Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

1

I knew Mac scoffed at all things psychic, but why must he taunt the fates?

“I can’t believe we’re finally getting away,” he said with a boyish grin and took my hand. “This is going to be fantastic.”

I smiled and hoped he would stop talking. The man had no sense of jinxes and self-preservation. We were barely twenty minutes down the snowy tree-lined highway away from Crystal Haven. Away from my parents, my aunt, his mother, my nephew, and two spoiled dogs. The back-patting phase of the trip sat happily in our future. Sometime after I had returned to my small Victorian, Mac had returned to his cottage, and we had shared the photos with our inquisitive families. We had decided to take my new Tahoe on the trip. Mac’s pickup truck and my ancient Jeep seemed inappropriate for a potentially icy drive to Chicago. The unfamiliar vehicle made it feel like we were already far from home.

I looked out the window at the gray sky of a Michigan winter. It had snowed almost daily in January. Mac and I got through it by plotting our escape over a few chilly evenings as the white fluff had piled up outside.

I wasn’t just excited to get away—I was desperate. Between Mac’s job as a homicide detective, my live-in teenage nephew, and the rest of my interfering family that lived a stone’s throw away and had no qualms about stopping by, we had little time to spend alone together. Plus, the pressure to either return to my own police career or find a new job that didn’t involve walking dogs increased daily. I was more than ready to escape my everyday life and all I wanted was to step off that airplane in Mexico with Mac, alone. I craved it so badly that I felt certain I might hex it. What can I say? A life with psychics and tarot readers had instilled a strong superstitious streak. And the longer I stayed in Crystal Haven, the worse it got.

But, we were together. Finally. And we were about to jet away from winter for a week. Ignoring caution to join his reckless glee, I said, “What should we do first when we get there?”

Mac ticked an eyebrow upward in an exaggerated leer. His blue eyes sparkled and the lines around his eyes deepened. He spent so much of his life keeping every emotion in check that I cherished the moments he relaxed and allowed his humor to take center stage.

“Oh, nice. I walked into that one.” I laughed, relaxing in my seat. I reached for my phone as it buzzed in my pocket. “After that,” I said as I clicked the phone open.

My grin faded and my mood nosedived when I saw the message.

“Mac, pull over up here.” I pointed to an exit just outside of Kalamazoo.

Mac turned away from the road long enough to see the concern on my face. He glanced at the phone in my hand and flicked the turn signal. “Was that Seth? Is something wrong?”

I shook my head. I wished it were from my nephew, Seth.

“The text was from the airline. Our flight got canceled. It says due to weather.”

Mac pulled into a gas station parking lot and turned off the ignition. I looked out the windshield at the leaden gray sky releasing a few small snowflakes. Channel 8’s weather guy hadn’t said there was going to be a bad storm. Maybe we could take another flight. The high-pitched ping of the rapidly cooling engine broke the silence. I immediately tried to pull up the airline’s website on my phone.

Mac leaned back and rubbed his jaw, staring out the window. “I was really looking forward to getting away from this.” His gesture encompassed everything outside of the car. “And having a break from your family,” he said quietly.

I looked away from my phone and put my hand on his shoulder. “I know. Me, too. I’m pretty sick of snow. And I know my family has been a handful. I’m tired of them, too.”

Living in Crystal Haven, a town full of psychics, had its unique set of drawbacks. And so did growing up in a family that made its livelihood off of psychic messages and tarot cards.

“I’m checking to see if there are other flights. Hope is not lost.” I waved my phone at him. I was waiting for the website to load when Mac opened the door and startled me.

“Let’s go inside and regroup,” he said.

I followed, thinking that it was typical of our luck that our vacation would consist of diet soda and popcorn in a roadside gas station. I thought I heard the fates giggling.

2

The balding, chubby proprietor smiled at us as we entered. Mac made a beeline for the cheddar popcorn, his go-to stress indulgence. I grabbed a diet soda and a package of almonds.

“Did it say when they might reschedule?” Mac asked. He put an arm around my shoulder, leaned down, and squinted at my phone as we walked to the counter.

I shook my head. “No, and I can’t load the airline website.”

We placed our items on the counter and the man began scanning them into the register.

“I hope you two are headed home before the storm hits,” he said.

Mac and I exchanged a worried glance.

Mac handed over a twenty. “Storm?”

The man looked at us over his glasses. He turned his small TV to face us. The sound was muted, but we saw the news crawl along the bottom of the screen: BLIZZARD WARNING.

“They say Chicago’s already socked in. Airport’s closed and the roads are packed with people trying to get home. It should be here in a couple of hours.” His voice held a note of excitement at being able to break the news.

I was leaning into Mac and felt him go very still. My own shoulders slumped as I saw our vacation dissolve.

The man smiled kindly at me. “You were headed to Chicago?” He slid Mac’s change across the counter.

I nodded, and swallowed hard.

Mac pocketed his money, slung an arm across my shoulders, and steered me out of the store. As the door closed behind us, he leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I have a plan.”

I stopped walking, which forced him to turn to look at me. “A plan?” I asked. Mac definitely had a romantic side, but I expected romance along the Mexican seashore, not along Route 131. When did he come up with a plan?

He moved his arm down to settle around my waist. “Just relax, I’ve got this.”

He opened my door for me and swept his arm out to gesture me inside. He bowed slightly before swinging the door closed. I grinned and sat back in my seat, excited now by the new adventure.

I opened the weather app on my phone and scrolled through the many warnings and alerts caused by the snow currently pounding Chicago. A storm in Chicago would often head across Lake Michigan and slam into the west coast of Michigan. So while Chicago was digging out, we would be hunkering down to wait out the weather.

“They’re saying we should start seeing serious snow by later this afternoon.” I shut my phone off.

“We’ll be safe and dry by then but not in Crystal Haven,” Mac said.

I sat back and watched the white landscape scroll past my window. My attempts at questioning were met with off-key humming. Even though I’d grown up in Crystal Haven, I didn’t know the Kalamazoo area very well and had no idea where he planned to take us.

Twenty minutes and miles of white fields and forests later we were nowhere near anything that looked like a city. We passed a sporting goods store touting the exciting sport of ice fishing and snowmobile rentals. Mac pulled down a dirt road that headed into dense woods. I hoped he wasn’t planning to camp, even if a cozy cabin was involved. We routinely lost power during storms even in Crystal Haven; I could imagine what a cabin in the woods in February would be like.