Luke picked up the phone and threw it out the window.
“Are you insane?” I totally lost it. “That was our only hope of finding Laria. He was going to lead us to her.” Last year Dane’s brother, Gunnar, had communicated with me through Penny, my beloved store cat, as a way of reaching between dimensions. Today Dane had used Bunny’s phone call as a conduit.
“Sports radio—you gotta love it.” His voice surrounded us, spilling from every speaker. I could almost feel it slithering down my arms like warm, poisonous honey. “So how are those Pats doing this year, MacKenzie?”
Luke was a lethal weapon poised to strike, but this time he reined in his emotions and sat still, poised and waiting.
“We’re coming for Laria,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “You can’t stop us.”
“Join us,” he said again. “I can offer you a world of pleasures you’ll never know with the human.”
Luke’s jaw was so tight I was surprised it didn’t snap in two.
“I want my baby,” I repeated. “She is a Hobbs. Sugar Maple is her birthright.”
“She’s one of ours now,” he said. “And what promise she has!”
Elspeth motioned for me to keep him talking. We were still deep in the woods. Our headlights quit and we were plunged into utter darkness. I motioned for Luke to keep quiet. Whatever Elspeth was trying to do we needed to give her the best shot.
And then I felt it. A tingling sensation that began at my scalp, then moved down my spine and back up again, faster, stronger, as we pushed deeper into the forest. We were getting closer. I could feel Laria everywhere. My breasts grew heavy with milk.
We darted left, then right, and suddenly our headlights came back on and I saw a flash of pink and movement about a football field away.
I grabbed Luke’s hand and held it tight. We were almost there. Laria was almost safe. There was no way in heaven or hell we would let Dane or his minion drag our child beyond the mist.
I wasn’t paying any attention to what Dane was saying. I just let him talk while Elspeth maneuvered the car closer and closer to our goal.
We approached a clearing and the flash of pink grew larger.
Laria was lying deep within a cluster of evergreens. She was still in her car seat and snugly wrapped against the cold in her travel blanket. James, or whatever his name really was, stood next to her, staring up at the sky. Our Jeep was tucked deep within a thicket with only its front end visible.
He was beautiful in the staggering way of all Fae. There was no way he could be mistaken for anything else. No wonder Meghan and Bunny had been overwhelmed by his looks. If he had appeared that way to me I would have looked twice as well, but Dane was too clever for that. We knew all about façades in Sugar Maple and he must have allowed me to see what he wanted me to see and not what was really there.
Dane had found his Fae equal in beauty and sent him out into my world to create havoc, beginning with Luke’s sister.
Stripped of a physical presence in our dimension he needed a surrogate to carry out his plan to snatch Laria.
Could James see us watching him? He gave no indication. He reminded me of a wax dummy, lifelike in every way but the one that really mattered. He had no soul. He was Dane’s perfect creation.
I reached for the door handle, but Luke grabbed me.
“We haven’t stopped yet. You’ll be hurt.”
“She needs me. I have to—”
Elspeth’s high scream stopped me in my tracks. She spun from the back of the car to the front, her screams growing higher, louder, more intense, and just when I thought my eardrums were going to burst I saw what she was screaming about.
Dropping through the night sky was a busted-up blue Toyota and it was headed straight for us.
Luke grabbed the wheel and turned it as far left as it would go, but nothing happened.
“Son of a bitch, that’s the car that ran us off the road,” he said, still struggling with the wheel.
The old blue car that had spun out on the snowy road the night Laria was born. The same car that had taken off without checking to see if we were all right.
His sister’s car.
It was all falling into place too late to matter.
“Hold on!” Luke yelled, placing an arm across my chest. “We’re gonna hit!”
The sound exploded inside my skull. In the blink of an eye I was six years old again, lying on an icy road while my parents lay dying in what was left of our car.
The car split open like a grape. I was torn from my seat and sent flying across the hood, spinning down toward the ground below. The sickening crunch of metal against metal was followed by a loud grunt from Luke and Elspeth’s high-pitched keening.
Twisted metal and glass sprayed everywhere, falling into the trees and cutting into my face and hands as I hit the ground hard. I tried to curl myself up into a ball to protect my back, but I felt the impact in every bone.
I heard nothing from Luke or Elspeth.
The silence was the most frightening thing of all, but it didn’t last long. Suddenly the old blue Toyota exploded, sending a fireball over the tops of the trees and into the night sky, where it quickly dissipated.
I tried to stand up, but my right knee buckled and I dropped back to the ground. I regrouped and tried again. We couldn’t be more than thirty or forty yards away from Laria, but I couldn’t see through the all-encompassing darkness that surrounded me. I would have to rely on instinct.
“Chloe.” It was Luke, his voice low and weak.
I followed the sound and almost tripped over his prone body.
“Elspeth,” he said. “She’s dead.” He had seen her hit the ground headfirst, then tumble end over end until she disappeared from his sight.
My sorrow ran surprisingly deep, but, like so many things tonight, mourning Elspeth would have to wait.
“The baby is about sixty yards away. Make a quarter turn to your right and pace it off. He’s there with her.”
“We can do it,” I said. “We can get her back.”
“Chloe,” he said, “I can’t move. Both legs are broken.”
Time stopped. I tried to take in his words, but the screaming inside my head wouldn’t stop.
“You have to do it, Chloe. You’re all Laria has.”
“I can’t. My magick—”
“It’s there. Look at your fingertips.”
So my magick really was coming back.My fingertips were beginning to glow like the old-school cigarette lighter in my ancient Buick. I didn’t know why or how it was happening—an offshoot of my adrenaline rush or maybe fear for Laria’s safety—but it didn’t matter. I needed every advantage I could get.
31
CHLOE
There was nothing left to say. I kissed him, then turned away before I started to cry. Dane’s presence was everywhere, a biting edge that made the hairs on the back of my neck lift in response.
“Join us,” James said, but I knew the words were Dane’s.
I ran toward the baby but yelped as I hit a wall of electricity.
“I need to hold Laria.”
“Like any other good mother.”
Instantly I realized James was terribly young. As beautiful as he was, and he was shockingly glorious, he was still unformed. As the Fae age, their beauty takes on a complexity that dazzles the heart as well as the eye. James hadn’t reached that point yet. He was early spring. The promise of summer still lay ahead.
But there was something more there. I just couldn’t pinpoint exactly what.
“You like what you see.” It was a statement, flat and without affect.
“You’re Fae,” I said with a shrug. “Everyone likes what they see.”
Suddenly the expression in James’s eyes ignited and waves of heat flowed toward me.
“We have unfinished business between us.”
“No,” I said, keeping Laria in my line of vision. “Whatever business we had is long finished.”
James pulled me into his a
rms and I heard Luke’s cry of outrage from behind me.
Go with it, I told myself. Find out what he wants before you make a move.
There would be no second chances.
The look in James’s icy blue eyes was Dane unmasked and it took every ounce of strength I had not to recoil.
His hands rested on my shoulders, then moved down over my breasts and lingered.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said. “I’m breastfeeding.”
The Fae were hot-blooded, but not earthy, and that reminder of my human side repelled him as I’d hoped it would.
James dropped his hands and stepped away and his eyes once again went flat.
I didn’t know much about interdimensional communication, but I did know that it took huge storehouses of energy to maintain the link, which explained this now-you-see-him-now-you-don’ t rhythm.
Laria started to cry and I felt her distress in every cell. Considering the odds were against me I was surprisingly calm. What were my choices? I could walk away and leave my baby in Dane’s hands or I could stand and fight.
But whether I won or lost, I would be with my baby. That certainty helped me to hold it together.
“She likes you,” I said, referencing that oddly sweet moment in the Jeep.
James nodded. Was I crazy or did I see a flicker of something behind those dead eyes?
“You’re good with babies,” I said again. “She sensed that.”
Definitely a flicker.
“She’s hungry,” he said. “He hasn’t fed her.”
My nursing bra felt damp with milk. I was grateful for the layers of sweater and coat.
“I can take care of that if you could help me get to her.”
He shook his head.
“Please,” I said, throwing caution to the wind. “I know this isn’t your fault. I know he has you under some kind of spell. I know he needs a physical presence in this dimension. Please help me get to my baby. I’m her mother. She needs me.”
He’s weakening . . . come on, James . . . you can do it . . . let me get my baby and we’ll fight him together . . .
He lifted me off my feet and slammed me to the ground, knocking the breath from my body. The wild, white-hot fire was back in his eyes and my heart sank.
“The baby comes with me,” he said, his booted foot resting squarely on my still-tender belly. I gasped as he leaned his weight into it. “The rest is negotiable.”
The pain radiated through my midsection, sharp, stomach-turning pain that made me dizzy.
“. . . And she’s the key to everything . . . ,” he was saying. “With her powers and pedigree on our side there will be no stopping us.”
“Sh-she’s an infant,” I managed as I rocketed toward the outer limits of my pain threshold. “You know how it is for descendants of Aerynn. She has no powers. It will be years before she’s of any use to you.”
“And that will give us years to make her one of us.” He eased up slightly and the nausea receded. “Years to teach her all there is to learn about our world.” He swept me up into his arms and cradled me against his rock-hard chest. “Years for you to mother her the way she deserves.”
He put all the power of the Fae behind his words. I could feel his heat burning through the layers of clothing that lay between us. The look in his icy blue eyes was fiery, compelling, desperately seductive on levels I hadn’t known existed until that moment.
It would be so easy to let go, to stand down and let Sugar Maple finds its own way, build its own future without a Hobbs in the lead. If I chose the avenue Dane opened to me Luke would be free to step back into the world he had left behind. A world filled with family who loved him, who wanted him to be happy, who would be there for him through good and bad. All the things that loving me denied him.
Elspeth had already lost her earth existence over this. Wasn’t that enough?
No matter how hard we tried we would never have a normal life. No matter how much I wanted to be part of the MacKenzie clan, I would always be the outsider, hiding my true self behind walls knitted of secrets and half-truths and lies.
Dane knew me too well. We had grown up in the same small village. He knew my weaknesses. He knew my dreams. He knew I had spent my life longing for my mother’s touch and that nothing short of death would tear me away from my baby. His words began to work their magick.
I’d be with my baby. Luke would be free to have the type of life he deserved, with a human wife and lots of kids who could play with their cousins without worrying they might set off some magick bombs.
I couldn’t fight it any longer. It seemed I had been fighting my entire life to fit in and always falling short. I had fulfilled the first part of my destiny. Laria was proof of that. Now I needed to guide her toward fulfilling her own destiny. I heard
Luke calling my name, but I refused to acknowledge him. I was giving him back his life. He was a mortal man like my father. He deserved a life as open and loving as his heart, a life filled with family and children and a mortal woman who wasn’t afraid to take those vows.
I was no match for a Fae at the height of his powers. Dane wasn’t even in this dimension and he could still bend Fae and human alike to his will. My powers, at their current level, wouldn’t be able to touch him and might only endanger Luke and the baby.
So there it was. The decision had been made. I opened my mouth to speak and realized Dane was gone and the real James remained. My resolve went out the window and hope filled my soul.
I had one more chance at my happy ending.
“He’s been lying to you, James. You don’t have to do this.”
The flicker of life I’d noticed before grew stronger.
“Help me rescue my daughter and I’ll help you make a home in Sugar Maple. He can’t touch you there.”
“I know about Sugar Maple. That’s where his accident happened. The town is deadly for Fae.”
I hoped he didn’t know I was the one who had banished Isadora from this realm into eternity. That wouldn’t exactly help my case.
“Did he tell you he tried to kill me? Did he tell you he tried to kill my baby’s father? Did he tell you that he killed my parents when I was a little girl? The problem wasn’t with the Fae, it was with Dane and his mother, Isadora.”
James didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I saw it in his eyes.
“The Salem Fae moved to Sugar Maple this past spring. Do you think they would have done that if Fae were being hunted down there?”
The flicker of life dimmed, then reignited. Any second Dane would take over and I’d be out of chances.
“Humans lie.”
“I’m only part human.”
“You’d lie to save your baby.”
“You’re right. I would. But I’m not lying now. You don’t have to believe me, but would you believe the Salem Fae if they told you themselves?”
I had him. I could see him wavering. Whatever hold Dane had over him wasn’t absolute. There were openings in the darkness where light could still get in.
“Please give me the baby, James. Give her to me. If you want me to, I’ll summon the Salem Fae right now and they can tell you themselves.”
There was goodness inside him still. I knew there was. Dane hadn’t completed the process of turning him toward evil.
“Laria likes you, James. I saw how kind you were to her, but she needs her mother. Please, I’m begging you to bring her to me before it’s too late.”
I was surprised Dane hadn’t reclaimed James by now. Had I made a terrible mistake and somehow played into his hands? Dane was both smart and cunning and it wouldn’t have taken him long to figure out what I was up to. Was I really talking to James or was Dane playing the part? All I could do was pray I was right.
“Hurry, James. We’re running out of time.” Just give me the baby. That’s all you have to do.
He took a step toward Laria. I swear I stopped breathing. He glanced around, then took another step and another, then grabbed the handl
e of the car seat with Laria in it. Her eyes were wide and she seemed to be staring straight up at him as he turned toward me.
“Take her,” he said.
I stepped forward but was again driven back by the invisible force field.
“You have to bring her to me. I can’t get past the barrier.” The same barrier he had breached twice already with no ill effects.
I had never before seen a Fae sweat, but beads of perspiration were streaming down James’s face. We had that much in common. I had passed into another level of fear entirely.
Don’t do it. The voice emanating from James’s body was pure Dane. Deliver the baby to me, James.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said as fear threatened to choke off my oxygen. “I’m her mother. You know what you should do, James.”
She’s human. She lies. We are the same blood. Give me the child.
“James!” I didn’t even try to hide the panic in my voice. “Don’t take her from me. Please, I’m begging you, don’t give my baby to Dane!”
Laria started to cry, her tiny face growing red with the effort. James looked down at her with concern and in that instant I knew I had won.
Don’t do it, James. Stop now while you still can.
But he didn’t stop. He took another step toward me and then another until we were just a couple of feet apart. Sweat was pouring down his face, beading his eyelashes, actually soaking through his sweater. I could almost smell his terror. But that terror didn’t stop him.
“Take her,” James said. “I don’t want her to—”
Those were his last words.
32
CHLOE
A hole in the sky the size of a baseball opened above the blazing treetops and a lightning bolt shot out and struck James dead center.
I screamed as he exploded into a shower of sparks and opalescent glitter like fireworks on the Fourth of July. The car seat with Laria in it shot straight upward, then fell back to earth.
Without Laria.
“Laria!” My cry ripped from my throat. “Where’s my baby?”
Spells & Stitches Page 23