“Bad?” Quinton asked.
I just nodded.
About ten minutes later we came out of the pass and started the last short downhill to Leavenworth, a mock-Bavarian village beside the highway surrounded by a larger town full of retirees, orchard keepers, and railroad workers. The traffic was thicker than I’d expected for so late in the day—it was after four o’clock already—and we slowed to a creep as we entered the city limits. A soft, floral smell spiked with the odors of greenery, manure, and beer slipped into the truck’s vents and invited us to roll down the windows, even though the air outside was crisp and the shadow of the mountain was already falling onto the bowl of the valley, lowering the temperature further.
“So where are we going?” I asked as we passed Icicle Road and the slope flattened considerably as U.S. 2 made its two-lane way through town.
“No idea. Didn’t look it up yet.”
“Did Rice tell you where the house it came from was?”
“No. I had the impression the salvage wasn’t quite on the up-and-up, so he didn’t have an address—covering his ass in case anyone complained and identified him. He said it was in an orchard outside town.”
I looked around. Everything that wasn’t houses or quaint Bavarian shops was either apple trees or ski resort business. Even from the business-choked confines of Highway 2, I could see the fruit trees climbing the hills surrounding the town. Late blossoms covered many of the visible trees in mantillas of pink-tinged white. Brighter white or pink splashes marked out the occasional pear or cherry tree in the congregation.
“Yeah . . . that’s going to be easy to spot.”
“We’ll start with the address we’ve got for Christopher Drew—the guy who bought the puzzle ball. The writing’s a bit hard to read, but that seems to be the name. If I can find some WiFi, I can look it up.”
It didn’t seem likely we’d get any signal in the middle of the road, but it wasn’t going to be easy to park: The streets of the town were thick with cars and pedestrians. Over the sound of engines idling, a loudspeaker squawked something about Apple Blossom Royalty and beer gardens. A lot of the cars ahead of us peeled off to the right in front of a restaurant named Gustav’s that sported an onion dome on a steeplelike extension and gingerbread deck rails cut with fanciful tulip shapes.
Quinton shot a wary look at the throng turning right and stayed to the left. “Let’s not go wherever they’re going.”
I took a longer look and saw the branching road was much more ornately built with unrelenting Bavarianisms on both sides. A block or so away the road curved abruptly and I could see a bright yellow banner hung high across the street on the dogleg beyond. It wasn’t close enough to read but I got the gist.
“I doubt we’ll be able to avoid it,” I said. “There’s some kind of festival going on.”
We crept past a hotel dressed up like an Alpine ski lodge that sported a smaller yellow banner with the words “Welcome to Maifest!” right under its Howard Johnson logo. I grimaced at our timing.
“Better park and walk,” Quinton suggested.
I rolled my eyes at the thought.
It turned out not to be so bad, though it did take fifteen minutes to find a parking place. I figured that dinner was approaching for some of the locals and they might prefer to eat at home rather than at the tourist-quaint biergartens and rathskellers. A bit of walking on the less popular highway side of the main drag brought us back into the center of town. Quinton spotted a familiar green logo near the park in the middle of the village and we headed for it, though the heavy German script made it difficult to make out the small carved sign on the building’s side that read “Starbucks.” We hunkered down with the dark sludge they call coffee while Quinton poked at his handheld.
Leavenworth was an odd place. On the south side of the highway it was conspicuously a themed tourist mecca with cute Alpine architecture straight off the slopes of Disney’s version of the Matterhorn. North of the highway, the Bavarian theme continued but in patches, interrupted with much more prosaic American buildings and ordinary houses beyond that. The Alpine architecture wasn’t entirely out of place since we’d only come a few hundred feet down from the ridge to the valley floor: The area was still mountainous and would whiten with thick drifts in the first snowfall. In the Grey I could see the bland, busy railroad town it had once been. But the rails had moved north to take a shorter route though the pass and this town had nearly died.
I stepped outside for a moment and glanced up and down Front Street—the main drag—looking at the pretty little buildings that hung their present happy colors over the sad, shuttered businesses that had once dominated the place. That was depressing, but as silly as I thought the current incarnation was, at least it was thriving. I had to applaud whoever had come up with the idea. Other towns abandoned by their primary industry hadn’t fared so well.
Quinton came out onto the railed porch that overlooked the street and put his arm around my waist. “It’s a little weird, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Did you know they have their own German-language newspaper here? They’re really into the Bavarian thing.”
“Seems to be working. Though it must seem a bit sad and strange when it isn’t Maifest.”
“It’s always something out here. Next week is Spring Bird Fest. Can you imagine what it must be like in October?”
I shivered at the vision of thousands of beer-loving tourists flooding into the tiny town to celebrate the traditional German brewfest. I wondered if they had to chase the visitors indoors and hose off the streets every night, though at that time of year, hosing might lead to icing; the seasons turned cold quickly on the eastern side of the state. I didn’t like the way my thoughts kept coming back to the negative, so I changed the subject. “Did you figure out where the address is?”
“Yeah. It’s close, but it’s on the other side of the river, so we’ll have to drive. The nearest bridge is a two-mile walk and we’d have to walk about the same distance on the other side. I don’t relish that sort of hike with the mountains already cutting the sunlight.”
Quinton was right: Snuggled up tight to the valley’s western wall, the shadow of the mountains had already cloaked the town, casting it into a long blue twilight scented with apple blossoms. We’d have to get moving if we were going to get much done before full darkness.
Quinton had his map on the palmtop and I drove to his directions, continuing down Highway 2 until we crossed the Wenatchee River, then doubling back on the other bank, looking for a house set back from the road. We nearly missed it, overhung as it was by trees and pushing its back door almost up to the riverbank. It wasn’t an interesting house, just an old one and quite plain, painted a muddy green that vanished into the trees and overgrown yard.
There was nothing sinister about it, yet as I got out of the truck, I felt a chill creeping over my skin that had nothing to do with the oncoming night or the rising chatter of the grid. In the Grey, a brilliant line of clear blue energy sizzled along the river behind the house while spikes and coils of red and yellow formed an ornate fence around the property. I’d never seen anything like it. The closest thing I could think of was the gold tracery of Mara’s perimeter spells around the house on Queen Anne Hill. This wasn’t the same shape or color: The lines and curves were much more pointed, thin, and sharp, more like barbed wire than the vinelike weaving Mara made. Although it was red, I didn’t get the same nauseous sensation from this cloud of energy that I did from vampires. It was unpleasant in a different way and I was not pleased that the puzzle ball was in the possession of whoever had raised that fence.