“How’s life treating you, kid?” he asked. “You still the glamour girl, taking pictures of all those pretty models in their underwear?”
Sara smiled. It was an old conversation. One they repeated over and over. “Still taking pictures,” she confirmed, though for the first time since she could remember, she was traveling without her camera. She felt bereft without it, and yet also weirdly free. “Though I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s not quite as exciting as you make it sound.”
When the sheriff chuckled, she saw the deep wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, and the gray bristle on his chin. He’d skipped shaving today. That wasn’t like Jackson Norris at all.
“Because you’re a girl,” he said. “I don’t know how a man can take photos like that and keep his concentration on the job.”
“Good thing I don’t have that problem,” she said, not bothering to mask the sarcasm he would never understand.
They rode the elevator up to the parking garage in silence, both stewing, contemplating, worrying. Walking to the car—his Wessex County Sheriff’s Department official vehicle—the sheriff moved a little too fast, as though he wasn’t ready for the rest of their conversation. The real part. The unfamiliar, unrehearsed part. He put Sara’s bag in the trunk and went around to unlock her door like a true gentleman. He even held it open for her.
Sara only stood and looked at him. “Where’s my father, Jackson?”
He had been urging her to use his name for years. Now that she did, he flinched. The sheriff glanced away and let out a breath, then lifted his gaze to meet hers as though his head weighed a thousand pounds.
“I honestly don’t know. There isn’t any news, Sara. You know if there was, you’d be the first to know.”
“So this law firm hires him to go look for one of their lawyers in fucking England—a guy who maybe murdered his father—he goes missing, and all you can tell me is that there isn’t any news?”
Hysteria tinged her voice. She knew it, and hated it, but could do nothing about it. Once upon a time, Jackson would have chided her for her language. Tonight, he said not a word. Small town guy he might be, but he wasn’t stupid.
“We know he and Julianna Whitney, who was with him, chartered a boat to take them out to an island off the coast of Scotland. It was in the middle of a snowstorm, apparently. But your father and Ms. Whitney went ashore on the island. When they didn’t come back, the charter captain went looking for them, but there wasn’t a trace. There was a fire on the island. The people who live there won’t say how the fire started. None of them report having seen your father or Ms. Whitney. I’m not sure what else I can say.”
December wind breezed through the garage. Sara shivered and ought to have zipped her jacket, but it was as though someone else was feeling it, someone else was cold.
She leaned against the car and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “Sheriff, what was my dad doing moonlighting for some law firm? I know…I mean, I don’t see him much, but we talk. He never mentioned doing anything like that. Sheriff’s detective pays all right, doesn’t it? So what was he doing this for? Going to England? In his whole career, he’s never done anything like that. He’s a cop in Maine. That’s all he ever was or wanted to be. So here’s what you can do. You can tell me how it happened. How did he end up going there in the first place?”
For a long moment, Jackson Norris stared at her with those raccoon eyes and a twist to his mouth like he’d just eaten something sour. Then he left the door open and walked around to unlock the driver’s-side door. After he opened his door, he paused and stared at her over the roof, past the rack of blue emergency lights that were, for the moment, unlit.
“Politics, Sara.”
Incredulous, she stared at him. “What?”
“I owed the firm a big favor. A lot of favors. Chances are, I wouldn’t be sheriff if it hadn’t been for their support. They wanted to play this investigation a certain way—do it quietly, try to protect their image, all of that—and I played along. Oliver Bascombe is one of theirs. Nobody really thinks the guy killed his father, but chances are he knows who did, or why. So when they wanted help going and fetching the lawyer in London—”
“You loaned them my father,” Sara said quietly, stomach in knots.
“Not quite. They asked if I’d give him some time off, if I’d object to them giving him a freelance investigation job. I paved the way, Sara, but I couldn’t have ordered Ted to take the assignment. It’s not my jurisdiction. Bascombe and Cox offered him work, and he took it. Hell, kid, you know what he’s like when he wants to close a case.”
Sara tasted bitterness in her mouth. “Better than anyone.”
Her father was a good man, but he had never been a good father. Not when it mattered. The job had always come first. And now, here she was, taken away from her life and her work because the idea that something might have happened to him made her frantic. Because, despite the distance that they could somehow never bridge between them, she loved him desperately and had never known what to do about that.
She slid into her seat and closed the door.
Only the crackling of the police radio broke the silence as the sheriff drove them away from the airport. He wasn’t going to be getting many calls down in Bangor, but still he did not shut it off. Habit, Sara supposed.
How she had wished for someone to blame this on. It would be so convenient to be able to hate Jackson Norris for putting her through this, or even her father for making her think maybe they would never be able to solve the problem of the awkwardness between them.
But there was no one to blame. And nothing to do but wait, and ask questions, and hope.
The snow was falling outside, heavy flakes that drifted gently to the ground. The way the snow danced on the darkened highway ahead was mesmerizing. Sara watched it, and let herself be captivated. Taken away.
“What was that?” the sheriff asked.
Sara frowned. “Huh?”
“You said something. I didn’t catch it.”
For a second she did not know what he meant. Then she realized that she had spoken, almost unconsciously.
“He wanted me to come home for Christmas,” she said, watching the snow, looking at the holiday lights gleaming on evergreens and strung from buildings as they drove away from Bangor. Tomorrow night was Christmas Eve.
“Guess he got his wish.”
The wind was blowing from the west, or Kitsune would have caught the soldiers’ scent before it was too late. Later, she would wonder if there was more to that failure than merely the direction of the wind, if the confusing feelings that swirled in her heart had distracted her. But by then, such questions would be meaningless.
It took longer than Kitsune had expected for them to reach the Orient Road. Many years had passed since the last time she had passed this way, and even then it had been from an entirely different angle. In those old times, she had not even been aware that Twillig’s Gorge existed. That had been a hard journey, as she recalled, and it was a dark irony for her to learn now, so long after, that had she only traveled a few hours to the west she might have come upon that sanctuary.
But that was an old story from her life, and she did not want to dwell upon it.
More than three hours after they left the gorge, they had come to a sparse forest of ancient growth trees. Skirting its edge, they had passed a pond upon which sat the ramshackle remnants of a long-abandoned grist mill. A short way further they came upon a small house, a kind of way station from an age gone by.
Then, at last, the Orient Road.
Kitsune had journeyed the length of that road more than once. To the southwest, it led toward Perinthia. To the east, all the way into the furthest regions of Euphrasia, into the deepest and oldest parts of the world beyond the Veil. That was where her home lay, the forest where she had been born, far back in the mists of time and the ancestral memory of an entire region.
But Kitsune had not passed through that forest in two hundred years and had no desire to return. All that waited there for her was the bitter, aching memory of a more vivid, more vital time and a life full of passion and playfulness. Another age.
The present was a pale shadow of the past, but it required her attention. When the sorcerers had created the Veil, they had done so to protect the purity of the legendary worlds. Kitsune believed they had failed. It was not a pleasant thought. Indeed, these recent days it had been only the presence of Oliver at her side that lightened her heart. He was a good man, smart and strong and simple. Despite his harsh opinion of himself, there was nobility in him that was becoming more and more difficult to find amongst the legendary.
In the shadow of the tall pines, she glanced at Oliver. She knew that he was devoted to another, but Kitsune desired him. It troubled her, that desire, for she did not understand it. For a human, Oliver was brave enough, and he was charming and full of heart, but he was still ordinary. Kitsune could not make sense of what she felt for him, but that did not lessen its power.
He longed for Julianna, the woman he would have made his wife. But she was a world away, and he might never see her again. In time, his devotion to her would lessen.
Kitsune could wait.
As they passed the dusty way station, whose roof had been staved in by a fallen pine, Kitsune spared a thought for Frost and Blue Jay, and all of her kin. Part of her longed to be with them, to search for answers and vengeance in Yucatazca. But that was not to be.
She cast another glance at Oliver. He sensed her regard and looked over, one eyebrow raised. A ripple of pleasure went through her and she smiled at him. Oliver smiled back, puzzled. If he thought her enigmatic, Kitsune did not mind.
“We go east from here,” she said.
Kitsune did not recall how far it was, precisely, to the stone circle where she could enter the Winding Way. For his part, Oliver did not ask, so she said nothing. It seemed more likely to her that they would be on this road all the way to the Sandman’s castle in the eastern mountains, and that was ten or twelve days’ walk on human feet. With nothing by way of provisions, they would have to forage or rely on the kindness of strangers. There were towns along the way, but with the Hunters after Borderkind, and the warrant sworn out for Oliver, they would have to be very careful indeed.
These were her thoughts as they turned east on the Orient Road and set off. The old forest grew denser the further east they went, and the hard-packed earth of the road was overrun in places with grass and weeds. The Lost Ones traveled only when they first crossed through the Veil. Once they had settled, they tended to remain settled, and their offspring rarely left the places of their birth. The legendary traveled more frequently, but usually only moving amongst the larger cities of the Two Kingdoms. Farmers took their harvest to market, tax collectors gathered tithes to the monarchs, but other than those, few ventured beyond their own borders.
The road was quiet.
“It’s peaceful here,” Oliver said, as the breeze rustled the leaves of the trees, whose shade kept most of the day’s heat from them.
“Most of this world is peaceful,” Kitsune replied. “It’s only those few fools who are desperate to draw blood that ruin it for the rest of us.”
Oliver glanced at her, no trace of humor on his face. His brow furrowed. “Yeah. It’s pretty much the same way in my world.”
“I know. Legends mirror the human world far more than anyone here wishes to admit.”
The hush of the wind accompanied them. Dust devils eddied up on the road. Deep in the woods, creatures skittered through the underbrush. A bird began to sing, and others replied.
Ahead there was a bend in the road, but Kitsune could hear the trickling of a brook. As they approached, she saw a stone bridge that spanned the little brook, and beyond that there was a weathered old house that looked as though it had been uninhabited for years.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world for Kitsune to catch Oliver’s hand in her own, twining fingers together like any couple out for a stroll in the country. For a moment, he left his hand there, warm in hers, and it was pure contentment.
Then Kitsune’s ears pricked forward. She frowned, breathed in the scents on the air, and turned back the way they’d come.
“What is it?” Oliver asked, breaking away from her.
“Hoofbeats. One rider, coming fast.”
“What do we do?”
Kitsune glanced around. “The bridge.”
They ran. The sound of the brook grew louder, but it was a gentle burble quickly lost in the thunder of approaching hooves.
Kitsune and Oliver reached the little bridge but did not cross. They ran beside it and down a small incline to where a swift, shallow brook rolled over gray and black stones that glistened wetly. There were far too many people, legendary and Lost, hunting them now. Better to just let the rider pass than risk being identified and having their position given away.
Her hood was back and her cloak floated behind her as she ran. Oliver thumped down into the brook, water splashing his heavy boots, and they ducked into the damp, shady hideaway underneath. Oliver’s breath came fast and his exhilaration was contagious. Kitsune looked at him and felt desire overcoming her. The rugged stubble on his face and the flush of his skin made him seem wild, for a human, and his blue eyes were alight.
Hooves hammered the road, not far off now.
“You there!” a voice boomed across the brook. “Identify yourselves!”
Oliver flinched and Kitsune spun, dropping into a lower crouch, fingers hooked into claws.
On the other side of the brook, in amongst the trees, several Euphrasian soldiers moved toward them. Kitsune counted five, then a sixth appeared from the woods, hitching up his pants as though he’d just relieved himself. Four of them hung back a bit, studying them with curious bemusement, but the two at the front, both officers from the insignia on their chest plates, were gravely serious. Some kind of patrol, she presumed, though what they were doing out here in the middle of nowhere, and on foot, she could not imagine.
