The Witch and the Huntsman

by Rod Kierkegaard Jr J. R. Rain

  Of course, if I were Sam, I wouldn’t have been shivering with the cold, either, because she’s always cold, as I can testify. However, at that moment I wouldn’t have minded if some otherworldly figure—a ghostie or even Bigfoot himself—had popped up out of the surrounding fir trees to warn me what I was about to find inside.

  They’d given away my room.

  Chapter Four

  “I’m very sorry, ma’am,” said the European girl at the front desk when I tried to check in—and, grrrrr, how I hate being ma’amed. “But it is after six o’clock, and as you can see, we’re very full.”

  By ‘full,’ I guess she meant crowded, which seemed to be true; there were aristocratic-looking people in ski sweaters crowded as thick as termites even inside the main lobby, which was built of thick stone and huge redwood beams and featured a massive six-sided fireplace in the middle.

  “We do have one more room I could let you have,” she said, tapping on the laptop that looked totally out of place on the tacky liquor-store casing and mismatched wood panels of the front desk. I guess you had to be really, really rich to afford rustic authenticity like this. I wasn’t really, really rich. I wasn’t even a little bit rich. I was now borderline broke.

  “How much?”

  “Only $690,” she said. With a straight face. I guess that comes easier when you’re Ukrainian or Romanian or whatever.

  “What?” I’d max my sole remaining credit card if I stayed even two nights here at those prices. “Seriously?”

  “It’s a fireplace room with all-original art, ma’am.”

  I said no thanks and dragged my suitcase away. Great. Now I would have to drive all the way back to Sandy in the dark and hope the Best Western there still had a vacancy. But the point wasn’t to be a guest at this weird-ass little Duck Dynasty snob resort—it was to find out what had happened to Marisa somewhere out there in the cold, white pine forest. I didn’t need to actually stay here to do that. But it might help.

  So I went back to the desk clerk with my tail between my legs.

  “Yes?” No more ma’aming now.

  “Actually, I kinda sorta forgot to mention it, but a friend of mine is staying here, and she said I could maybe bunk in with her. Her name’s Marisa?”

  Blank stare. “Marisa...”

  Damn. Had I ever known her last name? “Marisa, uh, Smith. But sometimes she uses her maiden name, I forget what that is.”

  With icy reluctance, the Slavic ice-queen tapped the keyboard with her perfect blue nails. “No Marisa,” she said.

  “Did she check out?”

  The girl wasn’t even bothering to be polite now. She heaved a loud sigh and rolled her eyes, but at least she did me the ginormous favor of glancing back at her laptop screen. “No, we have no listing of anyone here for that name in the last month. Sorry.”

  So I’d just come all this way on a wild goose chase for the sake of nothing but a feeling in my gut. Girl, I am really worried about you, I told myself. This witch thing is making you seriously lose it.

  “No, Allison, you couldn’t be more wrong,” came Millicent’s soft whisper in my thoughts again. “You are always right to follow your feelings, wherever they may lead you. But now they’ve brought you into great danger. There’s a terrible evil in this place, and you must be on your guard night and day.”

  I went and stood over by the rustic gift shop door. “What kind of evil, exactly?” I intoned silently.

  “Some things must remain veiled and cannot be spoken aloud, dear,” Millicent replied almost fearfully. I was always forgetting the rules that governed psychic communication between this world and the next. Like full disclosure of names that couldn’t be named.

  While our spirits communed in the ether, my earthly gaze accidentally strayed to a folder on the empty gift shop’s checkout counter. A paper printout on top of it said:

  POSITION NOW AVAILABLE: SERVER

  With our emphasis on excellence, the Regina Jaeger La Chasse Lodge must hire waiters and waitresses on a consistent basis. Primary responsibilities for La Chasse waiter/waitress jobs mirror waitressing positions throughout the hospitality industry, including greeting customers, taking food and drink orders, informing guests about specials and menu items, and catering to patron requests. La Chasse regularly screens for energetic, friendly, motivated, and dedicated individuals during the hiring process. Applicants should possess the ability to work on foot and remain cell phone-free for several hours at a time. La Chasse Lodge server jobs exist only for quality workers 18 and over.

  Well, I had nothing else to do for a week—and a temporary gig like this struck me as an easy way to get back some of the money I’d just blown on this dumb trip. After all, I was energetic and friendly, even if I wasn’t motivated or dedicated. And I was certainly over eighteen. Double it, in fact, though nobody here had to know that, right?

  And hadn’t I worked in the service industry back in the day? I had, as a go-go dancer. Hell, I couldn’t think of a more service friendly job than that! And, no, I wasn’t ashamed. I did what I had to do, to get to where I am now. Which was, apparently, out of money and out of luck. Sigh.

  Of course, working here would give me the chance to snoop around to my heart’s content. Lucky me.

  Before I’d even snatched the paper, Millicent’s warnings were ringing in my ears. “No, Allison! Please don’t try to tackle this while Ivy and I are so far away! It’s just too dangerous...”

  “But you said I should follow my instincts,” I thought-whispered back. “My instincts say this is what I should do. I can’t just leave without knowing what happened to Marisa! You weren’t there—you didn’t hear the terror in her voice. You were lecturing me on the plane about using my gift for selfish things—and going over to the dark side. Well, here’s a chance for me to maybe use it for good. What if Marisa’s still alive and in trouble somewhere?”

  I was pretty sure she wasn’t alive, actually. On the other hand, Millicent should know if the woman was dead, since she was a ghost herself.

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” said Millicent. “It’s just that there is one like that here—one who has become dark and evil. Demonic, if you will. I sense this presence everywhere, and I’m just not sure your raw and untrained powers are enough to deal with it alone. Not without the two of us at your side.”

  “Hey, I left another message on Ivy’s voicemail before I got here. She’ll probably get back to me tonight. And after her location shooting wraps, maybe she can even join me here—plus you’ll be getting stronger and stronger as the week goes on, right? So just chillax, babe.”

  “Chill what?”

  I sighed. I kept forgetting how long Millicent had been dead. And let’s face it, she’d been around a long, long time, even before her last life. She and I had even been at Salem together, according to her, so I probably should be using Shakespearean dialogue or whatever when I was trying to get through to her.

  No way I wanted to deal with that Euro-trash bitch at the front desk again, so the first time she was distracted by a phone call, I humped my suitcase up the stairs to the main lounge. This was where the action was, it turned out. Unlike the front lobby, all six fireplace sides were lit up here, and the chimney, shadowed by rafters like spokes, rose up several stories to the tower ceiling. The décor was sort of Wild West mixed with Vienna hunting lodge and Grimm’s fairy tale; little gossipy gangs of moneyed guests sat around the glowing hearthstones or rough-hewn ox cart wheel tables complaining about their hedge fund subscriptions and Lear jet maintenance fees, while their trophy wives talked trash about each other’s clothes. I couldn’t spot anybody in charge.

  I couldn’t spot any waitresses, either, which boded well for me getting the job. Not that there appeared to be much competition.

  But I had better luck inside the Krystall Ballroom, where more fires blazed between rows of windows sharing a view of a glowing white-covered mountain against a dark sky. It was called Mt. Jefferson, I later found out. A single waite
r and waitress, both wearing identical salmon-pink silk shirts and black pants, were rushing around, trying to set about a hundred dinner tables under the supervision of a man wearing John Lennon sunglasses who looked like the vampire in that movie Nosferatu. Well, kind of a cross between him and Tim Gunn from Project Runway.

  “Achtung, Peo-pull!” he said several times, clapping his hands loudly. “Ve haff only ten minutes to showtime! I am not seeing any salad forks now, but I am seeing dessert spoons everywhere already. Vhy is this, vill someone tell me please? It is all like a bad dream!”

  He sounded like he might get hysterical at any second. His voice was fluttery and shrill and had, you might have guessed, a German accent. Anyway, I won’t try to imitate any more here. You get the idea. I figured this was the dude I needed to talk to.

  “Looks like you could use another server, sir,” I said, trying to seem as motivated and energetic as I could and waving the sheet of paper at him. “I’m here to apply for the job.”

  “Gottsei dank!” He dabbed dramatically at his face with a napkin. “I thought you were another of the local prostitutes. We are always having so many troubles with those here.”

  Chapter Five

  “Walk this way, please,” said the man, and I followed his rustling black Brioni suit and clacking Prada dress shoes across the ballroom and past the kitchen into his little office. It was like stalking a giant insect. A giant insect with thinning pomaded hair, covered in makeup powder and with blusher on his white cheeks.

  I’d thought at first he might be a vampire, but thanks to my need to give blood, I’m able to sense the vibes they give off, and he wasn’t one. But he was something similar, I just couldn’t tell what. My intuition told me that whatever he was, he was very, very old.

  “I am Schreich,” he said, sitting behind a desk. “You may address me as Mr. Schreich.”

  “Allison Lopez.” I held out my hand, but he just made jazz hands at me, I guess to show that he didn’t like to touch people. I saw that his fingernails were long and lacquered and yellow. Like his teeth. He didn’t offer me anywhere to sit.

  “You are experienced?” he said.

  “You mean working in a restaurant? Sure. I’m also a personal trainer.” I certainly wasn’t going to mention being a professional psychic. Or a go-go dancer before that...

  He nodded, although he seemed distracted.

  “So, what kind of problems do you have with prostitutes?” I asked him. He certainly didn’t look like the type who would; not with female ones, anyway.

  “Some of the guests demand to have these young girls on the premises. And the creatures dress so poorly and have such terrible table manners. Many meals they will eat with their telephones in their hands! And they sometimes wear flip-flops! At a winter sports lodge!” His fingernails clicked together in horror.

  It turned out that Mr. Schreich thought any woman under the age of about thirty was a prostitute, so I guess in a way it was almost like a compliment, him mistaking me for one. Aside from the nasty crack about my clothes, I mean.

  He handed me some forms to fill out and then took a wooden coat hanger from a closet. On it was my new uniform; the same salmon-colored shirt and black pants the other two servers were wearing.

  “This should fit. I will leave you now to change. You may leave your baggage here for your shift, but only for this one occasion. Now hurry, please! You will start with the hors d’oeuvres trays, I think. Yes.” He clapped his hands together loudly twice and then closed the door behind him.

  I had thought about going through his desk drawers and computer, but there wasn’t time. Not right now, anyway. After I got changed, I opened the closet door to put the hanger back. There was a row of them on the rack, most with their uniforms dangling beneath. Four didn’t. Mine was unmarked, but the other three empty hangers all had little tags hanging from their wire necks with names written on them in a crabbed copperplate handwriting. ‘Brittany,’ read one; ‘Kevin,’ read another. I assumed those were the two people I’d already seen rushing around the Krystall Ballroom like chickens with their heads cut off.

  The third tag read, ‘Marisa’...

  “Ha, you see?” I mentally whispered to Millicent on my way out. “I was so right to come here! Something fishy is totally going on in this place.”

  Aside from the hors d’oeuvres, which I could smell from here.

  “Just be very careful, dear...” came the whisper back.

  It may come as a shock, knowing what a ditz I can be, but I’m actually an excellent waitress or server or whatever. All the physical training and dancing have made me pretty damn graceful, even if I say so myself, and I pick things up fast, almost like I’m reading their minds, haha. Also, I’m just really good with people. I like people.

  But I wasn’t crazy about these people. Crap, what a tough crowd! I mean, I’ve never really believed the old saying that the rich are different than me and you. Living in Beverly Hills, I run into famous faces all the time, and some of them are really nice and actually even humble. My friend Ivy, for instance, never lets her movie parts go to her head—she’s always genuinely thrilled when somebody turns out to be a fan; sometimes I have to drag her away once she starts signing autographs. And Conn, a very wealthy (and did I mention hot-looking) dude who often calls for me personally over the hotline is a very nice person, I’m pretty sure, and not the least bit arrogant. All those ‘Loving the Billionaire’ romance novels have got to be based on something, right?

  But the super-super-rich really are different. At least they were at La Chasse; enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth, anyway. It wasn’t only that I didn’t exist for them—a few of them went out of their way to be unnecessarily rude or demanded things we couldn’t provide them or loudly insisted I’d made a mistake or threatened to talk to ‘your manager’ because they didn’t like the caviar. As if they were scoring off me—like a big, weird game of chess. As if I was a threat or something! I could understand it when the women acted that way, but some of the men did it, too. I guess it was just reflex action on their part. They were the lords of this jungle, so they gave a swipe of their claws to any lesser creatures they saw skulking around.

  Like me.

  But I guess that’s how you stay on top.

  One of the papers on Mr. Schreich’s desk was a sort of bullet-point list of what I was supposed to be doing on the job. I taped it to the inside of a serving napkin and used it as a kind of cheat sheet whenever Brittany and Kev weren’t around to tell me what to do. Mr. Schreich didn’t even bother to—except to clap his hands at me, which always startled me into almost dropping something—whenever he happened to pass by. Which wasn’t often, thank God; he was too busy bowing and scraping and ass-kissing a few of the most important guests. Read: richest.

  So, given the fact I was more or less totally winging it, I was half-expecting to make some major mess and get canned from the job my first night. Hell, my first hour. But amazingly, it wasn’t me who got into trouble.

  It was Brittany.

  I was helping her with the dessert course when one of the late-comers, a large, very red-faced man dressed in what had to be the world’s most expensive Givenchy sweat suit, started hassling her.

  “What do you mean you’re out of it?” he was demanding. “It’s right here on the menu!”

  “But it’s—”

  “I don’t want to hear any excuses. Either you have it or you don’t—if you don’t, it shouldn’t be offered on the menu. My guests are extremely important people who have traveled a great distance in order to sample your Langschweinefleisch. That’s what I promised them tonight—and I won’t allow your incompetence to reflect on me.”

  His guests were another man and two women who all looked straight out of the Addams Family, if you can imagine the Addams Family including a Steven Spielberg lookalike and pair of Playboy centerfolds. These three didn’t look so much embarrassed at their host’s tantrum as just plain envious. And hungry.

  “Sir,
I’d be so happy to bring you anything else you might want tonight, but I’m afraid it’s just not possible—”

  “Just bring me your manager, please!”

  Brittany turned pink and looked like she might cry. She was a skinny, kind of gawky brunette, probably just out of state college, who was about a head taller than me. I figured we looked a little funny together because of the height thing, so I’d been careful not to stand too close to her. But now she looked like she could use some support.

  Too late. Brittany ducked her head so nobody could see her face and said, “I’ll go find Mr. Schreich.” She took off, leaving me to deal with the table.

  “Would you like me to get you anything else for now?” I asked them.

  I was holding a tray of crème brûlées. One of the blondes—the one I thought of as ‘Kendra’ because she looked like the Playmate chick who had her own reality TV show—just snickered at me and said, “Not that, anyway.”

  After a few minutes, Mr. Schreich came up, wringing his hands and cringingly apologizing. All I could hear was something about being sure to have it in stock tomorrow night.

  Meanwhile Kev came up behind me and said in a sort of loud whisper over the roar of clinking cutlery and dinner-table conversation, “What was all that about?”

  “They wanted some dish called Langschweinefleisch,” I told him. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  He shrugged. Kev was even taller and, if possible, younger than Brittany. He was also good looking and so earnest, I wondered if he was a Mormon or something.

  “We get that requested a lot here. It’s some kind of Austrian game delicacy, I think.”

  Duh, I’d thought it was a kind of wine, you know, like Liebfraumilch. He handed me a second tray of rainbow-colored macaroons and told me to follow him to table twelve.

  “You know, La Chasse isn’t just a ski resort; we’re a hunting lodge, too. Our parent company bags so much wild game around the world that the Jaegers also run their own specialty meat export business—that’s who supplies us when local game is scarce.”