“I’ll talk to you before then, Dad. And I’ll call on Christmas.”
As if it was some kind of negotiation.
“All right, Sara. You take care.” Halliwell wanted to say he loved her but the words were spoken so rarely that to speak them would be awkward, and he’d had enough of awkward tonight.
He thumbed off the phone and set it on the mantel as he went by on his way to the recliner. The chair creaked beneath him and he settled in comfortably, understanding without conscious choice that he would fall asleep there, as he did almost every night, before moving to the bedroom sometime in the wee hours of the morning.
The numbness had seemed to abate while he spoke to Sara but it was waiting for him the moment he relaxed. The whiskey and the horror of Alice St. John both set quietly and diligently to work on him. He stared at the television again, attempting to make sense of what was on the screen. Highlights of the biggest news stories of the day flashed by. The top of the hour, then.
Midnight.
He let himself read the crawl at the bottom of the screen. The little snippets of news— of entertainment and sports and politics— were always fascinating to him in the way they painted a picture of the American worldview. Which often led him to contemplate what sorts of things would be enormous news in other countries but did not even make it to the footnote of the crawl across the bottom of the screen of a twenty-four-hour news channel.
His eyes ached, staring at the screen. He felt the exhaustion of the day begin to slide into the pleasant sluggishness that preceded sleep. The chair was home to him, in so many ways. Halliwell was reading but only half aware of what he read on the crawl. Something about the governor of New Jersey. A bit about the estate of late actor Marlon Brando.
And then this:
FRENCH AND US AUTHORITIES SEEKING CONNECTIONS IN PARIS, SAN FRANCISCO MUTILATION MURDERS, VICTIMS BLINDED IN KILLINGS POLICE CALL “IDENTICAL”— AP
Halliwell sat up.
* * *
They snuck into the village of Bromfield under the cover of night. Even at first glance, however, Oliver thought the word village was understating things. They had traveled east along the Truce Road for several hours, beginning at dusk, and when they came in sight of the place Oliver at first thought they had somehow gotten onto the wrong road, for this was a village of cottages and shops. Oil lamps lined the Truce Road where it ran through Bromfield, and light flickered inside several of the small homes along several narrower streets that intersected it, striking off to north and south for parts unknown.
Once in sight of the village, they left the road and moved as surreptitiously as possible across grassy fields, taking cover where they could in copses of trees. In the distance, the moon and starlight showed several farms to the north of the village and a silver line of water that wound its way amongst the farmland, not quite a river but more than a stream.
Frost led the way. Ever since the injuries the demon Aerico had inflicted upon him, he had been unsettlingly silent. Conversely, the normally quiet Kitsune had taken to traveling beside Oliver and engaging in conversation that seemed designed to educate him more about this world without making him feel too ignorant. He was used to her mischievous side, but this gentle guidance was a facet of her that he had not expected.
Her cloak rippled around her, catching the moonlight, as they followed the winter man far out of the way so that they could come up to a stone cottage at the edge of Bromfield from the rear. Oliver heard someone playing the violin inside, a sweet and lilting sound that surprised him in this setting, but soothed him as well.
They moved along behind the homes on the north side of the Truce Road, most of which had healthy gardens growing. In some of the cottages they could see people going about their evening, enjoying dessert or playing parlor games. In one house, which seemed to be lined with books, a man with thick black hair and a long face sat in a high-backed chair, reading. It made Oliver think of home, and he felt a twinge of melancholy. He envied that man the peace that came from a comfortable chair and an old book.
“Oliver,” Kitsune whispered, her breath warm in his ear, her fur cloak brushing his hand. He turned to her and her jade eyes were wide and sincere. “Do not tarry. We may have friends here, but certainly some of the people will be tempted by the reward Aerico spoke of.”
He nodded and pulled himself away from the back of that cottage. Kitsune started after Frost, who had moved on without them and was now two cottages ahead. She reached back a moment as if to take his hand and Oliver blinked in surprise. Her hand was gone as though it had never been there, lost inside her cloak, and he wondered if she had merely been stretching, or gesturing, or if he had not seen it at all.
Frost had paused behind a cottage larger than those they’d already passed. The moonshine glinted off a thousand angles on his icy form as though he wore a constellation of tiny stars, and Oliver worried, not for the first time, that it would be the presence of the winter man that led to their discovery. But as he considered it he realized it was a foolish concern. He was Jack Frost, after all, and had spent centuries moving through the winter landscape of Oliver’s world, avoiding the eyes of the curious.
The winter man beckoned to them.
Oliver and Kitsune hurried to join him, moving swiftly behind a cottage whose owner had a pair of cherry trees in the backyard. The reminder of their terrible morning was unwelcome, and Oliver shuddered as he passed the trees. He had put his parka back on and the shotgun case slung over his shoulder made a kind of shushing noise, scraping across the jacket as he ran.
Kitsune, as always, moved in total silence.
Even before they reached Frost, Oliver heard the slow clap of horses’ hooves out on the Truce Road. They came up beside the winter man and peered around the corner of the cottage to see a wagon passing by, but the beasts yoked to it were not horses at all. Their bodies were similar to a horse’s, but each had a head like a giant eagle, and what appeared to be wings pinned at their sides. A man sat on the wagon’s seat, but he was larger than any man Oliver had ever seen. Not a giant by the standards of this world, but huge just the same. The back of the wagon was loaded with barrels, and atop one of them sprawled a dark, twisted-looking creature, a goblin or something very like it. From this distance— and, Oliver suspected, perhaps even upon closer examination— it was impossible to discern the goblin’s gender. It was dressed in ragged clothing, hairless, and its skin was a sickly green that glistened in the lamplight out on the street.
The cart rattled by and Oliver turned to Kitsune, so many questions in his mind. She placed a finger to his lips to hush him, giving a little shake of her head. A little friction spark jumped at the contact but he did not flinch. For a moment he only stared at her and then he pulled himself away, wondering at the way she so easily derailed his thoughts. Her beauty was captivating, but he did not think that was the explanation. Nor was her mythical nature the sole reason, he thought. There was something else.
Laughter came from out on the Truce Road. A trio of seemingly ordinary people came sauntering down the street with an easy camaraderie, a man and two women. Their clothing was old-fashioned but, Oliver was pleased to see, not entirely archaic. The man wore blue jeans and heavy boots with a thick jacket of the sort his mother had always called a “peacoat” and which had been popularized by sailors in the navies of countries around the world. Dark blue wool.
The parka would have to go, but Oliver thought perhaps it wouldn’t be as difficult to blend in here as he’d thought.
When the road was clear again Frost gestured for them to follow and continued on. They passed behind another small cottage and then came to a two-story house with a sloping roof that had several small dormers, little windows like eyes set in to what was probably the attic.
The house was dark.