"Watch me," I said, popping the lid on the Ben & Jerry's.

"Fat and sugar help me think."

"You're going to eat all of that?" Karen asked from the doorway.

"I'm going to give it my best shot," I said, reaching for a spoon.

"If either of you wants any, you'd better stake your claim now."

"Consider my claim staked." She grabbed a spoon from the counter and sat down opposite me.

"The Cherry Garcia is all mine."

"No problem," she said. "I'm a Dulce de Leche girl myself."

"Things might get ugly with the cookies."

"I'm willing to take my chances," she said with a tired smile.

Luke watched us with a look of amazement. "Any chance you have some single malt hidden away?"

I looked up at him. "What kind do you like again?"

"Glenfiddich."

I closed my eyes, focused deeply, then felt the answering ripple between my shoulder blades. "Check the cabinet over the fridge. You might find some."

Which of course he did. Sometimes magick came in handy.

He grabbed a juice gla.s.s from the dish drainer near the sink and poured three fingers' worth.

"Cent'anni," I said, lifting my box of wine in his direction. I said, lifting my box of wine in his direction.

"Bottoms up," he said and downed every last drop.

We ate (and drank) in silence. We ignored the cats, who periodically jumped up on the table, surveyed the proceedings, then jumped down again. Suppressing a feline insurrection was so far down on the to-do list that they could have smacked us around, then polished off the wine with a whiskey chaser, and we probably wouldn't have noticed.

"Your phone's ringing again," I said to Luke. I was almost relieved to hear the bland everyday ringtone I'd grown accustomed to. "What's up with that?"

"Isadora's light show. They saw it two towns over and think it was a UFO. The reporters are coming out of the woodwork. One of them even called NASA." He grabbed his bottle of single malt and excused himself to return some calls and explain away the incident.

"Is your brain on overload?" I asked Karen as I refilled my mug of wine.

"I pa.s.sed overload when the car went airborne," she said. "I think I'm moving from seriously delusional to totally fried right about now."

I laughed and scooped up another heaping spoonful of cholesterol-heavy lusciousness. Luke and I had given her a condensed version of The Idiot's Guide to Sugar Maple The Idiot's Guide to Sugar Maple, complete with audiovisual aids, courtesy of the Book of Spells.

"Do I get to say, 'I told you so'?" she asked as she popped a piece of chocolate chip cookie into her mouth. "I knew you were psychic all along."

"You're still wrong. Do you think I would have let us walk into that trap if I'd seen it coming? I don't have any psychic abilities at all. I'm what you'd call a sorceress-in-training."

We all had our labels. Psychic. Sorcerer. Part-time witch. Full-time shapeshifter. None of it seemed to matter anymore.

"How long do you think Luke will be in there?" she asked, gesturing toward the back of the cottage.

I shrugged. "I don't have a clue."

"That's exactly what he used to do when we were married." She jabbed her spoon into her ice cream. "He'd hole up at the office and wait until everything cleared."

"This is hardly the same thing, Karen. He's the chief of police. He has to return the calls."

"Nothing dangerous about that."

I narrowed my eyes in her direction. I'd always wanted to narrow my eyes at someone, and this seemed as good a time as any to do it. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You saw him back there at the dock. Why didn't he do something? He's a cop. He knows how to handle dangerous situations. He could have taken her down."

I laughed out loud. "Do you really think a one-hundred-eighty-pound human male could take down an immortal? Isadora and Dane almost killed Luke back in December. Trust me, he did the right thing." The only only thing he could have done under the circ.u.mstances. thing he could have done under the circ.u.mstances.

"I still think he should have tried."

"So we could bury him tomorrow?" I slugged down some more red. "Let's not have this conversation."

"I don't understand the problem. Give that Isadora creature what she wants and she'll release Steffie's spirit. It sounds pretty simple to me."

"It isn't."

"It should be."

Of course it should be. In a more perfect world, hers or anyone else's, a child's innocent spirit wouldn't be trapped in some hazy netherworld of loneliness. That wouldn't happen. But none of our worlds was perfect. Not even close.

My head was pounding so hard I thought it was going to explode. "I know Isadora. You don't. She used her own son son to murder my parents. What makes you think she'd keep her word on this?" to murder my parents. What makes you think she'd keep her word on this?"

"What makes me think you'll keep your word?" she tossed back at me. "You lied to me. You pretended to be normal. How do I know you haven't put a spell on Luke and trapped him here the same way that creature trapped Steffie?"

I shoveled more cookies and ice cream into my mouth. "Tell me how you really feel."

"You scare the h.e.l.l out of me," she said. "I mean, my G.o.d, you killed her son. I saw it playing out on that screen."

"It was an accident. The sword bounced off my shield and split him in two." But I wasn't telling the entire truth. I wanted Dane dead, and if that accident hadn't happened, I would have found a way to kill him.

"Almost everything you and Luke told me since I got here has been a lie. There's nothing normal about this town. None of you is even remotely normal."

"Depends on how you define normal normal," I reminded her. "To us, you're the abnormal one."

She put down her spoon and locked eyes with me. The urge to turn myself into a tree frog was almost irresistible but I held steady. "Maybe you're s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with me. Maybe you're not. Maybe that whole freak show out there tonight was the result of some magic mushrooms you slipped into my Kung Pao. But if there's even the slightest chance that my daughter is out there, that her spirit is in some kind of danger, then I'm going to fight as hard as I can, do whatever I have to do, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

I believed her. She was maybe five feet tall. I doubted if she weighed one hundred pounds. But there was something intensely powerful about her, something so fierce and primal that it defied the physical realities.

When it came to her daughter, the first Mrs. MacKenzie was a warrior.

Steffie was gone but Karen was still her mother. Even now, even when all of her human reality must be telling her it was futile, she was willing to fight for her daughter to keep her safe from harm.

My mother loved me but she never fought for me. When faced with the choice to join my human father in death or stay in this earthly realm and raise her little girl to adulthood, my mother chose to leave me in the collective hands of the villagers of Sugar Maple and ultimately in the loving embrace of Sorcha the healer.

After many earthly years in this realm, Sorcha had been ready to pierce the veil into the next dimension. But a needy six-year-old girl with no powers to her name and a sullied half-human heritage came into her life and she stayed until she was sure I could fly on my own.

Karen didn't care if I liked her, loathed her, or wanted to put her in a psychiatric inst.i.tution. All she cared about was Steffie.

Maybe on some level she was crazy, but it was a crazy I understood. Grief could do terrible things to a human's heart and soul, make you see things that weren't there and overlook the things that were. And maybe sometimes it led you to exactly the place where you were meant to be at the moment in time when you were meant to be there.

I wish I knew if this was one of those times.

"I saved the town," I said quietly. "I don't mean the buildings and the woods and the lake. I'm talking about the families who've been living here for over three hundred years. That's what Luke and I were doing the night Isadora's sons were killed. I regenerated the protective charm and managed to drive Isadora into banishment. When my parents died, this town became my family. They'll be here long after-" I stopped myself. "Let's just say if Isadora succeeds, she'll pull the town through the mist just like she promised. She has to be stopped permanently."

"Is that the worst that could happen?"

"The worst that could happen to the town is that not everyone will make it through to the other side. It's a violent process and there will be casualties." I met her eyes. "Luke would be one of them."

"So go live somewhere else. You all have magic powers. Wouldn't it be easier to live somewhere you didn't have to hide what you are?"

"I can't." a.s.suming such a place even existed.

"But Luke can."

The truth really does hurt, especially when it's aimed straight at the center of your heart. I looked down at the table, unable to think of anything clever or insightful to say.

"I don't see the problem," Karen persisted. "You can use your magic to keep him safe. I've seen what you can do. Pop him into one of those bubbles you wrapped around me. Think of something!"

"Shut up."

"What did you say?"

"I said shut up. Maybe if you quit talking for a minute, I'd be able to think of something."

"Come on," she urged. Her voice held a manic edge. "I mean, you're practically a knitting superhero."

"This isn't a joke."

"That's my child that creature's holding. I know it's not a joke."

My cheeks flooded with color. It took every ounce of self-control at my command to keep from grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking some sense into her. Protecting Sugar Maple and Luke and even freeing Steffie were only part of a wider picture I was just now beginning to understand.

The loss of her son Dane had pushed Isadora over the edge into obsession, turning her dislike of humans into an all-encompa.s.sing hatred of the race. If she managed to take Sugar Maple beyond the mist, who would be able to stop her from taking another town and then another?

But Karen couldn't see any of it. The loss of her daughter blinded her to everything else.

The parallel between the two grieving women, however, wasn't lost on me, and a part of my heart ached for them both.

The truth was I could study the Book of Spells like a Tal mudic scholar but there wasn't time to learn even a tenth of what I needed to learn in order to construct all the protections we would need to fight off a full-powered onslaught from Isadora. The Book revealed itself on its own schedule, according to the sorcerer's skill level, and my level was still rank beginner.

I should have done more, worked harder, dedicated myself to mastering my craft. That was why I'd been born, wasn't it? To protect Sugar Maple and her citizens. And to make sure another Hobbs woman walked the earth after I was gone. So far I was failing on both counts.

Only the most basic banishment spells were available to me, which was why I had to construct a web of spells in order to contain her.

Suddenly I felt very old and very tired. I had been outma neuvered by the Fae leader, and the only weapons I had in my a.r.s.enal were two heartbroken humans and the Book of Spells. I realized once again how much I had depended on Gunnar, not only for friendship but for guidance in dealing with his mother's eruptions.

There was only one way we could save Steffie, and that was by completely vanquishing Isadora once and for all. Surrender wouldn't work. Neither would compromise. Luke understood that, but I knew Karen never would.

I wasn't sure I wanted her to.

"Karen, I can't tell you not to fight for your daughter. The only thing I can do is tell you we're on the same side."

"Then why aren't you doing anything?"

I had nothing left to offer her but the truth. "Because I don't know where to start."

"You're pathetic." She sounded almost sorry for me. "You both are. Steffie was trying to tell us something, and I'm not going to rest until I figure out what it is."

She met my eyes. I wasn't crazy about what I saw reflected back at me: the last descendant of Aerynn.

The one who lost it all.

17.

CHLOE.

I watched from the living room window as Karen walked halfway down the driveway and lit a cigarette. She said she needed to think. All things considered, I probably should have tried harder to keep her inside, where I could protect her, but I wasn't sure I cared any longer. I hadn't been able to keep Luke's truck from sailing across town like a detailed Cessna. Why did I think things would be any different now?

With a little luck, maybe she would keep walking down the driveway and never come back and we could forget any of this ever happened.

I had never felt like a bigger loser than I felt at that moment.

"Where's Karen?" Luke's warm breath brushed against the side of my neck.

"She went out. Said she needed to think."

"And you let her go?" He wrapped his arms around me, and silver-gold sparks flickered all around us.

"I'm not sure I could have stopped her without dropping another bubble over her." And I wasn't sure how I did that the first time.

"Do you think she's safe?"