“First find them,” I said, trying to quell my own rising panic, “then we’ll figure out what to do about Elspeth.” I gave him the thought probe coordinates, as best I could, and it definitely sounded like they were at or near the burial ground.
Sometimes Luke forgot exactly what he was dealing with here in Sugar Maple. Elspeth’s powers were formidable. The other trolls in town were in awe of her abilities. Even Janice, who was distantly related to her on Elspeth’s mother’s side, looked at the cantankerous old crone with unabashed awe. I couldn’t imagine Luke coming out ahead in any battle he fought with Elspeth.
Jack MacKenzie sprang into action while Luke and I exchanged information.
“Spread out,” Jack ordered his family. “Check every street, knock on every door, look behind every shrub. If nobody answers your knock, kick the door down, but find that baby.”
“Hold on a second!” Lilith’s husband, Archie, stormed up to Jack in high dudgeon. “Kick my door down and I’ll kick your ass!”
Lilith put a calming hand on Archie’s shoulder. “He’s upset, Archie,” she said in a soft voice. “He won’t really kick down our door.”
“The hell I won’t.” Jack stared at the short and furious troll. “That’s my granddaughter we’re talking about. I’ll burn this town down if that’s what it takes.”
Definitely not the right thing to say.
The town went berserk. The crew from Assisted Living aimed their scooters straight at Jack while calling out his ancestry in colorful terms.
Poor Jack. He had no way of knowing Sugar Maple’s back-story, how our foremothers and forefathers had fled persecution in Salem to find freedom here.
But there was a definite upside to the melee.
“Go now!” I whispered to Luke while the MacKenzies and the townspeople squared off. “You can find Laria and straighten this all out before Jack and Archie stop yelling at each other.”
He took off at a run for the burial grounds.
I turned to find Meghan looking at me with a quizzical look on her face.
“You take your crowd,” I said, “and I’ll take mine. We’ll hope for the best.” As long as magick didn’t break out and turn the garden-variety brouhaha into a nuclear meltdown we had a chance.
“Sounds like a plan,” she said and we waded into the fray.
“Frank!” I cried. “Manny! Rose! Everyone! Turn off those scooters and get a grip.”
“He threatened to burn down the town,” Archie the troll cried. “I heard him myself.”
“Why are we wasting time arguing?” Meghan said. “We should be out looking for Laria. She’s the only thing that’s important right now.”
“It’s the man’s grandchild, Archie,” Lilith said in that soothing voice of hers. “You can’t blame him for being upset.” And if she put the slightest extra emphasis on the word “man” only the magick would notice.
It worked. Archie backed down. Jack scaled back his rhetoric. And two minutes later they all headed out to scour Sugar Maple for my daughter.
“Where did Luke go?” Meghan glanced around at the departing crowd.
“He figured Elspeth might have taken the baby back to our cottage. He went to check.” Lies, lies, and more lies. I would have felt guilty, but the stakes were way too high. Besides, she’d never believe the truth.
“Funny thing,” Meghan said, looking at me intently, “but you don’t look half as upset as you did a few moments ago.”
Crap. As far as I knew she had never been a cop, but there was no doubt she had inherited the same detective genes as her brother. “This is a very safe town. Besides, she’s with her nanny.”
“You mean that weird Betty White lookalike.”
“Elspeth,” I said, “and I don’t really see the resemblance.” Definitely time to tone down the Hollywood vibe.
“Five minutes ago I thought you were going to have a stroke. Now you’re okay with it. Did I miss something?”
I made a silly face and rolled my eyes for emphasis. “Hormones,” I said, falling back on that age-old excuse for crazy behavior by both sexes. “One second I’m happy, the next second I’m crying my eyes out. And here I thought PMS was bad!”
It was a lie. I knew it was a lie and I’m pretty sure she did, too.
But then her new boyfriend texted her and she forgot about my lie, about me, about everything but the words on the screen.
Whoever he was, I owed him a big, fat thank-you.
24
LUKE
I took off for the burial grounds like the hounds of hell were after me. I shot down Osborne skidding on patches of ice and new-fallen snow.
Laria.
I could see her tiny face in front of me, hear those soft, mewling cries.
I’d known from the start that something wasn’t right with Elspeth. From the very beginning I could see we were headed down a dangerous road with the elusive, intractable troll Samuel had set on our house like one of the biblical plagues and I couldn’t understand why Chloe remained blind to the truth.
Hell, she could be mixed up with the Salem Fae who had settled in Sugar Maple a few months ago. The Salem Fae had pledged their loyalty but centuries-old animosities didn’t disappear overnight. Unless I missed my guess, not all of the Salem Fae had been in favor of the decision and it was just a matter of time before trouble started.
Sugar Maple existed and thrived in the world of mortals and you only had to spend five seconds with Elspeth to know her opinion of my species. Elspeth and the more disgruntled members of the Salem contingent? It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they had formed some kind of alliance.
First Elspeth marked my daughter’s head with some weird red dot and now it looked like she had spirited Laria off to an old burial ground where nobody except Chloe’s father was actually buried.
Nobody was going to take my child to a cemetery and perform some weird mumbo-jumbo rite. I’d had a bellyful of strange-ass shit since coming to Sugar Maple and I had learned to accept what was good and ignore the rest. But hell, Elspeth wasn’t even part of Sugar Maple. I didn’t give a damn that Samuel Bramford had given her marching orders before he pierced the veil or died or whatever happened to magicks when they left this realm. All I knew was that I was putting a stop to it now.
Elspeth’s back was to me as I approached, her cape spread out around her like a giant pup tent. She was crooning something in that rusty-nail voice of hers, more sounds than words, although if they were words they definitely weren’t in English. I listened hard for sounds from Laria, but heard nothing, and a hot rush of adrenaline shot through my veins.
I crept up slowly, quietly, careful to ease my feet into the snow rather than crunch my way toward her. Elspeth was magick and magick meant powers humans could only guess at. I had experienced magick for myself last spring and I knew exactly what I was up against. The troll might be old, but her powers were formidable. If she chose to turn them against me I didn’t stand a chance.
If she sensed my approach she didn’t let on. Maybe she was in some kind of zone. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t complaining. I needed time to locate Laria and scope out the situation before I made my move.
Except suddenly I couldn’t move at all. I tried to take another step and another. I didn’t feel different, but I hadn’t moved an inch. I watched in horror as Elspeth slowly began to rise above the ground until she floated a good ten feet off the earth, her gruesome black cape swirling in the snowy late afternoon wind.
“Fool.” Her tone was rich with scorn. “The truth lies before your human eyes, but ye cannot see. Go now before you cause unending harm.”
She was wrong. I could see, and what I saw was my daughter lying on the slab of stone that marked Aerynn’s resting place, surrounded by swirling clouds of color and light that entwined themselves around her tiny exposed limbs and danced across her forehead in shimmering formations that made me feel like puking.
“Touch her again,” I said, “and I’ll kill you.”
She swooped downward and cradled Laria’s tiny face between her gnarled hands and exhaled loudly into the baby’s mouth. My gag reflex kicked in and I came close to losing my breakfast.
The baby laughed, or what passed for a laugh in a one-week-old child, and then Elspeth vanished, along with the clouds and my paralysis.
I lurched forward, limbs strangely rusty with disuse even though only seconds had passed, and dropped to my knees next to Aerynn’s memorial stone. A familiar buzzing moved through me, the same feeling I always got when I visited the burial ground. They may not have interred bodies here, but there were enough energies present to light Sugar Maple for centuries to come.
Laria gurgled, her arms outstretched in the loosely wrapped blanket. I noticed a faint damp sparkle smeared across her forehead, but other than that she appeared happy and unharmed. I bundled her up tightly and, holding her against my chest inside my shirt, made my way quickly back to Chloe before anything else happened.
“I know you’re following me,” I said out loud as I plowed through unshoveled snow. “I can smell you, Elspeth.”
There was no response, but the odor of stale waffles intensified the closer we got to the old church we used as a town hall. The crafty old bitch was cloaking, biding her time until she could swoop in and pull another one of her tricks.
Whatever the hell she was up to, it had to stop now before it was too late.
CHLOE
Luke had found Elspeth and Laria at the old cemetery just as I’d hoped. He pulled me aside and told me about the ceremony he had interrupted and although I tried to tamp down his nuclear anger with soothing words about rituals and traditions from the Old World I was seriously freaked out. Who in their right mind would take a lightly covered newborn out in a winter snowfall? And don’t get me started on the whole stretched-out-on-a-grave-marder-and-blowing-in-her-mouth thing or I’d really go off.
None of it made any sense. Elspeth was here to protect Laria, not harm her, but the things she had done since the baby’s birth often fell into the second category. Was it possible she had a hidden agenda, one that had nothing to do with the reason Samuel had sent her to us before he left this dimension forever? Luke definitely thought so.
Elspeth was a pain in the butt, but there was a part of me that had grown perversely fond of her. Call me crazy, but I didn’t want to believe she had kidnapped our daughter, laid her atop Aerynn’s grave marker, and set colorful clouds dancing across her body. I mean, would you?
Of course we didn’t tell his family what had really happened.
We went with the story about germs and diapers and a maybe-a-wee-bit-too-old nanny who had become overzealous in the performance of her duties and whisked the baby home where she could keep her safe from random sneezes.
Relief spread from one side of town to the other. And to say the MacKenzies were happy is putting it mildly. Their love and concern for Laria was powerful and genuine. She was one of their clan. If something happened to me today, they would be there to help Luke keep her safe.
Well, at least until her magick kicked in.
Meghan stayed around long enough to give Laria a kiss and then announced she was off to meet her new boyfriend.
“I don’t like this,” Bunny said as Meghan made her quick good-byes to the rest of the family. “Whoever he is, he should drive here and pick her up.”
“He doesn’t want to meet the family,” Jen said with a knowing smile. “That’s not a good sign.”
Then again, Meghan and her mystery man had been together less than two weeks. Nobody but a Kardashian boyfriend met the family that soon.
But I kept my mouth shut.
And then there was the minor fact that Luke was downright homicidal with anger. According to him, Elspeth had refused to give an inch by way of explanation or apology. She had stopped him literally in his tracks while she finished whatever bizarre ritual she was performing, then cloaked herself without a word.
No doubt about it. The Elspeth party was definitely over, but unfortunately a whole lot of partygoers still remained.
The MacKenzies were like a small army. I’m not sure what I had been thinking when we invited them en masse to see the baby. I’m not sure we had been thinking at all. I’d had some half-baked idea about opening the shop and hiring the house sprites to whip up a buffet spread fit for humans, but the days since Laria’s birth were all a blur. The only thing I knew for sure was that I had never gotten around to doing any of it.
I guess I just hadn’t realized how many of them would actually show up. There was no way we could fit them all into the cottage and, with Luke in the mood he was in, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t want to be there even if we could.
Unfortunately house sprites took off on the weekends to some uncharted place in a different dimension. I knew that Renate frequently employed them around the inn, so I cornered her to ask if she thought they would make an exception in an emergency.
“Not a chance. They disengage with the world on our Saturdays and Sundays.” I must have looked distraught because she patted my hand kindly. (Hard to believe we had been at each other’s throats a few months before.) “Tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can help.”
I did, in as few sentences as possible.
“We can open the restaurant for them,” Renate offered. “I’ll call in one of the chefs to help Colm, and Bettina and I can handle the front.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” I said, giving her the kind of hug that was impossible when she was her usual tiny Fae self. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to thank you for this.”
“I can’t give them rooms,” she warned me. “The Spirit Trail is very active right now and we’re actually doubling up on accommodations.”
The thought of the MacKenzie clan mixing with the Spirit Trail travelers was horrifying. But then, anything that brought Luke’s family in contact with the real Sugar Maple sent arrows of terror through my heart.
“We’ll figure something,” I said, even though I couldn’t imagine what.
I pulled Bunny aside and explained that Luke and I had to go home and deal with our “nanny problem” but would join the family at the inn as soon as we could.
“You do what you have to do, honey,” she said. “We understand.”
I was somewhere beyond exhausted and it was starting to show. I almost fell asleep during the four-minute drive back to the cottage. Not even Laria’s hungry cries from the backseat penetrated.
Somehow we all managed to make it home and that was when the fun started.
“Elspeth is out of here tonight,” Luke said as he paced back and forth in our tiny kitchen. “I don’t know what that bitch is going to do next and I’m not going to take a chance with our daughter’s life.”
I was sitting on the floor changing the baby and trying to keep curious cats from exploring the newest member of our household. “She was performing a ritual,” I explained for the third or fourth time. “She was connecting Laria with her forebears and asking them for protection.”
At least that was what Janice said and I wanted to believe she was right.
“Why would the baby need more protection?” he asked. “This entire town is protected against discovery.”
“No system is perfect.” I reminded him of some of the glitches he had experienced during his brief time in Sugar Maple. “Besides, when it comes to keeping Laria safe, isn’t too much better than too little?”
“Sorry, but I’m not buying it,” he said, still pacing the room. “I think she’s up to something.”
I looked up from diaper duty. “What could she be up to? She spent the last three hundred years doing Samuel’s bidding. Do you really think she would screw up his last wish?”
Suddenly the room filled with the smell of stale waffles and I saw Elspeth sitting on top of the refrigerator like a gargoyle.
“The ba
be must be guarded,” she said, staring down at Luke with disdain. “The old ways must be followed.”
I’m not sure Luke could feel the power vibrating from the rotund troll, but I was stunned by its force. I didn’t doubt her loyalty to Samuel, but she was still not a being to trifle with.
“We had the Presentation ceremony,” I reminded her as I made sure the baby’s diaper was fastened the way it should be. “That’s one of our oldest rituals. The baby now has a heartmother to help her move through life.”
“There be more what’s necessary,” she said in that nails-on-the-blackboard voice of hers. She aimed her look straight at Luke. “Danger is everywhere and she must be protected even from the blood.”
Luke stopped pacing right beneath the refrigerator. He glared up at her, bringing the full force of his years as a big-city cop into play. A lesser troll might have decided this was a good time to head for home but not Elspeth. She met his fierce gaze with one of her own.
“Enough with the dark looks and mysterious comments,” Luke exploded. “If you’ve got something to say, then goddamn say it. Otherwise get the hell out of here and stay out.”
“I say what I say. I do what I do. No more, no less than possible.”
“See?” Luke turned to me in exasperation. “How the hell do you deal with that crap? We need an interpreter.”
“Are we in danger?” I asked Elspeth.
“That depends.”
“Is Laria in danger?”
“The babe needs keeping.”
When it came to nonanswer answers, the troll was a genius.
I pulled in a deep breath and tried to calm the tingling sensation building in my fingertips. I did not want to go mano a mano with a troll. Especially not one with centuries of practice under her belt.
“Why are you so worried, Elspeth? Are we in danger?” Maybe this was some weird troll ritual and I had to ask three times before she would answer.
“What is danger?” she asked with a shrug of her plump shoulders.
“Now she thinks she’s Bill Clinton,” Luke muttered. “Next she’ll be asking us what is is.”
Spells & Stitches Page 18
