Down

by Kirsten Weiss

  “Did she tell you about Doyle?” Silken hope unfurled inside me.

  He met my gaze. “She told me to leave.” Gently, he lifted my other hand and dabbed at it with the cotton.

  My face tightened from the alcohol’s sting.

  “She and my mother had raging fights over it. My mom had a good job here. She liked Doyle. And she wasn’t superstitious.”

  “Superstitious about what?” I asked. Was it possible he believed?

  “Old things. Things in the forest. And then my grandmother died, and my mother and I moved on. Or stayed, depending on how you look at it.” And with his change in tone, the moment was over, his revelations done.

  A siren sounded, faint.

  “It’s not in the forest anymore,” I said. “What’s doing this is in Doyle, affecting us, making our world more like its own. And it’s taking sacrifices to maintain its power.”

  He met my gaze. “Sacrifices. Every seven years.”

  He believed, and relief bubbled through my veins. “I don’t know why it took the Bell and Thistle, but I think its grip is slipping. Two of its prisoners returned last year, though they didn’t last long in this world.”

  He nodded. “The old woman and the school teacher last summer.”

  “Maybe that’s why she took so many this time–”

  “She?” he asked.

  “She, it, does it matter? That book...” I nodded to the book on the seat beside me, setting off a fresh wave of sickening pain. I closed my eyes against it. “If you look inside, it’s not a children’s mystery. It’s an old book of folk tales, and I think it has the answers.”

  “Folk tales? Is that the book Van Oss was searching for?” He reached across me and opened the book, squinting in the dim light.

  “The book Van Oss was hired to find,” I said. My jaw clenched. He couldn’t take it as evidence. He couldn’t. “Connor–”

  Another car approached, slowed, stopped.

  Connor slid the book beneath my seat, his hand brushing against the legs of my jeans – white no longer – and my heart skipped a beat.

  A car door opened. “Deputy? Is everything all right?” Steve Woodley asked. The councilman’s figure silhouetted against the blaze of his headlights.

  “Yes, sir,” Connor said. “There’s been an accident.”

  “Good heavens.” He shielded his eyes with one hand. “Is that Lenore Bonheim?”

  “Yes,” I called out. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not,” Connor said.

  A paramedic’s van drifted to a halt behind Woodley’s SUV. Its blue emergency lights turned the forest and cars and men ghastly colors. The siren cut to silence, and two men in blue uniforms jumped from the cab. I breathed a sigh, recognizing Jayce’s boyfriend as one of them – Brayden Duarte.

  Brayden stopped, stared, cursed. “Lenore?” His muscular form raced to the squad car. He gripped a black, doctor’s bag.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  Connor stepped aside, and Brayden knelt in front of me. He brushed a lock of his dark hair off his face. “You’d better be,” the paramedic said, “or Jayce is going to kill me.” He pulled a penlight from his breast pocket and shined it in my eyes. “Okay, can you follow the light for me?”

  Connor moved away and spoke with Steve Woodley.

  Anxious, I strained my ears, but I couldn’t catch their conversation.

  The second paramedic came to stand beside us.

  Gently, Brayden felt my neck, my head. “Possible concussion. I want to take you to the hospital.”

  “No!”

  He stared. “No? What part of Jayce is going to kill me if you’re not okay didn’t you understand?”

  “I don’t...” I stuttered to a halt, confused.

  Connor walked to us and braced his hand on the squad car’s roof.

  Doc Toeller might be at the hospital. I’d been on my way there anyway, to see my sisters, but the book... I couldn’t bring it into an Emergency Room. What if Toeller examined me and saw it?

  “Don’t worry,” Connor said with quiet emphasis. “I’ll take care of everything.”

  The paramedics edged away.

  Grasping the top of the car door, I wavered to my feet.

  Connor took my arm, his breath warm against my cheek.

  I shivered, his nearness overwhelming. “But the...” The book, the book, we had to protect the book, had to get it to my sisters, keep it secret.

  “I’ll follow you to the hospital. Understand?” He unpeeled a lock of hair from my face and brushed it over my ear. “Trust me. I’ll take care of it.”

  My heart thundered, fear and hope tangling. He understood. We were together in this now. I raised my bandaged palm to his cheek, and his breath caught.

  Heedless of the men around us, we kissed. The men, the flashing lights, the forest vanished. In that moment, it was just us.

  With a soft breath, he stepped away. “I’ll follow you,” he said. “You’ll be okay.”

  It was a promise. I nodded, still feeling his mouth burning against mine.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I slipped inside Karin’s hospital room. My sisters looked up at me – Jayce from a lounge chair and Karin from her angled bed. They took in my bandages, the dirt and blood smearing my white jeans and loose, cream-colored top.

  Jayce rose. Karin sat up, the metal bedframe creaking.

  I glanced at the wall clock. It was nearly midnight, and suddenly I wanted to laugh, remembering our childhood, late-night whispered huddles.

  “What happened?” Karin asked, aghast.

  “Someone tried to run me off the road.” I glanced again at the clock. Connor still had the book. At least, I hoped he had it and hadn’t turned it in to the sheriff’s department. Where was he? He’d told me he’d come to the hospital, and I’d seen him briefly in the emergency room, but then he’d gotten a call on his radio, and–

  “Are you all right?” Jayce asked.

  “I found the book,” I said. “The Folk and Fairy Tales of America. Doyle’s in it. So is our fairy.”

  Jayce’s lips parted. “And?”

  “There’s a poem–”

  Someone rapped on the door frame and scraped the curtain aside.

  I turned.

  Connor strode into the room, his deputy’s jacket zipped to his collar. His mouth curved in a slow smile. “You’re here.”

  “Connor!” I wrapped my arms around him. Something hard and angular pressed into my chest.

  Pulling away, he unzipped his jacket. “I thought you might want to keep this secret.” He withdrew the book.

  I gasped. “You brought it. Thank you.”

  The radio on his shoulder crackled. Grimacing, he clicked its button and muttered into the small plastic device. There was a garbed response, and his face creased with annoyance. “I’ve got to go.” Lightly, he rubbed my upper arm. “Will you be all right?”

  “I will now.” Seeing him again made everything all right. “Thanks for keeping this for me.” He’d taken a leap of faith by bringing it to me rather than to his boss, the sheriff.

  “I want to hear all about it when my shift’s over.” Kissing me on the cheek, he hurried out the door.

  My sisters grinned at me.

  “So,” Jayce said, “you and Connor? When did that happen?”

  An alarm went off down the hall. Footsteps pounded down the corridor, nurses racing to deal with the crisis.

  “Priorities,” I said, my skin warming. “This book has a story about our fairy. I think—”

  “Connor brought it to you.” Karin’s forehead wrinkled. “How much does he know?”

  “Almost everything,” I said.

  The ticking of the clock grew louder, and I rubbed my ear.

  Karin shook her head, her hospital gown gaping over one bare shoulder. “It’s dangerous for him.”

  “And for Nick, and for Brayden,” I said. “But they had to know.”

  Karin’s mouth tightened, but she nodded. “
All right. What’s in the book?”

  I walked to her bedside and opened the book. It fell open to the first page on Doyle. Mike must have studied this chapter often. “It’s another poem,” I said. And I read:

  “The pow’r of the fairy queen,

  Lay in life at her feet,

  Her name inscribed in stone,

  Beneath her royal throne.”

  I looked up. The alarm echoed down the corridor, but the sound seemed farther away, muffled. The wall clock’s ticks seemed to slow.

  “That’s it?” Jayce rubbed her bare arms, shivering in her tight, blue shorts.

  But Karin’s expression was thoughtful.

  “It’s her name,” I said.

  Karin rubbed her cheek. “That could work. The unseelie’s real name can’t be Toeller.”

  “What?” Jayce’s gaze ping-ponged between the two of us. “What are you talking about?”

  “In old magic,” I said, “knowing something’s true name gives you power over them.” And there wasn’t much older magic than the unseelie’s.

  “In the Bible,” Karin said, “God asks Adam to name all the animals, and this gives man dominion over them. We name something, we identify it, we know its true essence, and that gives us power over it. If we knew the unseelie’s true name, we might have a chance against it. I’d need to consult the family grimoire, but I’m fairly certain there’s a binding spell in it that would work.”

  “Bind her?” Jayce asked.

  “In her world,” I said, “where she belongs. We can set things right.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t do that.” Steve Woodley stepped through the curtain and closed the door behind him. He held a gun.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I edged backward, my thighs bumping into Karin’s hospital bed.

  The blood drained from Jayce’s face. She half-rose from her lounge chair, but stopped at a look from the councilman. “Steve, what–?”

  “I’ll take that book.” He smiled in a fatherly fashion.

  “We’re in a hospital.” Paling, Karin laid her hands over the swell of her stomach. “One shot and everyone will come running.”

  “I think not,” he said. “Everyone’s busy at the other end of the floor, and the doctor will make sure they stay that way. Besides, I don’t think you really want me to sacrifice one of your sisters.”

  “Take it.” I tossed the book to his feet.

  He didn’t move to pick it up. “Have you read it?”

  “No,” I lied.

  He scratched his silver goatee. “Why don’t I believe you?”

  I reached behind me. Karin slipped her hand into one of mine. Jayce grasped the other across the bed. A whisper of energy flowed up my arms. The overhead lights flickered, humming.

  “Why?” Jayce asked. “Why do you want it? Why are you doing this?”

  “I doubt you’d understand,” he said, aiming the gun at her. “You’re too young. You think everything’s ahead of you.”

  “I know nothing is,” Jayce said.

  “He wants things to stay the same.” I bit back a whimper. “He likes Doyle as it is, preserved under glass. He and Mike argued about it.”

  “Mike had no vision,” Woodley said.

  “No,” I said, angry. “He understood the costs.”

  “Do you have any idea how old I am?” he asked. “Eighty-seven. I don’t look a day over sixty, and I expect to live well into my hundreds – and I mean live well. It’s a gift, don’t you see?”

  “It’s a curse for others,” Karin said. Her magic flowed, tingling, up my arm, through my heart, down my other arm into my other sister. Jayce’s energy twined through it, moving in a circuit that prickled the top of my scalp, lifted the hair on my arms.

  “A curse for your family, perhaps,” he said.

  “And for people like my assistant manager, Darla,” Jayce said, “cursed with bad luck.”

  “What about all those people in the Bell and Thistle?” I asked, my chest aching with fear.

  “Rather stupid to build a bar on top of a fairy spring.” His gun didn’t waver. He wasn’t going to take the book and go. “Ignorance is its own reward.”

  My gaze expanded, softened, drifted. My breathing slowed. My heart beat loudly in my ears, and I listened.

  “Ironic that Doyle has your great, great, great, whatever grandfather to thank for bringing her here. Your family started it all.” His face hardened. “And I won’t let you end it.”

  “You were the one who hired Van Oss to get the book,” I said, stalling. I’d physically gone to the place between worlds before. With my sisters joined to me, we could go there together and escape this lunatic. If we could pull it off. This was big magic, magic we’d never intentionally attempted. “You knew Mike would never hand it over, so you hired Van Oss to steal it back. How did you find out about it?”

  “I was looking for information on old Doyle legends and encountered Van Oss. He told me about the book he’d sold to Mike. I motivated him to get it for me.”

  “Why didn’t you just let him do his job? Why kill him? Why kill Mike?” My words rose over the sound of my heartbeat, so loud now I half expected Woodley to hear it.

  “Mike wouldn’t let it go,” he said. “It was more than just the book. I realized that even if I got it back, he’d keep trying to end the enchantment. And he had the brains to figure out how. All those occult books – where do you think his obsession started? He’s known something was different about Doyle since he was a boy.”

  “And so you killed Mike.” My grip on my sisters tightened. “You broke his neck and made it look like an accident, then left the bookstore before anyone saw you,”

  In the corner, beside the dresser, a shadow stirred.

  “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity,” he said.

  “And Alba provided you another opportunity to get rid of Van Oss,” I said. “She distracted everyone in the hotel while you snuck upstairs,” I said. “Did Van Oss ask for more money? Try to double-cross you?”

  “More money. I didn’t need him, and he knew too much.”

  “But you did need an alibi for the murder,” I said, “so you used your aunt. Her alibi isn’t so solid. She’s easily confused, but she knows her TV schedule. And Alba saw you at the hotel, didn’t she?”

  The room was shifting, changing. The walls slipped away, revealing translucent tall, white trees. The laminate floor softened to beaten gold beneath our feet.

  “I’d hoped to be able to leave her be,” he said. “No one ever listened to poor, demented Alba. But that damned FBI agent was sniffing around. She’s different. She understands things. And I thought she might get something out of Alba.”

  The wall clock ticked, slowed.

  A male figure, tall and blond, his face disfigured by scars, emerged from the shadows. He reached his hand out toward me. “Lenore.”

  “So you broke her neck.” My voice trembled. “You carried Alba upstairs and threw her out the window.” The words were a gasp, the circuit of energy dizzying. I could no longer tell where my flesh ended and my sisters’ began. The ceiling vanished. A full moon rode high above the aspens and turned the sky a velvety blue. Undimmed by the moon, the Milky Way streaked the sky.

  The clock stopped.

  From a distance, a bell tolled.

  His gun wavered. “Where are we?” the councilman barked, as if suddenly noticing our new surroundings. “What have you done?”

  I turned. The aspen’s yellow leaves rustled, and the hospital room, my sisters were gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Aspens shivered in a warm breeze. Their white trunks gleamed in the moonlight, yellow leaves fluttering to the ground. The scarred man strode toward us and through the trees.

  Woodley’s gun wobbled. “Stop this nonsense. Send us back.”

  A twig cracked beneath the scarred man’s feet.

  Woodley turned, too late.

  The man punched him in the jaw.

  Woodley tumbled
to the uneven ground and skidded to a halt against a papery tree trunk. He lay, unmoving.

  The scarred man rubbed his knuckles and smiled.

  I snorted, a short, disbelieving laugh. “Thanks.” Where the hell was I? How did he get here? And how did Woodley come along for the ride? I shook my head, trying to rattle some sense into it. Anxiety unspooled in my chest. “Where are my sisters?” Steve was here, so at least they were safe from him. But where were they?

  “They are safe, for now.”

  “But where—?”

  “They are not here. I do not know where you have sent them. But the danger is here, so they are safe.”

  “You’re the Rose Rabbit, aren’t you?”

  Slowly, he turned to me. “Once.” He bent and picked up the gun, studying it. “Interesting weapon.” He jammed it in the waistband of his jeans. “You have come for my lady’s name. We must go.” He strode down the slope.

  “Do you know Toeller’s real name?” I hurried after him. “The unseelie’s name, I mean?”

  “No.”

  “I think it’s carved into the base of her throne.”

  “Is it?” he asked. “I have not seen it.”

  “Then... How did you know which direction we should go in?”

  “I know we must leave this place. Danger approaches.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. If I was really here, and this wasn’t just a vision, I could be hurt. I swallowed. “We can’t leave him.” I gestured up the slope to Woodley.

  He paused. “Leave whom?”

  “Steve Woodley. Not if there’s danger.”

  “He is a murderer, and in the queen’s pocket.”

  “He’s vulnerable.”

  “The danger is not for him.” He turned and continued on.

  Steve was a killer. I shouldn’t have cared what happened to him. But I followed the Rose Rabbit guiltily.

  We crested a rise, and he paused. A black-and-white landscape sprawled before us, a mercury ribbon of river slicing it in two. Splintered trees lay scattered along the barren ground. Their roots were exposed, torn from the earth as if a flood had swept the valley.