Also, his mother is in the room, standing by the Gaudí floor lamp and reading from a tattered Agatha Christie novel, open in her hands.
“Mom?”
She turns to him, a curious smile on her face. There is intelligence and love and humor in her eyes, and he misses her so badly that his dreaming heart breaks.
No, he won’t think of dreaming.
“Should you be here?” he asks.
His mother chuckles softly, shaking her head and rolling her eyes just a little, as she’d always done when her son had surprised her with his precociousness.
“Where else would I be?”
“It’s . . . I’m so happy to see you.”
Oliver tries to get up off the sofa but he cannot. He looks down and finds that his lower body has been frozen in a block of jagged ice. The fire blazes and he can feel its heat, but the ice is not melting. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees something move by the fireplace, darting across the edge of his vision, but when he glances over, there is only Julianna. She has not moved, but her expression has changed.
Her lips are peeled back, revealing black gums and long yellow teeth, rows of deadly fangs.
“Julianna?”
“You ruined it all. My life. Did you think I’d just hide in my room and cry? I’m going to hurt you the way you hurt me. And then I’m going to forget you. What are you, after all? You’re not Oliver Bascombe, you’re just Max Bascombe’s son. I can’t believe after the life you’ve lived, you don’t see that.”
Pain sears his chest. Oliver hisses and looks down to see his shirt is torn. Blood seeps from fresh claw marks that have striped his flesh.
“Oliver.”
He turns to face his mother, shaking his head in confusion.
“Drink your cocoa,” she says indulgently. “Drink up.”
He shakes his head again, mumbling some rebellion, and glances back to find that Julianna is gone. The fire is out. Snow falls in the empty fireplace, hissing on cinders.
Oliver is startled by a sudden banging at the window and as he looks over, the glass shatters but does not fall. Instead it turns to snow and a winter wind blasts into the parlor, swirling it around. The room is dark now. No fire, no Gaudí lamp. He seeks his mother in the darkness but she is not there.
The ice that had held him down is gone.
He staggers to his feet, squinting against the storm that blasts into the room, and stares out at the darkness. At the blizzard. It is not the bluff overlooking the Atlantic he sees, not the yard in which he and his sister played as children.
Outside there is only sand.
Some distance away, his father stands and stares at him. Oliver feels trepidation at the sight, and a kind of dread that he has not felt since he was a small boy, curled up beneath his covers, eyes moist with fear at the scratching of a branch against the window and the sounds of an old house shifting.
Max Bascombe has been altered, somehow. Oliver expects him to sneer, to shout and proclaim and dismiss, but even from that distance he can see that his father is doing none of these things. Instead he is pointing. He is cupping his hands to his face and crying out to his only son— yes, their eyes meet, and Oliver sees that his father is trying to communicate with him— and yet his words are lost in the storm, in the snow that swirls in the air and never seems to touch the endless, shifting sand.
His father is sinking, the sand slowly swallowing him, but he seems not to know this. He only cries out to Oliver, fearful, as though trying to warn him.
Something moves under the sand.
Oliver wants to go to his father, to tell him to watch for whatever circles, sharklike, under the cascade, but he is trapped by his father’s urgency.
At last, dread trembling in him, he begins to realize that there, in the darkness, he is not alone. His mother is gone. Julianna is gone. His father cannot reach him.
Something touches his shoulder, needle fingers digging in, and begins to turn him around.
The snow blowing through the window is sand now, and the grit of it fills his eyes, stinging him.
Close them. He knows he must close them.
But the thing in the darkness is pulling him round to see now, and he wants to see. And, after all, he does not feel sleepy at all.
“Oliver.”
* * *
“Oliver.”
He awoke, sucking in a deep breath as though in his sleep he had ceased inhaling, and his eyes snapped wide. In the darkness a cloaked figure loomed over him and he could still hear the dream echo of its voice in his head, saying his name. An outstretched hand reached down toward him and only then did he break free of the lingering effects of the dream.
“Get away!” he shouted, scrambling back over the arm of the sofa, fumbling, then falling onto the wood floor with a thump. His elbow thwacked the ground and pain shot up his arm as he tried to crab-walk backward.
The cloaked shadow sprang through the air. Oliver opened his mouth to scream again, chest thundering with his racing heartbeat, but a powerful hand clamped over his mouth to silence him. Its weight bore down on him and he stared up . . .
Into jade eyes.
“You
must
be silent,” Kitsune said, and then she tossed her head, throwing back her hood, and her raven hair glinted in what little light filtered into the cottage from outside.
Oliver shook with relief and then nodded, pressing his eyes tightly closed a moment.
Kitsune removed her hand.
“I was . . . it was a nightmare,” he whispered. “But it seemed like more.”
Even as he spoke, it occurred to him that there were other things to fear than his nightmares. Kitsune was poised and alert, head cocked as she listened for something he knew he did not want to hear. Oliver extricated himself from beneath her and climbed to his knees, reluctantly glancing around the darkened cottage.
“What is it?” he asked, voice barely audible.
A shiver ran up his back and gooseflesh rose on his arms. A breeze had rippled through the room, and without turning he knew that Frost had joined them. When he did look, he found the winter man holding out to him a pile of neatly folded clothing.
“Quickly, Oliver.”
He took the shirt and pants, only then really aware that he wore only a T-shirt and underwear. In the dreadful tension of that moment, however, there was no room for the indulgence of embarrassment. The pants were some kind of wool-blended trousers and he stepped into them even as he glanced around at his companions again.
“Would one of you tell me what’s up? What time is it? How long have we—”
“Hush!” Kitsune growled quietly, baring fangs at him. There was a hint of pique in her eyes that confused him, but he was used to being puzzled by her.
As he slipped on the thick white cotton shirt and began to button it as quickly as his sleepy fingers would allow, he turned pleading eyes upon Frost.
The winter man gestured for him to hurry. “You slept only a few hours. Not enough, but it will have to be. The Kirata are here, in the village. Even now they will be searching for our scent, checking every home and business.”
Oliver swore softly as he reached for his own boots. They had rubber soles, and he could only hope they would not be so modern as to draw attention. Certainly many of the Lost Ones had modern clothing that they would have been wearing when they pierced the Veil. The boots would have to do.
As he bent to tie them he caught motion in the periphery of his vision, near the door, and he jerked back, ready to fight. It was Larch, who had been standing in the darkness, peering out a front window throughout their exchange. In the dim glow from outside his eyes looked desperate.
“Please, hurry!” he said, the words almost a whine. “You can’t be found here. I tried to help you, now you’ve got to help me by getting out of—”
“We’re doing our best, Mr. Larch,” Kitsune growled, the words darting across the darkened room.
Oliver fumbled his way through the near-dark to the darkened fireplace— shards of his dream returning— and grabbed the shotgun case where it rested on the mantel. He spun around, narrowing his eyes to get a better look at Larch.
“A coat. You said you had something for me.”
Larch raced into his bedroom and came out almost instantly with a long, thick gray woolen coat. “Take this. But you can’t leave the other here. Nor your clothes. Get rid of them somewhere else.”
“Kitsune, the back,” Frost whispered.
The fox-woman slid through the shadows to the back door and opened it quietly, slipping out into the night, disappearing beyond the gleam of moon and starlight. Oliver stared at that open door, holding his breath as he pulled on Larch’s coat and slipped the shotgun case over his shoulder. Frost grabbed up his parka and discarded clothes and went to the front of the house, glancing quickly out the window before rushing toward the back . . . following Kitsune.
“No sign of them yet. But they will be prowling. Could be anywhere.”
The winter man hesitated only a moment before following Kitsune into the dark. Oliver paused and looked at Larch, and he wished he could stay. In a way he had found all he’d ever really wanted when he and Frost had tumbled out over the ocean and through the Veil. Magic. Freedom from the expectations of the life he’d known. Part of him wished he could just sit awhile, get to know this village, explore.
He cast a yearning glance at the shelves and shelves of books in Larch’s cottage and felt another pang of envy. At last he took a deep breath and nodded to the Englishman, then stepped out the door.
The chill was bracing. The fire in Larch’s hearth had died hours earlier but the cottage had held much of its warmth. Outside, the wind whipped along behind the little house and made his whole body feel brittle. He buttoned the wool coat and turned up the collar, and that helped.
Frost was off to his left, Kitsune to the right, both of them on watch. When he emerged, the winter man rushed to him, an arctic breeze accompanying him, and together they hurried to where Kitsune waited. Frost still carried Oliver’s cast-off clothes. After what Larch had done for them, they wouldn’t leave the clothes so close to the house, even though Oliver was certain that if they entered his home the Kirata would smell the presence of their prey. He hoped it didn’t come to that.
Morning was only a few hours away and the village was silent but for the whistle of the wind through the gardens and the eaves of the larger houses. They moved swiftly to the east, past the Wayside Inn and behind a building that might have been some sort of marketplace. Just ahead, the Truce Road was intersected by another, much less impressive thoroughfare. Little more than a dirt cart path, really, it branched off the main road and was lined with houses that seemed far less well kept than their counterparts there.
As they passed silently between houses, Kitsune sniffed at the air. Her fur cloak gleamed the color of fire in the moonlight. She started to move again, slipping through shadows like water. At the corner of the large house, where a flower garden had been planted— and Oliver tried not to think about how some of these flowers could grow in such weather— Kitsune went rigid and still.
Frost seemed not to notice at first, so intent was he upon surveying their surroundings, and by reflex Oliver thrust out a hand and clutched his arm. The ice seared his flesh with cold and he hissed as he withdrew his touch.
But it was enough. The winter man turned to glare at Oliver, and in doing so caught sight of Kitsune, paralyzed as though Frost himself had frozen her there. Yet this was no attack, only caution and fear. Her eyes were wide and her chest rose and fell rapidly.
“We’re not going to make it, are we?” Oliver asked grimly.
She bared her fangs, his voice— or perhaps his words— snapping her out of whatever trance she’d been in.
“They’re close,” Kitsune whispered, focusing on Frost. “At least one just ahead. Perhaps two. And others close by. Is there no other way?”
The winter man shook his head slowly so that the icicles of his hair did not clink together. His eyes misted white-blue and the little clouds swirled around his face.
“There can be no running. Only death or survival. And our path lies ahead of us.”
She nodded solemnly and took another deep breath of the air that breezed around them— of the scent of their enemy. Then Kitsune slipped over beside Oliver and tapped the strap of his shotgun case.
“A sword in its scabbard is not weapon, but decoration.”
