Casting Spells (11 page)

“Actually it wasn’t on the market. I was planning to buy it.”

He glanced around my crowded storefront. “Business is that good?”

“Better.”

He looked like he was about to say something but thought better of it.

It took every ounce of self-control I had to keep from pushing the issue. In this case, less was definitely more, in every sense of the phrase.

“Why don’t you give me the key for next door and I’ll get out of your hair.”

I rummaged through my desk, the basket of unfiled correspondence next to my desk, the box of clippings and magazines under my desk, and came up empty.

“I know I have it somewhere,” I said as I started dumping baskets of yarn across my already overburdened desk. Paul had given me a copy so I could let the guy from the phone company in to do his thing.

“What’s that on the corkboard?”

I glanced up at the knitting patterns, notes, photographs, and charts pinned to the corkboard over my desk. “I don’t see anything.”

He moved closer. He smelled like the ocean. Or at least the way I remembered the ocean. Don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t go around sniffing strangers, especially strange men, but he was standing very close and sometimes breathing has fringe benefits you don’t expect.

His hand dipped under a stack of charts for Aran cable designs I was playing around with and popped a key dangling from a pushpin.

“So you have X-ray vision,” I said. “I’ll have to remember that.”

“Don’t worry.” His tone was easy, light, probably deceptive. “I don’t have any other superpowers.”

“Good to know.” I held out my hand for the key.

“I don’t get one of my own?” he asked as he dropped it in my palm.

“I’ll make a copy for you at the hardware store.”

“Why don’t I make a copy at the hardware store?”

“Because until the power is on, the utilities are up and running, and we receive signed papers from Montpelier, you’re nothing more than a tourist with an agenda.”

Which was probably not the best thing to say to a cop, but like I told you before, I’m not myself before my first three or ten cups of coffee.

“That’s cold, Mayor Hobbs.”

“You think so, Detective MacKenzie?” I favored him with my best precoffee smile. “And it’s only December.”

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

We looked at each other.

He laughed first.

I kind of liked him for that.

“Come on,” I said, reaching for one of my mohair wraps. “Let’s take a look at your new digs.”

8

LUKE

 

“Sorry,” Chloe said over her shoulder as she fiddled with the door lock. “It seems to be stuck.”

“No problem.” I wondered what the hell was so hard about unlocking a simple Quikset.

“There!” She straightened up and pushed open the door. “After you.”

“I wouldn’t use that lock on a bathroom door,” I told her as I stepped into the darkened storefront. “You need to make a few upgrades.”

“You’re lucky you even have a lock,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of crime in Sugar Maple.”

“You don’t have any crime in Sugar Maple.”

“Which is why we don’t need a police force.”

I inhaled and wished I hadn’t. “Damn, it stinks in here. Did the last tenant keep monkeys?”

“Actually he did.” She lifted the shades and pale winter light flooded the place. “Macaques. It was a pet shop.”

My olfactory system was threatening to pack up and head back to Boston. “Did they keep goats too?”

“Stuart had an eclectic inventory.”

She looked around. “This is awful,” she said, meeting my eyes. “I’m really sorry.”

“Unless you put the claw marks on the wall, you have nothing to be sorry about.”

“You can’t possibly work in here until we Lysol the whole place.”

“Either that or an exorcism.”

“What?” Her expression shifted so swiftly it was like a magic trick.

“I said it was either Lysol or an exorcism.” I waited a moment. “That was a joke.”

The last time I saw eyes that guarded they had belonged to a man with an addiction to wearing shoplifted Victoria’s Secret panties under his Armani suits.

Which was another joke she probably wouldn’t like any more than she had liked the first one.

“Where are you staying?”

“A Motel Six on the other side of the highway until I find something else.”

“Better hang on to it,” she said quickly. “We don’t do rentals.”

“I could stay at the Inn.”

“They don’t have any vacancies.”

“I’ll get on a wait list.”

“They’re booked through to the spring.”

“You handle their reservations?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You sound pretty sure they’re full up.”

“They’re always full up,” she said. “That’s just the way it is.”

Defensive. Confrontational. Argumentative.

My kind of woman.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” I said. “I’m just here to tie up a few loose ends. Hell, I’m not even going to ask why you call yourself mayor when Sugar Maple hasn’t held an election since 1814.”

Her throat and cheeks reddened. “It’s an honorary position. My mother was mayor before me.”

“You don’t deal very well with authority, do you?”

“Are you implying you have some kind of authority over me?”

“I’m no fan of Joe Randazzo’s, but I’m starting to feel sorry for the poor bastard. You’d probably burn your records before you’d turn them over to him.”

If she had been armed, I would have been reaching for my gun. The look she gave me was lethal.

“Don’t look so worried. I’m from New England too. I get the whole Live-Free-or-Die thing.”

“’Live Free or Die’ is New Hampshire’s state motto. Vermont’s is ’Freedom and Unity.’ ”

“Same difference.”

“You must be from Massachusetts,” she said. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

“Bradford, between New Bedford and Salem.”

“Those are cities compared to us.”

“I’ve seen a hundred towns just like this,” I told her. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to rock your boat. Hell, once this space is set up, you won’t even know I’m here.”

 

CHLOE

 

Two hours later I was back in my shop unloading a huge box of Koigu yarn from Canada while Janice and Lynette assembled craft kits for my annual Last Minute Holiday Gifts workshop later that afternoon. We had fallen into the habit of spending our lunch breaks knitting, gossiping, and occasionally eating.

Today, however, I bribed them with chocolate then put them to work while I told them about the unexpected arrival of Sugar Maple’s newest resident.

“Tell me you’re kidding,” Janice said as she counted out six buttons then slid them into a plastic envelope.

“I’m not kidding,” I said, fondling the gorgeous hand-painted yarn. “I almost blew our cover in the first few seconds.”

“That’s no surprise,” Lynette said, up to her elbows in pattern sheets. “All of your bodily humors are in disharmony. I mean, look at you. You look terrible!”

“You actually told him to shift back?” Janice let out a muted howl of anguish that sent the pile of circular needles spinning crazily across the tabletop. “What were you
thinking
?”

“I wasn’t thinking, Jan. I must have fallen asleep on the couch, and when I opened my eyes and saw the same face I’d just been dreaming about, I figured Lynette had dipped into my dreams and was pulling one of those shapeshifting practical jokes that makes me crazy.” I still hadn’t forgiven her for the time she pretended she was Johnny Depp (in full Captain Jack drag) in search of a skein of Noro Kureyon #40.

“You’ve been working too hard, honey.” Lynette leaned across the worktable and patted my hand. “You were hallucinating. It happens to the best of us.”

In Sugar Maple it was hard to tell hallucination from reality but I let it pass. I was in enough trouble already without adding
smart ass
to my list of transgressions.

“You’re sure he didn’t pick up on it?” Janice prodded.

“I dodged a major bullet. He thought I was talking in my sleep.”

“Where is he now?”

“He walked down to Griggs Hardware.” I took a deep, steadying breath. “There’s more.”

Lynette shrank down into a childlike version of herself then swiftly reassembled as a grown woman.

I plunged ahead. “I told him he could use my office until we get the pet shop ready.”

“Don’t make such a big deal out of it,” Janice said. “In a couple of hours our magick will be back to full capacity and we already have the extra work crews in this dimension. We can have his office set to rights by tomorrow morning.”

There was a lot to be said for taking the magick way out. Last night was the perfect example. The Harris boys heard about what happened in my kitchen through the Spirit Trail grapevine, and they added their one hundred fifty years of carpentry experience to the mix. A trio of household sprites who wintered at the Inn with the Harris and Souderbush families and the other travelers on the Spirit Trail teamed up with the band of elves who lived on the other side of the park, and together they restored my house by the time the sun rose.

But clearly this was one time when I would have to get by without a little help from my friends.

“He saw the place. He’ll probably need to have his sinus cavities fumigated. He’ll be suspicious if it smells like rose-buds tomorrow.” I refrained from telling them about the claw marks on the walls, the parrot damage to the windowsills, or the other less appetizing mementoes left behind.

“Wait a second,” Janice said as the light dawned. “Are you saying we can’t use magick?”

“No magick, no elves, no sprites. We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”

“But that
is
the old-fashioned way,” Janice said.

“The old-fashioned
human
way with mops and brooms and Lysol and vacuum cleaners. I can handle some of it myself and get high school kids to do the rest.”

“Oh, honey!” Lynette’s look spoke volumes. “These kids don’t know the first thing about mops and brooms. If it’s not magick or music, they don’t want any part of it.”

I stared at my friends in disbelief. Between them, their offspring could staff a football team. “You mean your kids wouldn’t—”

I had never seen them laugh quite so loud or so long.

“I’d help out,” Janice said, “but between the salon and the kids and my knitting, when would I have time?”

“I’m heartbroken I can’t help,” Lynette said, “but we’re rehearsing
Carol.
We open Saturday.”

Considering the fact that they had been performing Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
every season for over fifteen years, I had trouble imagining there was anything left to rehearse.

“Ask Gunnar,” Janice suggested. “You know he would do anything for you.”

“You didn’t see him last night. He was pretty banged up. I don’t think he’ll be fit for manual labor anytime soon.” In typical fashion, Isadora had ignored Gunnar’s cuts and bruises and whisked Dane away to wherever faerie mothers from hell took their injured offspring.

“What about Dane?” Lynette asked. (I had always wondered if she had a mild thing for him but never had the guts to ask.) “He’s big and strong too.”

“Big and strong and crazy,” Janice said, and I nodded in agreement. “She’s better off doing the work herself.”

Actually I was better off not doing the work at all but that option was now officially off the table.

“Why did he have to show up early?” I moaned, burying my face deep into a mountain of sweet worsted weight wool. “One more day... that’s all we needed... just one more—”

“Whoa!” Janice pointed toward the front window. “Is that him?”

I looked up, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, and saw Luke standing out there on the sidewalk, chatting up Martha Blayney, our mail carrier. “That’s him.”

Janice popped on her glasses for a better look. “You forgot to mention he was gorgeous.”

“That’s because he isn’t. His hair is shaggy. He has crow’s feet. And he has a scar on his left cheek.”

“Not that you noticed or anything,” Lynette said with a wink.

“Green eyes,” Janice said, staring out the window. “Dark hair and green eyes. Yum!”

“He’s not a jelly donut. Stop—”

Except I was the one who stopped midsentence as a wave of dizziness broke over me, sending the room spinning like the minitornado in my kitchen last night.

“Chloe?” Janice’s voice came toward me through a long tunnel. “What’s wrong?”

It was over as quickly as it had started. “I must be coming down with something. Esther Greenberg was sneezing all over the place last night. I’ll bet she—”

Janice kicked me hard under the table. “We have company.”