“About your ex, I’ll bet. Can’t make those calls with Chloe around, right?”
“Something like that.”
“So what brings her to Sugar Maple to see you?”
“Just passing through,” I lied.
“Oh, you can tell me,” Midge said in her Betty Boop voice. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Nothing to tell. She’ll be back on the road tomorrow.”
“She’s a tiny little thing.” Midge stepped farther into the room. “Not at all like Chloe. I’ve always loved a big tall man with a teeny woman.”
Midge barely topped five feet in heels.
I nodded and took a step back. What the hell? Midge was old enough to be my grandmother—and that was just counting human years—but the vibe in the room had become sexually charged.
“I’d better get back to the cottage,” I said. “Chloe will be wondering what’s taking me so long.”
“I brought some donuts.” She aimed a full-wattage smile up at me. “Why don’t you put on a pot of coffee and I’ll run back to the car and get them.”
“Maybe some other time, Midge.”
I’d never seen anyone over two actually pout before.
“Sit down.”
“What?”
She motioned toward the desk. “Sit down.”
Okay, now I was getting seriously freaked out. When it’s after midnight and a vampire tells you to sit down, you have reason to worry.
“Oh, don’t you look at me like that,” she said with one of her high-pitched laughs. “I’m not going old school on you.”
“Old school?”
“Interview with the Vampire. Bela Lugosi.” She pretended to bite down on her forearm. “My grandkids call it direct access.”
“That’s a relief.”
She laughed again and patted my hand. “You had that scared human look around your eyes. The young ones toy with the old ways, but trust me, they’ll learn soon enough. Life is easier all around without the hunt.”
Which was all terrific information but I didn’t have a clue what it had to do with me. Or why I needed to know it tonight.
“Midge, you know my office is open to you anytime, but tonight I need to get home and take care of some personal matters.”
“Honey, I hate to say this, but it really is time you went back home.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Not Chloe’s home. Your home: Boston.”
“Are you joking?”
Her big brown eyes brimmed with tears. “I wish I was, honey, but it had to be said. One human was tolerable but two is something else again. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t feel that way. I’m a firm believer in live and let live. We were welcomed here years ago by open-minded humans who believed we had rights too. There’s no reason why we can’t all get along together. But some of us—and I’m not naming any names but you can figure it out if you try—are seriously questioning whether or not Sugar Maple belongs in this realm at all.”
“The Weavers,” I said. They hadn’t exactly hidden their feelings from anyone since Isadora’s banishment. They were Fae so moving beyond the mist would be as natural as breathing to them.
“You didn’t hear it from me.”
“They’re only two people. You’d need a hell of a lot more to bring about that kind of change.”
“There were whispers before, but the whispers got a lot louder tonight after your wife showed up.”
“What does Karen have to do with anything?”
“The general feeling—and again I’m just telling you what I heard—is that it starts with one human and then another, and before you know it, they’re building summer houses and sending their kids to school here.”
“Karen is going home as soon as her car’s repaired.”
Midge’s expression lightened. “Well, that’s no problem. The boys can have it ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
I explained to her that because the accident was already on record with the rental car agency, we needed to follow procedures by the book. “They’ll probably toss her another rental and she’ll be on her way.”
“Honey, you’ll have to make sure of it or I won’t be held responsible for what happens.”
“Don’t worry, Midge,” I said as I moved her toward the door. “Nobody’s going to hold you responsible for anything.”
One way or the other, the responsibility was all mine.
Just ask Karen.
8
CHLOE
Clearly this was my night for lurking. This time I was positioned outside the bathroom door when I heard the unmistakable squeak of the medicine cabinet door sliding shut. I did a quick mental inventory of the contents and breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing incriminating in there. At least nothing that I remembered. For a second I considered barging in and catching her red-handed, but I kind of understood where she was coming from. The sad truth of it was I would be up to my elbows in her battered Coach tote bag right now if I wasn’t afraid I’d get caught.
All things considered, I’d rather have her poking around my medicine cabinet than unconscious on the bathroom floor looking all pale and wan and needy. I had never been the rescue-me type. When you were taller than most men of your acquaintance, damsel-in-distress wasn’t a card a girl could easily play.
I left her to her investigation and walked down the hallway to the laundry room to see what I could do about getting our clothes clean.
I see hand knits every day of my life. Everything from garter-stitch dishcloths to wedding ring shawls like the one that had come close to putting me into intensive care. I knew great knitting when I saw it, and her cardi was great knitting. Even spattered with mud, the ribbon-tie sweater was a thing of beauty. Intricate trim, clever short-row shaping, a dressmaker’s attention to detail.
But that unfortunate six-inch gash across the back was an affront to knitters everywhere.
I’m pretty good at repairs but this one was beyond my skills. My human skills, at any rate.
But my magick was another story.
By the time I heard the blow dryer start up in the bathroom, the tear was gone and I was pressing the excess water into a stack of thick white towels and congratulating myself on a job well done. A great sweater should be forever . . . or as close to forever as a knitter can manage.
The ex walked in while I was gently shaping the damp sweater on my blocking board.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said with a slight smile. “I was going to wash it.”
“No problem,” I said. “I didn’t want the mud to have a chance to settle into the fibers.”
“You’re a knitter.”
“So the mountains of yarn in the guest room gave me away.”
Her smile widened just enough for me to notice. “That and the eight spinning wheels in the hallway.”
“Occupational hazard. I own a knit shop in town.”
She smoothed the edging on her cardi. “Luke told me.” I held my breath as she ran her hand down the sleeve. “I was so proud of myself when I finished this. My daughter loved it. I used to tell her when she grew up—” She stopped and shook her head. “It has a big rip in the back. I keep promising myself I’d figure out how to mend but—” She flipped the sweater over. “You fixed it?” She looked at me like I’d cured cellulite with applications of hot fudge. “Where did you find matching yarn? It was hand-spun.”
Busted. I won’t tell you what I thought but it would have gotten me bleeped on The View.
I had to think fast. “Remember I’m a spinner too. I have boxes of samples stowed away. I can usually come up with a match for just about anything.”
As far as lies went, that was a good one. I really did have boxes and bags of yarn samples tucked in every storage space both here and at the shop.
“Un-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “Something weird’s going on here.”
My heart slowed to a crawl. I held my breath and waited for the other shoe to drop.
I made it a habit to avoid the M word around humans. Instead I babbled something incoherent about grafting and needle size, and then I heard myself offering to teach her some of the basics at the shop sometime.
“Wait a minute! Are you that Sticks & Strings? I read about you online,” she said, warming up even more. “Isn’t that the place where your yarn never tangles?”
“That’s us,” I said, laughing. “Your yarn never tangles, your sleeves always turn out the same length, and you always get gauge.”
Knitting makes strange bedfellows. It transcends race and gender and political orientation. Sit two knitters down with needles and yarn, and I guarantee they’ll find common ground.
Even if it’s only how to repair a ripped sweater.
KAREN
I hate the word bonding, but even I couldn’t deny that we clicked somehow. And it had nothing to do with the fact we had both slept with Luke MacKenzie. I felt my guard drop for the first time in weeks.
We sat down at her kitchen table with mugs of tea and she tried to show me how she had repaired my sweater, but I swear to you her fingers were a blur.
“Slow down,” I said. “You lost me when you threaded the tapestry needle.”
“Sorry. I have a quick metabolism.”
She wasn’t kidding. I don’t want to say there was something weird about Chloe Hobbs, but up until that moment I thought only cartoon characters moved that fast. Even though she was wielding the needle right under my nose, I still had the feeling it was the knitting equivalent of a Vegas magic trick.
Or maybe she had some weird kind of knitting superpowers, paranormal crafting skills straight out of a Harry Potter—
She stopped, needle poised above the piece of knitted fabric she was using to demonstrate her technique. “Actually I’ve never read Harry Potter.”
You could hear my breath leave my body in one loud whoosh. “What did you say?”
“I thought you—” She stopped and shook her head. “Forget it. I thought I heard you say something about Harry Potter but you didn’t so . . . ” Her words trailed away.
“You’re psychic!” Why had it taken me so long to figure it out? It was written all over her face. Those eyes! Nobody had eyes like that unless they saw things the rest of us couldn’t. “I knew there was something different about you.”
Her mouth opened but no sound came out.
“My grandmother was psychic and so was my mother. I’m not but I know when someone has the gift. You picked up on something I was thinking and then you pushed it away. My mother did that all the time.”
“I’m not psychic.”
“I grew up with it. You won’t shock me.”
“I was trying to slow down so you could read my stitches. That’s all it was.”
“Fine,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders. “Whatever.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
“My mother didn’t want to admit she had second sight either. It’s okay. I get it. Some people—”
She jumped up and sent cats and yarn flying in every direction. I wanted to tell her to consider cutting back on the caffeine but I thought better of it.
“I’m sorry,” I said instead, bending down to retrieve a ball of merino. “I just think you should be proud of your gifts and not hide them.”
She looked like she wanted to hit me with a pair of US 15s. “I’m not psychic,” she said through gritted teeth. “I can’t read minds. I can barely read a menu without my contacts in. Will you just drop it?”
She’s a foot taller than I am so I dropped it.
But I didn’t believe her for a minute.
CHLOE
I wasn’t lying when I told the ex that I’m not psychic. I’m really not. Or at least I don’t think I am. My powers still aren’t totally realized, but so far I haven’t seen any clues that mind reading was going to be one of my specialties. Mostly I’m lucky if I can figure out what I’m going to do next, much less what anybody else will be up to.
Bad enough she was Luke’s ex-wife; now she was turning out to be one of those humans who think they are somehow connected to “the other side.”
Trust me. They aren’t. They don’t have a clue what the other side is all about, and if they did, they would probably run like hell to get away from it.
Of course, there was one problem with my thesis: I had heard her speak even though the ex claimed she hadn’t said anything, which pretty much put us at an impasse. And if you think I’m bad at confrontations, you should see how awful I am at impasses.
I wiped up the tea. She saved the yarn from a wicked puddle. The cats abandoned the kitchen for the relative safety of the front room. We stared at each other for a few awkward minutes at the end of which she pretended to yawn and I pretended she wasn’t pretending. The sleeping draught I dropped into her tea wouldn’t take hold for another half hour.
Finally I showed her to the guest room.
Now all I had to do for the next eight hours was make sure the cutlery didn’t stage a performance of “Be My Guest” at the foot of her bed.
I started a huge pot of coffee. My plan was to stay up all night, standing vigil over the dishes and other household objects that just might decide to join the chorus. I could explain away a repaired sweater but dancing spoons might be problematic.
And don’t get me started on what I’d do if Isadora managed to breach her banishment and make another appearance. I had enough to worry about.
Like wondering when Luke was going to come back.
I grabbed my cell and pressed number one.
“Luke MacKenzie here. Leave a message.”
“What’s taking so long? Call me.”
Better yet, come home. His ex-wife hadn’t driven up to Sugar Maple to talk knitting. Whatever was going on, he needed to deal with it himself and send her back to Boston, where cutlery knew its place.
Another five minutes passed, then ten. Still no sign of Luke. I pressed the redial.
“Luke MacKenzie here. Leave a message.”
My hands started to shake and I disconnected.
I was now officially worried.
Luke was a cop. More than that, he was the only cop in town. It didn’t matter that this was the Town Without Crime. His cell was on all day, every day, even when we were making love. There was no way he would head out in the middle of the night with his phone turned off.
Come to think of it, he didn’t head out much at all after dark. There was the occasional lost tourist or dustup with some of the town’s teenagers, but once the sun went down, he stayed pretty close to home.
And to me.
My stomach knotted. Not that Sugar Maple posed a danger to him. Or at least it hadn’t before Isadora went totally nuts tonight and trashed our town hall meeting at the same time Luke was rescuing his ex from a ditch near the outskirts of town.
The coincidental timing bothered me, but I wasn’t sure why. Most of life was a series of coincidences. Some good, some not so. It was what you did after that mattered.
For all I knew, Karen’s arrival might have saved his life. As the only full-blooded human in town, he would have been the most vulnerable to serious injury when the explosion tore through the old church. A pillar or a giant shard of window glass might have—
I didn’t want to think about it. There were enough items on my list of worries without adding things that never happened.
I wasn’t sure if the thought made me feel better or worse.
A half hour later I had finally settled down at my favorite Schacht wheel when Luke pulled into the driveway. His headlights swept the living room like a beacon, spotlighting the soft merino roving I was spinning into
cobweb yarn. I felt the familiar little bump-up in my heart rate, but this time it was equal parts desire and anxiety.
Spinning was second nature to me. But love? Not so much. Just when I was finally getting the hang of it, maybe even believing this crazy connection between Luke and me might actually work out, the fates threw a curveball at me in the form of an ex-wife and the little girl they’d lost.
I pounced the second the door closed behind him.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your daughter?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk while Karen was in the house.”
“Why?” I asked again, my voice breaking slightly. “I need to know.” I was hurt and angry and feeling more vulnerable than I’d ever felt before in my life, and I didn’t like it. If I could have bartered away my all-too-human heart, I would have done so in a cat’s breath.
I locked eyes with him, and I didn’t even try to hide my feelings. It wasn’t easy for me to open myself up that way. I’d spent most of my life putting a good face on things, pretending to be happy and content when the loneliness threatened to swallow me whole. Who would have guessed love could hurt even more?
He needed to see what keeping secrets from a woman did to her. Let him see the damage he’d caused.
He pulled back.
I pushed harder.
Maybe too hard.
His expression downshifted swiftly from surprise to self-defense to a level of pain I’d never seen before, and all the fight went out of me.
“I wanted to tell you about Steffie,” he said, “but—”
I put my fingers to his lips. “I know. You don’t have to explain.” I wished with all my heart that he would but I wasn’t going to push. Not now.
“Karen’s in bad shape.” He told me about his call to his old friend Fran in the department. “Fran helped me track down a nurse Karen worked with at the hospital. She didn’t quit. She was fired.”
“I’m sorry she’s having a rough time,” I said, “but I don’t understand why she came up here to see you.”
Laced with Magic Page 8