Casting Spells (22 page)

Unless she had magic powers, she was right. “Okay, then thanks for the lift.”

“See that envelope hanging out of the glove box? Reach in and take two tickets for tomorrow’s opening night performance and then you can thank me.”

I pulled out two theater tickets emblazoned with drawings of Christmas trees and mistletoe.

“You’re Mrs. Fezziwig, right?”

“You remembered!” She beamed at me. “I’ll make sure you’re seated right up front.”

The last place I wanted to be tomorrow night was front row center at a community theater for another version of Dickens’s Christmas classic. Unless I ended up snowed in and unable to escape Sugar Maple’s gravity field, I would need to find a good excuse for not showing up.

“Chloe will be there too.”

Another reason to stay away.

“She’s going with Janice’s cousin Haydon.” She offered a radiant smile. “It’s a blind date.”

On second thought, maybe I’d give the theater another try.

16

CHLOE—LATER THAT EVENING

 

I’m not sure if denial is a skill or an unfortunate personality quirk, but I was pretty good at it. I mean, what else could explain my uncanny ability to pretend I hadn’t just made a man sail backward up the block or caused my own self to perform circus tricks in midair during a miniblizzard?

So this was really happening. It wasn’t a dream. It just felt so ... ordinary. Shouldn’t a woman feel at least a little bit different, a little bit more magickal, when she became a sorceress-in-training?

Instead I just felt like me, a skinny blonde with small boobs, big feet, and a whole lot of questions that needed answers.

If you saw me at Sticks & Strings later that afternoon, you would never know that, after thirty years, my powers were starting to kick in. I finished the impromptu I-cord class and sold an insane amount of twelve-ply cashmere to a woman from Toronto. I washed cups and cookie platters, settled receipts, packed three sock-of-the-month kits for mailing in the morning. I cleaned Penny’s box, fed her, then checked the basket of roving. It still looked a tad depleted and an uneasy feeling settled itself across my shoulders, but I pushed it aside and closed for the day.

For once I refused to feel guilty about it. Only a Yeti would venture out in this weather, and last I heard they weren’t big knitters.

The thought of walking home through the storm made me want to crawl into the nearest igloo and sleep away the rest of the winter but the strangest thing happened: instead of sinking into the snow with every step, I floated above it.

Okay, maybe every third or fourth step I sank down in a half foot of powder, but for the most part I pretty much glided home until I was about two hundred feet from my front door and my budding powers quit on me without warning. I slogged the rest of my way through the drifts under my own (very human) power and collapsed in a heap inside the front door.

The cats were less interested in my semifrozen state than they were in prodding me toward the kitchen, and I obliged.

Outside the winds howled. Snow splattered against the windows. I changed into my oldest, warmest robe, lit a fire in the hearth, and then curled up in my favorite chair, where I devoured an entire bag of Chips Ahoy then upped my daily calcium intake with a Ben & Jerry’s chaser.

The sugar and fat high helped me ignore the fact that the contents of my utensil drawer were working a conga line across the floor and that a dozen watch caps in varying stages of completion were knitting themselves in my work basket.

I stepped over the dancing whisks and ladles and waddled into the kitchen to break a few legs off the gingerbread men Lilith gave me the night of the Town Hall meeting. The gingerbread legs led to a few arms, which led to biting their heads off, and let’s face it, what was the point of saving gingerbread torsos? I ate them too, mainly to subdue the freak-out factor that kicked in when the fire crackling in the fireplace started singing “White Christmas” in Bing Crosby’s voice.

I needed a drink.

Scratch that. I needed ten drinks.

The thought had barely formed in my mind when the door to the fridge blew open and my box of white zin somersaulted onto the counter and poured itself into a conveniently waiting glass.

I scrambled back to the living room, followed by a flying phalanx of dish towels and oven mitts.

“Stop!” I yelled in the crazy voice that made the cats run for cover. “Quit following me!”

The dish towels flung themselves into the fire like a sacrifice to the gods of kitchen fibers.

I tried telling myself this was normal for women like me. That it was my heritage finally kicking in. Everyone else in town dealt with magick on a daily basis and you didn’t see them freaking out about it.

But I was pretty sure their silverware wasn’t about to mate with the contents of the utensil drawer right under the watchful eyes of a quartet of cats, who were beginning to look an awful lot like the Beatles on the cover of
Abbey Road.

Okay, I was now officially freaking out.

Every random thought that passed through my sugar-and-fat-addled brain came to life in front of my eyes, flashing by like outtakes from a twisted Disney movie. When my favorite fantasy, the one about the pirate king and the lost princess, started to play itself out on top of the coffee table, I let out a yell they probably heard all the way in Montpelier.

I heard something slam against the front door. The sound was followed by a string of inventive Anglo-Saxon expressions uttered in a very familiar voice. I swung open the door in time to see Lynette shaking off a few singed feathers.

“You could have warned me you had a fire going,” she said as she hurried into the warm house. “I was almost Christmas dinner.”

At least I thought it was Lynette. The woman standing in front of me was older, heavier, and a lot grayer.

Before I could say a word, Janice materialized in a spearmint-scented cloud. She was wearing red flannel pajamas and her ever-present Uggs. She was also shorter, older, and not a natural redhead.

“Oh God,” I said as a wave of dizziness came over me. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

Had the protective charm collapsed or was I seeing the town the way it really was because for the first time in my life I was finally one of them?

They led me back into the living room and I collapsed onto the sofa.

“You look like shit,” Janice said. “What’s wrong?”

I laughed out loud. “Hello. Have you taken a look around?”

They both glanced at the cutlery conga line, the rock star cats, and the oven mitts warming themselves near the fireplace and shrugged.

“We’ve seen it coming for a few days, honey.” Lynette patted my hand.

“The signs were all there,” Janice agreed. “Your date with Haydon isn’t a minute too soon.”

“Haydon?” I was afraid to think too hard about anything because it just might cartwheel across my living room.

“My cousin,” Janice said. “Your blind date for tomorrow.”

I groaned and buried my face in my hands. “I’m too sick to go out with anyone. I think I’m coming down with something.”

“You’re not sick,” Lynette said with a smile. “You’re in love.”

“Trust me,” I said. “This can’t be love. This is the flu.” I know they said love hurts but this was ridiculous. My head throbbed. My stomach ached. My ears burned. I felt like I had been sacked by the Patriots defensive line and left for dead. If this was really the way love felt, why weren’t they selling a cure for it on television along with the headache tablets and antacids.

“Lynette’s right,” Janice said. “That’s why your powers are finally kicking in.”

“You’re your mother’s daughter,” Lynette said with weepy eyes. “This is exactly how it happened to her.”

“He’s the wrong guy, of course,” Janice said, and Lynette nodded.

“That goes without saying,” Lynette said. “Totally the wrong guy.”

“How do you know he’s the wrong guy?” I asked through a haze of nausea. “You don’t even know who the guy is.”

“Please,” Janice said. “Give us a little credit.”

“We all know it’s the cop, Chloe. We’ve known it from the beginning.”

“Which was three days ago,” I said. “That’s hardly a romantic epic.”

“He’s all wrong for you,” Janice said.

“You already said that.”

“You couldn’t possibly build a future with him,” Lynette said. “Especially not now.”

I could hear doors slamming shut all around me. All those dreams of a normal family, of a real future, were disappearing. Love had opened the door to my powers and those same powers made loving Luke impossible.

“I’m not looking to make a future with anyone.” I pointed toward the knives and forks square-dancing in the hallway. “I’d be happy if I could figure out how to keep the cutlery from kicking my ass.”

They were my friends and they loved me but they couldn’t help me. Only the Book of Spells could do that, and until we figured out where Sorcha had hidden it, I was flying blind.

Literally, as it turned out.

I sneezed and did a revolution around the living room. The ceiling didn’t look half as good from up there as it did from ground level. At least from ground level you couldn’t see all those nasty cobwebs in the corners.

“You really do need help,” Janice said after she and Lynette grabbed me by the ankles and pulled me back down from the ceiling. “What are we going to do?”

Lynette suggested tethering me to a table leg. I suggested we drink our weight in margaritas. Janice suggested I go through Sorcha’s notebooks to see if there might be a clue hidden in one of them that might lead me to the Book of Spells.

I went to pull down the attic ladder so I could get the notebooks when it occurred to me there might be an easier way. Stilling my mind, I concentrated on the box of notebooks. Across the room, twelve back issues of
People
magazine stood up, straightened themselves out, then marched over to me single file while my friends applauded.

I tried again, concentrating more deeply, but this time
TV Guide
and the latest
Interweave Knit
flung themselves into the fireplace. I gave it one more shot, visualizing the fabric-covered box, picturing where I had stowed it under the eaves, imagining it inching its way toward the ladder then bumping its way down to me.

Unfortunately what I got was a dusty old box of newspaper clippings that dated back to FDR.

“You two might as well go home,” I said. “This might take a while.”

“Why don’t you just go up to the attic and get the damn thing?” Janice said.

It sounded like a plan.

 

LUKE

 

 

I made it halfway down Osborne Avenue before giving up the ghost and turning back. Staying in town for the night was the only option.

Chloe had told me where she hid the key to Sticks & Strings. She had a TV in there, a big sofa, a working fireplace, a cat. I’d already picked up sandwiches and a bag of chips from the sub shop on the corner so I wouldn’t starve.

And it wasn’t like I had anyone waiting for me back at the motel.

I didn’t go in there planning to snoop around, but I’ve got to tell you there isn’t a hell of a lot to do in a knit shop if you’re not a knitter. It took me maybe five seconds to register the fact that there was a lot of yarn in the place and some of that yarn cost more than a car payment. Add another ten seconds to stare at the assortment of pointy sticks, hooks, weird gadgets, and maybe a full fifteen to check out the sweaters and scarves on display, and you could kill half a minute without even trying.

The TV didn’t work. I couldn’t find a radio. Thanks to the storm, my laptop wasn’t able to hold an Internet connection for more than a few seconds.

By seven o’clock I was ready to teach myself to knit. I thumbed through a few of the how-to books but stuff like
picot cast on
and
s1 k2Tog psso
made my brain hurt. A neat stack of shiny white binders marked CHLOE’S DESIGNS caught my eye. What the hell. It wasn’t like I was reading her diary.

I’d be lying if I said I knew what I was looking at. Page after page of graphs with hieroglyphic symbols and arcane text that was tougher to decipher than the Dead Sea Scrolls. I liked her trademark, though: a simple drawing of a beautiful woman holding a glowing sun aloft. It was Chloe and it wasn’t, and it pulled me in the same way the real woman did every time I saw her.

There was something about being in her space. Her scent lingered in unexpected places. Handwritten notes were scattered across the top of her desk. At least a dozen sketches of a dozen different pairs of socks. Some were lacy. Some were striped or braided or had colorful designs of boats and hearts and kittens. Little squares of knitted fabrics in all the colors of the rainbow were pinned to the wall. A list of incoming orders rested near the printer along with a store inventory.