Laced With Magic (24 page)
I tried to stay on point. “She came to see Luke, not me. It’s their business, not mine.”
My two friends exchanged a look that wasn’t lost on me.
“Okay, so it’s my business now.” Isadora had seen to that. “But you know what’s at stake. Do you really want me to turn away from a child in trouble?”
“A human child who has already pierced the veil.”
“Died,” Janice corrected her. “Humans die.”
“Whatever,” Lynette said. “She’s gone. She’s not of this realm any longer.”
“You don’t understand. You’re not—” I stopped short.
“Human?” Janice asked with an arch of her brow.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You were going to.”
“But I didn’t.”
“Honey, I know what this is about and I feel for you. I really do. You see yourself in that little girl. We get it. But step away from the human side of your heart and rethink this. Your Luke isn’t forever, but Sugar Maple is.”
19
Chloe and her friends were holed up in the kitchen while I tried to fit in with the crowd milling through the rest of the cottage.
“We’re not blaming you,” Archie the troll told me over a single malt the size of his arm. “Not your fault all hell broke loose when you came to town.”
“Thanks, Arch.” I downed the second of what I assumed would be many shots before daybreak. “If you’re looking to lay blame, you might want to aim it at Montpelier. They gave me the assignment.”
“I know, I know. Bureaucracy sucks and all that. Any human would’ve set off shock waves, but nothing like this. Chloe fell in love with you. That’s what changed everything.”
And here I thought triggering her powers was a good thing.
“Glad you’re on her side,” I said, clapping him on his rounded back. “We need the support.” If not the lukewarm endorsement of our romance.
Support was good but what I really needed were some answers. I had interrogated everyone in the room about Isadora, but she remained as big a mystery to me now as she’d been from the beginning. They respected her. They feared her. They didn’t have a clue where she lived or how she lived. Did she have a consort? Children besides Dane and Gunnar? How old was she? Who was her family? Where did she get the power to break through her banishment and capture my daughter’s soul? Was there a source she went back to again and again, or was her power internally generated?
Easy questions like that.
I pulled Paul aside and we stepped out onto the porch. Maybe I was crazy but I knew this guy had my back the same way I had his. I could be straight with him.
“Is this it?” I asked him. “Is this all the support Chloe has in town?”
He shifted uncomfortably and looked out into the darkness of the middle distance. “All that’s willing to be seen.”
“Verna,” I said. His wife. “She’s on the other side?”
He met my eyes. “Sorry, MacKenzie. With the recession and everything, she’s thinking it might be time for a change.”
“You’ve got yourself a problem, dude.”
He forced a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Sooner or later we’ll have to come down on the same side.”
I didn’t have to tell him that sooner was about to bite him on the ass. Isadora had made that clear earlier tonight.
“Where’s your ex-wife?” Paul glanced toward the cottage. “Sleeping off the excitement?”
“She went out for a walk.”
“After the show Isadora put on tonight? The chick’s hardcore.”
“Definitely. It takes a lot to scare Karen.” In many ways Steffie was just like her.
“I’m sorry about your kid.”
I nodded. “Steffie was—” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Paul knew how to ride the silence while I pulled myself together. His sons were everything to him. He got it.
“She’s grieving hard,” I said when speech returned. “She’s not here for me or to cause trouble for Sugar Maple. All she wants is Steffie.”
I felt a rush of wind moving past my cheek, followed by a familiar laugh.
“AmIalucky girl or what?” Midge Stallworth appeared in front of us dressed like Betty Crocker if Betty had a Bedaz zler and wasn’t afraid to use it. “The two handsomest fellas in town out here to greet me.”
I recoiled, then quickly covered up with a cough and a tug at the sleeve of my sweater. For the second time in as many days I had to remind myself how much I liked the vampire matron with the espresso bean dark brown eyes.
Paul gave her a peck on one of her rosy cheeks. I wasn’t ready to commit to physical contact.
Just call me cautious.
“So where’s the family?” Paul asked on my behalf. “We know they’re not sleeping.”
Laughter all around. Like I said before: vampire humor.
“Billy took the kids up to a convention in Quebec City on Sunday. I’ve been a bachelor girl all week.” She mimed a pout, which wasn’t a good look if you were over sixteen. “You both should stop in for supper tomorrow night. I’m so used to cooking for a crowd that I don’t know how to cut back.”
Could someone be too normal? The conversation flowed easily. The laughs were unforced. Midge was her usual overly made-up, overdressed self with a wristful of watches and bracelets, fingers bedecked with rings, and more piercings in her plump ears than I could count. So why the itchy feeling moving its way up my spine?
I glanced over at Paul, who had retreated into the shadows. His body language was loose and natural. If he was picking up any weird vibes, it didn’t show. Then again the guy was a werewolf. Weird was his normal.
But Midge Stallworth unnerved the hell out of me, and it wasn’t just the bloodsucking thing. I mean, I get along fine with Manny and Frank and Rose from Assisted Living and they were all vampire. I hit a few buckets at the Sugar Maple Driving Range with Midge’s husband, Billy, last week and didn’t feel I had to guard my carotid artery.
“Lipstick on my teeth?”
I felt an embarrassed flush burn its way up my throat. Want some advice? Never get caught staring at a vampire’s smile. “Sorry, Midge. I was thinking about something else.”
She patted my hand with motherly affection. “No apologies, honey. I never complain when a man stares at me.” She winked. “All natural, in case you were wondering.”
Dirty Grandma was back again.
Time to change the subject.
After the obligatory small talk about gas mileage, the price at the pump, and the great fiscal meltdown out there in the real world, Midge went inside to offer her support to Chloe.
Paul stepped out of the shadows. “You don’t trust her.”
“Jury’s out but I’m leaning that way.”
“Midge plays both sides in a conflict. Always has. I’ve never had a problem with her, but she makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I see her.”
Which was saying something when those neck hairs belonged to a guy who spent half his life tearing through the woods on all fours.
“I’d better push off.” He fished his car keys from the front pocket of his jeans. “Verna’s on the warpath as it is about this situation.”
“Listen, I really appreciate your support.” I stumbled over my words. Why the hell was gratitude so damn hard? “Both of us do. It means a lot.”
“No sweat,” he said, equally uncomfortable. He took a few steps down the driveway, then turned around. “They don’t want to hurt you. They like you and they love Chloe, but they’re scared that the human world is making inroads and Isadora offers a way out. Your ex tipped the balance and it scared them.”
“I told you Karen’s not here to stay.”
“Tell it to them,” he said. “They see Chloe surrounding herself with humans. They think she’s pulling away from her obligations. All they want is for things to go back to the way they used to be.”
“You sound like you’re starting to rethink your own position, Paul.”
“Not me,” he said, “but Isadora and the Fae are part of our history. She’s one of us and so were her sons. Sugar Maple is different without them.”
“In a good way, if you ask me. Nobody needs that much crazy. She’s a psychopath.”
“She’s the chieftain of her clan. She fights for what belongs to her.”
“Dude, she tried to
kill
me.”
kill
me.”
The guy was my friend and he didn’t blink. “She lives by the rules of the Fae.” He shot me a look. “And it’s not all Tinkerbell and Disney.”
Not unless Tinkerbell was a commando.
CHLOE“I’m going out to look for Karen,” Luke said from the kitchen doorway. “She should’ve been back by now. Don’t wait up.”
“Don’t wait up?” Janice muttered as soon as he left the room. Then she muttered a few things I don’t want to repeat.
“This isn’t good,” Lynette, the optimist, said with a rueful shake of her head. “He didn’t kiss you goodbye. You should always kiss the ones you love goodbye because you never know if you’ll see them again.”
“You really know how to ruin a party,” Janice said. “Why don’t we work on our obituaries while we’re at it?”
I tried to laugh but couldn’t quite manage it. Some party this was. I had spent most of my time reassuring people who claimed to know and love me that I wouldn’t let them down. And to make it worse, Luke had seemed distant, preoccupied, borderline rude in a way I’d never seen him before. Was this more of Isadora’s handiwork or just a side of him I could have lived without?
The side Karen had lived with during their marriage.
“We had a fight before you showed up.”
“Before or after the hot sex?” Janice asked.
I shot her a look. “After.”
“After?” She glanced over at Lynette. “I thought humans believed in postcoital cuddling.”
“It wasn’t really a fight,” I said, the words spilling out like they had lives of their own. “I don’t know exactly what it was, but I don’t think he’s going to be here in Sugar Maple much longer.”
Janice’s sigh was long and loud. “I don’t want to say ‘I told you so’ but—”
“Then don’t.”
“But I—”
“Just don’t,” I said. “I get it. I’ve heard it before. I know the drill. I just don’t want to hear it again. Isadora’s breaking out of her banishment. Luke’s daughter is trapped in some other dimension. And I was stupid enough to let the ex wander off on her own at midnight. If you say one more word, I might turn you into Wayne Newton.”
Janice opened her mouth but Lynette, with cobra speed, clamped a hand over it. “We don’t want to hear it, Jan.”
Suddenly I felt so exhausted I could barely keep my eyes open. Time was ticking away, and I was no closer to a solution to the mess we were in than I was when Isadora threw down the gauntlet. “I need to crash for a half hour,” I said to my friends. “If you could clear the house, I’ll let you have the pick of my stash.”
Five minutes later I was alone with my cats and my Chips Ahoy. The box of red was history. I tried not to think about the fact that Karen was still out there wandering around Sugar Maple. Without my protection she was helpless as a baby rabbit.
I didn’t like to think that might be why I let her go, but I felt the sting of truth at the possibility.
Because I knew the answer to this whole mess. I’d known it from the beginning. All I had to do was let her go. Let her child go. They weren’t part of Sugar Maple. They had no bearing on my future or the future of anyone else in this town. Nothing I did would bring Steffie back to the realm of existence she had shared with her parents. No magick was that strong. Not Aerynn’s or Isadora’s and definitely not mine.
Luke and Karen had already lost their daughter. There would be no more hugs, no more bedtime stories and snuggles, no watching her grow up and go to college and get married and have a baby of her own. Even if I managed to vanquish Isadora once and for all and free Steffie’s spirit, none of those very human experiences would come to pass. Steffie’s time in this realm had come and gone.
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