Goldilocks Hits Town: Mudflat Magic, #5

By Phoebe Matthews

Review by Ivy for LASR
"When her boyfriend's ex-fiancée moves in, Claire has to keep a sharp eye out. Tarvik's ex comes complete with her own stalker, plus instructions to lure Tarvik back to his homeland ... And gee, the invitation doesn't include Claire....One of Matthews' gifts, besides her ability to write so naturally in first person, is her knack to make each Mudflat book in the series stand on its own....every time I finish a Mudflat story, I really want to start at the beginning of the series just to enjoy the ride all over again."

• Language: English
• Publisher: LostLoves Books
• Release date: Jul 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393795698

Phoebe Matthews

Phoebe Matthews is currently writing three urban fantasy series. Her novels have been published by Avon, Dark Quest, Dell, Holt, LostLoves, Putnam, Silhouette, and Scholastic.

Book preview

Goldilocks Hits Town

Mudflat Magic 5

PHOEBE MATTHEWS

LostLoves Books

Copyright © Phoebe Matthews

Cover Design Copyright ©  LostLoves Books

This is a work of fiction. With the exception of well-known historical personages, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

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CHAPTER  1

Like my life wasn't complicated enough, did I really need my boyfriend's ex-fiancée moving in with us?

Tarvik and I took a trip, driving from Seattle to the Olympic Peninsula for a short stop to his old Nowhere Land. A bit over a hundred miles. The trip includes a couple of bridges and a ferry boat ride. Depending on how long the wait for the ferry is, we're talking three to four hours.

His world can only be entered through a break in reality that's set in the middle of a stream in the Olympic National Forest on the western edge of Washington State. Wading through waist-high water, we carried a box of cremated remains to be buried there. Long story. I won't explain just now. What matters is this.

With the job done, Tarvik and I hiked out of his world and back to mine where we had left the car in a parking area in the forest. Not a parking lot. Just a small level space at the end of a narrow dirt road and marked off with log barriers.

The plan was simple. Chore done, reward time. That meant crossing a couple of peninsulas and bridges to catch the ferry home to Seattle. Along the way we planned to stop at a McDonald's and treat ourselves.

The only complication was wading back through the stream that wound beneath an archway of alders with silver-gray trunks and long thin branches covered with a fluttering of light green leaves. Above the alders the Douglas firs stretched to the sky. Beneath the trees the forest floor was thick with ferns and fir needles, filling the air with their scent.

We had both been halfway dried by sun and wind when we were in the meadow burying the mortuary box.

Tarvik handed me his shoes to carry and paused long enough to say, Try to keep them dry, my Claire.

Tossing me over his shoulder, he carried me above the muddy water. We are the same height and that's about the only similarity. I'm a skinny weakling. He's solid muscle. He thinks it is really fun to pick me up and drop me across his shoulder and leave me hanging head down over his back. I planted my elbows in his back to help keep my head up and my long hair from trailing in the water.

When he climbed out, he set me down. With our arms around each other's waists, we trudged across a carpet of moss and leaves toward the car.  My hair is the kind that blows all over and snarls. I tried to finger comb the tangles.

You're soaking wet, I said.

He was, from the waist down. 

His wet jeans clung to him. Okay, I wasn't complaining about the view.

Tarvik's bod is beautiful, muscular, well-proportioned. He's solid and strong, and have I mentioned his blond hair and his sky blue eyes and the little line of freckles across his elegant nose? And his smile? He's got a smile that makes me go limp. He flashed it at me now.

I'll dry my feet when we get to the car.

You'll still be soaking wet.

I suppose I can take off my jeans, he teased, and kissed my ear and whispered a few sassy comments.

And drive home naked. Right. Why didn't we remember to bring extra clothes?

I think there's a coverall of Roger's in the trunk. He leaves them there for when we're working on the car.

Our friend Roger is enormous, almost seven feet tall and almost as wide. I had a vision of Tarvik, who is my height, about five and half feet tall, in Roger's denim coverall with the sleeves and pant legs rolled. My guy is a hunk, but he's a short hunk. In Roger's clothes, he'd look like he was wearing a tent.

All right. That might be warmer. Good thing McDonald's is a drive-thru, I agreed.

His red Chevy caught little glimmers of sunlight through the branches of the trees. Pride of his life, that car. It's over ten years old but he acquired it only recently, so it is new to him. As often as he washes it, I figure he'll soon rub through the paint.

We had nearly reached the Chevy when he said, The back door is open. Claire, did we leave it like that?

Guess we forgot to close it.

I hope we don't have a squirrel in the back seat.

We shoulda been so lucky.

As we got closer, I saw a shape on the back seat and then I saw a small bare foot sticking out past the hem of a twisted skirt. A child lost in the woods? Automatically, I started to dig in the pocket of my jeans for my cell phone.

Didn't have it. Oh, right. I'd left it in the car so I wouldn't drop it in the stream.

We weren't near any campground and it was quite a walk to the highway. By now there would be a major search going on for a lost child. There would be frantic parents somewhere.

Tarvik reached the car first and leaned in. He obviously didn't see any serious injury on our trespasser because he put his hand on the small ankle.

Looks like a teenager. She's asleep, he said over his shoulder. He gently shook the ankle and bent down into the doorway. I heard him ask, Are you lost? Do you need help?

I hurried on around the car to the passenger door to get my phone. And that's what I was doing, bending over the front seat, hitting the latch on the glove compartment, when I heard him say her name.

His voice changed completely, went from soft to shocked. Alakar?

Gotta tell ya, he wasn't any more shocked than I was. I'd just found my phone and pulled it out of the compartment. My fingers turned boneless and I dropped it, swung around, bumped my head on the inside of the roof, kept turning, knelt on the seat and peered over the back. And nearly passed out from shock.

Because yeah, there she was, not a child at all, definitely a woman, very short and very curvy, with milky skin and a gorgeous face framed by reddish-gold hair. She sat up and pushed that curtain of hair back from her face and gave him the kind of smile I don't even know how to do. It's the sort you see on supermodels, a smile that promises all kinds of stuff, so take your pick, boyfriend.

Right. Two big problems about all that. First, Tarvik is MY boyfriend. And second, when I first met him he was planning on marrying Alakar.

Last I'd heard, she left home and ran off to marry someone else. Okay, my informant wasn't particularly trustworthy. Didn't matter. Tarvik insisted that I was the only woman he'd ever loved and right up to this minute, I believed him. At least, I believed that if he ever remembered an earlier love with fondness, it wasn't Alakar.

Couldn't help it, the words just slipped out.

Over the seat back, I glared at her and said, Which poison did you bring for Tarvik today?

Because that's what ended their engagement. She drugged him with knockout drops in his drink and he took it personally.

Alakar turned her gaze to me and the smile faded. She managed to look frail in the shadows inside the car. Wan. Weary. All that stuff you see actresses do on TV. Too tired to keep her eyelids up. Too weak to do anything beyond slump against the seat.

Tarvik looked stunned.

You're the templekeeper, are you not? she asked me.

Tarvik's brain kicked in and whatever he was thinking, what he said was, That's right, Claire was staying at the temple with Nance the last time I saw you. Claire, you remember my cousin Alakar.

Forget formal intros. We had a lot bigger problem than straightening out who was who. She was the daughter of his father's half-brother. Did that make her a half-cousin? Didn't care. What I wanted to know was what she wanted.

I said, What are you doing here?

That whole family, they have this in common. Their thoughts cross their faces like moving letters on a screen. She scrunched her forehead the same way Tarvik does.

Don't tell us you got lost in the woods, I added.

Okay, if I sound super rude, chalk it up to shock. Once upon a time this woman's mother tried to kill me by stabbing me with a very sharp knife. Maybe Alakar had similar plans.

She pressed her wrist to her forehead and closed her eyes. In a very small voice, she said, I haven't eaten anything in days.

Collapsing against the seat back, she really did look like she might pass out on us. Maybe it was an act, but hey, I am rude but I am not mean. Maybe she really hadn't eaten recently. Maybe she really was hungry. As far as I know, I've never intentionally turned away a hungry person.

And then I realized that Tarvik wasn't saying anything, just staring at me. He had that same scrunched forehead. On her it looked sneaky. On him the expression looked worried.

What? He thought I was going to toss her out of the car and leave her in the forest to starve?

Tar, fasten her seatbelt for her, I said, because she wouldn't know how, and then let's go get food.

I slid into my seat and faced front. I didn't want to watch him bend over her and reach around her for the buckle. She was everything I'm not, soft and rounded and pale and helpless, the kind a lot of men go nuts for. I'm thin and dark-haired, and I look smarter and more efficient than I actually am. For some guys \that's a turnoff.

Not for Tarvik. He insists he loves me. Says he always will. Once upon a time did he have similar thoughts about Alakar? Like before she tried to poison him? He can be good at the forgive and forget thing.

Okay, maybe one little mean corner of my mind wished I could actually push her out of the car and drive away. But I couldn't. I take in strays. Tarvik has another cousin, Nance, a lovable teenager from the other side of his family. Nance followed me home a year ago last winter and she is still with me. And then Tarvik showed up and I let him sleep on the couch and then I invited him into my bed. Yeah, well.

I heard the buckle click, heard Alakar protest, What is this? What are you doing?

This is a seatbelt. It keeps you from falling.

Why would I fall?

You won't. You'll be fine, Alakar. Are you warm enough? We will go find food now, he assured her.

He closed the side door. I watched in the rear view mirror as he circled the Chevy and opened the trunk and peeled off his wet jeans and pulled on Roger's coverall and rolled up the sleeves and legs. Any other time, I would have enjoyed the show. Now I had too many thoughts battling each other in my mind.

A shape moved behind him in the thick forest of fir trees. Where light slanted in thin beams through the branches, something lurked. I opened the car door, ready to shout at Tarvik. As dark as a shadow, what moved was huge. Maybe a deer? Sure, I know the size of a deer. I go to the zoo. This was one of the big ones.

On the other hand, I didn't know if there were any deer in these mountains because I know zilch about nature.

By the time I jumped out of the car to warn him, whatever it was had disappeared. If a deer ran off, wouldn't it cause a lot of snapping of brush and leaves?

Tarvik slammed the trunk lid down and saw me.

Is something wrong, Claire?

I walked around to the back of the car and peered toward the shadows. Guess not. I thought I saw an animal in the trees over there. A big one. Could it be a deer?

He looked where I pointed. Really? That's possible. Some fairly large deer in the woods, sometimes.

All I saw was something behind tree branches. Didn't get a good look. Didn't hear anything.

Could be a bobcat or a wolf. They move very quietly.

That didn't sound like anything I wanted to make friends with. Neither was the woman in the back seat but her I had to deal with, so I forgot the wildcat/wolf/whatever and got in the car.

When Tarvik slid behind the wheel, I said, Yup, you look like you're wearing a tent.

He grinned at me. And then he started the car. And then the screaming started.

We had both forgotten. Should have remembered and warned her. This was Alakar's first time in a car. She had no idea the thing was going to move.

She huddled on the back seat, her face hidden in her hands, and whimpered. We both tried to talk to her, even stopped the car a couple of times. She wouldn't answer and she definitely wouldn't look at us.

When she climbed in, she must have thought the car was a little hut, Tarvik said to me.

The two of them grew up in another world, not an off-world and not some  parallel universe, none of that science fiction stuff. Instead, their world exists in a wide wilderness within the Olympic Mountain range. Somehow it is invisible to outsiders, can't be seen from airplanes and can't be entered except through the hidden gate in the middle of a stream. Made invisible by old gods, I was told. I don't know. That's the best explanation I've heard so I have to believe it until I hear something better.

As I live in Mudflat, a neighborhood in Seattle where inherited magic hangs out, I grew up with witches and mages and a lot of other types, none particularly powerful. Maybe that's why I accept the odd a little quicker than most folks.

Tarvik's world is similar to medieval Europe, populated by sword-wielding barbarians ruled by warlords. Transportation is  limited to going on foot or riding a horse. Nothing there to warn a girl about boxes that move by themselves. No horse out front to pull.

After a few tries at stopping the car and turning around to talk to Alakar, we gave up. I continued to glance back occasionally, in case she uncovered her face and looked like she wanted to listen.

What I had thought was a skirt was actually a tunic, knee length, and slit up the side to her hip. Didn't cover much on top, either, scoop-necked and sleeveless. She filled it out with some amazing curves. Just as well Tarvik was driving. That kept his attention on the road most of the time and do I sound jealous?

Maybe she thinks the motion is part of some evil spell, I said.

The girl would know evil spells all right, growing up with a sorcerer and a deathwalker for company.

She'll be fine when she has food, he said.

We gave up trying to calm her and headed into the first fast food drive-in on our route. Ordered our usual, burger and fries for Tarvik, same for Alakar, and fishwich and coffee for me.

Alakar kept her head lowered into her hands even though we weren't moving. Even with her face hidden she looked like every man's dream, her head covered in a cloud of light hair that flowed down past her shoulders.

When the food came we took our stuff, lined it up on the dashboard and in the cup holders. Tarvik turned around to place a container in the cup holder in the console in reach of the back seat, before holding out a paper sack to Alakar.

She kept her hands over her face.

The meals here are excellent, he said. Yours is in this bag. You can have all you want. And look. Do you see this cup? It is made of material that bends. Do not squeeze it. Be careful because it has tea which is very hot.

Had he once squeezed a paper container and had a minor disaster and not told me? Probably. I watched and wondered how long it would take her to decide to try the food.

Traffic whizzed past on the nearby highway, made up mostly of summer tourists, the back windows blocked with luggage. The peninsula has the world's scenery all scrunched into a space that's less than a hundred and fifty miles across or down. In the middle is a range of snowcapped mountains that slope down to heavy forests and then level out to a narrow band of flatlands that stretch to the saltwater beaches.

To the west is the Pacific, on the north edge are the straits that flow into Puget Sound, and the east is bordered by a long, natural canal. If it weren't for bridges, the only way to get to the peninsula would be overland on a lengthy drive up from the south.

Sightseers were everywhere but in our car. Tarvik and I concentrated on our lunch and waited for the backseat passenger to figure out that we had stopped moving.

Good thing burgers and fries smell so strong. Without looking up, Alakar held out a hand and took the sack. She stared down at it and puzzled over it, because in their NeverWorld there is no paper. Reaching in carefully, she pulled out a fry and touched it with the tip of her tongue, then popped it in her mouth.

The wrapping is paper. Don't eat the paper, he told her.

Turning forward he gave me a quick smile before he did what he always does at mealtime. He put his whole mind and concentration on his burger. I picked away at my fishwich and watched them both.

Another thing everyone in Tarvik's family has in common, besides easy-to-read faces, is a real appreciation for food. Not a fussy eater in the bunch. Must have been some lean winters in their pasts.

Maybe we were a little short on mealtime conversation but as for entertainment, I got it full blast. That itty bitty sex kitten ate exactly the way Tar does, concentrating fully on her food. He could have hit the gas and torn out of there. I don't think she'd have given it a blink. Her small white fingers pulled away at the edges of the burger, examining it, removing bits of pickle and meat. She sniffed each bit and then stuffed the bits into her mouth.

Next time we pick up one of your tribe, I'm handing them food before we start the car. Maybe we need to keep a box of crackers in the trunk, I said.

Next time?

Right. I now know that no matter what I do, there will always be more of your family dropping into my household.

As far as I know, I have no other relatives, he said.

Didn't matter. Since his arrival, he'd been followed by an odd assortment of stragglers. They weren't blood relatives but they had distant ties that made them think they had rights. They brought along deadly magic and sorcery, stuff I don't like to deal with. None of them had been easy to get rid of. In fact, when we headed for the peninsula that morning, we both assumed we were returning the ashes of the last of the lot and closing that door.

It's not like I have to send out invitations. Folks come unbidden. But hey, I am an astrologer. I know I don't get to pick my destiny. Whatever happens, it's already out there in the stars. Sometimes I think the stars are mad at me.

We drove toward home, all three of us with full stomachs and bursting minds, way too much to think about. What I did, before Tarvik started the car after we finished eating, was swing around in my seat to hand Alakar my fries. Usually I give them to Tarvik. Today I figured I'd try the feed-his-tribe theory. A long road and a ferry ride still separated us from Seattle.

Worked fairly well, too. She was so busy nibbling on fries and licking the salt off her fingers, she forgot to be scared.

With the noise of an old car to separate our conversation from the back seat, Tarvik asked, What happens next?

Oh, let's see. Automatically I counted off on my fingers. First, we listen to Alakar scream her way across the Sound. She probably isn't going to like the ferry at all. Second, we get home and see what Nance thinks.

Tarvik has the two girl cousins that he knows about. I am kind of hoping that's all there are.

Nance is a darling. She's maybe a bit hotheaded and emotional, and she argues with my Tarvik more than I like but that's teen stuff and I can live with it. The rest of the time she is affectionate, helpful, cheerful, and fun to have around.

This other cousin, this Alakar, huh. Alakar is the same age as Tarvik, twenty. Let's see, let me name her virtues. Okay, I'll think about that. True, she is beautiful, but that's not a virtue. Sorry, can't think of any virtues. For starters, she keeps batting those eyes at my guy. Have I mentioned that she has one of those puffy, full-lipped mouths? Besides batting her eyes, she knows how to make that lower lip quiver.

She was going to get added to my household because what else could we do? Tarvik firmly believes he is the protector of anyone smaller than himself, plus, she's family. Tarvik adores the idea of family.

She doesn't have anywhere else to go, he said.

Sure, fine.

She can sleep in Nance's room.

I have a small two bedroom house. There are twin beds in the second bedroom.

We'll ask Nance. It's her room. If that's not all right, we can always move the extra bed into the living room for Alakar. We'd done that before for guests and I wasn't crazy about the idea, but Nance is a teenager and she really loves her room.

Whatever you think is best, he said.

I don't have a clue about what's best.

The thing is, I know Alakar's horoscope, and it's full of question marks and wobbly aspects and a whole lot of secrets. If I tried to explain that to Tarvik, would that make me sound jealous and unreasonable?

CHAPTER  2

My house is small. It's on the down side of a hill in Seattle, a city of hills, so that the driveway and garage are on the same level as the house and street. Out back the lawn slopes away, leaving room for a daylight basement apartment with a door that's a half flight of stairs below the lawn.

My house has a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms and a bath. The kitchen has room for a long picnic table, a bench on both sides and chairs at the ends. I keep thinking I should upgrade to a real dining table, but there are a few problems.

First, the wood picnic table is sturdy enough to sit on, and second, it can be used for anything without worrying about damage, and third, I can't afford new furniture. What I've got is what I inherited from my grandmother, along with the house.

When we walked into the kitchen with Alakar, my cousin Jimmy was with Tarvik's cousin Nance who was putting together supper. My cousin is a dark-haired, skinny scudze with a ferret face. Tarvik's cousin is a cute girl who doesn't seem to notice that Jimmy has the face and trustworthiness of a ferret.

Sure, I expected a reaction.