“I claimed it first,” Martha, my customer, announced as I approached. “This . . . this Betty White lookalike came out of nowhere and tried to get it away from me!”
I thanked the gods Elspeth had remembered to show herself in human form, because the sight of a three-hundred-something-year-old troll might not be good for business.
“Let go, Elspeth,” I said, trying not to sound as crazy as I was feeling. “Martha’s one of my favorite customers.”
Not that Elspeth would care about something as mundane as commerce, but I could hope.
“This weren’t for sale,” Elspeth said, her bony jaw jutting forward. “She opened one of those cupboards and swiped it sure as I was standing there.” She pointed at my not-for-sale closet near the workroom. “Saw her with my own eyes I did.”
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” Martha said. “That didn’t give you the right to assault me.”
Oh, great. That was all I needed. An assault-and-battery charge leveled against the shop.
I had to think fast. I flashed Elspeth a look that could stop a buffalo in its tracks.
“This was tucked away for a reason, Martha,” I said, running my hand along the dirty fleece and making a face. “Do you really want to deal with cleaning and carding?”
“It’s Bluefaced Leicester,” she said. “How often do you find a BFL fleece this size?”
“I have a cleaned BFL tucked away that I was saving. It’s thirty percent larger.” I paused for effect. “What if I offered it to you for the same sale price as the dirty one?”
She dropped that fleece so fast I almost laughed. “I’d say you had a deal.”
It wasn’t the Helsinki Accords, but I had learned to take my victories where I found them. I wrote up a sales ticket and sent Martha marching off to the register. Then I wheeled on Elspeth.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “You said you were going interdimension to visit friends today.” Both Luke and I had been looking forward to a day without her constant grumbling and griping.
“My comings and goings be none of your business, missy.”
“You lied!” I’m not sure why that came as a surprise. “You had no intention of going anywhere.”
She maintained an aggressive silence, which pushed me the rest of the way over the edge.
“When I tell you to stay away from the shop I mean it. You don’t get into arguments with my customers. That’s not exactly good for business.”
“She be nothing more than a thief.”
“Martha is not a thief. She’s . . . enthusiastic.” Fiber lovers were a fierce group who believed possession wasn’t just nine-tenths of the law, it was everything.
“She went where she had no business going.”
Look who was talking. I wasn’t going to try to explain Black Friday mania to her. It would be like explaining a DVR to a box turtle.
“You can’t stay here, Elspeth.”
“You need keeping after.”
“What I need is for you to go back to the cottage and quit picking fights with my customers.”
“I take no orders from you, missy. I was sent here to stay the forces of doom.”
I was about to remind her that I wasn’t a big fan of the doom talk, but to my surprise she turned on her heel and melted away.
Damn her. I’d warned Elspeth about using magick in public, but she knew better. I supposed I should be grateful she hadn’t shown up at the shop looking like the three-foot-tall, butter-yellow-haired troll she actually was. Okay, so maybe the Betty White disguise was a little much, but fortunately nobody seemed to notice.
I tucked the fleece away where marauding spinners wouldn’t find it, then went back to sorting through my remaining stock. Penelope, store cat and Hobbs clan familiar, peered up at me from her usual spot atop my basket of self-replenishing roving. Penny had been with me all my life and with my mother and my grandmother before me, all the way up the line to Aerynn, the mother of us all.
“Everything’s under control.” I bent down as far as I could and gave her a skritch behind the left ear. “Go back to sleep.”
The Noro was all gone and so was the Malabrigo. We still had a box of Tilli Tomas, some Debbie Bliss, and a fair amount of Cleckheaton and Jamieson’s. Even the splitty acrylic I refused to list on our website was flying off the shelves like fugitives from maximum security. Unless I missed my guess, we’d be out of sale stock long before closing time.
I had barely settled back down to tagging more stock when Janice Meany popped up at my side. Janice and I had always been close, but after the adventure in Salem last spring our bond was unbreakable. She owned and operated Cut & Curl, the full-service salon and day spa next to the library, and in her spare time took care of a husband and growing family.
“Don’t look now,” she whispered in my ear, “but you’re being stalked.”
I groaned and slapped a price sticker on my next-to-last skein of Noro Silk Garden. “Believe me, if you can’t knit me, spin me, or felt me nobody in this shop is interested.” The only thing being stalked was the legendary Wollmeise I had hidden inside the shop refrigerator behind the turkey sandwiches.
“No, really,” Janice said, angling her body so her back was turned to the selling floor. “This gray-haired chick has been standing over there near the Ashford wheels for five minutes and I swear she hasn’t blinked once.”
I slapped a sticker on a sparkly skein of Disco Lights. “People zone out in yarn shops.” I grinned up at my red-haired friend. “Personally I think it’s the fumes, but don’t tell our dyers I said so.”
Janice didn’t laugh, which definitely caught my attention. Anyone who says tenth-generation witches don’t have a sense of humor has clearly never met any of the Meany women. Besides, I could always make my friend laugh.
“Okay,” I said, putting down my roll of stickers and giving her my full attention. “What makes you think she’s stalking me?”
“Because she’s looking at you like you’re two hundred grams of qiviut, that’s why.”
“She probably never saw anyone this pregnant and she’s about to text the Guinness World Records.”
No joke, I looked like I was carrying a football team. I mean, I was huge. Luke thought I looked womanly but I was reasonably sure that was a euphemism for fat.
Not that I minded. I loved being pregnant. Okay, so maybe I didn’t love that I found out I was pregnant from a bad-tempered troll who had dropped into our lives the way Dorothy’s house dropped on the Wicked Witch of the West or that the morning sickness lasted all day, but I definitely loved the knowledge that every day that passed brought me twenty-four hours closer to meeting our daughter.
And, let’s be honest, bigger boobs didn’t hurt, either.
Janice, who had five kids of her own, wasn’t interested in my musings on motherhood.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her before.”
“That’s because you probably have,” I pointed out. “Sticks & Strings has the most loyal clientele in the Northeast.” I was going to say “in the world,” but I figured I’d save the hyperbole for my next e-mail blast. On second thought, who needed hyperbole when your in-store workshops are booked a year in advance and you’re known across the Internet as the shop where your yarn never tangles, your sleeves always match, and you never, ever drop a stitch.
Janice shook her head. “She’s not a regular customer.” She paused for a moment, brow furrowed. “Damn, where have I seen her?”
“Don’t ask me,” I said with a shrug. “I’m eight hundred months pregnant.”
But Janice had piqued my curiosity and I cast a quick glance toward the woman she had spotted lurking near the Ashfords. She was maybe five-two, small boned with a comfortable amount of cushioning. She wore a shiny purple down vest over a fancy navy jogging outfit, and dark green clogs, all the better to show off her yellow argyle socks. Her gray hair was cut in a no-nonsense bob. Her only jewelry was a plain gold wedding band and a pair of pearl studs in her ears.
All things considered, a short, gray-haired white woman in a northern New England yarn shop wasn’t exactly a blue whale sighting in Snow Lake, but I had to agree with my friend.
“You’re right,” I said. “She
does
look familiar.”
“And she can’t take her eyes off you.”
Right again.
The woman nodded and smiled at me. I nodded and smiled back at her as a tiny prickle of apprehension moved between my shoulder blades.
“Salem,” Janice said. “That’s where I saw her.”
The prickle of apprehension spread to my spine. “I wish you hadn’t said that.” Our trip to Salem had tested all of us in ways I never wanted to be tested again. I wracked my brain in an effort to place the woman in time and space. “Maybe she was the desk clerk at the motel.”
Janice shook her head. “Luke checked us in. We stayed in the car.”
Across the room, the gray-haired woman’s smile widened and she started pushing her way through the crowd of yarnaholics as she headed straight for me.
“Oh, crap,” I said. “She’s coming this way.”
The magick side of my DNA equation was up for anything, but the human side was screaming for me to get out of
Dodge. Adrenaline could be every bit as powerful as a major spell.
“Watch the shop,” I said to Janice as I struggled to slide my currently enormous butt off the stool where I’d been perched. This had trouble written all over it. The thing to do was run.
Unfortunately I was too late.
“Chloe?” The woman looked at me the way my cats did when I brought out the Fancy Feast. “It
is
Chloe, isn’t it? Luke mentioned you owned a yarn shop and I was hoping—” She stopped as her gaze moved down from my face to the ginormous belly that not even an industrial-strength workbench could hide.
“Oh!” It was amazing just how much you could pack into one tiny word.
For a crazy second I considered whipping out the magick and wiping her Chloe-specific memory bank clean, but with the store this crowded, that would be asking for trouble. I was still learning my way around the world of spells and potions, and even though I had developed into a pretty darn good sorceress, I had a long way to go. One little slip and the entire shop could find itself turned into a clan of quilters who were allergic to wool.
“Eight and a half months,” I said before she had a chance to ask. “And no, I’m not carrying twins.” I paused for a moment, but she was still transfixed by my bump. You would have thought I had a flat-screen TV strapped to my belly. “And you’re—?”
She pulled her gaze away and struggled to regroup. “I’m Fran.” She said it as if that should mean something to me, but I hadn’t a clue. “Fran Kelly. We met back in April when you and Luke were up in Salem.” She paused while I wracked my brain for the missing data. “Walmart . . . near sporting goods.”
This was getting more embarrassing by the nanosecond.
“I worked with Luke when he was with the department.” She forced a short laugh as she cast a sneaky glance toward the Welsh gold circlet I wore on the middle finger of my left hand. “Not that I want to take credit for this or anything, but I’m the one who told him about the job opening here.”
The entire awkward encounter in the center aisle of the discount store came rushing back to me. Not only had Fran worked with Luke in Boston, she was also good friends with his brother Ronnie, the Realtor, and probably the rest of the MacKenzie clan as well. Luke had been ducking dinner invitations from his family for months with lame excuses about his workload and my store hours. Even worse, he hadn’t shared our good news with anyone beyond the Sugar Maple town limits.
I’d warned him repeatedly that we needed to let his family know about the baby before she started college, but he did that guy thing I hated and went selectively deaf every time I brought it up. He had his reasons, but even I knew you couldn’t keep a secret like this from your family forever.
“Fran,” I said with a great big smile that I hoped covered my embarrassment. “Luke will be so sorry he missed you.”
She laughed merrily. “We didn’t expect to find him in the yarn shop. We’ll pop into the police station next door and say hello after we leave here.”
“He’s not there, either,” I said, feeling my cheeks burning red-hot. I gestured toward Janice, who was hanging on our every word, and heard myself babble something about helping Lorcan Meany weatherize their boat. Which was, of course, a total lie, but telling a human that her old friend was seeing a selkie off on his annual aquatic renewal wasn’t an option. “He won’t be back until late afternoon, but if you’d like to hang out here and wait, you’re welcome to stay.”
Okay, somebody stick a cuff-down sock in my mouth. The last thing I wanted was for Luke’s nosy human pal to stick around and observe the proceedings. I’d rather be trapped in a wind tunnel with Donald Trump’s hair.
You wouldn’t think things could get any worse, but you would be wrong.
“Wait a second.” I struggled to keep my heart rate under control. “Did you say
we
?”