Halliwell raised his eyebrows. They were hiring him to go find Bascombe and fetch him back to Maine. That made him the investigator. Why did they need to send someone from the firm along for the ride? To monitor his expenditures?
Then Cox glanced at Julianna. “I’m sure Miss Whitney will be of great assistance to you.”
And Halliwell put it all together. Julianna Whitney had gone to law school, but she wasn’t employed by the firm as a lawyer. She was their investigator, doing background checks on clients and opponents alike, digging up dirt, tracing shell corporations, and finding out which way Augusta politicians were going to vote.
She was Oliver Bascombe’s fiancée and she wanted to go find him. Cox wanted him found as well, for all the reasons he’d already said. Julianna was likely more than capable of finding Oliver on her own. But Halliwell was insurance. If love wouldn’t make the errant Bascombe come home, they were hoping intimidation would.
Halliwell was being manipulated. He was surprised to find that he did not care. What he wanted was answers, and he thought perhaps that having Julianna Whitney along would help him get them. The law firm might be using him, but Halliwell figured two could play at that game.
He stood up from the chair and smiled thinly at Andrew Cox. “I’ll pack.”
CHAPTER 18
The Isle of Canna was off the western coast of Scotland, part of the chain called the Inner Hebrides. Oliver had driven all through the afternoon and into the evening. Gong Gong had not ridden in the car, choosing instead to pace them from high above in the gray clouds and on into the darkness of night. It had been a relief and a surprise to discover that Blue Jay was capable of driving an automobile. By his own admission he had not done so for years, but Oliver had the distinct impression that the trickster knew the world of men quite well. Though he chose to do most of the driving himself— he was, after all, the only one with a license and the sole driver on the rental agreement— Oliver allowed Blue Jay to spell him twice, for an hour the first time and nearly three the second.
It had been the longest drive he had ever undertaken.
With the clock creeping toward midnight, they had at last arrived in Mallaig, a small coastal town with an inn where he and Kitsune had secured a room. Blue Jay, Frost, and Gong Gong made themselves scarce during the check-in and even afterward the male Borderkind had all chosen to keep watch over the inn rather than try to take any rest.
Oliver could feel their impatience bristling within them, crackling in the air. It raised the small hairs on his arms, so tangible was their need to be moving on. The nights and days might be longer on the other side of the Veil, but none of them wanted to wait another night before making their way to the island where they hoped to find Professor Koenig at long last. But they had made the best time that was possible, stopping only for gas and food and for Oliver to use the toilet. Even without those stops they would have arrived hours after dark and the boat that he had chartered through the travel office back in London would not run them out to Canna during the night.
The night had seemed eternal. Whatever frisson of possibility had made his previous close-quarters experiences with Kitsune so tense had been shattered by his grief and his anticipation. His father was dead. Julianna was frightened and confused and he had abandoned her. Over the course of the long drive, this had begun to sink in to Oliver in a way that it had not before, and by the time they had arrived in Mallaig he was hollow and numb. He had been relieved to learn that the inn had rooms with separate beds. The clerk at the desk had offered to give them separate rooms for no additional cost, the place being nearly deserted this time of year, but Kitsune had quickly declined. And rightly so. If the Hunters managed to track them, they would be better off together.
All through the trip and the night that followed the Borderkind were quiet and grim from the need to resolve their obligation to him, to see this through, and he felt the same compulsion. Blue Jay would flutter on nearly silent wings to land upon their window ledge every couple of hours and Oliver had slept so lightly that night that the scritch-scratch of the bird’s feet upon the ledge would rouse him.
But there was nothing they could do to make the night fly more swiftly.
In the small hours of the morning it began to snow, so that when dawn arrived there was a dusting of white outside the window. The snow continued, the sort of gentle winter fall that cast a hush upon the land. This was not difficult to do in a village on the coast of Scotland so late in the year. It took Oliver twenty minutes and the promise of an additional hundred pounds to convince Barclay Moncreiffe, the captain of the chartered boat, to set out for Canna Island in spite of the storm.
Now the grizzled Scotsman stood in the wheelhouse of the boat, peering out at the snow and the tumultuous sea, a firm grip on the wheel. Once upon a time it had been a fishing vessel but had been converted some years past to carry tourists from island to island and to deliver supplies to the smaller islands, where the ferry stopped every week or two. This morning the nameless ship carried three passengers, and for the trip Moncreiffe was likely taking in more money than he normally made all winter long.
Blue Jay stood on the prow with the snow falling all around him. The swell of the sea threatened at any moment to dash him to the deck or into the water, yet he seemed remarkably at ease. Kitsune was below in the small cabin, nursing a cup of strong coffee the aging, bearded captain had offered from the thermos he had brought on board. The angry seas made her nervous.
Oliver did not blame her. With the snow falling and the sea churning he had at first kept to the cabin himself, but then his stomach began to roil and bile had risen in the back of his throat. Nausea had driven him up onto the deck. Moncreiffe had recommended coffee and some gingersnaps from a box he had below, but the idea of ingesting anything only made his gut lurch. He hung his arms over the railing and waited to be sick.
“Watch the horizon,” Blue Jay said, appearing beside him. “Focus on the distance and your belly will settle.”
With no better suggestion, Oliver took this advice and within minutes his nausea began to abate. Snow accumulated on his coat and hair and he blinked it away from his eyelashes as he searched for the island ahead.
“Gong Gong is out there somewhere?”
“Somewhere,” Blue Jay said. “He’s far more clever than he appears. He’ll join us when we find your professor.”
“And Frost?” Oliver narrowed his eyes and tried to see between the snowflakes, searching for any sign that the winter man was with them.
Blue Jay gazed upward, snow whipping into his face. “Distracted. A storm like this, the snowfall is intoxicating to him, or it might just as well be. He revels in it. He’ll be tempted to lose himself in it, but that was how the Falconer nearly killed him the last time.”
Oliver felt a tightening in his gut that had nothing to do with seasickness. “I never realized.” He frowned, troubled, but said nothing more. If all went as he hoped, Frost should be free to drift with the storm for a while before they all traveled through the Veil again. And if not . . . well, Oliver didn’t think he had to worry about Frost losing track of the danger they were in, not with his grief for Yuki-Onna still fresh.
When the captain brought the boat up to the dock at Canna Island, Blue Jay helped tie them up to the moorings. The dock was located within a natural inlet, so the surf was calmer there, but still they knocked against the rubber bumpers hanging from the pier. Oliver was sure he saw a familiar figure in the falling snow, just for a moment. The winter man had been watching them. But when he stepped off onto the dock and glanced around, he saw no sign of Frost. Blue Jay and Kitsune followed and the fox-woman linked her arm with his as though to steady herself. Her features were drawn but her eyes were alight with relief now that they were off the boat.