It had been a long time since Oliver had been to London, but Trafalgar Square appeared largely unchanged. The roads around the square seemed somehow narrower than he remembered, but that might have been a fault of his memory. Once upon a time it had been the King’s Mews, but in the mid-nineteenth century it was transformed into a broad city square of marble and granite to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar, perhaps the most significant British naval triumph during the Napoleonic Wars. Oliver had a great fondness for the place because it was the tangible memorial to a part of history that fascinated him. There were other statues, other monuments in Trafalgar Square, but Nelson’s Column was always the most impressive. It towered imposingly over the rest of the square, and the statue of Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson looked out over the city from its peak. Nelson had led a fascinating life with a single-mindedness of purpose that Oliver had always found both intimidating and inspiring.
It was the first place that had come to mind when he had been forced to come up with a rendezvous under pressure. Given time to think, he might not have chosen it. Midday at the base of Nelson’s Column could not have been considered an inconspicuous meeting place. And yet he was pleased just the same.
Now he strode across the square toward a pair of older women wielding cameras who were bustling about the base of the column. No sign of his companions. Oliver let his gaze drift, surveying the whole square, almost faltering when he craned his neck round to see the National Gallery and the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. His favorite view was to the west, where Canada House stood proudly. Though it was hardly the grandest structure in London, there was something stolid and official about it that he had always admired.
Oliver had no watch, but the clock down in the tube station had been ticking toward noon. He hoped that the others would arrive momentarily, because otherwise he would have to entertain the idea that something had detained them, and the thought was deeply troubling.
When he reached Nelson’s Column he craned his neck to gaze up at the great admiral outlined against the sky, and he remained that way until the old women moved on to photograph some other monument. He leaned against the column and crossed his arms as though waiting for a train. There was little else he could do at the moment but watch cars going by at the outskirts of the square and the anonymous people passing through. There were beautiful fountains arranged around Nelson’s Column— perhaps a dozen feet from the base— but with the temperature they were not functioning, the statuary not spouting water today. The two he could see from his post by the column were filled with ice.
It was from there that the whisper came.
“Oliver.”
He looked up, eyes drawn immediately to the frozen fountain to his right. A smile came unbidden to his lips and a small, relieved chuckle followed after. During the tension at Battersea Park, Frost’s departure had been rushed, and though the winter man was likely the one amongst them most able to extricate himself from harm, still Oliver had worried for him.
A pair of dapperly dressed English businessmen strode by, both smoking cigarettes, trailing furling smoke trails behind them in the breeze. One muttered something to the other, eliciting a derisive grunt, but they did not so much as glance at Oliver. He glanced around and saw that the only other people nearby were a small cluster of young tourists, perhaps American exchange students, and a startlingly obese man who might have been their teacher or guide. But they were headed for the National Gallery.
There was still no sign of the others, but Oliver crossed to the fountain. The ice that was frozen there was sculpted into familiar jagged ridges that formed the face of the winter man.
“You’ve done well,” Frost said, with the snap of cracking ice. His blue-white eyes gazed up from the fountain.
Oliver grinned. “You were watching me?”
The fountain’s ice popped and shifted as Frost frowned. “I hadn’t anywhere else to go. When I am on this side of the Veil, I travel alone. It is difficult to be bound by the limits of flesh and bone.”
“Well, sorry to hold you up. I wouldn’t mind having the wind just carry me away when trouble starts.”
The winter man’s eyes grew dark. “You do not wish to trade lives with me. Despite the chaos you are experiencing now, there is still a place that you call home. I have never had a home.”
Oliver felt the urge to snap at him, to tell Frost that his father had been murdered and his sister stolen away, that his home had been torn apart by violence and grief that would never have intruded upon his life had he never met the winter man. But he knew that Frost was also in mourning, for the death of Yuki-Onna, and so he kept his bitterness to himself and the two of them shared a reflective moment in silence.
The bird passed just above his head, flying low, wings aflutter. He would not have given it a second look save for the uniquely brilliant blue of its feathers, but even so it took a moment to register with Oliver that Blue Jay had arrived. By the time he turned back toward the column, the shape-shifter was there. He had managed somehow to acquire clothing more appropriate for this world, and now wore black denim and thick-soled boots and a long canvas duster of the sort worn by Australian cowboys.
“Midday,” Blue Jay said. “As agreed.”
Oliver nodded. He didn’t ask where Blue Jay had gotten his clothes, mostly because he did not want to know. He himself had been too busy to find something else to wear, but he had grown fond of the gray peacoat Larch had given him and thought he might have kept it regardless.
“Where are the others?” Oliver asked.
Blue Jay raised his eyebrows. “I left Kitsune with you.” Then he grinned. “But the dragon has been here for hours.”
The trickster pointed toward Canada House. Oliver narrowed his eyes and stared at the regal structure, trying to figure out what Blue Jay was talking about, when he sensed something not quite right about the façade of the building. Something out of balance. It took him a moment to realize that a piece of statuary was missing from the roof of Canada House. There were often lions and eagles and that sort of thing built in to the architecture of such buildings. A quartet of carved lions had been placed around Nelson’s Column, in fact. But there was always a balance to such things. On Canada House, the eagle or sphinx or whatever it was that had been placed on one end of the building had no counterbalance.
Oliver blinked.
It was neither eagle nor sphinx, of course, but a dragon perched like a gargoyle on the edge of the roof of Canada House. No architectural flourish was missing. Rather, one had been added, and it was the Black Dragon of Storms.
“He’s been sitting up there all morning and no one has noticed?”
Blue Jay tapped a finger just below his left eye. “People see what they wish to see.”
Gong Gong remained where he was.
“He’s all right?” Oliver asked, wondering why he cared.
“Healing,” Blue Jay replied. “Like the rest of us.”
As he spoke his gaze shifted and Oliver turned to see Kitsune crossing the square toward them. Something shook inside him, not in fear but elation, like the ringing of a tiny bell. Though she had sworn that she would recover quickly from her wounds, and he had seen her do it with his own eyes, still he wondered how badly injured she had been.
“We’re all here now, Frost,” Oliver said, voice low, his gaze still on the approaching Kitsune.
“Excellent,” said the winter man from the ice of the fountain. He did not elaborate, did not mention the time passing beyond the Veil and the danger to his kin there, but he did not have to.
Several people passed by, pausing to take pictures but without coming very near the column. By the time they moved on Kitsune had joined Oliver and Blue Jay. He felt the urge to embrace her but fought it. A friendship had grown between them, but still Oliver saw her as the kind of woman you didn’t simply throw your arms around, any more than you would a queen. And there was another reason as well. Part of the urge to touch her did not spring from relief that she was all right. Oliver had to deny that part of what he felt.
He hoped to go home someday soon. There was no family there for him, but Julianna was there, waiting.
“You look much improved,” Oliver said.
Kitsune smiled. “I ache. But it will fade.”
He fumbled in trying to find a response to that.
Blue Jay knitted his brow in consternation at the odd moment that passed amongst them. “All right, we’re here. But we can’t stay here very long before we draw attention to ourselves. I hope one of you has an idea what to do next.”
A weight settled on Oliver’s heart. “What else can we do but move on? I have to find Collette, but I can’t do that with Hunters on my trail. We’ve come this far. I’ve got to at least talk to Koenig, find out how to get the price taken off my head.”
They were all looking at him curiously.
“What of Collette?” Frost asked.
Grief and dread and a sense of his own foolishness roiled in his heart. Of course he had not told them of his phone call with Julianna. Chaos had erupted outside the phone booth and then it had been all he could do to extricate them from that situation, to get them all moving toward the time when they could get out of London.
“She’s missing,” he said, his own voice sounding small and distant to his ears. “My dad—”
No, stop that. You never thought of him as Dad when he was alive. There’s too much warmth in that.
“My father’s dead. Murdered.”
Haltingly, he told them the rest, about the removal of Max Bascombe’s eyes and the disappearance of his sister and the investigation into his own vanishing.
“They probably think you killed him,” Blue Jay said lightly. “Or both of them. Or that you and your sister conspired together.”
Oliver stared at him.
Kitsune nodded sadly. “They may, Oliver. How could they come to the truth, these ordinary policemen? How could it even occur to them that the Sandman is loose upon the world?”
“The Sandman?” He stared at her stupidly.
Frost and Kitsune glanced at each other and the winter man blinked once, slowly, in assent, still only his face jutting from the ice in the fountain. “I agree. The coincidence is too great. The Sandman is freed, and soon after, Oliver’s father is murdered in that fashion? Someone must have set the monster to the task.”
Oliver scowled. “But who? And why?”
Blue Jay grunted with interest, studying Oliver as though seeing him for the first time. “Good questions,” he said, the blue feathers tied into his hair swinging in the wind.
“It is all connected,” Frost said, his voice a whisper like the wind. His eyes seemed unfocused. “Why should the Sandman be interested in Oliver, unless he has had instruction? Whoever is behind the hunting of the Borderkind, they do not want Oliver to aid us.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Oliver snapped. Realizing how loud he’d spoken, he glanced around, but none of the scattering of people passing by paid any attention to them. “My part in this was pure accident. I’m just a lawyer from Maine. What threat could I possibly pose to anyone?”
Kitsune’s jade eyes seemed to glow as she tilted her head and regarded him carefully. “Perhaps it was not an accident at all. Certainly, someone believes you are far more important than any of us knew. Important enough to kill your father to hurt you and to spirit your sister away to lay a trap for you.”
“That’s crazy!”
Blue Jay snorted. “Truly? Do you have another explanation? Anything at all?”
But he did not. “So, it’s the Sandman, then, who has my sister?”
“So it would seem,” Kitsune replied.
Oliver nodded. “Fine. As soon as I find out what I need to know from Koenig, I’m going after her.”
None of them said a word at first. What could they say? If they were correct and it was a trap, then he and Collette would both die. But she was his sister and he loved her for all that she had always been to him, for the bond they shared. What choice did he have?
The ice shifted in the fountain, cracks running all through it like a splintered mirror. “You know that we cannot go with you?” Frost asked.
Oliver hesitated. “I know I said I would help you find out who sent the Hunters after you—”
“And you will,” Kitsune interrupted. “Once you have found Collette.”
“Your sister must come first,” Frost said, and there was such sorrow in his voice. Yuki-Onna had not been his sister in the same way that Collette was Oliver’s, but his grief was no less real.
“For now, though, we stay together,” Kitsune affirmed.
Blue Jay nodded. “For now. That would be best.”
The ice ridges that made up Frost’s face jutted up from the frozen surface. “We must travel north to Scotland as swiftly as possible, but on this side of the Veil.”
Kitsune nodded. “Our destination is nearer on this side, and we have to assume there are Hunters waiting for us there.”
