Spun by Sorcery by Barbara Bretton

uneasiness washed over me.
    “Why is it hitting us?” I asked. “I thought we were outrunning it.”
    Janice wiped condensation off the side window and peered outside. “Not anymore,” she said.
    “Maybe it was in the weather report for today,” I said. “It might have nothing to do with the spell.”
    I didn’t believe a word I said. Neither did anyone else.
    Luke muttered something unquotable as the car slid noticeably to the left. He eased up on the gas and we slid back into the lane. “How the hell do you manage up here without four-wheel drive?”
    “Easy,” Janice jumped in. “Our girl doesn’t drive if there’s more than an inch of snow on the ground.”
    I plucked a bit of vegetable matter from my working yarn and dropped it in the unused ashtray. “I have enough trouble driving when it’s sunny and dry. Why push my luck?”
    “The town council was considering an ordinance to keep her off the road when there’s more than an inch of precip anywhere in the county.”
    I swatted her with my Noro sock yarn. “Excuse me but that was shouted down without a vote.”
    Janice’s grin was thoroughly wicked. “Only because you swore you’d stay off the road voluntarily.”
    “Thanks a lot,” I said. “You made me drop a stitch.”
    I swear to you Janice gasped so loudly she sucked the oxygen out of the car. “What did you say?”
    “I dropped a stitch and it’s all your—” Now it was my turn to gasp. I had never dropped a stitch in my entire knitting life. Not once.
    Janice squinted at her sock in progress then held it up to the light. “I don’t believe this.” She rummaged in one of my accessory bags for a ruler then laid it against the knitted fabric. “Holy crap,” she said. “I’m not getting gauge.”
    “Gauge is a good thing?” Luke asked, slowing the Buick down to practically a crawl.
    “Gauge is a very good thing,” I said. Otherwise that wonderful boyfriend sweater you were working on might be better suited for a toddler.
    Sticks & Strings was known as the shop where your yarn never tangled, your sleeves always matched, and you always got gauge. Customers came from all parts of the country to take our weekend workshops and ongoing classes. Fearful knitters cast on, terrified of dropped stitches, miscrossed cables, lopsided sleeves, all of the million and one things that can and do go wrong with a project. But by the time they were tying on their next skein of yarn, they were flying without a net.
    It had never occurred to me that my knitting skills might also owe something to good juju and more than a little outside magick. I preferred to think it was great genes.
    So much for Wonder Knitter.
    Janice slumped back in her seat, mumbling to herself as she frogged her sock and poked around in search of a smaller circular needle.
    I was busy fiddling with a steel crochet hook, working my dropped stitch back up the ladder. “Son of a gun,” I said as the stitches reappeared. “Guess I’m not such a bad teacher after all.”
    I knew that in the grand scheme of things a dropped stitch in a road trip sock wasn’t a big deal but I was definitely feeling uneasy. When something happened that had never happened before, you didn’t need magickal powers to know there was trouble brewing.
    Like the blizzard that was now dumping snow on us faster than the windshield wipers could push it away.
    “Maybe you should slow down,” I said to Luke as the rear end of the car slid left.
    “I’m doing twenty,” Luke said as he eased out of the skid. “Any slower, we’ll be going backward.”
    “Then go backward,” I said, clutching my Addi Turbos in a death grip. “I have a bad feeling.”
    I felt the car slow down a little.
    “Fifteen,” he said.
    Penny the cat abandoned the backseat for my left shoulder.
    “Look,” I said, trying to make a joke. “Even Penny’s worried.”
    “Leave the cat out of it and let Luke drive,” Janice said. “He’s a New Englander, too. He knows