“So, wait, that wasn’t a Door?”
Kitsune arched an eyebrow. “We passed through a door, but it was not a
Door
. Not the sort that you mean.”
Oliver only stared at her.
She laughed softly. “There was a Borderkind portal on the other side of that door. The Sandman had created it, and not very long before. Frost and I both sensed it when we first came into the castle.” All trace of amusement left her face then, leaving only a grave wariness behind. “When a Borderkind makes a crossing, it leaves a trace that others of our kind may follow. The trace dissipates in time, but we discovered it quickly enough.”
Oliver felt a chill ripple through him. “So, wait, you’re telling me he’s here? The Sandman?”
Images of the horror they had described flashed through his head.
Kitsune tilted her head. “Perhaps. Or he was. Regardless, we must move quickly and be far from here if the Hunters should find a Door and try to catch up with us.”
He tried to focus on that, on the next step. Getting out of here. If their journey beyond the Veil corresponded at all to their presence in this world, they were in far eastern Maine, probably not too far from Canada. If the Hunters came, they would begin tracking at this spot, so it was best to be as inconspicuous as possible. Kitsune wasn’t made from ice, but a startlingly beautiful Asian woman in a fox fur cloak was not going to go unnoticed in a place like this. They were going to draw attention. He only hoped that the Myth Hunters would be as reluctant as Frost was to have direct contact with people.
Snow swirled around his feet.
“Hurry,”
Frost whispered.
“Going,” Oliver replied. He glanced around again and decided to head toward the children and their snowball fight. There were bound to be adults there as well, and cars. And a parking lot. If there was a place to rent cars in this town, he had to assume they would not be open, but if they were lucky, perhaps there would be a taxi stand right here in the downtown. He did not relish the idea of becoming a car thief.
“We need transportation, and I need a jacket. Not to mention a phone.”
Kitsune hurried through the park at his side, but at his mention of a phone she grabbed his wrist. “You cannot go home. You know this. They will find you there within hours.”
“I know that,” Oliver said. “It may take me a while to learn, but I’m not a fool. I can’t go home, but that doesn’t mean I can’t call to tell them I’m all right. I was . . .”
Supposed to be married,
he thought, and realized it had been hours since he had given Julianna and their wedding a moment’s thought. Still, he knew she must have been brokenhearted and his father must be furious. He found it impossible to care if the old man was angry, but Julianna hadn’t deserved this.
Oliver linked arms with Kitsune as if they were a couple out for a stroll in the park. He was surprised to see that there were only a few kids throwing snowballs and that the park seemed otherwise empty, save for a few people walking dogs.
Then he saw the skating rink, and he understood that the yellow flash he had seen before was the police tape that had been set up around its entire circumference. In the parking lot beyond the rink were several police cars, and four uniformed officers stood in a conversational cluster, clutching what must be cups of coffee in their hands.
“Hey, kid,” he called to the nearest, a boy of fourteen or so whose face was bright with cold and exertion.
“Yeah?” the kid replied doubtfully, packing a fresh snowball in his gloves. His eyes scanned Kitsune, obviously impressed, and then he glanced at Oliver, perhaps trying to figure out what the two of them were doing together.
“What happened? What are all those cops doing here?”
A flicker of suspicion crossed the boy’s face. “You seriously don’t know?”
“We just got here,” Oliver replied, shuffling closer to Kitsune to bolster the image of them as a tourist couple. “On vacation.”
The teenager looked around, his ruddy cheeks not quite so red now. He seemed to want to be sure he was not overheard. Then his mouth stretched into an unpleasant grin.
“Some guy . . . some nut, right? Shows up in the park, walks right out onto the rink while people were skating, grabs this girl, and . . .” All the mischief went out of him as he realized his amusement was inappropriate. The kid shrugged. “He killed her. Right there in front of everyone. Right on the ice. People tried to stop him but he took off into the trees and they lost him. Shouldn’t have, right? I mean, where the hell can you run in a town like this? There were a bunch of people around. No way he could’ve gotten out of the square without someone seeing him. You’d think, anyway.”
Oliver shivered and crossed his arms, trying to warm himself from the cold that touched him now within as well as without. “The girl who was killed. She was pretty young?”
“Yeah, really terrible.”
Kitsune moved nearer to him, lowering her hood. The kid was almost mesmerized by her nearness. “He removed her eyes, correct? That is how she died?”
“Yeah,” the teenager said, nodding as though lost in an unpleasant dream.
The wind blew a flurry around their heads.
“The Sandman,”
Frost whispered.
Oliver did not have to ask for elaboration this time. The Sandman had taken his first child in centuries. And there would be more. He knew there was nothing he could do. That he couldn’t stay, or the Hunters would catch up with him and his companions. But the urge was there to do something, to help, somehow.
Kitsune pulled at his arm and Oliver started away from the kid. But this was a bad idea. They were headed right for the police, two strangers walking out of a park where a horrible murder had occurred what must have been only hours earlier. And Oliver without a coat. They were going to notice him for sure. Talk to him. And if they became suspicious and wanted to speak to them in a more official capacity, that would mean they would be doing little more than sitting around waiting for the Hunters to come.
“This way,” he said, turning toward the train station. The steam engine was still puffing in the station. No one used steam trains anymore, so he assumed it was some kind of local attraction. That didn’t matter, as long as it would get them out of the center of town without running into the police. The forest around the town was probably state-owned. If he understood the laws of the magic used to create the Veil, that would be sufficiently public for the Borderkind to cross.
The station looked as though it ought to have been in the English countryside, not some quaint village in Maine. Smoke rose from fireplaces at either end. As they crossed the park toward the lot in front of the station, he could see people in line inside the well-lit building, but the line was moving, people boarding the train.
This is good. This will work.
“Hey!” a voice called. The kid with the snowball.
Oliver and Kitsune walked faster. Whatever mesmerizing effect her presence had, it clearly did not last.
“Hey, how did you know that? About Alice’s eyes?” the kid called. “How did you guys know that?”
With a silent curse Oliver glanced toward the quartet of cops. All four of them had turned to see what the yelling was about. The question was whether or not they could make out the kid’s words from that distance. Their reaction was gradual, one of them starting into the park, the others taking a few steps to peer at Oliver and Kitsune, but they were moving. They had heard. One of the cops went to the nearest police car and ducked inside, reaching for the radio handset.
The other three set off on a diagonal route across the park toward the train station. The kid kept calling after them, but now one of the cops— the first to have moved— began shouting as well. There was a hesitation in him and the other two, for they still held their coffee cups. Walking fast, but not running. Curious and guarded, but not alarmed. Not yet.
Oliver and Kitsune ignored them.
Police officers do not like to be ignored.
The one in front was the first to drop his coffee cup and start really moving. The other two followed suit. Oliver snatched up Kitsune’s hand and began to run. For the second time in minutes, in two different worlds, they ran up a short set of stairs toward a door. Even as he grabbed hold of the handle and hauled it open, he could see that the last of the line had disappeared from inside the station, going out onto the platform to board the train.
Its whistle blew and steam blasted into the December night. People cheered. Oliver and Kitsune ran through the station. A woman at the ticket counter shouted at them not to run. An old man in a blue uniform warned them that they would need tickets if they wanted to get on the train.
As he pushed through the back door and out onto the platform, Oliver looked back. The cops were just coming through the front door and not one of them hesitated. Their eyes locked on him. The officer who had been first to react at every step reached down and released the strap holding his service weapon in its holster.
“Fuck,” Oliver snarled.
A family of five were just beside them. The oldest girl gaped at him with obvious surprise while the mother glanced down at their toddler to make sure the word hadn’t registered on the boy’s ears. The father glared at Oliver with utter contempt.
“What’s wrong with you?” the man demanded.
Kitsune went past him as though he wasn’t even there, and Oliver followed suit. There were many more people than he’d imagined, all of them jockeying to be next onto the train. Most of them had coffee or hot cocoa and every other adult had a backpack or shoulder bag. He and Kitsune began to weave amongst them as quickly as they could, bumping their way through when they had to. They were cursed and derided and one man gave Oliver a shove, but it only propelled him in the direction he wanted to go, toward the front of the train.
But they were still on the platform. The train was still steaming, but it wasn’t moving. People were still getting on board.
“This isn’t going to work,” he said through gritted teeth, glancing back to see the police sliding through the crowd. People got out of the way for the cops, especially when they looked serious, as these men did. Oliver understood that. He would be equally grim in the aftermath of a little girl’s vicious murder. He wished he could stop and explain himself to them.
As if he could have explained anything at all.
They were nearing the engine. Steam churned out from beneath it, making the winter air warm and damp.
“What the hell are we going to do?” he asked Kitsune.
She gripped his arm. “Hurry.”
The steam from beneath the train turned cold and he realized the wind had kicked up. Snow swirled up from the platform. A powerful gust propelled them forward. He had meant for them to board the train, to escape that way, but they were out of time. Kitsune began to run, and Oliver kept pace with her.
“Stop! Police officers! Stop where you are and turn—”
The rest of their commands were drowned out by the scream of the winter wind that drove at Oliver’s back, and a moment later they reached the edge of the platform. Kitsune was two steps ahead of him and he saw her jump. Knowing there was no other course, he followed suit, leaping off the edge of the concrete slab and landing in three feet of snow. But the police would not hesitate to come after them. He glanced around, saw that they were nearly at the front of the engine, and then he realized that this had been Kitsune’s intention.
They ran through the snow, kicking the white stuff into a kind of cloud around them with every slogging step. The police were still shouting. One of them jumped down and Oliver was sure it would be the same man— the first to follow them, the first to drop his coffee, the first through the door.
“Faster!” Kitsune shouted, and when she took his hand it seemed to him that he did move a bit faster, that he was more agile. It might have been his imagination, or perhaps just the urgency of her touch, her power to influence.
Her cloak flowed out behind her in the snow.
Snow.
It was not just being thrown about by the wind now. The December night had been clear and full of brilliant stars, but now the firmament was obscured by heavy gray winter and snow had started to fall from the sky.
They rounded the front of the engine. In the bright lights of the cab they could see the silhouette of the driver.
The snow was even deeper on the other side of the railroad tracks and beyond them there was only woods. Lovely, dark, and deep. The cops kept shouting but their voices were muffled by the night and the storm.
As Oliver and Kitsune ran toward the woods, the wind struck them like a hurricane and the night was a blizzard, a complete whiteout, as though they were surrounded by a wall of snow that erupted from the ground and poured down out of the sky. The cold cut into Oliver and he could not move. Kitsune grabbed hold of him, wrapped him in her arms, her cloak enfolding him, and he felt the warmth of her fur.
