Into the Woods (58 page)

“Cooper, don’t let the door shut!”

He flung out his free hand at the last moment, the heavy wood pinching his fingers before he pushed it open again. Inside, someone was screaming his name. “Kay?” he stammered as she slid to a breathless halt beside him, her eyes bright and her red scarf falling off her neck. Her fur-tufted boots were leaving clumps of snow on the swept front, and she looked alive, thrilled. “What are you doing here?” he asked, then yanked her back when she tried to go in. “Stop!” he shouted. “It’s a flesh club! I saw one take a chunk out of someone!”

Kay jerked her attention from the dark opening, grinning. A strong scent of pine wafted over him, clearing his head, and the kitten in his arms stirred. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Don’t let go of the door,” she added as she put his hand on the door. “Promise me you’ll keep the door open for me. Please, Cooper. I don’t know how, but you got the door open. You can hold it. Just give me five minutes. That’s all I want. Five minutes.”

“You can’t go in there!” he exclaimed.

“I can now,” she said, flashing him a savage smile. And then she ran, screaming as she dove through the opening and vanished in the darkness of the bar.

A second later, a flash of red light lit the room, glittering scarlet in the chandeliers and turning the gold on the bar to a burgundy sheen. Shocked, he stared at the cowering forms and savage snarls. His hand slipped from the door, but he caught the edge before it shut again, grunting when he needed to put all his weight behind it to pull it back open. He almost let it go again in surprise when two cats raced over the threshold, their coats smoking as they ran into the snow. When he looked back, the stage was on fire.

No one was trying to get out. Figures slumped across tables or on the floor. The people still moving were screaming in outrage—snarling as they circled the stage and tried to get into an inky black spot at the back of it. It hung behind a smoky gray figure wielding a bright sword. Whenever someone would try for the fog, the apparition would attack, cutting them down with three swipes and a horrific, satisfied scream. That others would slip in behind it and escape while their brethren died was not going unnoticed, but the sword wielder didn’t seem to care as long as someone was dying.

“It’s on fire,” he whispered as he realized the sword wasn’t glowing red from reflecting flame. The sword was really on fire.

Blood slicked the stage and dripped to the floor with each new sweep of the blade and falling body kicked off the sword. Feeling ill, Cooper slumped, almost letting the door slip shut as a wave of nausea hit him. “Kay?” he warbled, finally sitting down on the cold cement to prop the door open. It felt as if his energy, his stamina, was being sucked into the bar. “Kay? I can’t hold it . . .” he whispered, his hands still cradling the kitten, now a shivering ball. His fingers were so cold he couldn’t feel the softness of fur, and he hunched into himself, holding the door open with his deadweight as the screams grew fewer, more distinct, and finally, ended.

“Kay,” he whispered, not altogether conscious when someone smelling like a pine tree wedged a shoulder under him and lifted.

“God save you, Cooper,” he heard Kay whisper, and he felt them start to move. “I told you it was slippery tonight.”

“The people,” he muttered, unable to lift his head as he shuffled over frozen ruts, kitten cradled in his arms.

“I couldn’t save them,” she said, her voice lacking her usual warmth. “I don’t even know how you got out.”

“Didn’t eat the food,” he said, shambling forward. “Grandma told me not to eat food with dancing . . . fairies.”

A boom of sound shoved them forward as the bar exploded, and by the light of it burning, Kay got his passenger-side door open. She practically shoved him in and slammed the door shut. It seemed like forever before the driver’s-side door opened, and he blearily watched her grunt at his key ring, giving the bell a little tap. “That might explain it,” she said. “Cooper, you are one lucky bastard,” she added as she revved the engine and left Gateways to burn to ash behind them.

THREE

S
hivering violently, Cooper waited in Kay’s office for her to come back, a feminine shawl that smelled like flowers draped over his shoulders as he practically sat on the space heater. It roared as it kicked out the heat, but he still shook with cold and shock. His shiny shoes squished with snow melt, and his slacks were soaked from it. A soft bundle of fur cowered in his lap, and he curved a hand about the little black kitten as if it was a talisman.
What the hell happened?
he thought, flexing his free hand to see his strength returning. He’d say he had gotten some weird drug into him and had hallucinated the entire thing if not for the changes in Kay’s appearance—changes she didn’t seem to know he saw.

The familiar soft sounds of her feet filled him with new foreboding, and he managed an uneasy smile as she pushed past the hanging sheets of milky plastic to hand him a cup of coffee. “Better?” she asked as she sat on the edge of her flower-decaled desk and sipped her own hot chocolate.

Cooper set the cup down, the heat from it seeming to burn his cold-soaked fingers. Kay was sitting almost as close as he was to the heater, not wearing her coat but still having her scarf around her neck to make her look kind of trendy—in a petite, preppy, sword-wielding-warrior, pet-shop-owner kind of way. “Yeah,” he croaked out, feeling his throat. “Tell me that didn’t happen.”

The woman gave him a toothy smile. “What, you getting drunk and me having to spend your Christmas bonus on bail money? You owe me, Cooper. You owe me a week of Sundays in the store, and don’t think I’m not going to take advantage of it.”

Cooper’s lips parted. “Jail?” he said, one hand around the kitten, the other circling the hot coffee. “I was at a dance club. They were vampires, and you broke down the door and slaughtered them.” He didn’t believe it, but that’s what he’d seen, and he risked a glance at her, her eyes crinkled up in laughter as she sat on the desk like she was a normal person—a little closed and reserved perhaps, but normal.

Her laughter dying away, Kay brought a knee to her chin and wrapped her arms around it. “Vampires,” she said as she rested her head on her knee. “That’s what the cop said you were raving about. Drink your coffee,” she said, glancing at it. “It will make everything all better.”

A quiver went through Cooper at her words even as he lifted the mug, his grandmother’s words echoing in his thoughts again. Feeling Kay’s eyes on him, he dutifully brought the hot coffee to his lips, letting it touch his lips and nothing more—faking it. Sure enough, a hint of bitterness blossomed, reminding him of that sloppy, little-girl kiss that Emily had left on his lips. He hadn’t eaten anything, but what if that kiss had changed him? It might explain how he got the door open and could see the changes he now saw in Kay, things that had been under his nose for three years, but he hadn’t seen until now.

“Better?” she asked, all innocence and light, and he pretended to take another drink, sneaking looks at her and wanting to be sure what he was seeing was real. “You take the cake, Cooper,” she said as she slid from the desk and stretched to make Cooper look away fast. “It’s not every boss who will come down at two in the morning to bail out an employee. It’s a good thing you got drunk enough to be hauled out, though. The place burned down an hour later. You were lucky. No one made it out. They’d bolted all the doors to keep out the riffraff, and everyone inside died. Terrible. Just terrible.”

“Yeah, lucky.” Looking past the clear plastic curtain, Cooper had a view of the bus stop on the opposite side of the street. Under the slatted bench was a straggly black cat with a bedraggled kitten. They’d been there for the last fifteen minutes. Felicity and Emily? Cooper had been waiting for them to do something, but all they did was stare malevolently at the store. He was not going out until they left—or had a dog with him.

He shivered, and Kay touched his shoulder. The warmth of her hand came through the blanket to feel like the sun itself. “You okay?” she asked in concern, but he couldn’t look at her, afraid she might notice where his eyes were drawn to.

“Fine,” he said, his gaze on the old oak floorboards. “I need to warm up before I go home.”

She turned away and reached for some paperwork. “Sure, go ahead. I can take you home when I pick up the puppies.”

“Mind if I pick one out?” he said, and Kay hesitated in her reach for a pencil. “I’ve been wanting to get a dog for a long time,” he said, carefully not looking at her. “I can keep it here at the store with me in the day, and take it home at night. Besides, it will give Ember here someone to grow up with,” he added, petting the kitten still curled up in a frightened ball against him. He couldn’t call her Happy—that was a name of a snack cake.

“That’s a great idea.” Kay stuck the pencil behind her ear and headed to the front of the store with a clipboard to do the year-end inventory.

He watched her walk away, free to stare now that she wasn’t looking.
Next to that long pointy ear of hers is probably a really good place to wedge things
, he thought as he watched her floor-length, dexterous tail push aside the grimy plastic curtain so she could go through without touching it with her hands. It wasn’t that her pointy ears were especially big. Actually, they were kind of small and cute, but the little horns poking out right next to them cinched it. The pencil tucked between her ear and that cute little wedge of bone wasn’t going anywhere.

And neither was he
, he decided, holding Ember close and breathing her fur smelling of pine and iron.

Temson Estates

I wrote “Temson Estates” about the same time that I began working on the short that eventually became the first chapter of
Dead Witch Walking
. I wanted to know what a dryad might be like if the Greek and Roman visions of tree spirits were real, possibly giving a scientific reason for both their absence and possible resurgence. I played with a few ideas here that I went on to use very loosely when developing the Bis/Jenks short, “Ley Line Drifter,” but I liked my dryads here better, which might be why I never took the Hollows dryads any further.

That two of the characters have the same names as my to-be editor and her assistant was just plain weird, especially since it would be another year or two until I actually knew of their existence. I thought about changing them, but sometimes you just have to let the weird things stay.

W
ill shifted uncomfortably in the hard-backed chair, hot in the wool suit that he’d bought yesterday in a doomed attempt to try to make a good impression. It was itchy, but he wasn’t going to run a finger between it and his neck a second time. He had a feeling the man who had sold it to him had taken advantage of him, but that only proved yet again that he was totally out of place here among the rich carpets, tooled mahogany, and good manners. The young woman across from him already thought he was a crass Yank. Maybe she was right. It wasn’t his fault he was here—not that she’d ever see it that way—summoned across how many time zones to sit in a foreign law office and face down these two women over something he had no control over.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Temson,” the lawyer said, his voice sympathetic but firm. “Your father’s wish is quite clear. In the presence of a male heir, Temson Estate cannot fall to you. You retain the house, grounds, and your brother’s considerable offshore investments, but the woods themselves belong to Mr. William Temson.”

Ms. Temson, his grandfather’s sister apparently, pressed her lips together in quiet thought. Though clearly shaken, she was thinking hard, and that worried Will more than the fire and sparks coming from the young woman at her elbow. She’d been introduced as Diana and was Ms. Temson’s caregiver. Though to be honest, Will didn’t think the old woman needed any help. She looked too crafty to die from anything but a curse, as his father would have said.

Diana was about his age, dressed so smartly in her shape-fitting, pale cream linen suit that he felt like a used-car salesman. Seeing Will eyeing her, she squinted at him, her short nails clicking as she drummed her fingers once. “You drew that will up yourself!” she finally said, her accent charming even while furious. “How could you lose the Temson Estate to some—some—Yank!” she exclaimed.

“Diana,” the old woman murmured, and the young woman gave her a look both contrite and defiant. Will winced. It wasn’t his fault. All he wanted to do was sign the papers and go home. The money from the sale of the forest would be a godsend, enabling him to finish his master’s with enough left over he could really make a difference.

“There is nothing I can do,” the lawyer said as he stood in the thin light seeping past the wooden blinds. “The title and everything with it goes to him.”

Diana stood, angry and abrupt. “Let’s go, Grandmum.” She turned to him, fuming. “We are contesting this. If Arthur had known that entitlement had been in there, he would have changed it!”

Concerned, Will met the lawyer’s eyes, and the stiff man subtly shook his head, a sublime confidence in the way he opened the folder and began leafing through the legal papers.

The old woman ignored Diana’s anger, her hands in their stark-white gloves sitting on the table. “You know I can’t let the axes in there, Ryan. It would be murder.”

Uneasy, the lawyer glanced from the papers to Will, an apologetic crinkle in his eyes.

“Murder?” Will said, interested as papers were slid before him.

“Grandmum, please,” Diana murmured, her entire demeanor shifting to one of embarrassment as she touched the older woman’s shoulder as if to prod her into motion. The old woman pursed her lips, then finally giving in to Diana’s gentle tugging, she got to her feet. Will hastily rose, his chair scraping.

“She’s a bit creaky in the attic,” the lawyer said a shade too loudly as he handed Will a pen and pointed where to sign. “She and her brother, God rest his soul, never let anyone in that woods, but it’s yours now. You’ll be selling it . . . I presume? We don’t handle property transfers, but here is my brother’s card. He can get you a good price on it.”