Page 14

“Maybe,” I hedged. I really didn’t know why those photos hadn’t turned out, since I’d never tried to take a picture of the flowers. To me, they were quicksilver, magical, just like the unicorn that came and went in these woods.

A few drops of rain began to fall then, and I looked up at the bits of the sky I could see through the heavy canopy of trees. It had been gray all morning, but it did seem a little darker now.

Damn it — I knew I should have put on a jacket before I left the house this morning.

Usually, I always brought one along, even if it was just a water-repellent lightweight shell that I could tie around my waist and ignore until I needed it, but I’d been so preoccupied that I hadn’t even stopped to consider that the weather might take a turn for the worse.

The rain began in earnest, and I said, “I know a place where we can take shelter. Follow me.”

Ben didn’t argue, and only hurried along with me as I went as fast as I could to a spot a little ways off, where the forest floor rose and turned into a rocky overhang.

By the time we got there, my hair was pretty well soaked through, as well as the long-sleeved T-shirt I wore.

“Here,” Ben said, and unzipped the jacket he was wearing, one that looked suspiciously like an item I’d seen in the local outdoor shop.

“You don’t have to do that — ” I began, but he shook his head at once.

“You probably wouldn’t have even gone this deep into the woods if I hadn’t made you try to run away from me.”

I wasn’t so sure about that, since I often wandered pretty far before I turned around and headed back to the car. By that point, I’d made the trek so many times that I knew exactly how long it took to go in and get out so I wouldn’t be late for work.

Today, though, I’d been just a bit distracted.

He pulled off the jacket and handed it over to me. Knowing that any additional protests would fall on deaf ears, I shrugged into the jacket and pushed my wet hair out of the way. Because it had an insulated inner layer, I felt warmer at once.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

We were both quiet for a moment as we watched the rain pattering down, turning the soil muddy. Good thing we were both wearing hiking boots, because slogging our way back after the downpour probably wasn’t going to be too much fun.

I probably should have just let it alone. But I hated it when people weren’t being entirely truthful with me, even people I barely knew, like Ben Sanders.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re really here?”

A single blink. Then he replied, “I thought I did.”

“Not really,” I said. “Or at least, while what you said earlier kind of danced around the truth, I don’t think it was the whole truth. Not by a mile.”

His chin lifted. “You’re a very perceptive woman, Sidney Lowell.”

“Not always,” I returned. “But sometimes I just get a feeling.”

Once again, he was quiet, his face in profile to me as he stared out at the rain pounding down on the pine trees and hemlock and the small stand of birch about ten yards or so from where we sheltered under the overhang.

It was heavier now, with not much sign of letting up.

That was the way it worked around here, though; you often didn’t get much warning at all, just a few drops here and there, and then more and more until you had an honest-to-God downpour.

“I used to be an archaeologist,” he said. “But now I’m more interested in unexplained phenomena.”

“Like Bigfoot?” I asked, only half joking.

“I’m not much of a Sasquatch guy,” he replied, and now a hint of a smile had begun to play around his mouth. “But sure, things like that. Chupacabras are my specialty, though.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“I saw one once,” he said, his tone dead serious. “On a dig down in the Sonoran Desert. No one believed me, of course. But I know what I saw, and I suppose that spurred me to start investigating the strange and unusual.”

That revelation didn’t make me feel any less anxious. The last thing I needed was someone with scientific training poking around, trying to discover just what was a little — or a lot — different about Silver Hollow.

Had he somehow found out about the unicorn or the other creatures that appeared in this forest?

I couldn’t say for sure. We’d both been keeping our cards pretty close to our vests, and I doubted he was going to give away his hand unless he had something a little more concrete to go on from me.

And I wasn’t about to say anything.

Except….

Maybe I could act like I was trying to help him, but instead would do my best to steer him away from any of the parts of the forest that I knew were more likely to have some of those mythical beasts roaming around.

True, there wasn’t any real rhyme or reason to their movements, and yet I’d still noticed that they’d been spotted in certain locations more than others.

The idea felt horribly dishonest, but my first loyalty was to protecting the forest and the creatures who magically appeared there.

While Ben seemed like a decent enough guy, I couldn’t allow anyone to know the real truth about these woods, not when the women of my family had been guarding that secret for generations.

“And that led you here?” I asked. “Why?”

For a second or two, he didn’t reply. No, it seemed as if he was having an inner battle with himself, trying to decide how much he should say.

Then, “This is going to sound crazy.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “I’m pretty good with crazy,” I replied. “Try me.”

“Let’s just say I found a reference online to a shining horse that had been spotted in these woods,” he said.

“The person who wrote the entry admitted it was all hearsay, but it still sounded as if something strange was going on here. Since I was in San Francisco for a conference anyway, I decided to visit Silver Hollow and see what I could find out.”

A pretty big leap of faith, to come to the far end of the state to investigate an internet rumor.

Still, I wondered where he’d found the entry, and if there was any way I could possibly get it removed.

I did my best to keep on top of stuff like that, but I wasn’t anything close to a hacker.

Besides, I didn’t have unlimited free time to drop everything every time a snippet that might or might not have been about Silver Hollow popped up online.

“But you haven’t found anything yet.”

For just a moment, his eyes met mine. The admiration in them was clear, and warm blood rushed to my cheeks.

“Oh, I think I’ve found something,” he said softly.

I looked away first. No matter how attractive he was, I knew I couldn’t allow a connection to develop between us, not when he was trying to expose the one thing I knew needed to stay hidden.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t exploit that attraction if necessary…as much as I hated to do so.

“Maybe I can help,” I suggested, and at once, his eyes narrowed.

“You’ve seen this horse?”

“No,” I replied. That wasn’t really a lie, was it? I’d seen a unicorn, after all, not a horse.

Splitting hairs, I supposed, and yet I’d take the small wins where I could.

“But,” I went on before he could respond, “I know these woods really well. If you’re okay with meeting here early enough so I can still be at the shop to open at ten, then I think I can at least show you around if nothing else.”

His gaze met mine, now speculative, and I hoped I looked innocent and helpful and not at all like a woman planning to purposely lead him astray so there wouldn’t be any chance of him finding the unicorn — or whichever other creature decided to blunder into the woods.

Most of the time, you never encountered more than one at once, but I’d read an entry in my grandmother’s journal where she’d found both a unicorn and a griffin drinking out of a pond deep in the woods, which meant anything was possible.

“You’d really do that?” he asked, and I nodded.

“Glad to help,” I told him.

“Then I’m grateful for the assistance.” He paused there and gazed up at the sky. “It looks like it’s stopping.”

Sure enough, the rain had gradually lessened while we were talking and had diminished to little more than a faint drizzle. The ground was a muddy mess, though, and I wasn’t looking forward to the slog back to my car.

“So it is,” I said. “Do you want your jacket back?”

“You should probably keep it on until we get to the trailhead,” he replied.

Funny how he assumed we were going to walk together. But I knew it would look suspicious if I said I wanted to stay behind, especially with the current conditions being so nasty.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s get going.”

He stepped out from beneath the overhang and held out a hand, as if to gauge how much water still fell from the sky. Now even the drizzle was gone, though, which meant there wasn’t much reason to linger here any longer.

That same hand began to reach toward me, as if he instinctively wanted to help steady me as we descended toward the trail, but then he stopped. Had he told himself that I knew these woods much better than he did and could probably handle myself just fine?

Maybe. Whatever was going through his mind, he seemed content to wait until I had passed him and then fall in behind, allowing me to lead the two of us back to the trailhead.

With any luck, he’d continue to follow my lead while in these woods.

It was the only way to keep the unicorn safe, after all.