Casting Spells (24 page)

Me too,
I thought as I followed Janice out the back door.
Me too.

 

LUKE

 

I woke up at seven thirty the next morning feeling like I’d spent the night inside a cement mixer instead of a yarn shop. Everything that could hurt did. Four years as goalie on a losing college team had taken less of a toll on my body than one night on Chloe’s couch. I would have been better off sleeping on a bed of nails.

Penny the cat was curled up at one end of the sofa from hell. She opened one yellow eye and looked at me then went back to sleep. Easy for her to do. She had more padding.

And what was with the headache? I felt like there was something inside my brain trying to gnaw its way out.

Was there such a thing as wool poisoning? I’d spent most of the night surrounded by sheep by-products. Maybe the fibers had somehow worked their way into my brain. I usually didn’t remember my dreams but the ones I had last night were clear as the Super Bowl on a big HD screen. Like the one where I flew across Sugar Maple. Literally flew. I sailed over the tops of the trees, swooped down over the lake, maneuvered around entire families who needed to learn the rules of the aerial road. Finally I landed on one of the Inn’s peaked gables, right next to a World War II ace who offered me a Lucky Strike.

But it was the dream just before I woke up that I didn’t want to forget. In it Chloe was lying next to me, curled against my body like she had always been there.

Like she would be there forever.

We were on the floor of a small, windowless laundry room, lying on a stack of quilts or blankets. Something soft and fluffy. A washer and dryer were pushed up against the long wall. Bottles of bleach and detergent and fabric softener lined the shelf overhead. I curved myself around her, one leg slung over hers, arm resting just beneath the swell of her breasts, my face buried in her hair.

It was so real I could still feel her warmth against me.

I could also hear the sound of her voice. She had talked a lot in my dream. I could feel the rhythm of her words, but except for some seriously weird stuff about vampires and retirement homes, the content remained out of reach.

I fumbled around the makeshift kitchen, starting coffee and digging up something for Penny to eat that didn’t include fish. She’d have to settle for leftover turkey from yesterday’s club sandwiches.

I poured myself a mug of coffee then walked over to the front window to survey the damage. That had been serious snow last night, ten inches and counting by the time I fell asleep. The kind of snow that taxed Boston’s snow removal budget to the max and had its citizens digging out for days afterward.

I opened the shop door and stepped outside.

The sidewalks were clear and dry. So was the street. Fluffy white snow was piled neatly at the curbs and the corners. No slush. No ice. Even my truck, the only vehicle parked on Good as far as I could see, was dug out and snow-free.

Either the sanitation crews had nothing else to do or they were paid like rock stars because not even the White House saw snow removal like this.

I ducked back in the shop and gathered up sandwich wrappers and empty soda cans. I swept up some silvery-blue glitter from the floor near the sofa, the kind of stuff that spilled from greeting cards sent by sadistic friends with a bad sense of humor. Penny was curled up on the sofa, almost hidden by the fuzzy multicolored throw. The fire was out. I was about to grab my jacket and leave when I took another look.

Good thing I wasn’t planning a life of crime. I’d left enough clues behind to fry my ass. Binders and booklets and maps were scattered from one end of her worktable to the other. I shoved the binders back onto the shelves where I’d found them and stacked the town promo brochures.

The one featuring the Sugar Maple Inn was on top and the photo caught my eye. The main house dated back to the early nineteenth century, all dark wood and gables like the house in the Hawthorne novel. It beat the hell out of the Motel 6 where I was staying. Maybe I would walk over there and see if I could get on some kind of wait list for a room. Total occupancy all year long was just damn hard to believe.

Clearly Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables had been the prototype for the Sugar Maple Inn and the prototype for Hawthorne’s house could be found in Salem, Massachusetts, a town I had known well as a kid.

Was that the reason for the déjà vu sensation I had been feeling since I first drove into town?

I hadn’t thought about Salem in years. When I was in high school, Salem had been our arch rival. Hockey. Basketball. Football. It always came down to Bradford versus Salem in a do-or-die battle.

We didn’t pay much attention to our rival’s history but enough of it had filtered into my consciousness and stuck. Salem: scene of the infamous Witch Trials that resonated down through the centuries. Names like Good and Nurse and Carrier and Proctor and Osborne, even Hobbs and Griggs, still echoed in memory.

“Holy shit,” I said out loud to the empty room as it all came together.

That was it. Sugar Maple seemed familiar to me because it
was
familiar to me. The town had been laid out to replicate Salem. The names of its streets were names that were important to the small seafaring town. The lighthouse on the village green finally made sense to me. It was a model of Salem’s lighthouse.

Cities sometimes had sister cities. Towns had sister towns. The founders of Sugar Maple had designed their village as a tribute to the town that had defined intolerance in the late seventeenth century.

Freaking weird choice if you asked me.

 

CHLOE

 

By 7 A.M. the street had returned to normal. Or at least what I had always thought was normal before last night. No spirit families flying overhead. No spirit kids tobogganing up Osborne. We were back to the basics of people, buildings, trees, and sky.

I was still having a little trouble adjusting to the differences in my friends’ appearances, but compared to the traffic jam in the air space last night, it was nothing more than a curiosity.

Janice transported herself back home. I left the Buick in the driveway between Sticks & Strings and the pet shop and walked home to shower and eat breakfast.

Two hours later when I returned to the shop, Luke was gone. Sandwich wrappers peeked out from the trash and I noted an empty can of Pepsi in the recycling bin. I had a bad moment when I saw a sprinkling of Gunnar’s silver-blue glitter on top of the sandwich wrappers, but there was no way Luke would have been able to make the connection between glitter and the Fae. Nobody outside Sugar Maple could have.

But the rearranged binders and folders were something else again.

Janice was right. He’d snooped. I wasn’t one of those obsessive-compulsive neat freaks who alphabetized spices and color-coded their underwear according to the days of the week, but I usually knew when somebody had been messing with my stuff.

I probably should have been annoyed, but mostly I was disappointed that he hadn’t stumbled across the Book of Spells while he was poking around. I needed all the help I could get right now to handle these random bursts of energy. The most recent surge sent the hands of my watch spinning counterclockwise and a pair of clogs sailing across the room.

The store would be open for business in another hour, and for the first time I found myself hoping the snow would keep customers away. I’m not sure I would know how to explain a cardi that seamed itself then sewed on its own buttons.

Then again Sticks & Strings already had a reputation as a magical kind of shop. It might just add to the mystique.

The coffeepot was plugged in and I gratefully poured myself a mug then broke with tradition and added both sugar and cream. All that flying around the living room that I did last night was even better cardio training than blocking lace.

Which, of course, made me think of Suzanne Marsden.

Suzanne and Luke had a history. Not a romantic history but their lives had been intertwined since childhood. I hadn’t given a lot of thought to his loss but now, suddenly, I got it. I tried to imagine the two of them as children, but the image of Suzanne in her glittering naked dress overshadowed everything else.

I didn’t want to think about that night, but I couldn’t seem to shake the image of her gliding across the ice with the Orenburg shawl trailing behind her in the night breeze while a man watched from the shore. He was tall and broad-shouldered but the shadows obscured his face. I knew it was only my imagination at work, but it seemed so real that for a moment I felt the chill bouncing off the ice, the heat of the attraction between them.

I poured myself another mug of coffee then wandered back into the front of the shop. Gunnar, still wearing his coat, was slumped in one of the easy chairs. He seemed lost in thought. I quickly glanced at the floor. No glitter. I could have kissed him for using the front door.

Like Lynette and Janice, he looked older than he had before my powers began to blossom, but it was more than lines and wrinkles. Over the last few months I had noticed signs of physical vulnerability, but nothing had prepared me for what I saw that morning. It wasn’t just the bruises and cuts he’d sustained in his brawl with his brother. The spark inside him was dimming and it scared me.

“You look terrible,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“Try spending the night with my family and see how good you look.”

“I’m serious. You have to stop letting Dane drain your powers this way. I can almost see right through you.” And I meant that literally.

“We had a family council,” he said, grabbing for my mug of coffee. “Isadora wants me to help bring Sugar Maple through the mist.”

“You told her no, didn’t you?”

“She doesn’t recognize the word
no
.” Isadora needed a full-powered Fae to partner her in order to effect the change. Dane and Gunnar together would fill the bill, but Gunnar refused to join forces with them. He told me that she had even approached the Weavers about helping her transition Sugar Maple beyond the mist.

“Renate wasn’t interested, but Colm...”

I had no trouble filling in the blanks.

“What would happen if he joined forces with her?” I asked.

“She’d have the muscle, but without the Book of Spells, she still wouldn’t have the formula.”

“She trashed my place looking for it the other night.” I told him about finding purple glitter and Dane’s telltale steel blue everywhere.

“It’s only going to get worse,” he said. “She knows your powers are kicking in.”

“Nothing like starting the morning with a DEFCON 3 warning,” I said lightly.

“Hey, we’re in this together,” he said. “Sugar Maple belongs here, not under my mother’s control. I’m not going to let her win this fight.”

He went into the kitchen to pour himself some coffee then reclaimed the chair. “By the way, your friend the cop is at the Inn trying to snag a room.”

“What?” My stomach went instantly into a knot.

“You sound surprised.”

“I
am
surprised.”

“After last night I figured you knew his plans.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He took a long sip of coffee. “He spent the night with you.”

“Have you been spying on me?”

“There aren’t many secrets in Sugar Maple, Chloe. Half the town saw him sitting on top of the Inn last night with Captain Wilcox.”

“Nothing happened,” I said. “I didn’t summon him but he showed up and I couldn’t send him back.”

“So he’s the one.” The look in his eyes almost brought me to tears.

“I didn’t say that.”

He forced a smile. “You didn’t have to.”

Our shared history was contained in those words.

“We both know it can’t go anywhere,” I said, as much to myself as to him, “but at least I might get my powers out of the deal.”

“You never did do irony very well,” he said.

He was right. I didn’t do irony well at all.

Or love, for that matter. It was a family tradition.

Hobbs women loved only once and so far none of us had managed the happily-ever-after ending we all dream about.

Gunnar reached for my hand and held it tightly in his. We might not be lucky in love, but when it came to friendship, we were jackpot winners.

18

LUKE

 

When they said “No Occupancy” at the Sugar Maple Inn, they meant it. I had tried everything short of bribery or pulling a gun, but Renate Weaver wouldn’t budge.

“I’m sorry,” she said firmly, “but we just don’t have a room for you.”

“The place is empty,” I said. “The only time I’ve seen people in here is when the restaurant’s open.”

Renate gave me a big smile. “And your point is?”

“I don’t care if all you have is a broom closet. I need a room.”