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* * *
Drifting in sleep, Collette was gently roused by jazz music, playing soft and low. Her eyelids fluttered and she moaned with the pleasure of the warmth of her goose-down comforter, the feel of the flannel sheets beneath her, and the chill breeze that snuck in through the gap she had left in her window overnight. The jazz was from her alarm clock, which was still set to the same station she had always awoken to when she lived at home. It had been years, and yet while she snuggled there in her bed it felt as though she had never really left.
She opened her eyes and smiled, despite the early hour. The sun had not yet risen, though the night had become that rich, dark blue that was not quite black. On her windowsills were the Christmas lights that her mother had always insisted upon, and their warmth only added to the cozy, little-girl feeling she had in that bed. Collette pulled the comforter more tightly around her neck and burrowed deeper. For half a minute she relished the feeling, and the music, but she had a full day ahead. Her little brother was going to be married.
Her smile faltered as she recalled the conversation she’d had with Oliver the night before. Everyone said it was natural to get skittish before getting married, but Collette wished she had listened to her own doubts before walking down the aisle with Brad. It would have saved her a lot of heartache. She hoped Oliver and Julianna knew what they were doing.
It wasn’t her place to stir up trouble, though. She wanted to be there for her brother. That was the important thing.
Reluctant to leave her bed, she nevertheless forced herself to throw back the comforter and swing her legs over the side. Collette loved her job in Manhattan, really enjoyed living in the city, walking the streets that were so alive with light and energy. But at night when she went to sleep she could still feel the phantom presence of her husband beside her in bed. Not that she wanted Brad there with her. Not at all. But the comfort of having someone in her bed was something she missed. Yet, oddly enough, snuggled up in her childhood bed with that heavy comforter and the winter breeze coming in the window, she didn’t miss that at all. She was supposed to head back to New York the morning after the wedding— tomorrow morning— but now she was thinking she might stay an extra day.
Tempted to retreat beneath the covers yet again, Collette stood and stretched. Gooseflesh formed on her bare legs and she grabbed a pair of flannel pajama bottoms that were draped across the footboard and slid them on. The window seemed to beckon to her and she went to it. Though the sky was beginning to lighten it was not quite dawn yet, and the Christmas light in the window made it difficult to see into the dark. The bulb was very hot from burning all night and so she used the front of her T-shirt to grip it and unscrew it.
With the light off, she could see outside, and the view made her smile. The blizzard had come and gone, and left a couple of feet of new-fallen snow in its wake. South of the house there were evergreens that were frosted with a coating of white. Out across the ocean the horizon was changing color, gleaming with golden light that was a harbinger of morning. It was breathtaking.
Collette knew that the storm would keep some of the guests from attending the wedding. The ones who had come from very far away, from Los Angeles and London and Houston, had already arrived in town, and the locals would make it without any trouble. But she expected some of the people who had planned to drive up last night from New York City to be no-shows. That was all right, though. The blizzard had seemed like a bad omen the night before, but this morning it felt to her like a blessing. It was beautiful.
It was going to be a perfect day. She could feel it.
She slipped on a thick flannel robe and cinched it around her waist, then left her bedroom. The urge to pee had snuck up on her and now the pressure from her bladder was fairly persistent. But she had priorities this morning, and before she did anything else she had to fulfill her promise to her future sister-in-law. She had to wake up Oliver. Her brother slept like the dead. There were mornings even his alarm clock could not rouse him, no matter how loudly it was set. So Collette had taken on the job.
Quietly, not wanting to wake her father yet, she padded down the hall to Oliver’s room and prepared to rap lightly on the door before entering. To her surprise, however, the door was open.
“No way,” she whispered, a dubious smile lifting the corner of her mouth. Collette simply refused to believe that Oliver had risen before her this morning.
She did rap once on the open door as she went into his room, but then she paused, just inside, and stared in confusion at the bed. He had a down comforter as well, and four or five pillows. But Oliver was not in his bed, nor did it appear to have been at all disturbed since having been made the previous morning.
Unless he made it . . . she thought, before realizing how ridiculous that was. Her brother had never made his bed in his life. Collette sighed and smiled to herself. Oliver had been sitting up reading in their late mother’s parlor the night before, anxious about the wedding. If he wasn’t in bed, she assumed he had fallen asleep on the sofa in that room, in front of the fireplace.
“You’re going to be stiff this morning, little brother,” she said as she went back down the hall.
The house was quiet, dark, and quite chilly. At the top of the stairs she paused to turn up the heat, then started down. The foyer had a gentle gloom about it, the diffuse light of the pre-dawn sky giving her just enough illumination to see by. Collette turned left and went along the corridor into the south wing of the house, and to the room where only last night Oliver had expressed his doubts about marrying Julianna.
Her brother wasn’t there.
A frown creased her forehead deeply as she backed out of the room. Confused, she returned to the foyer and then stood a moment, looking first up the stairs and then at the front door, wondering where Oliver might have slept last night if not in his own bed or in the parlor.
It took a moment for her to realize that something in the corner of her eye had caught her attention. Then her frown deepened as she turned to stare at the coat closet beside the stairs. The door was ajar by several inches. She opened it the rest of the way and saw an empty wire hanger lying on the floor just inside, amongst a pile of boots and shoes. Several scarves and gloves had spilled from the top shelf and one long wool scarf trailed serpentine down from above. Another hanger was pulled out and hung at a strange angle. Someone had gone out in a hurry. An image rose in her mind, a memory of the night before, when she’d heard Oliver up and about and come out of her room, half asleep, to see him poking around in the closet.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “Oliver. ”
* * *
Morning came quickly over the Truce Road, the sun rising in the east with unsettling speed. The sky was a richer blue than Oliver had ever seen, and the flowers that grew wild in fields along the way seemed painted from a palette of colors so vivid that nature could never have created them. It was not so much that things did not seem real, but that they seemed too real. Better. Richer. Even the air smelled sweeter to him than any he had ever known. The sensation had existed for him since his passage through the Veil, but it had taken the arrival of morning for him to absorb it. Thoughts about Dorothy and the rainbow were inescapable, for the change from his mundane life to this extraordinary place was jarring. It was more than he had ever imagined, and everything he had hoped for.
But what’s that old saying? Be careful what you wish for. . . .
In all of his secret musings he had never wished to be hunted. The specter of the Myth Hunters hung over him as they continued on their journey, muting the astonishment he knew he ought to have felt at his surroundings. Now that morning had come, the threat seemed even more real. He wondered if this place beyond the Veil was truly as incredible as it seemed, or if it was simply the threat of imminent violence that made it seem so sharp, so vivid.
They had continued east through the forest and, as Frost had promised, soon come to its edge. Already the sky had begun to lighten and in that que
er gray early-morning light the Truce Road had been easy to make out. There was a gently sloping hill with tall grasses that swayed in the breeze, carrying the scents of growing things, and at the bottom of the hill, running north to south, had been the road. It was little more than a dirt track, barely wide enough for a single car, though he didn’t think there would be many cars on this side of the Veil. Carts, more likely. Buggies and carriages, drawn by horses, that sort of thing. Oliver had not bothered to confirm this suspicion with his companions, but he felt confident nevertheless. And the ruts in the road seemed to bear out his presumption.
Less than an hour had passed since they had come out of the forest and started their trek upon the Truce Road. As had been the case all along, Kitsune and Frost spoke intermittently, mostly in shorthand mutterings that he had listened to at first and then chosen to ignore. It was, he was disappointed to learn, the sort of conversation any two strangers might share. Where had they come from, what acquaintances did they have in common, where did they stand on the politics of the time. There were names of people and places that were unfamiliar to Oliver and though he tried at times to make sense of it, he found himself drifting away from the conversation even as he fell behind on the road.
He was an outsider. He did not belong here, but he had no other choice than to continue upon this path and pray that somehow it might be resolved.
The morning sun warmed the air and he thought it must have been nearly eighty degrees, but cloaked in her copper-red fur, Kitsune seemed unaware of the temperature. Several times while she spoke to Frost she glanced back at Oliver and caught him staring, and an indulgent smile touched her lips. Somehow her jade eyes gleamed from within even in direct sunlight.
For his part, the winter man was even less bothered by summer. The Truce Road was dusty and dry, but where Frost passed, his feet left moist, melting prints upon the earth. Oliver’s own tread kicked up small swirls of dust behind them, but Kitsune’s passing disturbed the road not at all.
Frost had been deeply suspicious of Kitsune upon their meeting, but there seemed a camaraderie now between the two Borderkind. It gave Oliver pause. She was no less beautiful by day than she had been at night, and he was no less taken with her, but as he hiked along behind them thinking mostly of his own mortality, of his chances of surviving to see another morning, he himself was less trustful of the mysterious woman.
They had something in common, the two Borderkind. Oliver was just tagging along, and with every step felt the truth of that with greater intensity.
“Let me ask you something,” he said, interrupting a conversation about someone or something called Gong Gong. Whatever the hell that was.
Kitsune glanced at him again, the fur cloak rippling on her as though it was knitted to her own skin. Even as she turned, the winter man looked as well— not at Oliver, but at her— and he realized that Frost had not lost his wariness of the green-eyed woman, but rather had hidden it. Oliver wasn’t certain if the feeling that rose in him then was relief or only deeper anxiety.
“What is it, Oliver?” the winter man asked. The sunshine gleamed on his icicle hair, throwing prismatic colors on the ground behind him. Other than his blue-white eyes, his body was nearly translucent.
Oliver dragged the back of his hand across the stubble on his chin and quickened his pace, coming up beside them. His hands moved as he spoke, a trait he’d picked up from his mother as a child.
“I understand that the other humans here, the Lost Ones as you call them, can’t go back because they’ve been touched by the Veil. And as long as I always cross over with you, or, I guess, with another Borderkind, that won’t happen to me. So I can go back, and by the laws of the Two Kingdoms that makes me an Intruder. So I’m a fugitive. ”
The Truce Road curved slightly and now they found themselves striding up a long incline.
“True enough, Oliver. The Lost Ones are people who are called here, or lured, like so many of the old Faerie tales. You must have read them. Some aren’t lured, but simply wander through the places where the Veil is thin or unstable. They are no threat to the Two Kingdoms because they can never go back. If the mundane world truly knew of our existence, believed in it, there’s no telling what would come of it. War, probably, or at the very least piracy and interference. We can’t have that. ”
“Fine, but why couldn’t I just lie?” Oliver said quickly. “I mean, I could just say I was one of the Lost, that I was lured here. It’d be halfway true anyway. All my life I dreamed of escaping to some other place, something—”
Kitsune did not look at him when she spoke, but instead gazed out over the field to the east, where rough terrain had replaced the tall grass and flowers they had passed earlier.
“Pretense would not deceive anyone for very long. The Lost Ones are touched by this place. Just to look at them is to know that they belong here. You do not. And even if Frost can disguise you, the Falconer has seen you, and has your scent. No, the word will go out that there is an Intruder among us and you will be hunted not only by the enemies of the Borderkind, but by the agents and marshals of the Two Kingdoms as well. ”
Oliver felt numb.
The winter man glanced sidelong at him. “None of us wants to die, my friend. You saved my life. I will do all I can to repay that debt, to keep you alive and return you to your home. ”
His stomach gave a sickening twist. “Once upon a time I would never have wanted to leave. ”
Kitsune turned only slightly, so that just the tip of her nose was visible poking from her hood as he studied her profile. “No journey is ever complete until we come back to the place we began. ”
They walked in silent contemplation of the danger they shared, trudging up the long, sloping hill. There were trees on either side of the road near the top, but they were scattered and small, with thin trunks and strangely contorted limbs. The turf here was all rocks and scrub grass, and those stunted-looking trees. Oliver thought he had once seen something like them in a dream, or a nightmare. In truth, the entire hill seemed familiar to him in that half-remembered way.