For a long moment, Jackson Norris stared at her with those raccoon eyes and a twist to his mouth like he’d just eaten something sour. Then he left the door open and walked around to unlock the driver’s-side door. After he opened his door, he paused and stared at her over the roof, past the rack of blue emergency lights that were, for the moment, unlit.
“Politics, Sara.”
Incredulous, she stared at him. “What?”
“I owed the firm a big favor. A lot of favors. Chances are, I wouldn’t be sheriff if it hadn’t been for their support. They wanted to play this investigation a certain way-do it quietly, try to protect their image, all of that-and I played along. Oliver Bascombe is one of theirs. Nobody really thinks the guy killed his father, but chances are he knows who did, or why. So when they wanted help going and fetching the lawyer in London-”
“You loaned them my father,” Sara said quietly, stomach in knots.
“Not quite. They asked if I’d give him some time off, if I’d object to them giving him a freelance investigation job. I paved the way, Sara, but I couldn’t have ordered Ted to take the assignment. It’s not my jurisdiction. Bascombe and Cox offered him work, and he took it. Hell, kid, you know what he’s like when he wants to close a case.”
Sara tasted bitterness in her mouth. “Better than anyone.”
Her father was a good man, but he had never been a good father. Not when it mattered. The job had always come first. And now, here she was, taken away from her life and her work because the idea that something might have happened to him made her frantic. Because, despite the distance that they could somehow never bridge between them, she loved him desperately and had never known what to do about that.
She slid into her seat and closed the door.
Only the crackling of the police radio broke the silence as the sheriff drove them away from the airport. He wasn’t going to be getting many calls down in Bangor, but still he did not shut it off. Habit, Sara supposed.
How she had wished for someone to blame this on. It would be so convenient to be able to hate Jackson Norris for putting her through this, or even her father for making her think maybe they would never be able to solve the problem of the awkwardness between them.
But there was no one to blame. And nothing to do but wait, and ask questions, and hope.
The snow was falling outside, heavy flakes that drifted gently to the ground. The way the snow danced on the darkened highway ahead was mesmerizing. Sara watched it, and let herself be captivated. Taken away.
“What was that?” the sheriff asked.
Sara frowned. “Huh?”
“You said something. I didn’t catch it.”
For a second she did not know what he meant. Then she realized that she had spoken, almost unconsciously.
“He wanted me to come home for Christmas,” she said, watching the snow, looking at the holiday lights gleaming on evergreens and strung from buildings as they drove away from Bangor. Tomorrow night was Christmas Eve.
“Guess he got his wish.”
The wind was blowing from the west, or Kitsune would have caught the soldiers’ scent before it was too late. Later, she would wonder if there was more to that failure than merely the direction of the wind, if the confusing feelings that swirled in her heart had distracted her. But by then, such questions would be meaningless.
It took longer than Kitsune had expected for them to reach the Orient Road. Many years had passed since the last time she had passed this way, and even then it had been from an entirely different angle. In those old times, she had not even been aware that Twillig’s Gorge existed. That had been a hard journey, as she recalled, and it was a dark irony for her to learn now, so long after, that had she only traveled a few hours to the west she might have come upon that sanctuary.
But that was an old story from her life, and she did not want to dwell upon it.
More than three hours after they left the gorge, they had come to a sparse forest of ancient growth trees. Skirting its edge, they had passed a pond upon which sat the ramshackle remnants of a long-abandoned grist mill. A short way further they came upon a small house, a kind of way station from an age gone by.
Then, at last, the Orient Road.
Kitsune had journeyed the length of that road more than once. To the southwest, it led toward Perinthia. To the east, all the way into the furthest regions of Euphrasia, into the deepest and oldest parts of the world beyond the Veil. That was where her home lay, the forest where she had been born, far back in the mists of time and the ancestral memory of an entire region.
But Kitsune had not passed through that forest in two hundred years and had no desire to return. All that waited there for her was the bitter, aching memory of a more vivid, more vital time and a life full of passion and playfulness. Another age.
The present was a pale shadow of the past, but it required her attention. When the sorcerers had created the Veil, they had done so to protect the purity of the legendary worlds. Kitsune believed they had failed. It was not a pleasant thought. Indeed, these recent days it had been only the presence of Oliver at her side that lightened her heart. He was a good man, smart and strong and simple. Despite his harsh opinion of himself, there was nobility in him that was becoming more and more difficult to find amongst the legendary.
In the shadow of the tall pines, she glanced at Oliver. She knew that he was devoted to another, but Kitsune desired him. It troubled her, that desire, for she did not understand it. For a human, Oliver was brave enough, and he was charming and full of heart, but he was still ordinary. Kitsune could not make sense of what she felt for him, but that did not lessen its power.
He longed for Julianna, the woman he would have made his wife. But she was a world away, and he might never see her again. In time, his devotion to her would lessen.
Kitsune could wait.
As they passed the dusty way station, whose roof had been staved in by a fallen pine, Kitsune spared a thought for Frost and Blue Jay, and all of her kin. Part of her longed to be with them, to search for answers and vengeance in Yucatazca. But that was not to be.
She cast another glance at Oliver. He sensed her regard and looked over, one eyebrow raised. A ripple of pleasure went through her and she smiled at him. Oliver smiled back, puzzled. If he thought her enigmatic, Kitsune did not mind.
“We go east from here,” she said.
Kitsune did not recall how far it was, precisely, to the stone circle where she could enter the Winding Way. For his part, Oliver did not ask, so she said nothing. It seemed more likely to her that they would be on this road all the way to the Sandman’s castle in the eastern mountains, and that was ten or twelve days’ walk on human feet. With nothing by way of provisions, they would have to forage or rely on the kindness of strangers. There were towns along the way, but with the Hunters after Borderkind, and the warrant sworn out for Oliver, they would have to be very careful indeed.
These were her thoughts as they turned east on the Orient Road and set off. The old forest grew denser the further east they went, and the hard-packed earth of the road was overrun in places with grass and weeds. The Lost Ones traveled only when they first crossed through the Veil. Once they had settled, they tended to remain settled, and their offspring rarely left the places of their birth. The legendary traveled more frequently, but usually only moving amongst the larger cities of the Two Kingdoms. Farmers took their harvest to market, tax collectors gathered tithes to the monarchs, but other than those, few ventured beyond their own borders.