The winter man glanced back at him, danger in his eyes.
“You may want to find that weapon now, Oliver.”
Kitsune moved aside, glancing around for any sign of imminent threat, and Frost stepped slowly into the vast, cathedral-like chamber that was the main hall of the Sandmen’s castle. Oliver could only stare.
There were dozens of them. Perhaps hundreds. The Bloody Caps were all dead, strewn in bits and pieces around the floor of that massive cathedral and across the ornate staircases all around its circumference that led into other areas of the castle. Their clothes were shredded, skin and bones shattered and torn. Only their iron boots seemed intact. Untouched.
Kitsune moved in and out of the sunlight that streamed through the high windows, disappearing into shadows and then reappearing. The winter man’s body glinted with refracted light and he moved with strange, unhurried grace as he examined the scene. Oliver stepped carefully over the broken corpses of the hideous little things. Sleep bringers and dream makers, according to myth. They were horrible, but Oliver could not help pitying them.
He glanced down and saw that the face of the creature below him had been savaged. When he could tear his gaze away, he saw the weapon in its hand. It was a knife of some kind, a dagger, but even as he reached down to pry it from the rough-textured fingers of the dead Sandman, he realized it was not metal, but bone. Or, perhaps, a tooth. As he brandished it before him he became certain that was what it was. A single fang, two inches in girth and at least seven in length.
What has teeth like this?
he wondered.
The question only made him draw a long, measured breath and swallow once, hard. But the weight of the weapon in his hand lent him some comfort. He had taken fencing lessons throughout middle and high school. This was no fencing foil, but he had no doubt he could stab something with it.
When he glanced around again he saw that Kitsune and Frost had moved closer to the middle of the massive cathedral chamber. They were at what seemed to be the center of the carnage and were staring upward at something that thrust down from the ceiling. As Oliver walked toward them, trying to make out what had drawn their attention, things crunched underfoot.
Not sand.
He paused and looked down. Scattered across the floor of the castle were shards of what he first took to be crystal. He crouched and reached to pick one up, careful in case they might cut him. Only after the piece of crystal was in his hand and he had held it up, studying its intricacies and its beauty, did he realize that it was not glass that he held, but diamond.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
Standing, he started toward his companions again. All over the ground, mixed in with the gritty remains of the dead Sandmen, were shards of diamond, some of them tiny and others as long as his arm. He shook his head in wonder and stared upward again. Now he saw that the thing that had drawn the attention of Frost and Kitsune was the source of the diamonds. Something had hung there, a gigantic lamp or chandelier, from the looks of the structure of it. The top of it was still there, but it had been shattered in a thousand fragments or more, which had showered down to the floor.
“What was it?” he asked.
Kitsune slowly turned to him, her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths beneath her black tunic, and her expression was entirely open and unmasked. In her face and her eyes, he saw fear.
“It was the prison of the Sandman,” said the winter man, his breath a cold mist. “The original Sandman. The monster.
“And now he is free.”
Collette stood in the shower with her hands against the tiles and her back arched, letting the near-scalding water sluice down her body. The house was old and the winter tended to seep in, especially at night. In the cold air, steam billowed all around her and filled the entire bathroom. It felt good to breathe it in, to have the hot water pelting the muscles of her back, forcing her to relax after the day she had had. It may not have been the worst day of her life but it certainly felt that way.
She could still recall the contentment she had felt upon waking that morning. It seemed so absurd now, when she was filled with such exhaustion and regret and worry. Though she would have given anything to avoid it, the task of delivering the news to Julianna had ended up in her hands. The woman was not only her brother’s fiancée but Collette’s friend, and to see the feelings of betrayal in her face had been painful.
Julianna had cried, there in the back of the church, already in her wedding dress and more beautiful than she had ever been. Collette had held her hands, but could not escape the feeling that she was guilty by association, because Oliver was her brother. Still, she had stayed, twisting her bridesmaid’s gown in her hands, and tried to convince Julianna that Oliver wouldn’t ever have done this to her if he could have avoided it.
The words had felt hollow coming out of her mouth, no matter how strongly she believed them. When the priest had announced to the gathering crowd that the service would have to be postponed, and when the florist had come in with condolences, as though Oliver was dead instead of missing, and when the cellist had come in to say that the musicians would still need the balance of their fee— only to be nearly dragged from the room by Julianna’s mother— Collette had stayed with her and tried to give her strength.
Never in her life would she hear the word
awkward
and not think of this day.
And yet, all along, as she comforted Julianna, her thoughts were of Oliver. For everyone else, the presumption that he’d gotten cold feet and run off superseded any fear for his safety; but not for Collette.
The detective from the sheriff’s department, Halliwell, had phoned forty-five minutes before the church service to say that, though he had followed up on all the leads they had given him, he had come up with nothing. No one had seen Oliver today. No one had heard from him.
It had been what Collette expected. And yet to hear her suspicion confirmed was a blow. Even now, so many hours later, standing in the shower smelling of apricot shampoo, she felt weakened by the memory of Halliwell’s voice on the phone. She had told them Oliver would not have left Julianna at the altar like that. If he had changed his mind, he would have tried to comfort her as best he could, tried to blunt the sharp edge of the news. If Oliver was gone, he hadn’t gone willingly.
She had seen him at the coat closet long after midnight, and in the morning found it in disarray. Perhaps he’d even taken out a coat and a hat, gloves and a scarf. It had been too long since she’d lived with Oliver to know what winter coat he wore, what hat he might take with him.
Collette did not believe for a moment that Oliver had just run off and abandoned Julianna. Something had happened to him, she was sure. But if she had told that cop, Halliwell, what she’d seen, he would have assumed her father was right, that Oliver had taken off. No matter how long she’d been out of this house, Collette knew Oliver better than anyone, and she’d looked in his eyes and seen the honor there. Regardless of his doubts, he wouldn’t have run.
And where would he have gone, on foot, in the middle of a blizzard?
“Oh, God, little brother, where are you?” she whispered in the shower, and a spasm of fear went through her.
Collette turned the water off and ran her hands through her hair, squeezing some of the moisture out. She paused and took a deep breath, steadying herself and trying to push her worry away. It did not work very well. At least the police were actually looking for Oliver now and not just assuming he had jilted his bride. The Wessex County sheriff’s department was working with Kitteridge police and the Maine state police. The cops had even interviewed poor Friedle to see if he knew anything about Oliver’s disappearance. Ridiculous, of course, but they didn’t know that. Collette was just happy they had not waited any longer to start looking for him.
She opened the shower door and reached for a towel, wrapping it around her head in a turban. Then she snatched up a second towel, an enormous fluffy blue thing, and quickly dried off. Her robe hung on the back of the door. She slipped into it and cinched the belt around her waist. The moment she opened the door— bright light and steam spilling out into the hallway— she shivered. The drop in temperature made her nipples hard and she crossed her arms over her breasts as the chill ran through her.
Though the heat was on very low— as it always was at bedtime— the pipes in the walls ticked with the effort of keeping it from getting any colder. The house creaked with its age and size, a venerable old thing whose emptiness seemed sad, as though the structure itself was mournful that it was just Collette and her father there tonight. There ought to be a real family in the house, she believed. Parents and children. Generations of family. Not just a distant, disappointed father and his apprehensive daughter.
The wood floor was cold beneath her bare feet and she hurried toward her open bedroom door. As she reached it, she paused and frowned deeply. A shudder went through her that had nothing to do with the thermostat. As a child Collette had often felt overwhelmed in this house. Often she had stayed awake long after her parents had gone to bed, and walking around the house late at night had been a terrifying adventure. Every night-black window seemed to hide in its darkness an unknown watcher. Padding toward the kitchen for a snack she would always have a strange, prickling sensation at the back of her neck, a tightening of the muscles between her shoulder blades, the certainty that someone was watching her.
That cold, familiar feeling touched her now.
But Collette was not a little girl anymore. She reached up to push the towel on her head up over her right ear and listened carefully to the moaning of the old house. Disdainful of her own hesitation, she glanced over her shoulder. There was a light at the top of the stairs that threw dim yellow illumination along the hall, but its reach was limited and there were shadows at either end.
“Dad?” she said, quietly. But that was foolish and she knew it. Her father was in his room, reading or perhaps already asleep, and if he had come out of his room, he wouldn’t be wandering around in silence. Max Bascombe was, as she’d heard him say on more than one occasion, Lord-of-the-fucking-Manor.
Collette smiled derisively at herself and went into her room. The antique lamp at her bedside was on, its glass globes handpainted with roses and a white frost that cast a pink hue across the bed. The Christmas lights in the windows burned, and just being in the room let her relax a little. Perhaps the feeling she had had upon waking that morning, of being a child again, had affected her more than she had realized.
You’re on edge because of Oliver,
she thought.
Her thoughts were of her brother as she unwrapped her towel turban and began to dry her hair vigorously. She wasn’t going to worry about blowing it dry tonight. After the day she’d had she had needed a shower, the heat and the relaxation of it, but in the morning she would take another. She would worry about her hair then.
Collette slipped off her robe and dressed in a clean pair of thick flannel pajamas. She pushed her fingers through her damp hair and picked up the towel to do a better job of drying it. When she was through she took her brush from the top of the bureau and ran it through her hair. Her body prickled with anxiety. The shower had worked its magic on her, but now that she was out of it, her worries were seeping back in. How was she just supposed to go to sleep now, not knowing what had happened to Oliver? How had her father managed the feat?
Putting the brush down she went to her bed, picking up her book from the nightstand. She was reading Jon Krakauer’s recounting of the tragedy on Mount Everest,
Into Thin Air.
It was a horrible story, but somehow an inspiring one as well. She hoped it would be enough to distract her so she could fall asleep.
Collette drew back the covers and started to climb into bed. As she did, that familiar feeling returned. Her brows knitted and she glanced at the door, which hung open half a foot. Though there was that small lamp in the hall, the light in her own room made it seem quite dark beyond the door. The urge to go and close it was powerful, but she resisted, chiding herself again.
Then something moved out in the hall.
Collette froze. “Dad?”
Her eyelids fluttered and a sudden sleepiness came over her, so strong that she swayed. Shaking it off, still trying to stare through that six-inch gap between door and frame, she reached up to rub at her eyes and wiped away the grit that was usually only there upon waking.
“Hello?” she said, and then she started toward the door. At first she walked slowly, but then she felt a flash of anger at herself and her father and at Oliver as well, and she strode over to the door and threw it open.
The light from her room cast its glow into the hall.
No one was there.
But someone had been there. Someone had been moving out there. She wondered if her father had wanted to talk to her and come down the hall, only to change his mind. Or if Friedle had come up from the carriage house for some reason. Collette could not help but wonder if whoever it was had seen her getting dressed, and she gnawed her lower lip angrily.
