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Chapter Twenty-One

E verything had happened so fast that my head was still spinning. Victor Maplehurst’s bloody death. The unicorn all but saying out loud that I shouldn’t go through the portal.

The creature disappearing in the circle of stones.

And Ben’s hand still on my arm, strong and reassuring, a signal that he was willing to be there no matter what might be going on around me.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

A very good question. My legs might as well have been made of jelly, but I supposed I could be excused for feeling that way, considering how I’d just seen the logging company exec brutally gored right in front of me.

Except….

“How is that possible?” I breathed as I stared at the man’s apparently unharmed body, and Ben shook his head.

“I have no idea. But I suppose if we’re willing to accept the existence of unicorns and extradimensional portals, then wounds that magically heal themselves should be kind of par for the course.”

Drawn despite myself, I moved closer to Victor Maplehurst’s body.

It was absolutely still, and I knew he was dead, even if the unicorn had somehow managed to erase any evidence of the true nature of his death.

The utter absence of any sign to show how he had died made the scene that much more unreal, and I had no idea how I was supposed to act now.

What did you do around a dead body that didn’t actually look like a dead body?

I swallowed, then asked, “Do you think the unicorn did that to protect us?”

“I’m sure he did,” Ben replied. He’d let go of my arm as soon as I started to move, but he came close again, as if he was worried I might bolt into the portal anyway despite the unicorn’s obvious warning.

“Not that I’m an expert or anything, but I have a feeling the medical examiner will find he died of a stroke or a heart attack. ”

“And by the time anyone comes out here to investigate, the circle of standing stones will be long gone,” I said softly.

“With the investigation wrapped up weeks before it returns,” he said. For a moment, he was silent as he gazed around the clearing, at the glowing plants and the solemn circle of pale stones, each of them taller than he by at least two feet or more. “If it even comes back to this spot.”

For a moment, I could only stare at him, trying to absorb the implications of his comment. “You mean…it moves around?”

“Maybe,” he replied. Again, he went quiet, as though trying to process the new and unexpected ideas moving through his agile brain.

“Isn’t that a common thread in folklore and fairy tales?

That these sorts of things could never really be pinned down because they never appeared in the same place twice? ”

“But it was here twice in a row,” I pointed out.

For a few seconds, Ben was quiet, mulling over the conundrum I’d just presented. Then he gave a small shrug and said, “Maybe it appeared here twice in a row because this is all part of the same moon phase. Next month, it could show up someplace entirely different.”

To be honest, despite knowing that unicorns and griffins and other mythical beasts sometimes roamed these woods, I’d never been a huge reader of fairy tales and had no idea what kind of rules we might be dealing with.

“I suppose it makes sense,” I said slowly, trying to pick up the bits and pieces of comments I’d heard my mother make…

things I’d read in my grandmother’s journal.

“It does seem as if when the creatures appear, it’s in different parts of the forest. That’s why it was always so hard to get a glimpse of them. They have to seek you out.”

“Like the unicorn did with us,” Ben said.

“I think so,” I replied. “And it could also be why those glowing flowers can be spotted in different places without much rhyme or reason. What if they appear where a portal has once been?”

He ran a hand over his stubbly chin, then gave a considering nod. “Like…the portal has left enough of its energy behind that some of the plants from that plane that were left here can still feed on it.”

“Right.” But I had to shrug, adding, “Or maybe something else is going on. This is all so out of my experience that I’m not sure I can say for sure.”

“It’s fine.” His hand reached out to take mine, and I didn’t try to resist. After everything that had happened during the past few minutes, it felt good to have our fingers intertwined, his touch strong and warm, and to know he wasn’t the kind of person to bail out just because the situation had gotten increasingly complicated.

“We don’t have to figure out everything right now. ”

Maybe not. But I’d never been someone who liked unanswered questions, which was why growing up with a father who’d walked out on his family and a forest full of magical creatures had created a sort of not-so-subtle dissonance in just about everything I did.

Before I could respond to his comment, however, movement inside the portal caught my eye. I stiffened, my grasp on Ben’s hand tightening.

The unicorn emerged in the center of the stones, only this time, it had something draped around its neck.

Oh, my God.

“What is it?” Ben asked.

“That scarf,” I breathed. “It’s my mother’s.”

Her favorite, the nubby handwoven one in shades of purple and turquoise that she’d bought at a craft fair in Eureka when I was in high school.

She’d worn it at least two or three times a week, weather permitting, and it didn’t surprise me that it might have been wrapped around her throat when she disappeared.

The unicorn came over to me and lowered his head. With trembling fingers, I reached up to remove the scarf from his neck.

Pinned inside was a strange piece of paper, rough to the touch but oddly glowing at the same time.

Only a few words, written in my mother’s graceful hand.

We’re safe. Protect the crossing.

I looked past the unicorn to the circle of standing stones. They looked solid, more real than almost anything I’d ever seen, but I knew they would vanish with the coming of dawn…and wouldn’t return for another month.

Possibly in another location, although I still didn’t know that for sure.

The message was clear, though.

If I crossed over to the other world, I wouldn’t be here to protect this one.

“Thank you,” I said, addressing the unicorn directly. “Tell them….”

The words trailed off. I had so many things I wanted to say, so many ideas that might have been too complicated for him to communicate.

I just had to hope he’d be able to get this one across.

“Tell them that I understand the assignment.”

The GPS signal from Victor Maplehurst’s phone led the authorities to his body the next morning, after his wife had called the police to say he’d had a meeting in Portland but had never come home afterward.

After that news swept through the town grapevine, I couldn’t help experiencing a slight pang of guilt.

I’d been so busy thinking about him as the chief threat to the well-being of the forest that I hadn’t even thought about the people he left behind.

But although a full autopsy was scheduled, the medical examiner in Eureka seemed to think Victor had died of an aneurysm…and I had a feeling they wouldn’t find anything different after the examination was completed.

As for Maplehurst’s two goons, Curt and Lenny, they hadn’t uttered a peep about what had happened that night.

Maybe they didn’t think anyone would believe them, or maybe they were just worried that if they started flapping their jaws, the unicorn would come after them and they’d meet the same fate as their boss.

Either way, it didn’t sound as if Ben and I needed to worry about them revealing any secrets.

Mayor Tillman had wanted to call off the town meeting scheduled for that night, citing respect for the dead, but Eliza Cartwright had steamrollered right over him, saying that just because Northwest Pacific might temporarily be out of the picture, that didn’t mean others might not step up to threaten the forest. So everyone gathered to voice their concerns, and the town councilors promised that the charter would be amended to state that absolutely no logging would be allowed in the forest. This might have put them at odds with the government, since technically, all of it was federal land, but since no private logging had been officially allowed there for decades, no one seemed too concerned about that particular wrinkle.

“But we’ll have to remain watchful,” I told Ben, who’d come over the next night for dinner. I’d kept expecting him to tell me he needed to pack up and return to Southern California, but so far, he hadn’t broached that awkward subject.

And although I hadn’t been lying when I’d admitted I wasn’t the best cook in the world, I was still fairly decent at following directions, which was why we were eating London broil I’d marinated all day according to my grandmother’s recipe — and which Ben had finished on the grill, guaranteeing that the results would be pretty decent.

As was the German potato salad I’d thrown together, again from one of my grandmother’s recipes. It provided a savory, vinegary counterpoint to the red wine marinade, and I thought the combination made a great, if simple meal.

Once again, the day had turned out blue and bright.

Although I’d worked at the pet shop today — I thought being closed a second day in a row when there wasn’t any real reason to do so wouldn’t have been very responsible — I’d closed a half hour early so I could come home and finish getting everything ready.

And since the sun hadn’t hidden itself behind the clouds, the two of us were eating dinner out on the back porch rather than in the dining room, so we had a clear view of the forest only a few hundred yards away.