directed toward Madison flare in his eyes. Her sister was keeping him from getting his way and Guru Meyer was accustomed to being obeyed.
“It’s not kidnapping if she comes of her own free will,” he said, haughtiness icing his voice. “Sanpreet, let’s go.”
Feeling as if she were standing a long distance away watching herself respond, she stepped away from his outstretched hand. Felt the glass shard dig deeper into her heel.
Heard Madison exclaim, “Shelley, you’re bleeding!”
“I’m okay,” she whispered.
“No, you’re not. You have glass in your foot and you look like a zombie.”
Shelley blinked and repeated, “I’m okay.”
“What did this asshole do to you?” Madison wrapped her arm around Shelley’s shoulder and dagger-glared at Guru Meyer. “Put your weight on me. I’ll help you get to a chair and we’ll tend to your foot.”
Police sirens wailed up Moonglow Boulevard.
“If you don’t come with us now, Sanpreet,” Guru Meyer hissed, “you are no longer welcome in our group. We’ll have no further contact with you. You can never return to Cobalt Soul. Think about it. You’ll be losing your spiritual family. The ones who took you in when your blood sisters turned their backs on you. You’ll have no support—”
“She’ll have me.” Madison tightened her grip around Shelley and said to her, “You’ll have Gia and Mike and Darynda and the Quilting Divas.”
“And me,” said the shop clerk. “And everyone at AM-A-Zing Liquors.”
“Shelley . . .” Madison said.
“Sanpreet.” Guru Meyer reached for her hand.
“Come home, come home,” the four young women in white chanted. “Come home, come home, come home.”
Shelley looked first at Guru Meyer, then at Madison. Standing on one leg, hovering her injured foot off the ground, she slipped her arm around Madison’s waist, met Guru Meyer’s eyes that had turned from peaceful to stormy.
“Guru Meyer,” she said, “I want to thank you for everything you did for me. You helped me when I was at my lowest point, but the truth is, I’m already home. I don’t need you anymore.”
“Don’t throw away your salvation,” he said.
“Mister, leave my sister alone. I have a TV show and we can do a program on cults if you catch my drift.” Madison growled.
“We are not a cult.”
“Then if I did a show on breaking free from a cult you wouldn’t be alarmed?”
His jaw clenched, and his eyes clouded. “And if I go quietly?”
“My show never mentions you,” Madison said.
“I could sue if you do.”
“I could countersue.”
“I could destroy you.”
“Ditto, buddy. We could go down in flames together.”
He dropped the wise sage act and Shelley saw him for who he really was, like the wimpy Wizard of Oz behind the scary curtain. His lip curled in a scornful snarl and his face darkened. “So be it,” he said. “You are dead to us, Sanpreet.”
Then just as two police walked into the liquor store, their hands resting on the butts of their holstered weapons, Guru Meyer motioned for his disciples to follow him and they swept out the side exit.
“C’mon,” Madison said, squeezing Shelley’s hand. “Let’s get you patched up, little sister.”
Chapter Seventeen
Madison
KALEIDOSCOPE: A quilt block pattern in which fabric is pieced so that it resembles the variegated image seen through a kaleidoscope.
THE CLERK AT AM-A-Zing Liquors had a first aid kit she let Madison use to tend Shelley’s foot. The police officers discussed the disturbance with them and left the store, issuing parting instructions to call them again if the big bald guy in white—who one kept calling Mr. Clean—returned to cause trouble.
A moment later, that same officer, wearing a sheepish grin, asked Madison for her autograph for his wife.
With a flourish of her pen, she sent him on his way and turned back to Shelley. The purple-haired clerk, Velma, according to her name tag, had parked Shelley on a stool behind the counter, with Shelley’s bleeding right foot resting on her left knee. The first aid kit lay open on the counter beside a bottle of salted caramel Crown Royal.
Efficiently, Madison cleaned and dressed Shelley’s wound while Velma swept up the shattered bottle of lemon vodka and cleaned the blood off Shelley’s flip-flops. Madison left enough money to cover the mess, plus a little extra, thanked Velma for the use of the first aid kit, and offered Shelley her arm as she hobbled from the store.
“We forgot the liquor for the party,” Shelley said.
“So we did.” Leaving Shelley buckled in with the windows down to catch the ocean breeze, Madison buzzed back inside and bought several flavors of vodka, plus the