Spun by Sorcery (9 page)

“It’s not you,” Chloe said. “It’s the Sugar Maple thing. She’s homesick.”

“The cat told you that?”

“The cat will tell you a few things if you don’t stop.”

Which would have been funny in my old life but in my new life it wasn’t funny: it was true.

I settled Penny on the floor near my feet. Luke turned on the heater and she was asleep by the time we exited the parking lot.

“You should’ve bought one of those cat carriers at Walmart,” Janice said as she worked on her sock in the backseat. “Or a leash.”

“I’ll definitely buy one when we get to Salem.”

Until then Penny was staying in the car.

I had trusted that Penny’s unusual history made her immune to crazy cat behavior but I hadn’t factored in the effect a change of landscape might have on her. Different sounds, different sights, different smells. She was probably as lost without Sugar Maple as I was.

I was halfway down the leg of my sock when we finally reached the entrance to the highway. The sun was shining. The road ahead was clear and dry.

“How long until we reach Salem?” I asked Luke as he merged with traffic.

“Another two and a half hours, give or take a blizzard or runaway cat.”

I’d be able to finish the first sock and take a big bite out of the second. With a little luck I’d fall into the knitting zone where there was nothing but color and texture and the gentle rhythmic click of my needles as they formed stitch after stitch. I definitely didn’t want to think about what lay ahead. I’d rather think about the way turquoise bumps up against royal purple.

Luke finally managed to tune into a sports talk station and I tuned out the chatter. In the backseat Janice was already in the zone and was casting on for her second sock.

“Are you knitting for Munchkins?” I asked over my shoulder. “You can’t possibly be knitting for adult feet. I still haven’t turned the heel on my first.”

“Toe-up, baby,” she said with a wink. “I told you it rocks.”

We chatted back and forth about elastic cast-offs for a while then fell into companionable silence. A radio caller was going on about Opening Day. Luke seemed riveted.

Go figure.

I knitted along in silence for a while. Behind me Janice dropped off into a nap, her head cushioned by a mountain of Manos and Araucania. The heater proved too much for Penny and she arranged herself on the console between Luke and me. She didn’t seem any worse for the wear after her adventure in the great outdoors. She did, however, seem unusually fixated on Luke.

“What’s up with the staring?” he asked as a big brown UPS truck passed us on the left. “She hasn’t taken her eyes off me.”

“I guess you two bonded when you were up that tree.”

“She made a horse’s ass of me up that tree. If you hadn’t come along, I’d still be up there waving that stupid Egg McMuffin at her.”

Penny stretched out her front paws and inched closer to Luke. She rested her chin on his thigh.

“Too late, cat,” he said. “I ate it.”

She stretched again then eased her upper body into his lap.

“This isn’t going to work,” he said. “Not that I don’t trust her or anything.”

I reached over to pluck Penny from his lap but she was too fast for me. Hard to believe an aged, sedentary cat could move that fast in such a confined space but she went from his lap to his shoulder in an eyeblink.

A cat person wouldn’t flinch. A driving non-cat-person definitely would.

“What’s going on?” I said as I unbuckled my seat belt; I leaned over to extricate Penny from her new perch but she pressed her face against his neck. “It’s like you used a catnip aftershave or something.”

“You want to get her off me?” He sounded a little tense. “The cat breath is getting to me.”

Funny how I’d never had to use magick with Penny until I had magick myself. She seemed to up the ante with every new skill I acquired. I cast the same spell I’d cast beneath the tree but this time to no effect.

“No joke,” Luke said. “My eyes are getting scratchy and I think I’m going to sneeze.”

“From cat breath?” I didn’t mean to sound so skeptical.

“Just get her off me, okay?”

“Since when are you allergic to cats?”

“Chloe, come on. Help me out. Use a little of that magick of yours. I feel like someone’s pouring salt in my eyes.”

“I’m trying,” I said, “but the spell is bouncing right off her.”

“She’s licking my face, damn it. My skin’s on fire. Just pull her off me.”

I made another effort at prying her from his shoulder but she was stuck like Velcro.

He yelped. “Those claws are sharp.”

This was no time to be a wiseass. I bit back my comment and concentrated on how best to reason with a stubborn cat and a ticked-off human.

“Janice bought some Cheese Nips,” I said with as much optimism as I could muster. “That might do it.”

I knelt on the console and reached into the backseat to rummage through the bags at my sleeping friend’s feet for the salty snack.

“I know she bought them,” I said, muttering to myself. “Must be in the other bag.”

I heard a scuffling sound, a sharp intake of breath, then Luke’s voice saying, “Take the wheel.”

I scrambled back to my seat. “What?”

“Take the wheel!”

“I don’t—”

I grabbed the wheel and held it steady. “What’s wrong? What happened? A second ago—”

“I can’t see.”

I heard the words but my brain couldn’t process them through the screaming inside my head. “Start slowing down. I’m going to guide us onto the shoulder. I’ll tell you when to stop.” We were already in the right-hand lane, which helped our odds.

“What’s going on?” Janice poked her head between our seats. “Is something wrong?”

“Luke’s eyes,” I said, keeping my own eyes riveted to the road ahead of me. “I think he’s having an allergic reaction of some kind.”

Janice said something unprintable.

“Take Penny,” I said. “Keep her away from Luke.”

Damn her hide. The cat leaped gracefully onto the swell of yarn next to Janice and settled herself down.

His arms were rigid at his sides. Beads of sweat poured down his face.

“Slow down some more,” I said. “No, not the gas pedal! The brake! The brake!”

I wouldn’t say my life flashed before my eyes but a few key scenes definitely made an appearance.

The shoulder was wide and clear. I eased the Buick over. Now all we had to do was stop before we hit the thick row of pine trees that marked the point where the shoulder ended and the woods began.

Luke’s breathing was raspy, labored. I had the feeling he was on autopilot, relying on muscle memory rather than conscious thought.

“Okay, now more brake,” I said. “Easy . . . full stop . . . that’s it. We did it. Great!”

We were safe. I turned my full attention to Luke and a chill iced its way up my spine. His face was red and mottled. His eyes were swollen shut. His breathing sounded raspier and more labored than before.

He was in trouble and my magick was utterly useless against whatever was doing this to him.

“He’s not breathing right,” I said to Janice as I struggled to push down my growing panic. “I think he’s in real trouble.”

“Don’t worry.” Janice was an oasis of calm. “I’m here. Let’s get him out of the car so I can work.”

Penny ignored us while we struggled to pull Luke from the car then stretch him out on the grass adjacent to the shoulder. It was like moving one hundred eighty pounds of deadweight.

He was slipping away from us. I felt it in every cell of my body. I wished with all my heart Suzanne Marsden had never shown up in Sugar Maple. If she hadn’t drowned, Luke wouldn’t have been given the job as chief of police and we wouldn’t have met and fallen in love. And if none of that had happened, he wouldn’t be balanced on the knife’s edge between worlds right now.

Janice knelt down next to Luke and moved her hands over his chest and along his neck. She splayed her fingers over his face, speaking softly in a language I would never know. Luke lay there motionless. His face was no longer red and mottled; the ghastly pallor of human death was washing the redness away.

I held his hand in mine, grateful for the warmth. His pulse was weak but it was still there.

I had seen Janice work miracles. Her healing powers were strong. If anyone could turn this around, she could. But I was still terrified.

“He’s human, Janice,” I said. “Have you ever worked on a full-blooded mortal before?”

“Not to this extent,” she said, “but right now I’m all he has.”

“What if he’s in some kind of shock?” I said to her. “Maybe we should take him to a hospital.” I watched
Grey’s Anatomy.

“Shock!” Janice sounded elated. “That’s it. . . .” Her hands were a blur as they swept patterns over his body. Her voice rose and fell with the strange words.

“Come on,” I whispered. “Come on!”

Janice’s eyes fluttered closed. Her lips moved but I couldn’t hear the words any longer. She had gone somewhere I couldn’t follow, deep into the heart of her knowledge and magick.

“What the hell are you doing?” Luke sprang to a sitting position and glared at Janice. The pallor, the harsh breathing, the swollen eyes—all gone. He was big, healthy, and pissed off.

“A simple thank-you would be plenty,” she snapped, glaring back at him.

“Janice just saved your life, you idiot.” I was laughing and crying simultaneously as I threw my arms around him.

He leaned slightly away and looked into my eyes. “I’m serious: what happened?”

“Your eyes . . . you lost your—” I frowned. “You don’t remember?”

He didn’t. The episode was a total blank to him.

“Remember what?” he asked.

I filled him in on the details.

“Shit,” he said. “Are you kidding me?”

We all knew the question was rhetorical.

He stood up and brushed dirt off his jeans. His color had returned to normal. Even I had trouble believing the last few minutes had been anything but some kind of crazy dream.

“Don’t move,” I said. “I should have done this hours ago.”

I conjured up a simple but effective protective charm then doubled it for good measure.

“Thanks,” Luke said. “Does that make me catproof?”

Janice and I exchanged looks. He still didn’t understand that cats lived above the rules of law and magick.

I reached for the handle on the driver’s-side door.

Luke frowned. “Isn’t the guy supposed to open the car door?”

“No offense,” I said to Luke, “but so far you’ve driven us over an embankment and gone temporarily blind.”

“You hate driving,” he reminded me.

“Yes,” I agreed, “but it turns out I hate crashing even more.”

“I’m a damn good driver.”

“Not today you’re not.”

“You’re blaming me because you have a lousy car with no snow tires and no four-wheel drive?”

“I’m not blaming anyone, Luke, but I’m still driving.” Okay, so maybe I did blame him but not in an ugly sort of way. We’d been up for over twenty-four hours. We’d engaged in a fierce battle with Isadora, lost my hometown, pushed our way through a blizzard, crashed through a guardrail and plunged twenty feet to almost certain death, then topped off the fun with temporary blindness.

He was only human and humans had their physical limits. It wouldn’t be long before I reached my limits, too, but the magick side of my lineage would carry me through a little longer.

I was still new to the whole male-female dance. Sometimes I could be a little too direct. I loved him. I didn’t want to hurt him. “You understand, right? We’re going to be busy when we reach Salem. You could catch a nap or something.”

I watched as his jaw worked through all sorts of contortions before he spoke. “It’s your car,” he said finally, then walked around to the passenger side and got in.

“Do I get a say in this?” Janice demanded. “We’d be better off if the cat drove.”

“I don’t hear you offering to drive.”

Janice grunted something nasty about my Buick then climbed into the backseat.

I readjusted the mirrors and buckled my seat belt. I won’t lie to you. I wasn’t looking forward to merging onto the highway. (I wasn’t all that crazy about turning out of my driveway back home.) But I couldn’t delay forever.

I shifted into drive and had just started rolling along the shoulder, building speed, when a pine tree crashed to the ground three feet in front of us without any warning at all.

I slammed the gear into park and turned off the engine.

Nobody said a word. When a forty-foot tree missed you by inches, there really wasn’t much to say.