Spun by Sorcery (25 page)

Samuel nodded his agreement. “The Fae blamed Aerynn for Da’Elle’s departure.” The Fae had seen power in Da’Elle unlike anything they had encountered before. They had put their hopes for the future in the young woman, only to have her turn away from everything she knew and head north with Aerynn and her followers. “Some of the Fae believed Aerynn had cast a spell over Da’Elle using the talisman and they were willing to do anything necessary to break the hold.”

Including murder Aerynn, if necessary.

Chloe sank back in her seat, her face a mask of anguish.

“So you let her go,” she said.

“She was carrying our child. I was not willing to endanger either of them.”

“You let them go,” she repeated.

He turned to me. “Time, to us, is not the same as it is to a human. We would wait and one day we would be together again.”

But time, human or magick, was not on their side. The Fae community in Salem was small but their anger at the loss of Da’Elle was large. Aerynn became the focus of their bitter rage.

“They monitored my every move,” he said, shaking his head sadly at the memory. “Probes violated the sanctity of my thoughts on an hourly basis. In order to protect my soul mate, I had to banish her from my thoughts, my heart.”

“But you couldn’t,” I said.

“No,” he replied, “I couldn’t. At least, not completely.” Now and again he monitored the progress of Sugar Maple through the eyes of Penelope the cat, who had been Aerynn’s familiar from the cradle. The seasons changed and the memory of the troubles grew fainter, less charged with passion. He consoled himself with the thought that each year brought them closer to being together. The day would come when the old problems would disappear and the need for secrecy and caution would disappear with them.

Until then, he could only wait.

Time passed. Too much time as it turned out.

One day the unthinkable happened and Aerynn pierced the veil.

“How did you know she was gone,” I asked, “if you hadn’t been in communication with her since she left Salem?”

His smile was bittersweet. “She came to say good-bye.”

It would take a week to explain the traditions that surrounded piercing the veil. I struggled to condense it enough so I could bring Luke up to speed.

“Your essence—your soul, if you will—travels about this dimension prior to piercing the veil and bestows blessings on the ones you love.” I looked over at Samuel. “Do I have it right?” Very few townspeople had left us during my time on earth so my experience was minimal.

The old man nodded while Luke looked like he was rapidly approaching magick overload. Who could blame him? I felt like I was drowning in it myself.

“But it’s always your choice, right?” Luke asked. “You determine when you pierce the veil.”

“Even we have an allotted span,” Samuel said. “Mine is longer than most.” And Aerynn’s had been considerably shortened when she sacrificed some of her own life force to empower the talisman.

I had grown up knowing that the odds were against me. No Hobbs woman had ever managed to get the guy and keep him. Forever wasn’t in our DNA. The only thing we could do was cherish every day we had with the man we loved and not be surprised when destiny had its way. I hadn’t kept this fact a secret from Luke but knowing it and understanding it were two very different things.

I would outlive him. Probably by a very long time. The day would come when he would breathe his last and I would be forced to go on without him, moving down through the years cloaked in the old loneliness I knew all too well. That was the flip side of the magick I had claimed when I fell in love.

He understood it now and the look in his eyes broke my heart. I wanted to reach out and reassure him that it would be different for us but the truth was I knew it couldn’t be. My half-human lineage would even things out a little bit but not enough to matter. Sooner rather than later it would be our turn to say good-bye.

“Why didn’t you join her?” I asked the old man, not caring that the question was insensitive. “If you loved her the way you claim you did, what kept you in this dimension if you could have been together in hers?”

I had to hand it to him: he didn’t flinch or look away. “I stayed because we knew the day would come when you would need the help of family.”

I couldn’t help laughing out loud. The word
family
wasn’t even in my vocabulary.

The bitterness in my voice was unmistakable. “You believed I would come to Salem to find you even though I didn’t know you existed until twenty minutes ago.”

“Yes.”

“I told you this wasn’t my idea.” That fact bore repeating.

“But you are here just the same.”

In the movies I loved, the books I reread a thousand times, this was the point where the wise old grandfather would open his arms wide and the needy young granddaughter would run into them and all of her problems would be solved in one homily-filled fireside chat. But even though I’d spent my life longing for exactly that, I didn’t have a clue how to make the first move.

Or even if I wanted to.

“I want my town back,” I said to Samuel Bramford, “and I need your help to get it. That’s the only reason we’re having this conversation.” I told him exactly what had happened and how I had tried and failed to access the Book of Spells for help.

“The Book does not contain the answer you seek.”

“Then what does?”

“You should have figured that out by now.”

“And you should come with a translator,” I snapped, “because I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

“Chloe.” Luke sounded a warning but I was beyond worrying about anyone’s feelings.

“Do
you
understand him?” I challenged Luke. “Do you understand one single word he’s said since we got here?” I waved my arms in the air like a frustrated windmill. “You’re the one who said the clock was ticking. We’re wasting time, Luke.” I aimed a deadly stare in Bramford’s direction. “
He’s
wasting our time!”

What did it take to anger the old man? The patient look he gave me was filled with something that looked an awful lot like love.

Which was totally ridiculous. We didn’t know each other. We would never really know each other. You couldn’t possibly love someone you didn’t know. They said blood ran thicker than water but you couldn’t prove it by me. I had never really had the opportunity to love or be loved by someone with whom I shared familial blood.

And yet I felt an answering rush of emotion that I would rather die than acknowledge.

“You do not need the Book, Chloe.” Bramford’s voice seemed to emanate from every part of the tower room. “You need only what is in your head and in your heart.”

“That’s a big help,” I said, with even more snark than I’d intended. “If you tell me life is like a box of chocolates, I’m out of here.”

He laughed out loud, a rippling rumble of a laugh that snapped my head back in surprise. “You got the reference?” I asked.

“I have been waiting for you a long time,” he said. “DVDs and knitting are a grand pairing.”

Poor Luke. Knitters were hard enough for civilians to understand. Sorcerers who knit while they watched
Forrest Gump
were probably impossible.

But again I refused to allow emotion to cloud my purpose. I didn’t want to feel anything for this stranger who claimed to be Aerynn’s soul mate and the father of her child.

“So how do I retrieve Sugar Maple?” I zeroed back in on the matter at hand and I would keep on zeroing back until I got an answer out of him.

“How did you lose it?” he countered.

“We went through this before. I didn’t lose it,” I said with deadly calm. “It vanished.”

“Because your commitment was not strong enough to keep it. Your loyalties were divided. Your love for Luke made you blind to the dangers facing Sugar Maple.”

“That’s not true! Why do you think we were at the waterfall? I was there to prevent Isadora from pulling the town beyond the mist.”

“The child’s welfare became your priority. The safety of the town was a very distant second.”

“The child’s soul was Isadora’s priority. Do you have any idea what Isadora had planned for that little girl?” A yawning black dimension of eternal loneliness that should be reserved as a hell for the worst creatures who ever walked the earth. Luke’s daughter deserved better than that.

“You are wrong. The child was merely Isadora’s tool for prying Sugar Maple out of your control and moving it beyond the mist, but you saw yourself in her plight and acted from your heart. It is your commitment to Sugar Maple that wavered.”

My eyes flooded with tears I struggled to blink back. Like I said before, the lonely girl inside me was never far from the surface.

“For a moment I committed my heart and soul to saving Steffie. How could that possibly cause Sugar Maple to vanish?” I asked Samuel.

“The talisman observed your loss of commitment at a time when Sugar Maple’s residents needed your leadership most and took it from you.”

I looked over at Luke but he was in full cop mode and his expression gave away nothing. I took the plunge alone.

“So you’re saying that the talisman—an old piece of jewelry, a keepsake—took over the town?”

I had to hand it to the old man. He didn’t bat an eye as he launched into an explanation.

“Since its creation the talisman has been sought after not only as a symbol of unity but as proof of strength. It began with Aerynn, who imbued it with the ability to protect Sugar Maple, and each of her descendants added to its powers, further ensuring the supremacy of the Hobbs clan.”

“My mother didn’t,” I said. “She left this dimension only a few earth years after her own mother pierced the veil.”

“A rare exception to what had been the rule,” Samuel agreed, “and one that weakened the chain. The years between Guinevere’s leave-taking and your assumption of your powers were fraught with peril.”

I frowned at him. “Peril? The town thrived!”

“That is what the residents of Sugar Maple wanted you to think,” Samuel said. “You were struggling to find your way in the world, battling loneliness, waiting for the day when your powers would finally come to life. They didn’t want you to know that with every day that passed, the talisman swayed closer to changing allegiance to Isadora.”

Now that was just plain crazy talk. “But the talisman belonged to Aerynn’s descendants. Even if Isadora stole it away, it would still respond only to a Hobbs.”

Samuel shook his head sadly. “Before Aerynn and Da’Elle left Salem, their powers were nearly equal. The talisman gave Aerynn the edge that conferred leadership upon her. Da’Elle only followed her to Sugar Maple because she hoped to capture the talisman then return to Salem and rebuild the community the Witch Trials had decimated. Over time, going beyond the mist replaced going back to Salem in the hearts of Da’Elle’s descendants, but the hunger for the talisman only grew stronger.”

“I thought Sugar Maple was my destiny and my mother’s before me and her mother’s, all the way back to Aerynn.” This was like finding out there was no Santa Claus but worse.

“Aerynn’s line has thus far proved wise and strong but do you believe the Fae would willingly play second fiddle to her descendants if there was no chance they could one day ascend to power?” He paused for a second to catch his breath. “The answer is no, Chloe: the leadership of Sugar Maple has always been determined by possession of the talisman and always will be.”

“So nothing ever changed,” I said. “We have the same problems with Isadora and her followers as Aerynn had with Da’Elle and hers.”

“The bitterness runs deep and long,” Samuel said with a quick glance toward Luke. “The treatment they received at human hands instilled a mighty distrust that time only served to intensify. When your mother Guinevere fell in love with your human father, the battle lines were drawn. Their deaths, however, only served to cool the flames for a moment because you posed an even bigger problem.”

“They hated the idea of a leader with human blood,” I said. “It’s their worst nightmare.”

“No,” Samuel said, “their worst nightmare is the thought of the child you and Luke will one day have.”

A child whose blood was three-quarters human and only one-quarter magick.

“The thought that the day would come when a leader who was more human than magick would assume control with the power of the talisman to enforce her rule had Isadora’s clan teetering on the edge.”

It took the arrival of Luke’s ex-wife to bring everything tumbling down around us.

“Aerynn wasn’t a seer but she understood the nature of her community. The only way they would survive in the mortal world was if the magick and Fae clans could continue to live in harmony. She knew that there would come a time when the tug-of-war would begin again and the sanctuary she had built in Sugar Maple would be in danger of toppling.”