Laced With Magic Part 17

"It's Daddy, Steffie," Luke shouted into his phone. "Say something!"

But their phones kept on playing that choppy lullaby I suddenly knew by heart, joined by the sweetly reedy voice of a child rising up over it.

"Mommy! Daddy! Help me! Please help me!"

Karen's anguish split the night in two. Her howls of despair pierced my heart.

"This isn't real," I said to her and to Luke. "This is an illusion. She's tapping into your histories and reflecting powerful images that will get the deepest response. Don't buy into it. That's not your daughter talking."

"Chloe's right," Luke said. "Isadora will do anything to get what she wants. That's not our little girl. Keep telling yourself. No matter how real things seem, that's not our little girl."

A glimmer of light appeared at the western edge of the lake. It hovered about one hundred feet above the treetops, spinning lazily, growing brighter with each revolution until it reached the dock and Isadora's face was revealed at its center.

An Isadora I'd never seen before. The turquoise eyes were streaked with blood. Her teeth had lengthened into yellowed fangs. The flawless porcelain skin was pockmarked and sallow, sagging around her neck like a baggy sock around a skinny ankle. The oily mist that had surrounded her earlier spilled from her mouth in noxious clouds that made the bile rise in my throat.

All things considered, I'd rather face down the giant anaconda she had conjured during our last battle than this hideous alternative version of Isadora. At least a snake had standards.

"You understand," this giant Isadora crooned into Karen's ear. "You're a mother. You know how it feels to lose your child. Chloe took my Dane away from me. She killed him, Karen. She took my baby's life."

Karen was strong. Her entire body shook with fear but she stood fast and said nothing.

Isadora exhaled another cloud of putrid oily smoke. Karen swayed but she didn't fall. My respect for Luke's ex-wife climbed another notch.

"Maybe I should show you what happened," Isadora said in a mock-friendly tone. "Sometimes humans need to see things with their own eyes before they can let themselves believe the truth."

"It's not the truth," I said quietly. "It's not the truth. She's using our memories for her own purpose."

Next to me, Luke was coiled and ready to strike. The a.n.a.logy wasn't lost on me. I reached for his hand and squeezed it, but I'm not sure it registered. He had disappeared behind the cop mask.

The sky began to curl back from the center, illuminated around the edges with shimmering streaks of silver and purple. Quick splashes of color burst onto the empty rectangular patch, random blasts of white and red and gray that added up to nothing at all.

I felt smug. She had nothing. Okay, so maybe she could fight against the banishment and cause explosions and make the winds go squirrelly and send us flying in Luke's Chevy, but those were all parlor tricks. Anyone with the most basic set of powers could do all that and more.

I mean, a big fat sky filled with nothing but Jackson Pol lock spatter? Come on. Give me something I can use. Something that would make a good story one rainy night over a box of wine and some Chips Ahoy.

"Show's over, Isadora," I said in my best been-there-seen-that voice. "We've had enough of your pathetic little magic tricks."

"Not a good idea," Luke muttered. "You don't want to p.i.s.s her off."

For the record, I should have listened. But I was too full of myself, too high on my own burgeoning powers, too pleased with Isadora's obvious limitations to pay attention to a man who had spent his adult life defusing dangerous situations.

"That's it," I said, turning toward Luke and Karen. "She's depleted her energies. She'll-"

Luke grabbed my arm. "Don't turn around," he said. "Don't look."

But I did.

In time to see my parents' car go into a death spin on a patch of black ice and slam into a tree all those years ago.

In time to see my beloved surrogate mother, Sorcha, crying for me in the next dimension.

In time to see Gunnar killed by his mother's black magick anaconda.

In time to see Isadora's death bolt ricochet off the crystal shield I held up high and sail straight toward Dane, slicing him in two.

In time to see Karen and Luke on their wedding day . . . gazing with wonder at their newborn baby girl . . . staring down, mute with grief, at her tiny open casket- Luke made a sound like he'd been gut punched, but it was Karen's cry of despair that will never leave me.

"Steffie!" Her voice bounced off the mountains and slammed back into us with the force of a thousand battering rams. "Oh, baby, I'm so sorry!"

"Karen," I cried, "listen to me. This isn't real. She's in a different dimension. These are nothing but home movies. That's not your daughter. You have to believe me."

She didn't hear a word I said. All she could hear was her daughter's voice.

The screen was gone. The images absorbed back into the night. The dock beneath us began to sway, then vibrate. A bolt of lightning sizzled from the sky to the lake, sending steamy mist spiraling upward to where Isadora, glowing pale against the darkness, seemed to reach from horizon to horizon. The shackles of her banishment glittered like captured moonlight.

Banish again! Banish for all time!

I raised my hands high and called upon all the knowledge I had gained so far. "Banish forever! Return never!"

I'd studied everything I could find about banishment spells and applied it to keeping Isadora contained, but there was still one piece missing, and that piece was the key to sending her away forever.

Karen was looking at me like I'd taken leave of my senses, which struck me as pretty funny considering we'd arrived by flying Jeep and she had witnessed astral movie projection without blinking.

Isadora was fading fast.

"Banish! Banish into eternity!"

With a roar that sent us sprawling backward onto the dock, a giant Isadora swooped down on us in all her restored beauty, her giant turquoise eyes blazing with emotion, burning hotter than the sun. She swept in close enough for us to feel her oily breath against our skin. Her eyes closed for a moment and I prayed this was the last gasp of power at her command for tonight, but then they slowly opened wider, then wider still, and the image of a small child in a transparent box appeared deep within her pupils. The child was curled up on the floor of the box, head resting on her arms, red curls tumbling over her shoulders. She wore the same simple white dress they had buried her in.

"Wake up, Steffie," Isadora crooned. "You have company!"

15.

CHLOE.

This time it wasn't an illusion. I'm not sure how I knew, but the second the little girl stood up and looked out at us through that glowing prison, I knew this was Luke's daughter.

Not a hologram. Not a reflection. Not a construct of memories gleaned from her parents.

This was Steffie MacKenzie.

The look on her face when she saw her parents was a mixture of joy and terror that not even Isadora at the height of her powers would have been able to replicate. She opened her mouth to scream but the sound was swallowed within her prison. She pounded the elastic walls with tiny fists, her face turning red as her hair. Tears, shimmering like freshwater pearls in the glowing light, ran down her face and splashed to the floor.

Luke seemed to be in some kind of emotional lockdown. I thought I knew him, knew the landscape of his face, but at that moment he was a total stranger to me. He stared at the image that was his daughter and betrayed nothing at all. He had gone someplace where I couldn't reach him, and I wondered if he would ever return.

It took a few seconds for the new reality to register on Karen, but when it did, I didn't have to tell her that this was truly her daughter. She knew it in her bones.

"Steffie." The name was a whisper, almost a prayer. Then, "Steffie! Baby, Mommy and Daddy are here! Where are you? Tell us where you are and we'll come for you!"

The child locked eyes with her mother and pounded harder on the walls of her prison within a prison.

"What's happening?" Karen grabbed my arm. "Where is she?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "I only know what I see, same as you." Somehow Isadora had been able to absorb Steffie's spirit into her own banishment. I had no explanation and, even worse, no idea what to do about it.

"It's a miracle," Isadora cooed. "The grieving parents have a chance to apologize for their mistakes."

Luke took a step forward.

"Hit a nerve, did I, Detective? Maybe if you'd been paying more attention that day, your daughter would be standing next to you instead of rotting in a-"

With a howl of rage, he flung himself in Isadora's general direction, but she closed her turquoise eyes and Steffie disappeared. He bounced off an invisible barrier that was part of the banishment and fell back onto the dock.

Karen's cry of anguish hung in the air like a bad dream. She screamed things at Luke, things I wish I hadn't heard, things I wish I could forget. Horrible, intimate, ugly words meant to destroy. The depth of her pain made me dizzy. The worst part of all was the way Luke let it rain down on him without flinching. As if he agreed with her.

My world was changing around me, and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. If Isadora was looking to hurt me in ways that went beyond giant snakes and flaming death bolts, her aim had been dead-on.

Karen's focus shifted from Luke to Isadora, and I watched, mesmerized, as the ex seemed to gather strength. "I don't know who you are and I don't care," she said straight to Isadora. "But I do know you have no right to hold my daughter's"-she struggled for the right word-"spirit prisoner. Let Steffie go." She drew in an audible breath. "Take me instead."

"Karen!" I couldn't hold back. "You don't want to do that."

Luke was on his feet and moving toward us when Isadora swooped in again and opened those terrifyingly magnificent eyes of hers to reveal Steffie one more time.

The child's eyes slid over me without any sign of recognition, then rested on her mother. Karen started to sob as she pleaded with Isadora to release Steffie. The look in the little girl's eyes was older than time, a blend of deep compa.s.sion, sorrow, and the kind of knowing that takes centuries to achieve.

Behind me, Luke's breathing was ragged and harsh, like he was struggling to hold himself together and almost failing. Steffie turned slightly and her dark green eyes, so like her father's, rested on him. His breath caught on the cusp of a sob, and I thought my heart would break apart.

He took a step forward, hand outstretched, and Steffie flattened herself against her translucent prison, crystal tears running fast over fists soft and small as a rolled-up sock. There was something almost ritualistic about the way she moved her fists, the splash of tears, the eerie repet.i.tion of movements.

"Tell us where you are, Stef!" Luke bellowed. "Help us find you!"

She was saying something, yelling something, but her words were trapped inside the container with her. The tears flowed faster and those tiny fists couldn't keep up with the flow. The tears spilled over them like rapids over rocks.

Isadora closed her eyes and telescoped backward to a spot over the treetops where she glowed like a shimmering purple cloud. There was nothing else in the world but Isadora. I heard nothing but her voice, saw nothing but the harsh glow of her essence in the night sky.

"Twenty-four hours." I heard her words from someplace deep inside me, as if the sound was working its way out through my bones. "The clock starts now."

She knew my thoughts before I gave them voice.

"Humans leave tracks through this world and the others. A guilty conscience is better than one of their tracking devices. His child wasn't difficult to find." Her laugh made me shiver. "Even easier to control." She paused while her words sank in. "We can end this now, Chloe. Undo this patchwork of spells you've put on me. Release me from my banishment and the child's spirit is free. Refuse me and an eternity of despair is all she'll know."

The sky ripped apart. The cage around Steffie shattered and I screamed as she started falling falling falling through staggering darkness, her small, defenseless body smashing against the jagged rocks at random. She had nothing to hold on to, no solid ground beneath her feet, only the darkness and the pain. We saw her body break against the rocks, saw her face smashed beyond recognition, heard her terrified cries, felt her terror, her loneliness, her despair as she called out for her parents in an endless plea for help.

A part of me wanted to say to h.e.l.l with Sugar Maple and undo the banishment spell right then and there. Was the town worth the horror Steffie would face at Isadora's hands?

"You're losing them," Isadora crooned. "You've been losing them since your human came to town. Let them go. It's what they want. It's what you want. Make a new life with your lover the way your mother should have years ago."

She was twisting the story. My mother loved Sugar Maple, and Sugar Maple loved her. She would never have considered walking away from her responsibilities as a descendant of Aerynn, not in a million years. Wasn't I living proof of that?

"But you don't have a child of your own, Chloe, and maybe you never will. Why delay the inevitable when it could all be taken care of now with so little fuss? Release me from this imprisonment and we'll let the fates determine the outcome for all of us. You'll be golden in your lover's eyes and I'll offer the good villagers a chance to make a new start beyond the mist where they can exist free and independent."

I couldn't gamble Sugar Maple's safety on the hope that Isadora would keep her word and release Steffie. The Fae weren't known for tolerance. Navigating life beyond the mist, in a world governed by the Fae, might prove far more dangerous than navigating through the human realm ever had.

"You don't trust me," she said. "I'm hurt, Chloe. After all we've been through together. I'll admit I badly underestimated your abilities last time but I won't make that mistake again. But are you willing to sacrifice this innocent human child's eternal peace to keep happy a town that doesn't belong to you any longer?"

I needed time to think. Time to figure out what to do next.

The huge tower clock that stood near the munic.i.p.al parking lot burst from the lake like Shamu at Sea World. Flames shot from the face, crackling and hissing like an out-of-control forest fire.

"Twenty-four hours." Her words tore through my brain like gunshot. "You will always be a half-blooded human. Release me now and the child's soul will be allowed to complete its journey and I will allow you and your human to live your lives henceforth without fear. But mark me well: my powers are strong even in banishment. If you choose to reject my offer, the time will come when I unravel this spell, and from that moment on, you and your precious human will not know a moment's peace."

A loud, bl.u.s.tery wind started moving toward us from the west. The trees twisted and swayed as if following some weird forest ch.o.r.eography. The sky went cloudless, moonless, starless black, and we instinctively reached for one another's hands.

"Oh G.o.d," Karen groaned as the dock began moving out from under our feet.

"Hang on!" Luke cried out as we flipped backward like a trio of Russian gymnasts, tumbling end over end over end through the velvety darkness until we found ourselves standing in front of Sticks & Strings, right next to Luke's truck.

A truck that was in perfect condition.

The sky overhead was filled with stars. A sliver of moon continued its transit across the sky. The streetlamps glowed gently, same as always.

We stared at the truck, the sky, and then at one another.

"That didn't really happen, did it?" Karen asked.

But she knew the answer as well as we did.

And like us, she also knew that time was running out.

16.

CHLOE.

When we finally got back to my cottage, I did what people do when life knocks you on your a.s.s: I broke out the Ben & Jerry's, the Chips Ahoy, and a box of wine, then sat down at the kitchen table to figure out what to do next.

"You're kidding, right?" Luke asked as he surveyed the calorie-fest. "You can eat after that?"