"If you'll excuse us..." Gabriel said, waving me to the door.
I grabbed things and squeezed past Ida and Walter with a quick, "Hey, how's it going? Sorry to run. Gotta pick up a hound."
"A what?" Ida said, following me down the front steps.
"Hound. Cwn. Ricky's. With him away in Miami, she's not eating, so I'm bringing her here." I walked backward. "That's okay, right?"
She gave me a look. A cwn in Cainsville meant a spy in enemy territory.
"We could do an exchange," I said. "Make Ioan take one of Cainsville's owls. Or a gargoyle. I could insist that Ioan prop one up by his door to keep an eye on him while I have Lloergan here. They're stonework spies, right?"
"There's no point in fishing regarding the gargoyles," Ida said. "We will be very happy to explain everything...as soon as you lift the terms of our agreement."
"Oh, fine. One last thing," I said. "If a woman shows up claiming to be Seanna Walsh, can you give her something to drink? Whatever it is you guys use to send someone into permanent la-la land. That'd be swell."
"Seanna--? Did you say Seanna Walsh?"
"Gotta run," I said, hopping into the car before she could reply.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ioan wasn't thrilled when I showed up with Gabriel in tow. He was gracious enough, though, having learned that anything else makes me surly. Gabriel, Ricky, and I fight against our roles as pawns by sticking together. That's where the original three failed. We will not repeat their mistakes.
On the return drive to Cainsville, I sat in the back with Lloergan. Under her mostly, given her size. I had a bag of her food, and she was taking pieces from me. As she ate, I rubbed her good ear. The other is little more than a ragged stump, and she's partially blind in one eye, old injuries from an attack that killed the rest of her pack.
After that attack, Lloergan had been found by a twisted bastard who didn't deserve the name of Huntsman. He'd helped her recover from her injuries...but only so she could serve him. When we took his hound, he'd fled to parts unknown.
All of that left Lloergan a bit of a mess, maimed from the attack and suffering from years of psychological abuse. She was improving, though. Her coat gleamed. Her ribs no longer showed. Perhaps more importantly, she didn't cower before the Huntsmen and their hounds. Her psychic bond with the Cwn Annwn had been severed in the attack, but we'd seen hints of it re-forming with both Ricky and me.
Gabriel drove along a back road. Snow had begun to fall, and people hadn't yet remembered how to drive in winter, so it was safer staying off the highway.
As I traced a flake down the side window, I said, "Solstice, right?"
"Hmm?"
"Cainsville celebrates Solstice, not Christmas."
"They acknowledge Christmas. They decorate the trees and whatnot, but yes, Solstice is the big day. Or night, as it were."
"And you'll show me your gargoyle then?"
He gave an uncharacteristic, "What?"
"You found your last gargoyle on Solstice. That's the only time it appears. With that, you won the contest and had a gargoyle made in your likeness. Ergo, you'll show yours to me on Solstice night."
"I fail to follow the logic of that explanation."
"It's Liv-logic. I've decided that's what I want for my Solstice gift. To see your gargoyle."
"I don't believe anyone said anything about a Solstice gift."
Lloergan growled.
"Be nice," I said to Gabriel. "You're upsetting the puppy."
"That 'puppy' is nearly as big as me."
Another growl.
"Careful," I said. "You might be bigger, but her teeth are a lot sharper. You--"
Lloe scrambled up, growling and snapping.
"Whoa, girl! Down!"
A shape darted onto the road ahead.
"Gabri--!" I began.
He'd already hit the brakes. The car went into a slide, the road slick with new snow. I wrapped my arms around Lloergan and braced for impact. A thunk as the car went off the road. Then the clatter of wet gravel hitting the underside. A crack, and a jolt slammed me back in my seat, Lloergan scrambling, her nails digging into my leg.
One moment of absolute silence.
Then, "Olivia?" A pause and the clack of a seat belt. "Olivia?"
"I'm fine," I said, my voice muffled. "Just buried under a hundred and fifty pounds of fur. Lloe? Are you--?"
A very cold nose snuffled my neck, and her nails clawed my legs as she tried to stand on my lap.
"Oww..." I said.
More snuffling, now with an edge of worry.
"I'm fine, girl," I said. "You make a wonderful air bag, but can you please get--"
The door opened, and Gabriel tugged Lloe out. I started to follow, but he insisted on a quick once-over--does anything hurt? how's your neck?--before setting me free.
I wobbled from the car, and I was sure I'd be stiff in the morning, but otherwise I seemed fine.
The car had slid onto the shoulder and struck a rock. It wasn't a big rock. Just enough to stop the Jag and set off the air bags, which left the car non-drivable.
"You'll need to call for a tow," I said.
He took out his cell phone. "No service."
"Naturally." I checked mine. "Same."
"I should hope so, considering we're with the same provider--the one Ricky set us up with. Which I've noticed has substandard coverage. I'm sure it has unlimited texts and calling, which is a benefit...to you two."
"Um, the guy replaced our ruined cell phones after we both almost drowned, and you're complaining?"
"No." He looked at his phone again. "Not exactly."
"Get a new provider if you don't like that one. Right now, we have a disabled car in the middle of nowhere. On an empty road. With a winter storm whipping up. Can you see any sign of..." I squinted against the endless white. "Anything?"
"No."
"All right. Come on, Lloe. We're going for a walk."
She sat on the roadside.
"Yes, I know," I said. "It's snowing. It's cold. You haven't eaten enough to 'need' a walk. But we really don't have a choice."
She lay down.
"Lloergan," Gabriel said firmly. "We are leaving. If you wish to remain here, you may." He opened the door. "It will be warmer in there. I'll turn on the emergency flashers."
"How much of that do you think she understands?"
His look said it didn't matter--the point was that he had explained, and if she lacked the mental capacity to comprehend, that was hardly his fault.
I waved Lloergan toward the open car door. "Go on. We won't be long."
She laid her head on her paws. Gabriel closed the door and started walking away. Lloe rose, growling.
"I think she's telling us not to leave," I said. "She did warn us that something was about to run across the road. Did you see what it was?"
Gabriel looked around as if--like me--he'd forgotten all about the cause of the accident.
"I presumed a deer," he said, "but I couldn't tell."
"This strikes me as a little too familiar."
"If you mean the last time we were run off the road, I believe you'd swerved to avoid one of those." He waved at Lloergan.
"Yes, but that didn't cause me to drive your car off the embankment." The hound had been a warning, one that came too late for me to avoid getting run off the road by a killer.
I continued, "Something darted in front of the car after Lloergan warned us. It disappeared, but not before we went off the shoulder. Now we're stranded on an empty road in a snowstorm, forced to go looking for help."
"An omen, then. We're supposed to search for something."
"Or it's a trap. But the possibility we're stranded here by accident is about zero."
He peered into the falling snow. Then he turned to the hound. "If there's something out there that bothers you, this car isn't going to protect us. We need to find out what it is."
Lloergan grumbled and glowered at Gabriel. She walked over and nudged his leg, n
one too gently, as if to say, Well, get on with it, then. It's your funeral.
As we headed down the road, I said, "What's the last movie we saw together?"
"We've never seen one together."
"Last one you saw?"
Silence, as he struggled to remember.
"Good enough," I said, and he nodded. He knew I was trying to determine whether this might be a vision, and I was zoned out in the Jag's backseat as it roared along.
I shoved my hands into my pockets. We hadn't officially hit winter yet, so I'd still been dressing for fall, expecting to spend maybe five minutes outside. My cropped leather jacket was more fashionable than practical. Same went for my footwear: Louboutin ankle boots with three-inch heels, which threatened to slide out from under me with each step.
Gabriel kept pulling ahead and then having to slow for me. When I got a particularly severe look, I broke into a jog...and landed on my ass.
Gabriel put out his hand to help me up, but I motioned for him to wait, gritting my teeth against the pain throbbing through my tailbone. Lloergan nudged me and whined concern.
Gabriel glanced at my footwear. "Aren't those boots?"
"Technically, yes. But for women, boots do not necessarily mean winter wear."
I took his hand and he tugged me up, saying, "You're freezing."
"I'll be fine."
He started taking off his coat.
"No, seriously, I'm fine and that would just weigh me down. We must be getting close to a farmhouse or something." As if on cue, the snow cleared enough for us to spot a laneway. "There. Now let's just hope someone's home."
His look said that was inconsequential. Locked doors don't stop Gabriel. As a teen, he'd survived on the streets using the only thing Seanna ever gave him: her talent for pickpocketing and burglary.
Gabriel patted his pockets and handed me a pair of gloves, which he apparently hadn't been bothering to wear himself. Then he said, "We'll walk slower," and put his arm around my shoulders. I wasn't sure if that was meant to keep me steady or warm, but I appreciated the gesture. Lloergan moved to my other side, sticking close enough to block the wind.
The snow whipped up, driving hard now, and we had to trudge, our gazes fixed on the gravel driveway, as we walked between twin rows of overgrown shrubs. The lane seemed to go on forever. Then those shrubs vanished, but there was still gravel under our feet, with weeds poking through the dirt and stones.
When something rose in our path, Gabriel yanked me back. It was a car rim with a metal pole sticking out of the center. Coated wire ran from the pole to a destination hidden by the snowfall. I put one gloved hand on the wire and followed it to another car rim and post.
"We're in a parking lot," I said. "These are row markers."
I called, "Hello!" and my voice echoed. "Hmm. Empty parking lot. Weed-choked gravel. That isn't very promising."
I checked my cell again. Still no signal. Lloergan nudged my hand. I crouched beside her.
"Any ideas?" I said.
She stared across the lot. When I squinted, I could make out dark shapes behind the curtain of snow. Lloergan took a deep snuffling breath and snorted, condensation puffing from her nostrils. Then she cautiously started forward. I did the same and nearly bashed into a sign--a wooden one, shaped like an arrow with peeling white paint and multicolored letters reading "Tickets!"
We changed course slightly, and after about a dozen paces we stepped onto concrete. Gardens bordered the walkway, the bushes gnarled, beds blanketed with dead weeds. When a giant rainbow appeared overhead, I stopped short. Then I realized it was a wooden arch, painted as a rainbow.
"Curiouser and curiouser," I said.
At eye level, a crooked sign read, "You're almost there!" Below it, a downward-pointing arrow proclaimed, "This way for fun and adventure!"
Gabriel straightened the sign so it pointed forward.
"Well, that makes more sense," I said.
I took another step, and my boot slid on the snow-slick concrete. Lloergan saved me the humiliation of another pratfall, as I fell against her. Gabriel tried to get a grip on my snow-covered jacket. I reached for his hand instead. He didn't hesitate, just took it, his fingers engulfing mine.
I looked up, the midday sun blazing through the light snowfall as it lit the scene ahead.
A row of booths stretched across the walkway. On the asphalt, multicolored painted arrows divided the crowd to funnel it through ticket booths. Each booth had been painted a garish primary color. Now that paint had peeled, leaving tiny speckled buildings, the Plexiglas scratched with hearts and obscenities.
Leering from the top of each booth was what had once been a clown head. But now, between the peeling paint and the vandalism, that row of grinning clowns looked like an army of escapees from a leper colony.
"Oh! It's Funland!" I said. "My dad brought me here once when I was little. It was terrible." I called, "Sorry!" as if to ghosts of employees past. "It was a cute little amusement park, just not really..."
"Your speed?" Gabriel said.
"Exactly."
My Cwn Annwn blood means I have a need for speed. As a child, I'd snuck onto grown-up rides with heeled boots. If I still came up short, most operators ignored it, figuring if I was with my father, it was his call. Dad had indulged me in this, as he indulged all my passions. If roller coasters fed some unfathomable need in my soul, then roller coasters I would have. Funland, though, had been sadly bereft of thrills.
"There's only one coaster," I said. "A wild mouse, with a ridiculous height restriction. But it was-- Oh, there it is! See it?"
We could make out the top of the tracks over the buildings.
"It's abandoned," Gabriel said.
"Hmm?"
"The park. It's abandoned."
"Uh, yeah," I said. "This isn't just its 'closed for the season' look. It's been shut down for, oh, nearly ten years? In high school, my friends and I planned to sneak in on prom night. But it closed the year before we graduated. I tried to get my friends to go anyway--it'd be even cooler to break into an abandoned amusement park. Two of the guys agreed, but only if I picked one of them as my prom date. So...no."
"I mean, it's an abandoned place. Which is significant."
"In light of the fact we've been lured by fae to several abandoned places? Right. Sorry. Frozen brain." I looked up at the park gates. "We weren't actually led here, though. Nothing compelled us to come down the laneway."
"Except that it was the first one we reached, after my car broke down."
True. I looked at Lloergan. She stared intently through the park gates. I took another step. She stayed at my side, making no more effort to hold me back.
If we'd been lured, there was little point in ignoring the summons.
CHAPTER FIVE
A massive padlock chained the gates shut. That would have been far more effective if someone hadn't used wire cutters to slice open the fencing.
Once we were in, I had to stop and stare. The park looked...magnificent. Nightmare and dream colliding in the most wondrous way. Hulking rides, rusted and broken, creeping vines engulfing them. Snow had hidden most of the decay, every surface a pristine white that glittered in the sun.
Then the sun disappeared, as if in a blink, and two young women raced from behind a building. Long hair streamed behind them as they ran, holding hands and giggling. They were barefoot, and light dresses swirled about their legs, their skin glowing in the moonlight.
The girls raced across unbroken concrete toward a moonlit carousel and swung onto freshly painted horses. Then music sounded, sweet and pure and haunting, and the girls clapped and laughed as a young man appeared, clutching a bottle in one hand.
One of the girls swung off the horse, and he called something, teasing, as he waved the bottle. From this distance, I couldn't make out what he was saying, but it sounded like Gaelic.
A memory of fae past, reveling in the park at night, not unlike my own dream of riding the carousel and sneaking through the fun house
and, yes, bringing a bottle of something that would make the adventure even more fun and, perhaps, sharing it with a handsome boy who'd make my night even more fun.
The scene flickered, and it was daytime again, Gabriel's hand still gripping mine, face taut.
"Just a garden-variety vision of fae," I said.
They'd have come late at night to take advantage of the empty amusement park. And then, after it closed permanently, and nature began her reclamation, they'd have come whenever they wanted. That was the allure of abandoned places. They are a reflection of fae themselves, pushed from their land by civilization, and then creeping back after the humans have left, retaking what was theirs. I feel the energy in these places and the wonder, too, the park a hundred times more beautiful in its decay than when I'd seen it as a child, gleaming and whole.
As Gabriel's gaze crossed the ruins, he didn't share my grin of excitement, but he watched--keenly watched--surveying the landscape, wary and intrigued.
"Where to?" I asked.
"I'm not the one with the psychic powers," he said.
"Sure you are. You have a sixth sense for trouble."
"Then I should hardly be the one who decides where we go."
I grinned. "But looking for trouble is always more fun than avoiding it."
"I believe trouble finds us quite easily enough."
I looked down at Lloergan. "Your vote?"
She was gazing about with a look not unlike Gabriel's. Wary yet intrigued. Like him, she gave no sign that she thought we should go--or not go--in any particular direction.
"All right, then," I said.
As I took off for the Tilt-A-Whirl, I swore I heard both man and beast sigh behind me. I climbed into one of the ride cars and looked around.
"It went faster before," I said.
Gabriel definitely sighed now.
"See that booth?" I pointed to the operator's box, the Plexiglas a spider's web of cracks. "The guy in there ran the ride and the tunes, and he'd yell, 'Do you want to go faster?' And I'd scream at the top of my lungs. Even Dad shouted with me. It never went any faster. Dude just cranked up the music to make it seem like it did. Total cheat." I twisted to look around. "You know, if both you and Lloergan grabbed a side and pushed..."
Lloergan hopped into the car with me.
"Sure," I said. "We can do that. Only you need to be on the inside so I can fall against you. These seat restraints have seen better days." I waggled the moth-eaten padding.
When I looked at Gabriel, he was still standing there, the very picture of patience.
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