Spun by Sorcery (22 page)

I had heard those same words years ago when my surrogate mother, Sorcha, sacrificed piercing the veil to stay in this world and raise me to adulthood. I would carry the weight of that sacrifice with me for the rest of my life. I refused to carry the weight of this stranger’s sacrifice as well.

“Elspeth, that’s enough.” It wasn’t what Samuel Bramford said but how he said it. I could actually feel Elspeth remove herself from the situation.

“I didn’t want to come here,” I said, almost daring the old man to contradict or interrupt me. “I wanted to stay in Sugar Maple. This was Luke’s idea. Salem means nothing to me.”

His faded sailor-blue eyes were focused on mine. “I know that.”

“You didn’t”—I waved my hand in the air—“send out any messages or anything to influence us, did you?” As a human, Luke would have been highly susceptible.

“Had I the power, I would have discouraged the three of you.”

“Swell,” I said. “That’s good to know.”

“You’re defensive.”

I said nothing.

“That’s understandable. You’ve made mistakes.”

I’ve made mistakes?
I still said nothing.

“You are drawn to humans and that was your undoing.”

“I’m half human,” I snapped. “I share their blood.”

“We are alike in our compassion for the species.”

“It isn’t a question of compassion,” I said. “It’s a question of blood.”

His sigh made the room shiver. “You know so little of your heritage.”

My face burned in response to his criticism. “My mother and father weren’t there to teach me.”
And neither were you, for that matter.

“My parents were magick but I never knew them,” he said. “I was raised by a human couple who took me in as their own.”

“Did they know your truth?”

“My birth parents had sheltered the Bramfords during an Indian uprising years earlier. The bonds of affection between them were strong.”

I didn’t want to feel anything for Samuel but I couldn’t help myself. “That must have been incredibly dangerous for them.” Given what we all knew about the seventeenth-century mindset, possessing magick was akin to consorting with the devil. The discovery that they had taken in a magick child would have been a certain death sentence.

“I didn’t understand how dangerous until the troubles began and Salem split apart into factions.”

“Meaning humans against magic,” Luke said. I could hear the faint tinge of resentment in his voice.

“That battle is ageless,” Samuel said with a glance toward Luke, “and most likely will never be resolved. But our problem, then and now, was magick against magick.”

“The Fae,” Janice said. “I think my grandmother told me something about that.”

Bramford gave her a warm smile and, to my surprise, I experienced a stab of jealousy. I curled my fingertips into my palms to keep the flames from shooting out and singeing the old man’s mane of white hair. What was that all about anyway?

“One of the reasons I like humans is they don’t speak in riddles.” I sounded like a world-class bitch but couldn’t stop myself.

“And
you
speak before you think,” Samuel said. “You are much like Aerynn in every way.”

I knew that was a compliment but I clung to silence. It was safer that way.

“She was headstrong and impulsive.”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t a compliment after all.

“I have no magick to make you believe me, Chloe, but if you hope to restore Sugar Maple, you’ll listen to my story.”

“Go ahead,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “I’m listening.”

“Aerynn is the reason Sugar Maple came to be,” he said, “and you are the reason why it is gone.”

“Hold on,” Luke said, stepping forward. “You were up here in a lighthouse while we were fighting Isadora in Sugar Maple. You don’t have a clue what happened.”

I shot Luke a warning look. Samuel Bramford might be old but I had the feeling his powers went far beyond anything we’d ever encountered.

And there was the fact that, blood relative or not, I still wasn’t convinced he was on our side. It was hard to tell friend from foe around here without a scorecard.

“I made mistakes,” I admitted. “But the Fae didn’t pull the town beyond the mist. I know that for a fact.”

“And who said they did?” Samuel’s words seemed to require enormous effort on his part and I found myself almost feeling sorry for him again. “Nobody stole Sugar Maple from you, Chloe. Your commitment was not strong enough to keep it, so the town was taken from you for its own protection.”

“Not strong enough?” I laughed in his face. “Nobody loves Sugar Maple more than I do.”

My life up until now had been played out within the township limits and I hoped the rest of my life would be as well. In what crazy world did that constitute danger?

“Think, Chloe,” Samuel said as he rested his head against the back of his chair. “Know the truth so the path will be illuminated.”

I groaned out loud. “Spare me the fortune-cookie wisdom, if you don’t mind.”

“Temperance,” he warned. “Think before you speak, child, or you will never achieve all that is within your power.”

Now he sounded like Mr. Miyagi from the original
Karate Kid.
Why did everything have to be larded with metaphor and deep-fried in self-help speak?

“You said I’m not committed to Sugar Maple,” I said with as much restraint as I could muster. “I want to know what you mean.”

Samuel leaned his head against the back of his chair again and closed his eyes. I exchanged looks with Luke and Janice. Janice pointed toward the staircase but I shook my head. We had come here for answers and I wasn’t going to leave until I had them.

We waited. Then waited some more.

“Is he breathing?” Janice whispered.

I wasn’t sure. I stepped closer.

“I’m still of this dimension.”

I jumped back at the sound. His eyes were closed. He hadn’t moved a muscle. But his voice filled the room like a philharmonic orchestra in a concert hall.

“Aerynn was as wise as she was powerful,” he continued. “Long ago she understood that the ultimate safety of Sugar Maple depended upon the strong, undivided commitment of its leader.”

The man could say more by saying little than anyone I had ever met. I instantly felt small and foolish but not contrite. A girl had to draw the line someplace.

“There was fatal dissension within your town,” he continued. “You allowed yourself to be distracted by matters of the heart.”

“I fought Isadora,” I said. “I was there at the waterfall to keep her from taking away the town.”

“When you saw the child, you lost sight of everything beyond her tears.”

So he knew about Luke’s late daughter, Steffie, and the battle for her spirit. Interesting.

“I reacted to the problem at hand.”

“While Sugar Maple slipped away.”

“I didn’t know it was slipping away.”

“The true leader would have.”

For once I kept my mouth shut, but the truth was I would do the same thing over again. The lonely little girl who still lived inside of me would choose to help Steffie every time.

“You have nothing to say in your defense?” he asked after a few moments passed by in silence.

“Do you?” I retorted. “You ignore me for almost thirty human years then do everything you can to keep us away from here—”

“He didn’t do it,” Luke broke in.

“Luke’s right,” Janice said. “It was the local Fae.”

I spun around to face them. “Where did you get that idea?”

Janice explained about Penny and the glittered hairball.

“The second she got rid of all of that gunk she headed down to the water and we followed her.”

“It was deliberate,” Luke said. “The cat had a plan.”

Samuel laughed. “In truth I had the plan. Penelope helped me to execute it. I needed to bring you to me and this was the only way at hand.”

“So you gin up mermaids and tidal waves to get me here? Why not just summon me here for a family reunion without all the drama?”

Ha!
I thought.
Try to weasel out of that, Mr. Wizard.

“The old magick is strong and I am old. I’d used my resources to break Penelope free and, beyond releasing you from the rest stop, I couldn’t protect you from random mischief. You had to find your own way through it.”

Random mischief?
That was one way to put it. Wait a second—

“You’re telling me that
you’re
the one who broke me out of the rest stop?”
He’s lying, Chloe. You know he’s lying.

“You believed it was your mother, didn’t you?” He sounded regretful. “That was unintentional.”

He relayed some convoluted story about getting my subconscious to share one of its most powerful happy memories in order to relax me enough to break the Fae’s hold on me.

“I am sorry if you read more into it, Chloe, than was actually there.”

Janice had been right. I should have known better.

I forced my thoughts away from the past. I had more than enough bones to pick with him right here and now. “So why didn’t you contact us as soon as we were in Salem?” I demanded. “Why all the cloak-and-dagger nonsense? Janice and I could have whipped up a spell that didn’t involve underwater highways and waterspouts.”

“Warning you would have opened up a conduit for thought probes.”

“Thought probes don’t require conduits.”

“Remember, we use the old magick here. I couldn’t risk another obstacle placed along your pathway.”

I had to hand it to the old guy: He had an answer for everything. “And you believe staying on my pathway will help me restore Sugar Maple.”

“Staying on your pathway will help you to claim what is yours.”

“My hometown.”

“Your heritage.”

“Sugar Maple is my heritage.”

“No!” His eyes blinked open and an explosion of light illuminated the room. “Without this, you have nothing.”

The cottage smelled of hay and sheep, salt air and wood smoke. I moved through the door with a spirit’s ease and settled myself on the trestle table against the roughly plastered back wall of the keeping room.

Heavy snow pelted the closed shutters but the fire roaring in the enormous hearth made the dwelling surprisingly toasty and bright. Near the hearth a round black cat slept peacefully atop a basket of yarn.

“Penelope?” It couldn’t be. Penny had been sprawled across Samuel’s bony shoulders when I took my leave.

The Penny clone lifted her head at the sound of her name and winked one enormous golden eye then settled back to sleep.

A shiver ran up my spine as I realized what was going on.
This is really happening,
I told myself.
I’m here where it all began.

That was my Penny and yet it wasn’t and it was clear I wasn’t the only one who knew the difference.

Samuel hadn’t enough strength to accompany me on this trip into the past or to send Luke or Janice with me. But what magick he had at his command was seamless. I moved from the twenty-first century to the end of the seventeenth in the space of a single breath without any of the car-crash aspects that usually went hand in hand with astral transport.

I sensed, rather than saw, the landscape beyond the small whitewashed cottage. The harbor clogged with fishing boats preparing to head out toward Stellwagen. Dirt roads that led to the center of the small New England town we now knew as Salem. The silence was rich and deep, unbroken by the incessant hum that marked the years after the Industrial Revolution that still lay ahead.

Two young women, teenagers really, swept into the room, arms piled high with fleeces and roving. They wore plain dresses of light brown wool with white aprons tied over full skirts. One girl was tiny and dark and beautiful in the way only a member of the Fae could be. Her eyes were wide and sea green, framed by thick dark lashes that cast a shadow on her sculpted cheekbones. A narrow trail of bluish purple glitter followed her as she walked.

The other girl was tall and skinny with long arms and legs and unruly blond hair that poked out from beneath her starched white cap. She had a big laugh and wide golden eyes and for a moment I thought my heart had stopped beating inside my chest as I realized who she was.

Aerynn, who had led the hunted from Salem to Sinzibukwud.

Aerynn, who was the mother of us all, a sorceress whose magick remained legendary and unequaled.

The sorceress whose blood ran in my veins, whose legacy shadowed every breath I took, every decision I made, the sorceress I would become.

I wanted to touch her hand. I wanted to look into her eyes and see myself reflected in them.