Angel Fire East

CHAPTER 16

When she had calmed down enough to think about something else, Nest loaded everyone into the Taurus and drove them to a tree farm north of town. Picking up a bow saw from the farmer, she marched them out into the Christmas tree forest in search of an acceptable tree. Other customers prowled the long rows, searching for trees of their own. The air was cold and dry against their skins, and a west wind whipped across the snowy fields, kicking up sudden sprays. Heavy clouds rolled in from across the Mississippi, and Nest could taste and smell the impending snow.

Exhilarated, she breathed in the winter air. If she was going to celebrate Christmas, she was going to do it right. Sitting around the house might be the easier choice, but it was also apt to drive her insane. Better to be out doing something. Ever since she was a little girl, she had handled her problems by getting up and doing something. It seemed to help her think, to come to terms with things. It was why she had begun running.

Harper raced ahead, darting in and out of the shaggy trees, playing hide-and-seek with anyone who would do so, leaping out unexpectedly and laughing as the adults feigned surprise and shock. Little John watched her for a time, his face expressionless, his blue eyes intense. He did not join in or respond, but he was not disinterested either. Something about the game seemed to engage his curiosity, and once or twice he slowed long enough to give Harper a chance to spring out at him and run away. Nest watched him do it several times, puzzled by what it meant. Once she encouraged him to join in, but he just walked away.

They found a fat little five-foot fir that Harper hugged and jumped up and down over, so they cut it down and hauled it out to where the farmer measured it and collected their payment. After loading the tree in the trunk and tying down the lid to hold it in place, they drove back to the house. It was not yet noon, and after consuming such a big breakfast, no one was ready to eat again. Nest wanted to keep everyone occupied, so she suggested they stick the tree in a bucket of water on the back porch to give it a chance to relax, and go for a walk.

With snow beginning to fall in fat, lazy flakes, they struck out into the park, Harper in the lead, racing this way and that, Nest, Ross, and Little John following. Smoking a cigarette and hunching her thin shoulders against the cold, Bennett, trailing everyone, had the look of someone who would just as soon be somewhere else. She had grown increasingly moody as the morning progressed, slowly withdrawing from all of them, Harper included. Nest had tried to make conversation, to bring her out of whatever funk she had fallen into, but nothing worked. Bennett's eyes drifted away each time she was addressed, as if she had gone off in search of something. Whatever had happened last night, Nest thought darkly, it was not good.

But she decided to wait on saying anything more. Bennett was already in such a black place that it didn't seem to Nest that it would do much good to emphasize it. After Christmas, maybe she would say something.

They drifted across the snow-covered ball diamonds toward the toboggan slide, drawn at first by their lingering curiosity over last night's accident and then by a clutch of police, fire, and ambulance vehicles that came into view. The deputy sheriff's car belonged to Larry Spence. Nest glanced at Ross, but he shook his head to indicate he had no idea what was happening. Nest moved to the front of the group, directing them west of the parking lot and its knot of traffic, crossing the road farther down. People were gathered along the crest of the slope leading down to the bayou, all of them whispering or standing silent, eyes fixed on a knot of firemen and ambulance workers clustered on the ice.

Nest's group slowed beside the others. The first thing she saw was the twisted length of Robert's toboggan lying to one side. A dark, watery hole glimmered where the ice had been chopped apart by picks and axes to free it. But then she saw that it wasn't the sled they had worked to free. The firemen and ambulance techs were working over a sodden, crumpled form.

"What's going on?" she asked a man standing a few feet away.

The man shook his head. He had owlish features and a beard, and she didn't know him. "Someone fell through the ice and drowned. Must have happened during the night. They just fished him out."

Nest took a steadying breath and looked back at the tableau on the bayou. A body bag was being unrolled and unzipped, its bright orange color brilliant against the dull surface of the ice. "Do they know who it is?" she asked.

The man shrugged his heavy shoulders. "Don't know. No one's been up yet to say. Just some poor slob." He seemed unconcerned.

Someone who fell through the ice, she repeated carefully, trying out the sound of the words in her mind, knowing instantly Findo Cask was responsible.

"They had to chop right through the ice to get him," the man said, growing chummy now, happy to be sharing his information with a fellow observer. "His hand was sticking out when they found him. Ice must have froze right over him after he drowned. The hand was all he got out. Maybe he was a sledder. They found him next to that toboggan. It was froze up, too."

Who was he? Nest wondered. Someone who had ventured out onto the ice while the demon magic was still active? The magic would probably have responded to anyone who got close enough.

The man next to her looked back at the ice. "You'd think whoever it was would have been smarter. Going out on the ice after the slide was shut down and the lights turned off? Stupid, if you ask me. He was just asking for it."

A woman a little farther down the line turned toward them. Her voice was low and guarded, as if she was afraid someone would hear. "Someone said it's a man who works for the park system. They said he was working the slide last night until an accident shut it down, and he must have gone out on the ice afterward to check something and fallen in." She was small and sharp-featured and wore a blue stocking cap with a bell on the tassel. Her eyes darted from the man's face to Nest's, then away again.

Ray Childress, Nest thought dully. That's Ray down there.

She turned away and began walking back toward the road. "Let's go," she said to the others.

"Mommy, what's wrong?" Harper asked, and Bennett hushed her softly and took her hand.

Nest kept her eyes lowered as she walked, sad and angry and frustrated. Ray Childress. Poor Ray. He was just doing his job, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. This whole thing was her fault. It had happened because she had insisted on bringing everyone out for sledding, even knowing Findo Gask was a danger to them, even after she had been warned not to help John Ross. It wasn't enough that she had saved them on the ice. She should have anticipated that others would be in danger, too. She should have warned Ray. She should have done something. Her eyes teared momentarily as she remembered how long she had known him. Most of her life, it seemed. He had been there when her grandfather had almost died in the fireworks explosion fifteen years ago. He had been one of the men who had dragged Old Bob clear.

Now he was dead, and a pretty good argument could be made that it was because of her.

"Nest!" Ross called sharply.

At first she ignored him, not wanting to talk to anyone, still wrapped in her grief. But then he called to her again, and this time she heard the urgency in his voice and looked up.

Findo Gask stood a dozen yards away at the edge of a clump of alder and blue spruce. He had materialized all at once, his black-garbed form barely distinguishable from the dark, narrow trunks of the alder trees and the slender cast of their shadows. He wore his familiar flat-brimmed black hat and carried his worn leather book. His eyes glittered from beneath his frosted brows as they fixed on her.

"A tragic turn of events, Miss Freemark," he said softly. "But accidents happen sometimes."

She stared at him without speaking for a moment, frightened by his unexpected appearance, but enraged as well. "Who would know that better than you?" she said.

His smile did not waver. "Life is uncertain. Death comes calling when we least expect it. It is the nature of the human condition, Miss Freemark. I don't envy you."

She glanced over her shoulder at Ross, Bennett, Harper, and Little John, who stood in a loose clutch, watching. Then she looked back at the demon. "What can I do for you, Mr. Gask?"

He laughed softly. "You can give me what I want, Miss Freemark. You can give me what I've come here for. You and Mr. Ross. You can give it to me, and I'll go away. Poof—just like that."

She came forward a few steps and stopped, distancing herself from the others. "The gypsy morph?" she asked.

He nodded, cocking his head slightly.

"Just hand it over, and you'll be gone? No more unexpected accidents? No more visits to my home by deluded law enforcement officials inquiring into drug buys in the park?"

His smile broadened. "You have my word."

She matched his smile with her own. "Your word? Why is it I don't find that particularly reassuring?"

"In this case, you can rely on it. I have no interest in you or your friends beyond finding the morph. Where is it, Miss Freemark?"

His eyes locked on hers, probing, and she was struck with a flash of insight. He doesn't know it's Little John he's looking for, she realized. That was the reason for the threats and the attacks; he was stymied unless he could compel her cooperation. He couldn't identify the morph without her.

She almost laughed aloud.

"You seem perplexed by my request, Miss Freemark," Findo Gask said jovially, but there was an edge to his voice now. "Is there something about it you don't understand?"

She shook her head. "No, I understand perfectly. But you know what? I don't like being threatened. Especially by someone like you. Especially now, when I'm not in a very good mood and I'm feeling angry and hurt, and it's mostly because of you. I've known that man you let die on the ice for most of my life. I liked him. He didn't do anything to you, but that wasn't enough to save him. That doesn't matter to you, does it? You don't care. You don't care one bit."

Findo Gask pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. "I thought we were beyond accusations and vitriol. I thought you understood your position in this matter better than it appears you do."

"Guess you thought wrong, huh?" She came forward another step. "Let me ask you something. How safe do you feel out here?"

He stared at her in surprise. His smile disappeared, and his seamed face suddenly lost all expression.

She came forward another step, then two. She was only a few paces away from him now. "I'm not afraid of demons, Mr. Gask. I've faced them before, several times. I know how to stand up to them. I know how they can be destroyed. I have the magic to make it happen. Did you know that?"

He did not give ground, but there was a hint of uncertainty in his frosty eyes. "Don't be foolish, Miss Freemark. There are children to be considered. And I did not come alone."

She nodded slowly. "That's better. Much better. Now I'm seeing you the way you really are. Demon threats are all well and good, but they work best when they are directed toward children and from behind a shield of numbers."

Her words were laced with venom, and hot anger burned through her. Wraith was awake and moving inside, all impatience and dark need, her bitterness fueling his drive to break free and attack. She was tempted. She was close to letting him go, to willing him out of her body and onto the hateful form of the creature in front of her. She wasn't sure how that would end, but it might be worth finding out.

"I made a mistake with you when you came to my house two days ago, Mr. Gask," she said. "I should never have let you leave. I should have put an end to you then and there."

His mouth twisted. "You overestimate yourself, Miss Freemark. You are not as strong as you think."

She smiled anew. "I might say the same for you, Mr. Gask. So now that we know where we stand on matters, why don't we just say good-bye and go our separate ways?"

He considered her silently for a moment, his eyes shifting to Ross and the others, then back again. "Perhaps you should take a closer look at yourself, Miss Freemark, before you expend all of your energy judging others. You are not an ordinary, commonplace member of the human race with which you are so quick to identify. You are an aberration, a freak. You have demon blood in your body and demon lust in your soul. You come from a family that has dabbled more than once in demon magic. You think you are better than us, and that your service to the Word and the human cause will save you. It will not. It will do exactly the opposite. It will destroy you."

He lifted the leather-bound book in front of him. "Your life is a charade. All that you have accomplished is a direct result of your demon lineage. Most of it you have repudiated over the course of time, until now you have nothing. I know your history, Miss Freemark. I made it a point to find out. Your family is dead, your husband left you, and your career is in tatters. Your life is empty and useless. Perhaps you think that by allying yourself with Mr. Ross, you will find the purpose and direction you lack. You will not. Instead, you will continue to discover unpleasant truths about yourself, and in the end your reward for doing so will be a pointless death."

His words were cutting and painful, and there was enough truth in them that she was not immune to their intended effect. But they were the same words she had spoken to herself more than once in the darker moments of her life, when acceptance of harsh truths was all that would save her, and she could hear them again now without flinching. Findo Gask would break down her resolve with fear and doubt, but only if she let him do so.

He smiled without warmth. "Better think on it, Miss Free-mark. Should it come to a test of magics between you and me, you are simply not strong enough to survive."

"Don't bet against me, Mr. Gask," she replied quietly. "It may be that this is a battle you will win, that the magic you wield is more powerful than my own. But you will have to find out the hard way. John Ross and I are agreed. We will not hand over the gypsy morph—not because you say we must or because you threaten us or even if you hurt us. We won't cede you that kind of power over our lives."

Findo Gask did not reply. He simply stood there, as black as ink and carved from stone. The wind gusted suddenly, whipping loose snow across the space that separated them. The demon stood revealed for an instant longer before the blowing snow screened him away.

When the wind died again and the loose snow settled, he was gone.

Some lessons you learn early in life, and some of those lessons are hard ones. Nest learned an important one when she was twelve and in the seventh grade. She had only just the year before experienced the consequences of using magic after Gran had warned her not to do so, and she was still coming to terms with the fact that she would always be different from everyone else. She had taken a book from the school library and forgotten to check it out. When she tried to slip it back in place without telling anyone, she got caught. Miss Welser, who ran the library with iron resolve and an obvious distrust of students in general, found her out, accused her of lying when she tried to explain what had happened, and sentenced her to after-school detention as punishment. Nest had been taught not to challenge the authority exercised by adults, particularly teachers, so she accepted her punishment without complaint. Day after day, week after week, she came in after school to perform whatever service Miss Welser required—shelving, stacking, cataloging, and cleaning, all in long-suffering silence.

But after a month of this, she began to wonder if she hadn't been punished enough for a transgression she didn't really believe she had committed in the first place, and she screwed up her courage sufficiently to ask Miss Welser when she would be released. It was almost March, and spring training for track would begin in another few weeks. Running was Nest's passion then as now; she did not believe she should have to give it up just because Miss Welser didn't believe her about the book. But Miss Welser didn't see it that way. She told Nest she would be on detention for as long as it took, that sneaking and lying were offenses that required severe punishment in order to guarantee they would not happen again.

Nest was miserable, trapped in a situation from which it did not seem she could extricate herself. Everything had begun to revolve around Miss Welser's increasingly insufferable control over her life. If Gran noticed what was happening, she wasn't saying, and Nest wasn't about to tell her. At twelve, she was beginning to learn she had to work most things out for herself.

Finally, with only a week to go before the start of track season, she told her coach, Mr. Thomas, she might not be able to compete. One thing led to another, and she ended up telling him everything. Coach Thomas was a big, barrel-chested man who preached dedication and self-sacrifice to his student athletes. Winning wasn't the only thing, he was fond of saying, but it wasn't chopped liver either.

He seemed perplexed by her attitude. "How long have you been going in after school?" he asked, as if maybe he hadn't heard her correctly. When she told him, he shook his head in disgust and waved her out the door. "Tell Miss Welser that track begins on Monday next and Coach Thomas wants you out here training with everyone else and not in the library shelving books."

Nest did what she was told, thinking she would probably end up being sentenced to the library for life. But Miss Welser never said a word. She just nodded and looked away. Nest finished out the week and never went back. After a while, she realized she should have spoken up sooner, that she should have insisted on a meeting with the principal or her adviser. Miss Welser had kept her coming in because she hadn't stood up for herself. She had given Miss Welser power over her life simply by accepting the premise that she wasn't in a position to do anything about it. It was a mistake she did not make again.

Staring at the space Findo Gask had occupied only moments before, she thought about that incident. If she gave the demon power over her by conceding that she was frightened, she lost any chance of ever being free of him.

Of course, there was a certain amount of risk involved in standing up for yourself, but sometimes it was a risk you had to take.

Ross, Bennett, and the children came up to her, Ross's hands knotted about his rune-scrolled staff as he limped past her a few steps to study carefully the tree-thrown shadows. Far back in the hazy gloom of the conifers, there was a hint of movement. Ross started toward it. He looked so tightly strung that Nest was afraid he would lash out at anything that moved.

"John," she said quietly, drawing his dark gaze back to hers."Let him go."

Ross shook his head slowly. "I don't think I should. I think I should settle this here and now."

"Maybe that's what he's hoping you'll try to do. He said he wasn't alone." She paused to let the implication sink in. "Leave it for another time. Let's just go home."

"I don't like that old man," Bennett muttered, her thin face haunted as she pulled Harper close. "What was he talking about, anyway? It was hard to hear."

"Scary man," her daughter murmured, hugging her back.

"Scary is right," Nest agreed, ruffling the little girl's parka hood in an effort to lighten the mood. Her eyes found Bennett's, and she spoke over the top of Harper's head. "Mr. Gask thinks we have something that belongs to him. He's not very rational about the matter, and I can't seem to persuade him to leave us alone. If he comes to the house again, don't open the door, not for any reason."

Bennett's mouth tightened. "Don't worry, I won't." Then she shrugged. "Anyway, Penny said he—"

She caught herself and tried to turn away, but Nest moved quickly in front of her. "Penny? Penny who? What did Penny say?"

Bennett shook her head quickly. "Nothing. I was just—"

It can't be, Nest was thinking, remembering the strange, wild-haired girl at the church. "Penny who?" she pressed, refusing to back off.

"Leave me alone!"

"Penny who, Bennett?"

Bennett stopped moving, head lifting, eyes defiant. She brushed at her lank hair with one gloved hand. "Get over yourself, Nest! I don't have to tell you anything!"

"I know that," Nest said. "You don't. But this is important. Please. Penny who?"

Bennett took a deep breath and looked off into the distance. "I don't know. She didn't tell me her last name. She's just a girl I met, that's all. Just someone I talked to a couple times."

"Someone who knows Findo Cask?"

Bennett flicked her fingers in a dismissive gesture. "She says he's her uncle. Who knows?" She fumbled in her pockets for her cigarettes. "I don't think she likes him any more than we do. She makes fun of him all the time."

"All the time," Nest repeated, watching as Bennett lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Like all last night, maybe. Because that's who you were with. "What did she say about Findo Gask?" she asked again.

Bennett blew out a thin stream of smoke. "Just that he was leaving town in a day or so and wouldn't be back. Said it was the only thing they'd ever agreed on, him leaving this pissant little town." She sighed. "I just thought that meant we probably wouldn't be seeing him again because he'd be gone, that's all. What's the big deal?"

Ross was staring at both of them, eyes shifting from one to the other.

"Does Penny have wild red hair?" Nest asked quietly.

Bennett's gaze lifted. "Yeah. How did you know that?"

Nest wondered how she could explain. She decided she couldn't. "I want you to listen to me, Bennett," she said instead. "I can't tell you how to live your life. I won't even try. It's not my job. You're here with Harper because you want to be, and 1 don't want to chase you off by giving you a lot of orders. But I won't look the other way when I think you're in danger. So here it is. Stay away from Penny and Cask and anyone you think might be friendly toward them. You'll have to trust me on this, just like I have to trust you on some other things. Okay?"

"Yeah, okay." Bennett took a last drag on her cigarette and dropped it into the snow. "I guess."

Nest shook her head quickly. "No guessing. I know a few things you don't, and this is one. These are dangerous people. Penny as much as Gask. I don't care what she says or does, she isn't your friend. Stay away from her."

Ross glanced past her to where they were bringing up Ray Childress from the bayou. "Maybe we ought to get back to the house," he said, catching her eye.

Nest turned without another word and started walking. Maybe we ought to dig ourselves a hole, crawl into it, and pull the ground up over our heads instead, she thought. Because not much of anywhere else is looking very safe.

But she kept the thought to herself.