Fox and Birch (The Rowan Harbor Cycle Book 3)

by Sam Burns

  Communicating with Aldric didn’t seem to have helped, though at least it had made him feel better about what was happening. He didn’t think Aldric wanted to hurt him—the feeling of foreign magic had curled up and tried to segregate itself from him. He wasn’t hearing the whispers all the time, and he hadn’t dreamed of a past before his birth, or Hector MacKenzie.

  Maybe Aldric was just biding his time. He was more than a thousand years old; he knew how to be patient. Eventually, the witches of Rowan Harbor would come up with a way to remove him—or they wouldn’t. Maybe Aldric was waiting for them to fail, and then he would take Fletcher’s body, shoving him into a tiny ball in his own stomach, screaming to get back in control.

  The tight ball that was Aldric shifted and reached out, and Fletcher tensed.

  Danger? There was worry in the word, not hope.

  Fletcher shook his head. The events of the last month were making him paranoid. It probably didn’t help that Aldric seemed to be a fearful guy, and that pressed on Fletcher’s own buried fear. No. Everything is okay.

  Aldric seemed to accept the words, albeit hesitantly, and retreated once again.

  Oak was standing between their tree and Fletcher, on the side opposite the river. Instead of looking at him, though, they were staring off behind him, head cocked to one side. Fletcher stopped at turned around.

  Standing there, a few hundred yards behind him, was Conner. Fletcher’s stomach turned, and it wasn’t because of Aldric.

  Conner looked shaken. His hand twitched toward his shoulder holster, and Fletcher tensed, ready to make sure he was between Oak and any weapon. But instead of reaching for the weapon, the man held his hands out. “Fletcher, come over here. Slow as you can.”

  “Huh?” Fletcher asked. He felt like he was wading through honey; everything was moving slowly, and yet his brain was struggling to catch up.

  “Over here. Come, come away from the—” Conner moved his chin a fraction, indicating Oak.

  “He appears to be concerned for your safety,” Oak said, voice not betraying anything more than their usual serene interest. “It is not my intention to injure Fletcher Lane, stranger. You need not fear for him.”

  Conner stared at the two of them for a moment, and Fletcher saw realization dawn in his eyes. Judgment didn’t follow, but confusion. “Fletcher, you shouldn’t—you don’t understand—” But the man broke off without finishing the sentence.

  “You don’t think that they’re going to hurt me,” Fletcher said, giving Connor his best arrogant cop impression, pursing his lips and raising an eyebrow. He hoped it covered the terror rolling through him, adrenaline spiking as though he was in any position to fight or run away, but he suspected he wasn’t fooling anyone.

  Connor didn’t seem to notice, looking around nervously as though he expected more dryads to appear from nowhere. “They?”

  Fletcher let out a laugh at that. He waved his hand over his shoulder toward Oak. “They. Oak.”

  “Fletcher, it—”

  “They,” Fletcher said again, stressing the syllable. “I may not have a college degree, but ‘it’ means a thing. Oak is alive and sentient. Oak is a they, not an it.”

  For a second, Conner continued to look confused, but he nodded. “Okay. They. Please come away from . . . them?”

  Fletcher turned to Oak and found them standing right behind him. He jumped. “Jeez, Oak, way to scare a guy.” He pointed at Conner. “He already thinks you’re evil. You think maybe sneaking up behind me was a bad idea?”

  “I did not sneak,” Oak protested, cocking their head and looking up at Conner. “You watched me walk to Fletcher Lane. There was no need to sneak. I would not injure him or any other. Is that not what humans mean when they say evil? That a creature intends harm to others?”

  Deliberately, Fletcher reached out and laid a hand on Oak’s shoulder. “Yeah, that’s what evil is supposed to mean. But you remember how we were talking about men who were afraid? They don’t always do things that make sense.”

  Oak nodded and ran a hand down their burned leg. “You are correct, of course. Fearful men react with violence.” They turned to look at Conner and then Fletcher again. “You must be careful, Fletcher Lane. If he is afraid, he may do you harm.”

  “I’ll be okay, I promise.” He looked back at Conner, who was holding a hand to his head and blinking, like he was dizzy, or possibly having a stroke. Not good. “I need to go, though. I’ll come back, hopefully sometime when I’m not being followed.”

  Oak gave him an indulgent smile. “I look forward to that.”

  Fletcher turned and jogged over to Conner, who was still standing motionless, staring at Oak, who had turned to walk away. He felt a surge of protectiveness, watching the dryad’s hitching glide, perfection marred by long-ago men who had feared what they didn’t understand and tried to burn Oak. Fletcher had never asked Oak how they’d survived that. He’d never wondered before. He’d never been afraid that it might happen again.

  “Oak is good,” he said, with as much force as he could put in his voice. “They’re innocent and good, and I won’t let anyone hurt them.”

  Conner turned to him, his eyes still confused, but also at least a little fascinated. “It—they’re a tree. A walking, talking tree. Like a—an ent? Like freaking Lord of the Rings?”

  “Never read it,” Fletcher said with a shrug. “But yeah. They’re a tree. A dryad.”

  “Is that why everyone in town hates us so much? They’re afraid we’re going to—” He waved off into the woods. “Are there more of them?”

  “My understanding is that they’re rare, but there are dryads all over the world.” Fletcher stepped between Conner and where Oak had been, trying to get the man’s attention back on him. “Oak is one of us. Part of our town. Hurt them, and you hurt us.”

  “Everyone in town knows?”

  “Yes,” Fletcher answered, then he stopped and reconsidered. “Well, maybe. It’s a small town, but it’s still thousands of people. There could be people who don’t know.”

  Conner’s gaze locked on Fletcher, brows drawn together. “You know.” When Fletcher didn’t respond, he huffed. “You know about White. You know he’s a vampire.”

  Fletcher’s jaw clenched. “Yes. I suppose that’s why you’re really looking for him, not because there was a murder.”

  “What? No. No, he killed a girl in Idaho in December. Frank called me in after that, and the three of us tracked him from there to here. Why would you think he didn’t kill anyone?”

  That was where Fletcher’s position got sticky. He liked what little he knew of Conner. He wanted to trust him. But he couldn’t trust a near stranger who admitted that he hunted the supernatural with the whole town’s safety. “You assumed Oak would hurt me. Why wouldn’t you believe all vampires are killers, with or without evidence?”

  Conner frowned at that. “You think we’d spend all this time looking for a vampire who hadn’t killed people? Is that even possible?”

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” Fletcher said, and the sound echoed off the trees, making birds take flight from nearby branches. He lowered his voice and continued. “You don’t even believe there are vampires who don’t kill people.”

  “You do?”

  There was the mentality Fletcher had been expecting from the beginning. His fists clenched and unclenched, and he thought of Cassidy, and how she’d visited Isla in the hospital every night for two weeks. “Don’t you think if vampires went around draining people of blood all the time, they’d be more than a myth about things that go bump in the night? There’d be bodies drained of blood turning up in every city. People would know about them.”

  “You think there are a lot of vampires out there,” Conner said. His tone made it sound like an observation rather than an accusation, so Fletcher tried to take a deep breath and speak calmly.

  “Vampires can make other vampires, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And do you think, with that abili
ty, they haven’t made more than a few, if only to have other vampires to spend their lives with? I can’t think of many things that would suck more than being immortal and surrounded by mortals.” He hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it, but every now and then he looked at how close Max and Cassidy were, and was reminded that the two of them had watched generations of Harborites be born, age, and die. It wasn’t the kind of life he wanted to live.

  Conner seemed to consider that. In fact, Conner seemed to be taking everything Fletcher said seriously. And he was listening instead of going after Oak with kerosene and a lighter. The realization made Fletcher calm a little.

  “You’re not a vampire, are you?” Conner asked, biting his lip and looking nervous.

  Fletcher sighed. “If I am, will you try to kill me?”

  Instead of answering, Conner stopped and thought about it, and Fletcher wasn’t sure whether that was reassuring or annoying. “We’d have to have a long talk about it. Being a vampire’s not like being a tree. Trees don’t eat people at all, that I know of.”

  He thought about joking that Conner didn’t know that, but if the man was going to accept that Oak wasn’t a danger, he would keep his damn mouth shut. “I’m not a vampire.” He held out his wrist. “Feel free to check for a pulse. Or do vampires have a pulse?”

  Conner quirked an eyebrow. “I thought you knew all about vampires?”

  “I’m not an expert. And I damn well didn’t check White for a pulse. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him.”

  “So you believe that he killed a girl?” Conner asked.

  Fletcher nodded, not an ounce of hesitation in him. He was sure Solomon White had killed many people in his century of existence.

  “And the police reports on him? Did you leave out—”

  “The reports were accurate,” Fletcher told him, scowling, because how dare the man suggest that he falsified his reports? The scowl slipped a little when he admitted to himself that they had done exactly that. “We think he was trying to bite the guy on the pier. Don’t know why he didn’t feed on the other victim.”

  That was still true, he told himself stubbornly, even if it was only half of the truth. But he couldn’t tell Conner everything. Most of those secrets weren’t his to tell, and he still didn’t know how the man would react. The council vetted outsiders before inviting them to take jobs in the Harbor, and Fletcher was hesitant to trust even those people. He would be an idiot to trust Conner. He’d come into town with murderers; he was dangerous.

  “There’s more,” Conner prompted.

  Fletcher nodded. “Yeah.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me about it.”

  “Where are your friends?” They both looked around after Fletcher asked the question, as though asking would summon them.

  Conner shook his head and turned back to him. “They drove up to Portland. Bob was making noises about not trusting your doctor to have set his arm right, so Frank took him. I wanted to stay here and keep working.”

  Not bothering to hide his annoyance, Fletcher pursed his lips. “And working was following me around.”

  “No!” Conner shook his head and took Fletcher’s hand, freezing and dropping it when he realized what he’d done. “I just—I saw you heading into the woods, and I thought I’d stop you and thank you again for helping us yesterday. But by the time I caught up—” He shrugged helplessly.

  It was kind of hard to fault him for wanting to be nice. Aldric gave a little buzz of concern. He still didn’t trust Conner at all. Fletcher was in the unenviable position of hoping he could trust both, but not being sure about either.

  Conner sighed. “In case I’ve somehow been less obvious than I think, I like you. You’re ridiculously good looking, and you seem to be a nice guy. Mostly, I was looking for an excuse to talk to you. I know, you said you’re not interested in a temporary thing. I’m not trying to talk you into one. I—I only wanted to get to know you better.”

  “Are you going to tell your friends about Oak?” Fletcher asked, trying to keep to business at least until he’d extracted a promise on Oak’s behalf.

  Again, Conner was quiet for a while, biting his lip. He looked conflicted, but Fletcher refused to feel guilty about asking for his silence. Finally, the man sighed and opened his mouth. “It might help if they knew why the town hated us. And your—Oak might be able to tell us if, um, if they’ve seen White.”

  “They haven’t,” Fletcher told him too fast. “Why do you think he’s still in Rowan Harbor? We’ve told you he’s not. I know he’s not.”

  “Because of the car?” Conner asked. “Because I get it, and that makes sense, but if he wanted you to think he’d left, isn’t that what he’d do?”

  “Why would he want us to think he left instead of just leaving?”

  Conner looked to one side and then the other, like he was about to impart a secret, and didn’t want anyone overhearing. Since they were still in the middle of the woods, it was odd. “I think Frank has been looking for White longer than he’s admitted. He brought me in after the girl died, but he talks like he knows a lot about White.”

  “And you don’t think that’s suspicious?” Fletcher asked, because for someone in Conner’s line of work, that sounded incredibly naive.

  Conner stopped walking and leaned against a tree, looking at the ground. “My father used to work with Frank. They were friends. He’s always been a little secretive and weird, but he’s good at what he does.”

  Without thinking about it, Fletcher closed the distance between them, getting into Conner’s space but stopping and crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re vigilantes. That’s bad enough without being ‘secretive and weird,’ don’t you think?”

  “We’re protecting people!”

  “You kill people!”

  Conner reared back like Fletcher had slapped him, almost hitting his head on the tree behind him. “I would never—”

  “No, of course not.” Fletcher shook his head and pulled his coat off. He shoved it at the man, who looked confused, but took it. “You’re the good guys, right?”

  “We’re—”

  Fetcher didn’t let him get a full word out before interrupting. “You’re only killing the people who don’t fit your definition of ‘people.’ They don’t matter, so why would their deaths bother anyone?” He kicked his shoes off at Conner’s feet, then yanked his shirt over his head and threw it on top of his coat.

  Conner didn’t even try to talk. Fletcher noticed the way the man’s eyes roved over him, filled with a combination of concern and curiosity. Not anger, strangely. Well, Fletcher was about to change that.

  He’d stripped in front of people before, in the high school locker room or the gym, but his ears burned a little at getting naked in front of Conner, whom he knew was interested in what he was seeing. Again, though, that was about to change. Fletcher pulled his sweats and briefs off and pressed them into the pile. He was grateful he hadn’t worn socks; the extra time to take them off would have been more than he wanted to deal with. Plus, it was freaking cold outside without the benefit of clothing or fur.

  “You want to know why this town hates you, Conner? They’re not trying to protect Oak—they’re trying to protect me. Because your friend Bob murdered my mother. And you know why? Not because she killed a girl in Idaho. My mother wouldn’t even kill spiders. No, your friend murdered my mother because she could do this.”

  He closed his eyes and reached for the switch in his head. For a second, he worried that Aldric’s magic had taken over, and he’d just be standing there like a naked idiot in the woods in January. But then he thought of learning focus with Oak, holding somewhere near the change without changing, how it felt to make the change. The transition was easier than it had ever been before, and so fast that his feet were almost pulled from the ground when his mass changed, but the position of its center didn’t.

  He looked up at Conner, who was hugging his clothes tight, staring down at him in shock. He barked at
Conner—that thready, sharp, fox bark—and promptly turned and ran away.

  What the hell had he been thinking? He’d covered for the town, at least. If they were just protecting him, it didn’t imply that they were also supernatural. And it hadn’t been a lie at all. The town might have their own secrets, but the thing that had made them close ranks and freeze out the killers was their loyalty to the Lane family.

  Before he even knew where he was running, he slunk in the dog door his father had installed on the back door when they’d first moved into the old house. He could tell by scent that his father wasn’t home. At the clinic working, probably. But that was okay, because he hadn’t wanted to bother his dad. He’d just needed . . .

  He climbed up on his father’s recliner, where the scent of the man, and cookies, and spiced apple cider were strong, curled up, and slept.

  Fletcher dreamed of fire. Of the crackling of flames that he wished would drown out the sound of screaming. Of dragging his unconscious father through a tiny window in the RV, his burned skin peeling off as Fletcher pulled, but the man himself making no noise. Of being terrified that the silence meant his father was dead, but shamefully relieved that even if he was, at least his father wasn’t giving them away to the men standing on the other side of what had once been his home. He barely heard them talking over the roar of the fire in his ears, but he was convinced that the tiniest noise would end with their discovery.

  “We better get moving,” a now all-too-familiar voice called, then gave a phlegmatic cough. “Somebody musta called the cops by now.”

  “See you in Missouri,” a deeper voice answered; the man Fletcher couldn’t put a face to, even in his nightmares. He was younger, and he had darker hair. He wasn’t Conner, though, Fletcher was sure of that.