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“Thank goodness we weren’t hurt,” I said, “but I think we’re going to have to walk from here.”
I turned off the engine and the lights. Darkness enveloped the car. I was tempted to turn the lights back on, but then I’d have to add a drained battery to the list of repairs on the car. I checked the glove compartment for a flashlight, but there wasn’t one. Then I put Ralph in my pocket and got out.
The dome light briefly showed how close I’d come to hitting a tree; then I closed the door and found myself in the dark again. Not total darkness though. The falling snow seemed to carry its own soft silvery light, but it didn’t really illuminate anything. Therewaslight coming from somewhere, though, probably from the street, I guessed, but the gully I’d landed in was so deep I couldn’t see streetlights. Nor could I climb back up the way I had come because the slope was too steep on that side. I’d have to walk parallel to the street until the slope leveled. Sooner or later I would run into my house, which was at the top of the hill on this side of the road.
I locked the car and started trudging uphill, bending my head down against the blowing snow. I was wearing a warm pair of sheepskin boots, so I didn’t feel the cold right away, but after about ten minutes I discovered that my expensive and stylish sheepskin boots weren’t even the least bit waterproof. Once the snow seeped through my whole body felt cold. I considered going back to the car for a pair of rubber boots that I’d thrown in the trunk a month ago but decided that was silly—I must be almost home.
I lifted my head and squinted through the driving snow. Yes, I could see small twinkling lights up ahead. Had I left the Christmas lights on? Or maybe Brock had come by to check on the house and left them on to welcome me home.Casa, heima, teg.
I quickened my pace, stamping my feet with every step to shake some warmth into them and keeping my eyes on the twinkling lights. They weren’t as close as they looked, though. In fact they seemed to recede as I approached, floating through the swirling snow…I stopped and looked around me. The lightsweremoving. They were swaying with the wind in the branches all around me. I peered closer and saw that hanging from the branches were the frozen ornaments that the townspeople had made during the ice storm—ice angels, partridges,elves, and reindeer. I could see the little charms that had been embedded inside the ice because the ice was glowing. As the wind moved them they clinked against each other like crystal chandelier drops, making a shivery chime that filled the woods. I had never actuallyfeltmagic before, but I knew it when I felt it and I could feel it now, stirring all around me, the power of all the wishes, hopes, and dreams contained within the charmed ornaments straining to break through their ice shells. I felt something inside myself straining to break through some hard shell. It was a feeling of anticipation, as keen as the bite of the icy wind, swelling to the breaking point. Just as the feeling became unbearable something crashed out of the brush directly behind me. I whirled around, nearly losing my balance in the deep snow, and found myself facing an enormous buck—no doubt the same one that had run in front of my car earlier. It looked at me with wide sentient eyes. Its antlers cast branching shadows across the snow. It huffed, its breath frosting in the cold air, and then lowered its head slowly to the ground. I noticed then that its antlers were tipped with silver and it wore a leather-and-silver collar around its broad neck.
“Are you from…the other side?” I asked.
But the buck only pawed the ground. Then it lifted its head, sniffed the air, its ears twitching, and leapt away as suddenly as it had appeared. I listened for what had frightened it, but all I heard was the chiming of the ice ornaments.
I turned and went on, soon coming out into a clearing that I recognized as my own front yard. Honeysuckle House was twenty yards away, my front porch light shining through the snow.See, I said to myself,I’m not lost. I struck out for my house, breaking into a clumsy run through the ankle-deep snow, but then something hit my head. I turned and met the yellow eyes of an enormous black bird, its talons stretched out. I ducked and flung my arm up to protect my face. The bird screeched horribly when I hit it and beat the air with its hugeblack wings, like a swimmer treading water. Its yellow eyes latched onto me, their hatred piercing the snow better than my high beams had.
Then it gathered itself for another dive.
I crouched and covered my face, sure it meant to pluck out my eyes, steeling myself for its talons and beak tearing into my flesh. But instead I heard a hollowthwackfollowed by the bird’s outraged scream and then the heavy beat of its wings. I uncovered my face and looked up at the figure towering above me, his back to me. Black feathers clung to his shoulders like a capelet. When he turned, the black feathers drifted down in front of me and landed in the snow, staining the white with splatters of blood. I looked up again, half expecting, half fearing that those yellow eyes would still be there. That the bird had transformed itself into this bloodied, feathered man, but the eyes regarding me were the soft brown eyes of Liam Doyle.
“Bloody hell, Callie!” he said, crouching down in front of me. “What did you do to piss off that bird?” His voice was shaking. I saw he still clutched the stick he’d used to fend off the bird. It was matted with blood and feathers.
“Liam, how did you know …? What are you doing here?”
“I was sitting in my room at the window, watching the snow fall, and then I saw someone in the woods. When you came out onto the lawn I saw it was you—and then I saw that crazy crow come out of the woods behind you. You know, I think it was the same one that attacked you the day you left…only it looks like it’s grown…”
He faltered and I wondered if he, too, was remembering what had happened the last time he’d rescued me from the bird—how we’d kissed and I’d pulled away. He reached out and touched my face, and I started to shake.
“You’re half frozen,” he cried, grabbing my hand and pulling me up. “We’ve got to get you inside. Do you have your key?”
I patted my pockets and realized that not only was the key gone but so was Ralph.
“Oh no!” I cried, scanning the blood-speckled snow. When had he fallen out? Had the monster crow gotten him?
“Don’t worry, you’ve probably got one stashed away. Most people hereabouts do, I’ve found. Let me guess—under this wee gnome perhaps?”
He’d helped me up to the front of the house and sat me down on the porch steps while he tilted back the stone gnome that had come with the house. “Ha! I knew it!” He cried, holding up a key. “Come on now, don’t cry. It’s just the shock of being attacked by that nasty bird.”
I wasn’t crying from shock—or at least not just from shock—but because I’d lost Ralph in the attack. Even if the bird hadn’t gotten him he’d freeze to death if he didn’t get inside soon. I had to look for him.
I got up and started to walk back across the snow, but I only got a few feet before a wave of dizziness overcame me and I sank to the ground. I heard Liam’s feet coming down the porch steps and felt his arms hauling me back to my feet. “Where do you think you’re going, Callie?”
“Um…I forgot something in the car…I have to go back.”
“You’re delirious, girl, which is one of the signs of hypothermia. You’re going inside now.”
Liam half carried me up the steps and into the house. I began to explain about Ralph, not caring anymore if he thought I was nuts.
“A pet mouse? What a strange woman you are, Cailleach McFay. But don’t you worry. Wild animals know how to take care of themselves. He’ll go to ground until the snow stops and then he’ll come home.”
He sat me down on the library couch and crouched beside the hearth where logs lay ready for a fire. He set a match to thelogs as he talked, his voice a soothing patter—like raindrops falling on a tin roof—but I couldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t just Ralph anymore; it was everything that had happened: Paul breaking up with me, my grandmother turning out to be a witch, finding out about Frank Delmarco, crashing my car in the woods, getting attacked by a giant bird…It all bubbled up inside me now and spilled out in long wrenching sobs. I told Liam some of it—about Paul and the car…and somehow I managed to throw in finding him on the cloakroom floor with Fiona.
“That hussy,” he said, wrapping a knit throw around my shoulders. “She asked me to get something off a high shelf for her and then was all over me. Don’t worry about her…or youridjeetex-boyfriend. You’re home now.” He knelt in front of me and pulled off my sodden boots and socks and rubbed my feet, his hands incredibly warm against my chilled flesh.
“It’s okay,” he cooed, his voice as warm as his hands. “You’ve had a bad time of it, but it’s okay now, you’re home now.”
He slipped his hands up under my jeans and chafed my calves, bringing the blood back into my legs. I’d never noticed how large and strong his hands were. He could span the width of my calf with one. I felt the warmth of them stealing up my legs.
