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.
Captain Moncreiffe followed them onto the dock, hat pulled down tight on his head and coat buttoned up around his throat. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and peered at them through the falling snow.
Beyond him, Gong Gong sat on top of the wheelhouse. The snow seemed to move aside as though it did not dare to fall upon the Black Dragon of Storms. Oliver did his best to ignore the little creature, forcing himself to look at Moncreiffe’s face.
“Mr. Bascombe, you’ve got three hours. Weather report says the storm’s meant to subside a bit toward noon, but afterward she’s going to get much worse. I’ll want to be back to the mainland by then.”
Oliver nodded. “Absolutely. We’ll be back.”
“Captain Moncreiffe,” Kitsune said, jade eyes peering out from beneath her hood with a light of their own, “you’re certain you cannot direct us to Professor Koenig’s home?”
The Scotsman had a twinkle in his eyes when he looked at her, but then he offered an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry, miss. I wouldn’t know where he lives. Anyone on the island ought to be able to tell you, though. Why, it’s tiny, after all. Can’t be more than twenty people living out here, all told. Stop at the first cottage with a light burning inside and you’ll have your answers. Best hurry along, though.”
He glanced warily skyward. For a moment he frowned and his eyes seemed to track something odd he might have seen in the snow above. Then he shook his head, his expression bemused. When Oliver glanced at the wheelhouse, Gong Gong was gone, and he could only imagine what Captain Moncreiffe thought he had seen in the storm.
“I have an old friend on the island. Perhaps acquaintance is more apt. But we’re acquainted enough that he’ll spare me a cup of tea and a scone and a warm place to sit while I wait on you.”
Blue Jay started down the dock ahead of them. Kitsune and Oliver turned together and started toward the small village that lay ahead, church steeples stark against the storming gray sky. Several inches of fresh powder lay on the ground and Oliver was grateful for his boots. Blue Jay and Kitsune seemed hardly to notice at all.
As they drew nearer, trekking through the snow, the cottages became more than shapes in the gentle whiteness of the storm. Oliver’s heels crunched on the powder but otherwise the village seemed entirely silent. So quiet, in fact, that he could hear the snow fall.
“I don’t understand,” Oliver said.
Blue Jay slowed to fall into step with them. “What’s that?”
“The churches.” He counted at least three steeples jutting up into the whitewashed sky. “Why are there only a handful of people here? Why are so many cottages empty? And if there’s at best a couple of dozen people, what do they need so many churches for?”
The island was quite small. According to the woman who had arranged for the boat charter to begin with, it measured five miles long and two miles wide. But that was enough for a much larger population, and from the look of the village, once upon a time things had been different on the Isle of Canna. The first few cottages they came to were dark and appeared deserted. One had its windows boarded. The roof of the other had collapsed at some point and never been repaired, and the winter had claimed it.
“Perhaps the ones who live here now are Newcomers. Either that, or they were left behind.” Kitsune nudged a bit closer to Oliver, still walking arm in arm with him.
“You can feel it?” Blue Jay asked.
Kitsune nodded. “It is empty here. As though thriving life has been erased. Or vanished.”
Oliver paused, breaking away from them, turning to face them. “Hold on. What are you saying? You mean nobody’s here?”
“You misunderstand,” Kitsune told him, her face nearly lost in the shadow of her hood. “There are people who live here, just as Captain Moncreiffe said. But once this was a real village. Now it is nearly a ghost town. You yourself asked about the churches. Where did those people go? There is a feeling about the place, a hollowness, that suggests it might not have been attrition. They might have been Lost. Slipped through the Veil.”
Oliver shoved his hands into the pockets of his wool coat, shivering. “Like Roanoke.”
“Something like that,” Blue Jay replied, but his attention was not on them. He scanned the snowy sky, presumably for sign of Gong Gong or Frost.
Oliver did the same. He knew there was every reason why the two Borderkind who could not disguise themselves as human had to remain out of sight, but it troubled him just the same.
They continued into the village, passing a sort of park on the left that a sign identified as a Viking burial ground, but under the blanket of new-fallen snow they could see little evidence of the ancient graves. The island was thickly wooded and there were trees even in the midst of the village. Near a stand of towering oak and rowan, all of them stripped to bare branches by winter, a massive Celtic cross jutted from the ground like a cemetery headstone. There were chips out of the crossbar and the cross was ancient and weathered. Nothing around it indicated that it was a grave marker, or supplied any other origin, for that matter. It was simply old, a memory of another age standing in the midst of this diminishing settlement.
“Oliver,” Kitsune said.
He looked up to see her pointing toward the cottage beyond that cross. The was light in several of the windows, he suspected from a generator. Even as he began to walk toward the cottage with Kitsune and Blue Jay, aware of what an odd trio the three of them would present to whoever lived there, he saw the dark figure of Gong Gong sweeping down out of the storm to alight on the snowy ledge of the cottage’s chimney. It set him somewhat at ease.
“Frost,” he whispered to the falling snow around him. “Are you here?”
The only response was the crunch of snow under his boots.
“He’s here,” Blue Jay assured him. “I told you, he’s just distracted. Let’s just find your professor. The boat isn’t going to wait forever.”
Oliver nodded and took one last glance up at Gong Gong before striding up to the cottage and rapping heavily on the door. As he waited with his companions he brushed snow from his hair and shook it from his coat.