Spun by Sorcery (20 page)

Cultural conditioning is a tough thing to break. I’d never struck a woman in my life and, if the curve factor was any indication, the mermaids who surrounded us were definitely female. But when the females in question were trying to kill you, all bets were off.

I kicked hard. Two mermaids, a brunette and a blonde, loosened their grip and that was all I needed. I launched myself through the suddenly warm, murky water toward where I’d seen Janice and Penny. My lungs were screaming for air. My brain was seaweed. I kept pushing forward, praying the first thing I bumped into was a red-haired witch from Sugar Maple and not a shark with a taste for B negative.

My fingers grazed something thin and ropelike. Fisherman’s net! I wrapped my arms around a struggling Janice and ignored the fact that Penny was being turned into a cat sandwich between us because suddenly those mermaids got behind me and pushed.

You know that feeling you get when you stand at the edge of a cliff and look down?

This was worse.

Janice, Penny the cat, and I rocketed down toward the ocean floor like we were jet-propelled. The glide was eerily smooth, as if we were being cushioned within a tube of air.

Which, as it turned out, we were. I didn’t know how long the pocket of air would last, but my lungs gulped in as much as they could take. I tapped Janice and showed her I was breathing, then ran a finger along Penny’s whiskers. She opened her mouth in protest and the look of surprise on her feline face when she started to breathe again was priceless.

“Luke!” Janice’s voice was weak and raspy. “What’s happening?”

“Don’t know,” I said and warned her not to waste oxygen talking.

When you found yourself rocketing across the ocean floor in a tunnel of air, things were pretty much out of your control.

It was like going to Sea World except that you were the one in the big tank. It was too early for striped bass but cod and big-eyed black oreo dory and serene haddock peered in at us. Somehow I didn’t think Penny would ever look at her can of Fancy Feast seafood special the same way again.

I was beginning to wonder if this was going to end up with us being shoveled into a whale’s mouth, when the trajectory suddenly angled up and the tube was flooded with brilliant white light and, like it or not, we were heading straight into it.

Nothing prepared a girl for being swept up inside a water-spout. I don’t care how many times you’ve seen
Twister
: watching Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton cower under a bridge won’t help you one bit.

I mean, who would have expected the impact to be softer than a whisper? Or that the sensation of piercing the funnel would be like stepping into one of those fancy multijet showers like Janice had installed in the spa section of her salon? The water was silky soft, fragrant with lavender and a touch of pine. Warm . . . buoyant . . . deeply relaxing. If Janice could harness this sensation for her spa, she would rule the world.

The fight left me in a giant whoosh and I settled back into the cocoon of warmth that happened to be a giant water-spout. Nobody sane wanted to spend even a second in the eye of any storm, much less one as potentially deadly as a water-fed tornado, but the sense of peace I experienced was narcotic. I wanted as much of it as I could get.

The words
Don’t worry
resonated inside me like a mantra. My anxieties about Luke and Janice and Penny the cat, about Sugar Maple and the friends I loved and our combined future, all vanished.

I suddenly realized I was being held aloft by an army of knitters, dozens of them, all in period dress, kindred spirits from across the centuries. Hippies and flappers, Gibson Girls and Civil War belles, Colonials and rustic early settlers. They laced their hands together and kept me from going under. They whispered my name like a litany in tones that were warm and loving and strangely comforting. I tried to speak but no sound came out. There was only the soft rush of their voices filling the spaces where the water wasn’t.

My sense of direction was suspect in the best of times even with landmarks and street signs and GPS to help me out. Put me in the middle of a churning steel-blue sea and I might as well be on Mars. Land was nothing but a memory. The sky melted into the ocean. The ocean was absorbed into the sky. I didn’t know if I was flying or drowning. I only knew that I was safe.

I was drifting away, in danger of disappearing altogether, when a beam of silvery light pierced through all of that nothingness and a small white and black lighthouse rose up in the distance.

My mind turned into white noise. My heart skidded into my ribs. My breath caught deep in my throat. All of the adrenaline that hadn’t flooded my veins when I saw that funnel of water broke free now. I felt like I’d consumed two pots of espresso on an empty stomach. I wasn’t exactly scared but I was alert in a way that was almost painful.

The lighthouse grew closer. Except for the size differential, it was identical to the kitschy ten-foot-tall replica that resided in the center of Sugar Maple. I had always wondered about the significance but chalked it up to another simple homage to Salem, same as the names we’d chosen for our streets and bridge.

A shimmering gold and silver pathway unfurled from the base of the lighthouse. I rose to my feet, balancing effortlessly on the foamy waves, and stepped onto it. I wished Luke was there with me and at the same time I was glad that he wasn’t. I don’t remember walking but somehow I found myself standing in front of a whitewashed door with a tarnished knocker in the shape of an anchor.

I rapped twice, feeling like I was in the middle of one of those movies where everyone but the heroine knew what was waiting on the other side of the door.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t consider it. I’ve never been a big fan of the unknown. If I had my way, the future would come with a trailer so you could check out the coming attractions.

I lifted the knocker to rap again, when I heard a shuffling sound on the other side of the door and a crackly voice mumbling something that sounded like “Hold your horses. I don’t have wings on my feet like others I know.”

The door swung open. At first I didn’t see anyone but then I looked down and my eyes landed on a very small, very round woman with a rosy, wrinkled face and spiky hair the color of buttercups.

“Takes you three hundred years to show up and you expect me to run to the door the second you knock. Well, girlie, that’s not how it works around here.”

“Sorry,” I said, bristling at her tone, “but this wasn’t my idea.”

“Oh, a fresh one you are.” She looked up at me with enormous deep brown eyes. “Not exactly what Himself is expecting.”

Himself? “So you didn’t bring me here?”

Her laugh was a cross between a cackle and a crow. “I’m not one for bringing trouble in when there’s enough to be found close to home. It was Himself and he may regret it.”

“May I come in?”

I found myself standing in a foyer the size of a postage stamp.

“I’m Chloe,” I said, extending my right hand.

She dismissed it with a look. “I know who you be. You’re lucky it’s not too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“As if you didn’t know.”

“I don’t know.”

“You wait here,” she said, “and don’t you be touching anything what isn’t yours.”

Which pretty much took in everything but the clothes on my back.

I had never been inside a lighthouse. The smell of the sea was strong and a faint mist glazed the exposed brick walls. A circular staircase dominated the area and I laughed in surprise when the old woman swirled around it like smoke up a chimney.

I stopped laughing a second later when it was my turn to be swirled sideways through a whitewashed wooden door into what looked like an eighteenth-century dentist’s waiting room.

A moment later the side of the wall unzipped and Luke, Janice, and Penny tumbled in on a frothy wave of seawater that spilled across the floor and lapped at my ankles.

“Luke!”

The look in his eyes almost made me forget we were trapped in a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean.

He held me so tight I could barely breathe. “I was afraid I’d lost you.”

“Impossible,” I whispered into his ear. “Never happen.”

Penny, who had been watching us, chose that moment to hawk up a hairball of truly monumental proportions.

“Editorial comment,” Janice said. “Better watch out or I’ll do it, too.”

Luke and I separated reluctantly.

“Anyone have any idea what’s going on?” I asked.

“We were going to ask you,” Janice said. “How’d you get here?”

I gave a casual shrug. “Just your usual tidal wave and a squad of female naval operatives.”

“We can beat that,” Luke said with a grin. “How about a half dozen knockout mermaids.”

Janice shot him a look. “Knockout mermaids?” she asked. “What ocean were you in?”

“You saw them,” he said. “Playboy centerfolds with flippers.”

This time Janice couldn’t stifle the laughter. “Hello. Bea Arthur with fins? Angela Lansbury topless with a tail? The Wicked Witch from
Wizard of Oz
without her—” She peered at him closely. “Did you ever actually see their faces?”

“No,” Luke said. “They had their backs to me.”

Janice waved her hands around in the air in a kind of figure eight pattern and a screen opened up between us. “Take a look.”

I wasn’t about to miss this. I positioned myself in front of the screen right next to Luke.

There he was in crystal clear HD, struggling against the current as he tried to save Penny, when six supple, sinuous mermaids appeared out of the murky depths then pulled him beneath the surface. It was easy to see why sailors crashed their boats on the rocks just to be near them. The allure crossed all boundaries. I felt the nasty pinch of jealousy.

“Keep watching,” Janice said with a wink for me. “You don’t want to miss the big reveal.”

“This isn’t going to end well, is it?” Luke mumbled as the mermaids spiraled toward the camera.

“Oh, I think it ends just fine,” Janice said, starting to laugh again.

She was right. The mermaid with the long mane of golden hair was a Bea Arthur lookalike. The redhead could have been Angela Lansbury’s twin sister circa now. I thought the brunette looked suspiciously like old news clips of Mamie Eisenhower but I would have to Google to be sure.

“Don’t go feeling too sorry for yourself,” I said, trying very hard not to laugh, “but the spirits have a sense of humor.”

“I’m not sure how funny this is,” Janice said, “but the motel rooms showed signs of Fae infestation.”

My laughter quickly stopped. “I saw glitter at the antique shop.” I told them about the Attack of the Spinning Wheels.

“Did you recognize any of the glitterprints?” Janice asked.

I shook my head. “Did you?”

“Nobody,” Janice said, “but I’m pretty sure I recognized two branches: the Weavers and the Olivers.”

The Weavers owned the Sugar Maple Inn and up until Luke came to town, I had counted the family among my closest friends. “The Olivers are the new family who moved down from Ottawa, right?”

Janice nodded.

“I know them,” Luke said. “Are you saying the Olivers might be ringers?”

“I’m just saying there’s a link between the Olivers and these Salem glitterprints,” Janice said.

A quick survey of the room revealed nothing.

“How long have you been here?” Janice asked me.

“A few seconds longer than you,” I said. “Did you see that ancient yellow-haired gatekeeper?”

“Only Luke’s mermaids,” Janice said with a broad wink. Luke stood up and I realized we were all somehow clean and dry again. I’d worry about the how of it later. Right now I was relieved to have one less problem. His gaze traveled the room in that methodical way he had as he filled us in on the information on Bramford Light that he’d gathered from the tour operator in town.

“Do you think that’s where we are?” Janice asked.

“Pretty safe bet.” He paced the small waiting area. “You’d think somebody would come out and tell us something.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d met Buttercup.” I told them a little about the curmudgeonly housekeeper and her concern for Himself.

“Himself?” Luke said. “What the hell? Did we wash up on the shores of Massachusetts or Ballycastle?”

“Who knows,” I said. “We could be anywhere.”

“We’re still in Salem,” Janice said. “I can feel it all around us.”

“Are we alone?” Luke asked.

Janice hesitated. “Not quite.”

“Not the Fae,” I said, feeling my adrenaline surge.

“I don’t think so,” Janice said, glancing around at our surroundings. “Not unless they’ve come up with invisible glitter.”