My ex-wife was floating three feet above the ground in the bottom of a giant soap bubble.
"Oh Jesus," I said, unable to tear my eyes away from the sight. "Tell me she isn"t dead."
"She"s not dead."
The holy-s.h.i.t aspect was gaining momentum. "Is she in a coma?"
She hesitated a second. "She"s sleeping." A pause. "At least, I think she"s sleeping."
"But you can wake her up."
She hesitated again. "I don"t know."
I watched as the bubble floated past us, gently tapped against the far wall, then began floating back toward the other side of the room. "You"ve got to be kidding."
"Do I look like I"m kidding?" She was starting to sound p.i.s.sed again. "In case you"ve forgotten, this hasn"t exactly been a great day for me. Watching your ex-wife float around my shop in a soap bubble wasn"t way up on my to-do list."
"What the h.e.l.l has been going on around here?"
"Other than the fact that every fake knitter in town walked through the store so they could take a good look at my compet.i.tion?"
It was going downhill faster than I could stop it.
And I didn"t try to stop it.
"And how about the fact that when I figure out how to break her out of the bubble, I"m going to have to explain how she ended up inside a bubble in the first place without mentioning the words magic magic, spell spell, or deep s.h.i.t deep s.h.i.t."
How many holy-s.h.i.t moments could you handle in one day? "So that"s why you stuffed her in a bubble."
"What kind of woman do you think I am?"
"A woman with magical powers she can"t always control." And a temper I wasn"t going to bring up right now.
"I didn"t put her in that bubble."
"She didn"t jump in herself, did she?"
All around the shop, lightbulbs shattered in a hailstorm of gla.s.s. Like I said, she has a temper.
"Okay," I said, backing up a step or three. "If you didn"t do it, who did?"
"You"re the detective," she snapped. "You tell me." Her cheeks reddened noticeably. "Sorry. It"s been a bad day."
I knew I was walking out onto thin ice but what the h.e.l.l. I"d been there before. "Are you sure you didn"t do it?"
"Absolutely."
I waited.
"Well, almost positive."
I waited some more.
"If I did, it was involuntary."
"Like turning me into Barbie"s boy toy."
"You really need to let that go, Luke. It"s getting old."
"It happened yesterday."
"You know what I"m talking about."
"I know weird things happen when you get p.i.s.sed off."
"I"m not p.i.s.sed off."
I mimed extreme relief. "Good to know. That last trip to miniature land knocked me on my a.s.s."
I expected a laugh or at least a bare-minimum smile but I got nothing. Our eyes met and the truth hit me hard. She wasn"t laughing. She wasn"t p.i.s.sed off. She was hurting and hurting bad.
"She said you don"t want another child. Is that true?" Pure Chloe. Straight to the heart of the matter.
"Yes." No point playing word games. This was too important. "I"m not saying things won"t change but right now it"s true."
"I guess your ex-wife knows you better than I do."
"We"re still new to each other." I reached for her hand. The sparks were there same as always but she didn"t respond. "We"ll get there."
"She said you were a lousy husband."
"She"s right about that too."
"She said you buried yourself in work whenever things got tough at home."
"I guess it seemed that way to her."
She met my eyes. "Is that why you stayed away today? Things were getting tough here and you took off."
"That"s not what happened."
"Where were you, Luke? Why didn"t you call? I mean, did you have to turn off your voice mail?"
This was as good a time as any. If we were meant to get through this, I"d find out now.
"I need your help." The words felt strange and unfamiliar to me. Cops were supposed to make things better for other people, not go around asking for help.
Next to me, she grew very still. "What kind of help?"
"I want to contact Steffie."
She was silent for a few moments. "Last night you were dead set against it. What happened?"
On cue, my cell phone erupted into the same sweet lullaby I heard earlier. Steffie"s voice, soft and babyish, wrapped itself around us like a hug.
"That"s what happened," I said. "My daughter called."
CHLOE.
Time stopped. Or at least it seemed to. There was nothing but the sound of his little girl"s voice and the heart-wrenching melody that kept her afloat.
I saw her laughing face in the photo Karen kept tucked away in her wallet and suddenly I knew that she loved a pink plush bunny named Mr. B., strawberry ice cream, and knock-knock jokes. She was funny and fearless, and more than anything, she wanted to see her parents one more time.
And I wanted her to go away and take her mother with her. I wanted to spin us back to the beginning when it was all bright and shiny and new. Our love. My powers. My beloved Sugar Maple. This thing called a future that had never seemed real to me before.
The town was slipping away from me. My powers were still unpredictable. Our love was so much more complicated than I ever could have imagined possible. And the future? It was anybody"s guess.
If I could have snapped my fingers and erased the sound of her voice from Luke"s memory banks, I would have. He was in pain. The kind of pain that changed a man forever.
But I didn"t have the power, and more important, I didn"t have the right. That pain was all he had left of his daughter.
It was all in my hands. I could say no to Luke. I knew I didn"t have the skill set to reach out to his daughter, but there was someone who did.
"We can hold a seance and try to bring Karen and Steffie together. Janice put herself through Yale holding seances all through Connecticut and New York. I think she"d do this for us."
"Janice went to Yale?"
Nothing in Sugar Maple was the way it seemed. Didn"t he know that yet? "Summa c.u.m laude, business degree."
"I"m not turning my daughter"s death into a sideshow."
"Do you really think Janice would summon your daughter into a sideshow?" More important, did he really think I would? "You asked for my help, Luke. That"s what I"m offering."
"Seances are bulls.h.i.t."
"Don"t get hung up on a word. A seance is a means to bridge two worlds, nothing more. That"s what you want, isn"t it?"
"Karen needs help, not witchcraft."
"This is Janice we"re talking about. The woman who cuts your hair and makes that lemon cake you like. Since when are you bothered by her bloodline?"
"I"m not."
"What kind of help did you think I was going to offer? A Ouija board and a DVD of Ghost Ghost?"
That seemed to hit a chord and he nodded. "I"m being an a.s.shole. You"re right. I"m in."
"We have to work fast," I said to him as his phone fell silent, "and we have to keep this a secret." I told him about the stream of villagers who"d pa.s.sed through the shop to see Karen up close and personal. "If they even suspect I"m doing anything to prolong her stay, all h.e.l.l will break loose. She has to be on the way back to Boston by midnight no matter what."
Luke went across the street to get Janice.
And then I did what I probably should have done hours earlier. I grabbed a pair of US15 bamboo straights, whispered a prayer to my ancestors for guidance, then popped the ex"s bubble.
KAREN.
One moment I was dreaming about soft Hawaiian beach b.a.l.l.s and the next I was bouncing across a hard wooden floor on my unpadded b.u.t.t. I looked up at the supermodel from the doorway, where I finally skidded to a stop. "What the h.e.l.l-?"
The supermodel was wielding a wicked long pair of knitting needles and a look of extreme relief. "You fell off the sofa."
It took a second for her words to penetrate. "I was asleep?"
"You don"t remember?"
I shook my head.
"Napping," she said. "You said you wanted to take a nap. I think you"re playing catch-up."
"And I think I"m turning into a narcoleptic." I glanced around the quiet shop. "Where"s Luke?"
"Across the street talking to Janice." That look of extreme relief vanished. "I think she can help you."
"With what? I"m not looking for highlights."
"But you are looking for your daughter."
Everything else fell away. "If you"re s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with me-"
"I"m not s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with you."
The weird, p.r.i.c.kling sensation I"d felt a split second before I walked into their church/town hall came back full force, and all I could manage was a nod of my head.
"If we do this, you"re going to have to follow my lead when we"re with Janice, no matter what."
"If it means reaching Steffie, I can do anything."
Maybe she wasn"t psychic but she knew where they held their club meetings. You could stop fifty people on the street and I"d bet not a single one would be able to rustle up a seance like it was a take-out pizza. And that would explain the weird vibes I"d been picking up ever since I arrived in the village. Don"t get me wrong. I"m not like my ex-husband. I don"t have anything against people with the gift, but I can"t help getting an itchy feeling every time I meet one.
And she made me itch like I"d fallen into a mosquito breeding ground.
No wonder she had overreacted back at the cottage when I confronted her about her abilities. If she wanted to pretend it was her friend Janice with the psychic gift, that was okay with me. The Luke MacKenzie I"d been married to had a major problem dealing with my mother"s and grandmother"s ESP. Maybe she had been keeping it a secret from him, like her real hair color. (I might believe in psychics but I don"t believe in natural blondes.) Still, I had to admit I was impressed that she was willing to put herself on the line for someone who had been a complete stranger less than one day ago.
Maybe I was her psychic charity project. I didn"t care. Steffie was out there somewhere and she needed me, needed her father, and if Chloe could help bring us together, I would spend the rest of my life figuring out a way to thank her.