Angel Fire East

CHAPTER 2

On the drive to church, Nest considered the prospect of another encounter with John Ross.

As usual, her feelings about him were mixed. For as little time as she had spent with him, maybe seven days all told over a span of fifteen years, he had made an extraordinary impact on her life. Much of who and what she was could be traced directly to their strange, sad relationship.

He had come to her for the first time when she was still a girl, just turned fourteen and beginning to discover that she wasn't at all who she thought she was. The secrets of her family were unraveling around her, and Ross had pulled on the ends of the tangle until Nest had almost strangled in the resulting knots. But her assessment wasn't really fair. Ross had done what was necessary in giving her the truth. Had he not, she would probably be dead. Or worse. Her father had killed her mother and grandmother, and tried to kill her grandfather. He had done so to get to her, to claim her, to subvert her, to turn her to the life he had embraced himself long ago. Findo Gask had been right about him. Her father was a demon, a monster capable of great evil. Ross had helped Nest put an end to him. Ross had given her back her life, and with it a chance to discover who she was meant to be.

Of course, he would just as quickly have taken her life had she been turned to the demon's cause, which was a good part of the reason for her mixed feelings about him. That, and the fact that at one time she believed Ross to be her father. It seemed strange, thinking back on it. She had rejoiced in the prospect of John Ross as her father. She found him tender and caring; she thought she probably loved him. She was still a girl, and she had never known her father. She had made up a life for her father; she had invented a place for him in her own. It seemed to her John Ross had come to fill that place.

Gran warned her, of course. In her own way, without saying as much, she indicated over and over that her father was not somebody Nest would want to know. But it seemed as if Gran's cautions were selfish and misplaced. Nest believed John Ross was a good man. When she learned that he was not her father and the demon was, she was crushed. When she learned that he had come to save her if he could but to put an end to her otherwise, the knowledge almost broke her heart.

Most of her anger and dismay had abated by the time she encountered him again five years later in Seattle, where he was the victim and she the rescuer. Ross was the one in danger of being claimed, and if Nest had not been able to save him, he would have been.

Ten years had passed since then, and she hadn't seen or heard from him.

She shook her head, watching the houses of Hopewell, Illinois, drift past as she drove her new Taurus slowly along Lincoln Highway toward downtown. The day was bright and sunny, the skies clear and blue and depthless. Another storm was predicted for Tuesday, but at the moment it was hard to imagine.

She cracked a window to let in some fresh air, listening to the sound of the tires crunch over a residue of road dirt and cinders. As she drove past the post office, the Petersons pulled up to the mail drop. Her neighbors for the whole of her life, the Petersons had been there when Gran was still young. But they were growing old, and she worried about them. She reminded herself to stop by later and take them some cookies.

She turned off Fourth Street down Second Avenue and drove past the First Congregational Church to find a parking space in the adjoining bank lot. She climbed out of the car, triggered the door locks, and walked back toward the church.

Josie Jackson was coming up the sidewalk from her bake shop and restaurant across Third, so Nest waited for her. Bright and chipper and full of life, Josie was one of those women who never seemed to age. Even at forty-eight, she was still youthful and vivacious, waving and smiling like a young girl as she came up, tousled blond hair flouncing about her pretty face. She still had that smile, too. No one ever forgot Josie Jackson's smile.

Nest wondered if John Ross still remembered.

"Good morning, Nest," Josie said, falling into step with the younger woman, matching her long stride easily. "I hear we've got baby duty together this morning."

Nest smiled. "Yes. Experience counts, and you've got a whole lot more than me. How many are we expecting?"

"Oh, gosh, somewhere in the low teens, if you count the three- and four-year-olds." Josie shrugged. "Alice Wilton will be there to help out, and her niece, what's-her-name-Anna."

"Royce-Anna."

"Royce-Anna Colson." Josie grimaced. "What the heck kind of name is that?"

Nest laughed. "One we wouldn't give our own children."

They mounted the steps of the church and pushed through the heavy oak doors into the cool dark of the narthex. Nest wondered if Josie ever thought about John Ross. There had been something between them once, back when he had first come to Hopewell and Nest was still a girl. For months after he disappeared, she asked Nest about him. But it had been years now since she had even mentioned his name.

It would be strange, Nest thought, if he was to return to Hopewell after all this time. Findo Gask had seemed sure he would, and despite her doubts about anything a demon would tell her, she was inclined to think from the effort he had expended to convince her that maybe it would happen.

That was an unsettling prospect. An appearance by John Ross, especially with a demon already looking for him, meant trouble. It almost certainly foreshadowed a fresh upheaval in her life, something she didn't need, since she was just getting used to her life the way it was.

What would bring him back to her after so long?

Unable to find an answer, she walked with Josie down the empty, shadowed hallway, stained glass and burnished wood wrapping her in a cocoon of silence.

She spent the next two hours working in the nursery, having a good time with the babies and Josie, doing something that kept her from thinking too much about things she would just as soon forget. She concentrated instead on diaper changing, bottle feeding, telling stories, and playing games, and left the world outside her bright, cheery room of crayon pictures and colored posters to get on by itself as best it could.

Once or twice, she thought about Paul. It was impossible for her to be around babies and not think about Paul, but she had found a way to block the pain by taking refuge in the possibility that she was not meant to have children of her own but to be a mother to the children of others. It was heartbreaking to think that way, but it was the best she could do. Her legacy of magic from the Freemark women would not allow her to think otherwise.

Josie helped pass the time with wry jokes and colorful stories of people they both knew, and mostly Nest found herself thinking she was pretty lucky.

When the service was over, a fellowship was held in the reception room just off the sanctuary. After returning her small charges to their proper parents, Nest joined the congregation in sipping coffee and punch, eating cookies and cake, and exchanging pleasantries and gossip. She wandered from group to group, saying hello, asking after old people and children come home for the holidays, wishing Christmas cheer to all.

"What's the world coming to, young lady?" an indignant Blanche Stern asked when she paused to greet a gaggle of elderly church widows standing by the narthex entry. She peered at Nest through her bifocals. "This is your generation's responsibility, these children who do such awful things! It makes me weep!"

Nest had no idea what she was talking about.

"It's that boy shooting those teachers yesterday at an outing in Pennsylvania," Addie Hull explained, pursing her thin lips and nodding solemnly for emphasis. "It was all over the papers this morning. Only thirteen years old."

"Takes down his father's shotgun, rides off to school on his bike, and lets them have it in front of two dozen other students!" Winnie Ricedorf snapped in her no-nonsense teacher's voice.

"I haven't read the papers yet," Nest explained. "Sounds awful. Why did he do it?"

"He didn't like the grades they were giving him for his work in some advanced study program," Blanche continued, her face tightening. She sighed. "Goodness sakes alive, he was a scholar of some promise, they say, and he threw it all away on a bad grade."

"Off to his Saturday Challenge Class," Winnie said, "armed with a shotgun and a heart full of hate. What's that tell you about today's children, Nest?"

"Remember that boy down in Tennessee last year?" Addie Hull asked suddenly. Her thin hands crooked around her coffee cup more tightly. "Took some sort of automatic rifle to school and ambushed some young people during a lunch break? Killed three of them and wounded half a dozen more. Said he was tired of being picked on. Well, I'm tired of being picked on, too, but I don't go hunting down the garbage collectors and the postal delivery man and the IRS examiner who keeps asking for those Goodwill receipts!"

"That IRS man they caught dressing in women's clothes earlier this month, good heavens!" Winnie Ricedorf huffed, and took a sip of her coffee.

"His wife didn't mind, as I recall," Blanche Stern advised primly, giving Nest a wink. "She liked to dress up as a man."

Nest excused herself and moved on. Similar topics of conversation could be found almost everywhere, save where clusters of out-of-season golfers looking forward to a few weeks in Florida replayed their favorite holes and wrestled with the rest of the sports problems of the world while the teenagers next to them spoke movie and rap and computer talk. She drifted from group to group, able to fit in anywhere because she really belonged nowhere at all. She could talk the talk and pretend she was a part of things, but she would never be anything but an outsider. She was accepted because she had been born in Hopewell and was a part of its history. But her legacy of magic and her knowledge of Pick's world and the larger life she led set her apart as surely as if she had just stepped off the bus from New York City.

She sipped at her coffee and looked off at the blue winter sky through the high windows that lined the west wall. What was she doing with herself anyway?

"Wish you were out there running?" a friendly voice asked.

She turned to find Larry Spence standing next to her. She gave him a perfunctory smile. "Something like that."

"You could still do it, girl. You could still get back into training, be ready in time for St. Petersburg."

The Olympics in four years, he was saying. "My competitive days are over, Larry. Been there, done that."

He was just trying to make conversation, but it felt like he was trying to make time as well, and that annoyed her. He was a big, good-looking man in his mid-thirties, athletic and charming, the divorced father of two. He worked as a deputy sheriff with the county and moonlighted nights as a bouncer at a dance club. His family were all from Hopewell and the little farm towns surrounding. She had known him only a short while and not well, but somewhere along the line he had decided he wanted to change the nature of their relationship. He had asked her out repeatedly, and she had politely, but firmly, declined. That should have been the end of it, but somehow it wasn't.

"You were the best, girl," he said, putting on his serious-guy mask. He always called her "girl." Like it was some sort of compliment, an endearment intended to make her feel special. It made her want to smack him.

"How are the kids?" she asked.

"Good. Growing like weeds." He edged closer. "Miss having their mother with them, though. Like there was ever, anything about her for them to miss."

Marcy Spence had not been what anyone could call dependable even before she had children, and having children hadn't improved her. She was a party girl with a party girl's tastes. After numerous flings with just about anyone inclined to show her a good time, and a number of screaming knock-down-drag-outs with her husband, the marriage was over. Marcy was on the road and out of Hopewell even before the papers were filed, husband and kids be damned. She was twenty-four when she left. "Babies raising babies," Nest had heard the old ladies tut-tut.

"Got any plans for Christmas?" Larry asked her suddenly. His brow furrowed. "You know, it would be good for the kids to have a woman around for the present opening and all."

Nest nodded, straight-faced. "Sort of a stand-in mother."

Larry paused. "Well, yeah, sort of, I guess. But I'd like it if you were there, too."

She gave him a pointed look. "Larry, we barely know each other."

"Not my fault," he said.

"Also, I've met your children exactly once. They probably don't even know who I am."

"Sure, they do. They know."

She shook her head. "The timing's not right," she said diplomatically. "In any case, I have my own plans."

"Hey, just thought I'd ask." He shrugged, trying to downplay the importance of the request. "No big deal."

It was, of course, as any teenage girl, let alone a woman of Nest's age, could see in a heartbeat. But Larry Spence had already demonstrated with Marcy that he was far from wise in the ways of women. In any case, he was in way over his head with Nest. He had no idea what he was letting himself in for by pursuing her, and she was not about to encourage him by spending Christmas at his home with his children. In this instance ignorance was bliss. Let him tie up with someone normal; he would be far better off.

She caught sight of Robert Heppler across the room. "Larry, I see someone I need to talk to. Thank you for the invitation."

She hurried past him before he could respond, anxious to forestall any other misguided offers he might be inclined to make. Larry was a nice guy, but she had no interest in him at all. Why he couldn't see that was a mystery to her, but it was the sort of mystery commonplace in relationships between men and women.

She came up to Robert with a grin. "Hey," she said.

"Hey, there you are," he replied, grinning back.

She reached out and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Still rail thin and towheaded, still looking very much like a mischievous little boy, Robert might have been mistaken by those who hadn't seen him in a while for the same smart-ass kid he had been all through school. But Robert had grown up when no one was looking. Right out of graduate school, he had married a small, strong-minded young woman named Amy Pruitt, and Amy had set him straight. Forthright, no-nonsense, and practical to a fault, she loved Robert so much she was willing to take him on as a project. Robert spent most of his life with his head somewhere else, developing codes, languages, programs, and systems for computers. Always convinced of his own brilliance and impossibly impatient with the perceived shortcomings of others, he had gotten as far as he had mostly on grades and the high expectations of his professors that one day they could point to him with pride in cataloging their academic accomplishments. But the real world has an entirely different grading system, and Amy was quick to recognize that Robert was ill equipped to succeed in the absence of a serious attitude adjustment.

She performed the surgery with flawless precision. Nest could hardly believe the difference in Robert between the time he met Amy and the time he married her, scarcely ten months later. Robert seemed totally unaware of the transformation she had wrought, believing he was just the same as he had always been. But after getting to know her a little better, Nest was quick to realize that Amy was the best thing that could have happened to her old friend.

Now they had one child, a boy of two who was clinging to Robert's leg playfully, and another on the way. Robert had a family and a life. He was a real person at last.

"Hey there, Kyle," she said, bending down to ruffle the boy's blond hair. "We missed you downstairs today."

"Was 'n church," the little boy mumbled, then blew her a kiss.

"I kept him with me," Robert admitted, shrugging. "I wanted some companionship. Amy stayed home. Not feeling so good this morning when she woke. This pregnancy has been a little rough."

"Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, sure. You know Amy. Tough as nails. But she's being careful. She's a little over six months. Kind of a touchy time."

"You'll let me know if I can do anything?"

Robert laughed. "I'll let you know if / can do anything. With my parents and my sister and her husband hovering over her twenty-four hours a day, I can't get close enough to find out!"

He glanced over at Larry Spence, who was watching surreptitiously from behind his coffee cup. "I see you can still draw bees like honey. Or maybe horseflies would be a better choice of word."

She arched one eyebrow. "I see you still haven't lost your rapierlike wit, Robert."

He shrugged. "I'm just being protective. He reminds me a little of that guy who kept coming on to you the summer before we entered high school, the one I would have decked if you hadn't hypnotized him into falling over his own feet. What was his name, anyway? Bobby something?"

"Danny Abbott," she said quietly.

"Yeah. That was a summer, wasn't it? I was in trouble all the time. Of course, you were the one playing around with magic."

He meant it as a joke, but it was closer to the truth than he realized. Nest forced a smile.

"You remember that business on the Fourth with John Ross and those fireworks exploding all over the place?" he pressed. "I was chasing after you through the park, and I fell down or something, hit my head. I can still remember the way you looked at me. You said afterward you used magic." He paused, suddenly thoughtful. "You know, I never did understand what really happened."

Nest reached down abruptly, snatched up a squealing Kyle, and thrust him at his father. "Here, Kyle, you explain it to him," she urged.

"Splane," Kyle repeated, giggling.

Robert took his son into his arms, jiggling him gently. "Don't forget the Christmas party Tuesday night," he said to Nest, kissing Kyle's fat cheeks. "You got the invitation, didn't you?"

She nodded. "Sure. I'll be there."

"Good. My parents are sure to find a way to blame me, if you aren't."

"Serve you right," she said, moving away. "See you later, Robert. Bye, Kyle." She wiggled her fingers at the boy, who hid his face in his father's shoulder.

"Hey, don't scare him like that!" Robert threw after her.

She put her coffee cup on a tray near the kitchen door, ready to leave. Larry Spence was still watching her, but she tried not to notice. Life in a small town is filled with moments of trying not to notice, she thought wearily.

She was just departing the reception room to retrieve her coat from the narthex when a tall, angular young woman with wild red hair and acrylic green eyes came up to her.

"Are you Nest Freemark?" the young woman asked, eyes wide and staring like a cat's. Actually, on closer inspection, she seemed more a girl barely out of her teens than a woman. Nest nodded. "I'm Penny," the other announced.

She stuck out her hand, and Nest took it in her own. Penny's grip was strong and sure. "I just wanted you to know how much I admire you. I've followed your career, like, ever since the Melbourne Olympics. I was just a little girl, but you were such a great inspiration to me! I wanted to be a runner, but I didn't grow up with strong enough lungs or something. So I became an actress. Can you tell?" She giggled. "Anyway, I thought you should know there's someone who still remembers you. You know, when you were famous." She giggled some more. "Hey, it was nice meeting you. You'll be seeing me around, I expect. Bye-bye."

She was gone before Nest could reply, disappearing into the crowd gathered by the coffee urn. Someone who remembers you from back when you were famous? Nest grimaced. What a strange remark! She had never seen the young woman before and had no idea who she was. She didn't even look like anyone Nest knew, so it was impossible to match her up to a Hopewell family.

Must be someone new in town, she thought, still staring after the young woman. Things around here change so quickly, she thought, mimicking Alice in Wonderland.

Speaking of which, there was Larry Spence, moving in her direction with a decidedly hopeful look in his eye. She turned as if remembering something and hurried out the door.