Ananta only shrugged. “You will want to speak with Miss Tsing. She can explain better than I.”
He took flight for just a moment, dropping down to a platform just beyond the edge of the cliff. Halliwell walked numbly after him. He glanced at Julianna. Her eyes were hollow.
The guardian had to be wrong. Oliver could travel back and forth. There had to be a way. The thing wasn’t even human, after all. What the hell did he know?
Together, Halliwell and Julianna went to the edge and looked down into the wondrous river gorge. There were awnings and stone bridges, ladders and walkways of wood and rope. The river went through a thriving village. The smell of food cooking down below rose to make Halliwell’s stomach growl. Somewhere down there, children were laughing, and the sweet sound echoed off the walls. He saw a large, colorful florist’s cart on the broad promenade beside the river, amidst all manner of shops.
Below, Ananta waited on the platform. It was connected to a strange latticework of stairs and rope bridges that led down hundreds of feet into the heart of Twillig’s Gorge.
Halliwell took one last, long glance at the eastern side of the gorge, knowing that their path continued there. They had to get after Oliver and this Kitsune. That was the only way they were going to find real answers.
But Ananta began to slide his long serpent body down the stairs, holding the rails, wings tucked behind him, and after a moment’s hesitation, Julianna followed.
Still numb, Halliwell descended behind them, wondering if there was any point in going on.
CHAPTER 7
L ight snow fell on the tarmac at Bangor International Airport, the gentle cascade of white illuminated by the runway lights as the plane touched down. Sara Halliwell stared out the window, her forehead against the glass, and stared at nothing as the pilot taxied toward the terminal.
Everyone stood up before the seatbelt light was off. Sara stayed in her seat. Only when the door was open and people began to file along the aisle did she stand and retrieve her bag from the overhead compartment. It was smaller than a suitcase but larger than an overnight bag, and heavy. With the strap over one shoulder, she listed badly to one side.
She shuffled along the aisle, face slack, tired but all too awake. The flight attendants stood just outside the cockpit and smiled pleasantly as she got off the plane, then Sara was in the throng moving up the gangway into the terminal. People hurried by her. A crewman pushed an elderly black man in a wheelchair. She went around them, but neither of them glanced up.
Once upon a time, an eighteen-year-old Sara had driven into Canada to go skiing with her girlfriends. It was raining lightly, just spattering the windshield, but in the dark she had not realized it was freezing rain, and the highway had become a sheet of ice. Then something about the sound of the rain on the roof of the car troubled her and she frowned and gently tapped the brake.
She had crested the hill. As she did, she saw the brake lights flash on the car in front of her. It started to skid, sliding as if in slow motion down the other side of the hill. Ahead, cars collided, one after the other, first two, then five, and then there were at least nine vehicles careening into one another with a crash of metal, gliding so gently into their collisions.
Sara had not tapped the brake again, nor had she accelerated. Instead, she had steered, carefully, skirting around a slowly spinning car and weaving through the wreckage. Even as she made it through to the other side, a car came over the hill behind her going much too fast, and the resulting crash made a thump like a cannon shot into the air.
Yet Sara had slipped through, as though she had been invisible. Untouchable. She felt that way now. Moving up the gangway and into the airport, anonymous and invisible, she was untouchable.
But fate had already touched her, after all.
Fate had been Jackson Norris on the phone just after ten o’clock last night. Just hearing his voice she had caught her breath. A phone call from Jackson Norris could only mean the worst.
When she left the gate area and walked past security, he was there waiting for her. The man was fortysomething, but the raccoon-dark circles under his eyes made him look ten years older. Haggard and tired, he looked too thin and his hair was much grayer than the last time she had seen him, back in the spring.
Still, he managed a sad smile for her as she went to him.
“Hello, Sheriff.”
He held her at arm’s length, like a long-lost uncle who hadn’t seen her since childhood. “Sara. You look great, kid.” The sheriff took her bag and slung it over his own shoulder. “And I’ve told you before, you’re long since old enough to call me Jackson.”
“Not sure I’ll ever be old enough for that,” she said, and she kissed his cheek even as they began to walk through the airport.
The sheriff led the way, already fishing out his keys, though it was no short walk to the parking lot.
“How’s life treating you, kid?” he asked. “You still the glamour girl, taking pictures of all those pretty models in their underwear?”
Sara smiled. It was an old conversation. One they repeated over and over. “Still taking pictures,” she confirmed, though for the first time since she could remember, she was traveling without her camera. She felt bereft without it, and yet also weirdly free. “Though I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s not quite as exciting as you make it sound.”
When the sheriff chuckled, she saw the deep wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, and the gray bristle on his chin. He’d skipped shaving today. That wasn’t like Jackson Norris at all.
“Because you’re a girl,” he said. “I don’t know how a man can take photos like that and keep his concentration on the job.”
“Good thing I don’t have that problem,” she said, not bothering to mask the sarcasm he would never understand.
They rode the elevator up to the parking garage in silence, both stewing, contemplating, worrying. Walking to the car-his Wessex County Sheriff’s Department official vehicle-the sheriff moved a little too fast, as though he wasn’t ready for the rest of their conversation. The real part. The unfamiliar, unrehearsed part. He put Sara’s bag in the trunk and went around to unlock her door like a true gentleman. He even held it open for her.
Sara only stood and looked at him. “Where’s my father, Jackson?”
He had been urging her to use his name for years. Now that she did, he flinched. The sheriff glanced away and let out a breath, then lifted his gaze to meet hers as though his head weighed a thousand pounds.
“I honestly don’t know. There isn’t any news, Sara. You know if there was, you’d be the first to know.”
“So this law firm hires him to go look for one of their lawyers in fucking England-a guy who maybe murdered his father-he goes missing, and all you can tell me is that there isn’t any news?”
Hysteria tinged her voice. She knew it, and hated it, but could do nothing about it. Once upon a time, Jackson would have chided her for her language. Tonight, he said not a word. Small town guy he might be, but he wasn’t stupid.
“We know he and Julianna Whitney, who was with him, chartered a boat to take them out to an island off the coast of Scotland. It was in the middle of a snowstorm, apparently. But your father and Ms. Whitney went ashore on the island. When they didn’t come back, the charter captain went looking for them, but there wasn’t a trace. There was a fire on the island. The people who live there won’t say how the fire started. None of them report having seen your father or Ms. Whitney. I’m not sure what else I can say.”
December wind breezed through the garage. Sara shivered and ought to have zipped her jacket, but it was as though someone else was feeling it, someone else was cold.
She leaned against the car and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “Sheriff, what was my dad doing moonlighting for some law firm? I know…I mean, I don’t see him much, but we talk. He never mentioned doing anything like that. Sheriff’s detective pays all right, doesn’t it? So what was he doing this for? Going to England? In his whole career, he’s never done anything like that. He’s a cop in Maine. That’s all he ever was or wanted to be. So here’s what you can do. You can tell me how it happened. How did he end up going there in the first place?”