Authors: Barbara Bretton
Spells & Stitches (11 page)
Or anybody else for that matter.
“Remind me why she’s here,” Luke said as he adjusted the defroster.
“Because she doesn’t take no for an answer,” I whispered. “At least she promised me she’d stay away from the brunch.” I didn’t know what she would do with herself while we were with the MacKenzie clan, but as long as she stayed quiet, invisible, and in a different dimension we had a fighting chance.
“I hear ye,” Elspeth said. “I’m here because Himself wanted it that way, but there are many places between heaven and earth where I would rather be.”
Tell us something we don’t know.
“You need to work on your attitude,” I said to her over my shoulder. “All of this gloom-and-doom talk is getting on my nerves.” I had had a terrible nightmare the night before, not for the first time, that left me shaken and weepy. I was trapped in a dark room and I could hear the baby crying, but no matter what I did I couldn’t find her. I wasn’t a big fan of those dreams.
“Truth is like chicory,” Elspeth said. “It leaves a bitter aftertaste in an unwilling mouth.”
Luke and I locked eyes for a second, then we burst into laughter.
“’Tisn’t funny,” Elspeth declared, her rubbery round body vibrating with outrage. “You have no business being here today, I tell you, no business.”
“You know,” Luke said to me, “she’s probably right.”
“I heard that,” Elspeth said with more than a note of triumph in her nails-on-a-blackboard voice.
“It’s the snow,” I said as I tried to squeeze in one more row on the hoodie I was making for the baby. Road trips, even short ones, had dwindled in the last few months and everyone knows knitters love their road trips. “Everything was okay until it started to snow.”
“You should be home where you belong.” Elspeth continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “There be a reason for all things, missy, and the spells of containment weaken with every mile you travel away from the center.”
“Spells of containment? You’re making that up.” I’d never heard anything about a spell of containment, and I was the hotshot sorceress.
“The spells of containment nurture the babe until the time is right to be born and not before.” She gave me one of those troll looks I hated. “There be no early births in Sugar Maple, not now or ever.”
I thought back through years of baby showers and Presentation ceremonies. “She’s right,” I said to Luke. “I can’t recall any premature births.”
“And there won’t be one now,” Elspeth said. “Not so long as ye stay where ye belong.”
Which I hadn’t. We were at least one hundred miles away from Sugar Maple and those spells of containment. Despite the warmth from the heater, one of those weird chills rippled through me. I tried to shake it off, but a sense of unease lingered.
“Back off,” Luke warned Elspeth. “I don’t want you bugging Chloe with any of your crap.”
“It’s not crap,” I said, placing a warning hand on Luke’s forearm. “Trolls tell the truth. It’s a congenital thing.”
In the backseat Elspeth was downright preening. “Ah, so you admit I might know a thing or two beyond your ken, do you now, missy?”
“You’re a thousand years old!”
Give or take a couple of centuries.
“If you don’t know a thing or two you’ve been wasting your time.”
Give or take a couple of centuries.
“If you don’t know a thing or two you’ve been wasting your time.”
“Doom is on the horizon,” she intoned, “and I can only hope my magick can—”
“Shut up.” Luke’s voice was low, steely, borderline threatening.
“Luke . . .” My own voice held a soft note of warning. Never piss off a troll. I thought everyone knew that.
“He senses it, too,” Elspeth said, still undeterred. “Even the human feels it in the air.”
“I don’t feel shit,” Luke said through gritted teeth, “and magick or no magick, I swear to God I’ll leave your sorry yellow-haired ass on the side of the road if you say one more thing about bad luck or containment or one goddamn word about our baby.”
Elspeth opened her mouth but apparently thought better of it and stayed silent. But it wasn’t a good kind of silent because I could hear her bitching in three other dimensions. The tension in the truck made my teeth ache and I was about to ask if Luke would dump my sorry yellow-haired ass on the side of the road when he said, “There it is.”
I put down my knitting and looked out the window. Carole’s Lakeside Inn looked exactly the way I had hoped it would: a sprawling stone and wood structure with lake frontage and a view of the White Mountains visible through the swirling snow.
“The parking lot’s jammed,” Luke observed as we inched our way up the hill. “I’ll let you out at the door and search around for a spot.”
“We can walk,” Elspeth said. “No need to coddle the missy because she’s carrying a wee one.”
“Coddle me,” I said to Luke. “My center of gravity is changing by the minute.” I was the tall, gangly girl who tripped over her own feet in the best of times. Add an icy walkway and an enormous baby belly to the mix and I’d be courting disaster.
“Walking is good for you,” Elspeth persisted. “Best way to prepare yourself for what’s to come.”
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” I shot back. “Talk to me after you’ve had a baby.”
“So much you know, missy. I birthed eleven, with three pairs of twins in the bargain.”
“You carried eleven babies yourself?” I was trying to pin her down. Elspeth was a tricky one, capable of all manner of verbal sleight of hand.
“And what was it I just said? Who else would be carrying my babies?”
I wasn’t about to start a discussion of in vitro, surrogacy, or donor eggs. Besides, wasn’t she the one who criticized the MacKenzies for being prolific?
“Must’ve been a long time ago,” Luke muttered.
“I heard that,” Elspeth said.
“Good.”
“Luke, stop it.” I placed a hand on his forearm. “I want to hear about your kids, Elspeth.” I had imagined her as the ultimate spinster, content to live her life in service to a powerful but needy male: Aerynn’s mate, Samuel.
“Eight have pierced the veil; three went beyond the mist to live amongst the Fae.”
“Are you in contact with them?” I asked.
“They are as dead to me.”
The lightbulb inside my head went on. “So that’s why you were so rude to Bettina the other day.” It seemed as if the war with the Fae would never end.
She made a particularly ugly face at the mention of Bettina’s name. “A foolish woman, that one, not worth the time it takes to think of her.”
“Why did your children go beyond the mist? Did they marry into Fae families?”
She narrowed her eyes in my direction and I swear I could feel her annoyance burrowing its way into my skull.
“They were weak boys, easy prey for hungry Fae priestesses in need of new blood. They were helpless to fight it.”
The sexual power of the Fae was the stuff of legend. When a member of the Fae turned his or her full power in your direction, you were pretty much toast. I counted myself lucky that my experience with the Fae Dane had resulted in nothing more than emotional whiplash.
It seemed another lifetime ago.
I peered out the window at the rows of parked cars. “I see a few Massachusetts plates,” I said, trying to keep the quaver from my voice. “Anything look familiar?”
“Parents. Ronnie. One of the sisters.”
“Oh, gods . . .”
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” I said. “Someone’s waving at us.”
“What was that?” Luke swiveled his head toward me. “I can’t understand you.”
“I said someone’s waving at us.”
“Ohhhh.” Elspeth emitted a long, keening sound. “’Tis starting ... ’tis starting and it cannot be stopped.”
“Nothing’s starting,” I protested as Luke waved back at a smiling middle-aged couple then made another loop around the small lot. “I just have butterflies.”
The second I said it, a swarm of butterflies spilled out of my mouth and filled the truck.
“What the hell—?” Luke barely missed slamming into a parked Saab when a monarch landed on the bridge of his nose.
“’Tis the spell of containment loosing its hold,” Elspeth said. “A bad sign ... a very bad sign.”
“Stop with this spell-of-containment stuff, will you, Elspeth? You’re making me crazy!”
“You’re speaking French,” Luke said. “When the hell did you start speaking French?”
The butterflies disappeared and tiny silver shooting stars took their place. Unfortunately they were shooting out of my ears and straight toward Luke and the troll in the backseat.
“Ow!” Luke swatted at them as they buzzed his head.
“I’m sorry!”
A flotilla of stars knocked Elspeth against the door.
Okay, so it wasn’t all bad.
“Do something,” Luke shouted as a shooting star dinged the windshield. “These damn things hurt.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. Possibly in French, but I wasn’t sure.
We rolled past another car with Bay State plates as it angled into an empty spot. The parents were too busy shouting at the gaggle of kids in the backseat of their Jeep to notice the fireworks in ours.
I should have listened to Lilith when she recommended a gentle yoga regimen to smooth out the rough edges of my frazzled nerves. Maybe then I wouldn’t be speaking French and shooting butterflies and electric stars from various orifices.
One thing was certain: I couldn’t meet Luke’s family in this condition.
I took a deep breath, centered myself, then dived deep into the
Reader’s Digest
version of the Book of Spells that I hoped would span the distance between Sugar Maple and Lake Winnipesaukee.
Reader’s Digest
version of the Book of Spells that I hoped would span the distance between Sugar Maple and Lake Winnipesaukee.
It took three tries, but my command of English returned and the butterflies and shooting stars disappeared. Now all I had to do was remember the blend of spells in case I started spitting gold nuggets over brunch.
“Last chance,” Luke said as a spot right next to the entrance miraculously opened up.
“Nothing good will happen here, missy,” Elspeth reminded me. “Let the human aim this contraption back where we come from.”
I should have. In retrospect I wish I had listened to Luke and to Elspeth and said, “Let’s go back to Sugar Maple as fast as we can.”
But I didn’t and that was my first mistake.
MEGHANHis name was James Whelan and he owned a cabin in Massachusetts. A secluded cabin far from nosy neighbors and busy roads where they’d spent the last five days in bed getting to know each other. She couldn’t remember exactly how they got there. She drove. Or maybe he drove. Maybe nobody drove and they were teleported by Scotty and the crew of the
Enterprise
. All she knew was that the world could go to hell. He was the only thing that mattered.
Enterprise
. All she knew was that the world could go to hell. He was the only thing that mattered.
She knew he was mercurial, up one minute and down the next. She knew he had a temper, which meant hot sex, which was followed by slow, sweet makeup sex. She knew she felt alive when she was with him. She knew that it would never last.
In rare lucid moments she understood that the whole thing was crazy. Sane women didn’t toss their jobs and their lives aside because a man smelled like starlight, but from the moment he walked into Hot Yoga her life had been out of her control.
She told herself it was his eyes; those icy blue eyes with the frame of thick dark lashes had been her undoing. One look and she was under his spell.
“I’m sex crazed,” she said, curled on her side with her mouth pressed against his warm, hard belly. “I literally can’t get enough of you.” She trailed her tongue down lower, then lower still, until his body reacted.
He told her what he wanted and she gave it to him. They both knew he would teach her things no mortal should know existed. Deliciously sinful things that made her blush in the darkness when she had never blushed before. This was way more than good sex. This was sex you would die for, do anything for, and it was starting to scare her.
Early on the sixth morning she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror and a chill rippled through her body. She looked wild and hungry, feral. Like a woman who had been raised by wolves instead of a traditional, churchgoing Irish American family.
She tried to imagine strolling into Carole’s Lakeside Inn to toast Luke and his new whatever and the thought made her laugh out loud. Could you say intervention? Her mother would think she was strung out on drugs—heroin, maybe, or crack—and drag her off to one of those rehab centers that promised miracles in thirty days or your money back.
She loved Luke, really loved him. He was the only one of her siblings who got her. Steffie’s death had sent shock waves through the entire family, dragging her brother down into the kind of grief she prayed she would never know. If he really had found someone and was starting over she wanted to be there to cheer him on.
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