“Not even a hint?”
“How about a couple of questions instead?”
She nodded.
“Was Aerynn pregnant when she left Salem?”
Janice gave a bark of laughter. “That was over three hundred years ago! How would I know?”
“I thought you knew all the old stories and legends about Sugar Maple’s early years.”
“Lilith is the real expert,” she said modestly, referring to the beautiful Norwegian troll who served as town librarian and historian. “But I can hold my own.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered who fathered Aerynn’s children?”
“I never much thought about it.”
“It wasn’t an immaculate conception.”
“And it wasn’t happily ever after either,” Janice shot back at me.
“And you know that how?”
“The fact that Hobbs women are notorious losers when it comes to love. That’s part of their heritage.”
They loved only once and not always wisely. Janice didn’t say those words but I heard them just the same.
“It’ll be different for Chloe and me,” I said.
Janice just gave me a
we’ll see
kind of smile.
“So was Aerynn’s first child born in Sugar Maple?”
“First child?” Janice’s look changed subtly. “You mean, her only child.”
“I didn’t know she only had one child.”
Now she looked downright uncomfortable. “Hobbs women always have only one child,” she said. “A girl.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Historically proven fact.”
“Is it something biological?”
“That would be one hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?” She had me there. One child. Always a girl. The link remained unbroken.
We dropped the subject by unspoken mutual agreement. I put the information aside for some other day.
Janice applied herself to the task of eating her way through the remaining bagels. I dialed Chloe’s cell phone but it flipped immediately to voice mail.
“I’m at the motel with Janice,” I said. “It’s twenty after one. Call me.”
I checked for messages. Returned a few. Ignored the rest. The ice-eyed woman’s message repeated itself on an endless loop inside my brain. Better than an endless loop of Janice’s revelation about the Hobbs women and their reproductive pattern. I turned on the television then turned it off again. Janice was standing by the window, looking out at the water.
Penny the cat was—
“Where’s Penny?” I asked.
“Asleep on the bed,” Janice said.
“Not on this bed.”
“She was there a minute ago.”
“Check your room,” I said. “I’ll check the bathroom.”
Janice was looking under her bed when I walked into her room.
“Shit,” I said. “She’s gone.”
“She can’t be gone,” Janice said as she stood up and brushed dust off her jeans. “The doors are closed and so are the windows.”
“She’s still gone.”
“Chloe’s going to kill me,” Janice said.
“Probably,” I said, “but Chloe’s not here either.”
“You think there’s some kind of connection?”
“We’re in Witch City looking for a way to bring a magic town back into our dimension. I think everything’s connected.”
Her gaze drifted to the sliding doors and her brown eyes widened.
“What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
She dashed across the room and bent down in front of the doors. “Do you see that?” she asked, pointing toward the metal runner that held the doors in place.
“The floor? The door frame?”
“The glitter.”
“Shit,” I said. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding. The floor is thick with spruce green, chartreuse, and burgundy glitter.” She stood up and ran over to the closet. She flung the door open. “More burgundy. This place is infested with Fae.”
“With talk like that, it’s no wonder there’s a problem between you.”
“You don’t really think you’re being funny, do you?”
I did, but this didn’t seem like the time to explain my family’s penchant for black humor. “Can you identify anyone?”
She shook her head. “These colors are all new to me. It has to be locals.” She stood and tugged at the hem of her hot pink T-shirt. “You know what this means.”
Hell, yeah. I was a cop, wasn’t I? “Either the Fae reestablished here after the witch troubles faded away—”
“Or some of them never left to begin with,” she finished for me.
“And now Chloe’s gone.”
“And Penny,” Janice added.
“I don’t give a—”
“Yes, you do.”
She was right. I did. Penny the cat was inextricably linked with Chloe and Sugar Maple and probably to Salem as well.
“Grab your stuff,” I said. “We need to find them now.”
“I’m not going out there.”
“You can’t stay here alone.”
“You can’t force me. In case you forgot, I have magick.”
“Go for it,” I said. “Like it or not, we’d better stick together.” I softened my tone. “You know I’m right, Janice.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I don’t know anything.”
I rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment. “Me neither,” I said.
We agreed that we needed to concentrate our efforts on finding Chloe. It wasn’t like Penny had shimmied through a pet door or slipped out while we were getting the mail. The cat had made an escape worthy of Houdini. She’d be found when she wanted to be found and not before.
And unless I missed my guess, she’d be with Chloe.
“You’re the detective,” Janice said. “How do we start detecting?”
“Try blueflame,” I suggested. “See if Chloe answers.”
Janice cupped her hands, focused deep, then yelped as blue flames shot up her arms all the way to the shoulders.
I didn’t know whether to pour water over her or arrange an exorcism.
“That’s a first,” she said, waving her arms around like a windmill.
“On to step two,” I said to Janice. “Clock’s ticking.”
She dashed into her room, gathered up a big bag full of stuff, then slung the bag over her shoulder. “Ready.”
Except there was one problem: I couldn’t open the door.
“Shit,” I said, jiggling the doorknob. “The damn cat locked us in.”
Janice struggled to suppress a grin. “You don’t really think the cat did it.”
“The hell I don’t. We’re here. She’s not. Do the math.” Another thing your average dog would never do.
“Let me try.” Janice grabbed the doorknob, jiggled it, then let loose a string of curses.
Okay, there were two doors. We’d use the one in her room.
Except that door was locked, too.
“We could go out the sliding door. The balcony’s about ten feet off the ground.” A pretty easy jump.
Janice looked appropriately horrified. “Wait here,” she said and in a puff of deep purple smoke, she disappeared.
Two seconds later the room door opened and I saw a black and white needle-nosed bird standing on the other side. The bird looked smug.
“Janice?” This stuff never got old.
A few feathers were lost in the process but she managed to resume her normal packaging. “That’s how you open a door,” she said.
“Beats the hell out of using the key,” I admitted. “But why didn’t you just magic me out with you?”
“Not part of my skill set. I’d probably scramble your atoms and send half of you to Poughkeepsie.”
The staircase was at the far end of the walkway. We were almost there when a yowl split the air and I saw Penny the cat balanced on the railing that overlooked the parking lot.
Janice made a move toward her but I held her back.
“Wait,” I warned her. “It could be a trick.”
“It’s Penny.”
“Probably,” I said, “but that cat had it in for me yesterday. I’ll bet this is part of her scheme.”
“All she did was climb a tree, MacKenzie. Get over it.”
“She put me in some kind of damn coma, Janice.”
“And you’re fine now. What’s your point?” She got in my face. “This is Penny we’re talking about. Put your human limitations aside and think about it. If something happens to Penny, Chloe will be devastated.”
“She’s a thousand years old.” I was exaggerating but not by much. “She’s survived wars, pestilence, you name it. An afternoon in the Salem sun won’t kill her.”
But what if it did?
Since I met Chloe, I had seen the impossible happen every day. Just because something had never happened before didn’t mean today wouldn’t be the day that it did.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll get the cat.”
Another yowl right on cue. I looked over at Janice and did my best Spock eyebrow lift.
There was nothing worse than being played by a cat.
“You’ve had your fun, salmon breath,” I said, moving slowly toward her.
She hissed softly.
Janice reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of bagel. “Come on, Pen. You know you love it.”
If she did, she’d forgotten. She began a slow, stalking kind of prowl along the rail.
Another reason why I was a dog person. Dogs didn’t tight-rope walk along railings fifteen feet above the ground.
“Here, kitty kitty.” I felt like a jerk but whatever worked. “Here, kitty.”
The look of scorn on Penny’s face made me cringe.
“Do something,” I said to Janice. “You’re the one with powers. Cast a spell on her.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“Penny’s powers are stronger than mine at the best of times. Besides, that whole key business drained my reserve. I’ve got nothing right now.”
Just what I needed to hear.
Penny shot me a look, hawked up a hairball that would do a mountain lion proud, then leaped from the railing to the grassy slope below. She shook out her fur, examined her right front paw, then ambled slowly toward the cove beyond.
“I don’t believe it!” Janice dashed toward the hairball balanced on the railing.
“She hawks one up every day,” I said, adding that to the list of things dogs don’t do. “I don’t think we need to alert the media.”
“I forgot you can’t see it.”
“I see enough.”
“You don’t understand.” She peered down at the disgusting lump of wet fur like it was a rare diamond. “There’s glitter all through it.”
It took me a second. “You mean, like Fae glitter?”
“Exactly like Fae glitter.” She met my eyes. “They were using Penny to stop us.”
“Past tense?”
“We can hope.”
“I’m going after her.”
“I’m right behind you.”
I scaled the railing, lowered myself as far as I could, then jumped.
“Never mind,” Janice called after me. “I’ll take the stairs.”
Penny was faster than she seemed. What looked to the eye like a casual saunter was actually hauling ass. I broke into a sprint but no matter how fast I went I couldn’t seem to gain any distance on her.
Where was she going? Cats hated water. If she kept running like that, she’d be in for a major dunking.
I accelerated.
So did she.
Another fifty yards and she’d be in the water.
Correction: She wasn’t in the water, she was on the water. Sitting on the water, to be precise, licking her left front paw between lazy yawns.
Damn, that cat was good.
I hit the water hard. It was New England cold, which meant cold enough to snap a few bones. The depth went from ankle to over my head in a single step and I quickly started treading water. Penny, still casually grooming herself, paid no attention. I broke into an easy crawl. I wasn’t exactly sure what I would do when I reached the cat but first I had to get there.
Another twenty feet . . . ten . . . five . . .
Penny stopped grooming.
“Come on, girl,” I whispered. “Don’t get spooked. Timmy’s trapped in the mine.”
A dog would have gotten the joke.
Penny stood up. She stretched. I moved closer, angling so my left shoulder was pressed up against her. Cats loved sitting on shoulders. I’d seen Penny riding around on Chloe’s shoulder a million times.
Her nails were razor sharp as she climbed aboard. She really did smell like salmon.
“Thought about Jenny Craig lately?” I murmured as I struggled to keep her above the water level.
She swatted at me with a lazy paw.
“You’ve got her!” Janice yelled from the shore. “Don’t let go!” I felt something moving beneath me. The way things were going, it was probably a great white. I tried to move out of its way but it came closer, tugging at my legs. In fact, I was pretty sure there were more than one of whatever was down there.
“Come on!” Janice bellowed. “What’s taking so long?”
Damn. What the hell was going on? I tried kicking free but a hand—at least I thought it was a hand—grabbed my right ankle and pulled. I kicked out with my left foot but a hand grabbed that ankle, too.
I was starting to feel like a wishbone on Thanksgiving.
Good thing I had something your average wishbone didn’t: the protective charm Chloe had woven around me back on the highway. Maybe all I had to do was roll with the punches and see where I ended up.
And maybe I still believe in Santa Claus. . . .
The hands on my ankles tugged harder and I sank beneath the waves. What the hell? My eyes were open and through the salty murkiness I saw mermaids floating beneath me while Penny flailed desperately above, clawing at the water with her mouth open wide in a silent howl.
The mermaids grabbed at my legs, which in another context might not be half bad. I squinted into the dim light and saw Janice struggling a few feet away from Penny with a look of total panic in her eyes. She was wrapped head to foot in a fisherman’s net.
I kicked out at the mermaids but they were tenacious. They wrapped themselves around my legs like barnacles and started pulling me deeper into the water. Penny had attached herself to the netting around Janice and the two of them were looking toward me, the resident human, for help.