She swept the enormous cat into her arms then dashed back to the center of the field.
“Uh-oh,” Janice said. “That doesn’t sound good.”
I’m not going to tell you I understand it, but that mellow old cat served as some kind of interdimensional courier between Chloe and the world the rest of us can’t see. Today, however, not even Penny made a difference.
I shot a quick look at my watch. We had maybe another ninety minutes before the real world and all its problems descended on what used to be Sugar Maple.
“I’m getting nowhere,” Chloe said as she rejoined us. Penny was draped across her shoulders like a knitted shawl. “I’ve tried every spell I know short of abracadabra.”
A brisk wind blew in from the west and I realized the sky had grown noticeably grayer over the last few minutes. Early April in Vermont is a crapshoot. The day can start cold, turn warm, and end with a blizzard, all within one twenty-four-hour period.
On cue, a few big fluffy white flakes drifted down.
“Oh, great,” Chloe muttered. “Just what we need.”
“I hate snow,” Janice said. “Our ancestors should have settled in Boca.”
A few more pieces of the puzzle shifted, collided, then dropped into place. “I’m thinking snow is exactly what we need.” Lots of snow. A blizzard of it, aimed right at the heart of the place where Sugar Maple used to be.
Chloe and Janice exchanged a what can you expect from a human look.
I blew it off. I knew I was onto something. “This is the answer. Maybe if you combine your powers, you can create a blizzard and block out the town.”
“I don’t have much right now,” Chloe said, clearly distressed. She turned to Janice. “How about you?”
Janice put on her game face. “We’ll find out.”
The plan was simple but if it worked it would buy us time to figure out what was going on and, with luck, a way to restore the town.
Janice’s powers were of the earth. The natural world was her element and, under normal circumstances, this should have been child’s play. Chloe’s powers were less easy to characterize and more mercurial. Their potential, however, seemed unlimited.
They moved to the middle of the open field that separated us from the woods that were once Sugar Maple, then Chloe called to Penny the cat, who had wandered off while we talked. Penny glided across the field then leaped effortlessly and once again draped herself across Chloe’s shoulders as the two women clasped hands. I’d been warned to keep my cop vibe at a distance so I leaned against the Buick and watched the show.
CHLOE
I went deep, deeper than ever before, and came up empty every time. Sugar Maple wasn’t the only thing that was gone. The Book of Spells was gone and so was my magick.
“Come on,” Janice urged. “You can do it.”
“I can’t. The Book isn’t responding.”
“What do you mean, it’s not responding? It has to respond.”
“It doesn’t have to do anything. It’s the Book of Spells.”
“It’s not the boss of you. Make it listen!”
Easy for her to say. She’d been magick all her life. Magick was as natural to Janice as breathing in and out. For me it was still like patting my head and rubbing my stomach while standing on one foot in a hurricane.
“I can’t make it listen, Jan. I’m still learning.”
“You can make it do anything you want.”
“No, I can’t. It does what it does and I go along for the ride.”
“You sound like you’re giving up.”
She was right. I was giving up. In the face of trouble, I was sliding back into my nonmagick self. Except my nonmagick self didn’t exist anymore. I owed it to everyone who had come before to remember that.
“Try again,” Janice urged. “You’re the alpha dog around here now.”
I saw the fear in her eyes and tears welled up in sympathy. I had cried more in the last few hours than at any time in my life and I didn’t like it.
“Don’t you dare,” she warned me. “If you start, I’ll start again and this time I won’t be able to stop.”
I had no blood family of my own at stake but she had a husband and children, a mother and father and siblings and nieces and nephews, an entire web of family lost out there somewhere with Sugar Maple. If I was in any way responsible for this, I had to try to make it right.
I burrowed down and gave it my best shot. I begged, coaxed, cajoled, pleaded with, and downright ordered the Book of Spells to show itself and help us out of this jam but it remained out of reach.
“Screw it!” Luke looked over at me in surprise. “To hell with the Book of Spells,” I said. “I can do this without the Book.”
I would gather up what skills I’d already mastered and put it all in the hands of my ancestors. Aerynn, if you’re out there, please help us!
Luke was watching us but there really wasn’t much to see. Whatever had occurred here had changed more than the landscape. Both Janice’s and my magick had been severely depleted and would take time to replenish. Time that we didn’t have.
But we were relentless. The air around Janice moved in vertical waves, like heat rising off a summer pavement, but there was still no sign of magick.
Janice had laid the groundwork and it was up to me to figure out a way to build on it. Last night I had done the impossible and saved a little girl’s spirit from an eternity in hell. Conjuring up a snowstorm—even with diminished powers—should be easy.
Of course there were women who said childbirth was easy, too, so I guess it was all relative. I wove my spell around Janice’s energies, adding mine to the mix, commanding the clouds to open up and spill a blizzard exactly where we needed one.
But no matter how hard I tried, nothing happened. I knew what magick felt like now. I knew how it felt when magick moved through my body, the way the muscles in my arms and legs tensed, the accelerated heartbeat, the almost sexual feeling of anticipation. And, believe me, it wasn’t there.
Penny had abandoned us and returned to the car and was now peering out at me through the rear window. Her golden eyes, strangely like mine, seemed to glow with an energy that warmed my skin like summer sunlight. I could feel myself growing loose and relaxed. The moment lengthened and I sensed a change. Instead of speeding up, my heartbeat slowed. A chill washed over me, raising goose bumps up and down my arms.
Next to me Janice let out a shriek. “It’s snowing!”
Flurries at first, big soft white snowflakes that landed like powdered sugar, then it quickly upshifted into serious snow.
The kind that showed every intention of turning into a blizzard that closed down schools and shops and roadways and took a town off the grid.
I mean, seriously, you’ve got to love magick.
Luke was euphoric when we joined him by the car. “Another fifteen minutes and nobody will be able to get within a mile of home.”
The heavy storm would also make aerial views impossible. There would be no planes flying overhead in the foreseeable future. No nosy news choppers looking to fill a twenty-four-hour cycle.
But still we couldn’t leave anything to chance.
“I’ll call the county and report the downed bridge and the whiteout conditions and tell them I’ll let them know when to send in the plows and the repair crew,” Luke said. As chief of police, his word would be taken at face value. Besides, if Mother Nature and our powers cooperated, they’d have more than enough snowplowing to keep them busy once the storm stopped.
With a little luck, that would give us forty-eight hours. I didn’t know what we were going to do with those hours but we would figure that out as we went along.
Except for the fact that Sugar Maple was still MIA and we were tired, hungry, and broke, things were really working out.
“Did you say something before about Fig Newtons?” I asked Janice. I may have drooled a tiny bit but I wouldn’t swear to it.
“You’re not getting my Fig Newtons.”
“Check the glove box, honey,” Janice said. “I promise it’s better than cookies.”
6
CHLOE
Not only was Janice’s surprise better than cookies, it was almost better than magick.
She’d stuffed my favorite felted knit purse into the glove box, along with my wallet, my credit cards, and all of the cash we’d had on hand in the shop. Not only that, she’d taken time to pop into Luke’s office next door to my shop and raid his petty cash.
“You also had an AmEx card, your cell phone, and your old Massachusetts driver’s license in there,” she told him, “so I grabbed them, too.”
It didn’t take much to make us happy. A partially charged phone, some plastic, and a handful of dead presidents and we were suddenly masters of the universe. Janice could have gone for days without eating but Luke and I shared the human need for meals at regular intervals. I couldn’t speak for Luke but I knew I would think better after I got some of those hash browns under my belt.
“Have fun, guys,” Janice said. “I’m staying here.”
“Are you crazy?” I asked. “The snow’s only going to get worse.”
“I’ll take my chances with the blizzard.”
I started to laugh. “She’s afraid I’m going to drive,” I said to Luke. “That’s what this is all about.”
Janice didn’t deny it. “Honey, the only thing worse than driving your Buick is riding around in your Buick with you behind the wheel.”
Who could blame her? Everyone knew how much I hated driving. And to make matters worse everyone seemed to agree that I was horrible at it at the best of times. The only wheel they wanted to see me behind was a spinning wheel.
To Janice’s relief, Luke agreed to drive. It occurred to me that might give us an advantage. If we were pulled over, having the chief of police driving should guarantee us no questions asked.
The snow was hellacious but, true to the spell we cast, it centered on Sugar Maple and the mile or so immediately surrounding it. By the time we were halfway to the Golden Arches we had outpaced the storm and were free and clear.
McDonald’s anchored a huge outlet mall two towns away. We debated eating in the car but the lure of indoor plumbing was too tempting to resist. Penny opened one eye as I exited the car then promptly went back to sleep when I promised I’d bring something back for her.
Twenty minutes later, Luke, Janice, and I were eating our way through a mountain of Egg McMuffins, piles of hash browns in those nifty paper envelopes, and enough coffee to keep us awake until Thanksgiving. Conversation was limited to “Pass the ketchup” and “I need another creamer.”
There was only so much chaos the mind could process without flaming out. It was good to sit there in the toasty warm restaurant, scarfing eggy-cheesy muffins, chugging coffee, and pretending our lives hadn’t been turned upside down.
And then it was time to get serious. We disposed of our trash. I ordered an Egg McMuffin for Penny and grabbed a few extra coffees for the road. We might be up the creek without a paddle but at least we weren’t going to starve.
“It’s snowing!” I said as we exited McDonald’s and walked across the parking lot toward the Buick.
Janice stopped in her tracks. “It’s not supposed to be snowing here. We made sure of that.”
“Probably a coincidence,” Luke said, glancing up at the flurries swirling around our heads. “Flurries might have been part of the weather report.”
I was wondering if we had done too good a job with the snow. If the roads were impassable for delivery trucks and tourists, they would be impassable for us too.
Then again, we had magick to help us, out. I refused to worry about it until I had to.
Walmart anchored the opposite end of the strip mall and, luckily for us, it opened early. We wrote up a list of emergency items on the back of a paper napkin (cat litter, bottled water, Chips Ahoy). Luke went off in search of an ATM while Janice and I did the shopping.
“Now what?” Janice asked when we met back up in the parking lot and considered our options.
“I guess we go back to Sugar Maple,” I said. What else could we do? It wasn’t like we had anyplace else to go.
“There is no Sugar Maple,” Luke, back from the ATM, reminded me.
“I know that.” I hit each word hard. “That’s why we need to go back there.” Wasn’t that the first rule of detecting? Keep your eyes on the scene of the crime. Sooner or later the guilty party would return for a victory lap and a smart detective would be there waiting.
Unless, of course, the guilty party turned out to be one of the detectives, which called up a whole different set of complications I didn’t want to consider. I know both Luke and Janice believed I had nothing to do with Sugar Maple’s disappearance but it would take more than loyalty to convince me I was totally innocent.
“Did you forget about the blizzard?” Luke sounded maddeningly calm and more than a little annoying. I felt like turning him into a hot-pink stitch marker but we needed him to drive. “The roads are probably impassable by now.”
“We have to go back,” I said. “I need to find the Book of Spells.” He knew as well as anyone how important the Book was.
“What makes you think it’s there?”
“Hey,” Janice said, whirling on him, “back off, MacKenzie. I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas.”
“Janice is right,” I said. “You’re the hotshot big-city detective.” I was so ticked off even I could see the raging red aura forming all around me. “If you’re so smart, what would you do?”
“Easy,” he said. “I’d go to Salem.”
7
LUKE
Chloe stared at me like I’d turned into a frog. “Salem’s not a great idea, Luke.”
“Salem!” Janice’s voice shot up at least two octaves. “Are you freaking nuts?”
“What’s wrong with Salem?” I demanded. “Hell, you guys have a monument to the place on your collective front lawn.” The replica lighthouse that illuminated the village green. Even the street names were based on Salem references. And those were only two of many shout-outs. Once you caught on, you realized Salem was everywhere you looked.
“Think about it, Einstein.” Janice was practically spitting fireballs at me. “Witch Trials sound familiar?”
“They happened over three hundred years ago.”
“And nothing’s changed since then.”
“Come on,” I said. “Get real, Janice. When’s the last time someone was burned at the stake for being a witch?”
“They were hanged in Salem,” Janice corrected him. “Get your facts straight.”
“Come on, guys.” Chloe sounded a warning a wiser man would have heeded. “Let it go. It’s a Sugar Maple thing, Luke. You’ll never understand.”
“And you do?” She might be magick but she was human, too, and that powerful connection was something we shared. She had been raised as a mortal woman. She had to see the absurdity of Janice’s position.
Instead I saw only uncertainty in her wide golden eyes. “As much as I can,” she said softly.
I’d taken at least two dozen sensitivity courses during my years on the force. Workshops on racial discrimination, religious intolerance, sexual harassment, hate crimes of every type. I’d role-played both sides of every issue. No matter how you parsed it, the message was simple. Diversity was good. Bigotry wasn’t. I got it. I agreed with it. I always had.
However, this whole issue of humans versus the Others was above my pay grade. That alone should have stopped me but it didn’t. My gut said I was onto something, and a good cop never ignored his gut even if it got him in trouble.
I grew up two towns over from Salem. I knew the area like I knew the sound of my own heartbeat. Salem was a Massachusetts seaport and fishing village and nothing more.
“Have you ever been to Salem?” I as
ked both Chloe and Janice. “Walked the streets, talked to the people, stood on the docks and breathed in the salt air?”
The look of pain in Janice’s eyes surprised me. “Once,” she said. “I lasted three minutes before I bolted. I couldn’t breathe.”
“I drove over there one weekend when I was at BU,” Chloe said. “I couldn’t get past the Entering Salem sign.” She’d broken out in hives and ended up in the ER.
I regrouped.
“We’re in deep shit,” I said. “We have maybe forty-eight hours before somebody out here in the world notices Sugar Maple’s gone. We’re not going to find the answers on the Internet or in the public library and there’s no point trying to collect fingerprints or DNA. Salem is our best shot.”
“Are you always this cheerful?” Janice wisecracked. “No wonder you humans spend so much money on shrinks and Prozac.”
Great. Another antihuman dig from Janice. I wondered how she’d ended up best friends with Chloe, whose father had been one hundred percent mortal.
“What do you think we’ll find in Salem?” Chloe asked. “Another Book of Spells? A welcoming committee?”
Janice flashed me a look. “Santa Claus with a marching band and the key to the city?”
“Maybe nothing,” I admitted. “Maybe everything. We won’t know until we get there. That’s how you find out.”
“Are you sure you were a detective?” Janice asked. “That’s not how it is on television.”
I let it pass. Detective work was actually a hell of a lot like advertising. Maybe only ten percent of your efforts would amount to anything but nobody knew which ten percent it would be so you covered all your bases.
Chloe looked at me over Janice’s head. “I think we’re better off here. Our connection with Salem has no relevance to what’s happening now.”
“Then why all of the Salem references in town?” I challenged her. “Why keep the connection alive all these years? It has to mean something.”
“Sure it does,” she said. “History . . . tradition.”
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