“Most of the Harvest are not Borderkind, and the Myth Hunters have ignored those amongst us who are . . . until now,” Konigen continued, focusing on Frost. His expression darkened with a crinkling of the husks that composed his face. “But along the wayside and in the fields and orchards we have heard the stories of dark deeds. Of murder. Julenisse, Nicolai Chudovorits, Sinter Klaas, Pater Cronos, all of them dead.”
The winter man had been remarkably silent for some time and Oliver wondered if his injuries had taken a greater toll on him than he was willing to admit. Now he brought a hand to his face so quickly that the sharp edges of his fingers scraped ice upon ice and shaved off a sprinkle of frost that drifted to the dirt. The icicles of his hair fell over his forehead and he shuddered, hunched with grief.
“Devils,” Frost whispered.
Kitsune stood in the midst of the clearing, almost regal in her cloak, jade eyes looking out from beneath the hood. “The Sandmen are dead as well. And La Dormette. The original, the root of the legend, escaped. We have heard of others who have been killed. Selkies and Merrows and other of my distant kin.”
Ahren Konigen nodded slowly. “This is true. Even Hu Hsien. Your cousin, Coyote, is alive, however. He has hidden himself well.”
The fox-woman sneered. “Yes, that will solve everything, won’t it? Hiding? He ought to be ashamed.”
“La Llorona is among the dead. Eshu and Anansi as well. Several aspects of Herne the Hunter have been destroyed, but other variations of the Wild Hunt have gone beyond the Veil. They will be forced to fight before long, when the Myth Hunters find them.”
“Are there many among the Myth Hunters now?” Frost asked, a frigid hatred in his blue-white eyes, in the very mist that plumed from them.
“Far too many,” Konigen replied.
The winter man nodded gravely.
“We only know what we have heard. Appleseed knew his fellow Borderkind better than those amongst the Harvest who are bound on this side of the Veil. It may be that some of those we have heard are dead yet live, and it is likely that many more have been killed and we are not yet aware of it. What is clear is this . . . whoever has set the Hunters after the Borderkind, they must be stopped.”
A rime of ice had spread on the soil around Frost’s feet. When he spoke, a chill wind swept through the Harvest Fields. The gods must have felt it, but none seemed to notice.
“That is our intent,” the winter man said. “Any aid you can provide—”
“With regret, we cannot risk the health and safety of the Harvest with an open alliance,” Konigen said, and Oliver thought he glanced away in shame, though as he had no eyes it might have been a trick of the late-afternoon shadows upon the husks of his face. “We can only offer sanctuary.”
Frost was silent for several long moments, mist still pluming from his eyes.
Kitsune stared around at the gods of the Harvest. Her fur cloak rippled as she moved nearer to her companions, standing now between Oliver and Frost.
The winter man nodded. “Of course. And we are grateful. Though sanctuary may be the totality of our future, from here on. The Borderkind who still live will be traveling just as we are, seeking safe haven. It will be difficult to mount a defense without allies.”
Oliver astounded himself with the sound of his own voice.
“You don’t need a defense.”
The entire congregation stared at him. He fidgeted beneath the weight of their regard, but he forged on.
“It’s what you’ve already said. Someone has set the Hunters after the Borderkind. You can escape the Hunters if you’re smart and quick and strong enough. But your situation is a lot like mine. The only way to survive is to get whoever’s calling the shots to order them off.”
Kitsune drew back her hood. Her silken hair blew in the breeze. She smiled at him.
“True, Oliver. But we haven’t any idea who commands the Hunters. The question that will lead us to our real enemy, of course, is who benefits from the destruction of the Borderkind? But until we answer that question, we are in the dark. Meanwhile, given that we’ve got only a handful of Hunters after us, and you’ve the whole of this world ready to kill you, for the moment we’d best concentrate on getting you to Perinthia and attempting to have the mark of death lifted from you.”
His stomach gave a lurch, and Oliver shivered. “You say that as though it’s the simplest thing in the world.”
“A simple goal, but a complex journey,” Kitsune said, inclining her head.
“Yes,” Frost agreed. “One thing at a time. Though if we can learn anything useful in Perinthia . . .”
The Kornwolf stalked from amidst several other Harvest creatures. “If you mean to pass through Perinthia, this one must find clothes without the look and scent of his world. There is a settlement of Lost Ones on the way to the city. They have no love for any authority on either side of the Veil. They will help.”
“Yes. Excellent,” Konigen said. And then he stepped forward with that same shushing sound of husk against husk and approached the three travelers. The Harvest king— for that was surely what he was— acknowledged Frost and Kitsune, then reached out a hand to Oliver, who hesitated a moment before holding out his own.
Konigen dropped a waxy green seed into his hand.
“If all else fails, you may use this. Depending upon where you are, it may take root and help you. Or it may not.”
Oliver stared at the seed and then at this being, the tall, shifting effigy made of corn husks. Konigen seemed entirely less human up close.
“Thank you. But . . . I’m not sure I understand . . . why? Why would you take the risk involved in helping us? In helping me?”
The clearing was filled with a flutter of leaves and a creaking of branches. Oliver could feel the presence of Frost and Kitsune, but was only barely aware of them in that moment, as he felt the gods of the Harvest confer all of their attention upon him for the second time that day.
The husks over Konigen’s eyes moved, revealing slits of darkness. The void there, the hollow inside, was more dreadful to see than anything this world had presented to him thus far.
“There is peace in the Two Kingdoms, and structure to the Veil,” Konigen said. “Order. And whoever has sent the Hunters out to slaughter the Borderkind is an enemy of Order. We oppose them. And if that power wishes you dead, then we are pleased to be able to aid you in whatever small way that we can.”
Oliver closed his hand around the seed.
It was warm to the touch.
CHAPTER 11
Halliwell had returned from Cottingsley shortly after six o’clock and hadn’t bothered to go into the sheriff’s office. Instead he had retreated to his home, where he went about the business of an aging bachelor with the numb gravity of a somnambulist. The world had been dulled, his senses diminished, by his visit to that quaint little village whose charm had been perverted by the grotesque murder of a little girl.
He cooked himself a late meal, a shrimp étoufée that his elevated cholesterol transformed into gastronomic idiocy. His doctor would have scolded him, and with reason. Halliwell had been unmoved by the thought. Like an inveterate drinker, he had been well aware that he was doing himself a disservice when he bought the stuff. And just to relish the point, he’d fixed himself a Seagram’s 7 and 7-Up to go along with the étoufée. Creole food went best with whiskey, he’d found.
It tasted like nothing. No spice, no bite, no pleasure.
Of course. For how could he take any pleasure in his meal, or in anything else, this night? Images of the corpse of Alice St. John— of the gaping hollows where her eyes had been— lingered in his mind and surfaced whenever he was not on guard against them.
He had thought of Sara, his only child. His daughter. How long had it really been since they’d had more than a perfunctory conversation? How long since they had connected on any level at all? A terrible suspicion had grown in him as he tipped whiskey and ice to his lips that the answer might be never.
Sara. And the girl at the reception desk at the Cottingsley police station had been Sarah. Halliwell was not the kind of man to believe the Powers That Be were trying to send him a message. He was not truly certain he believed in the Powers That Be in the first place, so placing cosmic significance on something so mundane it barely qualified as a coincidence was beyond him. Yet he had found himself dwelling on the girl at the reception desk, Sarah, and on Alice St. John, and on his own Sara as well.
As he stumbled through his evening, trying to find solace in the simple task of preparing his meal and cleaning up after himself, he had been unable to accept these nonexistent connections. At rest in the leather recliner that his ex-wife had bought for him a dozen years earlier, he stared at the television without focus. Had someone asked him in that moment what it was he was watching, he would have been forced to guess were it not for the CNN logo in the bottom corner of the screen.
From outside the living room window there came the glow of multicolored Christmas lights, but they were not his own. His next-door neighbors, the Ochse family, always did things up big for Yuletide. The lack of any such lights, or any holiday decoration at all, made his own home seem pale and unreal.
It was late now, though he could not have said exactly how late. Even with the television on, he could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall. It chimed at the hour and half hour. Halliwell hated the fucking thing but left it up there in defiance of himself. It was a part of the life that had slipped away from him, the life of husband and father.
He swirled melting ice in his glass and wondered how many whiskey and sodas he’d had. Only one or two, surely. But he’d had dinner hours ago and somehow the ice was still there in the glass. It would have long since melted to water if he hadn’t added fresh ice. And what was the point of fresh ice without a fresh drink?
Perhaps two was conservative. Three, then?
Halliwell rose to make himself another drink, Alice St. John’s mutilated face still haunting his mind. He thought he might want to be very drunk tonight before going to sleep, otherwise he would surely dream of her, and he didn’t want to be all alone inside his slumber with that dead girl.
He found himself picking up the portable phone in the kitchen. Setting his glass in the sink, he thumbed the TALK button and began to dial Sara’s number in Atlanta. As he listened to the ringing on the other end he leaned against the counter and closed his eyes, tasting the whiskey in his mouth and feeling it move through him. Halliwell had already been numb when had had come home from Cottingsley, but it had been the wrong sort of numb. Now he had replaced it with another kind.
“Hello?”
“Hey, sweetheart. It’s Dad.”
“Dad?” Sara rasped sleepily, followed by a tired little groan. Looking at the clock, Halliwell was sure. “Do you know what time it is?”
He did not. Frowning, he glanced at the television. CNN had it as 11:37 P.M. He remembered many nights when he was still waiting up for her when midnight rolled around and she was out past her curfew. Time changed everything.
“I woke you. I’m sorry, Sara. The night kind of got away from me.”
“You all right?” his daughter asked, and he told himself there was genuine concern in her voice.
“Bad day on the job.”
“What happened?” Beat. “Wait, you haven’t been shot or anything?”
Halliwell chuckled drily at that. “Nope. Still unperforated. I just . . . I’m sure your mother already has things planned out and I know you don’t want your life complicated, but I was just sitting here thinking how nice it would be to see you on Christmas, just once, you know? It’s been almost the whole year since you made it up this way.”
“Dad, don’t . . . you know how little time off I have. I can’t be bouncing around from state to state. I don’t want to go anywhere for Christmas. If Mom would ever let me hear the end of it, I’d stay in Atlanta.”
He nodded with the phone in his hand, just as if she could see him. Several seconds passed in which he found it hard to breathe, then Halliwell shoved himself away from the kitchen counter and went to the window.
“I know it’s a lot, sweetheart. I’m not saying every year. Just once, you know. Or, hell, let’s get ambitious. Once a decade, you come see your old man at Christmastime. Doesn’t even have to be on the day. I’ll pay for your ticket, if money’s an issue, and—”
“You know that isn’t it. I don’t have that kind of vacation around the holidays. The agency doesn’t like us to . . . we’ve talked about this, Dad. It just isn’t feasible.”
Feasible. The little girl whom he’d held all through the night, T-shirt stained with her snot and tears, was telling him it wasn’t feasible.
“Your mother could do without you this once,” Halliwell said, staring out the window at the Ochses’ front lawn.
“Don’t do this to me, Dad, please. I’ll come up for Valentine’s, all right? And we’ll talk about next Christmas, maybe, okay? But not this year. It’s a week and a half away. I’ve got my plane tickets. I’ve got a four-day weekend for Christmas, that’s it. I just can’t—”
“All right,” he said, his voice low, embarrassed at the emotion choking him. “Okay.”
“Dad,” she pleaded, though he’d said nothing more.
“It’s okay, Sara. I’m okay. Just one of those days, you know?”
You remember, he wanted to say, but he didn’t dare. Why remind her of the times when the job had gotten to him, when he had been dour and cold? Now the shittiest days on the job had nearly the opposite effect. Instead of pushing away people who loved him, he wanted to hold them close.
But you pushed away so hard, there’s nobody left.
“Listen, you have a wonderful Christmas, okay. Give that boyfriend of yours a hello from me, and please, sweetheart, try not to work so hard. Life’s for living, right?”