Casting Spells (9 page)

Not that I was interested in her—skinny blondes didn’t do it for me—but he seemed too comfortable in her shadow, like a politician’s spouse during campaign season. People drifted in and out of my line of vision as they offered their good-byes to the blonde, a constant stream of villagers who seemed to think she had all the answers.

I heard the front door of the church swing open some thirty feet away and footsteps moving closer.

Shit.

I did what any other cop in my position would do: I ducked behind one of the huge snow-covered bushes and tried to become invisible.

The footsteps stopped abruptly. I heard muffled conversation. Then the footsteps retreated back across the ice-encrusted snow. A chorus of voices called out “Good night,” and a bus engine turned over with a clunk. The VW van I’d noticed added its distinctive high-pitched whine.

The night fell silent in a way it never did in Boston, and I was counting off a full two minutes of it before breaking cover when I got that old familiar feeling, the one that made the hackles on the back of my neck rise.

I was being watched.

I turned toward the church. The windows were dark. No telltale condensation on the glass. No movement. I scanned right, then left. Nothing. But the prickling sensation along the back of my neck was still there and it was never wrong.

And then I saw it. A quick flicker of darkness in my peripheral vision. The kind of thing only a cop would notice. I turned quickly but there was nothing there. No footprints. No broken branches. Just the familiar knot in my gut that signaled trouble.

The place was lousy with wildlife. When had I become a city dweller who could be thrown by country noises? People were trouble after dark. Owls weren’t. Raccoons foraged for food at night but they usually gave humans a wide berth. An entire segment of the animal world came alive when the sun went down, and most of them managed without acknowledging the presence of man.

Still the feeling that I was being watched persisted. I scouted around some more then finally chalked the whole thing up to the fact that I hadn’t slept in two nights. It was time I got my ass to Motel 6 and crashed for a few. Stifling a yawn, I climbed behind the wheel of my truck and headed back toward the bridge that led to the highway.

It would all make sense tomorrow in the daylight.

It always did.

6

CHLOE

 

Janice drove Gunnar and me home after the meeting. We told Gunnar it was because Janice needed to borrow a set of US1 double point needles to finish a sock she’d been knitting, but the truth was we didn’t think Gunnar was steady enough on his feet to be left alone.

We would have taken him back to his own place but neither one of us had a clue where his place was. Gunnar was my best friend and I didn’t know exactly where he lived or how he lived. So much of his life was shrouded in the whims and mysteries of the Fae that there were times when I wondered how well I really knew him.

“I know what you’re doing,” he said after Janice drove off with her knitting needles. “I’m fine. I just had the wind knocked out of me.”

I put the tea kettle on the stove to boil. “You were blown across the room into a wall,” I reminded him. “And no offense, friend, but you haven’t been looking so good lately.”

He didn’t meet my eyes and the light dawned.

“Dane?” I asked.

He nodded. “He must be in some kind of trouble. My powers have been leeching away faster than I can replace them. It’s been a bad couple days.”

“Maybe that’s why your mother was in such a contentious mood.”

“Contentious?” He lifted a brow.

“Okay,” I said. “Bitchy. You have to admit she was in rare form tonight.” I set out two big mugs and an assortment of tea bags. “I really wish you could find out why she hates me so much.”

He pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’m going to skip the tea and head out. It’s late.”

“You look hungry. Why don’t I make you some scrambled eggs?”

“Chloe, I—”

I felt Dane before I saw him. A sharp, almost metallic presence in the room that set my teeth on edge, like biting down on a piece of aluminum foil. The cats emitted high-pitched meows of surprise then fled from the room as Dane appeared in a shower of steel blue glitter that smelled like the air just before an electric storm.

He said something to Gunnar that I didn’t understand, in a language I had never heard before, and then I screamed as a bolt of lightning shot from his right forefinger and pierced Gunnar’s right eye. Gunnar whirled, both arms extended, and shimmering silver ropes encircled Dane’s ankles and pulled him off his feet.

Dane’s roar of rage as he crashed to the ground sent me reeling backward against the kitchen counter. The air felt jagged. The sharp edges of their anger stabbed at my exposed skin. A deep, almost primal, terror started building inside me as the lightning bolt vanished and Gunnar’s eye healed itself while I watched.

Everything I had ever believed about belonging here, about being the same as everyone else, disappeared as I found myself scrambling atop the counter like a terrified field mouse. The power in the room almost sucked the oxygen from my lungs. I could feel it swinging wildly like the tides from Gunnar to Dane and back again. I wanted to help but had never felt more clueless, more helpless, in my life.

Dane placed his hands on the silver ropes around his ankles, and tongues of flame leaped to life. The bonds vanished in a shower of silver ash and the smell of burning leaves.

My small kitchen wasn’t big enough to contain their rage as they crashed together in an explosion of broken dishes, spilled water, and body blows. A hideous creaking noise sounded overhead and I looked up in time to see the roof of my cottage tear away from the structure and rise slowly into the icy night air as if lifted by invisible hands. Moonlight flooded the room as Gunnar and Dane, locked in what seemed to me to be mortal combat, spun upward past the roofline, glowing like hot embers.

How was I going to explain this to State Farm?

The thought was so ridiculous I started to laugh out loud. The kind of nervous braying laughter that had nothing to do with humor and everything to do with the fact that the only thing that kept me from grabbing the cats and my mother’s stash of roving and running away was that I had nowhere else to go.

Plates and cups and glassware swirled around my kitchen in a Martha Stewart tornado. My best friend and his brother were trying to kill each other in the airspace over my house while my roof floated down Carrier Court like a David Copperfield magic trick gone bad. You could keep sibling rivalry. For the first time in my life I was glad to be an only child.

I thought I had pretty much seen it all. In Sugar Maple, villagers appeared and disappeared at will. I didn’t think twice when a teenage faerie appeared on the rim of my wineglass or I had to design a special ski cap for a troll. Grown men transformed into wolves, bears, and other forest creatures every full moon. Retired vampires polished their dentures then rolled out after dark in motorized wheelchairs.

But this anger-fueled violence was new to me. Sure there had been family squabbles and disagreements, but until tonight I had never witnessed anything like the mayhem swirling over my head.

Under normal circumstances, Gunnar would have been able to deflect his brother’s blows and retain dominance. But Dane had been steadily draining his resources, and his confrontation with Isadora earlier in the evening had compromised him further. A member of the Fae with full powers was impervious to anything a mortal could do to harm him. Neither Gunnar nor Dane had full powers. The fact that the balance between them shifted almost daily was proof of that. It was possible that somebody could be hurt, even killed, and the fact that Gunnar had heard the banshee wail again only heightened the urgency.

Even if I dragged a ladder in from the garage, I wouldn’t be able to get close enough to either one of them to make contact. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure how close I wanted to get to the battle. I could dial 911 but it would still take Leonard and his crew of sprites and hobgoblins ten minutes or more to assemble themselves on the fire truck and—

My gaze landed on the fire extinguisher hanging from its holder near my back door. What was it Paul Griggs had said when I plopped down almost fifty bucks for it? “This bad boy has a longer reach than the tax man.”

Well, now was as good a time as any to see if he was right. I slid carefully off the counter, where I’d been cowering like some horror movie chick, and held my breath as I skirted the domestic whirlpool wreaking havoc with my kitchen. Lucy poked her nose into the kitchen, saw the kitchen tornado, then turned and ran back to safety.

Smart cat.

Stupid woman.

I probably should have taken my cue from Lucy and fled the scene. Instead, I slowly eased my way around the perimeter of the room, careful to keep from offering up any part of my person to the example of Mother Nature Gone Wild that was currently turning my maple kitchen table into toothpicks.

I had never liked being the skinny girl with the small boobs, but tonight it seemed like a blessing from the gods. Finally I made it to the other side of the room. I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

At least I tried. The second my finger touched the metal, I screamed in pain and it crashed to the floor at my feet.

“You fool!” Isadora appeared before me in a violent explosion of color and sound. She retrieved the fire extinguisher and heaved it into the whirlpool and I watched with a combination of horror and wonder as centrifugal force held it captive. “Are you trying to destroy us?”

Destroy us? Wasn’t I the one with the removable roof? If anything was being destroyed, it was my home.

Before I could say anything, she flicked her narrow wrist in the direction of her warring sons and they froze in place, locked in deadly combat. Suspended in midair, they looked like Greek statues from the mind of a mad genius.

Suddenly I was the center of her attention, not a place anyone with a passing grasp on sanity would ever want to be. As she aimed the full power of her green-eyed gaze in my direction, I finally understood the depth of her hatred. If she ever dragged Sugar Maple beyond the mist, I would be left behind.

“Get rid of the stranger before you bring destruction to this town.” Her voice was a sharp blade against my skin. “I meant what I said, Chloe. Your mother broke the chain of protection and it’s up to you to put it together again. If you can’t save Sugar Maple, I will and soon.”

She didn’t wait around for my response. As I watched, Gunnar was enveloped in a pocket of black mist that slipped through a tear in the sky and vanished from sight. A long plume of purple mist swooped around Dane then unfurled itself around Isadora’s bare feet. The next moment they vanished through a sky tear the same as Gunnar had.

I looked at the kitchen tornado and the starry night sky where my roof used to be. My place had been trashed. My cats would need therapy. My best friend got the crap beat out of him by his brother, and I had made an enemy of a faerie woman whose powers made Wonder Woman look like a wimp. And as if that wasn’t enough, the entire future of Sugar Maple rested in my hands.

That was the bad news.

The good news?

Things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

7

LUKE

 

I rolled into Sugar Maple a little before eight the next morning and parked my Jeep in the small municipal lot across from the church. A Santa Claus clone in a bright red sweater gave me a time-stamped ticket and a coupon for a free cup of coffee (regular only) at Fully Caffeinated. You had to wonder if central casting had a hand in populating the burg. So far it had been a parade of supermodels, movie stars, and now Saint Nick.

I was starting to feel like a gargoyle.