Kitsune had been in the ambassador’s residence long minutes before she had found the best point of entry for Oliver. During that time it was obvious she had been upstairs already. The guard was nowhere to be seen, undoubtedly put aside in some corner room where no one would discover him until morning, or until he raised an alarm upon regaining consciousness.
The door at the top of the stairs was unlocked. Kitsune had been very busy indeed. It creaked softly upon opening and she glanced back and gestured him to silence a final time-needlessly-before entering. A light burned in the hall bathroom, perhaps to guide the way for nighttime wanderers, and another in a sitting room at the far end of the corridor. Kitsune ignored this, and so Oliver assumed it was empty.
The fox-woman led the way to a curving staircase that wound up to the third floor. Oliver followed, several of the stairs creaking lightly beneath his step. A carpet runner kept his tread otherwise silent and he was grateful. Nervously, he slid his hand into his pocket and rubbed the seed of the Harvest gods between his thumb and forefinger. It had grown into a habit for him.
From his entry into the embassy until the moment they stood in the open door of the nursery it had been perhaps four minutes, yet each passing second grew longer, and none so long as that in which Oliver first laid eyes upon the little girl who slept in the floral canopy bed. The ambassador’s daughter-he knew only the family’s last name, Hetherton-lay curled in the bed, a plush doll crushed against her, hair spread upon her pillow, burrowed deeply beneath her covers.
Christmas Eve. In a matter of hours, she would wake in search of her presents. His mind busily wove fictions about Santa Claus and his helpers in the event that their entrance roused her. Yet he prayed that did not become necessary.
All of this was so wrong, and nothing more so than sneaking into the room of a little girl-she couldn’t have been more than three-while she slept. The magic that he still felt in his heart at the thought of Christmas Eve only made it that much worse.
Oliver hesitated. The little girl’s breathing seemed so loud. Her expression was soft and innocent, her lips parted in total surrender to sleep.
To the Dustman.
Kitsune snatched up his fingers and drew him into the room. Oliver swallowed hard and stood staring down at the girl as Kit closed the door all but a few inches. Drawing her cloak around herself, Kitsune diminished, becoming a fox in the space between heartbeats. Each time she did this Oliver felt a second of vertigo, as though he might fall into the space left by the sudden absence where she had been.
The fox trotted to a place at the foot of the girl’s bed. Oliver frowned at the lack of any sound from her passing, not even the scratch of claws upon the wooden floor, but he ought not have been surprised. Kitsune rarely made a sound, her feet seeming barely to touch the ground. The fox stood at the foot of the bed and twitched her tail as though it was a beckoning finger. She nodded as if to urge him to join her, and so he did. If the girl did stir, it would be best not to be within her view. Careful not to let his sheathed sword bang against the wood, Oliver lay quietly on the floor, hidden.
Kitsune circled him twice like a dog searching for the perfect spot to lie before the fireplace. At last she settled in front of him, backing up, nuzzling into him as though she were indeed a pet. Oliver’s throat went dry. The strangeness of the moment enveloped him. In the silence of the embassy he lay there. Low and primal, the fox purred in a way that was not at all feline. This was the purr of a lover.
She shifted her head, copper fur brushing against his arm. The fox glanced at him with jade eyes.
There, against him, the magic transformed her again. Fox became woman so suddenly that he started, then held his breath waiting to see if the child had been disturbed. Kitsune gave him half a smile, one corner of her mouth lifting. Her hair hung down from within the hood, a cascade of black velvet. It touched his arm, just as her fur had. The heat from her body had reached him before, but now she felt like a furnace so close to him.
“What about the Dustman?” he whispered, barely vocalizing, afraid to wake the girl, afraid he wouldn’t be able to speak.
“If he could sense me, he will have. He’ll come.”
She edged nearer, her body up against him, every contour felt in sharp relief.
Kitsune reached up to trace his face.
“Oliver,” Kitsune said. “There is magic in you.”
She brought her mouth up to be kissed.
Oliver shivered with lust and fascination. “Kit.”
“Ssshhh,” she whispered.
He drew back to catch her gaze, and then shook his head. No. He could not do this. No man could have been there with Kitsune, in that moment, and not desired her. It would have been so easy to surrender to that. But he owed Julianna more than this.
Julianna had gone searching for him, and according to the news, she had vanished as well. He had done his best not to think about what might have become of her. With every part of him-from muscle to spirit to breath-he felt the longing for Julianna. All he wished for was to hold her in his arms and know that she was safe, not only for her benefit, but for his own selfish needs as well. No one could look inside him the way she could. When he felt despair or fear or doubt, no one could raise him up from that the way Julianna had always been able to.
Thus far, he had not allowed himself to consider the obvious possibility-that the Sandman had taken Julianna as well as Collette. He knew his sister was in the monster’s hands, and so before he could consider the next step, he had to save Collette. Until then, he could only hold Julianna in his heart like a talisman, to keep away despair. In his mind he could still see her there on the end of the jetty, all the way back in the summer before high school began. He kept that image clear in his thoughts, polished and shining.
“Kit, I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Or thought he did. He might not even have spoken the words aloud. Regardless, Kitsune understood well enough. Anger and betrayal flashed in her jade eyes. Her brow furrowed and she glanced away, though she did not move. Her body was still pressed tightly to his.
“I understand,” she whispered. “You must have time.”
But he shook his head. She should not speak. For something was stirring in the room. A sound like a breeze rustling leaves far away reached him and a soft wind blew across the floor, eddying and swirling. It was not the girl that stirred.
Grains of sand danced across the wood floor. It began as a light spray, but soon a fine covering lay upon the floorboards, a dust devil of sand. When it began to rise, to sculpt a form, Oliver went rigid. He knew this was not their enemy, not the creature who had taken Collette, but it was an aspect of the same being. How could they predict what was to come?
The breeze died and a bit of sand scattered upon the floor.
The Dustman had arrived.
On Christmas morning, Sara Halliwell woke with the dawn. Warm sunlight streamed in the windows of her father’s house. She had slept on the sofa in the living room, falling asleep there in front of the fire. Sometime during the long night she had awoken in the dark with only embers glowing in the fireplace and the gleam of Christmas lights outside from other houses in the neighborhood, and she’d been tempted to move to her father’s bed.
But Sara stayed on the sofa instead, too tired and unnerved to move, troubled by the suspicion that sleeping in her father’s bed would constitute some strange admission that she thought him gone forever.
When the light of Christmas morning woke her, she turned over, burrowed into the sofa, and tried to go back to sleep. Her eyes burned and her head felt stuffed with the cotton of exhaustion, but no matter how early it was-surely no later than seven-she could not force herself to go back to sleep. Her neck ached and her mouth felt dry.