Casting Spells (28 page)

Sorcha’s visit had shaken me to my core. Knowing that my parents’ love story was built on a foundation of magick and not the deeply human connection I had longed for my entire life made me feel as if someone had cut me free from my familiar moorings and set me adrift in uncharted waters.

The thing was I understood why my mother did it. In the deepest part of my heart I got it. Humans claimed all was fair in love and war and maybe they were right. Guinevere had been blessed with beauty and talent and magick. They were all part of who she was. She fell in love and used magick to tip the balance in her favor. You used what you had. We all did.

It’s not the same thing, daughter, and you know it.
I could hear Sorcha’s voice loud and clear inside my head. What if my father had known the truth about Sugar Maple and realized he couldn’t commit to a lifetime in a town where he was the only mortal being? He had deserved the chance to decide for himself. I was old enough to know that in the human world love wasn’t always enough to bridge the gap between people.

Maybe Sugar Maple wasn’t so different after all.

Remember that future I had spent my life dreaming about? The one with the home and the kids and the normal everyday life? It wasn’t going to happen. I could dream and wish and pray all I wanted, but “normal” and “everyday” weren’t in the cards for me.

The last thing I wanted to do was get all dressed up for Lynette’s opening night, but a promise was a promise. I dragged myself off to the shower and hoped my mood would improve at least a little by the time the curtain went up.

I was fiddling with my eye makeup when someone knocked on the door.

A smarter woman wouldn’t have answered it. My hair was wrapped around bright red Velcro rollers the size of soup cans. My right eye was shadowed and mascaraed. My left one wasn’t. I was wearing my favorite pair of toe-up candy-striped knee socks and an old hoodie from my brief time at BU.

Luke MacKenzie was the last person I expected to see on my front porch.

“Luke!” I ducked behind the door. “I’m not dressed!”

“I tried calling but you’re not answering your phone.”

“I—uh, I had a busy day.”

“The shop was closed.”

“That doesn’t mean I wasn’t busy.”

“I knocked a few times but you didn’t answer.”

“That’s because I went home early.” I hoped I didn’t sound as lame to him as I sounded to myself.

“You found time to change the locks.”

That pulled me out of hiding. “I didn’t change the locks.”

“The key you gave me fit yesterday but it didn’t fit today. What’s up with that?”

“Maybe you used the wrong key.” I couldn’t tell him that it was probably another random act of magick, courtesy of the good citizens of Sugar Maple, designed to make his life difficult.

His eyes swept over me from the rollers on my head to my freshly polished toes. He lingered on my legs just long enough for me to forget the fact that I was one giant goose bump.

“Why are you here?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“I mean, really. What made you decide to come over?”

He frowned. “I already told you. I wanted to talk to you and you weren’t answering your phone.”

“You’re here of your own free will?”

“Yeah,” he said, taking a step back. “What’s with the weird questions?”

“It’s ten degrees out here,” he said. “Do you think we can talk in the hallway?”

I felt like I was the one under a magic spell. My heart leaped into my throat as he stepped into my tiny foyer. Would he remember that he’d spent the night here last night?

“You look uncomfortable,” he said.

“My hair’s in rollers, my makeup’s lopsided, and I’m half-dressed. You’d be uncomfortable too.”

“Half-dressed is good.”

I tried to say something but we were in each other’s arms before I could form the first word. The room glowed with silvery sparks that made my skin tingle with excitement.

The kisses were long and slow and sweet. They were everything I had ever imagined kisses could be. I wanted to lose myself in them again, dive deep into this sensual ocean and never surface.

I wanted more kisses. Deeper kisses. Longer kisses. The kind of kisses a woman didn’t recover from without more kisses.

His hands slid along my rib cage and I shivered with pure pleasure. Last night had been part magick, part fantasy. I had danced close to the edge but somehow I hadn’t gone over it. I didn’t want him through magick. I wanted what happened between us to be as real and as human as he was.

As human as I once was and would never be again.

He was here because he wanted to be here. He was kissing me because kissing me was what he wanted to do. No spells. No charms. No magick potions.

My Velcro rollers went flying. His heavy coat fell to the floor. He inched my hoodie up. My hands slid under his heavy sweater. I couldn’t hear over the pulse beating in my ears. I couldn’t think beyond the next kiss, the next touch. I didn’t want to. Not tonight.

Desire had a choreography all its own and it never stumbled. The kissing never stopped yet somehow we managed to get naked. Still kissing, we found our way to the sofa.

Did you ever have a moment when you were more yourself than you had ever been before? A moment when everything you were and everything you would ever be rushed together in a radiant burst of heat and light and you realized you were happy. The kind of happy you knew could never last but the memory of it would be enough to get you through the next thirty or forty years.

That’s how it was for me.

Who knew that twenty minutes could change a woman’s life.

I remember every second of our time together. I remember how he sounded, how his body felt poised over mine, the way his skin tasted. I took those details into my heart and embedded them deeply into my memory where nobody else could ever reach them.

I don’t know how long we lay together while the world reassembled itself around us. I only know it wasn’t long enough.

“I’m driving down to Massachusetts tonight,” he said into my hair.

A sense of foreboding edged out some of the afterglow. “Leaving us so soon?”

He explained about the call from his former brother-in-law and the memorial service some friends were holding for Suzanne Marsden. “I’ll stay at Jack’s and be back here Monday morning.”

I did what I always did when faced with real emotion: I hid behind a cheap joke. “Can’t face Lynette’s
Christmas Carol
?”

He held me closer. “Can’t face seeing you with a blind date.”

I started to laugh. “Janice’s cousin! I totally forgot about him.”

“Don’t go.”

I leaned back and met his eyes. “What?”

“Ditch the play and come to Massachusetts with me.”

I pressed my face against his chest. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can.”

“I have a store to run.”

“Play hooky.”

I wanted to throw responsibility to the wind and say yes, but I knew that if I walked away from Sugar Maple now, even for a night, I might as well hand it over to Isadora.

“It’s my busiest season. I can’t.”

He held me closer. The warmth from his body flooded mine.

“I don’t want to leave,” he said.

But we both knew he would. Suzanne had been his friend, and friends were rare in this world. When you lost one, that loss had to be acknowledged.

I heard the sound of a familiar car crunching its way through the snow.

“Are you expecting someone?” he asked.

“Oh no,” I murmured against his neck. “It’s Janice.”

He groaned. “And you didn’t lock the front door.”

“That’s a fact, Detective.”

I didn’t tell him that it would take more than a lock to keep Janice out once she realized the truck in the driveway belonged to Luke.

I grabbed his clothes and threw them in the general direction of the sofa. My hoodie was inside out. I fumbled around with it then yanked it over my head the way it was. It beat being caught naked by Janice, the most judgmental woman in Sugar Maple. I loved her, but when it came to my romantic future, the woman had issues.

I glanced over at Luke, who was sitting on the edge of the sofa. “Put your pants on! She’ll be here any second.”

We probably looked like cartoon characters scurrying around the living room in search of runaway clothing, but we managed to get ourselves decently covered with not a moment to spare.

Janice knocked once and swung open the front door. “Hi,” she called out in a fake cheerful tone of voice. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

Which meant she knew she was.

There was something to be said for police training. Luke’s expression gave away nothing. I looked for a glimmer of connection between us, but it had disappeared beneath some kind of emotional armor.

Janice, who had been expecting fireworks, looked disappointed as he said hello and shrugged into his coat.

“You have my cell number, Chloe.” He didn’t sound like a man who had been naked less than three minutes ago. “Call me if the shop floods again.”

“I will.” Unfortunately I did sound like I had been naked less than three minutes ago. And the whisker burn probably didn’t help matters. “Drive safely.”

We locked eyes. We probably shouldn’t have but we did, and the air between us shimmered with heat.

Janice waited until he was in his truck before she let me have it.

“No.” I raised my hand to stop her. For once in my life I didn’t want advice, no matter how well-meaning or on target.

Her eyebrows lifted.
“No?”

“Really, Jan.” I looked straight at her. “No questions. No explanations.”

“I think I liked you better before you got your powers.”

“Janice—”

“Honey, the guy’s hot. I don’t blame you. But don’t turn it into something it isn’t.”

“I’m not having this conversation.”

“Enjoy it for what it is, but don’t expect more.”

“I don’t expect anything.”

“Of course you do. You’re your mother’s daughter. But you can’t have it with your human, Chloe.”

“You don’t know that.” There was nothing she could throw at me that logic and passion couldn’t refute.

“I know that he won’t stay here forever and I know you’ll never leave.”

Except for that.

 

LUKE

 

 

I hung around at the end of Chloe’s driveway for a few minutes before I pulled away. I wasn’t sure what I thought was going to happen, but I couldn’t make myself leave until I saw her through the window as she pulled on her coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck.

I could still feel her against me, smell her on my skin, hear the sounds she made low in her throat. My body was still warm from hers. In a perfect world we would be lying naked in her bed right now and we wouldn’t leave it until Monday morning.

And that was only half of the story. Something more than sex had happened back there. The connection between us was more than physical. For a little while, in that small cottage, on her narrow couch, I had been happy, and unless I missed my guess, she had been happy too.

About an hour later I pulled off the highway at a rest stop for gas. The full moon was moving higher in the sky. I was thinking about grabbing a couple bags of chips and some coffee when I remembered my former brother-in-law had moved since I’d last been down in Bradford and I didn’t have the new address.

The old phone number was still good and one of his sisters picked up on the second ring.

“Jackie’s not here,” Sherry said. “He and Lisa went down to Florida for their anniversary weekend.” Sherry was watching the kids, the dogs, and the house for them.

There was no memorial service for Suzanne that weekend. No gathering of old friends and ex-family. Nothing.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Luke,” Sherry said, “but it’s great to hear your voice.”

I paid for the gas, grabbed a coffee and two bags of chips, then climbed back behind the wheel. I knew Lisa had problems with Suzanne. Knowing your husband was still friends with his ex would be tough enough for a woman to swallow, but when the ex looked like the ultimate trophy wife, trouble was inevitable.

And then there was the fact that Jack had never really gotten over Suzanne.

It wasn’t hard to picture him drunk dialing old friends to set up a memorial service for his first love, only to be reminded by his present love that they had anniversary plans for a weekend in Orlando.

With a little luck I’d be back in Sugar Maple before Scrooge took his final curtain call.

 

CHLOE

 

 

The Pendragons really knew how to throw a pretheater cocktail party. The lobby was packed with townies and tourists toasting the season with hot buttered rum and mulled wine. Vivid scarlet poinsettias decorated every available surface. Glossy dark green holly, punctuated with plump red berries, framed windows and entryways. Old-fashioned Christmas carols, the kind that made you cry because you knew not even Bing Crosby had perfect holidays, filled the air. A full winter moon hung in the sky like polished silver.

And to make it even better, my blind date had stood me up. Apparently Janice’s cousin Haydon didn’t date women with less than full powers and had decided to drive on through to Canada. Janice said she had tried to convince him that my human side was only a technicality, but he wasn’t interested.

“Where’s Gunnar?” I asked Janice as the lobby lights flickered. “I haven’t seen him.”

“Lynette had a minor emergency. He’s backstage helping out.”

“Where are you sitting?”

“Row G on the left.” She rolled her eyes. “The Meany clan takes up the entire row. Where are you?”

“C1 and C2 center.” We made plans to meet during intermission to compare notes on this year’s Scrooge, a selkie named James who was scheduled to return to the sea sometime this coming spring.