Page 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

DAYS AGO, I HAD WHINED to Ben that I was too busy to think. In the two days leading up to Beltane eve, I learned what “busy” meant.

King and his team had left, but the rooms they had vacated, and the last unoccupied room swiftly filled with more guests.

It was as if they had been waiting for the ignorant humans to leave, because some of the guests were distinctly not human. The dryads stopped wearing human clothes and went back to their preferred garments made of softly matted leaves and vines.

Even more guests arrived, and I had to negotiate with the single occupancy guests to give the other bed in their rooms. I left Percy Finch alone, though. I suspected that he would fall apart if I suggested he share germs with another occupant.

I tried to match species as roommates, but some of the species I couldn’t identify. They were too close to human, or absolutely human in appearance. Some of them would be shifters. The others I would have to learn about later.

A pair of dwarves arrived, the first I’d seen beside Hirom, which answered the question I had wondered about since meeting Hirom. He wasn’t a human dwarf. Dwarves were a species of the hidden world.

Which led to another question: Did dwarves have paranormal talents? Hirom had shown a talent for woodcarving, that he had turned into a business making barrels and the contents for those barrels. He had also made me a statue of the Roman goddess Diana, which he had given to me for Christmas last year. It sat on my desk.

But he had also told me that his family were traditionally metal workers. Perhaps my two guests were of the same inclination? Was it a species-wide bent? Or just Hirom’s family?

I knew so little!

I had additional work to do that was related to Beltane preparations, and for some of it, I enlisted my guests. Everyone I could speak to, I asked that they comb through the forest around the town and bring back any deadwood and pile it in the middle of the crossroad. Each day the hotel emptied as everyone, except Percy Finch, headed out into the woods. Even Orrin Stonebrunch seemed willing to haul wood. He dragged back to the crossroad deadwood the size of full trees.

The pile of wood in the crossroad swiftly grew taller. Ben produced an extending ladder that was laid against one side of the pile and the feet were anchored. People climbed the ladder to lay their deadwood haul upon the top of the pile.

Once the bonfire was pronounced big enough, the wood was stacked on the corner opposite Olivia’s house and the old hall. That would be used to feed the fire during the night.

I had another task that I wanted to put off, but time was pressing upon me. Late on the 29 th , after the bar had closed, I grabbed Ben and Broch and Hirom, and asked Wim to meet us at Juda’s grave. We carried camping lights and shovels, and I had stitched together a pair of old blankets to wrap the remains in. We’d wrapped Juda in a shroud made of sheets, but it had been in the earth for three months.

Halfway through our grisly work, Ben had laughed. “Look at us,” he said, stretching his back. “In the eighteenth century, resurrectionists were publicly whipped for their crimes.”

“Resurrectionists?” I said, wiping my sweaty face off with my sleeve.

“Grave robbers,” Broch said, shoveling with relentless, unbroken rhythm.

“Why would people steal bodies? It was only the ancient races who buried grave goods with their dead.”

“Anatomists would buy the bodies to dissect them,” Ben said. “Modern medicine was built upon what they learned from taking a human body apart.”

Wim shuddered. “They could have learned more from speaking to living bodies.”

“Humans don’t have your talent for talking to mute intelligences.” Ben bent to his work once more.

The other Beltane-related job, and one of the largest, was preparing the feast that everyone was expecting to enjoy. Olivia, who was looking forward to Beltane so much that I often caught her singing to herself as she scurried about the kitchen, filled me in on the usual arrangements for the feast.

“It is a smorgasbord,” Olivia explained. “We put up trestles on three sides of the crossroads, where everyone can help themselves throughout the night.”

“Hot food?” I asked, thinking about the massive organization required to keep hot food continuously on three tables, for an entire evening.

“Oh yes,” Olivia replied, carefully picking the eye out of a carrot. “And Hirom sets up a table in front of Ben’s house, for the beer and whisky barrels, and all the glasses.”

“I’ll have to run to Gouverneur,” I said, thinking aloud. “It will require a ton of food…”

“Probably not as much as you think,” Olivia said placidly.

That was on the same night that King and his people left, when I had spoken to Trevalyan. The next day, I learned what Olivia meant by her cryptic remark.

The guests and complete strangers arrived in the foyer with a mind-bending range of gifts for the kitchen. For the feast, they explained as they handed it over.

I was given rabbits, a raccoon, and a whole deer carcass, which made me worry about what the stag might do if he learned of it. And, delivered in sections, an entire moose, already skinned and dressed and expertly butchered. In addition, I was handed bags, baskets and bunches of a bewildering array of vegetables, fruit and nuts, and herbs. Some of them were clearly foraged from the wild – morel, chickweed, field garlic, wild blackberries and blueberries, walnuts and chestnuts. But many of the baskets contained human, domesticated food. Carrots, potatoes, lettuces of all types, tomatoes, bell peppers, and a small hill of onions and garlic. Apples and berries of all kinds, pears and apricots and figs. A bag of dates.

Working space in the kitchen grew cramped, as the only place we could store the overflowing food was on the counters and worktable. The cold room was stuffed with meat.

“Orrin will take care of most of a table of food all by himself,” Ben said, when I marveled over the largesse.

“Hirom will take the second,” Olivia said, with a trilling laugh.

Orrin Stonebrunch did not switch back to his natural appearance once Axel King had left, which I found curious. And while everyone in the hotel spoke to everyone else, Orrin remained alone. At dinner, when everyone was forced to share tables—even Percy Finch found himself with three other diners—and everyone chatted with their fellow diners, Orrin stolidly ate and then left, while the other three at his table looked relieved.

We had over fifty people eating at each meal. My preparations in the kitchen expanded. I barely left the place, and I needed the help of everyone I could tap. Trevalyan was down and out, but Frida emerged from her room, wan and clearly weak, but willing to work. I reluctantly allowed her to take over the cleaning of the rooms once more, and asked Wim to help her.

Broch and Hirom managed the bar, while Ben, Olivia and Harper worked in the kitchen.

Everyone was running on the spot, Alice-style, and we were just barely keeping up.

At night, I would fall into bed, my body actually hurting and my brain numb, to fall instantly asleep. On the morning of the 30 th , Beltane Eve, I woke up lying in the exact same position I had fallen asleep in, and it felt as though I had just laid down.

I dragged myself down to the kitchen well before dawn and started work preparing both breakfast and the feast for this evening. After breakfast, I took a thermos of soup over to Trevalyan, along with a tincture that Ben wanted Trevalyan to rub on his chest, to help with his breathing, which was loud and sounded painful.

“Beltane starts at sunset,” Trevalyan told me, sipping the soup. His voice was hoarse and made me wince in sympathetic pain. “The power will intensify until midnight. It will be at its most intense from then until dawn. Spells and rituals performed after midnight and before dawn will be strong and lasting.”

“I know,” I assured him.

“If anything is to happen, it will be after midnight.”

“Yes.”

“You have to watch, though. It could happen sooner. The veil grows thin throughout the evening. As soon as it is thin enough for anyone to pass through, or use it, they will.”

“I will watch.”

Trevalyan broke into a heavy, wracking cough, which left him trembling. “Damn it!” he cried, thumping his knee with his fist. “I can’t even stand. I tried. I came round to find myself on the floor.”

“It is what it is,” I told him, using his own words deliberately. “I’ll manage…or I won’t. I’ll do everything I can.”

He nodded, still coughing.

I went back to the kitchen. I had nothing left to do but cook and wait for sunset. All the arrangements were made.