Into the Woods: Tales From the Hollows and Beyond Page 6

My brother made a nervous guffaw, crossing his legs to help keep his body heat with him. We were right over the heater, but it was still cold. “That’s what you were trying to do, wasn’t it, Firefly?” he said.

  “Yes, but he’s so real!” I said, hushed. “I didn’t expect anything but a whisper or a feeling. Not a naked man in the snow. And certainly not him!”

  Pierce flushed. His eyes met mine, and I bit back my next words, stunned by the depth of his bewilderment. The bus shifted forward as the driver braked to pick someone up, and he almost fell out of his seat, grabbing the pole with white hands to save himself.

  “You drew me from purgatory,” he said, confusion pouring from him even as he warily watched the people file on and find their seats. His face went panicked, and then he swallowed, forcing his emotions down. “I suspected I was going to hell. I suspected my penance for my failure was concluded, and I was going to hell. I’ll allow it looks like hell at first observance, though not broken and lacking a smell of burnt amber.” He looked out the window. “No horses,” he said softly, then his eyebrows rose inquiringly. “And you bricked over the canal, nasty swill hole it was. Are the engines powered then by steam?”

  Beside me, Robbie grinned. “He sure uses a lot of words to say anything.”

  “Shut up,” I muttered. I thought he was elegant.

  “This isn’t hell,” Pierce said, and, as if exhausted, he dropped his head to show me the top of his loose black curls. His relief made my stomach clench and burn.

  I looked away, uncomfortable. Thoughts of my deal with Robbie came back. I didn’t know if he would think this was a success or not. I did bring a ghost back, but it wasn’t Dad. And without Dad saying yes to the I.S., Robbie would probably take it as a no. Worried, I looked up at Robbie and said, “I did the spell right.”

  My brother shifted, as if preparing for an argument. My eyebrows pulled together, and I glared at him. “I don’t care if it summoned the wrong ghost, I did the freaking spell right!”

  Pierce looked positively terrified as he alternated his attention between us and the new people calmly getting on and finding their seats. I was guessing it wasn’t the volume of my voice, but what I was saying. Being a witch in public was a big no-no that could get you killed before nineteen sixty-six, and he had clearly died before then.

  Robbie frowned in annoyance. “The deal was you’d summon Dad,” he said, and I gritted my teeth.

  “The deal was I would do the spell right, and if I didn’t, I would come out to Portland with you. Well, look,” I said, pointing. “There’s a ghost. You just try to tell me he isn’t there.”

  “All right, all right,” Robbie said, slouching. “You stirred the spell properly, but we still don’t know what Dad would want, so I’m not going to sign that paper.”

  “You son of a—”

  “Rachel!” he said, interrupting me. “Don’t you get it? This is why I want you to come out with me and finish your schooling.” He gestured at Pierce as if he was a thing, not a person. “You did an eight-hundred-level summoning spell without batting an eye. You could be anything you want. Why are you going to waste yourself in the I.S.?”

  “The I.S. isn’t a waste,” I said, while Pierce shifted uncomfortably. “Are you saying Dad’s life was a waste, you dumb pile of crap?”

  Pierce stared at me, and I flushed. Robbie’s face was severe, and he looked straight ahead, ticked. The bus was moving again, and I sat in a sullen silence. I knew I was heaping more abuse on Robbie than he deserved. But I had wanted to talk to my dad, and now that chance was gone. I should’ve known I wouldn’t be able to do it right. And as much as I hated myself for it, the tears started to well.

  Pierce cleared his throat. Embarrassed, I wiped my eyes and sniffed.

  “You were attempting to summon your father,” he said softly, making nervous glances at the people whispering over Pierce’s bare feet and Robbie’s lack of a coat. “On the solstice. And it was I whom your magic touched?”

  I nodded fast, struggling to keep from bawling my fool head off. I missed him. I had really thought I could do it.

  “I apologize,” Pierce said so sincerely that I looked up. “You might should celebrate, mistress witch. You stirred the spell proper, or I expect I’d not be here. That I appeared in his stead means he has gone to his reward and is at peace.”

  Selfishly, I’d been wishing that Dad had missed me so much that he would have lingered, and I sniffed again, staring at the blur of holiday lights passing. I was a bad daughter.

  “Please don’t weep,” he said, and I started when he leaned forward and took my hand. “You’re so wan, it’s most enough to break my heart, mistress witch.”

  “I only wanted to see him,” I said, pitching my voice low so it wouldn’t break.

  Pierce’s hands were cold. There was no warmth to him. But his fingers held mine firmly, their roughness stark next to my unworked, skinny hands. I felt a small lift through me, as if I was tapping a line, and my eyes rose to his.

  “Why . . .” he said, his vivid eyes fixed on mine. “You’re a grown woman. But so small.”

  My tears quit from surprise. “I’m eighteen,” I said, affronted, then pulled my hand away. “How long have you been dead?”

  “Eighteen,” he murmured. I felt a growing sense of unease as the small man leaned back, glancing at Robbie with what looked like embarrassment.

  “My apologies,” he said formally. “I meant no disrespect to your intended.”

  “Intended!” Robbie barked, and I made a rude sound, sliding down from my brother. The people who had just gotten on looked up, surprised. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my sister.” Then Robbie’s expression shifted. “Stay away from my sister.”

  I felt the beginnings of a smile come over my face. Honestly, Pierce was a ghost and too old for me even if he was alive. At least twenty-four, I’d guess from the look at him. All of him.

  I flushed as I recalled his short stature, firmly muscled and lean, like a small horse used to hard labor. Glancing up, I was embarrassed to see Pierce as red as I felt, carefully holding his coat closed.

  “If the year is nineteen ninety-nine, I’ve made a die of it for nearly a hundred and forty-seven years,” he said to the floor.

  Poor man, I thought in pity. Everyone he knew was probably gone or so old they wouldn’t remember him. “How did you die?” I asked, curious.

  Pierce’s gaze met mine, and I shivered at the intensity. “I’m a witch, as much as you,” he whispered, though Robbie and I had been shouting about spells for the last five minutes. But before the Turn, being labeled a witch could get you killed.

  “You were caught?” I said, scooting to the edge of the bus seat as we swung onto a slick, steep road, captivated by his air of secrecy. “Before the Turn? What did they do to you?”

  Pierce tilted his head to give himself a dangerous air. “A murder most powerful. I’d have no mind to tell you if you’re of a frail constitution, but I was bricked into the ground while breath still moved in my lungs. Buried alive with an angelic guard ready to smite me down should I dare to emerge.”

  “You were murdered!” I said, feeling a quiver of fear.

  Robbie chuckled, and I thwacked his knee. “Shut up,” I said, then winced at Pierce’s aghast look. If he’d been dead for a hundred and forty years, I’d probably just cursed like a sailor.

  “Sorry,” I said, then braced myself when the bus swayed to a stop. More people filed on, the last being an angry, unhappy woman with more of those fliers. She talked to the bus driver for a moment, and he grumbled something before waving her on and letting the air out of the brakes. Leaning back, he shut his eyes as the woman taped a laminated flier to the floor in the aisle, and two more to the ceiling.

  “Take a flier,” she demanded as she worked her way to the back of the bus. “Sarah’s been missing for two days. She’s a sweet little girl. Have you seen her?”

  Only on every TV station, I thought as I shook my head and accepted
the purple paper. I glanced down as she handed one to Robbie and Pierce. The picture was different from the last one. The glow of birthday candles was in the foreground and a pile of presents in the back, blurry and out of focus. Sarah was smiling, full of life, and the thought of her alone, lost in the snow, was only slightly more tolerable than the thought of what someone sick enough to steal her might be using her for.

  I couldn’t look anymore. The woman had gotten off through the back door to hit the next bus, and I jammed the flier in my pocket with the first one as the bus lurched into traffic.

  “I know who has her,” Pierce said, his hushed, excited voice pulling my attention to him. The lights of oncoming traffic shone on him, lighting his fervent, kind of scary expression.

  “Driver!” he shouted, standing, and I pressed into the seat, alarmed. “Stop the carriage!”

  Everyone looked at us, most of them laughing. “Sit down!” Robbie gave him a gentle shove, and Pierce fell back, coat flying open for a second. “You’re going to get us kicked off.”

  “I know where she’s been taken!” he exclaimed, and I glanced at the passengers, worried. The driver, though, already thought he was drunk, and everyone else was snickering about the peep show.

  “Lower your voice,” Robbie said, shifting to sit beside him. “People will think you’re crazy.”

  Pierce visibly caught his next words and closed his coat tighter. “He has her,” he said, shaking the paper at Robbie. “The man, that . . . beast that murdered me to death. The very creature I was charged to bring to midnight justice. He’s taken another.”

  I could tell my eyes were round, but Robbie wasn’t impressed. “It’s been almost two hundred years.”

  “Which means little to the blood-lusting, foul spawn from hell,” Pierce said, and my breath caught. Vampire. He was talking about a vampire. A dead one. Crap, if a vampire had her, then she was really in trouble.

  “You were trying to tag a vampire?” I said, awed. “You must be good!” Even the I.S. didn’t send witches after vampires.

  Pierce’s expression blanked and he looked away. “Not good enough, I allow. I was there on my own hook with the belief that pride and moral outrage would sustain me. The spawn has an unholy mind for young girls, which I expect he satisfied without reprisal for decades until he abducted a girl of high standing and her parents engaged my . . . midnight services.”

  Robbie scoffed, but I stared. Figuring out what Pierce was saying was fascinating.

  Seeing Robbie’s disinterest, Pierce focused on me. “This child,” he said, looking at the paper, “is the image of his preferred prey. I confronted him with his culpability, but he is as clever as a Philadelphian lawyer, and to pile on the agony, he informed the constables of my liability and claimed knowledge of the signs.”

  Pierce’s eyes dropped, and I felt a twinge of fear for the history I’d missed by a mere generation. Liability was a mixed-company term for witch—when being one could get you killed. I suspected spawn was pre-Turn for vampire. Midnight services was probably code for detective or possibly an early Inderlander cop. Philadelphian lawyer was self-explanatory.

  “Truly I was a witch,” he said softly, “and I could say no different. The girl he murdered directly to protect his name. That it was so fast was a grace, her fair white body found in solstice snow and wept over. She could no more speak to save me than a stick. That I showed signs of liability about my person and belongs made my words of no account. They rowed me up Salt River all night for their enjoyment until being buried alive in blasphemed ground was a blessing. This,” he said, shaking the paper, “is the same black spawn. He has taken another child, and if I don’t stop him, he will foul her soul by sunrise. To stand idle would be an outrage against all nature.”

  I stared at him, impressed. “Wow.”

  Robbie crossed his arms over his chest. “Kind of poetic, isn’t he?”

  Pierce frowned, looking at Robbie with a dark expression.

  “I think he’s telling the truth,” I said, trying to help, but the small man looked even more affronted.

  “What would I gain from a falsehood?” he said. “This is the same sweet innocence looking at me from my memory. That damned spawn survived where I didn’t, but being dead myself, mayhap I can serve justice now. I expect I have only to sunup. The charm will be spent by then, and I’ll return to purgatory. If I can save her, perhaps I can save my soul.”

  He stopped, blinking in sudden consternation at his own words, and Robbie muttered something I didn’t catch.

  “I need to study on it,” Pierce said softly as he looked out the windows at the tall buildings. “Spawn are reluctant to shift their strongholds. I’ve a mind that he is yet at his same diggings. A true fortress, apart in the surrounding hills, alone and secluded.”

  Apart in the hills, alone and secluded was probably now high in property taxes and crowded, right in the middle of a subdivision. “I have a map at home,” I said.

  Pierce smiled, his entire face lighting up as he held onto the pole. The gleam in his eyes had become one of anticipation, and I found myself wanting to help him until the ends of the earth if I could see his thanks reflected in them again. No one had ever needed my help before.

  Ever.

  “Whoa, wait up,” Robbie said, turning to face both of us. “If you know this vampire and think you know where he is, fine. But we should go to the I.S. and let them take care of it.”

  I took a fast breath, excited. “Yes! The I.S.!”

  Pierce’s enthusiasm faltered. “The I.S.?”

  Robbie looked out the window, probably trying to place where we were. “Inderland Security,” he said, pulling the cord to get the driver to stop. “They police the Inderlanders, not humans. Witches, Weres, vampires, and whatever.” His look slid to me and became somewhat wry. “My sister wants to work for them when she grows up.”

  I flushed, embarrassed, but if I couldn’t admit it to a ghost, maybe I shouldn’t even try.

  Pierce’s free hand scratched at his beard in what I hoped was simply a reflexive action. “That was what my midnight profession was,” he said, “but it wasn’t called such. The I.S.”

  The bus swayed and squeaked to a stop. Pierce didn’t move, holding tight to the pole as Robbie and I stood before the bus had halted. I waited for Pierce, letting him walk between Robbie and me as we got off.

  The cold hit me anew, and I squinted into the snowy night as the bus left. “You want to wait for a bus going back into town?” I said, and Robbie shook his head, already on his cell phone.

  “I’m calling a cab,” he said, looking frozen clear through.

  “Good idea,” I said, cold despite my coat, mittens, and fuzzy hat.

  “We need to go to the mall,” Robbie said, “and I don’t want to waste a lot of time.”

  “The mall?” I blurted as we dropped back deeper into the Plexiglas shelter. “What for?” Then I winced. “You need a new coat.”

  Phone to his ear and his face red from cold, Robbie nodded. “That, and it’s going to be hard enough getting the I.S. to believe we’re not nuts coming in with a naked man in a coat.”

  Pierce looked mystified. “The mall?”

  I nodded, wondering if he’d let me pick out his clothes. “The mall.”

  FIVE

  Bored, I sat in the comfy brown fabric chair beside Pierce and shifted my knee back and forth. The mall had been a success, but Robbie had pushed us from store to store inexcusably fast, getting us in and out and to the I.S. in about two hours. Pierce was now respectably dressed in jeans and a dark green shirt that looked great against his dark hair and blue eyes. He still had on Robbie’s coat, and I swear, he had almost cried when he was able to shift up a half size of boot with the ease of simply pulling another pair off the rack.

  But for the last hour, we had been sitting on the third-floor reception area doing nothing. Well, Pierce and I were doing nothing. Robbie, at least, was being taken seriously. I could see him down the open walkway
at a desk with a tired-looking officer. As I watched, Robbie took off his new, expensive leather jacket and draped it over his lap in a show of irritation.

  Pierce hadn’t said much at the mall, spending a good five minutes trying to locate the source of the mood music until he got brave enough to ask. I made sure we passed an electric outlet on the way to get him some underwear. The food court had amazed him more than the electric lights, though he wouldn’t try the blue slurry I begged off Robbie. The kiddy rides made him smile, then he stared in astonishment when I told him it wasn’t magic but the same thing that made the lights work. That was nothing compared to when he saw a saleslady in a short skirt. Becoming beet red, he turned and walked out, his head tilted conspiratorially to Robbie’s for a quiet, hushed conversation. All I caught was a muttered, “bare limbs?” but Robbie made sure we went past Valeria’s Crypt so he could see the same thing in lace. Men.

  Pierce’s silence deepened after finding an entire building devoted to Inderland law enforcement, but even I was impressed with the I.S. tower. The entryway was a fabulous three floors high, looking more like the lobby of a five-star hotel than a cop shop. Pierce and I had a great view of the lower floors from where we sat. It was obvious that the designers had used the techniques of cathedral builders to impart awe and a feeling of insignificant smallness.

  Low lights on the first floor created dark shadows that set off the occasional burst of light. Acoustically, the space was a sinkhole, making what would be a loud chatter into a soft murmur. The air carried the faint scent of vampire, and I wrinkled my nose wondering if that was what was bothering Pierce, or if it was that we were three stories up.

  A minor disturbance pulled our attention to the street-level entrance as two people, witches, I guess, brought in a third. The man was still fighting them, his arms securely behind his back and fastened with a zip-strip of charmed silver. It looked barbaric, but bringing in a violent ley line witch was impossible unless they were properly restrained. Sure, there were ways to prevent magic from being invoked in a building, but then half the officers would be helpless, too.