Casting Spells (26 page)

“Not a bad day,” I said to Penny, who ignored me.

I flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED and sat down with a cup of yogurt and some knitting, determined to spend an hour not thinking about Luke or the Book of Spells or the fact that life as I knew it was spinning out of control.

Normally I could lose myself in a complicated lace pattern or drown my sorrows in the comforting repetition of a familiar sock, but today nothing worked. I dropped stitches, screwed up repeats, generally made an utter and complete hash of things until I was this close to bursting into tears of frustration. And believe me, it had been years since a sock made me cry.

A sudden memory flashed to life in front of me. I saw my mother at the wheel, sunlight spilling over her shoulders, as she spun roving into yarn finer than spider’s silk. She was young and beautiful. She was in love with a man who loved her. She had the world of magick at her fingertips.

And there in a Moses basket at her feet was the baby daughter she would abandon a few years later to follow the man she loved into the earth.

My anger was dark and hot and twisted and it scared me. Anger like this had a power all its own. I tried to push it down to some safer, quieter place deep inside, but it bubbled up again like lava from a long-dormant volcano.

Some bonds were inviolable. They transcended the divide between human and magick. The bond between a mother and child was one of them. No matter how hard I tried to romanticize my mother’s decision, I would never understand how she could have left me behind.

And I would never forgive her.

I tried to conjure up the memory of my father instead, but all I could find were shadows and whispers. He had lived here in Sugar Maple for almost six years and not once had anyone offered up so much as an anecdote for me to hold on to. It was as if he had passed through the town and not left so much as a footprint behind.

Everyone acknowledged the fact that I was half-human, but nobody ever talked about my father, the man my mother married. I remembered that he was tall and strong and that he smelled like freshly cut grass after a long rain, but his smile and the sound of his voice were lost to me. My mother’s memory overpowered all else.

When I looked in the mirror, I saw a blurry version of her face. When I spoke, I heard her voice. When I sat down at the wheel or picked up my needles, it was her hands that I saw at work.

Oh, I was definitely my mother’s daughter, right down to falling in love with a human. I had spent my entire life yearning for what my mother had found with my father, but I had never taken a minute to think it through. To understand what it meant to love someone who belonged to the world beyond Sugar Maple.

I guess the joke was on me.

I picked up my sock and started knitting again, willing myself to disappear into the stitches and be all about color and texture and shape. No words. I didn’t want any more words. I didn’t want to think, because if I did, I would have to admit that even the loneliness was better than this ... this empty, hollow feeling of loss.

So far I wasn’t all that impressed with love.

Penny meowed softly and changed position for what must have been the twentieth time.

“You’re the lucky one,” I said, putting down my sock to see if I could help her get comfortable. “No more chasing around after the boys. You’d just as soon take a nap.”

The roving had decreased noticeably from where it had been less than an hour ago. I plunged my hands into the softness and tried to fluff it up around Penny. For as long as I could remember, that basket had been full to overflowing with the most gloriously soft and workable roving you could ever imagine. It took dye like silk, was soft and warm as quiviut, had the elasticity and durability of wool. And best of all, it was always there waiting for me in whatever amount I needed.

At least it had been up until now. I wiggled my fingers deeper then muttered something mildly unprintable when my mother’s Welsh gold wedding ring snagged on the edge of the basket. Penny gave me one of those “we are not amused” looks.

“Sorry,” I said. “If I can just get unsnagged, I’ll—”

A jolt of electricity sizzled up my arms, through my chest, and out the top of my head.

And then everything faded to black.

LUKE

 

I tried to tell the Griggs boys about the lightning bolt with my name on it, but all they wanted to know was if they could take the rest of the day off and go snowboarding.

“What about school?” I asked.

“Snow day,” Jeremy said.

I glanced around the shop. They had done a day’s work in record time. What the hell, I figured. Snow days didn’t come along often enough in life. “Go,” I said, tossing a few twenty-dollar bills their way. “An advance on your check.”

You would have thought I had handed them the keys to a new Porsche.

“Mrs. Stallworth called,” Johnny said just before they took off. “She said she has something for you. She’ll give it to you tonight at the show.”

I had stopped by the knit shop earlier to tell Chloe about my near miss, but the CLOSED sign was up and the blinds were drawn. Closing the shop in the middle of what looked to be a high tourist traffic day struck me as odd, but then again so did just about everything today.

We weren’t friends. We weren’t lovers. We weren’t even dating. I didn’t know what we were to each other. I had held her in my arms, kissed her until neither one of us could breathe. Sparks flew when we touched.

And I still didn’t know what the hell any of it meant.

If it meant anything at all.

I closed the pet shop and walked across town to the Stallworth Funeral Home. I wouldn’t be at the show tonight. I would be on my way down to Bradford for Suzanne’s memorial.

The parking lot was empty except for a dark blue Chevy that I recognized as the one Midge had been driving the other night.

I don’t know why funeral homes always set up shop in the warmest, most welcoming house in town. The house with the most kids, the biggest Christmas tree, the loudest music.

It was almost enough to make you forget the dead people in the basement.

Some people took comfort from sitting with the dead, but death made me want to punch a wall.

I cut across the courtyard and walked up to the front door.

The locked front door.

I thought they didn’t believe in locks here in Sugar Maple.

I tried the door again. Definitely locked.

I searched around for a bell but couldn’t find one.

I knocked, waited, then knocked again but nobody answered.

Okay, this wasn’t going to be the day I interviewed the Stallworths.

I was halfway to the sidewalk when I heard a voice call out my name.

“Detective MacKenzie! Yoo-hoo! Here I am!”

Don’t get me wrong. I liked Midge Stallworth. But over the years I had visited enough funeral homes to last me the rest of my life.

The front door was partway open, but the only thing I saw of Midge was a hand waving at me.

“Come in! Come in!” she called out in her cheerful helium-balloon voice. “You’ll freeze your donuts off out there!”

I didn’t know how to break it to her, but it was even colder in the lobby. I was surprised there weren’t icicles hanging from the curtain rods.

It was also dark. Considering the clientele, I guess it made sense.

“I’m embarrassed!” Midge patted her hair curlers and giggled. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.” Her face was free of makeup and she wore a hot pink zip-front velour bathrobe, the type my grandmother wore thirty years ago. Basically she looked like she was getting ready for bed at eleven in the morning.

“The Griggs boys told me you called and I figured I’d walk over and save you the trouble.” I told her that I wouldn’t be at the Playhouse that night but I didn’t tell her why.

“No apologies!” Even her gestures were cheerful. “Business is bad right now, which means life is good. I have time to putter around catching up on my beauty routines.”

We were verging on TMI.

“So you found something that belonged to Suzanne Marsden.”

“Yes, I did,” she said as she motioned for me to follow her down the hall. “I’m not usually this forgetful. I think Christmas does something to the brain cells.”

She made pleasant chitchat, and I tried not to think about what went on in the basement of the old house on the hill.

She led me into the dimly lit office. The blinds were down, curtains drawn, heat turned off. The only source of light was a small battery-operated candle on a bookshelf.

“Saving energy,” she explained as she rummaged in the top drawer of an old mahogany desk. “Every little bit helps these days.”

I couldn’t argue against that, but the place was so cold a polar bear would be begging for a sweater.

I walked over to the bookshelf. Maybe the battery-operated candle was throwing off a little heat. Family photos lined the shelf, tucked in between hardbound editions of
People
Magazine yearbooks and the complete works of Jackie Collins.

“Your kids?” I asked, pointing toward photos of a smiling bunch on ice skates.

“Aren’t you nice! Grandkids,” she corrected me. “Eleven of them and counting. We took that the night of the Moonlight Festival last year.”

Goober’s brother went cross-country skiing through a forest at night. Kids skated after dark. Life in a town without crime could be pretty damn good.

“Is the Moonlight Festival a big deal around here?”

“Oh yes, indeed, it is. It’s our Winter Solstice celebration. You’ll just love it.”

I scanned the photos, grinning at the wide-open enthusiasm on the kids’ faces. There was even one of Midge and a man I assumed was her husband, posed near the tree that had caught my eye the first night. Inside the perfect circle burned into the bark were other markings (initials? symbols?), but the image was too small for me to make them out.

“I know I put it in here,” Midge was saying. “Wait ... I think... here it is!” She handed me an envelope. “I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached.”

I opened the envelope and pulled out a small gold pin in the shape of a star.

“We found it on the floor after the boys from Montpelier came for her. I guess it had been attached to her coat.”

I knew that star. Suzanne had worn it all through high school, pinned to the collar of her uniform blouse. Later on, as her tastes grew more sophisticated, she wore it pinned to the inside of her purse or to a pocket. She called it her lucky charm. In the end it had been anything but.

“You don’t look so good,” Midge remarked, peering up at my face. “You want some juice or something? I think your blood sugar’s low.”

“I’m fine,” I said, slipping the pin back into the envelope then into my pocket. “But thanks.”

“You know,” she said as she led me back down the endless hallway, “my feelings are hurt. You questioned Janice. You have an appointment with Lynette. But you never questioned me.”

“No offense meant, Mrs. Stallworth.”

“Midge, dear. Call me Midge.”

The Stallworths had provided a detailed description of the condition of Suzanne’s body to county authorities, including the standard photos.

It would be a long time before that faded from my memory.

I started to explain that I definitely wanted her observations, but first I needed to interview people who had seen or spoken with Suzanne
before
she died. However, I was there. She was there. Why not get it over with?

“We could do it now,” I said, and she laughed.

“Oh, honey, now isn’t such a good time. I’m not much of a morning person. You come over one night next week for dessert and you can ask all the questions you want.” She smiled and I had a close-up look at big white teeth that could light up a room. (But what was with those incisors?) “How does that sound?”

We set it up for Wednesday evening. I hoped everyone in Sugar Maple stayed healthy between now and then.

Midge stifled a yawn, and I used that as an excuse to thank her for passing along Suzanne’s star pin and said good-bye before she roped me into a guided tour of the premises.

20

CHLOE

 

I was pretty sure I was dead. I mean, if you opened your eyes and found yourself lying flat on a cold hard surface while your dead surrogate mother smiled down at you, what would you think?

The face was Sorcha’s. The bright smile. The dark brown eyes that saw everything, even your secrets.

“It’s about time!” said Sorcha in the same tone of voice she’d used when I was running late for school. “I don’t have all day, honey. I was afraid you’d sleep through my visit.”

“You mean I’m not dead?”

“Of course you’re not dead! Why would you even think such a thing?”

I jumped up and threw my arms around her, and the years fell away.