Feast (2 page)

Chapter 2
Ticonderoga Falls

Ash:

A bell on the door jangled and a hush fell across the room. I stood near the counter, a pile of odd supplies stacked before me as I waited for old Mr. Hudson to snap to attention and tell me how much I owed him. Then the room filled with a hint of early frost, mingled with the fragrance of sunlight and fallen leaves, and somehow, without even turning, I knew that she had just walked into Ticonderoga Falls’ only grocery store.

Twenty-five years later, she had returned.

I wanted to look around and see how she had grown, see if those imaginary friends of hers still tottered just at the edge of sight. But I kept my eyes downcast instead, focused on the counter and the bag of sugar and the pound of coffee.

She laughed and a smile teased the corner of my mouth. Another voice joined hers, a young boy.

“Samwise is watching us, Mom. Look,” he said.

Then I swiveled on my heel, took all three of them in one glance.

A tall woman hesitated at the end of one of the crowded aisles, dark hair falling in tangles around her shoulders, a small boy at her side with hair the color of autumn birch leaves, while a dog stood just outside the window, grinning in at them, a leash tethering him to a lamppost.

She looked up and her gaze caught mine. No memory of me flickered in her eyes, but then why should it? I’d changed my skin since she’d been a little girl. I’d had to. Couldn’t stay the same person in this small town, not when I’d easily outlive all the inhabitants and their grandchildren.

“This all you’ll be needing, Mr. Ash?” Hudson said behind me.

“Mr. Ash?” she asked, taking a step nearer, still not seeing any resemblance between me and the creature she had met in the woods so long ago. “Are you related to the caretaker who used to work over at the bed and breakfast?”

“My father.” The lie slipped from my tongue easily.

Her expression softened and she held out her hand. I took it gently, held it in my palm, perhaps a moment longer than I should have, but she didn’t seem to mind. “He was a friend of mine, once,” she told me. “My family and I visited here. A long time ago.”

“Mr. Ash is the caretaker now. A fine one, too,” Hudson said.

Caretaker
. Not the word I would have chosen.

“Really. Well, we might be seeing one another then. I just rented the same cabin my parents and I stayed in.”

I wondered if she was like them, if she would fill the rooms with the stench of alcohol and fighting. I didn’t think so. I had a feeling she was different. Her hands danced through the air when she talked, as if she were pulling words from the ethos. Steam and smoke curled from her fingertips—a phenomenon only my kind could see—and I tilted my head with curiosity, trying to look deeper.

It would have been much easier if she belonged to me.

“I’ll check in on you later,” I said. “Make sure you have everything you need.”

“Will you be staying for the Hunt—” Mr. Hudson asked, but I cut him off before he could finish.

She’s an outsider, you fool.

I shot him a quick glance and his eyes flashed wide at his mistake. He wore his sleeves rolled back and part of a long, jagged scar peeked out on his left forearm—my mark. He and about half of the town were mine.

He stammered for a moment, then righted himself. “I meant to say H—Halloween. Will you be staying?”

“No.” She didn’t seem to notice his awkward speech. “Not that long. We’ll be leaving in the morning.”

“That’s too bad,” I said, meaning it. I glanced back outside and noticed that there was no husband waiting for her in the SUV parked at the curb. No ring on her finger either, although a band of white flesh told me that there had been one.

I pushed my groceries aside. “You can go first. I’m in no hurry.”

“Thanks,” she said as she set her things down on the counter. Her shoulder brushed against mine and I could smell the fragrance of her dreams, she stood that close. The hunger in my belly stirred and I longed to cast a spell of sleep right there and then, to stop time and take her in my arms, to lead her into that vast land of imagination where humans dwelled almost half of their lives.

The land I could never visit on my own.

I watched her every movement, quiet as a trespasser on gated property: the hazel eyes that shifted from green to brown; the hair that hung across her cheek until she brushed it behind one ear; the way she reached for her son’s hand and found it instinctively, without even looking; how she frowned unexpectedly when she opened her wallet and saw a photo inside that she must have forgotten about.

Her fingers grazed the picture of her son standing beside a man who looked almost exactly like him, a lake in the near distance. Both of them grinned and held fishing poles slack in hand, a tiny silver trout glistening at the end of the boy’s line.

This was the man who wasn’t in the car.

She took a deep shuddering breath, heavier than a sigh, then pulled out a credit card and closed the wallet. Mr. Hudson ran the card through a machine, and with a cheery voice, he handed it back.

“I hope you enjoy your stay, Mrs. MacFaddin,” he said.

She winced. “Miss,” she corrected him. “Miss MacFaddin.” Then she wrapped one arm around the paper sack, balanced it on her hip, turned and left the store, one hand still possessively clinging to her little boy. I continued to watch her as Hudson bagged my purchases. Dark hair surrounding her like a cloud, she put her groceries in the car, then strapped her son in the backseat. At that point she came back and untied the dog, pausing to ruffle his fur and kiss him on the snout.

Her fragrance grew even stronger then. Perhaps she had slipped back into her own world. A small host of transparent creatures emerged from the shadows and gathered around her, although these were different from the imaginary friends she’d had as a child. These had more substance, as if she’d spent countless hours—maybe even years—with them.

One thing lifted my spirits as she drove away and I left the shop, heading back toward the bed and breakfast. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, that much was certain. She now carried the sorrow of a broken life.

And now she was old enough to harvest.

Chapter 3
Deep Dark Secret

Maddie:

We drove through a cavern of trees that blocked out the sky. Pine and oak leaned across the road and caught one another’s boughs in leafy hands, forming a canopy. In twenty-five years, the town hadn’t changed. The people still acted as if they were one breath away from revealing some deep dark secret. Even though the words—whatever they were—never escaped their lips, their eyes seemed desperate to speak.

Almost as if someone or something was forbidding them to talk.

I shivered slightly as I drove over the winding blacktop road. It curved and dipped and tried to evade me, spinning off into a myriad of forks and unmarked turns—almost as if someone were trying to hide the path through this village.

Tucker fidgeted with his PlayStation in the backseat, and Samwise curled beside him. All the good that was left in my life had dwindled down to what was contained in this car.

Maybe not
, I told myself
. Maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for here.

I pulled two granola bars from the bag of groceries on the front seat, tossed one back to Tucker, then rustled the other bar open with one hand and took a bite. That was when I missed our street. I drove for a few more blocks before I realized my mistake, cursed below my breath, then slammed on the brakes and pulled into a driveway to turn around. For some reason, the GPS hadn’t worked since we’d arrived this morning. I fumbled with a map that lay on the seat next to me.

That was when my phone rang. I switched on the Bluetooth.

“How’s it going?” A familiar voice said in my ear.

My shoulders sagged. It was my agent. “I’m heading for the cabin right now,” I said. I traced a nearly invisible hairline road with my finger, tried to figure out how I had gotten off the main road. Two pickup trucks flew past me—must be rush hour up here—before I was able to pull out again.

“So, anything yet?”

“Simon, I haven’t even unpacked yet, so, no. Nothing.”

I crammed my half-eaten granola bar in my pocket. The map crinkled across the steering wheel as I backed the SUV out onto the two-lane highway, the narrow blacktop spine of this little mountain village.

“No worries, Maddie. You’ll get your mojo back soon. I know it—”

He meant it, I know he did. But we both also knew that if I couldn’t break through my writer’s block soon, my career would be over.

“I didn’t really call to talk about that, though,” he said. “It’s just that, well, I didn’t want you to hear about it on the news—”

“Simon, if you’ve got something to tell me, just say it. I mean, my life already sucks, right? How much worse can it get?” I said, waiting for my agent to say something. For a moment, I thought I had lost his signal.

“Simon?”

Then I saw the cabin up ahead and I felt a sense of relief. It didn’t last long.

“He got married, Maddie. Yesterday, in Las Vegas.”

I slowed to a stop in the driveway of the cabin where my parents had taken me on one last holiday, where they fought and drank and made love like teenagers, trying desperately to hang on to the love they thought they had.

“Maddie?”

I got out of the car, opened the door for Tucker.

A chill autumn wind cantered through the trees that surrounded us. Much too cold for October, it howled against my light jacket. I knew that I should have felt some emotion, but in reality everything felt flat and hollow.

“Did you hear me?” Simon asked.

“Yeah,” I answered, my voice cracking. “So who was the lucky girl?” My ex had plenty to choose from. Hollywood was just one big dating smorgasbord for a director of his caliber.

“Lacey.”

I sat on the front steps of the cabin, the air in my lungs coming in short staccato puffs. Meanwhile, the dog loped across the grass, frolicking with Tucker. They chased each other, my son pulled the German shepherd’s tail and the dog turned, leaped through the air, giving Tucker a big sloppy kiss right on the nose. Both of them laughing, mouths open, tongues hanging out.

A kiss.

Wasn’t that how it had all started? Wasn’t that what I had seen in the tabloids, month after month? My ex with his tongue down my best friend’s throat. A photo taken when I’d been on a movie set in Romania. Back when I and the rest of the world were pretty sure that I was still married. Had been for eleven years.

Since then I hadn’t been able to write, couldn’t even come up with a decent character. It felt like somebody had crept in during the night and stolen all of my ideas.

All that was left was a blank page.

And an empty bed.

“You know, I’ve heard rumors about that town you’re staying in,” Simon said, breaking the silence. His tone was suspiciously upbeat. “It’s supposed to be filled with inspiration. All the Hollywood writers used to go up there, back in the seventies, whenever they . . .” He paused. He’d unwittingly crossed back into dangerous territory.

“Whenever they ran out of words?” Nobody but another writer could fully understand the terror of the blank page. There had to be therapy groups for what I’d been going through.

“The reporters are hunting for you,” he said then. “That’s why I called. I thought I should give you a heads-up, before one of them tracks you down for an interview or something. Look, I’m sorry. About it being Lacey, I mean.”

I stood up and walked away from Tucker, cupped my hand around the phone, instinctively lowered my voice. “They deserve each other,” I said with a long sigh. I cradled the phone on my shoulder and rubbed my hands together. Maybe it was going to snow. I wondered whether I still had the tire chains for the SUV or if they had ended up in Dan’s Mercedes by mistake. My ex-husband had just married my former best friend and I was grinding my teeth together, and right now, more than anything, I wanted to go search the cargo compartment for those damned chains. I didn’t hear the soft approach of my son until he stood in front of me, hair the color of toffee, eyes just like his father’s.

Tucker stared up at me and my heart nearly broke in two.

“I’ll call you back later,” I told Simon, then I flicked the phone off.

“Mom? Can we?” Tucker asked.

Somewhere along the way, I’d missed the question.

“Can we go for a hike before we unpack?”

Samwise seemed to sense the answer was yes even before I did. The dog spun around in a black-and-tan circle, yipping at the unending stream of crows in the sky. I shoved my cell phone and Bluetooth inside my pocket, then pushed a smile into my eyes. A real smile this time, one that talked about Christmas and birthdays and body surfing at Santa Monica, one that remembered reading the entire
Lord of the Rings
trilogy out loud when Tucker was three years old. One that knew he was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

“Absolutely,” I said.

He slid his nine-year-old hand in mine.

“Come on,” I told him. “We’re going on a hunt for a new story, something magical, something wonderful, something so incredible—”

“—that they’re going to make a movie out of it,” he said.

“Exactly.” I turned my face from his for a moment so he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.

Then, as if he knew exactly which way to go, Tucker pulled me toward a section of the forest that seemed to open like a door as we approached. The trunks stepped aside and boughs swung out of the way, arching overhead like a secret tunnel into another world. All the trees whispered and sighed in the breeze as I stepped onto the path.

It almost felt like the forest had been waiting all these years for me to return.

Chapter 4
A Century of Magic

Ash:

The house held a century of magic twisted into its cupboards and narrow crevices. It remembered me, the old me, I know it did. I know that somewhere in its wooden heart, it woke up and wept on the day of the curse. When my wife lay crying and dying and hoping that I would find her, this old house had watched every moment. An unnatural wind followed me from room to room, like a sigh, moving curtains, sometimes tossing small objects from tables. My clan says it’s nothing but my own magic, gone awry from the curse. But they’re wrong, of course.

I think hauntings start like this.

A spirit stays too long in one place, with bad intentions, like I did, and then they get stuck. Might be torment for the humans, but nobody ever seems to wonder how the house feels about it.

Sometimes I think I’ve succumbed to the enchantment of my own curse.

I put the groceries away, stretching, my human skin feeling too tight. Probably because I saw her—
Maddie
. She was disturbing my thoughts, intruding into memories I didn’t want dredged up. The look in her eyes, and that mouth—how had that little girl grown up into something that lovely? It just wasn’t right.

“Not much right in this world,” a voice spoke at my side.

Sage, my sister, emerged from the shadows, unexpected, as always. She loved to catch me by surprise. I didn’t even have her room ready yet.

“Don’t need a room, you know that. I’ll just stretch out on one of those green boughs, watch the stars, wait for the moon to rise, full and sweet.”

Music sparked in her voice, casting even more memories about the room. “You’re early.”

“Half a day, give or take. We all left early this time. You have anything sweet in your cupboards, brother? I’ve got a craving for human food.” She flexed her shoulders. “The flight was wearisome and long.” A pair of wings fluttered at her back, broadened to stretch almost the full width of the narrow room, then fell into place, neat and tight between her shoulder blades.

I cut her a thick slice of white cake, heavy with frosting, put it on a plate and handed it to her. She ran a slender finger along the icing, then slid it into her mouth with a smile. She ate with her fingers, an act some humans would call uncivilized. But in my land, only the host is allowed a knife and fork, too many fierce fights have started and ended over the use of cutlery during meals.

“Where’s your human?” she asked, her mouth full, a smear of dark frosting on her cheek.

Sage was walking behind me now, as we went up to my private chambers at the top of the house. Three flights of stairs, through the door to my room, and then we were outside again, on the widow’s walk. I always feel better outside, with the wind in my hair and the trees close enough to smell. I think it’s instinctive—it’s much easier to fly, to escape, when you’re outdoors.

The moon greeted us, near full and commanding, making it difficult for me to think clearly. It rested at the top of the tree line, a swollen silver disc challenging her sister, the sun, for possession of the earth and all within it.

“I’m not sure where he is,” I answered, as I stared down at the green across the street where the cabin was situated, just opposite the bed and breakfast. Maddie was down there, talking on a phone, her son and dog playing in the leaves. Without thinking, I closed my eyes and pulled her fragrance into my lungs, estimated how far away she was, how long it would take me to get to her. I’ve always thought of humans as prey. It’s hard to stop.

“You’ve let Driscoll run wild, over hill and dale,” my sister said in her best accusatory tone. “He should be sitting right there, at that desk, ready to greet me with a bow and a shiver, but he’s not. And you’ve grown thin because of it.”

“I’ve grown weary of his dreams is all.”

“And the old dreams, the ones of Lily. Are they gone?”

I sighed. This was a familiar argument. I didn’t answer.

“That’s what I feared,” she said. “They’ll make you sick, if you keep on. Dreams that old should be forgotten.”

“You want me to forget my wife?”

“She’s dead, Ash, been dead longer than most humans have been alive. Nothing in the curse says you can’t mate again, though you always seem to cast your gaze in the wrong direction.”

We were both staring down at Maddie now, I, with rumbling in my gut, my sister, with distaste.

“Mayhaps a good hunt will set your bones at ease,” she said, a hopeful gleam in her eyes.

Even now it was difficult to focus on the words my sister spoke, for part of me was lifting my head toward the moon and catching that human’s fragrance on the wind. Her dreams were growing stronger, I could feel it.

But something that beautiful had to be avoided.

I’d learned that lesson once already.

“How many are coming for the Hunt?” I asked, forcing my attention back onto my sister.

Sage leaned against the railing and stared down at webbed fingers. She seemed to be counting, lips moving. “Four, I think. No, five, including me.”

I raised an eyebrow, waited for details.

“Sienna.” A female, one of her handmaidens. Sage always traveled with an escort, ever since she had married Willow, one of the High Princes, himself. “Thane and River.” No doubt the cause for the carrion stench that hung thick in the forest today. I already regretted sending an invitation to those two.

Then I realized that Sage had stopped talking. She made a long, dramatic pause, and lowered her voice as if someone was listening to us. As if any of the humans cared about my indiscretions.

“And Elspeth.”

It should have made all the difference. My daughter was coming here; the half-breed child I had abandoned, the one I had kidnapped from her human mother and then exiled into a foreign land—my homeland. It should have caught my attention, caused me to wonder why she was here, why now. But it didn’t.

Because that was when Maddie and her boy and their dog headed toward the creek and the Ponderosa Trail—toward the outermost boundary of Ticonderoga Falls. Hadn’t Driscoll warned them? Didn’t some part of her still remember? It was dangerous to go too deep into the woods, especially on days like today. When the moon was almost full, and the Hunt itself hung ready and eager on the horizon.

At that same moment, a crow circled overhead, crying and cawing until we both gave it our attention. Then, with a great flourish, it swooped down to land beside Sage on the railing. And before either of us could blink, the bird’s black feathers and beak faded away. A shape grew in its place, a shimmering shadow that transformed like liquid silver until finally, a lovely young woman sat on the railing, legs crossed at the ankles. With a slender waist and long hair the same color as the raven, her voice sounded like wind rushing through the trees.

It was Elspeth. My daughter. Wearing the same vexing grin I saw on all the local teenagers. Her human features were growing more pronounced with each passing year.

“A fine entrance,” I said.

Then movement on the green below caught her eye. In an instant her posture changed, her fingers curved into talons and her breathing slowed. The wild, untamed stance of the Hunt caught me by surprise.

My daughter was growing up. Much faster than I had expected.