by P. R. Frost
“Wrong time of year for Christmas colors, guys. If only you were garden gnomes blowing around in the wind,” I said out loud. Some of their black blood had landed on my parka and was eating away at it like acid. Hopefully, the blood wouldn’t manage to work its way through both the parka and the blanket the girl was wrapped in.
Mom’s garden club had sold lawn monuments to bad taste as a fund-raiser a year ago. Because of the political prominence of a number of the club members, everyone on tasteful Cape Cod had a dozen of the tacky things on display.
“At least Dill’s disappeared,” I subvocalized, hoping Scrap would hear my mutterings better than my mental voice. I didn’t need my husband’s acerbic comments at the moment.
But, Goddess, I missed him.
“Not so lucky, lovey. I’m right behind you.”
“Well, stay there. Out of the way.” Again with the barely audible grunts.
“Your ghost isn’t warm. He’s colder than cold,” the girl said. For a brief moment her eyes cleared, and she looked almost alert.
How come she could see Dill? Allie couldn’t. Or, if she did, she didn’t acknowledge that she could see a ghost.
“Don’t move about so much. You don’t have a seat belt on,” I replied.
“Seat belts aren’t groovy. They restrict our freedoms.”
Both Allie and I rolled our eyes at that one.
“She has a point,” Dill added. “People should have the choice to die or not.”
“Why don’t you go back to whatever ever after you came from?” I muttered, louder than I’d intended.
“Don’t be rude,” Allie admonished me. She must think I spoke to the girl.
“Love to move on to the ever after, lovey, but I’m stuck in limbo until you and I are truly united forever,” Dill said.
“Not in this lifetime,” I mouthed.
“That’s what I mean.” I didn’t have to see his grin in the rearview mirror—couldn’t see him at all in the mirror— but I knew it was there.
“I didn’t come from the ever after, I came from Paradise, ” the girl whispered. “I want to go back.”
“Looks like you got kicked out of Paradise, kid. If I remember my folklore right . . .” And I did. “Wrong time of year for easy passage between dimensions for humans. You need the solstice and a massive ritual for that,” I told her, trying to figure out what was going on.
Something, an old story, tickled my mind then vanished.
“Kicked out of Paradise?” Allie repeated. She pulled on her earlobe again, thinking hard.
I grabbed her hand. “You’ll end up like Carol Burnett with a long and drooping lobe,” I chided her.
We grinned at each other.
I proceeded forward at a crawl that seemed break-neck on the snow and frozen ruts.
Try All Hallows Eve for dimension moving, Scrap chimed in. He popped into view leaning on the dashboard, feet braced against the center console, one wing folded neatly around his shoulders. The other wing canted at a strange angle. It looked like it hurt. He looked more faded and washed out than usual. The aftermath of a fight without a full dose of mold or, lacking that, beer and orange juice to restore him. If he started to glow pink, I needed to be wary. When he got full red, we’d both need him to transform into the Celestial Blade.
Not likely to happen for a while, until he recovered. Not to worry, babe. I found a stash of mold along the upstairs bathroom floor trim.
About time you got back from kissing the ass of that golden weasel you worship, imp. There’s more trouble brewing. I had no idea if that was where he’d been. But he was always on me to believe in something, anything. Lots of Gods and Goddesses out there.
Yeah. Right.
I caught a flash of a little being pacing me on the left. Green cap and tunic. Yellow leggings and pointy shoes. The cheap plastic statues that littered the Cape were just that—cheap. Their colors had faded in the long harsh winter. This guy was impossibly bright.
Same for the red one on the other side.
Greenie grinned at me with a mouth full of far too many dagger-shaped teeth. Three rows of them up and down. The flare of warning along my spine became full fledged ripples of alarm.
“You see that, Allie?”
“See what?” All her attention was on the girl in the back.
On it, dahling, Scrap said. By the way, that bulky sweater over jeans is so not you. Black may be classic, like this car, but it drains the color from your face. You need the teal cashmere sweater Dad gave you for Christmas and a lavender turtleneck—silk, I think—in this weather. Such a nice insulator silk is. He disappeared with only a little whoosh of displaced air.
“I’ll worry about my fashion sense later. Tell me about the garden gnomes, one right, one left.”
Allie turned pale.
That told me a lot.
“Pretty little imp,” the girl crooned. She reached a bare arm out of my parka to grasp a handful of air where Scrap had been.
“What’s she talking about?” Allie asked.
“She’s hallucinating.” No one but me, or another Warrior of the Celestial Blade should be able to see him. And most of the warriors were locked up tight in their Citadels. I was the only reject on the loose that I knew about.
They’d have taken Scrap from me if they could when they kicked me out. But our bond was too deep. Metaphysical ties knotted and tangled us together for life.
I took my eyes off the road for half a second to stare at the girl. An icy rut grabbed my tire and swerved me toward the curb and a parked car.
Cautiously, I corrected before my tires skidded and I totally lost control.
The two escapees from the trailer park say they came for the girl, Scrap said, popping back into view and chomping on a black cherry cheroot. Out of respect for Mom, he never smoked in her car. They say they’ll take down anyone who stands in their way. We’re on the hit list now, babe.
I tensed my shoulders and clenched my hands tighter on the steering wheel.
“Don’t let them take me back,” whispered the girl. “They’re mean and they hurt me.”
“No one’s going to hurt you, honey,” Allie reassured her. “We’ll take care of you.”
“What’s this we business?” I raised my eyebrows at Allie. “I’m going to Mexico, just as soon as I e-mail the rest of my book to my editor.”
I didn’t think the Windago could find me on a sunny beach south of the border.
Ahead I saw the blaring red neon arrows pointing to the ER. Two more blocks. Get the girl safely inside, then I could get on with my normal life. In my head I made vacation plans.
I slid into the covered entry of the ER. Allie stashed the broadsword beneath her seat and hopped out before I came to a complete halt. Using the authority of her uniform, as well as her intimidating size, she grabbed two orderlies and a gurney.
Gratefully, I let them ease my passenger into the welcome warmth of the ER. I retrieved my jacket the second they covered the girl with another blanket. Then I followed, keeping my eyes and other senses open and wary. Scrap hovered above my head and off to my right, stubby wings and wide ears flapping. (The left wing was still drooping unnaturally. Where had he been playing? Or rather who had he been playing with?) His pug nose worked overtime seeking hints of demon blood. Shades of pink outlined his edges. He’d lost the cigar, ready to work his magic.
The moment the automatic doors whooshed shut behind me the warning flares across my back soothed.
Hospitals are sacred. We’re safe here. Scrap paled and dropped back to his normal pudgy grayish-green form. He flapped his wings once and landed on my shoulder, as substantial as dandelion fluff.
The kid had mentioned dandelion fluff when I asked her for a name. Now the admissions people were asking her the same question.
“Names have meaning only to the person owning them,” she said on a breathy sigh.
Allie looked at me and tsked in disgust. “Want to get your aunt down here? Maybe she can make sen
se of this.
“Not yet,” I replied. "Stow the New Age crap and give it to me straight, lady. What’s your name?” I ordered the girl. I’d learned long ago, when I made my living as a substitute teacher, that sometimes kids will only respond to direct commands snapped in an authoritative voice.
"WindScribe.” Her eyes rolled up into her head and she lost consciousness.
Allie choked.
“What?”
“Weirdest story ever to come out of the cold case files. We pass it around the station about once a year.” She swallowed heavily. “Twenty-eight years ago, about the time you and I were born, twelve women from the same Wiccan coven disappeared. All on the same night. No trace of them ever found. We presume they ran away to California where witchcraft is more acceptable. But the case file is still open.”
There went that flare of warning up my spine again.
Chapter 5
It was once believed that the Moon was a gem worn by the Goddess, and that the stars were decorations upon Her Gown.
"TWELVE WICCA WOMEN?” I thought I knew where this story was going. No one on Cape Cod talked about it much, but kids whispered it around the campfire when they wanted to scare the youngest members of the scout troop.
“A Wiccan coven celebrating the sabbat of summer solstice,” Allie added.
I caught a glimpse of the red-and-green gnomes peering in through the glass doors.
“A coven has thirteen members. MoonFeather says the rituals always need thirteen,” I insisted, ignoring Dill. Maybe he’d go away.
Part of me hoped he wouldn’t.
“But that night MoonFeather didn’t attend. It was her coven,” Allie said. “Her father—your grandfather— locked her in her room and tried to get the family priest to perform an exorcism on her, to cure her of her devilish ways. She missed the sabbat, so only twelve were there. Only twelve went missing.”
“And WindScribe here was one of those women.” Hard to believe, she looked so vulnerable, innocent, and young. Way too young to have gone missing thirty years ago.
Time is just another dimension, babe, Scrap mumbled around his black cherry cheroot. Those who know how to manipulate it can flit hither, thither, and yon in a single night while decades pass in their home dimension.
“Rip Van Winkle in drag. Times twelve,” I said. “I think my vacation in Mexico just vanished into Neverland when it dumped this broad in my lap.”
The sounds of coughing, hacking, retching, moaning, and crying filled the ER lobby. The cold weather took its toll on the health of the community. With disease and accidents.
The place was full to overflowing.
“I’m going home,” I told Allie. If I was on anyone’s hit list, I wanted to fight on my own turf. Without an audience or endangering bystanders.
“Not yet you don’t.” Allie grabbed my arm and steered me toward the desk. “I want your statement, in writing. Before my boss gets here.”
“But I wasn’t there. I didn’t see her appear.”
Allie bit her lip. “But you heard her talk about paradise and flowers. You saw that she was naked. You heard her say her name. You made those garish apparitions bleed. Who’s going to explain the blood?”
“Um . . . Allie, is this a good idea? Can’t we just put the whole thing in the X-files or the UFO folder or whatever you call it?”
“No. I was there. I saw something really strange, and I want explanations.” She stood between me and the door.
The gnomes continued making faces at me from the other side of the glass. They also shook their tiny fists and bared their rows and rows of teeth.
“Come on, Allie, what am I going to put into that report? That you told me you saw a beautiful blonde step out of nothing directly into the path of your car and that she claims to be a witch who disappeared thirty years ago but hasn’t aged a day? That the garden gnomes that litter the Cape came to life and tried to chew through your bright and shiny new cruiser to get to that girl. If I wrote that anywhere but as fiction, we’d both be laughed off the Cape. Or into the loony bin.”
“I’ve got to have something to tell my boss.”
Anything resembling the truth was suspect.
“Coffee. I need caffeine before I can think this through.” I jerked away from her in search of the cafeteria, or (shudder) a vending machine. “The Pacific Northwest has great coffee on every corner, and I bet the weather behaves itself, too,” I grumbled. Dill’s folks lived in Oregon. Maybe I could take refuge there from the Windago and garden gnomes with teeth.
Not a great idea. My in-laws were weirder and more suspect than Dill’s ghost.
Allie followed me to the cafeteria where they had an espresso machine. Over hazelnut lattes we tried to find a way out of the dilemma.
“They call hazelnuts filberts in Oregon,” I said, still daydreaming of a refuge elsewhere.
Then Joe Halohan, Chief Constable for our township, wandered in. “Thought I’d find you two in here.” He pulled a chair up to our miniscule table and straddled it. He draped his portly frame over the back, chewing on a toothpick. “Care to give me a saner explanation than the doctor and the naked woman did?” He raised bushy gray eyebrows at us both.
“Can’t find anything saner, sir,” Allie reported.
“Then until you do, I suggest our novelist here takes the fictional character in hand.” He heaved himself off the chair, the matter concluded.
“What does that mean?” I snapped at him.
“Very simple. The hospital doesn’t have any spare beds. The jail is full, too, with all the bums we’ve pulled off the streets to keep them from freezing to death. There is nothing visibly wrong with the woman who calls herself WindScribe. Someone has to take her in. Until the FBI gets here. I elect you, Tess.”
“FBI?” I gulped.
“A cold case of kidnapping warming up. It’s their jurisdiction. ”
“But . . .”
“No buts about it. Either take her in, or find a logical explanation for where she came from, who she is, and why she’s totally naked in subfreezing weather.” This time he escaped me.
“Shit.”
“You don’t have to do this, Tess.” Allie didn’t look convinced.
“He’s right. Who better than me? I’ve got that big rambling house that used to be a bed and breakfast. I just finished a book, so I’m not on deadline. I only have to e-mail the last four chapters as soon as I get power and phone lines back. And I’ve got MoonFeather to help us untangle this. Come on. Let’s take WindScribe home. The sooner we get answers, the sooner I can take off for vacation in warmer weather.” I needed at least a couple of days to make reservations and pack. And do laundry, check my stacks of unopened mail, take out the garbage, and wash four days of accumulated dishes before I could leave.
Then I was outta here.
If the gnomes let me.
An hour later, I zipped up my parka and huddled into it a moment. A bewildered WindScribe sat beside me in the car clutching a little white paper bag with two vials of tranquilizers. She huddled into a hospital blanket draped around her hospital gown and robe.