Kitsune had woken him at dawn, the sensual scent of her musk filling the close air of the cabin’s shuttered interior. Her jade eyes had glowed in the dim morning light filtering through the window. There had been no real conversation. Oliver had breakfasted on deviled ham and taken the last of the cupboard’s old supplies— two cans of SpaghettiOs— and the can opener, and slipped them into the pockets of the musty-smelling parka. He’d gone out the back door of the cabin to piss in the woods, wondering where Frost had spent the night, and then they had set off.
Hours had passed. Oliver figured it was still morning, but based upon the position of the sun in the sky, it was sliding on toward noon. They had trudged for miles— or, rather, he had trudged while the other two moved through the snow without any difficulty whatsoever. A while back, as the day had grown warmer and the snow began to melt, he had removed his parka and now carried it slung over one shoulder. His feet were still cold and numb but his face and hands were warm enough and his body was heated by the exertion.
Every hour or so they paused to let Oliver catch his breath and lean against a tree for a few minutes, but he could see the restlessness of his companions. A dozen times he thought to press them on the source of that anxiety, but he was consumed by his own concerns and left them to speak in their own time.
Memories of his home haunted him. The scents and sounds and comfort of the house on Rose Ridge Lane accompanied him on that journey through the woods of northern Maine. Melting snow dripped off skeletal branches and the needles of pine trees, glistening in the sun, and he remembered a lifetime of Decembers in the house on the oceanside bluff in Kitteridge. In particular, his mind went back again and again to his mother’s parlor, before the blizzard and the winter man. He thought of Christmas lights and gauzy, sepia-toned memories of his mother.
How could it be that his memories had more heft and substance and immediacy to him than the events of the past two days? Yet it was true. The world beyond the Veil had crystallized in his mind and he accepted the reality of it. It was fantastic, without question, but there was nothing dreamlike about his experiences there. He had felt the roughness of the terrain, the texture of things there: tree bark, the grit of the Sandmen’s castle, the scratch of branches as he moved through the forest.
Now he was in his own world. The real world. He was still a target, still hunted, just as if he himself were one of the Borderkind, so he knew the danger involved in attempting to stay behind. Oliver had no choice but to forge ahead. The regret, the longing to stay here in the world he knew and understood, was sharp and profound. Though he relished the recent collision of his life with the extraordinary and the impossible, this exposure to the familiar made him hesitate.
Despite all of that, the world seemed surreal. The events of the previous night with the skating rink and the train station, with the murder of a little girl and their flight from the police, felt as though they had happened to someone else. It was one thing for him to pass through the Veil and witness the wonders there, but entirely another to be wandering the north woods on a December morning with an exotic shape-shifter and Jack Frost.
So he held on to those memories of his hometown and the house where he had grown up. As distant as they felt from him now, they were all that seemed real. And he needed that.
The longer they walked, the less real it all seemed to him. The forest was pristine with the recent snowfall, the sky a perfect blue. The colors were so rich and the air so pure that Oliver felt as though this was the world of magic and myth, that there was really little difference between what he knew and what existed beyond the Veil. As if he could pass through to the other side just by looking out the corner of his eye, by stepping at a certain angle past an ancient tree.
As tired as he was, it was not the ache in his legs that brought him to a stop this time. Kitsune was far enough ahead that he could only make out the shape of her, crouched upon the snow, and the sunlight on her bright orange-red fur. He could not have said, in that moment, whether she wore the form of woman or fox, and understood that it did not matter.
The winter man’s blue-white eyes had been distant throughout the morning. Now he seemed to sense something beyond exhaustion in Oliver, for he tilted his head, icicles of hair cascading to one side with a strange December music, and studied his friend.
Friend. What a strange word. Oliver wondered if he and Frost truly were friends, or if only the debt between them kept the winter man at his side. He found he preferred not having an answer to the question.
“Are you all right?” Frost asked.
Oliver leaned against the nearest tree and put his head back against rough bark, dropping his parka on the snow. The question was vast, the possible answers infinite. But he knew Frost was not asking about his general well-being.
“I’m going to need a longer rest soon,” he admitted, rasping his palms across the stubble on his cheeks, the friction connecting him more to the present and stealing him away from his musing.
“It should be safe to make a border-crossing now,” the winter man replied. “It will be warmer there. And by now the Hunters have made their way to the village we visited last night and will be pursuing us here. If the Falconer is among them, they will have no trouble tracking us. If we are to stop for any length of time, it would be best to be on the other side of the Veil.”
When the sun hit him at a particular angle, Frost was partially translucent. Oliver found it difficult not to stare at the beauty of it.
“Sounds logical,” he replied, but his thoughts were elsewhere. With a frown he ran his fingers through his hair and held his arms against the sides of his head, mind going back to the skating rink from the night before and the yellow police tape roping it off from the rest of the park.
“What troubles you, Oliver?”
He glanced up at Frost. “At the moment?”
The winter man nodded.
“The Sandman.” Oliver studied him. “He’s here, somewhere. Murdered that little girl last night. The police up here aren’t going to know how to contend with that. How can they, when they have no idea what they’re up against?”
Frost took a deep breath and let it out in a plume of cool mist. “I see. You feel your knowledge makes you somehow responsible. That you have an obligation to stay. To help.”
“Something like that.”
“But you know the police would never believe you. And if you found yourself in the path of the Sandman, he would have your eyes. You know that even now the Hunters are searching for you.”
Oliver knocked his head against the tree again. “Yeah. But it just feels wrong. We’re talking about children here. There are going to be others.”
“Perhaps,” Frost allowed, those blue-white eyes clear and unforgiving. “Yet you have no reason to believe the Sandman will stay in this world. He has been a prisoner for a very long time. Predicting his actions now would be impossible. Even if he does stay on this side of the Veil, he isn’t likely to linger in this particular area. If we were free to pursue him, I would join you in that quest. Perhaps it will come to pass. But at the moment all of our efforts must be dedicated to removing the sword of Damocles that dangles above our heads.”
The reference was unfamiliar but Oliver understood the intent. Reluctantly, he nodded. “I get it. I never had any illusions that we had a choice in this. That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
A silence descended between them, broken only by the sound of melted snow dripping from the trees. Oliver had been doing his best not to think too much about how they were going to find Professor Koenig, if the man was even still alive, or whether he would be able to help even if they did find him. If he let himself ruminate on that subject, he would fall into a morass of distracting questions, and right now, distraction could be very dangerous.
“All right,” he said, pushing away from the tree and bending to retrieve his parka, which was weighted down with cans of SpaghettiOs. “Are you ready to go?”
The winter man nodded thoughtfully, then glanced around for Kitsune. Oliver followed suit, his gaze automatically tracking to the last place he had seen her. There was no sign of her.
Oliver took the first step, casting a worried glance at Frost. Then the winter man fell in beside him and they hurried through the trees and the melting snow, following the path Kitsune had taken. They had progressed thirty or forty yards when Oliver held up a hand to halt the winter man.
“Shush,” he whispered.
Frost frowned, ice crackling in his forehead. “What is it?”
“Engines. A road, not far off.”
A gunshot slapped the sky, echoing through the trees. In the snow off to their left something dashed behind a berm made by a fallen maple and years of moss and detritus from fallen leaves. Oliver almost expected to see Peries flying around the dead tree.
Raucous laughter followed the gunshot, and then several hoots and catcalls.
“Hunters,” the winter man said, his voice the whisper of wind.
Oliver knew he did not mean Myth Hunters. The voices that reached them were entirely human, and he could not imagine the Falconer or the Kirata carrying shotguns. It was December, and the woods would be filled with men looking to bag a white-tailed deer but willing to settle for a few snowshoe hare or a coyote if that was all that could be found. Max Bascombe had gone on several hunting vacations while Oliver was growing up, but had never thought to invite his son. As much as the concept of hunting for sport unnerved him, Oliver would have gladly gone along if his father had wanted him there. He would have tried his damnedest to kill something, too, just to make the old man notice him. To make him proud.
The presence of hunters in the woods this morning was no surprise, but it was unwelcome for several reasons, not the least of which was the bitterness that swam up in the back of his throat at the associations they brought with them.
“We must find Kitsune,” Frost whispered, and the two of them began to move through the trees, taking cover where they could.
“I’m sure she caught wind of them long before they would have noticed her,” Oliver said. It felt true, yet still he worried.
Given the amount of noise they were making, Oliver thought the hunters had likely given up for the day and were preparing to head home. Together, he and Frost worked their way quietly through the snow, keeping to the cover of evergreens. They were moving up a slight rise and nearer to the occasional sound of car engines rumbling by on the road. Perhaps a hundred yards from the place they had been when they heard the gunshot, they came in sight of a man-made snowbank.
The voices of the hunters were just beyond the snowbank. They ridiculed one another good-naturedly and Oliver heard a loud, long belch before an empty beer bottle came spinning through the air over the top of the bank. Frost sneered at the discarded bottle and moved nearer, his passage over the snow utterly silent.
Of course. He’s Jack fucking Frost.
Oliver followed, doing his best to match the quiet swiftness of his companion. Fortunately, with the snow melting there was no crunch underfoot and soon he was beside Frost on the snowbank, creeping up to get a look over the top.
It was a narrow, paved access road, just a few hundred feet from a moderately busy two-lane blacktop. Out on the main street, cars went by with a shushing noise as they kicked up some of the water that ran across the pavement from the snowmelt. There were two vehicles parked in the small circle at the end of the access road, an old Jeep Cherokee and a sparklingly new cherry red Ford F250 with a plow blade attached to the front. The hunters had plowed the access road themselves. There were four men, all in the requisite orange vests, though most of them had stripped off the thick coats and hats they would have worn when they went into the woods early that morning.
A dead white-tailed buck was strapped into the back of the pickup truck. From their vantage atop the snowbank, Oliver could also see a brace of dead hares in the truck. He wondered which of the four men had bagged the deer.
Three of the men had gathered between the vehicles and were drinking bottles of beer from an enormous cooler. One of them, a thirtyish guy with thick, curly hair the color of rust and forty pounds he would have been better off without, was smoking a joint whose sweet scent only now reached Oliver’s nose. The man took a long hit and passed it to another man, who might have been his brother, so similar were their features, only he was in much better shape and had his hair shorn down to a military buzz. They looked like the before-and-after pictures in some weight-loss commercial. The third sat upon the big cooler, sipping his beer and laughing about something Mr. Before had said that Oliver had missed. A hibachi grill was on the ground between them and fat sausages sizzled over the fire.
The remaining member of their troupe was standing at the rear of the Cherokee, the tailgate open as he zippered his shotgun into a leather case complete with shoulder strap and ammunition. He slid it into the back of the Jeep and then strode away from the group, toward the snowbank on the other side of the road.
“Fish me out a beer, Gav. Just gotta take a leak,” he said, unzipping his fly even as he walked.
“Goddamn it, Virgil, put it back in your pants!” said Mr. After with a shake of his head. He took a hit from the joint and tried to pass it to the guy on the cooler, who waved it away, so After had to pass it back to his brother.
“Fuck’s sake, Virg, you’ve got a bladder like my grandmother,” said the guy on the cooler.
For his part, Virgil just swore at them all and started to piss, an arc of yellow that stained and melted the snow, steam rising from the hole he was making in the bank.
Oliver glanced at Frost, wondering what they were going to do. They could not wait forever for Kitsune to return to them and he had no interest in a run-in with these hunters, who would at the very least want to know who he was and how he had gotten there. They might offer him a beer and a sausage, which would have been welcome, but there would be no way for him to slip back into the woods without explanation. All in all, it would be better to go unseen. Better, in fact, just to get out of there entirely. He was concerned about how long Frost might be willing to wait for Kitsune, and how much time before those other Hunters— the ones they had to really worry about— might catch up to them.