Spells & Stitches

by Barbara Bretton

  “Long enough,” he said. “You missed breakfast.”

  That woke her up the rest of the way. “You ate breakfast without telling me?”

  “I tried, babe, but you were out for the count.”

  She glanced up at the welcome sign. “Why are we stopped here?”

  “I told you. This is as far as I go.”

  She waited for the punch line, but there wasn’t one. He didn’t say a word.

  Even in unforgiving daylight he was perfect. Chiseled face, even features, thick glossy hair, seductive icy blue eyes, body to die for. A little self-absorbed, but that was to be expected. Most gorgeous men of her acquaintance spent a fair amount of time at the mirror and James was no exception.

  “Okay,” she said carefully. “I get it. You need to gear up before you meet the family. We can wait a few minutes before we jump in. I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink or ten before I meet the family, and I’m related to them.”

  Still nothing.

  She tried again. “They probably have a bar in town. We could stop and get some fortification.”

  She might as well have been talking to the welcome sign. Funny how chiseled features could turn to stone when you weren’t looking.

  She struggled to keep her voice even. “I really don’t want to be the last one there.”

  He turned to her, his piercing blue eyes hooded and unknowable. “You’re not listening. This is as far as I go.”

  “We didn’t come all this way for us to stop here.”

  “Nobody is stopping you from being with your family.”

  “Wait a second.” She tried to collect her thoughts, but they had scattered like scared mice. “This isn’t a joke?”

  “It’s no joke.”

  “You’re just going to leave me here.”

  “Afraid so.”

  “You won’t even drive me to Luke’s place?” She had a lousy sense of direction. She’d be wandering that stupid town for hours.

  “For the fourth time, this is as far as I go.”

  “And you waited until now to tell me.”

  “I didn’t know myself.”

  “Okay,” she said, relaxing, “now I know you’re kidding.” Nobody sane would drive across two states on a Sunday morning in December to pull a stunt like that.

  “Listen,” he said, drumming his strong fingers on the steering wheel, “either get out or come with. Your choice.”

  There was no choice. Not anymore. She gathered up her stuff, slid out of the car, then slammed the door shut behind her.

  “Want me to come back for you in a couple hours?” He looked as relaxed as if he had spent a day on the sofa watching football. “We could head up to one of those ski resorts you were talking about.”

  “What I want you to do is go fuck yourself.”

  “I’ll come back,” he said, laughing, “and when I do you’ll be here.”

  Throwing her tote bag at him as he drove away was a ridiculously stupid thing to do, but it felt good even if it did miss the car by a mile. This was why she didn’t believe in owning guns. If she’d had a firearm on her, he would be lying dead right now in a pool of his own blood and she would be dancing around his corpse.

  Maybe not dancing, but it would definitely be a while before she felt any remorse.

  The son of a bitch had her car.

  22

  CHLOE

  I was so busy congratulating myself for making sure the Presentation ceremony was over before the MacKenzie clan descended on us that I totally forgot about the buffet Janice and Lynette were hosting at town hall in less than an hour. The entire village had been invited and, trust me, the entire village was going to show up.

  The residents of Sugar Maple never missed out on a free meal and if there was the slightest possible chance that some good gossip might break out—well, try to keep them away.

  “We’re screwed,” I said to Luke as we raced around the cottage, picking up laundry, scanning for dust bunnies, making sure the litter boxes were clean. Not to mention seeing to it that Laria was changed, fed, burped, and dressed in her most adorable handknits. “Our worlds are about to collide!”

  “I thought they’d already collided at the shop after Thanksgiving.”

  “Not like this they didn’t. Every single resident of Sugar Maple is going to make sure to show up and check out your family and I can’t do a thing to stop it.”

  He looked like he was enjoying himself, which only upset me more. “Another blizzard?” he suggested. “Or you could take out the bridge. That usually works.”

  “Don’t be a wise guy.”

  “I was trying to be helpful.”

  “If you really want to be helpful, see if you can find the BSJ Janice made for the baby.”

  He stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language, which I guess I was. Knitting does have a language all its own. “The pink-and-purple-striped sweater with the fancy buttons.” I spared him the story of Elizabeth Zimmermann and her amazing one-piece garter stitch jacket that had been delighting knitters for decades.

  Wonderful handknits had been arriving from just about everywhere. Long-time customers, newbies, old friends, and even some people I didn’t think liked me all that well—they had taken up their needles when they heard I was pregnant and created garments that literally took my breath away.

  Laria would be the best-dressed infant in New England and maybe the Mid-Atlantic and Canada, too. She had received sweaters, socks, caps, heirloom-quality blankets, squishy stuffed toys, soakers, mitts so tiny they made me laugh every time I looked at them. And no wimpy baby pastels for my daughter! She would be garbed in every color of the rainbow if my friends had anything to do with it.

  Luke came back with the BSJ, a pair of adorable purple angora booties, and a soft cap that somehow captured all of the colors on a very small scale. We struggled a little getting those tiny arms into the equally tiny sleeves of the jacket and our eyes met over our daughter’s squirming body and for a moment I swear time stopped. Not in the magick way, but in my heart.

  “I know,” he said, as my eyes filled with tears. “I feel it, too.”

  “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and find out this is all a dream.”

  “This time last year we were just getting to know each other.”

  “And falling in love.”

  “You took some convincing,” he said. “I fell in love with you the moment I saw you.”

  “You said I was asleep on the sofa with my mouth open, snoring like crazy.”

  “So maybe I like women who snore.”

  I could feel my heart growing two sizes larger inside my chest, like the Grinch’s heart on Christmas morning.

  It was a good feeling, but there was no time for sentimental walks down memory lane. We had a baby sorceress to finish dressing and a human family about to descend on us any minute.

  “I’m going to send out a group blueflame,” I told Luke, “and make sure they all know your family will be at the party. I don’t want anyone getting crazy and doing something I can’t explain short of shock treatment.”

  My head spun at the thought of how many things could go wrong. The group blueflame was my last chance to head trouble off at the pass and keep some of our more colorful residents from putting on the kind of show not meant for human consumption.

  I had barely doused the flame when Renate’s youngest daughter exploded into the room in a spray of bubblegum pink glitter. Not exactly what you’d expect from a teenage goth queen, but the Fae had no choice over their identifying colors. Nature made the choice for them and it was theirs until they pierced the veil.

  “Mom says it’s an emergency,” she said from her perch atop the diaper bag. When it comes to displaying boredom and disdain, Fae teens were the same as their human counterparts. “Some girl knocked on the door looking for you and Luke.”

  “Some girl?” Luke appeared in the doorway. “What girl? We need more information, Calli.”

  She shru
gged her narrow little shoulders and bounced up and down on the quilted fabric. “All I know is what my mother told me. There’s a girl at the door and she’s looking for you.” She gave Luke a quick but coy look. “Mom says she’s a human, too.”

  And then she was gone in a giant burst of glitter and angst.

  “It’s got to be Meghan,” Luke said when we were outside, as he positioned Laria in the car seat. “She’s the only MacKenzie who doesn’t travel in a herd.”

  “I’m not going to get hysterical yet,” I announced to the world in general. “We’re lucky she showed up at the Sugar Maple Inn to ask for directions and not the Stallworths’ funeral parlor.” The thought of Midge, a cheerful but bawdy vampire, being Meghan’s first contact with Sugar Maple made me dizzy. “Don’t even think it.”

  The Weavers knew how to deal with humans. Their Sugar Maple Inn did a thriving restaurant business, but, when outsiders inquired, their guest rooms were always mysteriously “filled.” If Luke’s sister had to turn up somewhere unexpected, at least she had picked the right place.

  My cell phone vibrated and I peered at the message on the screen.

  “Renate says we should go straight to the party. She’ll walk over there with your sister.”

  He started the engine and looked over at me. “At least Elspeth’s not here. That’s something.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but she was at the Presentation ceremony. I’m surprised you didn’t see her on top of the lighthouse.” Then again, when it came to cloaking, Elspeth was Olympic gold.

  “Shit.” He smacked the steering wheel.

  “Luke!” I tilted my head toward the newborn asleep in her car seat.

  “She doesn’t understand.”

  “It’s never too early.”

  He gave me a look that was somewhere between amused and exasperated. “So Elspeth didn’t really leave.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “What the hell is she doing hanging around? Is she going to stay here forever?”

  “She hates it here,” I reminded him. “She probably had to stay until the Presentation and Laria’s formal acceptance into the community. I’ll bet she’s back in Salem right now bothering someone else.”

  Luke grunted something, but I didn’t pursue the topic. We had more than an irritable troll to worry about today.

  To my surprise it looked like everyone in town had chosen to walk to town hall instead of utilizing less traditionally mortal forms of transportation. The sidewalks were packed with werewolves, trolls, spirits, witches, myriad branches of the Fae, and shapeshifters and all of them in human form.

  My eyes filled with grateful tears. “Wow,” I said, waving at Lynette as we moved slowly past the Pendragon clan. “They’re really going all out to make this work.”

  “Looks like the damn Easter Parade,” Luke said as he beeped hello at half the residents of Sugar Maple Assisted Living, who were careening up the block on their motorized Rascals.

  “Oh!” I spotted the Weavers near the parking lot. “I think I see your sister. Is she kind of medium height with curly light brown hair?”

  He glanced in the direction I pointed. “That’s her.”

  “You’re not going to stop and offer her a lift?”

  “She’s fifty yards away from town hall. We’ll catch up with her there.”

  “She looks like she’s been crying.”

  “She probably broke up with her latest.”

  “You don’t sound very sympathetic.”

  “She goes from one bastard to another. It’s like she has some kind of radar that zeroes in on the one guy in the room who’ll hurt her.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My own romantic history was so limited that I felt like a child at the grown-ups’ table whenever the conversation turned to affairs of the heart.

  Or of the body, for that matter. I didn’t exactly have much of a history there, either.

  The parking lot was filled with cars with Massachusetts plates, a Connecticut, two New York, and a Rhode Island. It wasn’t so much the fact that they were Luke’s relatives that made my stomach turn inside out; it was the fact that they were human.

  “Okay,” I said as we unstrapped baby Laria from the car seat and gathered up the mountains of stuff newborns seemed to need, “it’s time for our worlds to collide.”

  Our town hall was a desanctified church that we had turned into our central meeting place. Monthly council meetings, wedding receptions, sweet sixteen parties, even an occasional prom or retirement party. This was our venue of choice.

  Today it was the site of my Laria’s welcome party.

  I positioned the baby in her Snugli. Luke’s arms were piled high with blankets, diaper bag, and the cakes we’d baked for his family. We had no sooner stepped across the threshold when a giant cheer rang out and we were surrounded by laughing, crying members of the MacKenzie clan, all of whom wanted to kiss and hug and coo over baby Laria.

  “They forgot all about us,” I said to Luke as Bunny and Jack beamed over their newest grandchild. “We might as well be invisible.”

  He shot me a look.

  “Kidding,” I said, gently poking him in the arm. “This is a no-magick zone today.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Oh, crap,” I muttered, gesturing toward the other side of the room. “Elspeth’s lurking around the punch bowl.”

  Luke started across the room, but I pulled him back.

  “Let’s just keep an eye on her,” I said.

  We watched as she chatted up one of Luke’s uncles.

  “She’s flirting with Uncle Matty.” Luke sounded downright outraged.

  “It gets worse,” I said. “He’s flirting back.”

  “There goes my appetite.”

  Luke’s father joined us. His wide, handsome face was aglow with what looked like total bliss. He started to say something about baby Laria, but his hazel eyes filled with tears and his face crumpled up like a handkerchief. Next thing I knew, both Luke and I were enveloped in a bear hug that bordered on incarceration.

  “Jeez, Pop!” Luke said when he came up for air. “Ease up on the Old Spice, will you?”

  “He’s your father,” I chided Luke. “Show some respect.”

  “I love this girl,” Jack said, giving me another hug. “You two should go ahead and get married.”

  “Pop,” Luke warned. “Knock it off.”

  “You’re young. You’re in love. Chloe looks like a movie star—” He stopped midsentence. “Come to think of it, what’s in the water around here? You’re a knockout, Chloe, don’t get me wrong, but you’re practically the plain one around here! Even the olds guys on the scooters look like matinee idols.” His chuckle was deep and gravelly. “Hell, I thought I saw Clark Gable near the hardware store.”

  Luke practically mugged his father to shut him up, but I burst into laughter. Yes, my cheeks were red-hot with embarrassment, but I knew he meant it as a compliment. Well, a sort-of compliment anyway.

  “I think my old man’s had a few too many rum punches,” Luke said. “I’m going to snap some photos while he’s still upright.”

  Jack was far too mellow to protest.

  Some of the crew from Fully Caffeinated came forward to congratulate me on Laria’s birth and Presentation.

  “We wanted you to have this,” Camille, one of the younger baristas, said as she handed me a beautiful log cabin crib quilt in every color of the rainbow. “We all worked on it. We tried to have it ready for your shower but didn’t quite make it.” She flipped it over and showed me the inscription complete with their names and the date of Laria’s birth embroidered on the back.

  “This is beautiful,” I said as the tears threatened once again. “I can’t believe you did this for us.”

  Camille cast a quick glance at her sister baristas and they all laughed. “Well, we can’t believe little Laria is showing magick already. That was some display this morning at the Presentation.”

  “What di
splay?”

  She winked at me and lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Oh, don’t worry! You can be a proud mama around us. Who would think a baby with so much human blood would show so much talent so soon?”

  Lynette joined us, and Camille and the crew smiled and drifted back into the crowd after I thanked them profusely one more time.

  “Laria is all anyone’s talking about,” Lynette said to me. “They all seem to think she’s presenting magick! Can you believe that?”

  “That’s exactly what Camille said. I didn’t see any magick, did you?”

  “Remember when you fell at the end of the ceremony?”

  “I wish I could forget.” My adventures in klutziness were legendary.

  “Well, they don’t think you tripped.”

  “Hello. Have they met me? I can trip over thin air.” She looked so uncomfortable that I stopped short. “What do they think happened?”

  “It’s too ridiculous to even repeat.”

  “Repeat it,” I said. “I want to know.”

  “They—” She looked away for a second and shook her head. “They think Laria did it.”

  I started to laugh out loud. “Little six-pound-something Laria pushed me into a snowdrift?” My laughter grew louder. “Now that’s funny!”

  Lynette wasn’t laughing. “They think her powers are coming in.”

  “She’s a week old.”

  “I’m just telling you what I heard.”

  “I hope you told them how ridiculous an idea that is.”

  “Is it?”

  I stared at her, openmouthed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I was there, Chloe. I’ve got to be honest with you: I didn’t see you trip.”

  “Of course I tripped.”

  Lynette looked like she was a half step away from shifting into her canary persona and flying away.

  “Don’t you dare,” I warned her, sotto voce. “This place is lousy with humans.”

  “You were moving forward, then suddenly you were airborne and moving backward. That’s not how it happens when you trip.”

  “And when did you get your degree in physics, Mrs. Pendragon?”