Dream Lake

by Lisa Kleypas

  “Zoë’s in the kitchen,” he heard Tom say.

  Opening his eyes, Alex did a double take as he saw that Tom wasn’t alone. A slender young woman stood beside him, their hands clasped. Her blond hair was arranged in smooth curls and parted on the side. She had a lovely, slightly angular face, her eyes bright with intelligence.

  Alex sat up slowly, keeping the sheet pulled up to his waist. “Good morning,” he said, dazed.

  She gave him a familiar smile of mischief. It was more than a little disconcerting to see Emma’s smile in this drastically younger version of herself. “Good morning, Alex.”

  His wondering gaze slid over the two of them. The air was luminous with happiness, emotion translated to light. Tom had lost the ever-present shadow of loneliness, his dark eyes snapping with joyful vitality.

  “Everything’s okay, then,” Alex said, giving them both a questioning glance.

  “Glorious,” Emma said. “Everything is the way it should be.”

  Tom’s gaze lingered on Emma before returning to Alex. “We came to say good-bye,” he said. “We’ve got places to go.”

  “Do you?” It hit Alex that the ghost was finally leaving him. They were both free. What Alex had never expected was that he would feel so forlorn at the prospect. “I’ve never been so damn glad to get rid of anyone,” he managed to say.

  Tom grinned. “I’ll miss you, too.”

  There were things Alex needed to say … I will never forget you and your obnoxious singing and smartass comments, and the way you saved my life. You became the friend I didn’t even know I needed. And you made me realize that the worst thing isn’t dying, but dying without ever having loved someone. However, it didn’t seem that they would have the time or opportunity to talk. And he saw from Tom’s gaze that he understood all of that, and more.

  “Will I see you again?” Alex asked simply.

  “Yeah,” Tom said, “but not for a while. You and Zoë have a long life ahead of you. And a big family to start on—two boys and a girl. And one of them is going to grow up to be—”

  Emma interrupted hastily. “Alex, pretend you didn’t hear any of that.” Turning to Tom, she clicked her tongue reprovingly. “Still a troublemaker. You know you weren’t supposed to tell him anything.”

  “It’s your job to keep me in line,” Tom told her.

  “I’m not sure anyone could manage that,” she retorted. “You’re a tough case.”

  Tom lowered his head to hers until their foreheads touched. “Not for you,” he murmured.

  They were silent for a moment, their pleasure in each other’s company almost palpable.

  “Let’s get going,” Tom murmured. “We’ve got some lost time to make up for.”

  “About sixty-seven years,” she told him.

  He smiled into her eyes. “We’d better get started, then.” Sliding an arm around Emma’s shoulders, he guided her to the doorway. Stopping at the threshold, they turned to look back at Alex.

  He saw them through a sudden blur. He had to clear his throat roughly before he could speak. “Thanks. For everything.”

  The other man smiled in understanding. “You and I both got it wrong, Alex: love does last. In fact … it’s the only thing that does.”

  “Take care of Zoë,” Emma told him gently.

  “I’ll make her happy,” Alex said in a gravelly voice. “I swear it.”

  “I know you will.” She held his gaze for a long, affectionate moment. “Work on that foxtrot,” she eventually said, and gave him a wink.

  The next moment, they were gone.

  Putting on his jeans, Alex went barefoot to the kitchen, where a pot of coffee was brewing. But Zoë wasn’t there.

  Seeing that the door to Emma’s room was ajar, he realized she had gone to check on her grandmother. He found Zoë sitting on the edge of the bed with her head bent. Although he couldn’t see her face, he could hardly miss the glitter of tears falling into her lap.

  “Alex—” she said in a suffocated voice. “My grandmother—”

  “I know, sweetheart.” He held out his arms, and she went to him at once. He wrapped her in his arms and murmured against her hair, telling her that he loved her, he would always be there for her. She buried her face against him and breathed in shuddering sighs, until her tears finally slowed.

  After a while, Alex eased Zoë from the bedroom and closed the door. “She’s happy now,” he said, keeping an arm around her. “She wanted me to tell you that.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, looking bewildered.

  “Very sure,” he replied firmly. “She’s with Tom.”

  Zoë pondered that for a moment. “I don’t know anything about Tom.” She wiped a last smudge of moisture from her cheek. “I don’t know if I like the idea of her going off with a man I don’t know.”

  Alex smiled down at her. “I can tell you a few things about him …”

  Epilogue

  A week after Emma’s funeral, Zoë went back to work at the inn. It was a beautiful September morning, sunny and clear. The farmers’ markets had begun to feature dazzling varieties of apples, along with squash, eggplant, carrots, and fennel. The orca pods had begun to travel farther away from the island as the salmon had finished their runs and reached the mainland spawning rivers. Wintering loons and ducks had begun island-hopping to feast on marine life, and bald eagles busied themselves with adding sticks to their massive nests.

  As Zoë made breakfast, she wondered why it was so quiet at the inn. Justine had dashed in and out of the kitchen with barely a word to her. And although Alex had promised to stop by for breakfast after running a couple of errands, he still hadn’t shown up. The guests, for that matter, were oddly silent, with none of the usual conversation and clinking of coffee cups.

  Before Zoë could venture out of the kitchen to find out what was going on, Justine appeared.

  “Is breakfast ready?” Justine asked without preamble.

  “It will be in about fifteen minutes.” Zoë gave her a quizzical smile. “What’s happening? Why is everyone so quiet?”

  “Never mind that. Someone’s at the front door, asking for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Can’t tell you. Take off your apron and come with me.”

  “Couldn’t you just send them back here?”

  Justine shook her head and tugged Zoë along with her. They went through the hallways and into the empty dining room.

  “Where are all the guests?” Zoë asked, mystified. “What did you do with them?”

  Her question was answered by the sight of a crowd in the entrance hall. And they were all grinning at her. Zoë flushed as she realized they had gathered as a part of some surprise intended for her. “It’s not my birthday,“ she protested. Laughter rippled through the group. They parted, and the front door opened. Cautiously Zoë went out to the front porch.

  Her eyes widened as a five-piece swing band began to play.

  Alex emerged, handing her a small bouquet. He smiled down at her. “I arranged for us to have a dance.”

  “I can see that.” Zoë took the bouquet, inhaled the fragrance of fresh flowers, and looked up at him with shining eyes. “Any particular reason?”

  “Just wanted to practice my foxtrot.”

  “All right.” Laughing, Zoë set the bouquet on a porch rail and went into his arms, letting him draw her into a smooth, easy dance. Other couples joined in, young and old, and passersby stopped to listen. A few children began to hop and swirl in time to the ebullient music. “Why this particular morning?” Zoë asked Alex. “And why on the front porch of the inn?”

  “I’m in the mood to make a public declaration.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes.” Leaning closer, Alex murmured in a confidential tone, “I have a present for you.”

  “Where is it?”

  “My back pocket.”

  Her brows lifted. “I hope it’s not a brooch. You could hurt yourself.”

  Alex grinned. “It’
s not a brooch. But before I give it to you, I need to know something. If I got down on one knee in front of all these people and asked you a yes-or-no question … what would you say?”

  Zoë looked up into his warm blue eyes. They were eyes a woman could gaze into for a lifetime. She stopped dancing and stood on her toes to kiss him. “Try it and find out,” she whispered against his mouth.

  And he did.

  Turn the page for a sneak peak at

  Crystal Cove

  the third book in the Friday Harbor trilogy by Lisa Kleypas.

  Available soon from Piatkus

  Copyright © 2012 by Lisa Kleypas.

  Prologue

  “Happy Birthday,” Marigold Hoffman said, setting a bulky linen-wrapped object on the table.

  Her sixteen-year-old daughter, Justine, stared at the present with wide brown eyes. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Her mother smiled and gestured for her to open it.

  As Justine unwrapped the linen, a wonderful perfume rippled upward, honey-sweet, greeny-herbal, lavender-musty, candle-waxy. The cloth, with its frayed selvage and ancient fingerprint smudges, fell away to reveal a leather-bound book with ragged deckle-edged pages. The leather binding gleamed like the skin of black plums and cherries. A design of a clock face had been tooled on the front cover, with a small copper keyhole in the center.

  Justine’s breath caught. “You’re giving the grimoire to me?” Astonished and marveling, she traced the word incised along the volume’s spine: Triodecad. It was the word for a group of thirteen, a number that bonded multiplicity into oneness. The ancient book was filled with spells, rituals, and secrets. Justine had only been allowed to see it a handful of times, since spellbooks were dangerous in the hands of children. And the Triodecad, at least three centuries old, was more hazardous than most.

  Usually a grimoire was burned upon its owner’s death, but a few were too powerful to destroy. Those rare and revered volumes were passed down through generations. Since a grimoire preferred to remain with its keeper, it was almost impossible to steal one. But even if you did manage such a feat, you would never be able to open the book without a key.

  Marigold removed a long chain from around her neck. A glimmering copper key caught briefly on the strawberry-blond ripples of her hair. “Here. It’s time for you to begin the study of spellcasting. Read the grimoire and commit as much to memory as you can.”

  Justine closed her fingers around the key, letting the heat of her palm sink into the cool metal. She was tempted to question her mother’s judgment, or maybe even her sanity. There were many in the Tradition who allowed their daughters to read spellbooks, but no one handed a grimoire to a sixteen-year-old as an outright gift. “What will you do without it?” she asked.

  Marigold looked vastly pleased with herself. “I scanned the book into my computer.”

  “A cyber-grimoire? Are you sure that’s safe?”

  “The file is encrypted. And it will self-destruct if someone uses the wrong password three times in a row.” Marigold smoothed Justine’s hair with a gentle hand. “The Triodecad is yours now. Make sure to keep it in a cloth with white sage leaves, and rub a drop of protection oil on the cover now and then.”

  “Will that be enough to keep someone from stealing it?”

  “No one will ever be able to take it from you, unless you want them to have it.”

  After unlocking the book, Justine slipped the long chain over her head and slipped the key beneath her gray sweatshirt.

  “We have to do something about your clothes,” Marigold said. “I’m going to burn that sweatshirt. It’s time you started dressing with some style, Justine. All I ever see you in are jeans and sloppy shirts. I’ll give you some of my things—we’re almost the same height now.”

  “Thanks,” Justine said ruefully, “but that kind of stuff never looks right on me.”

  Marigold’s wardrobe consisted of crushed-velvet skirts and hats with flowers or feathers, silk tanks with macramé vests, skinny jeans, blouses made of delicate chiffon or lace, kimono silk jackets, studded bags, boots with tall spindly heels. And even though Justine was a natural-born witch, no amount of Renaissance-Faire-Freak clothing was ever going to make her look like one.

  There was a certain something about hereditary witches—a kind of Stevie Nicks–glam vibe, a crystalline and charismatic veneer. You could see it in their daughters, and you could even see it in older crafters like Rosemary and Sage, a grandmotherly pair who lived nearby on Cauldron Island. Justine, on the other hand, just looked and sounded … ordinary. She had straight brown hair and a fair complexion and brown eyes.

  While growing up, Justine had often heard the comment “You must be cowan,” from the other children at Summer Solstice Camp or other Tradition events. It was the word used for non-witches, usually uttered with a wrinkling of the nose, as if they had just passed by a cat’s litter box.

  Justine had become so accustomed to the remark that it had long ceased to bother her. But whenever Marigold caught wind of it, she erupted into fury. “Call my daughter that name again,” she would hiss to the other children, “and I’ll wash out your mouth with soap.” A particularly heinous threat, since the practice had originated in the seventeenth century as a form of witch torture.

  “Don’t be angry, Mommy,” Justine had told her. “I don’t mind that word.”

  “I mind it for your sake.” Marigold had knelt and taken Justine’s shoulders and stared at her in a way that made her fidget uneasily. “They may call you names now, but someday you’ll be more powerful than all of them. Someday you’ll have the Triodecad.”

  Now it seemed that day had arrived.

  Justine leafed through pages so foliated with intricate symbols and sketches and spells that it would require a lifetime of study. Brilliant shades of ink had been used on the antique rag paper … sunflower yellow, peacock blue, medieval red, soot black, deepest emerald.

  The spine of the volume slumped in a way that caused it to flop open to page thirteen. Unlike the rest of the book, that page was blank. But beneath Justine’s curious gaze, words began to form on the …

  “No.” Marigold moved to close the book decisively, frowning at it. “Don’t be naughty,” she scolded, and turned to Justine with a rueful expression. “There is something you must promise me … never read page thirteen. The Triodecad will try to show it to you from time to time, but you have to resist.”

  “Okay. But what’s on page thirteen?”

  “Everything and anything,” Marigold replied ominously.

  “Huh?”

  “Page thirteen is different for everyone. It will show you how to make your deepest dreams come true.”

  “What’s so bad about that?”

  “It always comes with complications that are guaranteed to turn your dream into your worst nightmare.”

  “Always?” Justine asked. “No exceptions?”

  “No exceptions.”

  “Jeez.” Justine looked down at the grimoire with a chiding grin and jostled it playfully. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you? You wouldn’t get me in trouble.”

  She felt the Triodecad’s cover flex as if it were smiling back at her.

  Sometimes at night Justine could sense the grimoire’s presence. It was tucked safely under her bed, emanating a nameless soothing something that made the air cool and electric. Whenever she read the book, it exuded a pleasure that reminded Justine of a cat’s purr. But it seemed to want to be consulted far more often than Justine was willing to do, with the result that it was sometimes cantankerous. Pages might turn blank or stick together. Occasionally chapter three, the section on herbology, would ooze sticky green sap on her hands.

  “Behave,” she would mutter to the book, “or I’ll give you to Goodwill.” And then it would fall open to some brightly colored page, as if to entice her.

  One of its thirteen sections dealt entirely with love magic, containing instructions for potions, talismans, glamours, fetches, binding r
unes. But there were no spells for a witch with an empty heart. Nothing for a young woman who yearned for something as extraordinary, and yet entirely normal, as love.

  One

  Ten years later

  Justine looked up with a wan smile as her cousin Zoë entered the kitchen. “Hey.”

  A September morning breeze swept in, softened with mist, sweet with sandy loam and bigleaf maples, bitten with ocean salt and a hint of marine diesel from the nearby docks of Friday Harbor. The scent was agreeable and familiar, but it did nothing to improve Justine’s mood. She hadn’t slept well for the past few nights, and so far caffeine wasn’t making a dent in the accumulated effects of insomnia.

  Zoë, as usual, was as cheerful as a daisy, blond curls bouncing on her shoulders. “Good morning.” She brandished a paperback romance novel and set it on the wooden table where Justine sat with a cup of coffee. “I brought this for you.”

  Before Zoë had come to work at the inn, Justine might have snorted at the claims that beauty could be a burden for some women. But she had seen firsthand how often her cousin was stereotyped and hit on and dismissed because of her looks.

  With her bombshell figure and eyes like Wedgwood blue saucers, Zoë was the kind of woman who made men react like the old cartoon characters … the ones whose eyes launched out of their sockets and whose tongues dangled and whose ears puffed steam. They inflicted terrible pickup lines on her and treated her as if she had a room-temperature IQ. Zoë endured these affronts with patience and dignity, whereas most women by now would have resorted to cans of pepper spray.

  Picking up the romance novel, Justine saw that the pages were tattered and yellow with age, some of them barely attached to the spine. A swooning woman wearing a red satin gown adorned the cover. “Thanks, Zo. I forgot I asked you for this.”