Spun by Sorcery

by Barbara Bretton

  Crap. I had to stop putting thoughts in their mind. Old magick was like a boomerang. Put something out there and you could be sure it would come winging back at you with a bomb attached.

  Right on queue I heard the rumble of a car approaching. I turned and started to run back toward safety. I slipped and fell to one knee. Pain shot through to my hip. I scrambled to my feet and pushed myself back into the clearing seconds before a black pickup truck roared past then disappeared.

  Dusk was giving way to night. I wasn’t sure whether or not this was part of the illusion. Exhaustion, the cold, everything was conspiring to make me punchy. I was tired of dodging bullets, tired of trying to figure out what was real, what was trying to kill me, what was just trying to screw with my head.

  I wanted it to be over. I wanted to be with Luke. I wanted Sugar Maple to reappear. I wanted to see my friends again, walk the streets I played on as a kid, claim my heritage, and get on with my life.

  Was that asking so much?

  And that was when it all came crashing down.

  33

  CHLOE

  I heard the crash before I saw it. The sound of brakes screeching. A scream rising up into the darkness. The slam of metal against wood.

  And then silence.

  I started to shake and this time it had nothing to do with the falling temperature.

  I knew those sounds. Those sounds had been with me almost every day of my life.

  I was frozen in place, once again helpless to stop the inevitable as the seven glittering orbs returned to enjoy the show.

  “Don’t do this,” I shouted, even though I knew better. “Please don’t do it.”

  They hovered, rays of glitter pulsating to some internal rhythm, and took turns moving slowly past my face. They smelled vaguely like thyme and grass clippings and something I couldn’t identify. Elation flowed from them like snowmelt. They were waiting for me to lay my broken heart on the snow for them to see.

  But they ceased to matter when I saw the car.

  Oh, how I had loved the big green late 1970s Thunderbird with a backseat made for napping. As a little girl I had thought it was the most beautiful car in the world. It had been my family’s magic carpet to exotic places like Burlington and Montpelier. Anyplace is exotic when you’re not quite six years old.

  The T-Bird didn’t look so beautiful crumpled and broken and lying on its side, wheels spinning, windows smashed, steam punctuating the frigid night air from the crushed front end. I heard the sound of a little girl crying from somewhere close by but I didn’t turn to look. I couldn’t turn away from the horror in front of me.

  “Ted!” My mother’s voice, slightly husky. Utterly unforgettable. “Oh, please, Ted, talk to me! Say something!”

  Her anguish was like another presence. Even though one of Isadora’s sons had thrown down the black ice that caused the crash, my mother’s guilt knew no bounds. If she hadn’t cast a spell over my father that bound him to her forever, the accident never would have happened.

  “Why are you showing me this?” I cried out.

  Because we can, came the answer.

  I cried out as the crumpled side of the car lifted up and away and I saw my father lying in my mother’s arms.

  They were both twenty-five years old and doomed.

  I had no photos of my parents. No scrapbooks or old letters or birthday cards to remember them by. Over the years I had blocked all memories of my father, letting my anger at my mother overshadow everything else. In time I was so successful at it that he was nothing more than a whisper on the winds of time.

  But now a thousand long-buried memories came at me in a tidal wave of sweet pain.

  Riding through town on his shoulders as he showed off his little daughter to Lilith and Archie and Midge and the Griggs family and anyone else in town who stopped to talk to the strapping young mortal and his half-sorceress child.

  How hard it must have been for him to give up all that he knew, all that he was, to be with my mother and me in Sugar Maple. Was he resentful? I would never know.

  The memories I saw spinning before me showed nothing but joy.

  I drank in the sight of him: tall, lanky, with dirty blond hair and melted chocolate brown eyes that crinkled when he laughed. His hands were big and callused from his carpentry work. Strong hands that made a child feel safe in all the ways that mattered.

  I loved you so much. The realization felt like coming home. He wasn’t a shadow. He wasn’t just a name on some long-forgotten birth certificate. Some shared DNA.

  That was my father. The all-too-mortal man I had called Daddy. And as I watched my mother cradle him as he bled out in her arms, I felt like I was losing him all over again. Losing them. Losing my childhood and my future in one terrible moment.

  “Such a shame,” the tangerine-glittered orb said with a note of mirth in her voice. “So young!”

  “A waste of fine human flesh,” said the lime green orb.

  “Oh, he was a pretty one,” said the chestnut-tinted orb. “Guinevere always did have an eye for fine young men. I’ve always wondered who would have been next if she hadn’t left the way she did.”

  Rage exploded inside my head. Powerful, destructive, ugly rage that sent me spinning up into the air in a crazed attempt to tear those glittering balls apart with my bare hands.

  Every ounce of magick at my command, everything I had ever learned through the Book of Spells, all that Sorcha had taught me came pouring out in an eruption of vengeance that made the volcano from hell seem like a child’s chemistry experiment.

  Conscious thought vanished. I didn’t want the cruel and vicious Fae to claim my beloved hometown but the only clear motive at work inside me at that moment was to make them stop. To make them pay for the fact that one of theirs caused the accident that took my father’s life.

  With every sob ripped from my mother’s broken heart, I hit them harder. I tore the lime green ball into two and laughed as it disappeared from sight. I sank my teeth into the lime green and spat the glitter at the other. I laughed out loud when I dug my thumbs into the tangerine-glittered orb and its lifeblood spilled over my fingers.

  Familiar flames shot from my fingertips and incinerated the aquamarine orb. My heart filled with powerful elation. My need to destroy knew no limits.

  I could have ripped apart the entire Fae world, all of Isadora’s old followers, the descendants of Da’Elle, the clan members who’d stayed behind in Salem, destroyed every single one of them with one mighty blow. Orchid, chestnut, both lemon and butter yellow—one by one I fought and obliterated the glittering orbs.

  “I know you can hear me!” I roared into the night. “You’ll never be able to harm the ones I love again!”

  Bold words, heedlessly spoken.

  I should have known better.

  Your daughter, a new voice said. How long will you be able to protect the daughter?

  “I don’t have a daughter,” I shouted. “Are mind games all you’ve got left?”

  Another orb appeared before me, but this one was huge and the color of onyx. It obliterated the wrecked T-Bird and the terrible scene playing out in front of me. The orb glittered darkly like ice on a moonless night. A faint hum emanated from it, steady, toneless, unsettling enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck.

  The orb suddenly split apart and Luke spilled out on a sea of bloodred foam. He was alive and in one piece and a surge of love, violent and fiercely protective, almost knocked me to my knees.

  Luke rose to his feet as the orb healed itself and ascended to a point a few feet above our heads, where it hovered. If you had asked me yesterday if giant glittering disco balls from hell were high up on my list of fears, I would have laughed in your face.

  But if you asked me now, I’d pencil it in at number one.

  The orb began to trace slow circles over Luke’s head.

  “Stop,” I said in a deadly calm tone of voice. “Don’t do that.”

  The circles slowed to a lazy crawl
as the orb dropped down closer to him.

  “I told you once,” I said, still sounding calm, “but I’m not going to tell you a second time. This isn’t his battle. It’s mine.”

  I saw Luke’s expression flatten into his cop face, a sure sign he was about to do something we might both regret.

  A sick feeling washed over me as I realized his temporary powers were quickly disappearing. His reflexes had slowed to human speed, which made him vulnerable to attack. Twenty-four hours, Samuel had said, but I could see the estimate had fallen dangerously short.

  Here’s a present for you, mortal, a deep, rich voice intoned as a shimmering screen unrolled from the top of the orb and a little girl on a bicycle trundled into view. The daughter reference now made horrifying sense.

  It was Luke’s daughter, Steffie. Any second she would ride that bicycle into the street and her tiny body would be crushed beneath the wheels of a neighbor’s car.

  The need to destroy filled my heart and soul. A dark red mist clouded my vision. I would do anything to spare the man I loved the sight of his daughter taking her last breath on this earth.

  Sugar Maple didn’t matter any longer. I didn’t give a damn about talismans or clans or leaders or any of the thousands of things that get in the way of what was truly important.

  This was important. Love was important. Husbands, wives, lovers, partners, parents, children in any combination. I hated my world of magick for taking my parents. I hated Luke’s world of mortals for letting his daughter die. It didn’t have to be this way and the fact that it was had me spinning out of control.

  Luke tried to stop me as I threw myself at the orb but my powers, as well as my rage, were beyond his reach.

  I started shredding the black orb inch by inch, using everything at my command. My nails, my teeth, my magick, my fury. I aimed bolts of fire at its heart. I pierced it with daggers conjured from years of loneliness.

  I raged against the senseless death of a little girl and the unending pain her parents endured. I raged against the fact that the town I loved, the creatures I called family, had been taken from me because I had been found wanting. I raged against the fact that I hadn’t understood how far I would have to go to win.

  I was grotesquely alive. Fully aware of everything I was doing in a way I had never been before. The adrenaline rush of blood madness was the kind of high not even hand-dyed pure cashmere or a bucket of Ben & Jerry’s had ever delivered. Was this how Dane felt when my parents’ car skidded across the carpet of black ice he had prepared just for them? Was this the way Isadora felt when she watched Suzanne Marsden sink below the surface of icy Snow Lake?

  Was this how you became a monster?

  34

  CHLOE

  “Chloe!” Luke’s voice came to me from a distance. “Chloe, stop! It’s over . . . stop . . . you did it . . . you won . . . it’s all over!”

  The red mist parted just enough for me to realize Luke was next to me. I was still flying on pure sensation and had trouble taking in my surroundings.

  His shirt was ripped. A jagged gash bisected his left cheek. I had a fuzzy memory of him fighting by my side but my fury had all but blotted it out.

  I was standing in the middle of an empty field with Luke. It had the scruffy, hopeful look of early spring in northern Vermont. A few snowdrops dotted the expanse. Here and there a yellow daff poked out its head to test the surroundings. Winter was gone but spring hadn’t quite made up her mind.

  The snow was gone. So was the totaled Thunderbird. And the wreckage of my parents’ lives. The screen with Steffie’s image. The ashes of the orbs I had destroyed. The last vestiges of the rage that had carried me through battle to this place.

  Was this what you wanted me to become, Samuel? I asked silently. I had crossed the divide between civilized being and monster to save the town I loved.

  But where was the talisman? Why wasn’t I basking in its golden glow right now? Maybe I had won the battle but lost the war.

  Seven beings watched us from a point some twenty feet away. They were the height of human children but unmistakably adult and undeniably beautiful in the way only the Fae could be. Each was garbed in a simple robe matching the color of one of the glittering orbs I had vanquished just moments before.

  They looked fragile in defeat, as if a gust of wind would tear them apart like dandelions on a hot summer day.

  I had to remind myself that they were ruthless warriors who, if the tables had been turned, would be rejoicing at my death and Luke’s with no reservations.

  They spoke in one voice. “We have been defeated. We are prepared to be banished into the eternal darkness.”

  So that was the next step. I wasn’t sure even the Book of Spells had instructions for a situation like this.

  I recognized their collective future was in my beginner’s hands. I had banished Isadora gladly and with no regrets. She had preyed upon the weak and taken lives for sport. Banishing her had been the right thing to do.

  These warriors had waited centuries to claim a birthright promised them by their ancestors and when the moment came, they had fought fiercely and without remorse to achieve it.

  Hadn’t I done the same thing?

  “Chloe,” Luke whispered in my ear, “they’re waiting.”

  I knew what he expected me to do. It was what Samuel had coached me to do in order to win over the talisman. A total commitment to Sugar Maple that allowed no room for doubt of any kind. It was exactly the same thing I had expected of myself up until a half second ago.

  I knew that my decision might cost me Sugar Maple but if I was ever going to be a true leader, now was the time to start.

  I stepped forward and looked toward the Fae. “I’m not going to banish you.”

  My voice was strong. My resolve was unshakable.

  If they sensed weakness they would strike but I wasn’t weak. I had never felt stronger or more powerful in my life.

  “You have two choices,” I continued as the Fae watched and listened. “You can choose to leave this dimension and go beyond the mist or you can choose to stay here in Sugar Maple, build a place for yourselves in the community, and finally live in peace.”

  I felt Luke’s eyes on me and I knew what he was thinking. I wasn’t totally crazy. I would build safeguards that would protect all of our citizens, Fae and magick and human, from mischief or harm. One transgression and the entire clan would be banished. I finally understood my enemy. I understood how deep the bitterness ran but I believed there was no other way to achieve the goal Aerynn had set all those years ago.

  Once again the seven Fae spoke as one. “There is no Sugar Maple. The talisman didn’t return it to you.”

  My answer surprised even me. “Then we’ll rebuild Sugar Maple together and we’ll make it better than it was before.”

  I didn’t expect them to jump up and down with excitement but I had expected more than the silence that greeted my words.

  “I need a decision.” Okay, so maybe working together had been a crazy idea but it was worth a shot. Beyond the mist was looking more and more likely.

  “Chloe.” Luke stepped forward. “Look!”

  He pointed toward a twinkling dot in the northwestern sky.

  “The surveillance camera?” I said. “That’s not possible.”

  Luke shot me a quizzical look. “What surveillance camera?”

  “The one that watched everything that went on inside the dome.”

  “I don’t think that’s a surveillance camera, Chloe.”

  Whatever it was, it was burning brighter and hotter with every second that passed. A murmur of excitement rose up from the gathered Fae as it began a rapid descent then headed straight for me.

  LUKE

  The disk stopped inches away from Chloe. A flat gleaming circle of intricately detailed gold that could be only one thing: the talisman.

  Samuel’s voice rang out across the open field.

  You are all she was and more, daughter. You will achieve ever
ything Aerynn dreamed of before you are done.

  Tears flowed down Chloe’s cheeks as she held out her hands and the talisman dropped into them.

  The seven Fae representatives swirled closer.

  “We will join with you here,” they said in unison, “and help you rebuild Sugar Maple. It is the right thing to do.”

  Chloe beamed with happiness and welcomed them with more genuine warmth than I would have believed possible. Call me a suspicious, cynical cop but I would be keeping a sharp eye on them from this point on.

  She turned to me and gave me a smile that was equal parts elation and embarrassment. “It looks like an Olympic gold medal,” she said. “Maybe I should wear it around my neck.”

  “That’s some serious bling,” I said as she moved into my arms.

  “Too bad a town didn’t come with it.” Her voice caught on the last word. “Damn,” she whispered. “I came so close.”

  “We’re still here,” I said. “We got through the worst they could throw at us.” We both had stories to tell and now we’d have the time to tell them.

  She looked up at me as the Fae swirled around us doing their equivalent of the happy dance. “I hope that was the worst.”

  “Gutsy choice, Hobbs. I’m not sure I’d have been so generous.”

  I felt her shoulders lift and fall in a shrug. “I thought—” She stiffened in my arms. “The forest,” she said, pulling away slightly so she could get a better look. “It’s gone!”

  Something was happening. The air buzzed with energy. The Fae were swooping and diving with what I hoped was excitement and not some kind of doomsday plan.

  The forest was gone but stands of sugar maples took its place, studded with evergreens and trees I knew by sight if not by name.

  “It’s coming back!” Chloe cried. “Sugar Maple’s coming back!”

  We ran toward the perimeter of town. I steeled myself for the thwack I would get when I ran face-first into that weird memory foam barrier that had thwarted us in the beginning but it wasn’t there. We were inside the township limits for the first time since the incident at the waterfall.