleep. Yawning, she forced herself to sit upright and open her eyes.
“How long was I out?” she asked, running a finger around the corner of her mouth where a patch of dampness had accumulated. Drool. Yeah, that was hot. She hoped he hadn’t noticed.
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