“Don’t be silly. It’s just that this spell takes a lot out.” She waved a hand—and I saw the bandage wrapped around her finger.
Now I knew where the blood came from. And I was cold all over again, because graveyard dirt and human blood meant powerful magic. I knew something else, too, without Mom having to spell it out for me.
If I didn’t get the elixir to Nana, she’d die.
Chapter 3
My flight left the airport at ten the next morning. It was five and a half hours to Watertown International Airport in northern New York, and then a three-hour drive in a rental car to Gate’s Hollow, where I’d stay overnight at the village inn and strike out for Nana’s at dawn. I’d tried to call ahead, but an extremely rude man with a gruff voice had informed me that they didn’t take reservations, and then hung up on me.
I couldn’t wait to meet him. Maybe I’d turn someone into a toad after all.
I’d only packed a small carry-on bag. A change of clothes, Mom’s cloak—well, my cloak now—and a basket with the elixir and honey cake for Nana. I couldn’t risk having it lost in airport luggage limbo forever. I’d also decided not to wear red until I had to put the cloak on. I didn’t want anyone in the village to recognize me and start asking questions, and then try to hound me into staying out of the forest. There was no time to waste.
I had a window seat toward the back of Economy. When I got there, the three-seat row was empty, and I kind of hoped it stayed that way. Five hours of small talk was not the way I wanted to pass this flight. I sat down with my bag between my feet and pretended I wasn’t watching the cabin fill. Finally, the takeoff announcement started and the fasten seatbelt sign lit up. No seat neighbor for me.
Until an annoyed flight attendant ushered a man with a black hoodie and matching backpack into the cabin, and he rushed down the aisle and plopped into the outside seat of my row, breathing hard like he’d just made a run for the plane.
I tried to ignore him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t paying attention to my unspoken no-conversations rule. He shrugged out of his backpack and said, “Do you mind if I put this here?”
I had to look, because I didn’t know where ‘here’ was. He meant the middle seat. “Sure,” I said, resolving to use as few words as possible.
“Thanks.”
I shrugged, and was about to turn back to the window when he tugged his hood down. And I stared. The guy was about my age, maybe a little older—and hotter than a New York sidewalk on a summer afternoon. Dark blond, shoulder-length hair and bronzed skin, eyes so brown they were almost red, and a face like a Greek god. Prince Charming incarnate. The dark blue crescent moon tattooed under his right ear was just bad-boy enough, rugged but not hardcore. I almost changed my mind about the no small talk thing, in the hopes that his personality matched his looks.
But he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. I guessed he didn’t want to chat, either.
I’d just gone back to Olympic Window Staring when I heard a flight attendant say, “Sir, you have to fasten your seatbelt. We’re taking off now.”
I looked over and saw the guy flinch to attention. “Oh. Sorry,” he said, and fumbled with his seatbelt until it clicked. Then instead of closing his eyes again, he gripped the armrests until his knuckles whitened and stared straight ahead. Poor guy had a bad case of first-flight nerves.
Before I could stop myself, I said, “Hey. Is this your first time flying?”
I regretted it right away—it sounded like a stupid pickup line, and I hated those. But he turned his head and smirked at me. “How could you tell?”
“Lucky guess.” I managed to smile back. “You know, sometimes fresh air helps.” I pointed to the air valve above his seat. “If you open that up all the way and point it at your face, you might feel better,” I said. Like I was some guru of flying.
“Yeah?” He wrenched a hand from the armrest and reached up, then stopped and glanced at me. “Um. How does it turn on?”
I tried not to laugh. “You just twist it. Look.” I demonstrated with my valve. Cool air washed over me and tickled through my hair.
“Got it. I think.” He got the valve open and immediately grabbed for the seat again. After a few deep breaths, his hands relaxed visibly, and a sigh of relief escaped him. “Hey, that does help,” he said. “Thank you…er, kind stranger.”
“Aurora,” I said. “And you’re welcome.”
“I’m Jack.” He flashed a crooked grin. “The idiot who doesn’t know how planes work.”
“Oh, I think you’re catching on.”
As the plane entered takeoff, we both fell silent. I felt pretty bad for him. I was a seasoned veteran of six whole flights, and takeoff still made me queasy. Jack spent the entire roaring, rattling time with his eyes squeezed shut. But at least he wasn’t hyperventilating or ripping the upholstery apart. Finally, the plane leveled out, and a disembodied voice announced that we could move freely about the cabin.
Jack just about attacked his seatbelt getting it off. He let out a gusting breath and slumped in his seat. “Well,” he muttered. “That wasn’t so bad. Compared to, say, breaking a bone or being set on fire, it was a piece of cake.” He focused sparkling brown eyes on me and said, “I’m normally not this smooth and sophisticated. You should see me on the ground—I’m a basket case. All that stability and gravity makes me nervous.”
I couldn’t help laughing. Something about him put me completely at ease, like he was emanating a personal charm spell. I wondered if this was how Jenna felt with Paul. Then I told myself to stop being a moron, because I wasn’t falling in love with a stranger on a plane.
Still, it was nice that if I had to sit next to someone, he wasn’t a jerk. He was easy to look at, too.
“So, where are you headed?” he said. “Home or away?”
“Home.” I blinked in surprise as the word left my lips. Gate’s Hollow hadn’t been home for ten years, and I was still pissed at the general population for pretending that Nana didn’t exist when things got hard. “I mean, away,” I said. “I live in New York, but I’m…visiting the place I used to live.” I smirked, and added, “Now who sounds like the idiot?”
“Not you.”
“Right.” I cleared my throat and stared at my hands for a minute. “How about you—home or away?”
“Away, but I don’t live in New York. Almost missed my connection, too.” He smiled. “Where’s not-home for you?”
“Some little village no one’s ever heard of.”
“Gate’s Hollow?”
I gaped at him. “You’re not going there,” I said. “Are you?”
“I am. I’m meeting someone.” He must’ve read the disappointment on my face, because he said, “It’s not a personal meeting. It’s business.”
“You have business. In Gate’s Hollow.”
He laughed. “You make it sound like the place is straight out of a bad horror movie. Everybody walking around saying creepy things like ‘we don’t do business with strangers’ and ‘leave this town before it’s too late’.”
“Actually, that’s pretty close,” I said. “Have you been there before?”
“No. But I’m just going for information.” He patted his backpack. “I’m researching old village cemeteries. For a book.”
My mild suspicion passed, and I relaxed. “Well, you won’t find many older than Gate’s Hollow,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it’s been there since the dawn of time.”
“I did get that impression. The guy I talked to sounded older than dirt.”
I nodded. “Brewster Jones?”
“Yeah, that’s him.” Jack’s brow went up. “How did you know?”
“It’s a really small village.”
“Oh. Right.”
We lapsed into comfortable conversation, like we were old friends catching up, and I barely noticed the time passing. I knew we’d split up at the Watertown airport, because I wasn’t dumb enough to ride three hours through the middle of nowhere with a virtual stranger—no matter
how nice he seemed.
But I did find myself hoping we’d run into each other in the village. This was the nicest non-date I’d been on in a long time, and I kind of wanted to find out what would happen on an actual date with Jack.
As long as it happened after I saved Nana.
Chapter 4
As I drove into Gate’s Hollow after a boring and uneventful three-hour trip, the sun painted its last gasp across the horizon in brilliant shades of crimson and orange that blazed through distant trees like fire. I’d forgotten how clear the sky could be out here. The effect wasn’t quite the same under the haze of city glow. In New York, sunset was just the time when the street lights came on.
Here, it was practically a holy experience.
An impulse led me to pull over just past the village welcome sign—Beyond Here is Gate’s Hollow—and climb out of the car to watch the skies until the last of the colors faded, and the first stars spangled the deepening black. Then I got back in, fully intending to drive to the inn and sleep, so I’d be up and refreshed at first light.
But somehow I ended up in front of a painfully familiar house that I’d avoided even thinking about for a long time.
Beyond Here is Elias Vail. I shivered as the words skated through my mind. Elias—the village outcast, and my best friend. My shy guy. He’d been pale and thin, sickly, with a constant cough and frequent weak spells that kept him from running around with the other kids. But he was the sweetest person I’d ever known, and his eyes were the most stunning shade of blue. Like the depths of a pristine lake caught in sunlight.
Elias loved the forest more than I did. He wasn’t a warlock—there was only room for one family of magic users in this village—but he had Nana’s way with animals, and his own extended to insects, and even plants. He could talk to the trees. I was pretty sure he kept that fact hidden from the others at his family’s insistence, but he shared all his secrets with me.
Until the night he vanished, along with his parents and his younger sister.
No one suspected foul play. The family’s important possessions were gone, and so was their car. But I was heartbroken, because he didn’t tell me a thing about leaving—and he never said goodbye.
Once, Mom tried to gently suggest that he might have died, because he’d been so sick, and the Vails had left out of grief. I didn’t speak to her for a week after she said that. It wasn’t until years later that I admitted to myself she’d probably been right.
It looked like the house had remained empty all this time. Someone had kept up the lawn, more or less, but the bushes along the front grew wild and tangled, and brown weeds thrust themselves through the sagging wooden steps leading to the front door. The exterior, once a deep green, had faded to the color of a muddy river bottom. A few roof shingles hung crooked and left gaps like missing teeth.
I almost wanted to go in there and visit with the ghosts I was sure he’d left behind. I knew there’d be traces of him in the attic bedroom, where we’d spent so many snowbound afternoons talking and laughing. But sometimes, ghosts had teeth—and I didn’t feel like being bitten.
So I headed once more for the inn.
Gate’s Rest wasn’t the most creative name. But the village inn had been built long before anyone cared about marketing, and the name never changed. The stone structure stood at the far end of town, looking like a sentry between the village and the thick growth of the Whistlewood Forest just beyond it. The only light in the place shone in fractured glints through the block-glass front window, and there were no cars in the little side lot, or along the street.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen a single vehicle on the road since about thirty miles before town.
I shrugged it off and parked in the lot. When I got out of the rental car with my bag in hand, a serious case of the shivers started in my feet and worked its way up through my spine. It didn’t take long to figure out what had given me the creeps.
It was the silence.
There was absolutely no sound in the air. I could almost buy that from the village itself, because this had always been a sleepy sort of place. But the forest was less than ten yards away and there was nothing. No rustling or chirping, no buzz of night insects, not a shivering leaf or a snapping twig.
As I stood there with my skin crawling, I did start to hear something. It was a kind of low hum, like distant power lines, unfolding from the forest. The volume increased gradually—and as it grew louder, it became an echoing, rumbling howl.
I slammed the car door shut and practically ran for the inn. And found it locked.
“Hey!” I banged a fist on the door, trying to peer through the block glass as the awful noise intensified. I could feel whatever it was getting closer. “Come on, open up. Weary traveler out here!” I banged some more, and added a few kicks for good measure.
The door flew open. The instant it did, the howling stopped—and a voice barked, “What?”
“What do you mean, what?” I’d hardly looked at whoever opened the door. My attention remained on the forest while I tried to figure out why the sound had cut off like that. But everything was still and silent out there again. “This is an inn, right?” I said. “I want…to get…a room.”
My voice wavered and shrank as I looked up, and up some more, at the big bear of a man who filled the doorway. He wore a massive brown cloak with a hood that shaded his eyes, so I could only see his thick, firm jaw and the shaggy brown hair that fell past his collar. And the big stick he carried in one hand.
“Who are you?” he said in booming tones.
This time I recognized the voice—Mister We-Don’t-Take-Reservations. “I’m a weary traveler,” I snapped, no longer caring how big he was. “And I want a room for the night.”
He made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a growl. “You showed up.”
I frowned. “Do I…know you?”
“No. I remember you from the phone.” He turned and stalked away.
I stood there like an idiot, until his voice called from inside, “Are you coming? I don’t have all night.”
“Yeah, I’m coming.” Jerk. I pulled myself together and went in, closing the door behind me. I’d only been here a few times—I’d been fifteen when we left, and had never found the need to rent a room—but everything looked just the same to me. The spacious main room had the same stone walls, burnished wooden floor, and elegant couches, and the old-fashioned check-in counter still held an oversized ledger, a tap bell, and an actual rotary dial phone. Obviously, the digital age hadn’t arrived at Gate’s Rest.
The big bear stood behind the counter with his stick leaned up next to him, tapping his fingers on the ledger. “Well?”
I rolled my eyes and crossed the room. I almost wanted to ask him what happened to Mr. Cathcart, the man who used to run the inn. His son would’ve been about the right age, but I was pretty sure this guy wasn’t Noel Cathcart. Unless he’d managed to grow two feet in both directions. And besides, asking about the people I used to know here would blow my cover. They loved their meddling in Gate’s Hollow.
I stopped in front of the counter, and the bear grunted at me from under his hood. “It’s sixty a night. Cash or charge?”
“Cash.” I wondered how he could possibly accept a card. What would he swipe it on, the rotary phone? I dug three twenties out of my bag and dropped them on the ledger.
He didn’t touch them. “Name?”
“Julia.” No way was I giving my real name, especially to this guy.
“Julia what?”
“Roberts.”
He folded his arms. “Julia Roberts.”
“Yes.”
“Lady, this may look like the backwater hick town that time forgot, but we do have things like phones and TV. Some of us even have them newfangled auto-mobiles instead of horses.” He slipped into a twisted, mocking drawl for that last part. “And if your name’s Julia Roberts, then mine is Ryan Gosling.”
I gave him the sweetest smile I could fake. “Nice to mee
t you, Ryan.”
“Fine. You know what? I don’t care who you are.” He pulled something from under the counter and set it on the ledger. A slim, black laptop.
My jaw might’ve dropped a little. But he didn’t seem to care whether I was impressed with his technology. Without so much as a glance at me, he lifted the lid and punched a key, presumably to knock it out of sleep mode, and then started typing rapidly.
“Sorry,” I said anyway.
He offered a bitter laugh. “No, you’re not. But whatever.” He reached under the counter again, this time tossing a key with a leather fob onto the surface. “Here you go, Ms. Roberts. Room Three, up the stairs to the left. I hope you don’t need anything, because the kitchen is closed and the maids have the rest of their lives off.”
I snatched the key and glared at him. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“Good. Because I won’t be here to fetch it.” He grabbed his stick and started around the counter toward the door. “I was on my way out when you showed up.”
“You’re leaving?” I blurted.
He didn’t even slow down. “Yes.”
“So you’re crazy,” I said. “Do you usually leave your guests alone in your place?”
Now he did stop, with one hand on the doorknob. “I don’t usually have guests at all,” he said in a tight voice. “And I don’t want one now. Goodnight, Ms. Roberts.”
With that, he walked out and slammed the door shut.
“Then why did you check me in?” I said to the empty room.
It was the only thing keeping me from going after him in a rage. He might’ve been the biggest bastard in the world about it, but he had given me a room. Otherwise I would’ve ended up sleeping in the car. Besides, I had made some pretty rude assumptions about him.
That didn’t excuse his behavior. But I felt just sorry enough to drop it, because chances were excellent that I’d never see the big bear again. I was out of here at dawn. And once I made sure Nana was going to be all right, I’d be more than happy to get out of this village and away from the memories.
Red - A Paranormal Fairy Tale (Fairy Tale Reboot Book 1) Page 2
