The Mountain's Shadow

by Cecilia Dominic

  The path leveled out, and we had to be careful not to trip in the grooves that mountain water runoff had created in the soil. I could hear the river more clearly now and knew we must be close to the boathouse. I rubbed a tear off my cheek before the guys could see it.

  “We know he started out here,” Leo said as he held a tree branch aside. The boathouse, a ramshackle wooden box with a tin roof, stood over a calm spot out of the way of the main flow of the river. The only way in was to use a rope that hung on the outside to open the garage-door-type mechanism.

  The boathouse still held two kayaks, both molded and with chipping orange plastic. Their oars dangled on fraying rope beside their shelves. I noticed someone had put the canoe back, and it looked like it had been recently painted. The shiny metal oar sat in the seat where someone had tossed it after they brought it back.

  “That’s all they found?” I asked.

  “That and some clothes,” Ron replied. “It had rained, so any footprints had been washed away.”

  “And scents,” added Leo.

  “It wasn’t like him to go out if the weather was going to be bad,” I said. “Let’s go to where the canoe was found.”

  We closed the boathouse back up. Sure, it wasn’t exactly secure, but no one had ever bothered it before.

  We walked along the bank of the river, where the path had been partially eaten away by the landscape’s natural shifting as well as trees that had been uprooted. We sometimes had to climb over or under logs and jump over puddles. My legs ached by the time we reached a spot about a mile downstream from the boathouse. I had tried to keep up a regular exercise regimen while at Cabal, but the past four weeks of self-pity and isolation had taken their toll on my muscle tone. The two men showed no sign the trip was anything but a nice afternoon stroll.

  “It was about here. They found the canoe wedged against that rock.” Leo pointed to a large, pitted, dark gray boulder that jutted into the river on the other bank. “The clothes were farther downstream on this side.”

  “The theory was that whoever did this had tried to push the canoe off so it would float downstream, but it got stuck,” Ron added. “Why anyone would want to harm Charles is beyond me. Did you know him well, Joanie?”

  “No. I wish I had known him better.” I wish he had told me we were working on the same problem.

  We circled the spot in wider and wider arcs until we found ourselves at the edge of the woods. I sat on a log, looked around, and tried to see it as my grandfather would have. The guys continued to search, and I wished for a moment that I could see the world through their eyes and noses.

  My mind drifted back to lunch at Tabitha’s. I couldn’t understand how Ron worked in a restaurant with his extra sharp senses. The trash cans must torture him. I shook my head. That train of thought wouldn’t get me anywhere, and I doubted Ron wanted me to try to empathize with him. His resentment kept him going. Leo had what? His nephew?

  I brought my mind back to the present. I studied each tree and shrub and took in the texture of the bark, the spread of the branches. The water rippled and ruffled against the riverbank, and I noticed a tree that tipped out—a drunken sailor looking for a quick drink of water, my grandfather would have said. Its roots pulled from the bank, and tan mud clung to them. Lichens had sprouted along the trunk. Fairy steps. I smiled and walked over to the tree. Grandfather had always loved to turn our walks in the woods into a magical journey, and when I was here year after year, we’d visit old haunts with whimsical names like Fairyland and Smurf Hollow. I could imagine the lithe sprites tiptoeing up the stairs and pausing in the hollow that gaped toward the sky. The jagged edges of the branches had pulled away like large wooden spikes, and something green and silver winked at me from inside. I checked for snakes and biting insects, then reached for it. It took a moment to work my fingers down into the hollow and tease out the pendant on a tarnished chain. A silver cat with emerald eyes sparkled in the sunlight.

  “Miskha?” I whispered.

  Chapter Seven

  I held the silver and emerald cat charm in my hand. I couldn’t help but remember the first time I’d seen it—also during a time of loss and grief.

  Grandfather and I had gone walking in town one Sunday morning. I was still dressed in black, the dress Mother had gotten me for Andy’s funeral, and even though it had a full skirt—my favorite kind to twirl in—I wasn’t feeling up for a good twirl or laugh. Grandfather had been very patient with me that summer as though he knew what it had been like to lose my twin brother and to be the non-favorite child who survived. I didn’t know, but my parents were working through divorce proceedings while I played in the Ozarks, and my grandfather had a sense things may even be worse when I got back.

  “You’re walking slow today, Joanna,” he said.

  “These shoes pinch.”

  “The way you’re walking reminds me of a cat. They always pad on their toes, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “And if you’re lucky, they wink at you.”

  “Cats don’t wink.” I had read all about cats and knew their facial expressions weren’t the same as people’s.

  “That’s what the books say, but they never asked a cat.”

  “How would you ask a cat?”

  “Sometimes you just need to sit down with them and let them tell you in their own time.”

  “Cats don’t talk.”

  “They usually don’t want to. They find people dull and boring.”

  I smiled. I tended to find people dull and boring too. Books were much better companions.

  “Now look at this little lady.” We stopped at a jewelry store window. The shop was closed, but in one of the display cases, a silver cat charm with slanted oval emerald eyes winked at us in flashes of green light. “Would you say she doesn’t wink?”

  “I guess not.”

  “When the store is open on Tuesday, I’ll come back and get her, and you can keep her here.”

  “Why can’t I take her home?”

  His brows bent as he pondered how to tell a nine-year-old her mother would always try to take away whatever she valued. “Because she’s an Ozark cat,” he explained. “She’ll get lonely in the city. She needs to be up here where there are red wolves and other wild things.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she told me. But she’d be happy to be your friend and protector while you’re here.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  The following Tuesday, Mishka the silver cat came home, and whenever I visited, she would always be there around my neck on a silver chain. I hadn’t seen her in years.

  “Hello, Mishka,” I said. The emeralds winked back. Other than being a little tarnished, she looked the same, like she’d been polished just before being left outside.

  “What did you find, Joanie?” Ron came over.

  I stuffed the charm in my pocket. “Nothing.” I knew this was a message from my grandfather, and I didn’t want to talk about it until I could figure out what it meant.

  “Still nothing.” Leo’s scowl reminded me of my grandfather’s. “Happy now?”

  “Yes, thank you. I have a much better idea of what happened.”

  I guess.

  Lonna returned just before we sat down to dinner. While Gabriel cooked, I asked the guys about anything they could remember about Charles Landover and if he’d ever mentioned a family curse or his research on it. They repeated conversations, and we analyzed them until nothing made sense anymore. I had the feeling there was something they weren’t telling me, but I couldn’t tease it out of them.

  A timid knock on the front door broke our concentration. There was Lonna, and I didn’t need to have a werewolf’s nose to tell what she’d been up to.

  “Sir Peter’s peter strikes again,” Ron said. “I guess he won’t be making any more babies with Marguerite tonight.”

  Lonna shot a scared look into the den and raced up the stairs to her bedroom.

  “Don’t be too long,” I ca
lled up after her. “Dinner’s about ready.”

  “I’m not hungry.” I could hear tears in her voice. What the hell could she be crying about? Had they already broken up? I’d tried to warn her about the perils of messing with a married man.

  “Suit yourself.” With a shrug, I walked back into the formal dining room, which could also be reached through the front hall. It had a view through French doors of the mountain vista, and I took a deep breath and basked in the twilight scenery. Green waves of mountains faded to purple in the distance and broke under a pink and orange sky. I took another breath, slowly, in through the nose and out through my mouth and tried to block the memory of Lonna in the café with Peter. Involved with a married man. Had she not paid attention at all? At the end of the day, they always go back to their wives and tots and leave you in the cold.

  “Is everything all right, Madam?” Gabriel carried a silver tureen redolent with the smells of savory herbs, onions, garlic and red wine into the room. He put it on the table, which was set with fine cream-colored porcelain plates on burgundy table linens.

  “Rabbit stew.” He gestured to the tureen. “It’s one of your grandfather’s recipes.”

  “I’m fine, I guess.” I tried to calm my roiling emotions, which bubbled like the stew. I had to admit some of the conflict was from the unfulfilled sexual tension bursting between me and the werewolf men. Something about them was so primal and untamed, and the fact they hated it made it even more alluring. I didn’t even think I’d be able to feel those impulses since Robert had broken my heart.

  Gabriel opened his mouth, then shook his head and went back into the kitchen.

  I turned back to the mountain vista and tried to imagine standing there with a husband or lover. Maybe that was it—jealousy. All Lonna needed was a glance, and any man was hers. I could risk career, sanity, everything, and it was never enough. I’m sure Kyra had the same talent, but at least Lonna wasn’t a bitch about it. I couldn’t help but frown at the thought of her making my mistake of getting involved with a married man.

  I closed my eyes and breathed deeply again. This line of thought wasn’t getting me anywhere. In the scientific world, solving a puzzle might take years, but at least it had a solution somewhere that could be found by breaking the problem into little manageable bits. In the world of emotions and people, things were never simple.

  “Full moon tonight,” commented Gabriel as he returned and poured the wine. I jumped and opened my eyes. The sky had darkened, and the first few stars—planets, I guess—shone forth.

  “I guess the boys will have to run.” I had known that for some reason, but my memory wouldn’t tell me why it was important beyond the significance to the werewolves.

  “They already have.”

  “Oh.” A pang of disappointment stabbed my chest. “I’ll see if Lonna wants to join us.”

  The upstairs hallway was dark, but the light in Andy’s—I mean Lonna’s—room was on, the door cracked.

  “Knock knock,” I called.

  “Come in.”

  Steam from Lonna’s recent shower made the air feel warm and moist, and I smelled the citrus-coconut scent of her shampoo. I walked through the room to the bathroom door, which was ajar. She stood by the sink and toweled off her long, luxurious dark brown hair.

  “The guys—Ron and Leo—left.”

  “Good. I can come down to eat.”

  “Why didn’t you want to before?”

  “New people. I’ve had enough of strange men today.”

  I raised my eyebrows but resisted the retort that came to mind. Instead I asked, “Was Peter able to give you any insight into the missing children?”

  “No, but he did fill me in on the families that were here, specifically which ones fought the development.”

  “Does he think the two are connected?”

  “He doesn’t know. But at this point, everyone is a suspect.”

  “Even him?”

  She ran a comb through her hair. “Even him. You know the saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

  I bit my tongue over the reply that she seemed to have kept him close enough that afternoon.

  “I’ll let you get dressed.”

  I made my way down the stairs and paused by the front door. I don’t know what I was hoping to hear, but I could only make out the typical night sounds. I imagined what it would be like to shed human responsibilities for a few hours, to run under the moon and stars through the wild hills with the pack. I shivered. Would it all fall away, the grief over my grandfather’s strange disappearance, the guilt that blossomed at the thought of Louise going missing that morning, and the bitterness and anger over Robert’s betrayal? I could feel all of these things whirling around in my head, a miserable fog that weighed heavily on my heart. Ah, to be shed of that for even a few moments. A tear slid down my cheek and I took a deep breath so sadness wouldn’t overwhelm me. Even with two guardians in the house, I felt so very alone.

  I swirled the red wine around in my glass as Lonna recounted what she’d learned from Peter. The alcohol warmed me from the center out and loosened some of the tension in my chest. A good fruity Merlot, it paired well with the rabbit-leek stew and the crusty French bread, which Gabriel had somehow found out I loved and which he had picked up at the bakery in town that afternoon.

  Most of the settlers of Piney Mountain were of German and Scandinavian stock, and not much had changed due to the community’s isolation until the weekend commuters had discovered the joys of clean air and mountain living. The town’s resistance to being incorporated into Crystal Pines had been led by three families: the Van Dorens, the Schmidts and the Jorgens. Louise’s daughter had been Honey Jorgen, and it was her son—Louise’s grandson Johnny—who’d been the second to disappear. Eleven-year-old Simon Van Doren had been the first.

  “How did the developers explain that one?” I asked. “It seems the connection is obvious.”

  “It snuffed the resistance, that’s certain.” Gabriel used tongs to refill the bread basket with fresh, hot bread slices. “Suddenly the families who’d been here for generations were more willing to sell their land and get out. Your grandfather talked about it often.”

  “And the ones who moved in haven’t lost any kids?”

  Lonna took a piece of bread. “I pressed Peter for more information…”

  Into the couch in his office? The angry little voice in my head broke in.

  “And?”

  “He said they just took it as a sign they were meant to be here, and the land was supposed to change hands now for a new era.”

  “How pompous!” Wine sloshed in the glass as I set it down. “He’d be great in politics.”

  Gabriel looked up from the bread. “Worse arguments have been made for relieving people of their birthrights. This used to be Native American country before the settlers came through.”

  “Good point. So he couldn’t come up with any good explanation either?”

  “No, only a strange one. The Piney Mountain residents seem to feel the developers have brought an evil spirit upon them. Did you have any luck with Louise?”

  “No.” I lowered my eyes. “I didn’t get to talk to her.”

  “What happened?”

  “She didn’t show up for work today. The sheriff didn’t know anything, either.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Gabriel said.

  “Why didn’t you say something before now?” Lonna’s tone accused me of a grave sin of omission, so I decided to commit one and not tell her about the CLS victims in our midst.

  “I got a little distracted, okay? Leo and Ron knew my grandfather, and they’d seen the spot where he disappeared. They took me there.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  I lied. “No. But at least I got a mental picture of the crime.”

  “Some of us can do our jobs without getting distracted by a cute piece of ass.”

  “And some of us can do our jobs without sleeping with one.”


  We locked eyes. Gabriel cleared the bowls and beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen.

  “I come up here to protect you, and this is the thanks I get?”

  “Oh, that’s rich!” I threw my napkin down. “Since when does protecting me entail getting into the first pair of trousers you come across?”

  “I wouldn’t have if I’d known about Louise.”

  “Not like we could do anything anyway. The sheriff has his eyes on us. He’s not the only one.”

  “Your job was to get information from the locals.” She pitched her voice low and dangerous. “I wouldn’t have spent so much time with Peter if I’d known you couldn’t even manage that today. I was going to interview Ron and Leo tomorrow.”

  “What is my job, Lonna? I. Have. No. Job. I have no boyfriend. I have no ability to find either right now, not until I figure out what happened to my grandfather!”

  “Ladies, would you like dessert?” Gabriel came in with three dishes of chocolate mousse on a silver tray. His eyes begged for us to be finished.

  “I’m done.” Lonna slowly folded her napkin and placed it on the table. “I’ll be upstairs reviewing my notes on the missing-children case if anyone needs me.”

  I put my head in my hands as I listened to the angry click of her heels on the hardwood floor. “I think I need something a little stronger, Gabriel.”

  “Yes, Madam. An Irish coffee, perhaps?”

  “Decaf. I’ll be on the balcony.”

  The motion-sensor light clicked on as I opened one of the French doors and slipped outside. The house was built on the mountainside, so the basement level was actually a ballroom in the back with a patio under the balcony that could be used even in the rain. The night was quiet as though the hills slumbered, and far away I could hear the river. An owl hooted somewhere in the woods, and then I heard a howl. The bone-piercing cry chilled me to my marrow, and I didn’t see the wolves in my mind’s eye, but rather another presence, this one infinitely menacing and ready to snatch up victims without notice. I wondered at this and at the fight Lonna and I had just had. It wasn’t like either of us to confront each other. Something about this place was unsettling. Too many had gone missing. What could be out there?