Casting Spells (3 page)

Janice rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to get any sympathy from me. Try giving a full body wax to an overweight eighty-five-year-old man with more wrinkles than a shar-pei. Now
that’s
a workout.”

Too much information. What went on behind the closed doors of Cut & Curl was none of my business.

“Seriously. I thought that shawl was going to get the better of me.”

“Our visitor is the one who got the better of you,” Lynette said. “You barely recouped the cost of the yarn.”

Lynette was always trying to give me business advice, and I was always doing my best to ignore her. “I thought we had a great group tonight. Definitely better than the carload of mystery writers who drove in for the finishing workshop last month. Now that was a big mistake.”

Leave it to mystery writers to wonder why the Inn flashed a NO OCCUPANCY sign but didn’t have any visitors.

“I’m talking about the shawl. She practically stole it from you.” Lynette could be like a dog with a stack of short ribs.

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“You must have spent twice that on yarn.”

“I didn’t spend anything. That was hand-spun from my mother’s stash.” When my mother died, one of the things she left me was a basket of roving that remained full to overflowing no matter how many hours I spent at my wheel, and another was a love of all things fiber.

“Good gods,” Lynette shrieked. “It’s worse than I thought.”

“I’m not crazy,” I said, slightly annoyed. “Lilith checks the roving twice a year to make sure it’s free from any traveling spells.”

Lynette was mollified, but just barely.

“You really should drive down to Brattleboro and take a class in small business management,” she went on. “Cyrus said it’s the best money we ever spent.”

Lynette and Cyrus were owners/operators of the Sugar Maple Arts Playhouse at the corner of Carrier Court and Willard Grove. Cyrus was one of the SMAP’s favorite performers, which, considering the fact that he was a shapeshifter, made casting a snap. Lynette and their daughters Vonnie and Iphigenia were also shapeshifters and had been known to round out Cyrus’s repertory company on more than one occasion. Their sons, the unfortunately named Gilbert and Sullivan, were occasionally pressed into service too, but Gil and Sully were quickly reaching the age where it would take cash to turn them into orphaned pirates.

“So you’ll think about it?” Lynette pressed. “If you sign up before the end of the year, Cyrus gets a fifty-dollar rebate.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, “but it’s pretty hard to get away these days.”

“You don’t want to get away,” Janice said as she rinsed out the teapot.

“That’s right,” Lynette observed as she swept crumbs off the worktable and tossed them into the trash. “You’re all about the work these days.”

“It would do you good to take a little trip.” Janice reached for the coffeepot. “I can’t remember the last time you went away for a night or two.”

“I can,” Lynette said as she fluffed up the pillows on the leather sofa near the fireplace. “It was when she was seeing that lawyer from New Hampshire.”

Janice frowned. “That has to be—what? Four, five years ago?”

“Almost six,” I said, “and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You can’t possibly still blame us for that.”

“Putting a spell on our car wasn’t very funny. We could have frozen to death up there in the woods.”

“We moved the relationship along,” Lynette broke in. “You should be grateful.”

“Lynnie’s right,” Janice said. “We saved you from making a terrible mistake.”

“Howard was handsome, smart, and independently wealthy. Where’s the mistake in that?”

“He was human,” Janice said. “It wouldn’t have worked.”

“I’m human,” I reminded her.

“Only half,” Lynette said. “Your mother was a sorceress.”

“Yes, she was, but we all know I take after my father.” I had his height, his hair, and his humanness. There wasn’t the slightest bit of magick about me and there never had been. I couldn’t see into the future or shapeshift or bend spoons with the power of my mind. I was as solid and earthbound as one of the maple trees in Willard Grove.

“Nothing good happens when magick meets human,” Janice went on. “Don’t tempt fate, honey. Stick with your own kind.”

What they meant was, “Your mother fell in love with a human and see what happened to her.”

I was six years old when my parents died in a car crash not far from the Toothaker Bridge. The car skidded on black ice and slammed into a towering maple tree. My human father had been killed instantly. My sorceress mother lingered for two days while Sorcha and Lilith and all the people who loved her did everything in their power to convince her to stay, but in the end Guinevere chose to leave this world to be with the only man she would ever love.

My memories of that time were all in soft focus. Mostly I remember Sorcha, who had opened up her life and her home to me and made me her own.

Sometimes I hated my mother for making that choice. What kind of woman would choose to leave her daughter alone in the world? Depending on the time of day and how much wine I’d consumed, I either found her decision achingly romantic or the act of a supremely selfish woman.

“You’re not listening,” I said to my friends. “I don’t have magick and I probably never will.”

“You never know what might happen,” Janice said. “You always were a late bloomer. You were the last in your class to start wearing a bra.”

I was also the last in my class to score a date to the senior prom, something that still stings even now, thirteen years later. If it hadn’t been for my pal Gunnar, I wouldn’t have gone at all. “And your point is?”

Lynette leaned forward, all dark-eyed intensity. “My mother told me that your mother didn’t come into her full powers until she fell in love. Maybe—”

“But she had some powers before she met my father,” I reminded my friends. “I remember the stories. Why can’t you both accept the fact that I’m never going to be more than I am right now?”

They exchanged another one of those knowing glances that reminded me of the housewives of Wisteria Lane.

“No matchmaking,” I said, barely stifling a yawn. “Absolutely, positively not. I am way too old for matchmaking.” Okay, so I was only thirty, but blind dates aged a girl in dog years.

“But he’s perfect for you.”

“That’s what you said about the last one.”

Janice had the decency to look a tiny bit sheepish. “I’ll admit Jacob was a mistake.”

“Jacob was a troll.”

Literally.

“Midge Stallworth forgot to mention that. We thought he was a vampire like the rest of the family.”

“If the Universe wants me to find someone, they’ll send me a hot alpaca farmer who likes to spin.”

“Honey, you know we’re only thinking about your happiness.” Lynette patted my hand.

Maybe they were thinking about my happiness, but they were also thinking about the accident just before Christmas last year. A bus carrying a high school hockey team en route to Brattleboro blew a tire and careened down an embankment near the Sugar Maple town limits, killing the goalie and the coach.

Things like that weren’t supposed to happen here. Accidents, crime, illness, all the things that plagued every other town in America, didn’t happen here. Or at least they hadn’t up until recently.

Over three hundred years ago one of my sorcerer ancestors cast a protective charm over the town designed to shield Sugar Maple from harm for as long as one of her line walked the earth and—well, you guessed it. I’m the last descendant of Aerynn, and if you thought your family was on your case to marry and produce offspring, try having an entire town mixing potions, casting runes, and weaving spells designed to hook you up with Mr. Right.

“The accident was random chance,” I said, trying to ignore the chill racing up my spine as I remembered the crowd of reporters who had flooded the area. “The weather was terrible. It could have happened anywhere.”

“But it didn’t happen anywhere,” Janice said. “It happened here and it shouldn’t have.”

“Jan’s right,” Lynette said. “The spell is growing weaker with every year that passes. I can feel the difference.”

Janice nodded. “We all do.”

I didn’t but that was no surprise. I could only take them at their word on this, same as I did on everything else I couldn’t see or hear or understand.

“Cyrus met a charming selkie named Glenn at the Scottish Faire last week,” Lynette went on.

“She already dated a selkie,” Janice reminded her. “It wasn’t a good match.”

“I dated a selkie?” The parade of recent losers had mercifully blurred in my memory.

“You said his breath smelled like smoked salmon.”

I shuddered. “I’ll skip the selkies, thanks.”

“You’d skip them all if we let you,” Janice said.

She was right about that.

“Just keep Saturday nights open,” Lynette said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

As far as I could tell, my Saturday nights were open from now until the next millennium. I nodded and stifled another yawn. “No trolls, no selkies,” I said. “And he has to be at least six feet tall
before
the magic kicks in.”

“Not a problem,” Janice said. “Tall is good.”

“Human might be nice for a change.”

They looked at me, then at each other, and burst into raucous laughter.

“Honey,” Lynette said as she patted my arm, “around here human might not be your best choice.”

I wasn’t usually prickly about their wariness about humans, but that night it got under my skin. It wasn’t like I actually thought Mr. Right was going to show up at Sticks & Strings one snowy winter day searching for the perfect ski sweater to wear on the slopes. But I did think love was possible. It had happened for my parents, hadn’t it? Maybe they hadn’t managed the happy ending part of the equation, but for a little while I saw what real magic was all about and I didn’t want to settle for anything less.

Now you know why I had five cats, one TiVo, and a stash of yarn I couldn’t knit my way through in six lifetimes.

I mean, what were the odds that the perfect man would not only show up in Sugar Maple, but also be okay with the fact that the town wasn’t the picture-postcard New England town our Chamber of Commerce would have you believe, but a village of vampires, werewolves, elves, faeries, and everything else your parents told you didn’t really exist?

Or that he would be okay with the fact that the woman he wanted to spend his life with had a few surprises lurking in her own gene pool?

Ten million to one sounded about right to me.

Besides, Sugar Maple was doing fine without my help. We had a thriving tourist trade and zero crime. What other town could make that claim? It seemed to me that Aerynn’s protective blessing was still getting the job done even if we had had a few close calls over the last year or two.

The blessing’s strength might be weakening, but we still had time to figure this out before it vanished altogether. All we needed was a frothy little protective charm to cover us until I either found the man of my dreams or came up with a Plan B.

And maybe things would have worked out that way if, just a few hours after she left my shop, Suzanne Marsden hadn’t been murdered.

2

CHLOE

 

It was around eleven when we locked up the shop. I said good night to both Lynette and Janice then waited until they drove away before I cut across the tiny yard that separated my store from the empty pet shop next door and headed straight for the Inn.

It was one of those crystal-clear winter nights that made me glad to be a New Englander. Moonlight bounced off the snowy sidewalks, doing a better job of illuminating my path than our treasured gas lamps. The gas lamps had been converted to electricity some years back, but they still imparted a glow rich with nostalgia. The air was crisp and cold, and it carried with it the scent of woodsmoke and pine and something else, something I couldn’t identify but understood deep in my bones. It was the smell of my childhood, of home and family, of the place I knew I would never leave.

There had been a time back in our village’s early days when someone like me wouldn’t have set foot outside after dark. The energies had been wilder then. The scent of human flesh triggered visceral hungers that could be satisfied only one way. The old way.

But that was a long time ago. Originally our town had provided a safe harbor for the hunted creatures of this world. While towns like Salem waged an ugly war against perceived witchcraft, our early citizens had opened their homes to strangers whose very appearance would strike terror in most hearts. The risk had been great and there had been losses along the way to understanding but we had not only survived: we had thrived.

Sugar Maple had sheltered Aerynn and her family when they fled Massachusetts, and to show her gratitude, Aerynn vowed that as long as females of her line walked the earth, the protective charm would keep the villagers of Sugar Maple from harm. Before she pierced the veil, she had poured all of her secrets into the Book of Spells, which would be passed down, along with her magick, through her female descendants.