The Witch and the Huntsman (12 page)

Out loud, I said, “Well, don’t look so surprised to see I actually have friends.”

Eric laughed and took my arm. “I’m not. I guess I just didn’t expect them to be almost as awesomely amazing-looking as you are.” And he gave me a loyal squeeze. “Seriously, it’s so great to meet you guys. I hope you’ll both be sure to come to our masked Hunt Ball tomorrow night. Allie can hook you up with invitations. Did you show them your costume?”

“
I think that’s our exit cue,” Ivy said to Millicent, taking her hand again.

“
Hey, if you guys want to keep visiting, I can come back later,” said Eric. Then turning to me, “Or we can just meet tomorrow for breakfast—I didn’t mean to break anything up here.”

“
No, no—it’s okay.” I gave each of my triad sisters a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek while I was mentally imploring them: “
Please be okay with this
?
It’s been
so
long since I had a really great guy to care about...
”
 

When I sensed the wave of their acceptance and approval wash over my consciousness, it came almost like a physical relief—I felt like a ballerina marionette whose strings had just been cut. After they were gone, I didn’t so much go to bed with Eric as collapse onto it.

But just before I drifted into sleep, I had the presence of mind to tell him, “Hey, Eric—do me a big favor, okay?”

“
Sure. Anything.”

“
Please don’t tell your stepmother about my friends.”

I’d tried to think of some excuse for keeping my relationship with Ivy—I still wasn’t too sure Millicent wouldn’t just melt away in daylight—a big secret, but everything I came up with sounded pretty lame. However, I was terrified of Regina finding out she had a triad of fellow witches gathered under her own roof. I didn’t know the full extent of her powers—aside from the dark hints Millicent kept dropping—but I figured Regina’s reaction would be pretty extreme.

“
I just don’t want her knowing that I’m close to people who can afford to be guests here, you know? It might make her think I wasn’t serious about the job. That I was just slumming—and maybe planned to disappear like Marisa and Ivanka.”

“
You aren’t, are you?” It was hard to read his face in the dark, but I was pretty sure he didn’t like that idea much.

“
Hell, no!” I meant I wasn’t planning to be murdered in the snow, but after a second I realized
that
wasn’t what he was asking. “I mean, being a hotel receptionist isn’t exactly the career I’d been planning, but now I’ve met you, I guess everything has changed for me.”

It’s funny; when I’d first started that sentence I’d felt guilty, like I was lying or leading him on. But by the time the words had been spoken and sort of hung there in the air between us, I realized they weren’t a lie. I mean, you can’t base your life on two nights of love—but I knew I was going to have to at least stay at the lodge to see where our feelings might lead us.

Not to mention finding out the real fate of the two missing girls. And who was responsible...

Besides, what did I have waiting for me in Beverly Hills? A job I had been suspended from, a handful of training clients who could wait, and a friend, Bernice, who was going to be busy having a baby. No reason to rush home.

“
I’m glad you feel that way, Allie.” Eric ran his fingers gently, erotically down my spine, causing the most delicious shivers. “Because that’s how I feel, too. I’m just surprised why you think I might rat your relationship with your friends out to Regina.”

“
I thought you two were tight.”

“
Why on earth would you think that?”

“
Well, I mean, she’s your stepmom. And your business partner—you run this resort together, right?”

“
Wrong, actually. She’s the boss here—and never lets me or anyone else forget it.” He rested his head on my chest. “It took me a long time to forgive Dad for leaving it to her in his will. He left her pretty much everything. There was enough for me to finish forestry school and get a grad degree in botany, but everything else went to
her
. Hasn’t been easy adjusting to that reality.”

“
And you haven’t been tempted...?”

“
Huh? Tempted to what? Bump her off?”

“
No, you know—tempted by your hot stepmom. I thought all guys were into porno fantasies like that.” My dumbass way of fishing for the answer to the question that had been tormenting me since I’d first seen them together. I’d sensed something ambiguous there, but finding out the truth was like pulling teeth.

And he reacted exactly like I
was
a dentist, pulling away and turning cold. “Of course not. Jesus, don’t be ridiculous!”

So that blew up in my face.

Typical, Allison, right? Can’t stand prosperity. But, hey, I made a major effort to fix it.

“
Look, Eric—I’m the jealous type, I admit it. It’s not my fault! The moment I start to care about a guy, I guess I just go a little crazy if there’s anyone else in his life. Forgive me?
Please
? Pretty please?”

I guess you can tell that apologizing doesn’t come easy for me. Sleep didn’t, either. Let’s just say I kept trying until I found a way to make it up to him.

But I was haunted all night by the sense of something still being not quite right between us. Or at the La Chasse Lodge...

Chapter Seventeen

Naturally, Ivy had brought her skis along in that huge mound of luggage, so she spent the day out on the slopes with the second-hottest guy at the lodge, a ski instructor named Brady. Her showing up had caused a kind of sensation at the resort. Half the men there were following her around like puppy dogs, after she signed a few autographs, even the gross red-faced guy in the Givenchy sweat suit. Who would stand in the lobby every time she went in or out just staring at her and, I totally swear, licking his big fat lips.

Not to mention the waiter, Kev, who had it bad for Ivy the night before at supper. His crush was so obvious that a sullen Brittany dragged me aside and, not knowing Ivy and I were friends, started bitching about her. “Why can’t she go stay someplace else, like Vail? What does she want with us when she can be anyplace she wants?”

Millicent wasn’t interested in the great outdoors or socializing; instead, she haunted the lobbies and the little library and sampled snack foods and drinks at the Blue Boar Bar half the day. I guess it had been a while for her, ‘tasting the temptations of the flesh,’ as she called it. Frankly, I think I’d have graduated to something a little more intense than Planter’s peanuts and extra dry ginger ale, but hey, that’s what seemed to turn the girl on. Not that she was starved for attention; the other half of the men there had their eyes on
her
.

Which was okay by me, just as long as neither half included my Eric. So far, miraculously, it didn’t seem to. We’d had breakfast together early and then gone out for my crossbow target practice, which was basically just an excuse for him to stand there with his arms around me.

He said I was getting pretty good at shooting, except I needed to watch my ‘itchy trigger finger.’ Or my witchy trigger finger, as I couldn’t help thinking of it.

“
I’ve been thinking, Allie,” he said in a serious tone. “Maybe you’re right about those girls that disappeared, that there was foul play involved, I mean. I told you we had a couple of incidents here before that, too, with local people who went missing on the mountain and the cops came up here looking for them. Anyhow, I think you better have one of the Tenpoints on you when you go back to the annex at night. I’m not supposed to let people borrow them, but I may not be able to keep an eye on you all the time.”

“
But I can’t just carry a crossbow around with me everywhere I go.”

“
Don’t worry—it looks like a guitar in its carry case. And it’s only for when you go out.” So what could I do, except give in? Except now I really felt like a dork, lugging that thing around.

Once I was back at work in the lodge, I’d been worried Millicent might melt away in the sunlight, leaving me and Ivy with a lot of ‘splaining to do, but, in fact, Millicent seemed stronger and more real each time I set eyes on her. Weirdly, though, being around her too much seemed to somehow exhaust me—almost as if it was me keeping her tethered in this world through sheer willpower alone.

Plus, I had a fine line to tread. I didn’t want Regina Jaeger to notice me hanging with my home-girls. And Regina picked today of all days to insist on lunching with me. And not in one of the dining rooms, either, but all the way up in her lair at the top of the tower.

The two wings of the lodge met at the lobby, which is where I worked; the rounded stone entrance hall was dominated by its massive central six-sided fireplace. This was replicated even more ornately in the floor above, which was the main lounge, its roof rising up to the rafters. Above this was the tower, roofed by a medieval cupola, where Regina lived. This was the highest point in the whole Lodge and had the best view in every direction.

We ate in her breakfast nook, served by Marisa’s new replacement, a shy young Korean woman named Hun Suk.

“
I couldn’t help but notice how Eric feels about you, Allison,” Regina announced over crab and herb fettuccine in a light citrus sauce.

“
What do you mean?” I asked nervously. With no sense of her aura, no vision into her thoughts, and the fact that she never smiled, I totally didn’t have a clue what was coming next. Was she going to fire me? Warn me off? Or just bump me off, like I strongly suspected she had with Marisa and Ivanka?

And neither of them had even been involved with Eric, as far as I knew. After my innocent little question to Eric about Regina had blown up in my face, I sure wasn’t about to ask him...

She took a long sip of her blood-red chardonnay, then rested her hand on mine. “I mean that I am very happy that Eric has at last found someone. And not just anyone. A sensitive soul with many hidden talents. I sense something about you, Allison Lopez—I have from the very beginning known that you and I, we are much more alike than you think. Tell me, my dear young lady, have you ever had the feeling that you had lived before?”

Not until Millicent had spilled the beans about my many past lives of being a witch, no. However, I could hardly tell Regina that.

“
No you cannot, child
,” came Millicent’s words in my inner ear. “
You must guard your thoughts from her; this woman can read you like a children’s book. Shield your mind
!
”
 

Death Star! Death Star!
I thought. And focused on Darth Vader. I’d been doing that a lot lately. And I
hate
science fiction flicks.

“
Nope.”

“
I think we have known each other in another time. I think we were once very important to each other.”

“
You mean like back in the Old Country? In other historical times? What were things like?” I wanted to sound interested—and after all, Millicent had told me the same thing about my past lives. Since I had no memory of them, I had to take other people’s word for it.

“
I lived like a queen in a beautiful castle. Until I was unfairly persecuted for my beliefs and driven from my own native soil.” She drank deeply. “You, too, have known this hatred. That is why I say we are alike. And why it is such a great pleasure for me to welcome you into my little family.” Regina gazed deeply and hypnotically into my eyes. “I think you and I will become even closer than you and Eric...”

Okay...
spooky
. I didn’t stick around for dessert.

Speaking of children’s books, something even weirder happened when I got back to the reception desk. Someone had left a dusty old illustrated book of Grimm’s fairy tales open on the counter to the tale of
Snow White
. The picture was of the evil queen looking in the mirror, saying ‘
Magic mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land
?’

My first thought was that Millicent had left it there. Then I saw there was a yellow Post-it note on the opposite page that said, “
Warnungzu den Weisen. Siewerdennächste
” in a crabbed, tiny handwriting.

“
What the hell?”

“
It says ‘
you will be next
’, child,” said Millicent’s voice in my ear. Only this time it wasn’t in my mind; she was actually standing there beside me, dressed in one of Ivy’s designer Donna Karan dresses with a sea-green silk shawl draped dramatically over it and her scarlet-red hair flying everywhere.

I gave a little startled yelp, and said, “Don’t do that! You almost gave me a heart attack! And stop calling me child. It’s ridiculous; you look even younger than Ivy. I feel like your freakin’
mom
!”

“
Sorry,” she said.

“
Seriously, since when do you speak German?”

“
We all spoke High German once. And Old English, French, and the Gaelic. Remember, we’ve lived many lives together.”

“
Yeah, yeah, that’s what Regina was inferring upstairs during our little
tête-à-tête—
that she knew me from a past life.”

“
She knew all three of us, Allison—you and me and Samantha Moon. Particularly Samantha.” Millicent began to turn the pages of the fairy tale book as if she were reading a story aloud from it.

“
Regina’s passion for Sam was unholy, unnatural. And just as swiftly, it turned to hate. In those days, Regina von Bose had used her magical arts to become an
Erzherzogin
, an archduchess. She lived in a grand palace high in the Alps, and sent her familiars into every village to find the prettiest young girls. These she would have brought to her palace and would bathe in their blood. That’s how she has kept her youth and beauty all these centuries—not by vampirism, but by abusing the sympathetic magic found in the life-force of others. It is an utter perversion of the Wiccan craft; yet, it has allowed her to retain the same physical body for many centuries.