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I laughed…and was startled at how the sound echoed inthe round glade. “Yeah, poor us. We’ve had amazing sex for a week and now we have to go back to the real world. How will we survive?”
I’d meant it as a joke, but he answered gravely, “By remembering. That’s why I wanted to bring you here. So we’d have something perfect to picture when we thought about this week.”
I looked at the glade. The moon had risen to the center of the gap now, so large and full that it looked as if it would burst through the trees and come rolling toward us. I had a sense of other things—strange and unfriendly things—waiting on the other side of that door for their chance to come through. I recalled my vision of Faerie and the diaphanous host who had pleaded with me to release them. Were they there waiting for me now? Would they pull me through the door if I strayed too close to it?
“Itisbeautiful,” I said, wanting now to go, but not wanting to alarm Liam. How could I explain what I was afraid of? “But it’s also frigging cold. Let’s go home.”
“Home?” he asked, the light of the moon in his eyes.
I understood that he was asking if it was his home, too, and in that moment I realized I wanted it to be, that Honeysuckle House had never felt so much like my home as it had this week with Liam there. Should I ask him to move in right now? But when I remembered the way he’d acted earlier about Paul’s email, I hesitated. A shadow fell across Liam’s face. He looked away and then he started turning his skis around, pleating the once perfect snow into a wide fan. We fitted our skis back into our own tracks, which the cold air had turned icy in the few minutes we had stood in the clearing. Liam went first, his skis shooting away on the slicked tracks. Although I didn’t like the idea of being left behind, I took one look back over my shoulder. The clearing was still empty, but the moon had risen high enough now that it cast the shadows of the trees onto the white snow. I thought I saw other shapes among the shadow branches—shapes with horns and wings and spiked tails. Creaturesfrom the other side of the door trying to come through.Otherworlders, my grandmother had called them. She had also said there wasn’t any difference between a fairy and a demon. These shadow creatures certainly looked more like demons than fairies.
I turned and followed Liam, skiing as fast as I could in the iced tracks. As the moon rose higher the shadows stretched out longer in the woods on either side of the narrow track. I had the impression that the shadows were chasing us back to the house and if they overtook us we’d never make it back. I skied faster, trying not to look to either side but unable to resist. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw one of the shadows break free and skitter across the snow, scuttling sideways like a crab, its claws scraping against the crusted snow. I pushed my skis faster in their grooves. The shadows fell across the path now, like leaves tossed by the wind, but there was no wind. One shadow landed right in front of me, fat as a toad. Without thinking twice I speared it with my ski pole while reciting the antipest spell that I’d heard Justin Plean use.
“Pestis sprengja!”
It popped like a swollen blister…and then turned intotwoshadow-crabs.Shit, maybe Justin’s spell didn’t work on these creatures—or maybe my grandmother was right about my lack of magical talent. Maybe every spell I cast would go wrong becauseIwas wrong, the product of two bloodlines that weren’t supposed to mix. One landed in my left track. I lifted my ski up, slammed down hard, and heard it splatter. Something sticky dragged at my left ski and I nearly stumbled, but then I was back in the icy groove moving faster than ever. I could see Liam up ahead, standing beyond the path in the yard behind Honeysuckle House. Should I call out to him? What would he see if he looked back? Me batting at shadows? Would he be able to help me—or would the shadow-crabs turn on him?
I felt a sudden conviction that the latter would happen. Iwhacked one of the shadow-crabs with my right pole and raced to reach Liam and the open shadowless lawn he stood in. Just as I reached the end of the path, a prickly ball launched itself at my feet and latched onto my ankle. I lifted my leg to shake it off—and froze in my tracks. There was nothing on my ankle…because Ihadno right ankle. Where thethinghad attached itself there was a blank hole where my ankle should have been, as if the shadow had swallowed my flesh.
I could feel myself falling, but I knew that if I did the shadow-crabs would devour me. I used the right pole to balance myself and the left to pry the shadow thing off my ankle before it ate my whole leg. But before I could accomplish that rather complicated maneuver, something else flew out of the woods. I thought it was another shadow-crab, but then I noticed that this one looked more like a flying squirrel.
“Ralph!” I screamed.
He landed on the shadow-crab attached to my ankle and sank his teeth into it. The thing squealed and fell off, my ankle taking shape again, and the two of them rolled onto the snow and into a snowdrift.
“Callie?” I heard Liam calling me. I couldn’t let him come back into the woods for me—and I couldn’t leave Ralph.
“I’ll be right there,” I called.
I released my boots from the skis and knelt down, plunging my hands into the drift, knowing full well that I might pull out stumps. But instead I pulled out Ralph. He was limp in my hand. I didn’t have time to see if he was breathing. I stuck him in my pocket and ran for the moonlight, out of the shadows, stumbling straight into Liam’s arms.
“What are you doing?”
I looked around us. The shadows didn’t reach to where we were standing. In fact, they seemed to be shrinking back into the woods.
“I saw Ralph,” I said, pulling him out of my pocket. “He was attacked by…an owl.”
“Poor little guy.” Liam peered closer at him but didn’t touch him. “He seems to be breathing. Let’s get him inside—and you, too. You’re limping.”
“I think I twisted my ankle,” I said, leaning on Liam’s arm.
“Should I go back and get your skis?”
“No!” I said much too loudly. “I’ll get them tomorrow. Let’s get in before poor Ralph freezes to death.”
I put Ralph in his old basket, wrapped up in a blanket, and put the basket near the fireplace in the library. He was breathing but still unconscious. Maybe the shadow-crab had done something to him. My ankle was swollen and bruised. It didn’t hurt, though; it felt completely numb, as if it wasn’t even there. Liam propped it up on a pile of pillows on the couch and put an ice pack on it.
“Some New Year’s Eve,” he said. “I guess we’ll have to cancel the dancing. At least we’ve got champagne.”
He produced a bottle of Moët & Chandon and two glasses and then, even more magically, a picnic of bread, cheese, and fruit, which he fed me as if my hands were injured and not just my ankle. I downed two glasses of champagne before I could stop shivering—from the cold, Liam thought, but I knew it was from the fear of fending off those nasty shadow-crabs. My grandmother had been right when she said that sooner or later I’d be in danger in Fairwick. I hated when my grandmother was right.
I drank another glass of champagne and let Liam feed me strawberries and whipped cream. Somehow a dab of the whipped cream ended up on my nose. Liam leaned forward and licked it off. I laughed and drew a mustache over his mouth with two swipes of cream. He retaliated by burying his damp, whipped-cream covered mouth between my breasts. Then he unbuttoned my shirt and drew a line of whipped cream from my solar plexus to the waistband of my ski pants. When histongue reached my navel I conceded defeat with a long moan. I tried to pull him to me, but instead he gathered me in his arms and picked me up. He rolled his eyes toward Ralph’s basket on the hearth
“Sorry,” he said, “I’d feel like your friend was watching.”
He carried me to the stairs.
“You know, Icanwalk,” I said hoarsely.
“Nope, sorry, I don’t believe you can. In fact, I believe you’re utterly and completely helpless. At my mercy, to do with what I please.”
“And what do you please?” I asked when he laid me down on the bed.
He showed me.
Hours later I startled out of a delicious postcoital languor. “Hey, did we miss New Year’s?” I asked.
But Liam was already asleep. I got up and limped to my desk to read the clock. It was 11:58. I should wake him for a New Year’s kiss, but he looked so peaceful that I didn’t want to disturb him. And he certainly had kissed me plenty in the last few hours. Yes, indeedy, I felt pretty thoroughly kissed.
I sat down at my desk and leaned forward to see out the window. The moon had crossed over the top of my house and was in the western half of the sky, throwing all the shadows east, back toward the woods. I thought I could see some of those shadows moving through the woods, skulking between the trees, flitting through the branches, scurrying back before the door closed at midnight. Would they all make it? Or would some be stranded on this side? I shuddered thinking of those shadow-crabs and hoped that they, at least, had made it back. Fairwick already had enough monsters, I thought, climbing back into bed beside Liam. I spooned myself against his back, burrowing into the warmth of his body, but it was a long time before I stopped shaking.
