Spun by Sorcery (15 page)

I blinked the soapy water from my eyes and found myself staring up at two short, plump women in period costumes from a bad revival of
The Crucible.
One wore a bulky gray knitted shawl wrapped across her chest and tied in the back while the other wore a version of a wedding shawl knitted up in a Romney handspun that looked as light as a whisper.

Did I mention I could see right through them?

“Get out!” I pointed toward the door and they laughed. Who could blame them? They probably hadn’t used a door since 1692. “I’m not joking. Get out right now!”

“There be no shame in nakedness, child,” the younger of the two said in her gently trilling voice. “It is as natural as the changing of the seasons.”

“I don’t give a damn about naked,” I sputtered, grabbing for a towel just the same. “You tried to drown me!”

“Even the temper is like Aerynn’s,” the older woman said, clearly relishing my distress. “Ever the Hobbs downfall, it is.”

“That and the humans,” the younger woman said with a knowing nod of her head. “It is as if they are determined to throw away their magick.”

“I don’t know who you are,” I said, “and I don’t care. Go away. You’re not wanted here.”

“You’re doomed to failure,” the younger woman said. “Better you leave now before it’s too late. Had we wanted to snuff out your existence or that of your human consort, there would be nothing you could do to stop us.”

“You think Bramford Light is the answer,” the older woman said, “but it never was and it never will be . Go back while there is still time.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, tugging the bath towel closer. “I’ve never heard of Bramford Light and if you ever try anything like this again, I will—”

It didn’t matter. They were already gone.

“Chloe.” The hand on my shoulder was warm and strong. “Wake up.”

“Go away,” I mumbled. “Why won’t you listen to me?”

“Come on, Hobbs. It’s pushing midnight. Let’s go.”

“What the—?” I opened my eyes and it was Luke, not those two annoyingly critical biddies, looking at me. I was still in the tub with a giant bath towel resting soggily across my breasts. “Where did they go?”

He gave me his patented cop scowl. “Who?”

“The spirits.”

“You saw spirits?”

“Two of them,” I said as I stood up and reached for a dry towel. “And they weren’t very nice.”

“Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

I hesitated. “Pretty sure.”

“I didn’t see anyone.”

“They were ghosts, Luke. They didn’t want you to see them.” I pointed toward the soggy towel draped over the side of the tub. “Why do you think I was covered with that stupid towel?”

“Part of some kind of girlie bath ritual?”

I ignored him. “Bramford Light,” I said. “That’s where we’ll find the answer.”

Except there was one small problem.

Bramford Light didn’t exist.

Luke tried every search engine out there and came up empty. We checked the telephone book on the nightstand and the tourist maps stacked up on the desk, courtesy of the visitors bureau.

“I didn’t imagine it,” I said, leaning against his shoulder as he clicked on every single possible link. “They definitely said to stay away from Bramford Light.”

Luke, however, said nothing.

“You think I imagined the whole thing, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what the hell I think.” He tossed aside the keyboard and pulled me across his lap. “I’m tired of thinking.”

My cheek rested against his thigh. My skin absorbed his warmth and made it my own. After a day of loss and chaos, I was where I needed to be.

His hands moved along my rib cage, my spine, my breasts, leaving silvery white sparks in their wake. He bent over me and I felt his breath against my ear. Warmth swiftly escalated into heat and in seconds we were naked on the motel bed.

The world fell away. I lay back on the soft mattress and opened myself, my heart, to him in a way I never had before and it both scared and excited me. Everything I thought I knew about my life, my future, had disappeared today along with Sugar Maple and now there was only Luke.

This all-too-mortal man.

Luke had been willing to walk away from the life he had known, the family he loved, and build a home with me in Sugar Maple and now here I was, wondering if I would be able to survive anywhere else.

But I wasn’t thinking of any of that as we made love that night.

For a little while I wasn’t thinking at all.

If sleeping were a sport, Chloe would be on the Olympic team. Put her within shouting distance of a pillow and blanket and she was a goner.

Come to think of it, she had been asleep when I met her. I walked into Sticks & Strings that first morning and found her conked out on the sofa near the hearth. She was barefoot. Her feet were long and elegant. Her hands were long and elegant, too, but she bit her fingernails. A bright red blanket was pooled on the floor next to her. A fat black cat slept soundly in a basket of what spinners called roving.

They both snored.

And yeah, it was love at first sight.

Tonight she fell asleep minutes after we finished making love, curled up against me as close as she could get. I teased her once about being a heat-seeking missile and the look on her face made me regret opening my stupid mouth. The whole part-human, part-sorceress thing was still a touchy issue for her and probably always would be. I think she was embarrassed by her need for human contact. I had to remind myself that she hadn’t grown up surrounded by brothers and sisters who lived to tease each other until they cried or ended up in therapy.

I lay there with her for a long time, listening to the sound of her breathing, the water slapping against the dock not too far from our window, the faint rustle of the sheets each time we shifted position.

This is enough.
The thought appeared full-blown and undeniable. If this was all we ever had, it would be enough for me. I was hardwired for home and family. Always had been. I had made the decision to walk away from the world I knew and become part of Chloe’s and I was okay with that as long as she was there with me.

Or I would be, in time. I had made a hell of a lot of progress in the four months I had been living in Sugar Maple. Vampire funeral directors and troll librarians and shapeshifters who morphed into parakeets in the kitchen sink. Trust me. You can get used to anything if you try hard enough. And I’d been trying. I wanted this to work. Chloe’s destiny had been set centuries ago by forces I would never understand. She had no choice about the life she was living. But I did.

And I chose her.

I chose Sugar Maple.

But now everything had changed. Here I was, back in the world I had left behind and my old dreams back within reach. I could get a job on a local police force. Decent pay. Okay benefits. A pension down the road. And it would be a hell of a lot less dangerous than chasing demons and battling Fae warriors. Maybe Chloe could open up another yarn shop like Sticks & Strings. We’d buy a dormered cape in the suburbs, a couple of cars, have the family over for barbecues on lazy summer afternoons and big Super Bowl bashes every winter.

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t appeal to me on a hell of a lot of levels. After years of seeing the worst of my species on the streets of Boston, the surburban dream sounded pretty good. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fit Chloe into the picture. She wasn’t ordinary. She wasn’t regular. Asking her to be any of those things she wasn’t would be wrong.

And no matter how hard she tried to live the life of a mortal woman, she would fail because she wasn’t one any longer. In just a few months her powers had multiplied dramatically and there was no reason to think they wouldn’t continue to multiply. I had seen what she could do when she battled Isadora at the waterfall and that was only the beginning.

Or it would be, if we managed to find Sugar Maple and restore it to this dimension.

If we failed, the future was anybody’s guess.

At around two in the morning, Chloe turned over and hugged her pillow instead of me. I carefully climbed out of bed, hit the john, then stood by the wide picture window for a long time, looking out across the parking lot toward the cove. The beam from a lighthouse glowed softly behind the dense fog that blanketed everything.

I was home.

Chloe wasn’t.

It was a long time before I went back to bed.

And even longer before I slept.

I woke up a little after six. I was still tired and groggy but a few cups of coffee would take care of that.

Luke had already been out on a breakfast hunt and the desk in our room was piled high with goodies.

I tapped on the door between our room and Janice’s. “Breakfast! Better hurry or the bagels will be gone.”

The lock clicked. The door swung open. Penny the cat burst into our room and leaped straight into my arms.

“That cat’s crazy,” Janice said as she joined us around our makeshift buffet. “She slept on my head all night.”

“This is a surprise?” I arched a brow in Janice’s direction. “You know cats.”

“My cats don’t weigh thirty pounds and smell like Egg McMuffin.”

Penny swiveled around in my arms and shot Janice a look that would have quelled a lesser woman.

“Stick a sock in it, cat.” She dumped four packets of sugar into her coffee and followed it with two containers of cream.

We jokingly elbowed each other as we grabbed for bagels and donuts and claimed the creamers.

Finally Luke and I were settled on the bed while Janice took the desk chair. Penny was off in the corner enjoying Fancy Feast and a piece of bagel with salmon cream cheese.

“The blueflame erupted twice during the night,” Janice said.

I stopped, midchew. “Who was it?”

“Wish I knew. No identifying signal. Just a sputter of flame then nothing.” She fiddled with her coffee cup. “I doubt if any Salemites know about blueflame.”

I glanced at Luke then over at Janice. “Don’t be so sure. I had visitors last night.” I told her about the pair of critical wenches who had dropped in while I was in the bathtub.

“So where is this Bramford Light?”

“We googled it but no luck,” Luke said. “A couple of subdivisions here and there. That’s it.” He didn’t say it but I knew he thought I’d dreamed the whole thing.

“Shit.” Janice leaned back in her seat. Her despair was palpable.

Luke slipped back behind his cop face. “If we’re going to make any headway, we’ll need to split up.”

I nodded. I can’t say I was happy about it but the job was big and our time was short.

“Janice?” Luke asked. “Is that okay with you?”

She shook her head. “I can’t.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I just can’t bring myself to go out there.”

“That’s okay,” Luke said, dropping his cop façade long enough to let the real man show through. “You can work the phones and the Internet.”

We were looking for any indication that not all the magickal beings followed Aerynn to what became Sugar Maple. In my experience, magickal beings had a great deal in common with their human counterparts. The odds against getting everyone to agree to a plan of action were astronomical. Someone must have stayed behind and left a trail that extended down through the years and it was up to us to find it .

“I want to check out the waterfront,” I said to Luke as we walked across the parking lot to the car. “Maybe someone knows about Bramford Light.”

“No way,” Luke said. “I’ll take the waterfront. You start looking around town.”

“I’m going to the waterfront.”

“Not a great idea.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Docks aren’t always the friendliest places.”

“I’ll be fine. I have magick.” Humans didn’t scare me. The Fae were another story.