Frost took a deep breath and let it out in a plume of cool mist. “I see. You feel your knowledge makes you somehow responsible. That you have an obligation to stay. To help.”
“Something like that.”
“But you know the police would never believe you. And if you found yourself in the path of the Sandman, he would have your eyes. You know that even now the Hunters are searching for you.”
Oliver knocked his head against the tree again. “Yeah. But it just feels wrong. We’re talking about children here. There are going to be others.”
“Perhaps,” Frost allowed, those blue-white eyes clear and unforgiving. “Yet you have no reason to believe the Sandman will stay in this world. He has been a prisoner for a very long time. Predicting his actions now would be impossible. Even if he does stay on this side of the Veil, he isn’t likely to linger in this particular area. If we were free to pursue him, I would join you in that quest. Perhaps it will come to pass. But at the moment all of our efforts must be dedicated to removing the sword of Damocles that dangles above our heads.”
The reference was unfamiliar but Oliver understood the intent. Reluctantly, he nodded. “I get it. I never had any illusions that we had a choice in this. That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
A silence descended between them, broken only by the sound of melted snow dripping from the trees. Oliver had been doing his best not to think too much about how they were going to find Professor Koenig, if the man was even still alive, or whether he would be able to help even if they did find him. If he let himself ruminate on that subject, he would fall into a morass of distracting questions, and right now, distraction could be very dangerous.
“All right,” he said, pushing away from the tree and bending to retrieve his parka, which was weighted down with cans of SpaghettiOs. “Are you ready to go?”
The winter man nodded thoughtfully, then glanced around for Kitsune. Oliver followed suit, his gaze automatically tracking to the last place he had seen her. There was no sign of her.
Oliver took the first step, casting a worried glance at Frost. Then the winter man fell in beside him and they hurried through the trees and the melting snow, following the path Kitsune had taken. They had progressed thirty or forty yards when Oliver held up a hand to halt the winter man.
“Shush,” he whispered.
Frost frowned, ice crackling in his forehead. “What is it?”
“Engines. A road, not far off.”
A gunshot slapped the sky, echoing through the trees. In the snow off to their left something dashed behind a berm made by a fallen maple and years of moss and detritus from fallen leaves. Oliver almost expected to see Peries flying around the dead tree.
Raucous laughter followed the gunshot, and then several hoots and catcalls.
“Hunters,”
the winter man said, his voice the whisper of wind.
Oliver knew he did not mean Myth Hunters. The voices that reached them were entirely human, and he could not imagine the Falconer or the Kirata carrying shotguns. It was December, and the woods would be filled with men looking to bag a white-tailed deer but willing to settle for a few snowshoe hare or a coyote if that was all that could be found. Max Bascombe had gone on several hunting vacations while Oliver was growing up, but had never thought to invite his son. As much as the concept of hunting for sport unnerved him, Oliver would have gladly gone along if his father had wanted him there. He would have tried his damnedest to kill something, too, just to make the old man notice him. To make him proud.
The presence of hunters in the woods this morning was no surprise, but it was unwelcome for several reasons, not the least of which was the bitterness that swam up in the back of his throat at the associations they brought with them.
“We must find Kitsune,” Frost whispered, and the two of them began to move through the trees, taking cover where they could.
“I’m sure she caught wind of them long before they would have noticed her,” Oliver said. It felt true, yet still he worried.
Given the amount of noise they were making, Oliver thought the hunters had likely given up for the day and were preparing to head home. Together, he and Frost worked their way quietly through the snow, keeping to the cover of evergreens. They were moving up a slight rise and nearer to the occasional sound of car engines rumbling by on the road. Perhaps a hundred yards from the place they had been when they heard the gunshot, they came in sight of a man-made snowbank.
The voices of the hunters were just beyond the snowbank. They ridiculed one another good-naturedly and Oliver heard a loud, long belch before an empty beer bottle came spinning through the air over the top of the bank. Frost sneered at the discarded bottle and moved nearer, his passage over the snow utterly silent.
Of course. He’s Jack fucking Frost.
Oliver followed, doing his best to match the quiet swiftness of his companion. Fortunately, with the snow melting there was no crunch underfoot and soon he was beside Frost on the snowbank, creeping up to get a look over the top.
It was a narrow, paved access road, just a few hundred feet from a moderately busy two-lane blacktop. Out on the main street, cars went by with a shushing noise as they kicked up some of the water that ran across the pavement from the snowmelt. There were two vehicles parked in the small circle at the end of the access road, an old Jeep Cherokee and a sparklingly new cherry red Ford F250 with a plow blade attached to the front. The hunters had plowed the access road themselves. There were four men, all in the requisite orange vests, though most of them had stripped off the thick coats and hats they would have worn when they went into the woods early that morning.
A dead white-tailed buck was strapped into the back of the pickup truck. From their vantage atop the snowbank, Oliver could also see a brace of dead hares in the truck. He wondered which of the four men had bagged the deer.
Three of the men had gathered between the vehicles and were drinking bottles of beer from an enormous cooler. One of them, a thirtyish guy with thick, curly hair the color of rust and forty pounds he would have been better off without, was smoking a joint whose sweet scent only now reached Oliver’s nose. The man took a long hit and passed it to another man, who might have been his brother, so similar were their features, only he was in much better shape and had his hair shorn down to a military buzz. They looked like the before-and-after pictures in some weight-loss commercial. The third sat upon the big cooler, sipping his beer and laughing about something Mr. Before had said that Oliver had missed. A hibachi grill was on the ground between them and fat sausages sizzled over the fire.
The remaining member of their troupe was standing at the rear of the Cherokee, the tailgate open as he zippered his shotgun into a leather case complete with shoulder strap and ammunition. He slid it into the back of the Jeep and then strode away from the group, toward the snowbank on the other side of the road.
“Fish me out a beer, Gav. Just gotta take a leak,” he said, unzipping his fly even as he walked.
“Goddamn it, Virgil, put it back in your pants!” said Mr. After with a shake of his head. He took a hit from the joint and tried to pass it to the guy on the cooler, who waved it away, so After had to pass it back to his brother.
“Fuck’s sake, Virg, you’ve got a bladder like my grandmother,” said the guy on the cooler.
For his part, Virgil just swore at them all and started to piss, an arc of yellow that stained and melted the snow, steam rising from the hole he was making in the bank.
Oliver glanced at Frost, wondering what they were going to do. They could not wait forever for Kitsune to return to them and he had no interest in a run-in with these hunters, who would at the very least want to know who he was and how he had gotten there. They might offer him a beer and a sausage, which would have been welcome, but there would be no way for him to slip back into the woods without explanation. All in all, it would be better to go unseen. Better, in fact, just to get out of there entirely. He was concerned about how long Frost might be willing to wait for Kitsune, and how much time before those other Hunters— the ones they had to really worry about— might catch up to them.
Just as he was about to crawl back down the snowbank, Oliver was brought up short by the widening of the winter man’s eyes. Frost stared in what seemed equal parts alarm and amazement at something on that access road, and Oliver dragged himself upward several inches to have another look. At first nothing looked different to him.
Then he saw the fox.
Kitsune darted along the access road at the base of the snowbank, doing her best to remain out of sight of Virgil and Gav and the Before-and-After brothers. At the back of the Cherokee, using the vehicle to hide herself, her fur rippled and flowed and she stood up. The transformation from fox to woman was as simple as that and Oliver had to blink several times as he tried to figure out what he had just seen and how it could be such a natural change. One moment the fur belonged to an animal and the next it was a cloak draped upon a beautiful woman.
With a peek at Virgil, who zipped his fly and started over to join the others, she ducked and reached into the back of the Jeep. In a single swift motion she slung the strap of the shotgun case over her shoulder and then she was darting for the snowbank, directly beneath the spot where Oliver and Frost lay in hidden observation.
Gav had a sausage wrapped in a roll, dripping mustard onto the ground as he went to take a bite. It was inches from his mouth when he glanced up and saw her scaling the snowbank with such delicate agility that she seemed to skate up its face.
“Holy . . . Virgil, she just . . . your gun! She’s got your gun!”
He had only gotten out the first few words as he stood, pointing at the snowbank, when the others caught sight of Kitsune as well. Mr. Before spotted Oliver and their eyes met. Oliver could not help it. He grinned.
Then he was scrambling down the snowbank with Frost beside him and Kitsune leaped over the top, running so swiftly that she dashed past them. She cast a mischievous glance at Oliver, eyes alight with pleasure. The hunters were shouting threats and curses after them. He heard the sounds of them huffing up the snowbank. A beer bottle sailed through the branches of the tree to Oliver’s right and then struck another, showering broken glass down into the snow.
“Do you . . . think . . . maybe it’s . . .” he began, hardly able to catch his breath as he maneuvered through the trees, keeping abreast of Frost but unable to catch up with the fox-woman.
“Yes,” the winter man replied, the icicles of his hair clinking together as they ran. “It’s time we were gone.”
The wind whipped up around them, driving the snow into a maelstrom once more. In moments the sky was gray and the sun blotted out and the shouts of the hunters were muffled. Kitsune paused just ahead as she realized what was happening. They caught up to her and she smiled, revealing those too-sharp teeth, just before the driven snow whited out all of their surroundings. The forest was entirely gone.
And Oliver felt the world
shift
.
CHAPTER 8
T
he Whitney family lived in a Federal Colonial that had been built in the last decade of the eighteenth century for a sea captain by the name of George Jensen. The seaman had been forty-one at the time of his marriage to Ruth Anne Landry, twenty-year-old daughter of the town’s only baker. Her father had no dowry to speak of, but with a wife as fair as Ruth Anne, Captain Jensen felt he had all that he could ever have asked for.
The house had been built for her over the course of an entire year, painstakingly constructed to meet the standards of the captain, who felt that his home ought to be put together with at least as much care as his ship. Local legend held that he had never slept a single night in his own bed, that his last voyage ended in a storm at sea on the very same day that the builders declared the house complete and announced to Mrs. Jensen, now heavy with child, that she could begin to decorate and move the couple’s belongings into the sprawling home at her pleasure.
This was not precisely true. In fact, the captain had overseen the furnishing of his home and had spent several weeks there in his marital bed with his pregnant wife before sailing on that fateful voyage. The truth was less colorful but no less tragic than the legend.
On Monday afternoon, a small headache working through his brain like a burning fuse, Ted Halliwell sat in the parlor of the Captain Jensen House— as the plaque beside the front door proclaimed it— and listened to Marjorie Whitney tell the history of her home as she served him tea, smiled awkwardly, and did everything possible to postpone the moment when he would get what he had come here for: a meeting with her daughter, Julianna. The young woman Oliver Bascombe had left at the altar.
“That’s a wonderful story, Mrs. Whitney. You must love being surrounded by so much history here.” Halliwell sipped his tea, which tasted slightly of almonds, and then gingerly set the cup down. “But I really do need to speak with Julianna. Do you think she’ll be much longer?”
