Spun by Sorcery (8 page)

“Not a good idea,” he said, jaw settling into lines of granite. “Just because you don’t see cars doesn’t mean they aren’t there. We could end up with an eighteen-wheeler in the trunk. It’s better to keep moving.”

He was probably right. Visibility was less than zero out there. We’d be a sitting target.

I scrunched my eyes closed and poured myself into the knitting.

“You can knit with your eyes closed?” Luke asked.

“I can knit in my sleep,” I said and started to tell him about the time I woke up after a nap to discover I’d cast on for a Pi Shawl, when the car fishtailed wildly to the left and we sailed across the oncoming lane, through the guardrail, and over the embankment.

Time slowed to a crawl. The car glided through the air as if we were being cushioned by clouds and I had to remind myself we were falling.

I told myself the snow cover would break our fall and that the tank-sized Buick would withstand the impact. I told myself we’d laugh about it later, but I wasn’t buying it.

We were screwed.

My skin went hot, then cold, then hot again. I felt like I was on fire from the inside out. The rush of adrenaline through my bloodstream made it hard to hear anything but my heartbeat.

We were in a flat spin, like one of those fighter planes in
Top Gun
just before it slammed into the ocean. A flat spin that seemed to be going on forever, delaying the inevitable.

Janice would never see her family again. Luke’s mortal body would break apart like shattered glass. Our story would end the way my parents’ story ended, a half step short of happily-ever-after.

“No!” The word exploded from me with the force of a gunshot. “No!”

Not now. Not here. Not again.

I hadn’t come this far to let our lives slip through my fingers.

Unfortunately I had less than a second and a half to keep that from happening.

I popped my cherry on my fifth day on the job. The first few days I had pulled scut duty, partnering old-timers who were counting down the days until retirement. Low-crime areas, not much excitement. You could go twenty years out there and never break a sweat.

Near the end of shift on the fifth day, a call came in and we hung a U-turn and headed out toward Langley Crescent near a private high school. It was a bitch of a road: hairpin curve, poorly graded, a drainage ditch with no guardrail.

A kid high on beer and hormones had somehow sailed across the road, over the ditch, and down the embankment to the roadway below.

I was the first to reach him. One look and I was bent over, puking up my lunch. Seventeen years old and his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.

So I knew what was going to happen and I knew it was too late to stop it.

The flat spin angled and we tilted from side to side like an amusement park ride. Gravity always won. I knew I wasn’t going to walk away from this but maybe Chloe could.

I took that thought and held it tight as the ground rushed up at us.

Less than a foot before we hit the ground, I remembered the words.

“On the wings of my ancestors, carry us away from danger!”

And just like that we were saved.

No thunder and lightning. No fireworks display. The power of magick simply reached out, plucked us off the path to disaster, and deposited us back on the road as if nothing had happened.

This time I didn’t have to tell Luke to pull over. He had no choice. His hands, like mine, were shaking too hard to grip the wheel.

The second we rolled to a stop, Janice flung open the door, leaned out, and said good-bye to her Egg McMuffin. My stomach was in knots, too, but I couldn’t do anything more than hang on to poor Penny the cat and wait for the panic to die down.

Luke turned and looked at me. I felt the heat rise to my cheeks as his expression shifted from relief to downright wonder.

“You did it,” he said and I nodded.

I did it.

Nobody had ever looked at me like that. I felt embarrassed and proud and totally disconnected from what was passing for reality today.

“You did it,” he said again, a crazy smile breaking across his face. “We didn’t have a chance in hell but you made it happen!”

“I did,” I said with a crazy smile of my own. “My mind was blank, then all of a sudden the words popped out.”

The beautiful flowery language of magick. I’d never let anyone poke fun at it again.

Something happened to you when you cheated death. Maybe it was all that adrenaline still racing around with nothing to do once the danger was over, but my senses were on high alert and, judging from the look in his eyes, so were Luke’s .

He leaned my way.

I leaned his.

An explosion of white and silver sparks filled the space between us like our own private Fourth of July celebration.

Our lips touched. Our breaths mingled. Tears of relief and joy ran down my cheeks and he brushed them away with his fingertips. We had come so close to losing it all that I wanted to hold on to him and never let go.

“Oh, come
on
!” Janice settled back into her seat and closed the car door behind her. “I feel like I’m in high school again.”

We kissed once more just because we could. I could look at his face forever and—

“Your bruises are gone,” I exclaimed. “The cuts are healed! You’d never know you’d been in a fight.”

He shifted position a few times. “The ribs don’t hurt anymore.”

We both turned toward Janice. “Hold the applause,” she said with a smug but happy smile. “You can thank me when this is all over.”

“We’ll have dinner at the inn,” I said, feeling wildly optimistic. The Sugar Maple Inn was owned by Renate and Colm Weaver, Fae friends who had become enemies thanks to Isadora’s influence.

I missed my old friends. I wanted to go back to the way things used to be.

Of course, in order for any of that to happen we had to find the town first.

We sat for a little while in comfortable silence while our pulse rates returned to normal. I guessed that we had finally outrun the storm because the blizzard was no longer a blizzard but an accumulation of semiserious flurries. The county snowplows were probably out in force clearing the highways but it would be awhile before they reached small feeder roads like the one we were on.

The storm might have stopped but the road ahead was still a snowy, icy accident waiting to happen.

Janice and I were in favor of sitting tight until the road was at least salted but Luke disagreed strongly.

“The clock’s ticking,” Luke said. “We only have a few miles to go until we hit the highway. If we can push through this, the worst will be over.”

He readjusted his mirrors. I don’t know about Janice but for a second there I considered making a break for it. I caught her eye. She shrugged and picked up her knitting. Good choice. It was either that or a tranquilizer dart. The soft yarn, the bright colors, the slippery slickness of my beloved Addis brought me immediately back to center.

“You really need to rethink the whole toe-up issue,” Janice said. “Not only is this way more intuitive, you never have to worry about not having enough yarn to finish the pair.”

“I’ve heard the arguments,” I said as I whipped along, “and I agree they make sense but when it comes to everyday socks, I’m cuff-down, heel flap, and gusset all the way.”

“I do a gusset with my toe-ups.”

“I don’t think they look as elegant.”

Janice slipped off her shoe and rested her right foot on the console. “Tell me that’s not a gorgeous sock.”

“Of course it’s a gorgeous sock,” I said. “You’re a fabulous knitter. I just like cuff-down better.”

Penny the cat, who had been tracking the conversation from a spot by my feet, apparently reached her limit on knitting conversation and emitted an unearthly yowl.

“Thanks, Pen,” Luke said. “I couldn’t have said it better.”

I ignored him but I couldn’t ignore the cat’s obvious discomfort.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “I think she needs the litter box.”

Which, all things considered, was probably not something anyone in the car wanted to hear.

“Why don’t you set it up in the backseat?” Luke suggested.

“I don’t
think
so.” Janice sounded highly put out and who could blame her.

“I hate to say it, Luke, but we need to pull over again.”

There was a scenic overlook a half mile ahead and Luke pulled into the tiny rest stop adjacent to it so Penny could take care of her needs.

Janice and I exchanged looks after I set the improvised litter box down behind the car.

“It’s probably gross in there,” I said, gesturing toward the shack that called itself a “Unisex Restroom.”

“Most likely.”

“Still, it’s probably not a bad idea.”

Janice nodded. “You never know when opportunity is going to strike again.”

I reminded Luke to make sure he put Penny back in the car the second she was finished and said we’d be right back.

“Just hurry up in there. It’s coming up on eleven and we’re not even at the halfway mark yet.”

The inside of the bathroom shack was worse than the outside. I found myself wishing I’d worn a hazmat suit.

“Good thing you’re a healer,” I said as I washed my hands in a sad little trickle of icy cold water. “This place is a bacteria incubator.”

Janice was staring at her reflection in the dingy mirror. “Why didn’t you tell me about my hair?” she muttered then set to work.

“Can’t you do that in the car?” I asked as she ran her fingers through her long wavy hair. “Luke’s waiting.”

“Be right there,” she said, but I knew her idea of being right there was very different from mine.

I rearranged my ponytail and wished once again that I had been born with curly auburn hair instead of stick-straight blond, then hurried back out to Luke.

Who, as it turned out, was up a tree.

I’m a dog guy. I grew up with dogs. I get dogs. I know what it means when a dog wags his tail or when the ridge of fur at the top of his spine lifts like a line of porcupine quills.

Dogs are simple and direct. Dogs don’t mess with your head.

Cats are a mystery to me. Cat signals are like animal cave drawings better left to a student of the species.

You would think the fact that the woman I loved was a sorceress-in-training would be enough to deal with, but fate wasn’t through with me yet. She had cats. Lots of cats.

And one of them talked.

Yeah, it freaked me out, too. There really was no way to adjust to a cat that could explain quantum physics to you or turn you into a catnip mouse if the spirit moved her.

The truth is, except for the talking and the magick and the litter box thing, I liked Penelope. She was a mellow cat. No diva hissing or scratching. No pouncing or swinging from the curtains. She slept, she ate, she slept some more. She was a house cat who’d been a house cat since before we were a loose collection of colonies with an English accent.

In other words Penny the cat wouldn’t know the great outdoors if it bit her in her hairy butt.

So what the hell was she doing up a tree?

And the bigger question was, what the hell was I doing up the same tree trying to lure her down with an Egg McMuffin?

“Okay,” I said, scrabbling for a foothold on the snow-covered branch, “so I dropped the ball. I shouldn’t have turned my back on you.”

Penny the cat stared back at me with those unnerving golden eyes.

“C’mon,” I said, extending the morsel toward her. “You know you want it.”

She didn’t say
screw you
out loud but she might as well have. Clearly the cat expected better than fast food.

“Now I remember why I didn’t become a firefighter,” I mumbled as she inched farther up the tree. Cops didn’t do this crap.

For that matter neither did dogs. You wouldn’t find a poodle up a tree or a rottweiler. Ground level was good enough for a dog.

“Luke!”

I looked down and saw Chloe looking back up at me. “Your cat’s up the tree.”

“Impossible! Penny doesn’t do trees.”

On cue Penny the cat gave another of those yowls she’d been unleashing all morning.

“Damn, I wish she’d stop that.”

“Penelope,” she said, “come down here.”

I swear I didn’t see the cat move. One second she was looking down at me from the uppermost branch. The next she was wrapped around Chloe’s neck like a boa.

And I was still up a tree.

“Are you coming down on your own,” Chloe asked, “or do you want me to magick you down?”

I did my best lumberjack impression and landed on my feet next to her.

You wouldn’t think a cat could look disdainful but Penelope managed it.

“The cat hates me,” I said as we trudged back to the car through the snow. “When was the last time she climbed a tree, sometime around 1712?”