Spun by Sorcery (6 page)

“Check the glove box, honey,” Janice said. “I promise it’s better than cookies.”

Not only was Janice’s surprise better than cookies, it was almost better than magick.

She’d stuffed my favorite felted knit purse into the glove box, along with my wallet, my credit cards, and all of the cash we’d had on hand in the shop. Not only that, she’d taken time to pop into Luke’s office next door to my shop and raid his petty cash.

“You also had an AmEx card, your cell phone, and your old Massachusetts driver’s license in there,” she told him, “so I grabbed them, too.”

It didn’t take much to make us happy. A partially charged phone, some plastic, and a handful of dead presidents and we were suddenly masters of the universe. Janice could have gone for days without eating but Luke and I shared the human need for meals at regular intervals. I couldn’t speak for Luke but I knew I would think better after I got some of those hash browns under my belt.

“Have fun, guys,” Janice said. “I’m staying here.”

“Are you crazy?” I asked. “The snow’s only going to get worse.”

“I’ll take my chances with the blizzard.”

I started to laugh. “She’s afraid I’m going to drive,” I said to Luke. “That’s what this is all about.”

Janice didn’t deny it. “Honey, the only thing worse than driving your Buick is riding around in your Buick with you behind the wheel.”

Who could blame her? Everyone knew how much I hated driving. And to make matters worse everyone seemed to agree that I was horrible at it at the best of times. The only wheel they wanted to see me behind was a spinning wheel.

To Janice’s relief, Luke agreed to drive. It occurred to me that might give us an advantage. If we were pulled over, having the chief of police driving should guarantee us no questions asked.

The snow was hellacious but, true to the spell we cast, it centered on Sugar Maple and the mile or so immediately surrounding it. By the time we were halfway to the Golden Arches we had outpaced the storm and were free and clear.

McDonald’s anchored a huge outlet mall two towns away. We debated eating in the car but the lure of indoor plumbing was too tempting to resist. Penny opened one eye as I exited the car then promptly went back to sleep when I promised I’d bring something back for her.

Twenty minutes later, Luke, Janice, and I were eating our way through a mountain of Egg McMuffins, piles of hash browns in those nifty paper envelopes, and enough coffee to keep us awake until Thanksgiving. Conversation was limited to “Pass the ketchup” and “I need another creamer.”

There was only so much chaos the mind could process without flaming out. It was good to sit there in the toasty warm restaurant, scarfing eggy-cheesy muffins, chugging coffee, and pretending our lives hadn’t been turned upside down.

And then it was time to get serious. We disposed of our trash. I ordered an Egg McMuffin for Penny and grabbed a few extra coffees for the road. We might be up the creek without a paddle but at least we weren’t going to starve.

“It’s snowing!” I said as we exited McDonald’s and walked across the parking lot toward the Buick.

Janice stopped in her tracks. “It’s not supposed to be snowing here. We made sure of that.”

“Probably a coincidence,” Luke said, glancing up at the flurries swirling around our heads. “Flurries might have been part of the weather report.”

I was wondering if we had done too good a job with the snow. If the roads were impassable for delivery trucks and tourists, they would be impassable for us too.

Then again, we had magick to help us, out. I refused to worry about it until I had to.

Walmart anchored the opposite end of the strip mall and, luckily for us, it opened early. We wrote up a list of emergency items on the back of a paper napkin (cat litter, bottled water, Chips Ahoy). Luke went off in search of an ATM while Janice and I did the shopping.

“Now what?” Janice asked when we met back up in the parking lot and considered our options.

“I guess we go back to Sugar Maple,” I said. What else could we do? It wasn’t like we had anyplace else to go.

“There is no Sugar Maple,” Luke, back from the ATM, reminded me.

“I know that.” I hit each word hard. “That’s why we need to go back there.” Wasn’t that the first rule of detecting? Keep your eyes on the scene of the crime. Sooner or later the guilty party would return for a victory lap and a smart detective would be there waiting.

Unless, of course, the guilty party turned out to be one of the detectives, which called up a whole different set of complications I didn’t want to consider. I know both Luke and Janice believed I had nothing to do with Sugar Maple’s disappearance but it would take more than loyalty to convince me I was totally innocent.

“Did you forget about the blizzard?” Luke sounded maddeningly calm and more than a little annoying. I felt like turning him into a hot-pink stitch marker but we needed him to drive. “The roads are probably impassable by now.”

“We have to go back,” I said. “I need to find the Book of Spells.” He knew as well as anyone how important the Book was.

“What makes you think it’s there?”

“Hey,” Janice said, whirling on him, “back off, MacKenzie. I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas.”

“Janice is right,” I said. “You’re the hotshot big-city detective.” I was so ticked off even I could see the raging red aura forming all around me. “If you’re so smart, what would you do?”

“Easy,” he said. “I’d go to Salem.”

Chloe stared at me like I’d turned into a frog. “Salem’s not a great idea, Luke.”

“Salem!” Janice’s voice shot up at least two octaves. “Are you freaking nuts?”

“What’s wrong with Salem?” I demanded. “Hell, you guys have a monument to the place on your collective front lawn.” The replica lighthouse that illuminated the village green. Even the street names were based on Salem references. And those were only two of many shout-outs. Once you caught on, you realized Salem was everywhere you looked.

“Think about it, Einstein.” Janice was practically spitting fireballs at me. “Witch Trials sound familiar?”

“They happened over three hundred years ago.”

“And nothing’s changed since then.”

“Come on,” I said. “Get real, Janice. When’s the last time someone was burned at the stake for being a witch?”

“They were
hanged
in Salem,” Janice corrected him. “Get your facts straight.”

“Come on, guys.” Chloe sounded a warning a wiser man would have heeded. “Let it go. It’s a Sugar Maple thing, Luke. You’ll never understand.”

“And you do?” She might be magick but she was human, too, and that powerful connection was something we shared. She had been raised as a mortal woman. She had to see the absurdity of Janice’s position.

Instead I saw only uncertainty in her wide golden eyes. “As much as I can,” she said softly.

I’d taken at least two dozen sensitivity courses during my years on the force. Workshops on racial discrimination, religious intolerance, sexual harassment, hate crimes of every type. I’d role-played both sides of every issue. No matter how you parsed it, the message was simple. Diversity was good. Bigotry wasn’t. I got it. I agreed with it. I always had.

However, this whole issue of humans versus the Others was above my pay grade. That alone should have stopped me but it didn’t. My gut said I was onto something, and a good cop never ignored his gut even if it got him in trouble.

I grew up two towns over from Salem. I knew the area like I knew the sound of my own heartbeat. Salem was a Massachusetts seaport and fishing village and nothing more.

“Have you ever been to Salem?” I asked both Chloe and Janice. “Walked the streets, talked to the people, stood on the docks and breathed in the salt air?”

The look of pain in Janice’s eyes surprised me. “Once,” she said. “I lasted three minutes before I bolted. I couldn’t breathe.”

“I drove over there one weekend when I was at BU,” Chloe said. “I couldn’t get past the Entering Salem sign.” She’d broken out in hives and ended up in the ER.

I regrouped.

“We’re in deep shit,” I said. “We have maybe forty-eight hours before somebody out here in the world notices Sugar Maple’s gone. We’re not going to find the answers on the Internet or in the public library and there’s no point trying to collect fingerprints or DNA. Salem is our best shot.”

“Are you always this cheerful?” Janice wisecracked. “No wonder you humans spend so much money on shrinks and Prozac.”

Great. Another antihuman dig from Janice. I wondered how she’d ended up best friends with Chloe, whose father had been one hundred percent mortal.

“What do you think we’ll find in Salem?” Chloe asked. “Another Book of Spells? A welcoming committee?”

Janice flashed me a look. “Santa Claus with a marching band and the key to the city?”

“Maybe nothing,” I admitted. “Maybe everything. We won’t know until we get there. That’s how you find out.”

“Are you sure you were a detective?” Janice asked. “That’s not how it is on television.”

I let it pass. Detective work was actually a hell of a lot like advertising. Maybe only ten percent of your efforts would amount to anything but nobody knew which ten percent it would be so you covered all your bases.

Chloe looked at me over Janice’s head. “I think we’re better off here. Our connection with Salem has no relevance to what’s happening now.”

“Then why all of the Salem references in town?” I challenged her. “Why keep the connection alive all these years? It has to mean something.”

“Sure it does,” she said. “History . . . tradition.”

“Maybe it’s time to push it into the twenty-first century.”

Both Chloe and Janice scowled at me.

I regrouped again. “I know we all believe that the best way to bring Sugar Maple back is to retrieve the Book of Spells, and since the Book isn’t answering Chloe’s call, we’ve got to assume it’s with the town.”

“Go on,” Chloe said.

“The way I see it, this all comes down to figuring out where can we find another Book of Spells.”

Chloe laughed out loud. “There’s only one Book of Spells.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

She hesitated. “That’s what I’ve always believed.”

“Okay, let’s say you’re right and there’s only one Book. We know the Book began in Salem and that the knowledge was acquired there. What if some of that knowledge stayed there in Salem?”

Janice surprised everyone, including herself, when she said, “Luke might be onto something.”

Luke? She called me Luke. Most of the time I was either a third-person pronoun or “the human.”

Chloe seemed uneasy. “It’s taken me four months to even master a tiny percentage of one section of the Book. The knowledge contained in it definitely predates Aerynn’s arrival in Sugar Maple.”