by Sam Burns
“Mother?” the mayor asked, coming to stand between the two women and the exiting crowd of people, who had—mostly—not stopped to gawk. “Is everything all right?”
“My scrying also told me that Helena has been bothering the head of our council.”
Devon cringed. So he wasn’t going to defend Helena, but neither did he need Madame Cormier defending him as though he were a child. “It’s nothing I couldn’t deal with.”
She turned and smiled at him, and it . . . wasn’t doting and grandmotherly. It was just a smile and nod, nothing more than a tiny acknowledgment that he’d spoken and his words were of value. Somehow, it made Devon feel like an actual adult like nothing else ever had.
“Of course,” she agreed. “The problem is that Helena has been harassing the wrong council member. There will only ever be one witch on the council. The pact is clear, and the council is one fae, one witch, one vampire, one wolf, and the representative of the forest. If you badger Devon away from us, there is no one who can replace him. Quite literally, Helena, a member of your family will only join the council over my dead body.”
“Mother,” the mayor said again, this time sounding almost like an embarrassed teenager.
Madame Cormier gave her son a smile, and there was the doting, patronizing smile Devon was used to getting from the women of Rowan Harbor. “Of course, dear. Why don’t you accompany your mother home? You can go back to the school once you have me settled.”
He looked to Devon, almost as though he needed permission to leave. But he was just making sure Devon didn’t need him for anything, and Devon couldn’t let the little rush of power go to his head. This was the time for everyone to stick together, not for anyone to go on a power trip. “Thanks, Uncle Tommy. I’ll see you at the school.”
The mayor and Madame Cormier both nodded to him and left.
Suddenly, he was alone with Helena MacKenzie, who’d just been treated like a child while he’d been treated as an equal by the most respected witch in town. Once again, he needed to play peacemaker. This time, he hoped it might work.
“I don’t know why you and Gran don’t like each other, Helena, but whatever it is, it doesn’t apply to you and me.” He moved over to stand in the space Madame Cormier had occupied, right in front of Helena. “Obviously, I can’t give you my place on the council. But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect your abilities, and your contribution to this town. The MacKenzies helped build Rowan Harbor.”
Something else in the room caught his eye. Not movement, but a lack thereof. A woman, all alone, in one chair. She hadn’t stood when the mayor sent everyone off, and she was just sitting there, still staring at the podium.
Helena sighed in front of him, drawing his attention back to her. “You’re still trying to take Lachlan for that—girl.”
“Salli. You can call her a siren. She doesn’t mind as long as you don’t imply she’d ever use her abilities on your son. And whatever is going on between them is none of my business. They’re just both my friends.”
It felt like forever, but finally, Helena held out a hand. “Truce?”
He grinned at her. “Truce. Happily.”
She gave him a grudging look that told him it wasn’t going to be all unicorns and rainbows from there out, but at least it was progress. When she left the room, the chair the woman had been sitting in was empty. Devon was alone with the security guard waiting there to lock up after everyone.
He looked back at the empty chair, and couldn’t shake a strange feeling of déjà vu.
4
A Walk in the Woods
Devon pulled Alannah’s car back into the space he’d taken it from. He made sure it was unlocked and left the keys sitting in plain sight on the driver’s side seat in case he wasn’t around when she needed to leave.
The snowfall was still light, and if he hadn’t known what was coming, he’d have thought it was nice. His mother preferred southern climates, so he had always thought of snow as something rare and novel.
He started to head back over to the elementary lot where a few cars were arriving, but movement at the tree line caught his eye. It was the woman from the town meeting, and she was marching right into the forest by herself. He looked at the people getting out of their cars next to the elementary school, decided that Mayor Cormier could handle them, and followed.
Maria continued to remind him he’d said he wanted to take up jogging, but so far, he had managed to avoid doing it. He did want to. Or maybe he just wanted to have already jogged, without having to do it. As he ran to catch up with the woman disappearing into the woods, he wished he had followed through. Even more, he wished he weren’t so damned clumsy that he had to worry he would fall and break his head.
The woman wasn’t walking fast, which was the only reason he didn’t lose her between the falling snow and the enclosing forest. “Wait up,” he called.
The woman froze and turned toward him, shock on her face. It was Vera Owens, the local postmaster. She was an older woman, a little heavy-set with short, iron-gray hair.
The tapestry of Rowan Harbor sprang into Devon’s mind. Vera Owens. Lived on Maple Street. Had a thread attaching her to almost everyone in town.
He paused next to a tree, breathing hard and bracing himself against it. Closing his eyes, he focused on the threads. There were so many of them; most pale and gray—not important relationships. Dozens of them were silver, which usually indicated family, but Devon didn’t think Vera had any family.
“You should go back to the others,” she told him, her voice kind and light, like he’d wandered into the post office and she was telling him they had some new stamps. “They’ll worry about you.”
“They won’t worry about you?”
The smile she gave him was painful to look at, so sad and certain, but instead of answering, she shook her head.
“No, that’s not possible. Lots of people would worry about you.” He tried to remember who the threads led to, if not family. She didn’t come to knit night and mostly kept to herself, so he’d never seen her socially. “You have strong bonds in this town. I can see them.”
That seemed to surprise her. She was the first person he’d said anything to about it, other than Wade and his grandmother. No one knew he could see their relationships, which made it feel a little gross and voyeuristic.
“You can help with the search. Just come back to the lot where they’re organizing. We’ll get everyone paired up, so no one gets lost out here.”
“They wouldn’t let me,” she told him. The way she said it was chilling. How had he missed this woman’s misery? She was a member of his town. He saw her every day—the post office was just down the street from the yarn shop.
“Why not?”
She looked conflicted, but braced herself, hands on hips, chin lifted defiantly. “Because I’m a lamia. They all think I want to eat their children.”
He stared at her. “Eat them? What’s a lamia? They eat children?”
“No!” Her voice broke, and a tear rolled down one cheek. “I would never hurt a child, not for anything.”
Silver threads. So many silver threads, connecting her to people all over town. They were all to children. “They’re like family. You want to protect them. What’s a lamia?”
“It’s a horrible legend. It’s—” She broke off with a sigh and walked back over to him. “You’re not going to go back, are you?”
“Nope.”
“I have to help. I can find them. I know I can.”
“Okay,” he agreed. He pushed away from the tree and took a step toward her. “Let’s go. And you can tell me all about it. But I’m not letting you go into the woods alone. Everybody needs a partner to search with. It’s too easy to get lost out here.”
The tiny smile she gave him felt like a reward. She was still crying, but he would figure it out and find a way to fix it.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, and he didn’t push. She seemed to be gathering her thoughts. She also
seemed to know where she was going.
“Can you sense the children?”
She startled and turned to look at him, so he gestured to the relatively straight line they’d been walking in. She bit her lip and considered, then shook her head. “No, not exactly. I just have a sense that the children are frightened, and they need help. It pulls at me.”
“Makes as much sense as anything in town,” he said. “But I interrupted your thoughts. Sorry, I didn’t mean to push.”
She chuckled at him. “Yes, you did. You want to have a talk about my problems, fix everything. Just like your grandmother.”
“And you don’t want things fixed?”
The defiant tilt to her chin came back. “I am not broken. I have a good life, and I don’t need anyone to fix it.”
It was a surprising answer, for some reason. Everyone Devon offered to help before seemed to want it, but he supposed that the people who came to see him were self-selecting. Who was he to tell Vera that her life wasn’t good enough? “Okay. No fixing. Your life is yours, and it’s not my place to tell you how it should be.”
“You’re different from your grandmother.”
That made him laugh. “You know, you might be surprised by how few people understand that.”
They went back to walking in silence, but it was easier than before, her shoulders less tense.
After a few minutes, she took a deep breath and started talking again. “I had a child, once. I was seventeen. The world was different. My husband was an outspoken critic of the government, and they arrested him. We were left on our own, and I was useless, not much more than a child myself.” She stared at the ground, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other as she spoke. “Winters were harsh there. The baby and I froze to death.”
It took a moment for the sentence to fully penetrate. “You died. Both of you.”
She nodded.
“But you’re here.”
“I woke up. Kseniya didn’t.”
Devon had no idea what to say to that. He wondered how she was sure she had died, but it wasn’t the kind of thing a person imagined. He hated to imagine a teenage girl waking up in the aftermath of her own grisly death, her dead child still in her arms. How could anyone think that this woman would harm a child?
“Everyone thought I was a ghost. My friends wouldn’t speak to me. It took weeks to find out that my husband had died. By then I had realized I wasn’t myself anymore.” It had obviously been a long time since the events, but from the pain in her voice, it could have been the day before. Devon felt like an ass for making her relive it. It was clear that she wasn’t interested in his sympathy, though, so he just plowed on.
“You were human before?”
“Yes. And when I woke, I wasn’t. My sight is terrible now, for one thing. Shapes and colors are fine, but everything is blurry. That nonsense about Zeus allowing lamia to take our eyes out”—she rolled her eyes and made a tsking noise—“the things people will believe.”
“We should tell them the truth.” It was easy for him to say, since everyone would believe him. “I mean, if you want to tell them the truth. It’s your truth, not mine.”
She smiled and waved it off. “It’s not important. This kind of thing doesn’t usually happen in Rowan Harbor. Children don’t freeze to death here.”
“And these children are freezing to death.” His breath caught at the idea. They had to be lost and terrified. And what about Leah Anderson?
Vera nodded. “Maybe not right this minute, but they will be. This cold is going to get worse. If we don’t find them before the blizzard, we won’t find them alive. We have to find them alive, Devon. We have to.” She reached out and clasped his hand, then seemed to realize what she’d done, and dropped it. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he answered. “You have nothing to be sorry for. And we will find them, Vera. I promise.”
She looked in his direction, and for the first time, he realized how little her eyes focused on him. Also for the first time, he saw a real emotion other than misery or defensiveness there. “Thank you.”
He decided not to point out that he hadn’t specified when they would find them. They had to find them soon, and Vera seemed to have a sense of where to go, so they kept walking.
The longer they walked, the more the snow started to accumulate around them. What had started as the odd flake here and there had become a steady fall, and it was getting heavier as time passed.
Devon considered calling someone, but he wasn’t sure exactly where they were or what he would say. Wade would put up a fuss and demand he come back immediately, but that wasn’t an option. He and Vera might be the only ones anywhere near the right spot. He already knew he was going to be fine, so the important part for him was making sure everyone else was too, and that started with Vera, Mrs. Anderson, and the kids.
So instead of thinking about what he was doing wrong, he focused on the snow, willing it to wait. If the storm wasn’t trying to hurt him, as Oak said, he needed it to hold off until they got the children to safety.
They made a little small talk about how long Vera had lived in town, and why she’d joined the postal service. She said she enjoyed the steadiness and liked having a job that helped everyone without being flashy. Devon thought he could use a little more of that attitude. Sometimes he felt like he was all flash and no substance.
Vera was the opposite of that, with her quiet, solid strength. She was a service dog, and he was a show dog. Actually, maybe he was a cat. Cats again, dammit.
“You don’t knit?” he asked, à propos of nothing.
She chuckled at him. “Can’t stop trying to help poor, lonely Vera?”
“You are lonely, and the people at the shop are nice. I think you’d like them, but no, I was just thinking I could use an influence like you. But I guess that’s kind of selfish.”
“You’re a strange boy.”
He laughed, and the sound was muted by the falling snow. “Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh. Yeah, I am strange. But the best part of Rowan Harbor is that we’re all a little strange.”
She tilted her head in acquiescence. “I suppose we are.” After a second, she continued, “I haven’t knitted since I was seventeen.”
“Are you afraid you can’t, because of your sight?”
Vera was an expressive woman once he’d gotten her talking, and at his question, she seemed to roll her eyes, but with her whole body. “Don’t be silly. Do I seem like my sight holds me back from anything? I simply never went back to things I did in my life before.”
He thought about that. It made sense, a girl who’d been horribly traumatized avoiding everything that reminded her of her previous life. He shrugged. “I understand, as much as that’s possible. You’re welcome at the shop if you ever decide to try again, but I can see why you wouldn’t. I kind of stink at it. I mean, I’m trying, but I can’t do any of those fancy things the others do.”
“Fancy doesn’t make better clothes, just prettier ones. I was never good at that.” She looked almost wistful. “They do make pretty colors now, though, don’t they? So bright.”
“Every color of the rainbow, and a few more,” he agreed. “That’s what Gran says.”
There was a rumble from somewhere ahead of them, and they both jumped. Vera kept her footing with ease, and of course—of course—Devon slipped. His right foot slid through some desiccated leaves, slick with wet snow and the near-frozen mud beneath them, and it went out from under him. He landed on his ass in an inch of snow.
He tried not to curse out loud but failed. Vera turned toward him, looking concerned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m f—” He hesitated on the word “fine.” Crap. “Okay, maybe I’m not fine.”
He tried to stand back up, and sure enough, his ankle didn’t want to bear his weight.
“Devon?” Vera asked.
“It’s sprained or twisted or something.” He glared at his ankle for a second, but steeled himself and stretched it out in front of h
im. “Give me a minute. I’m going to try something.”
He’d been wanting to try healing something for a while, but he didn’t want to test his powers out on anyone else. Accidents like messing up the temperature of his tea were more common than successes, so he still used his abilities judiciously. Cold tea wasn’t a big deal, but healing someone wrong might be.
Vera leaned over next to him, but thankfully didn’t sit, since the ground was still wet and Devon felt the dampness seeping into his jeans. He thought he was going to be sorry about that later.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Should we call someone?”
“Give me a minute. I’m going to try to fix it.” He gripped his leg with both hands and stared.
You have to understand a thing down to the bones, his grandmother had once told him. He knew that his powers didn’t work quite the same way as hers, but it seemed like a good place to start. He closed his eyes and pictured the inside of his ankle. Each bone, whole and healthy. Tendons and muscles all right where they were supposed to be.
His ankle was hot beneath his hands, and blood rushed in his ears.
Hot wasn’t right, was it? Cold was better for swelling, and he was pretty sure his ankle was swelling. The blood was flowing through the strained area, trying to fix the damage, but it was too much, too fast. His mind flicked to the snow falling around them, still slow and gentle, and the heat ebbed.
Before he could overcorrect and accidentally freeze his own foot off, he yanked his hands away. The rumble came again, and this time it caught his attention instead of just startling him.
“That isn’t thunder.”
“What?” Vera asked, looking around. “It has to be thunder. It’s been thundering all day. You don’t think it’s an earthquake, do you?”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s not an earthquake, but it’s not thunder either. There was no lightning, and it’s too high pitched.”