Forests of the Heart (47 page)

“I’m going to do something that will feel odd to you,” Bettina said, still whispering, “but I need to get closer to them to hear what they’re saying and I don’t have time to explain.”

Before Chantal could question her, she pulled the other woman with her into the between, deep enough inside so that they wouldn’t be easily remarked by anyone who might look their way, but not so far that they would miss what was being said.

Chantal leaned against her. “I think I feel sick to my stomach.”

“I’m sorry,” Bettina said.

She would have left Chantal behind, but she was afraid of the creature circling back through the woods and coming upon the sculptor.

“It will pass,” she assured Chantal.

“Not quick enough to suit me,” Chantal grumbled.

Her face had gone pale and perspiration beaded on her brow.

“Truly,” Bettina said. “I’m sorry.”

Chantal tried to smile. “What did I tell you about apologizing all the time?”

Eh,
bien,
Bettina thought. She would make it up to her friend, that was a promise. But for now she took Chantal’s hand and led her closer to where Nuala and Musgrave Wood were arguing. The freezing rain had plastered the women’s hair to their faces, a rain that Bettina and Chantal no longer felt in the between.

“—wake such a thing inside?” Nuala was saying. She was angrier than Bettina had ever seen her, her
brujería
flashing in her eyes. “Someone could have been killed.”

“This wasn’t what we had planned when—”

But Nuala wasn’t listening. “I thought I’d made it clear. Kellygnow is under my protection and I will not have you playing the Morgana within her walls.”

“Don’t you dare take that tone with me,” Musgrave told her, standing taller, glaring at the other woman. “You forget who I am. You are here only on my sufferance.”

Nuala shook her head.

“And if it wasn’t for me,” Musgrave went on, “the Gentry would have taken you down from that high horse of yours a very long ago.”

Nuala laughed, but without humor. “Is that what they told you?”

“I know what I know.”

“Then mark this, woman. I have always been what you only pretend to be.”

“Don’t you—”

“And,” Nuala went on, “I have what they don’t. I have a home; they have only the wilds.”

When she said that, Bettina was reminded of her first encounter with her
cadejos,
those rainbow dogs who had been silent for so long, silent because she’d turned away and refused to listen to them after the death dog had stolen her
abuela
away. They, too, had spoken so longingly of a home, had been so grateful to find it in her. She felt a sudden shame to have denied them for so long, for she knew what Nuala was saying was true. All spirits yearned for a home. To be grounded in one place, to have a safe haven waiting for them no matter how far their wanderings might take them.

She wanted to listen for her
cadejos
right now, to call to them, but she couldn’t concentrate with the argument going on in front of her.

Musgrave was shaking her head. “You don’t have any power …”

Nuala’s laughter darkened. “Power? Power is for little boys such as those wolves you run with. It’s a hurtful thing—have you not understood that yet?”

“You can say that, being what you are. Death has no hold on you.”

“Oh, no, Sarah,” Nuala said.

Her voice had taken on a sympathetic tone. Bettina and Chantal exchanged glances, the same question rising in both of them. Sarah?

“That’s another Gentry lie,” Nuala went on. “We can die as readily as a human. Perhaps not by illness or age, but by accident and murder, certainly. The difference is, not all of us fear dying.”

“Says the immortal,” Musgrave said, bitter. “Death doesn’t wait for you around every corner. It doesn’t require you to make bargains with the wolves simply to maintain your health.”

Nuala shook her head. “No,” she said. “So says one who lives in harmony with life, who knows that it is defined by its limitations. Who sees death not as the closing of a door, but the opening of one.”

“I can’t believe you,” Musgrave told her.

“I know. That is why I live in your house, why I have the home, while you live in the wilds with the wolves.”

“I have no choice.”

“There is always choice,” Nuala told her. But she seemed to be growing tired of the argument, and her tone grew less sympathetic. “And here is one you will not forget again: in future, choose to keep your games out of the house, or truly, you will understand what suffering can be.”

“You—”

“Listen to me,” Nuala told her, her voice hard now. “I am older than those wolves you run with and I am patient, but my patience has limits. Leave me and the house in peace. Do not involve the residents in your games. Ignore my request again and I will wake the salmon and you will finally understand what change means.”

Musgrave took a quick step back from the other woman.

“What?” Nuala said. “Do you think I haven’t seen you sniffing around his pool, your little mind whirring as you try to see a way to steal his wisdom without risking his waking?”

Musgrave turned abruptly and stalked back to her cabin. Her route took her within a few feet of where Bettina and Chantal were standing in the between, but she took no notice of them.

“They really can’t see us, can they?” Chantal whispered to Bettina.

“Or hear us. Are you feeling better now?”

Chantal nodded. “Do you understand any of what they’re talking about?”

“Not everything,” Bettina told her. “But it has cleared up some things that were puzzling me. Unfortunately, none of it helps in dealing with this creature Donal has pulled into the world.”

She paused suddenly, realizing that while Musgrave had been oblivious to their presence, Nuala had not been so easily fooled. Of course she wouldn’t be, if all she’d told the Recluse was true. Sighing, Bettina took Chantal by the hand again and stepped back into the world, back into the winter with its wet snow underfoot, the chill in the air and the freezing rain.

“I didn’t take you for a spy,” Nuala said.

“I’m not,” Bettina said, dropping her gaze. “I mean, I’m not usually. I’m just pulled by curiosity into places I shouldn’t necessarily be.”

“I know,” Nuala told her.

Bettina looked at her. “You do?”

Nuala’s laugh had all the warmth that her humor with Musgrave had lacked.

“Not the details,” she said. “Only that you have a good heart. And that is often enough—if you are also willing to do more than think kindly of others, but help them as well.”

“You know that I—”

“Whisht,” Nuala said. “I’m not angry. In truth, it’s good to not have to hide who I am from at least a few.”

“You’re like a brownie or a hob,” Chantal said. “Aren’t you? Keeping everything shipshape, but you’d have to leave if people knew who you were and showed their appreciation.”

Nuala smiled. “Something like that.”

“How do you know all this?” Bettina asked Chantal.

“I told you before,” Chantal said. “I grew up on fairy tales.”

When this was all over, Bettina planned to go the library and catch up. For now there was too much else to do, though she couldn’t resist trying to satisfy another small puzzle if she could.

“That woman,” Bettina asked Nuala. “You called her Sarah, but I thought her name was Musgrave.”

“She owns them both, but Sarah was the earlier of the two.”

“Sarah Wood?”

Nuala shook her head. “Sarah Hanson. The woman who originally had Kellygnow built as an artist’s retreat.”

“But she’s …”

“Long dead?” Nuala finished for her. “So she would be. But she struck a bargain with the wolves. By spending much of each year in the spiritworld, her life has been extended. Have you not noticed that humans who spend much time there don’t age as other people do?”

So that was how Abuela could have lived what seemed like more than one lifetime.

Nuala turned her attention to Chantal now.

“How much do you know?” she asked the sculptor.

Chantal sighed. “Way too much.”

Nuala nodded. “So it seems at first. Come,” she added. “We have work to do at the house. We will speak more of this later.”

“But the Glasduine …” Bettina began.

“Is hunting wolves,” Nuala told her. “And that’s not such a bad thing, is it?”

That depends, Bettina thought, worried for her own wolf. But she kept it to herself.

There wasn’t going to be a miracle, Miki realized. The hard men were going to have their way just like they always did. They’d trash the place. They’d beat her and everybody else up, maybe worse, and there was nothing they could do to stop them. Because these weren’t human bullies. They were living remnants of what had been waiting for us in the darkness since time primordial, ready to pounce and tear as soon as we left the cave, the hearth, the safe haven. They were spite and cruelty given human shape, but there was nothing human about them.

As though to emphasize the point, one of the Gentry standing near the front racks straight-armed the new release display and sent it crashing to the ground. CDs flew in all directions. A few landed near him and he crushed their jewel cases under the heel of his boot.

“You owe us,” the leader told her, grinning.

His thick accent woke a flood of memories in Miki. Dimly lit pubs, the smell of cigarettes and beer, Fergus and his cronies, their faces flushed with Guinness and spite as dark as fresh peat.

“And these,” another of the Gentry said, crushing more jewel cases underfoot, “aren’t enough.”

The leader nodded. “We need blood.”

Their sheer, ignorant callousness was what put Miki in motion. She was still desperately afraid, but she was more angry. As one of the Gentry moved toward the counter, she picked up the stool she’d been sitting on and flung it at him. If Hunter could stand up to them, she thought, then so could she.

“You stupid little bint,” the leader said.

He moved now. When Adam tried to block his way, he grabbed Adam by the shirt and flung him across the room. Adam landed badly, falling against the CD bins, before tumbling to the floor with his face twisting in pain. That crash brought the others from the back room. Miki saw Fiona come out first, followed by Titus, who took one look at what was going on and darted back out of sight.

Get out of here, too, Miki wanted to shout at Fiona. Before they see you.

But there was no time for warnings. She was too busy looking after herself.

Another of the Gentry had leapt up onto the counter. Miki saw only two choices. Bolt for the open space beyond the counter and have him jump on her back, or take the offensive. She didn’t even have to think about it. As the hard man swung a boot at her, she grabbed his leg and pulled it out from under him. He fell awkwardly, his spine hitting the cash register. He slid off it onto the counter, pushing magazines and the phone onto the floor by Miki’s feet. But he was kicking out as he fell and one foot connected. The blow sent her staggering back, knocking the CD player and all the promo CDs off the shelf behind her. She fell on top of them, scrambled to get back on her feet, but then the leader was standing over her. He gave her a kick that caught her in the shoulder and threw her back onto the slippery pile of CDs. Her eyes flooded with tears of pain.

That’s it, then, she thought, feeling oddly distanced and calm for all that her pulse was drumming in overtime. The next kick would take her in the head. If she was lucky, she’d wake up in hospital. If she wasn’t…

But the attack broke off as suddenly as it began. As one, the hard men lifted their heads to stand like statues, some dark ache flaring in their eyes, twisting grimaces from their lips. Their heads all turned to look out the window. Miki had no idea what they were seeing, what was going on. There was only the rain out there, the empty streets. Still, she took the opportunity to crabwalk backwards, out of range of the leader’s boots. When she neared the man she’d toppled from the counter, she grabbed the phone and smashed it down on his head, then looked at the leader, ready to throw it at him. But he was still preoccupied with whatever it was that he sensed or saw outside.

When the Gentry started for the door, leaving their fallen comrade behind, Miki slowly rose to her feet, steadying her balance by holding onto the edge of the counter. She watched them step out into the rain, one by one, trench coats flapping against their legs. The leader was the last to leave. He turned to look at her from the doorway, an unreadable, confusing expression in his eyes. But there was nothing confusing about the threat he left her with.

“We’ll be back,” he told Miki. “We have unfinished business, you and I.” Then he was gone as well.

This made no sense at all.

She stared at the door, sure they’d come sauntering back any moment to finish what they’d begun, laughing at the joke, at the false hope their departure might have woken, but the only thing coming in through the open door were splatters of freezing rain and a growing puddle. Catching movement from the corner of her eye, she turned to see Titus stepping warily out of the back room with a baseball bat in hand.

That was unexpected as well. Diffident Titus going all fierce? Next Fiona would go surfer-blonde.

She moved her arm, working her shoulder muscle. It didn’t hurt as much as she expected, though she knew she’d have bruises for souvenirs—there and on her torso. Her gaze dropped to the hard man lying still at her feet. He didn’t move when she toed him. Perhaps she’d killed him.

Serve him right, she thought as she stepped over his limp form and joined the others. Fiona was kneeling beside Adam, pushing the hair from his eyes.

“What happened to them?” she asked, looking up at Miki. “What made them go?”

“I have no idea,” Miki said.

Adam tried to move. He moaned, scowling at the pain the movement brought. His face was so white it was like typing paper.

“We need to get him to the hospital,” Fiona said.

Miki nodded, not really listening. She was still filled with fury at how the hard men had come in, so ready to hurt them, and for what? To prove they could. That was all. To prove they could.