Casting Spells (30 page)

There was something going on there, and it had nothing to do with apple pies and white picket fences.

I had noticed an abandoned dirt road a few hundred feet back. The forest was in the process of reclaiming it, but I was pretty sure my truck was up to the job. I had a full tank and a good sense of direction and the growing certainty that Sugar Maple wasn’t what it seemed.

And maybe neither was Chloe.

 

CHLOE

 

Isadora was waiting for me when I burst through the front door of Sticks & Strings.

She wore a purple velvet cloak embroidered all over with silk thread in the colors of the rainbow. Her magick was so powerful that the room shook from it.

Tonight I saw her through eyes opened by my own blossoming powers and her beauty was astonishing. Ribbons of silky jet-black hair that cascaded to the floor, luminous turquoise eyes, skin the color of heavy cream tinged with the slightest touch of pink.

I could feel myself growing smaller as I stood there, diminished in every way possible by the faerie woman standing before me.

“So it’s true,” she said as she motioned me into my own shop. “Your powers have begun.”

I dodged the issue. “What are you doing here?”

“We’ve come too far for pretense,” she said with an amused chuckle. “The Book of Spells should be mine.”

I had to hand it to her. I had been expecting the usual Fae game of thrust-and-parry, but she went straight to the heart of the matter.

“Only a Hobbs woman can own the Book,” I reminded her.

I was flung across the room like a bag of roving. The edge of the worktable stopped me before I went headlong into the fireplace. My right hip took the worst of it and I was grateful for every quart of Ben & Jerry’s calcium I’d ingested lately.

“You might want to have your meds adjusted,” I muttered as I struggled to my feet.

Fortunately wise-ass humor was lost on most Fae.

“The facts are these,” she said, imprisoning me in a silver net that clung like a damp spiderweb. “I will have the Book. Your powers are not yet sufficient to fully claim it. You can defer to my greater powers and be rewarded, or you can fight me and lose everything you value.”

“You forgot the third option,” I said as I shrugged off the silver net with a surprisingly effective display of my own newfound magic. “I could fight you and win.”

 

LUKE

 

The road came to an abrupt stop about a half mile from Snow Lake. I could either retrace my path and try to find another route or ditch the truck and go the rest of the way on foot.

I ditched the truck.

The woods were thick. Very little moonlight filtered through the dense cover of pine and spruce. I kept myself on track by focusing on the clearing that I assumed opened onto the lake itself. An owl hooted from somewhere close by, but there was little sound beyond that and the crunch of ice-encrusted snow beneath my feet.

I had the sense I was being watched. The woods were filled with creatures, most of which came alive at night. I figured as long as I didn’t hear a banshee, I was ahead of the game.

I reached the clearing at the southwest edge of the lake. The place was deserted and I figured the entire village was over at the Playhouse, where Scrooge should be putting it all together right about now.

Most lakes of this size in northern Vermont had been deemed safe for skating by Thanksgiving this year. No warnings to the contrary had been posted at Snow Lake. The kids had played hockey and practiced for the upcoming festival without incident just two days before Suzanne’s accident. By all reports the center ice had been unmarred by signs of wear or weakness.

The frozen surface gleamed smooth in the moonlight as if it had been Zambonied. It was as if yesterday’s half foot of snow had never happened. I decided against walking the perimeter of the lake. Walking across it was faster and it would give me a chance to see the spot where the accident happened. I walked out toward center ice. I had grown up skating natural ice and I trusted my gut the same as Suzanne had that Snow Lake was solid.

I stopped a few feet away from where she went in. Where I had expected to see the usual angular breakage common to this type of accident, I saw the smooth edges of a perfect circle.

For the second time in my life my blood ran cold as my hand closed over the star pin in my pocket. I stood there staring at the opening where Suzanne had dropped into the icy lake and experienced an overwhelming sense of dread that I couldn’t explain.

I backed away from the spot then turned and walked quickly toward the enormous sugar maple I had noticed on my first night. The tree was halfway between the lake and the street, the tallest of the maples in that stand. I ran a hand over the bark. The circle wasn’t new. Dried sap had long since formed scar tissue over the initial injury but hadn’t obliterated the smaller designs.

Burned into the once soft wood were the symbols I had noticed in the news clipping: a small crescent moon and a sun whose rays shot off in every direction. The same symbols as those on Chloe’s parents’ grave markers.

There was a third symbol, however, that hadn’t been in the news clipping. A star like the one in my pocket. When I leaned close, I caught the faint scent of burned wood and I felt the residual dampness of sap against my fingertips.

“Too bad about that one.”

I turned to see one of the golden boys standing behind me. He wore a long black coat and a wide scarf that covered much of his face.

“What do you mean?”

“Your friend,” he said, unwinding the scarf. “I don’t remember her name.”

His face was magazine-cover perfect. No bruises or scrapes.

It was the cross-country skier but without the good-natured charm of the other night. This man made me wish I hadn’t left my gun in the truck.

Something ugly was taking shape and I didn’t know where it was heading.

“Her name was Suzanne,” I said.

His smile was white and gleaming. “Suzanne,” he repeated. “I’ve never been good with names.”

“You were with her that night.” It wasn’t a question.

“I wondered how long it would take you.” His smile widened. “Not bad, Detective. I’m impressed.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“Are you asking as her friend or as a cop?”

“Would it change your answer?”

“If you want to know if I fucked her, the answer’s no.”

I didn’t say anything.

“C’mon,” he taunted. “Take a shot at me. You know you want to.”

I kept my cool.

“So what is it? She wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

I still didn’t respond. I wasn’t going to be goaded into doing something stupid.

“She’d been drinking,” he said, “but she wasn’t drunk. She saw the lake and she wanted to go skating.”

It sounded like Suzanne. She wouldn’t have thought twice about skating in some skimpy evening dress. Of the old crowd, she was the one who had always thumbed her nose at convention.

“She said she could teach me to skate a star into the ice.”

Definitely Suzanne. She had taught herself to skate figures as a kid just for the hell of it.

I knew where this was going. Dane had figured he would put up with her skating in the hope that it would lead to something else, and when it didn’t, he lashed out in rage.

“Too linear,” he said with a grin.

Shit. The guy could read minds.

“Figured that out too. Damn, you’re good.”

“You killed her.”

“Now there you’re wrong, Detective. I didn’t kill her but I could have saved her. A small distinction but an important one.” He studied me carefully for my reaction. “The human body doesn’t do well in those temperatures. My mother counted on that.”

“What the hell does your mother have to do with Suzanne’s death?”

“Who do you think melted the ice beneath her feet?” The son of a bitch actually laughed. “You should’ve seen your friend’s face when she realized what was happening. She kept grabbing for the edge of the ice and it kept melting beneath her fingers.”

If I’d had my gun, I would have used it. The fury I felt burned away rational thought. I swung at him with a right hook that should have flattened him but didn’t. The guy didn’t even blink.

“You get one free shot,” he said. “Next time we play by my rules.”

I swung at him again, but this time I was lifted off my feet and flung backward into a spruce tree. My head slammed against the trunk with a thud.

I tried to get up but couldn’t. Every time I lifted my head, pain pushed me back into the ground.

“I didn’t think you’d be much of a problem but I was wrong,” Dane said, standing over me. “I’m going to have to do something about you.”

His boot connected with my gut and I vomited blood into the snow.

“Poor bastard,” he said. “Too bad there’s nobody around to help you.”

I heard the words but I was having trouble putting them together into a whole. The pain in my head was bad but the pain in my gut where he’d kicked me helped take my mind off it.

He was a psychopath but I didn’t think he was a cold-blooded murderer until he kicked me in the right kidney and things went black.

I don’t know how long I was out, but when I opened my eyes again, there were two of them battling it out six feet above the lake, which was ablaze with what looked like some kind of flaming glitter.

I was either dead or brain damaged. Nothing else made sense.

I pushed the idea as far away as it would go. As far as I was concerned, magic was a Vegas lounge act performed by a middle-aged guy with a bad rug and a twenty-year-old assistant looking to fast-track her way into show business.

One of the brothers crashed to the ground a few feet away from me. His bloodied face sported some older bruises so I knew it was Gunnar. He tried to say something to me, but an unseen blow threw him back against the big sugar maple tree.

Maybe it was time to rethink my position.

Three symbols. Three accidental deaths. And now the faint outlines of two new symbols were beginning to form in the bark while I watched.

I pulled myself upright. Near me Gunnar groaned. But where the hell was his brother?

I glanced around the lake. The mirrorlike surface of the ice was thick with steel blue glitter. There was no sign of either brother. People didn’t just disappear like that, did they?

“Shit,” I said out loud. In Sugar Maple they did. I thought of the woman I’d met at the cemetery and the way she’d seemed to vanish into thin air.

“That was our mother.”

I followed the sound of the voice and saw Dane standing on the branch of a winter-bare oak tree looking down at me. “She does a pretty good Boston accent, doesn’t she?”

Bad enough he had read my mind but now I heard Jack’s voice as he had sounded on the cell phone that morning.
Hey, Mac. We’re having a memorial for Suz on Sunday. The old crowd
. . .

The dead electronic equipment. The busted water pipe.

“Mine,” he said.

“The black ice?” I asked out loud.

“Pretty good, huh? Then again I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“Jesus,” I breathed. “You killed Chloe’s parents.”

“Can’t take credit there but I gave you a few good scares.”

“Did you cause that school bus accident too?”

“Guilty as charged.”

When a suspect started spilling his guts, it usually meant one of two things: he was either ready to give himself up, or you didn’t have to worry about what to do on your summer vacation. My chances of making it through the night were shrinking fast.

“You’re in over your head, MacKenzie. You’re messing with shit you can’t comprehend. You would’ve lived longer if you’d gone back to Boston and stayed there.”

He vanished with the last word, but he left his calling card in the form of a thunderbolt that split the night sky with a thunderous crack. It gathered speed as it looped the lake, then entered a trajectory headed straight for me. I moved left. So did the thunderbolt. I moved right. It did too.

A thunderbolt with my name on it. Why not? It was as believable as anything else that had happened to me since I arrived in Sugar Maple.

There was something ironic about a cop buying it in a town without crime. Maybe one day, in some afterlife Zen kind of moment, I’d find the humor in it.

The thunderbolt was so close I could feel its heat when Gunnar threw himself in front of me.

I bellowed as a red-hot current zapped my right leg.

Gunnar was motionless but watchful. His scorched flesh smelled like a combination of toasted marshmallows and motor oil.

Our eyes met. He had taken a blow meant for me.

“Why?” I asked as I stared down at him. “You don’t even know me.”

“Chloe loves you,” he managed. “Save her.”

“From what?”

His eyes opened, closed, then opened again. “... Mother ... knit shop...”

I slipped my arm under his shoulder and helped him to his feet. “You’re badly hurt,” I said, stating the obvious. “We need to get you to the nearest hospital.”

But there were no hospitals in Sugar Maple. Or doctors, for that matter. I hoped some of those brochures in the truck had the information I needed.

“You’re...not...listening,” Gunnar said, grimacing as he pulled away from me. I watched as he seemed to gather strength from some unseen source. “It’s an ambush...we have to get to the knit shop now.”

I started for the car but he grabbed my arm hard enough to stop me in my tracks, uttered a few syllables I didn’t understand, and we were pulled backward into darkness.

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