by Sharon Lee
“I’ll take care of that,” Felsic interrupted, putting a hand on Peggy’s shoulder. “Let Kate take care of you; call Management; have a bath. Should I come past, tonight?”
“Yes,” Peggy said with a smile.
“I will, then,” Felsic said, smiling, too, before stepping back. “Go on, then, the pair of you. The midway’ll come to no harm.”
“That sounds like marching orders to me,” I said, tucking my arm through Peggy’s. “C’mon; I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
Gregor had a prepaid candy bar with 60 starter minutes preloaded hanging on a card behind the counter. When he heard what happened to Peggy’s phone, he threw in an extra 120-minute card for free, and pointed at the door.
“I’ll get it activated and bring it over to Bob’s. You girls need to sit down and relax. Big and tough, right? Picking on somebody their own size, sure! Lucky it wasn’t worse, that’s all.” He peered at Peggy. “I hope this ain’t put you off us, deah.”
Peggy smiled and patted his hand.
“No, I met Kate first, so I knew this was a good town.”
“Well, there.” Gregor looked pleased, then pointed at the door again, making shooing motions with the hand that held the minute card.
“Go on! Go sit down ’fore you fall down!”
So it was that we were sitting in a booth in Bob’s nearly deserted main room, ice tea to hand, and lunch on the way.
Peggy was looking wilted and pale, no shame to her. I sipped my ice tea—unlike his coffee, Bob’s ice tea is pretty darn good—and put the glass on the table.
“So,” I said, by way of keeping her awake. “I didn’t know you and Felsic were an item.”
She stirred and reached for her glass. “That makes us even, right? I didn’t know you were the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz.”
I grinned. “That warning about not looking behind the curtain . . .”
“Too late for that,” Peggy interrupted. “I’m dating Felsic. I saw a woman throw herself into a living fire, and walk out of it like I walk out of the shower. I’m right here behind the curtain with the rest of you.”
“Then you know there’s nobody here who’s all-powerful.”
“Neither was Oz.”
She took a long drag on her straw, and sighed, deep and heartfelt.
“Here you are, ladies.” Bob put a bacon, lettuce, tomato and cheese sandwich in front of me, a cheeseburger in front of Peggy, and a plate of fries bigger than my head between us.
“Look okay?” he asked, standing back, and watching us sharply.
“Looks wonderful,” Peggy told him. “I really am hungry.”
Bob grinned. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Holler if you need anything; I’m just in the back.”
He bustled off, pushing through the kitchen door with energy.
“Is Ulme going to be okay?” Peggy asked, applying a liberal coating of ketchup to her burger.
“I think so. Her Great Flame didn’t look to me like a man who’ll be fooled twice. Whatever Joe did to snatch Ulme in the first place isn’t going to work again. Us, though . . .”
I paused. Peggy was tired, maybe even a teensy little bit shocky. I’d drawn on the land’s energy, but I could own to being tired, too. Not really the time to be introducing more stress into either of our lives.
“What about us?”
I picked up half of my sandwich and gave her a straight look.
“Well, I’m thinking of Joe as I know him. He’s not going to be pleased with us, and he’s not a man who’s shy about letting his feelings be known.”
I took a bite, feeling lettuce crunch.
“What’re the chances Kyle will get him?”
Chewing, I blinked. “Kyle?”
“Ulme said Kyle was hunting Joe, remember?”
“So she did.” I thought about that, reaching for a french fry. “Well, fuck.”
“What?”
“If Kyle’s hunting Joe, then he’s MDEA—”
Peggy blinked.
“Maine Drug Enforcement Agency,” I expanded. “Which means he’s not likely to be making me a carousel animal, like he said he would.”
“You think a cop’s gonna rip you off?”
“Let’s just say that I’m alive to the possibility.”
She nodded and turned her full attention to her burger. I did the same to my BLT. At some point, Bob came by and refilled our glasses; the fact that I didn’t notice him was kind of a testament to how tired I was. Peggy must be out on her feet.
The street door opened, bell jangling.
“Good. You’re still here!” Gregor called, coming quickly to our table.
“Taking our time,” Peggy said.
“That’s what you need.” Gregor put the phone down at the edge of her plate. “I just loaded in that extra one-twenty while I was at it. Sorry it took so long; had me on hold forever. But you’re all set now.”
“Thank you,” Peggy said, giving him a smile that was just a little ragged at the edges. “I really appreciate your help.”
“No problem at all. You need anything else like this, you come see me.” He gave me a nod. “Kate.”
“Thanks, Gregor,” I said, dredging up a smile of my own. “You’ve been a big help.”
He colored a little, nodded.
“You two have a good rest of the day, now. See you.”
I looked at Peggy. She had picked up her new cell and was frowning at it.
“God, that’s an ugly thing.”
“Tomorrow, you can call your cell company, explain what happened to your phone, and talk them into replacing it for free. That’ll be fun, won’t it?”
She brightened considerably.
“You know, it will.”
“So, if you’re taking suggestions—home, a shower, and then a call to Management?”
“Sounds like it might be the bet,” she said. “Then beer. What about you?”
“Shower and nap, I think. Got a date tonight.”
“You need to look your best, then! How do we settle?”
“Bob!” I called. “How much do we owe you?”
“On the house!” His voice came from the kitchen.
“Bob—”
“Can’t hear you, Kate! Wicked noisy back here.”
I rolled my eyes. Peggy got up, cell phone in hand, and jerked her head toward the door.
“C’mon, we’ll gang up on him later.”
“Deal.”
We walked up Dube Street. I saw Peggy to her door, and safely inside, then started up the steps to the porch.
My cell phone gave tongue. I sighed and fished it out of my pocket.
“Katie,” my mother said urgently. “I need you here—now. There are intruders in the Wood.” There was a small pause before she added.
“They aren’t dead. Yet.”
It isn’t far from the midway to Heath Hill. It’s a lot farther when lives are hanging in the balance. Running down Grand, I asked the land to show me what was going on in the Wood.
That got me a head full of shadows, and looming, tentacled horrors. I thrust my will forward and into the land, demanding that the trees attend to the land’s Guardian.
That . . . wasn’t too bright.
They paid attention, all right. I was hit with a spike of enmity so strong that my link to the land evaporated in a blast of static. The land howled—defiance, not panic—and we were united again, sharing a very lively fear for the intruders’ lives.
The Wood . . . I had never felt the Wood’s anger before. To me, it had always been a measured, peaceful place—and it hit me that I wasn’t going to be in time; the trees were too angry; people were in mortal peril, and I couldn’t run fast enough. I needed to be there. Needed to be there now.
And once again, in response to my urgency, it came, that whooshing blur, and the sense of not quite being—and then I was being again, all right. I was on my knees well within the boundary of the Wood, a vine-wrapped man under my right hand.
/> The air inside the Wood was cold—I mean to say, bone-chilling cold. There came a faint, soft growl inside my ears, which I ignored as I took a breath, and said, as calmly as I could manage. “It’s Kate.”
There was a pause, stretching out. I used the time to look about me. We were in a clearing so small it could be argued that it was only a clearing at all because the thickness of the surface roots made it impossible for anything else to take root here. Those that had were hulking brutes of trees, their leaves as sharp as knives, and their branches like the twisted fingers of murderers.
The man under my hand was trussed up handily. His ankles and wrists were bound in the vines of fox grape and honeysuckle, twigs and dirt were tangled in his light brown curls, and there was what appeared to be a stringy, flexible rootling around his throat.
His eyes were closed, he was breathing, and I knew him.
I let go the breath I had been holding, and looked around me, aware that I hadn’t had any kind of acknowledgment to my announcement. A gleam drew my eye, and I saw my mother crouched behind a small shrub directly across from me; Arbalyr the firebird perched in a branch above. She shook her head when she saw that I’d seen her.
I looked away, keeping my hand on Kyle’s shoulder, and said, more loudly, “It’s Kate.”
A breeze tickled the inside of my ears, but that was all. Right. Time to pull rank.
“I am the Guardian of this Land, and in the absence of the Lady, I am empowered to arbitrate with the Wood. I know this man, and I vouch for him. I do not believe that he came into the Wood with intent to despoil or destroy. If you have evidence that refutes this, I will see it now.”
Nothing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother shift, her eyes narrowing.
He should not have come here, the Wood informed me, coldly.
“He should not have come here,” I agreed. “Plainly, he was in error. Did he offer the Wood harm?”
The others wished to harm us. He followed them.
“Maybe he wished to forestall them,” I said, and rose to my feet. “I will see these others. Preserve this man until I have learned what I might.”
Silence.
“Well?” I asked, irritably. “I don’t have all day, you know.”
A path opened before me, and I followed it, not far, as such things are measured in the Wood.
Two people—a man and a woman—were bound hand and foot, and very deeply unconscious on stony ground littered with twigs and pine cones. Not your most comfortable sleeping situation. I knelt down so I could get a good look at their faces.
The man was a stranger, but I recognized the woman.
She’d tried to kill me a few weeks back, and it was only luck and the land that she’d murdered my favorite commuter mug, instead. It really is an aid to memory, almost getting shot.
“There was a disturbance at the house,” my mother said from beside me. “A lot of cars and police cars, and—these two were out back, and when they understood what was happening—that the house was being raided, they ran down the hill and into the Wood.
“The other one—he did come after them, but I think he meant to arrest them, Katie.”
“I think so, too,” I said. I sat back on my heels and rubbed my forehead. “This,” I told my mother, “is turning into a very interesting day. Remind me to tell you about it.”
“All right,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
That was a good question, but really, there was only one thing to do.
“I’m going to wake up Kyle,” I said.
“This man,” I told the trees, as I knelt again beside Kyle, “came into the Wood on purpose to protect it. I propose to awaken him, and have him take the two despoilers away.”
They are ours, the Wood said, and there was enough menace in the voice of the trees that I shivered.
“Times have changed. If you kill them, men will notice you. The Lady has lately avoided notice, hasn’t she?”
Silence, then an answer, very nearly petulant.
She has.
“Then, in the Lady’s absence, that’s how we’ll play it.”
I put my hand on Kyle’s shoulder.
“Please unbind him.”
For a count of three, nothing happened; then the vines unwound from his legs and arms, and the rootling withdrew from about his throat. I heard a rustle and glanced to my right, watching my mother place a gimme hat, a handgun and a bottle of Poland Spring water on the ground by Kyle’s shoulder, before she once again withdrew to the shrubbery.
I considered the handgun without favor, then I reached to the land and nudged Kyle awake.
“Hey!” he said, sounding faintly surprised.
He opened his eyes, and met mine, blinking like he’d looked into a lamp that was too bright.
“Good morning,” I said cheerily. “How’re you feeling?”
“Lousy,” he said, keeping his eyes on mine. “And also like I might be losing my mind.”
“Lucky I happened by,” I said, nodding to his right. “There’s a bottle of water there for you, if you’re thirsty.”
“Thanks.”
He sat up cautiously, turned his head, and looked at the things Nessa had put there on the grass for a longish time before he sighed, put out his hand—and took up the bottle of cold spring water.
“I guess my question is how you happened by,” he said, after he’d cracked the seal and taken a swig.
“Truthfully? Got a phone call that there was a trespasser in the woods. This land here belongs to my family.”
Kyle looked at me, holding the bottle a little away from his mouth.
“The trees tried to strangle me!” he said, like he’d rather be saying almost anything else.
I nodded, as matter-of-fact as I knew how.
“They’re old trees, set in their ways, and they don’t like strangers.” I shrugged. “You really shouldn’t’ve come in.” I glanced significantly at the gun, that he’d left out in plain sight on the ground.
“MDEA?” I asked.
He shook his head. “FBI.”
I sighed, making it as theatrical as possible.
“I guess this means I’m not getting my horse.”
“What?” He blinked, and for a second it looked like he had no idea what I was talking about, and then the penny dropped. “Oh, hey, no! You’ll get the horse—Mike’s working on it now.”
“Mike?” I suddenly had a bad feeling. “The guy in Glen Echo? You didn’t ship that wood to Maryland, did you?”
He shook his head.
“No; he’s here at the shop. We brought him up once I had the in with you. Since we didn’t know how long this would take to crack, or exactly what your relationship with Nemeier’s operations was, we figured we’d best produce the horse.” He pressed his lips together, but his eyes said he knew he’d let the cat out of the bag.
“You thought I was working for or with Joe Nemeier?” I demanded. “Do I look like a smuggler to you?”
“Does he look like a smuggler?” he countered, jerking his head toward the top of the hill. He had another swig of water. “And there were questions enough about you—including where the hell did that horse go, and what was in it?
“But you’re not a smuggler, are you?” he continued. “You’re—what? A sorceress? A—an earth spirit?”
I was impressed; the boy could think outside of the box. ’Course, being entwined and throttled by the Wood might broaden anybody’s outlook.
“I’m what’s called the Guardian; job’s been in the family for generations. Now, I don’t want to be rude, but I also don’t want to try the trees’ patience much further. The kiddies you chased in here are alive, but if we don’t move them soon, they won’t be. What I propose is that we drag them outta here, before you call for backup. Okay?”
He took a breath, nodded, and reached for his hat.
“Okay.”
“Did you get Joe Nemeier?” I asked, as we stretched our prisoners out on the grass at the edge of
the Wood. “In the raid.”
“Far’s I know,” Kyle said, flipping open his phone.
“Good. And before you make that call, I’m leaving, and you never saw me, right?”
He looked at me, face resigned.
“My boss is a real down-to-earth kind of guy. He doesn’t handle . . . unusual situations well, and the team tries not to upset him.”
“Then he’s going to love how you’re not going to tell him about Ulme, who was a victim, and who’s gone home now.”
“To the world next door,” Kyle muttered. “You bet I’m telling him that.”
“Go up to St. Margaret’s any Sunday morning, and they’ll tell you a story that sounds remarkably similar,” I said.
He gave me a sour look. Clearly, he wasn’t in the mood for philosophy.
“All right, then! I’ll just leave you to your work,” I said, and left him at the edge of the wood, cell phone in hand.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Sunset 9:02 P.M. EDT
“I’ll call that a busy day followin’ a frantic yesterday.”
Borgan had been waiting when I got home, one hip resting on the porch rail as he gazed out to sea.
“Oh,” I said. “Damn!”
He turned his head and looked down at me, eyes glinting.
“You forget our date?”
“No and yes,” I told him, coming up the stairs slowly.
Borgan had dressed for a nice date: salt-white shirt embroidered with seashells in glistening silver thread; black jeans; boots. The nacre stud was in his ear, and I caught the gleam of a silver bracelet under the edge of one cuff.
He was so beautiful that my chest hurt, just looking at him. He raised an eyebrow.
“You want to reschedule?”
“No!”
Halfway up the stairs, I stopped, looking into his face. I didn’t want to reschedule; I was sick and tired of people, but I wasn’t sick and tired of Borgan. I wanted him with me. I wanted . . .
I swallowed, hard.
“How ’bout a change of plans?” I asked.
“To what?”
“You go to Lisa’s and buy us a pizza; get a bottle of wine—no, get two bottles!—from Ahz. While you’re hunting and gathering, I’ll take a shower, and order my thoughts so I can present the most entertaining version of how I didn’t forget our date, but managed to be totally unprepared to find you standing here.”