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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I HAD TO PHONE MY lawyer, Lucinda, and tell her to postpone the Zoom meeting with Jasper and his great white shark of a lawyer. I said something had come up that had to be handled right now. Lucinda was pissed about it. I could tell, even though her tone didn’t rise at all. She said she would see what she could do and hung up.

As it turned out, that was one of the least stressful moments of my day.

I refused to take anyone with me. Not even Olivia, whose car I would have to drive. “It’s bad enough that I’m leaving for a whole day,” I told Olivia, who had suggested that at the least, she could drive and I could navigate. “The hotel will need all of you on deck to keep it ticking over while I’m gone. Let Harper make the casserole—”

“Harper?” Olivia asked, startled.

“Yes, Harper,” I said. “She can follow the recipe I wrote out – two batches, of course.”

“Plant-based and omnivore,” Olivia said, with a nod.

“And you can manage everything else,” I added. “I’ll use Google Maps. It will talk me through every mile.”

What I didn’t tell Olivia was that I had never been to New York. And now I was going to drive a car the size of a small submarine around the busy streets of one of the largest cities in the world, find parking, and not get a ding on it, all while millions of other cars got in my way.

Yeah, telling Lucinda to move the Zoom meeting barely twitched the stress-o-meter in comparison.

Olivia had pulled the Continental out of her garage and left it in the driveway. That was on the greenway side of the house. I headed over to the house after breakfast and after checking with Ghaliya one last time and found the car where Olivia had said it would be, and one more thing.

Harper was leaning against the car, her arms crossed, her flat-brimmed black hat shading her eyes from the morning sun. She didn’t move as I got closer, and she was leaning against the driver’s door.

“You’re doing this just because it’s the right thing to do.” Her flat tone made it sound like a statement, but I knew it wasn’t.

“I’m doing it because the world is fucking with you, Harper, and that’s not fair.”

“That would be yes?”

I picked out the big old car key on Olivia’s key ring and shook it out. “I’ve been where you are. I know what it feels like. No one should ever be there.”

Harper considered that for a long moment. “Who helped you out?”

I smiled. “This whole damn town. Last Christmas.”

I could see that the sentiment irritated Harper. But she straightened and got out of my way. “Go through Albany, not Syracuse,” she said. “It’s quicker, even though it doesn’t look like it would be on the map.”

·

Whoever thought up the idea of Google Maps’ navigation feature deserves a Nobel Prize. As nervous as I was, having my phone tell me in a calm voice where to turn, what lane I needed, and how soon a turn was coming up was a life-saver.

I took Harper’s advice and picked the Albany route, which Google Maps told me was nearly thirty minutes quicker than going through Syracuse. Once I had settled into the route, some of the tension eased, only to flare up high once I crossed over to Manhattan and was dealing with five lanes of cars racing through four-laned streets.

Once I reached the apartment building in Soho, I had to circle around the block several times until I spotted a legal parking spot that was miraculously empty and had room on either side for me to steer the Continental into the space. The curbside tires ended up six inches away from the curb. I called it good enough.

A different sort of tension tugged at my innards as I rang the buzzer to be let into the building. It was a lovely old gray building, in a quiet street with actual cobblestones. It didn’t look pretentious, but this was Soho. Kids were playing in the street while mothers stood on the stoops and gossiped.

It seemed perfectly normal and domestic. But I could hear, close by, the endless noise of cars and horns, the basso rumble of trucks, and even more horns. People yelling, somewhere I couldn’t see from where I was standing on the small stoop. Music playing—all I could hear was the beat.

Noise. It was everywhere. Even the chitter of birds in the small trees planted along the sidewalk seemed less like nature’s soundtrack and more like the complaints of neighbors.

I couldn’t remember L.A. being this noisy. Had it been? I suspected it might have been.

The door clicked open, and I headed up to the second floor and knocked on the double doors. They were the only doors at this level. Riley Connors owned the whole floor, it seemed.

Everything Harper had said about Riley Connors being royalty in the hunting world came back to me.

The door opened. The dark-haired woman smiled at me.

I was taken aback for a second, because Riley Connors had answered her own door. It had to be her, a woman who was known for her beauty, for she was stunningly gorgeous.

“Mom, it’s moving !” came a cry from behind her.

Riley lifted her hand. “Just a moment,” she told me. She twisted and called over her shoulder. “Put the lid on and turn the heat all the way down!”

“I’ve got it, Riley!” came another voice. Male.

Riley looked back at me.

“Warming milk?” I guessed.

“For hot chocolate.” Riley smiled. “Good guess.”

“You can also blow on the foam. That will take it right down to nothing, then the milk won’t spill over beneath the pot lid.”

Riley’s eyes widened. “You’d better come in. You’re Anna, right?”

I nodded and stepped in. The apartment was one of the open studio apartments that New York seemed to love, except that the kitchen was closed off—I could see a teenage girl, who I guessed was Chloe, and a tall man with olive skin working at a gas range, both studying a small pot.

I realized that the two partners that Harper had spoken about weren’t just hunting partners. They were life partners.

At the far end where the kitchen wall ended, I could see the end of a dining table. On the right, the wall was punctured by huge old windows that let in southern light, where it spilled on gleaming floorboards in bright squares.

Three sofas defined the sitting area. At the far back of the apartment was a king sized bed half hidden by a bamboo screen. The corner was closed in. A bathroom. And in the corner to my right was a spiral iron staircase, heading down to the floor below.

A second man sat on one of the sofas. He had pale skin and dark hair, and pale blue eyes. He was watching me with a stillness that reminded me of Broch.

Was he a vampire? That sort of stillness wasn’t natural. Did that make Riley a vampire? Harper hadn’t mentioned this. As she hated vampires and had spent the majority of her adult life hunting them down, it would have been natural for her to state that they were. But she had said nothing.

Or did her unease at the idea of speaking to Riley Connors come from this old prejudice of hers? That seemed likely.

Riley waved toward the sofas. “Have a seat. Did you drive down this morning?”

“I came straight here,” I admitted. I picked the sofa opposite the man watching me closely and nodded at him. “I’m Anna Crackstone.”

“Sorry,” Riley said, dropping onto the corner of the sofa the man sat on. She picked up a cushion and put it over her knees, as she curled her legs up under her. “This is Nicholas. Damian and Chloe are in the kitchen. I’ll introduce you when they’re done burning the milk.”

“I heard that!” Damian called.

Riley smiled. “If you just arrived in the city, you’re probably hungry. Have you had lunch?”

“I stopped at a McDonalds not long ago,” I said.

“Then she hasn’t eaten real food at all!” Damian called. “I’ll make a sandwich.”

“Thanks, Damian!” Riley said, lifting her voice. “He likes to cook,” she told me, her voice lower.

“I like to have other people cook for me,” I said. “It doesn’t happen often.”

Riley laughed softly. “I looked up Haigton Crossing. It’s not on any maps except for one that Nicholas has that is from the eighteenth century.”

“That sounds about right,” I told her. “Haigton is…different.”

“There are hamlets like Haigton all over Britain,” Nicholas said. “They are rare, here.” He spoke with a rich English accent. “Hags’ town…the name explains everything.”

I shivered. “It does.”

“Even you, Anna Crackstone,” Nicholas added. His gaze would not let me go. I had to wrench my attention away from him. I looked at Riley instead.

“Yes,” Nicholas said. “She’s the real thing.”

Riley nodded.

I felt a touch of irritation. “You were testing me, somehow?”

“You broke Nick’s gaze,” Riley said. “Most humans don’t have the strength to look away, once he holds their gaze. It’s a vampire thing.”

I let out my breath. “Then I guessed right.”

Riley put her elbow on the arm of the sofa and her head on her hand, considering me. “You’ve met vampires before?”

“Just one. Broch. He gave me your email address.”

“Broch…Eadward,” Riley said, clearly recalling the name from her memory.

“Yes, that’s him.”

She looked at Nicholas and raised her brow.

Nicholas rubbed his chin. “I met him in eighteen ninety…three. Not long after I arrived here. Not a hunter, but not completely useless, either.”

I could feel my lips parting. Broch was at least a hundred and fifty years old…why was that a surprise to me?

Damian emerged from the kitchen carrying a plate that he handed to me. “Lots of protein,” he told me. “You’ve been stressed lately and its running you down.”

I stared at him, speechless.

“Your pheromones give away everything,” Riley said. “There’s no privacy among vampires.” And she smiled fondly at Damian.

He grinned and headed back to the kitchen.

I looked down at the sub he’d made. I could see thin slices of roast beef, ham, cheese, and a sauce with a slightly pungent odor. My mouth watered even though I wasn’t hungry. I took an enormous bite. It was as good as the smell implied. “What’s in this sauce?” I asked, as soon as I could speak.

“I’ll have Damian write it down and I’ll email it to you,” Riley said. “Please, eat. We can wait.”

She and Nicholas chatted while I ate as quickly as possible. It was general talk. Plays they had seen, a book Nicholas had read, and a vigorous, apparently ongoing argument about the merits of British football versus ice hockey. Riley liked football. Nicholas was the Rangers fan. And Damian, from the kitchen, weighed in with his opinion about cricket.

The three of them were all contradictions.

I put my plate on the low table between the sofas and sat back. Now I wasn’t hungry.

Damien took the plate away, then sat on the empty sofa and crossed his ankle over his knee.

Riley said, “We heard the news about Calloway only a few hours before your email arrived. And that was via an unofficial channel. No one in authority is talking about it.”

I nodded. “That’s because the investigation team—the FBI, not the police—is in Haigton. And for the moment, that is where they’ll stay. Their investigation is mired.”

All three of them stared at me. Chloe came over to the sofa Damian was on. She was a pretty girl of around sixteen years of age, I estimated, but looked nothing like her mother. She had Hispanic features that didn’t match Damian’s either. If Damian was a vampire too, that made sense. I wondered who Chloe’s real father was.

Chloe sat beside Damian, sipping her hot chocolate and watching me.

Riley said, “You’re detaining the FBI?” Her tone was polite.

“Oh, not me,” I said quickly. I told them everything that had happened since Axel King had arrived in Haigton. With these people, I didn’t need to monitor what I said or distort the truth. I could just tell the story.

When I was done, everyone remained silent for long minutes, thinking hard.

“I can see why you came to speak to me,” Riley said at last. “I must be one of the last people to speak to Calloway other than to take his order. He must have died later that day.”

“They aren’t saying when he died,” I said. “But unless it was midday, then Harper couldn’t have done it. And only we in Haigton, and now you, understand that even if the time frame works, Harper still could not have left Haigton.”

“No,” Riley said, in agreement.

I let out my breath, feeling a surprising touch of relief. The three of them had accepted without argument that some people in Haigton couldn’t leave. Neither could Axel King leave, not until the town allowed it.

“Are you sure that the town allowed Harper to leave just to look into the murder?” Nicholas asked. “That shows a highly sophisticated understanding of both human nature and human affairs. And from what you say, the town has no interest in either beyond crude basics.”

“That is what I thought,” I admitted. “But now I’m second guessing.”

“I have to wonder if the town has not discerned that Harper has emotional ties that keep her returning, that everyone else is yet to notice,” Damian said, frowning down at his bare foot. He looked up. “That seems to be its standard way of dealing with the world.”

“Except for killing my mother, to bring me to the town,” I said.

They all stared at me once more.

I sighed and explained how I had come to Haigton last Christmas and when I was done, they stirred and cleared their throats.

“A Jinn, Damian?” Riley asked softly.

“Heard of them,” Damian said. “I’ve never met one. They’re rare.”

Riley’s face filled with amusement. “And do they grant three wishes?”

“They can, but there’s no upside to wish fulfillment,” Damian said.

“You’re getting distracted,” Nicholas said. “Anna wants to know about Calloway. She drove six hours to find out.”

Riley cleared her throat. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry, Anna. My role in this was a side issue. I can’t see how it has anything to do with Calloway’s murder. But…I went to Gouverneur because rumor reached me on the dark net that Calloway was there.”

I frowned. “Why did you want to speak to him?”

“Because he was hunting Harper Gibbs.”

It was my turn to stare in surprise.

Riley gripped her hands together. “The internet has connected more than just the human world. Twenty years ago, hunters could only pass along news when they came across each other while hunting. These days, there is a heavily trafficked bulletin board on the dark net, where news is posted. Hunters can cooperate with each other, seek out other hunters with complimentary skills, or those with specific knowledge of the species they’re hunting. There’s chat about weapons, eluding the police, multiple and serial identities…everything that hunters must deal with.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I admitted.

Riley nodded. “You know of the history between Calloway and Harper, yes?”

“They’re a pair, those two,” Nicholas added.

“They were a pair, once,” Riley said. “Harper was obsessed with slaughtering vampires. Calloway was, too, until Harper beat him up. He lost his job and all formal ties to the human world. That was part of the reason Harper first came to our notice and why, eventually, we had to post a takedown notice for her.”

I shivered. These three people were the reason why Harper was hunted by her own kind, now.

“What you may not know,” Riley continued, “is that after a few years, Calloway gave up trying to find Harper. He settled down. Instead of indiscriminately killing vampires, he turned himself into a moderately good hunter. Not brilliant, but solid and methodical. That was about the time I first met him. He was older, wiser, and dogged about spending the last of his days finding supernaturals.”

“That sounds…sort of admirable,” I admitted.

“Doesn’t it?” Riley said in agreement. “That was why I grew alarmed when rumors broke out that Calloway was hunting for Harper once more. It was as if he’d relapsed.”

“That’s why you went to speak to him?”

She nodded. “I wanted to talk him out of his obsession with Harper. I went in to bring him back to the city before sending in Nick and Damian. I failed. He wouldn’t give up on his hunt for Harper, and he wouldn’t tell me why.”

“What were you two going to do to him?” I asked the two men.

“Not kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Damian said easily. “We hadn’t quite decided when we heard he’d been murdered. I was thinking Nepal. Nick wanted to drop him in Georgia. But either place, without a passport or funds…he’d be there a long time, trying to find a way home. Long enough to cool down and grow some perspective.”

“We haven’t left Manhattan in over a year,” Nick said. “We did not murder Calloway.”

I believed them. Certainty built in me that these three had nothing to do with Calloway’s death. Riley was tangled up in it only because she was one of the last people to see him alive.

“We’ve known that Harper was in St. Lawrence County for a few years now,” Riley said. “Not exactly where—no one could pin that down. But she was no longer leaving a trail of bodies behind her, so we left her alone. The takedown notice expired eight years ago.”

“You mean, Harper isn’t being hunted, anymore?”

“I wouldn’t take it that far,” Nick said. “There is no ticket out for her, but the vampire community has long memories. She killed friends, lovers, people considered to be family....”

“Ah,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“This Harper,” Chloe said, speaking for the first time, and surprising me. “She hunted vampires, whether they had tickets or not?”

“Yes,” Riley said.

“But there’s a vampire where she’s living now. Right, Ms. Crackstone?”

“Anna is fine,” I said. “Yes, there’s a vampire in Haigton. Broch.”

“Why didn’t she kill him, then?” Chloe asked.

“Rules of the highway,” Nicholas said, before I could.

I was impressed.

“Huh?” Chloe said.

“Don’t grunt, Chloe.” Damian prodded her shoulder.

“I mean, ‘what the hell does that mean?’”

“Don’t swear, either,” Nicholas said. “The rules of the highway are an older authority. It is so old, no one remembers where it came from. Highways and crossroads are neutral territory. No one can harm anyone else while they are under the protection of the highway, which grants free, unfettered passage for all who use it.”

“That’s dumb,” Chloe declared. “It’s just a rule. If Harper was so pissed about vampires killing her family, why does she let a silly old rule stop her?”

“It’s not silly, and it is a rule because everyone enforces it,” Damian said. “In Sparta, even humans understood that while they travelled the highways—the unofficial highways—they were safe. And safe travel was unusual, then.”

He was a Spartan. That made Damian…well, I wasn’t sure how old that made him, but it wasn’t just a few hundred years.

“But why was it safe?” Chloe demanded, with the typical teenager’s relentless and self-centered focus upon the point that she wanted explained.

“Because if anyone broke the rule, they were destroyed. Right there and then, by whoever had witnessed it,” Nick said. His voice was harsh. “No trial was needed. No mercy was given. They were slaughtered and their heads mounted on stakes, which were left by the road as a warning for others.”

Wow. And even Juda had followed that rule. He’d killed himself as soon as he discovered he had been the one who murdered my mother.

Chloe weighed that up. “The highways that follow the rule…that’s not the nearest Interstate, right?”

“You’d be surprised,” Damian said. “Many of the older highways follow even more ancient paths used by people for centuries before they were sealed and cars took over.”

“But they’re not the same thing, no,” Riley added. “Real highways…well, they have a power that is hard to explain.”

“There is one running through Haigton,” I said. “It’s called the Greenway by everyone because it’s old and moss has grown over it. But dryads still use it to move up and down the state. Other creatures, too.”

“Like what?” Chloe asked me, with deep interest.

“I have a witchlette, four dryads, a dwarf and a Firbolg in my hotel at the moment.”

“A what?” Riley asked, her voice rising.

Nick made a sound that pulled my attention to him. “You have a Firbolg in town?”

I nodded.

His expression was grave. “That’s…not good.”

“Nick?” Riley prompted.

“Firbolgs…they’re nature’s policemen,” Nick said. “I’ve never heard of one living inside a human structure, but there’s a first for everything, I suppose. Firbolgs patrol the wild places. If they come across a human enclave that they think is hurting or damaging the…the earth and the plants that it is sited upon, then they correct the issue.”

Even Damian looked alarmed. “Just wipe the town out?”

Nick nodded.

The band of tight worry that had been constricting my chest for days tightened up a few more turns. “All Orrin is doing right now is drinking beer. He says he’s waiting for Beltane, to see what nature and the will of the town think about things.”

“Judgement Day,” Chloe said, and grinned.

I couldn’t laugh, even though the others smiled. I wanted to be back there. To pat Ghaliya’s belly and count noses in the bar. To assure myself everything was fine.

Damian insisted on making me a thermos of coffee for the road. I pointed out that I couldn’t return the thermos, but he waved that off. “Give another traveler the thermos to take with them. One day, it might find its way back.”

I took the thermos with gratitude because I had learned today that roadside coffee was unfiltered sludge with a dash of motor oil to disguise the taste.

“What will you do now?” Riley asked me as she walked me to the door. The street door, not merely her apartment door.

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I need to think through everything you’ve told me. Calloway was looking for Harper, and that involves her. I have to figure this out. Axel King won’t go away with anything less than solid evidence that Harper is innocent.” I sighed. “Harper is always in defense mode. She comes across as…abrasive.”

“I’ve known people like that from time to time,” Riley said. “Once you crack open their shield, you frequently find that they’re far more vulnerable than anyone suspected.”

“And I think Harper might be exactly like that, too,” I admitted. “but her shielding is nuclear proof.”

“She’s been fighting the entire world for a long time,” Riley said. “Maybe, if she can lay aside the shielding, Haigton might be the one place where she can draw breath and heal.”

“You don’t plan on coming for her, now you know where she is?”

Riley weighed that up. “She destroyed lives, and not just the lives of those she killed. Yet her own life was destroyed by rogue vampires, and it sounds as though her current life is anything but happy. Some might say that the world and Harper are even.”

“Do you say that?”

Riley smiled. “I’ve got much better things to do than sort out old feuds.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“That doesn’t mean Harper is free to go where she will, though,” Riley said. “Harper has clung tenaciously to her need for vengeance. There are many others who feel the same way about her.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” I thanked her for her hospitality, got back into the Continental and reset my phone to lead me by the nose back to Gouverneur.

It seemed to take longer to return, which was ridiculous. Yet time seemed to slip by fast. I had a lot to think about. By the time the Continental was rattling over the corrugations of the Greenway, I still had come no closer to figuring out what to do next.

But at least I had a little good news to give Harper.

And that decided the matter for me. I would call a town meeting.