Authors: Barbara Bretton
Spells & Stitches (23 page)
I had barely doused the flame when Renate’s youngest daughter exploded into the room in a spray of bubblegum pink glitter. Not exactly what you’d expect from a teenage goth queen, but the Fae had no choice over their identifying colors. Nature made the choice for them and it was theirs until they pierced the veil.
“Mom says it’s an emergency,” she said from her perch atop the diaper bag. When it comes to displaying boredom and disdain, Fae teens were the same as their human counterparts. “Some girl knocked on the door looking for you and Luke.”
“Some girl?” Luke appeared in the doorway. “What girl? We need more information, Calli.”
She shrugged her narrow little shoulders and bounced up and down on the quilted fabric. “All I know is what my mother told me. There’s a girl at the door and she’s looking for you.” She gave Luke a quick but coy look. “Mom says she’s a human, too.”
And then she was gone in a giant burst of glitter and angst.
“It’s got to be Meghan,” Luke said when we were outside, as he positioned Laria in the car seat. “She’s the only MacKenzie who doesn’t travel in a herd.”
“I’m not going to get hysterical yet,” I announced to the world in general. “We’re lucky she showed up at the Sugar Maple Inn to ask for directions and not the Stallworths’ funeral parlor.” The thought of Midge, a cheerful but bawdy vampire, being Meghan’s first contact with Sugar Maple made me dizzy. “Don’t even think it.”
The Weavers knew how to deal with humans. Their Sugar Maple Inn did a thriving restaurant business, but, when outsiders inquired, their guest rooms were always mysteriously “filled.” If Luke’s sister had to turn up somewhere unexpected, at least she had picked the right place.
My cell phone vibrated and I peered at the message on the screen.
“Renate says we should go straight to the party. She’ll walk over there with your sister.”
He started the engine and looked over at me. “At least Elspeth’s not here. That’s something.”
“I hate to break it to you, but she was at the Presentation ceremony. I’m surprised you didn’t see her on top of the lighthouse.” Then again, when it came to cloaking, Elspeth was Olympic gold.
“Shit.” He smacked the steering wheel.
“Luke!” I tilted my head toward the newborn asleep in her car seat.
“She doesn’t understand.”
“It’s never too early.”
He gave me a look that was somewhere between amused and exasperated. “So Elspeth didn’t really leave.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“What the hell is she doing hanging around? Is she going to stay here forever?”
“She hates it here,” I reminded him. “She probably had to stay until the Presentation and Laria’s formal acceptance into the community. I’ll bet she’s back in Salem right now bothering someone else.”
Luke grunted something, but I didn’t pursue the topic. We had more than an irritable troll to worry about today.
To my surprise it looked like everyone in town had chosen to walk to town hall instead of utilizing less traditionally mortal forms of transportation. The sidewalks were packed with werewolves, trolls, spirits, witches, myriad branches of the Fae, and shapeshifters and all of them in human form.
My eyes filled with grateful tears. “Wow,” I said, waving at Lynette as we moved slowly past the Pendragon clan. “They’re really going all out to make this work.”
“Looks like the damn Easter Parade,” Luke said as he beeped hello at half the residents of Sugar Maple Assisted Living, who were careening up the block on their motorized Rascals.
“Oh!” I spotted the Weavers near the parking lot. “I think I see your sister. Is she kind of medium height with curly light brown hair?”
He glanced in the direction I pointed. “That’s her.”
“You’re not going to stop and offer her a lift?”
“She’s fifty yards away from town hall. We’ll catch up with her there.”
“She looks like she’s been crying.”
“She probably broke up with her latest.”
“You don’t sound very sympathetic.”
“She goes from one bastard to another. It’s like she has some kind of radar that zeroes in on the one guy in the room who’ll hurt her.”
I didn’t know what to say. My own romantic history was so limited that I felt like a child at the grown-ups’ table whenever the conversation turned to affairs of the heart.
Or of the body, for that matter. I didn’t exactly have much of a history there, either.
The parking lot was filled with cars with Massachusetts plates, a Connecticut, two New York, and a Rhode Island. It wasn’t so much the fact that they were Luke’s relatives that made my stomach turn inside out; it was the fact that they were human.
“Okay,” I said as we unstrapped baby Laria from the car seat and gathered up the mountains of stuff newborns seemed to need, “it’s time for our worlds to collide.”
Our town hall was a desanctified church that we had turned into our central meeting place. Monthly council meetings, wedding receptions, sweet sixteen parties, even an occasional prom or retirement party. This was our venue of choice.
Today it was the site of my Laria’s welcome party.
I positioned the baby in her Snugli. Luke’s arms were piled high with blankets, diaper bag, and the cakes we’d baked for his family. We had no sooner stepped across the threshold when a giant cheer rang out and we were surrounded by laughing, crying members of the MacKenzie clan, all of whom wanted to kiss and hug and coo over baby Laria.
“They forgot all about us,” I said to Luke as Bunny and Jack beamed over their newest grandchild. “We might as well be invisible.”
He shot me a look.
“Kidding,” I said, gently poking him in the arm. “This is a no-magick zone today.”
“Good to know.”
“Oh, crap,” I muttered, gesturing toward the other side of the room. “Elspeth’s lurking around the punch bowl.”
Luke started across the room, but I pulled him back.
“Let’s just keep an eye on her,” I said.
We watched as she chatted up one of Luke’s uncles.
“She’s flirting with Uncle Matty.” Luke sounded downright outraged.
“It gets worse,” I said. “He’s flirting back.”
“There goes my appetite.”
Luke’s father joined us. His wide, handsome face was aglow with what looked like total bliss. He started to say something about baby Laria, but his hazel eyes filled with tears and his face crumpled up like a handkerchief. Next thing I knew, both Luke and I were enveloped in a bear hug that bordered on incarceration.
“Jeez, Pop!” Luke said when he came up for air. “Ease up on the Old Spice, will you?”
“He’s your father,” I chided Luke. “Show some respect.”
“I love this girl,” Jack said, giving me another hug. “You two should go ahead and get married.”
“Pop,” Luke warned. “Knock it off.”
“You’re young. You’re in love. Chloe looks like a movie star—” He stopped midsentence. “Come to think of it, what’s in the water around here? You’re a knockout, Chloe, don’t get me wrong, but you’re practically the plain one around here! Even the olds guys on the scooters look like matinee idols.” His chuckle was deep and gravelly. “Hell, I thought I saw Clark Gable near the hardware store.”
Luke practically mugged his father to shut him up, but I burst into laughter. Yes, my cheeks were red-hot with embarrassment, but I knew he meant it as a compliment. Well, a sort-of compliment anyway.
“I think my old man’s had a few too many rum punches,” Luke said. “I’m going to snap some photos while he’s still upright.”
Jack was far too mellow to protest.
Some of the crew from Fully Caffeinated came forward to congratulate me on Laria’s birth and Presentation.
“We wanted you to have this,” Camille, one of the younger baristas, said as she handed me a beautiful log cabin crib quilt in every color of the rainbow. “We all worked on it. We tried to have it ready for your shower but didn’t quite make it.” She flipped it over and showed me the inscription complete with their names and the date of Laria’s birth embroidered on the back.
“This is beautiful,” I said as the tears threatened once again. “I can’t believe you did this for us.”
Camille cast a quick glance at her sister baristas and they all laughed. “Well, we can’t believe little Laria is showing magick already. That was some display this morning at the Presentation.”
“What display?”
She winked at me and lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Oh, don’t worry! You can be a proud mama around us. Who would think a baby with so much human blood would show so much talent so soon?”
Lynette joined us, and Camille and the crew smiled and drifted back into the crowd after I thanked them profusely one more time.
“Laria is all anyone’s talking about,” Lynette said to me. “They all seem to think she’s presenting magick! Can you believe that?”
“That’s exactly what Camille said. I didn’t see any magick, did you?”
“Remember when you fell at the end of the ceremony?”
“I wish I could forget.” My adventures in klutziness were legendary.
“Well, they don’t think you tripped.”
“Hello. Have they met me? I can trip over thin air.” She looked so uncomfortable that I stopped short. “What do they think happened?”
“It’s too ridiculous to even repeat.”
“Repeat it,” I said. “I want to know.”
“They—” She looked away for a second and shook her head. “They think Laria did it.”
I started to laugh out loud. “Little six-pound-something Laria pushed me into a snowdrift?” My laughter grew louder. “Now that’s funny!”
Lynette wasn’t laughing. “They think her powers are coming in.”
“She’s a week old.”
“I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“I hope you told them how ridiculous an idea that is.”
“Is it?”
I stared at her, openmouthed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I was there, Chloe. I’ve got to be honest with you: I didn’t see you trip.”
“Of course I tripped.”
Lynette looked like she was a half step away from shifting into her canary persona and flying away.
“Don’t you dare,” I warned her, sotto voce. “This place is lousy with humans.”
“You were moving forward, then suddenly you were airborne and moving backward. That’s not how it happens when you trip.”
“And when did you get your degree in physics, Mrs. Pendragon?”
“I don’t need a degree to know what I saw and what I saw had nothing to do with tripping. I think you were shoved.” She paused for effect. “Hard.”
“And you’re saying they—you—think that Laria somehow shoved me into Midge Stallworth.”
“It
is
possible, you know. Not everyone takes as long to come into her powers as you did.”
is
possible, you know. Not everyone takes as long to come into her powers as you did.”
“In case you forgot, a Hobbs woman doesn’t come into her full powers until she falls in love.”
“And in case you weren’t listening, I didn’t say full powers.”
“And here’s where your logic goes off the rails,” I said. “Do you realize the skill level required to propel an adult through the air? I’m not sure a full-blood magick could pull that one off at her age.”
“Maybe she’s gifted.”
“Maybe you’re delusional.”
She shrugged. “Well, you asked.” She glanced around the crowded room. “I’d better see what’s taking Cyrus so long with that punch.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Lynette move that fast.
“What’s with Lynnie?” Janice asked as she joined me near the refreshment table. “She looked upset.”
“We had a little confrontation, but it’s all okay.”
“I told her not to tell you. It’s all ridiculous nonsense.”
“About the baby having her powers already?”
“Laria’s three-quarters human. She can’t even hold her head upright yet.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I tripped. It’s boring, but that’s what happened.”
Janice shot me a look. “You didn’t trip.”
“Not you, too, Jan.”
“No, seriously. There was definitely magick involved.” She leaned in close and lowered her voice. “I saw Simone aiming her boobs in Luke’s direction. Maybe she decided to pull a little practical joke on the woman who stands between her and another conquest.”
“If you’re trying to be funny, I’m not laughing.”
“Good, because I’m not trying to be funny.”
The thought of Simone aiming her ample, albeit otherworldly, assets in Luke’s general vicinity made me wish I could turn my fingertips into flamethrowers and singe Simone’s extensions.
“First time this season I’ve been glad Lorcan is at sea,” Janice said. “That woman is dangerous.”
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