The Borderkind

CHAPTER 5

With the dawn light peering over the upper ridge of the plateau where they had camped the night before, Julianna sat with her legs pulled up beneath her and stared at the breathtaking beauty of sunrise. Halliwell lay on the ground fifteen feet away, arms akimbo, snoring lightly. From the ache in her own bones, she knew that he would be a wreck when he woke. Every hour of sleep he had managed to steal on the hard-packed earth of the plateau would be another knotted muscle, but she could not bring herself to wake him.

She was not sure what to make of Halliwell now.

When he had first been saddled with bringing her along in pursuit of Oliver, the man had been distant and arrogant. No more so than many men she had known, of course, but it had been tiresome. As they had traveled from the States to the U.K., things had warmed between them. Julianna had decided that she liked him. Curmudgeon that he was, Halliwell was an intelligent man and good at his job. She had also begun to believe that her newfound respect for him was reciprocated. And perhaps it had been.

But here, the rules had changed.

Halliwell wanted answers to the mysteries that his investigation had presented, but they needed to find Oliver for a different reason entirely now. If they had any hope of getting out of here, of waking from the nightmare of this impossible place, it lay in Oliver’s hands.

Whatever had happened to Oliver-and the surreality of their surroundings made it appear that there was no simple explanation for that-it was clear now to Julianna than he probably had not abandoned her without reason. If he had an explanation, she wanted to hear it.

She had loved him for so long that he was a part of her, under her skin and in her every breath. When she had thought that he had abandoned her at the altar, she had been crushed. But what she could never have explained to anyone was that what had shattered her heart was not the idea that he had decided not to marry her; it had been the thought that he did not trust her love for him enough to come and talk to her about it.

As horrifying as Max Bascombe’s murder-and Collette’s disappearance-had been, they had made her doubt the version of events that everyone she knew had been so quick to embrace; that Oliver had simply gotten cold feet and vanished. Julianna hated the fact that she had initially embraced this as truth.

She ought to have known better. Julianna was not a fool; she had sensed his hesitation, and she understood it. How could she not? No one in the world knew him the way she did. But if Oliver had changed his mind about getting married, he would never have let her find out at the altar.

They’d known each other most of their lives, but had only become friends during freshman year of high school, when they’d been partnered up in biology lab. Julianna had always thought Oliver was cute, but he was such a boy, and she didn’t have time for the foolishness of boys when she was younger. Older guys intrigued her then, because she had been such a serious girl, a brooding poetess, scribbling her heart’s every yearning and ache by candlelight in her bedroom. She had always been close to her father and their conversations around the dinner table had made her a thoughtful, opinionated child with a deep appreciation for a good debate.

Her poetry was private and full of all of the parts of her that her father would not have understood, never having been an adolescent girl. Her mother had tried to nurture her relationship with her daughter through “girls only” shopping trips and special dinners for just the two of them when Julianna’s father was out of town, but the bond between father and daughter had been different. They’d always been at ease in one another’s company.

When she and Oliver had become friends, that first year of high school, Julianna knew she had found the only other person in the world she had ever felt that way around. He understood how private her poetry was and never pressed her to read it, but whenever she allowed him to, he would look at her as though she’d given him some kind of gift. She had admired his closeness with his sister, who was off at college but came home to visit frequently.

Oliver had been one of the cutest boys in their class and friendly to everyone, but he and Julianna had become a clique all their own. But their friendship had not grown into anything more, which astonished everyone they knew. Instead, they advised each other on every crush and flirtation through the first two years of high school. She liked that Oliver never seemed to want the girls who wanted him. He preferred interesting to pretty, and focused on juniors and seniors, the same way Julianna herself did with the boys.

It was only much later that she came to wonder if they had both been concentrating on people who were beyond their reach in order to avoid falling in love with anyone else.

At the end of sophomore year, Oliver had appeared in his first play. He had always loved drama and music and Julianna had encouraged him to audition. His father had dismissed his interest in theater as an unnecessary distraction. Football would have been fine, but theater, somehow, did not fit Max Bascombe’s image of the young man he wanted his son to become.

Oliver might have auditioned to spite him, or because Julianna would not leave him alone about it, but once he was cast in the play-a production of 42nd Street -his motives became pure. He had simply loved the magic of the stage, the freedom of transforming into someone else.

Julianna understood. Her poetry provided her a similar freedom.

The show was performed half a dozen times. Collette came all the way home from Boston College to see her little brother on stage, but Oliver’s father never managed to attend.

After the last performance, Julianna had gone backstage and found Oliver standing in the wings by himself. He did not mention his father’s absence, but she saw the hurt in his eyes.

She’d held him then.

Nothing was the same after that night.

They spent their junior and senior years lost in each other, physically and emotionally, happy to make their classmates’ predictions come true. Somehow, rather than suffering from the intensity of their relationship, their grades actually improved. The future was important to both of them.

And it had almost ruined them.

The summer after their graduation from high school had been the saddest time of Julianna’s life. She and Oliver had stayed together, but their every kiss and touch had been bittersweet. They had agreed that they had to pursue their own paths, that they would be doing a disservice to themselves and each other if they did not reach for their dreams.

Oliver had gone to Yale, in Connecticut. Julianna had attended Stanford, all the way across the country, in California. Surrendering to logic, they had promised one another that if, when college was through, they were both single, they would be together again, but that there would be no promises in the meanwhile. It was only practical.

At Yale, Oliver had followed the pre-law curriculum and spent all four years in the Drama Club, fulfilling his father’s plan for him while still following his own heart. At Stanford, Julianna had fallen for a California guy two years older than she was. All of the anguish and drama of her poetry came alive in that relationship. He turned out to be shallow and callous, and forced her to wonder how she could be so wrong about someone.

The asshole went to Stanford Law. Julianna refused to follow him there. When she learned Oliver would be attending Yale Law School, she knew that she had to go as well. Older and wiser, she knew that the intimacy she’d shared with Oliver was a rare thing. To have such passion with someone, combined with an abiding trust, was so precious that only a fool would surrender it willingly.

They had a chance to make up for a terrible mistake they had made four years earlier. Julianna had never been much of a believer in destiny, but could not deny that it felt as though they had always been meant to be together.

She still felt that way.

Ted Halliwell needed to find Oliver because he wanted answers, and he wanted to go home. Julianna wanted those things as well, but what Halliwell did not understand was that, to her, finding Oliver was going home. The lunacy and horror that had intruded upon their lives had made her question her faith in Oliver, but she was beyond that now. She still had questions, but no longer had doubts.

All she really wanted was to be reunited with him. Everything else was secondary.

Halliwell had different priorities.

But to find Oliver, to survive in this place, she and the detective were going to have to work together. At first that had seemed obvious and natural, but now she had begun to grow concerned. Halliwell had cooled to her. She felt it. The truth was, they had been fellow travelers before, working together. Not friends. And Julianna was no fool. Halliwell knew where her loyalties were, and whose side she would be on if he had any conflict with Oliver when they caught up to him.

Yet they had to travel together. They had only each other to rely on.

Julianna shuddered and hugged herself tightly. The night had grown cold with the wind whipping across the top of the plateau, but there had been nothing they could do about it. She wished she had not left her jacket behind. That had been foolish.

She watched the golden light of the sun spread across the sky. Soon it would reach her, warm her, and the air would begin to heat up. Halliwell would stir.

During the night, she had woken several times and felt a rising spark of hope that she would find herself back in her world, in a place that made sense and followed the rules that she understood.

Now, with the sunrise, she realized that it had been a dangerous moment. She might have gone mad, fighting the need to accept the reality of the world around her. To accept magic and giants and rivers that spoke with human voices, and the dead things they had seen back in the real world on Canna Island.

“Real world,” she whispered. “Can’t think like that.”

This place, this world, was real. Accepting that was the only way to survive. Yet from the look in Halliwell’s eyes last night, she was not sure if he had quite accepted it. The detective was numb, moving from one place to another with the single-minded determination of an angry drunk.

Maybe he has to be that way. Maybe that’s how he needs to survive, she thought. That made sense to her. Finding Oliver was all that mattered to Halliwell. Slowing down for a moment to look too closely at the world they were traveling through would only confuse and distract him.

The more she thought about it, the more Julianna thought that was a good strategy. Full speed ahead. Don’t look too closely. And whatever you do, don’t stop to smell the roses. No telling what they might really be.

They had spent all the long afternoon of the previous day making their way up the ridgeline to the top of the cliff, following a switch-back for a while and then a steep hill. In the end, they had found themselves miles from where they had begun, but on top of the plateau, looking down into the valley as night fell.

This morning, they would strike back toward the spot where the river went into the cliff face, then follow what they hoped was the path of the river until they reached the other side of the mountain, the far end of the plateau, and then descend to the valley or basin or whatever they found there, and follow the water again.

If the river did not disappear underground forever.

In that case, they would not have a clue where to begin.

Julianna ran her fingers through her hair. Her bladder felt full and she got up, muscles popping in protest, her whole body aching, and stumbled off behind a stand of shrubbery to pee.

When she came back, the sun had just touched the edge of the plateau, nowhere near Halliwell, but the lightening of the sky must have been enough to rouse him, for he was stirring. Julianna had never asked Halliwell his age, but pegged it at early fifties. Not old, but a long way down the road from young. He was at least her father’s age, but there was something she found attractive about the detective with his gruff features and piercing blue eyes, his somber expression and more-salt-than-pepper hair in need of a cut. Halliwell could have been an actor. Not a star, perhaps, but one of those character players that people recognized right off but whose names they could never remember.

She slipped her hands into her pockets and stood a few feet away as he slowly woke. A groan escaped his lips and he opened his eyes, reaching up to scrape the remnants of sleep away.

In his age and in his eyes there was the weight of something that haunted him. Halliwell was what people called a soulful man, and she realized suddenly that this was what she liked about him.

It reminded her of Oliver.

He grunted as he sat up, then slowly climbed to his feet. Halliwell stretched his back and arms and neck with a groan of protest; his bones popped loudly as he moved. He took a deep breath and gazed at the sunrise, rubbing the back of his neck. All of this was done without a single glance at Julianna, as though he had forgotten she was there.

“I feel a hundred years old,” he said, without turning to her.

“You look it,” she replied.

Brows knitted, he turned and stared at her. Then his mouth twisted up into a smile and he chuckled softly. Some of the weight seemed to lift from him.

“I’ll bet I do.”

Julianna walked over and stood beside Halliwell, staring at the eastern horizon with him. “We’re really here.”

Halliwell paused, exhaled, and then nodded. “Yeah.”

“I have a weird question for you. I wouldn’t even ask it, but you seem a little less…freaked out…than you were yesterday.”

“Appearances are deceiving-” The detective turned to look at her and she saw the years in his blue eyes. “But what’s your question?”

“Like I said, it’s weird. But…okay, look, something has happened to us. We’re lost, somewhere so far from what we know that we might as well be stranded on the moon. For me, the urge to find Oliver is even more powerful than the need to get home; he’s the only man I’ve ever really loved.”

She thrust her hands deeper in her pockets, shifting her weight awkwardly. “I want to go home, Ted. Desperately. But not as desperately as you do. I can’t help thinking there’s more to it than just going home for you.”

Halliwell crossed his arms. “So what’s your question?”

Julianna shrugged. “Just what it is, I guess. What’s back there that’s got you frayed so badly? I’ve got my parents, my work, my friends, everything. My whole life. What is it that’s waiting for you back there that makes the thought of not getting home so terrifying for you?”

His blue eyes were cold. His nostrils flared in anger.

“We’re wasting daylight,” he said, staring at her, daring her to push it or contradict him. “If we have any hope of catching up to Oliver, we’ve got to move, find that river.”

Her throat dry, Julianna almost asked him again. The thought that they might not get home panicked her, but it was obvious that it affected Halliwell far more, fraying at his spirit.

But all she did was nod.

Halliwell turned his back on her, studying the sky. “Give me a minute? I’ve just got to-”

Gruff as he was, he didn’t want to talk about the need to relieve his bladder in front of her. The guy was an enigma. Julianna smiled and let out a breath.

“Sure. I’ll start walking. You can catch up. Due west, right?”

“No. We’ve lost too much time. I think we need to go northwest, try to gauge where we might intersect with the river, and then turn north until we come to the other side of the plateau. If we haven’t hit another valley first.”

Julianna pushed her fingers through her hair again. “All right.”

She started walking. Her feet ached from all the walking that they had done the previous day, but that was just the beginning. Somehow she doubted there would be a bus to carry them to their destination. Her shoes were comfortable, hiking boots that doubled for her as winter footwear. But this was no ordinary hike.

The sun had spread across the plateau, and as she set out, it began to warm her at last.

After several minutes, Halliwell caught up, not even winded. For his age, he was in pretty good shape. That was good. If he had been out of shape, they’d likely be dead by now.

In silence-the space of words unspoken between them-they walked across the plateau. Halliwell had been a Boy Scout as a child, which came as no surprise to Julianna. She herself had been forced into the Brownies, the junior Girl Scouts, but by the time she could have joined the older girls, she refused to have anything further to do with it. Hallie Terheune had by then become queen bitch of all Brownies, and she’d be going into Girl Scouts as well. But even now, Julianna remembered well enough how to navigate by the sun, and Halliwell had not forgotten much of his childhood love of the woods either. Growing up in midcoastal Maine, it was just the sort of thing children learned.

Time had passed, of course, and scouting wasn’t exactly like riding a bike. Some things did fade. Yet Julianna felt sure they were on the right track.

The landscape reminded her of Arizona: dry and rocky with stretches of scrub grass. Not desert, certainly, but not exactly lush. Small ridges of rock jutted up from the earth as though carved out by ancient glaciers, and there were small, thin trees here and there-wiry things that resembled nothing at all familiar.

Within a quarter of an hour after setting out, Julianna was wetting her lips with her tongue, mouth parched. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so, and there was a breeze that brought a dry, sweet smell, like pressed flowers. But she was thirsty. Hunger had not begun to rumble her belly yet, but she was certain it would begin soon enough. She could do without the food for a while, but the water was going to be a problem. The river was important to them for more reasons than one.

The stale smell of her own body and the unpleasant way her dirty clothes clung to her reminded Julianna of mornings in college when she had woken after long, regrettable nights. But despite it all, she had none of the dullness of a hangover. The scent on the breeze, the feel of the sun, the colors of this world were all too vibrant to allow it.

Halliwell limped a bit as he walked. She was not even sure he noticed it, but he favored his left leg. A selfish twinge went through her when she noticed, and she hoped it was just sleeping out on the ground that had given him a kink, not something permanent. Something that was going to be a problem down the line.

Her shoelace came loose.

“Hang on,” she said, as she knelt to retie it.

Halliwell paused and stood above her. As she finished, he spoke in a voice that was barely a rasp.

“We’re not alone.”

Outside Oliver’s window, dawn’s light was reaching down into Twillig’s Gorge. Morning came later in the Gorge, the sunlight creeping down along the western wall as it rose. The Nagas had given them specific instructions to be gone by dawn, but Oliver could not move. He sat on the edge of the bed in his room at the inn and stared at Kitsune.

“That’s insane.”

Kitsune’s eyes were always so wild, but not now. In this moment, they were rock steady. She leaned forward, silken hair hanging in black curtains on either side of her face.

“You think I don’t know how it sounds?” she asked, an edge in her voice. Kitsune glanced around the room, hands fluttering, as though trying to search for some explanation for the inexplicable. “I am used to being on my own, Oliver. Solitary. Tricksters nearly always are. But when I learned that the Borderkind were being killed, I thought perhaps it would be best not to be alone for a while.”

“And then you met Frost and me in the Oldwood,” Oliver said.

The fox-woman nodded. Her hood was thrown back, the fur soft. Vulnerable. Oliver had never thought of her that way before.

“I thought I had found trustworthy companions whose goals were my own. To survive. To uncover terrible secrets. But there were more secrets than I ever imagined-”

Oliver held up a hand. “Wait. Just…just stop, okay? I get that you were just as much in the dark as I was, so can we focus for a minute? Does any of what Frost and Smith were saying sound familiar to you? Do you have any idea what he was talking about?”

Kitsune took a breath. “Not at all. It was clear he believes that you and your sister are somehow important to this world, that if the truth about you were to come out, it would be even more dangerous to you than the death warrant.”

“How can that be?” Oliver shot to his feet. “What is more dangerous than someone ordering your execution?”

He searched her eyes for answers but found only confusion that mirrored his own, and sympathy. Oliver put a hand over his eyes and sighed. Could it be that Frost was not his friend, that the winter man had been lying to him all along?

“Jesus,” he whispered, dropping his hand. “All right. So the Falconer…wasn’t hunting Frost. He was sent after me and Collette, and Frost was wounded trying to stop him. That’s what you’re saying?”

Kitsune opened her hands. “I have told you what I heard.”

“Why us? What is it about us?”

“This is not the first time we’ve asked that question, Oliver. The Sandman wants your life so badly that he is holding your sister as bait. It is you he wants, not Frost. Not any Borderkind. You. And now we know that Collette is only still alive because the Sandman has not caught you yet.”

Oliver narrowed his eyes. “The Sandman? Or whoever woke him up? Whoever sent the Falconer?”

Kitsune turned her back on the window. Slowly, she raised her hood, jade-green eyes staring out from the shadows beneath. When she spoke, he could see the points of her tiny, sharp teeth.

“Your questions might be better put to another.”

Anger and confusion roiled in him. He nodded, staring at Kitsune. “I want to trust you. But I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anyone I can trust.”

“I wonder the same,” she said, voice a low growl. “You are not the only one who has been kept in the dark.”

“All right,” Oliver said. “Let’s go ask those questions, then.”

He dressed quickly, grateful once again for the new clothes Coyote had supplied. Hunyadi’s sword hung at his hip and he was surprised how quickly he had become used to its weight and sway.

Oliver opened the door and led Kitsune into the hall. He went to the next room and rapped on the door.

“Blue Jay won’t be there,” Kitsune said. “We were supposed to meet at the front desk.”

“Right.”

Together they went down the stairs. Oliver quickened his pace, anger rising. With all that they had been through together, the idea that Frost had been keeping secrets was infuriating. His father had been horribly murdered. His relationship with Julianna was in shambles, the wedding plans ruined. His life was in constant peril. Collette was in the hands of a monster. Maybe Frost had only come to Kitteridge to try to save them, but he’d been less than completely successful. If there were reasons behind all of this, Oliver deserved to know what they were. Hell, Kitsune deserved to know.

His boots pounded the wooden steps. Out the window in the stairwell he saw the gorge spreading out below, coming alive with the industry of morning. People and legends traveled bridges and ladders; store awnings were unfurling; small boats were bobbing at the dock on the river as goods were unloaded. All of that, he caught in a glance. What was going on in Twillig’s Gorge mattered not at all. Not now.

“Frost!” he shouted as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Oliver, you may want to-” Kitsune began.

His hands curled into fists. He wasn’t listening. Two governments wanted him dead, and now it seemed that those trying to kill the Borderkind had set their sights on him as well. And Frost was keeping fucking secrets? The time to be quiet was over.

“Frost, where the hell are you?” he shouted.

Behind the front counter, the innkeeper shot him a dark look and crossed his arms. “Sir, if you please, some of the guests may still be sleeping.”

Oliver ignored him. Kitsune prowled around the foyer for a moment, sniffing the air, then went toward the tavern. Oliver followed, but she stopped at the door, peering inside.

“They’re gone,” she growled. When she turned, he saw the wildness had returned to her eyes. The fox-woman bit off the words. “Chorti, Cheval Bayard, Blue Jay, and Frost. Just this morning; they’ve been and gone.”

Kitsune slipped past him, fur brushing his hand, electric to the touch. She darted toward the front of the inn again and leaped up onto the counter. The innkeeper snapped an angry curse and raised a finger to admonish her. Kitsune slapped the hand away and grabbed him by the hair, pulling his face close to hers.

“How long ago?”

“Let me go, you myth bitch!”

Oliver drew the sword, staring at the man. “When did Frost and the others leave?”

The innkeeper whimpered, but he opened his mouth to answer. Before he could, however, another voice spoke up from the front door.

“You’ve missed them by half an hour, I’m afraid.”

Oliver and Kitsune both twisted round. Wayland Smith stood just inside the door, fox-head walking stick in his hand. If he had just entered, the door had made not a creak.

Smith nodded toward Kitsune, hat brim hiding his eyes. “You chose your path, fox.”

All of the anger and tension went out of Kitsune. Oliver watched in amazement as she stood straighter, letting her cloak fall around her, and bowed her head in deference.

“As you say, uncle.”

Wayland Smith raised his gaze and stared at Oliver. “You saw last night that there are spies in the gorge. There’s no telling how many of those frogs escaped. Even if the Nagas did not order you to leave, you risk danger from myriad sources every moment you remain. Even if there were no conspiracy, no Hunters, have you forgotten the price on your head? Word is spreading. You ought to-”

Oliver snorted. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” He glared at Smith, then at Kitsune. “Kit, this is the guy Frost was talking to, right?”

The fox-woman did not raise her head.

“Bascombe,” Smith began, as though to admonish him.

The Sword of Hunyadi felt warm and light in his grip. Oliver raised it, pointing the tip at the old Borderkind in punctuation.

“Kitsune heard your little chat with Frost this morning, old man. I’m through with secrets. The Falconer was after me and my sister, that’s what you said. The legendary want us dead. You’re going to tell me what it’s all about, or I swear to God, I’ll take your fucking head off!”

“Oliver,” Kitsune whispered. “Don’t.”

He stared at her. “Don’t? My father had his eyes ripped out by the fucking Sandman. The thing has my sister. Come on, Kit, don’t you think I deserve to know why?”

Wayland Smith shook his head slowly. “You fool.” He gripped the fox-head of his stick and glanced at the innkeeper. Something about the look drew Oliver’s attention, and he saw that the innkeeper was looking back and forth between them as though trying to work out a puzzle.

“Now, wait a moment,” the man behind the counter whispered. He pointed to Smith. “He’s the one, isn’t he? Oh, you bastard, trying to keep it so quiet. You clever prick.”

Smith clucked his tongue and shot a meaningful glance at Oliver. “See what you’ve done?”

Then Wayland Smith leaped across the room, twisting in the air. He swung the stick with its heavy, carved head, and brought it down with a sickening crack on the innkeeper’s skull.

The man staggered back, crashed into the wall, and slid to the floor, unmoving.

Oliver stared, sword wavering in his grasp. “Oh, Christ. What the hell did you do?”

Kitsune stepped up, fur brushing him, and grasped his free hand. “We must go, Oliver.”

He gritted his teeth. “Not without the truth.”

“You’ll die here, then,” Smith said, eyes cold and gray. “You’ve said too much. I killed the man for your own safety, but there’s a chance others overhear us even now. And you cannot know how much Coyote may have guessed, or who else he will tell to save his own skin. Word will spread, the truth will out, and it will come to you eventually. It’s safest for you if you do not know.”

“Bullshit! If it concerns me, then it’s my truth! And you’re going to tell me, damn you.”

He started toward Smith, sword up, watching the walking stick warily. How many fencing matches had he won? Dozens, at least. But he had never fought someone with such uncanny speed, not at close quarters.

Wayland Smith removed his hat and set it on the counter. Even as the brim touched wood, he sprang. Oliver raised the sword, parried his attack, then darted the blade forward. Kitsune cried out, but Oliver could not hear her over his own howl of rage. All of his betrayal and fear went into his attack and he twisted inside Smith’s defenses, then drove the point of the sword through his shoulder, puncturing flesh and grinding against bone.

The old man grunted in pain, but grinned.

“Well, there’s proof, eh?”

Gripping the stick with one hand, he shot the other out and cuffed Oliver in the side of the head like he was an errant child. Staggered, Oliver lost his balance. Smith kicked him away, the blade slipped out of the wound, and then the old man stood there, glaring at him, one hand clasped over the piercing in his shoulder. Blood seeped through his fingers.

“Uncle,” Kitsune began.

“I heal,” Smith replied.

Oliver was disoriented from the blow, but determined. Blood dripped from the tip of Hunyadi’s sword as he raised it, ready to attack again.

Wayland Smith rushed at him with the speed of the wind. One hand gripped his wrist, keeping the sword at bay, the other grabbed his throat and he felt himself driven backward. In the span of three heartbeats he was nearly carried across the foyer of the inn. When he slammed into the door, it crashed open, and then they were at the top of the bridge that led to the inn, hanging above the Sorrowful River.

The sun splashed down upon them. Oliver twisted to escape its glare, trying to wrest himself from Smith’s grasp. The old man slammed him against the thick wooden balustrade of the bridge and Oliver was bent backward, a hundred feet above the river, nothing below him but a fall that might kill him.

“You will go,” Smith said, “because you have no choice. To stay is to die, but to go is to have a chance for yourself and your sister. You will see me again, Bascombe. Be assured of it.”

The old man glared at him with stormy gray eyes, then abruptly released him. Wayland Smith backed away, turned, and strode along the bridge, leaving Oliver to gasp to catch his breath. He pulled himself away from the balustrade and stared for a moment at the drop below, at the community of Twillig’s Gorge going about its business, none the wiser.

Kitsune stepped out of the front door of the inn. She raised her hood and looked at him from its depths, jade eyes gleaming.

“You’re fortunate to be alive,” she said. “Shall we be going now, and try to stay that way?”

The fox-woman turned and started along the bridge. Oliver took a deep, shuddering breath of frustration, slid the sword into his belt, and followed.

We’re not alone.

Julianna stood after tying her shoe, Halliwell’s words echoing in her mind. She looked at the detective, but his expression revealed nothing. Halliwell scratched at the back of his neck like a man dying of boredom and regarded her impatiently.

“You all set?” he asked.

“Yeah. Shoelaces. They come untied. It happens.”

A smile flickered across his face and was gone. By silent consent they started walking again. Julianna watched Halliwell, wondering when he would comment further. Obviously there was a purpose to his behavior. He’d said those words and now he was acting as though nothing had happened at all.

But his gaze was restless. Whenever she glanced at him, Halliwell’s eyes were moving, taking in the landscape around them, this copse of skeletal trees, that jutting rock obelisk.

Julianna saw the figure then, perched upon a rock fifty yards ahead. She had looked that way a dozen times and not seen the little man. Now, suddenly, he was simply there. Halliwell had noticed him, obviously. Or had felt that they were observed.

“Keep walking,” Halliwell said softly.

She had slowed nearly to a stop without realizing it. Now she picked up her pace, keeping stride with Halliwell. At the same time, she did not take her eyes off of the figure who sat on the rock slab like a child, knees jutting up, elbows resting atop them. In his hands, the little man held a flute and as she watched, he set it to his lips and began to play a lilting, pleasant tune, as though to greet the morning. The melody swirled and dipped, and in spite of her trepidation, she smiled.

As they came abreast of the rock, Julianna slowed again. Halliwell stopped entirely, so she did the same. The detective stood with his hands at his sides, fingers splayed, as though he expected an attack.

They stood together and listened to the jaunty, winding music, watched the little man play his flute. He was dressed in a gray cloth tunic with a thin black rope around his waist, almost like some kind of monk. His bald pate gleamed in the sun and against the early morning blue of the sky, his nut-brown skin seemed a shadow unto itself. Her first impression, that he was old, was borne out by the many wrinkles upon his face, though his skin was taut against his skull.

But his eyes were young, and alight with mischief. As he played, he watched them, returning their curiosity. When he reached the end of the tune, he took the flute away from his lips and smiled, bowing his head.

“Very pretty,” Julianna said.

“You have my thanks. A very good morning to you, travelers.”

Julianna nodded. “And you.”

Halliwell regarded the little man carefully. “Seems a long way from anywhere, if you don’t mind my saying, sir. A long way to travel to play your flute.”

The old man frowned, brown skin wrinkling even more deeply. “But of course this is not my destination, friend. It is only a place on the road, a spot to rest. But where are you headed, travelers? Forgive me for saying that you seem unlikely mountaineers. You are Lost, yes?”

“Very,” Julianna admitted. It earned her a wary look from Halliwell, but she forged on. “We are attempting to catch up to some friends who are also traveling this way. They followed the river, but we weren’t certain what dangers might be under the mountain-”

“And so you went over,” the old man said, tapping his flute upon his knee. “It is dark down there.”

Halliwell let out an audible breath and at last his hands seemed to relax. His whole body deflated a bit.

“We hoped to cross to the other side, to find wherever it is that the river comes out again.”

The old man looked at Halliwell. He brought the flute up to his lips and blew, a little trill of music drifting off into the air. Then he lowered the instrument and grinned again, his teeth crooked and yellow.

“Ah, but those you seek will not have reached the other side of the mountain.”

Julianna shivered. “What do you mean by that? Is there something in the river? In the tunnel?”

“There are many things in the dark water, lady. But you shouldn’t worry. The river would carry them through Twillig’s Gorge, where travelers are nearly always well met. The odds that the sentries would have killed them are very slim.”

Halliwell had frozen at the implication that Oliver might be dead. Julianna understood. Her own heart had trembled because she loved him, but Halliwell was afraid because if anything happened to Oliver, they had no hope of getting home.

“This gorge,” Halliwell said. “Can we reach it from here?”

“Certainly. Your present course will bring you there in time.”

Julianna shivered again, this time with happiness. A town of some kind, along the river. And if she understood the wrinkled old monk properly, Oliver would have almost had to stop there.

“Thank you,” she said. “So very much.”

“Not at all,” he replied, fingering the holes upon his flute. “The truth is freely given. But surely you must be hungry, yes?”

Something about the glint in his eyes when he said this gave Julianna pause. But Halliwell’s face lit up.

“Starved,” the detective said. “I don’t suppose you have-”

“Certainly,” the monk said.

With his flute in one hand, he leaped easily down from the rock, faster and more agile than seemed possible for one so ancient. When he stood before them, Julianna was startled by his size. He had looked small there upon his perch, but now she saw he truly was no larger than a child, perhaps four feet tall at most.

Halliwell seemed at ease, a grateful expression on his face. She wondered if the wrinkled little man’s age and size had caught the detective off guard. Certainly, he did not seem to pose any threat. His music had been beautiful, his face beatific, his voice calming. He had been nothing but kind and helpful.

But what had that meant: The truth is freely given?

The sprightly little man slipped behind the rock and emerged with a knapsack of the same gray cloth as his tunic. He set it on the ground, unlaced the ties, and reached inside, withdrawing first a small loaf of bread and then a single banana. Crumbs fell from the bread as he held it out, offering it to Halliwell.

Julianna frowned, staring at the banana. It was perfectly yellow, ripe, with only a hint of green at the stem. There was not a trace of a bruise on it, not a brown blemish on the peel.

The old man was traveling as well. This was just a stop along the way for him. If he was carrying food supplies, unless he had taken the banana off a nearby tree, it seemed incredible to her that it would be so perfect.

Incredible.

Small, wrinkled brown hands held out the bread and the banana. Halliwell wore a neighborly smile as he reached out to take them.

The truth is freely given.

Which meant some things were not given so freely.

“Ted, wait.”

Halliwell was about to pluck the food from the old monk’s hands. He glanced sidelong at Julianna, one eyebrow rising in a question.

“Don’t take them,” she said.

The old man’s eyes narrowed and he reached to put the banana in one of Halliwell’s outstretched hands. Julianna lunged forward, slapping at the old man’s wrist and knocking the banana from his grip. It struck the ground, where it instantly changed, transforming first into a flute, and then into a pale yellow serpent with a line of green diamond scales running down its back.

“What the hell?” Halliwell snapped, as the snake hissed and coiled, drawing its head back as though to strike. But it only swayed and watched them.

Halliwell and Julianna both backed away from the monk, staring at him. The detective’s hands bunched into fists.

“It’s in every fairy tale, Ted. Every legend,” she said, heart hammering in her chest. Julianna licked her dry lips and stared at the old man, who only regarded them coolly, still with that benevolent expression that had lulled them. “Meet a stranger on the road, you never take anything from them. Nothing. Especially not food. It costs something in those stories, and the cost is always something terrible.”

As they stared at him, the monk blinked once, and then he laughed softly. His grin widened.

And widened.

The sides of his face split, mouth spreading so far that the entire top of his head tilted back like it was on a hinge. His mouth stretched from ear to ear, and within were rows of yellow, crooked teeth. The front ones seemed ordinary enough, but the others were jagged fangs, long and thin, some of them broken and pitted.

When he spoke, his voice was like the hiss of the snake.

“How fortunate for you that the woman is with you,” the monk said. “And unfortunate for me. I would have had your right hand in trade, friend. And her body for my pleasure, had she partaken.”

Horror shook Julianna, yet the danger seemed to have passed. The man made no move to attack, nor did the hissing snake upon the ground.

“We’ll be going now,” Halliwell said, and he took a step backward.

The snake hissed.

The monk laughed and bent down to scoop the serpent into his hand, where it became a harmless flute once again.

“If you insist,” he said, the words stretched out by the vastness of his jaws. In his left hand, he still held the small loaf of bread. “But the bread is real. Have it, if you would. Your prize for surviving. Freely given.”

Julianna’s breath caught in her throat. “Freely given,” she said, looking at Halliwell. “I don’t think he can break his word on that. There are rules.”

“To hell with rules,” Halliwell said, still staring at the monster. “No thanks. We’ll pass.”

Julianna agreed. As hungry as she was, she could not have eaten anything this creature touched. They backed away slowly, watching the little man and his sack and his grisly smile. Only when they were fifty yards away and he had made no move to follow did they turn and walk normally again. They went quickly, glancing back every few seconds.

When they had gone so far that they could no longer see the rock, or the old man and his flute, Halliwell let out a breath.

“I owe you,” he said.

“Not a problem. You do the same for me, okay? We’ve got to keep each other alive.”

“Damn straight.”

Julianna put a hand on his back. The detective glanced at her, surprised by the gentle contact.

“We’re going to get home, Ted. We are.”

Halliwell nodded, but his eyes were haunted by the fear that Julianna was wrong.