Many Bloody Returns Part 36

Meanwhile, I was freezing my b.u.t.t off. I looked great in my estate salefind Harris Tweed wool coat, fluffy Russian hat, and fake-fur lined boots, but the skimpy little black number I had underneath everything let the cold seep in to the bone. Normally, a forecast of subzero temperatures suppressed my fas.h.i.+onista tendencies, but it was Sebastian's birthday, and I'd wanted to glam things up. No doubt I looked absolutely fabulous underneath my winter layers, but a fat lot of good that did me right now. I was s.h.i.+vering so hard that my knees literally knocked together.

The deep blue shadows stretched in the fading rose-colored light, and above us, a highway light snapped on. Sebastian glanced up in the sudden illumination, and then glared at me for a short moment before going back to the distributor cap.

Sebastian hadn't said much since the car sputtered and died twenty minutes ago, and I knew he was brooding. He hadn't wanted to come out for his birthday. He said he'd never celebrated it in all the thousand-odd years of his life, and he hardly wanted to start now. It had never been a happy occasion for him.

He believed his birthday caused him to become a vampire.

Today was Christmas.

Apparently, the superst.i.tion at the time Sebastian was born was that sharing a birthday with Jesus was extremely bad juju- something about your parents engaging in earthly pleasures at the same time of year that the Virgin Mary had been divinely conceiving. Whatever. It made no sense at all to me, not being of a religious persuasion that concerned itself with Jesus' birthday, but it was important to Sebastian. Plus, he had been reminded of this wickedness every single birthday. He told me once that the curse had become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, since he had pursued the "dark arts" of alchemy and witchcraft partly because people expected him to. If he hadn't, he would never have discovered the formula that made him a vampire.

"Try it now, Garnet," Sebastian shouted from somewhere under the hood. I slipped and slid over the frozen slush to the driver's side. I scooted into the driver's seat and shut the door to the wind. Depressing the clutch, I put my hand on the key and made a quick appeal to Pele, the Hawaiian G.o.ddess of fire. I closed my eyes and whispered, Give us a spark. Please.

When the engine turned over, I almost thought my prayers were answered. Then the noise stopped again, and this time, I had the distinct impression that something died-a metal-on-metal, grinding, final death.

"Nothing," I shouted back as if he couldn't tell. Having grown up with Midwestern winters, I couldn't help but complete the traditional call-and-response of injured vehicles.

I waited for another word from Sebastian. Instead, he shut the hood with a firm finality, like closing the lid of a coffin.

I cranked down the window as he came around. I gave him a hopeful smile, but he shook his head. "It's dead."

I tried to remain perky. "It's still early," I said. "We could call a cab."

Sebastian leaned against the driver's side door, looking away from me. Crossing his arms in front of his chest despite the bulk of his parka, he stared out into the darkening fields. "Is anyone going to be working today?"

"The restaurant is open," I reminded him. "As is the movie theater." Despite being moderately sized, Madison-a left-leaning, radical, college town-had a large contingent of people for whom Christmas is just another day. In fact, I'd debated long and hard about whether or not to keep open the occult bookstore I managed but had decided to close it in deference to Sebastian's birthday. It was winter break and my college-age staff was all at home enjoying roast turkey right about now, and I'd have had to staff the store myself. I'd wanted the day off to spend with Sebastian.

Sebastian fished through his pockets for his cell phone, but came up empty-handed. "Figures," he sighed as we searched the car. "Benjamin must have walked off with it again."

Benjamin was Sebastian's resident house-ghost-well, poltergeist, really, since he had a tendency to toss things around when riled up. Still, it wasn't like him to run off with Sebastian's things. Benjamin was usually very loyal to Sebastian to the point of "defending" the house from all interlopers, even me. "What did you do to p.i.s.s him off?"

"I've been thinking about rewallpapering Vivian's room."

"Are you insane?" Vivian was Benjamin's wife, whom we suspected Benjamin had axe-murdered in that very room. Benjamin got especially crazy if anything in her bedroom was altered. In fact, Benjamin was so obsessed with keeping things precisely as they were, Sebastian could sometimes trick him into cleaning the place by moving some of Vivian's things to other parts of the house.

Sebastian lifted his shoulders in a shrug barely visible through the thick down of his parka. "Why don't we just go home?"

I would have been more excited about his suggestion if he'd sounded more "in the mood." But I could hear the defeatism oozing from each syllable. Even so, part of me did want to just give up-the exact part being my frozen toes-but I was on a personal crusade to shake Sebastian of his birthday melancholia. He'd been carrying around this hatred of his birthday for a millennium. It was time for an att.i.tude adjustment.

Sebastian's farm was just about as far away from us now as Portobello Restaurant, where we had reservations in twenty minutes. We could still make it.

"I'm sure there's a farmhouse nearby," I said, rearranging my hat so it covered more of my ears. "We can call a cab from there."

"For home."

"For the restaurant."

We got into one of those stare-downs where a normal person would just let the vampire win. The look of fierce intensity in those chestnut brown eyes with their eerie golden starburst pattern around the pupil said Back off. I, however, am a pigheaded Witch, and I'm somewhat careless with my sense of self-preservation.

"Come on." I pasted a cheery smile on my face, despite the skin-numbing chill. Swinging the car door open, I strolled out into the frozen wasteland with a jaunty step. "It'll be an adventure."

For several steps I wondered if Sebastian was going to let me have this so-called adventure on my own. Then, in that silent way he had, he was suddenly beside me.

"You're incorrigible," he grunted, but there was the hint of a smile in his voice. Victory.

It didn't take long for me to regret my pluckiness. Minus twenty was dangerously cold, and I was just not dressed for it. My face felt raw, and my toes had gone way past the tingly phase. I was seriously entertaining the idea of asking Sebastian to turn me into one of the living dead so that I didn't have to deal with the prospect of freezing to death when we spotted a pickup truck heading in our direction.

Actually, at first, all I saw were two points of light, like the eyes of some huge animal. Through the still night air, I heard the snarl and spit of a working engine. I waved frantically, hoping to flag the vehicle down. My only thought was: heater.

Miraculously, it stopped.

Behind the wheel of the s.h.i.+ny black Ford was a woman in her mid to late fifties. The curls of hair that stuck out from an Elmer Fudd earflap hat were the color of steel wool. Her cheeks were burned red by the wind and cold. One look at her REI arctic-ready parka, insulated gloves, snow pants, and heavy-duty boots, and I knew she was a farmer.

The interior of the cab was blessedly hot and smelled faintly of stale coffee and wet dog. "Thanks for stopping," I said, climbing in gingerly.

She nodded in that rural way that implied You're-welcome and I-should-have-my-head-examined-for-this-act-of-kindness all at once.

"You should really stay with your car on a night like this," the driver said as I wedged myself into the center of the bench seat. She was right, of course. Beyond the actual temperature, there was the wind chill, which could be considerably lower. A car protected you from that. Plus, out in the elements the cold hemorrhaged heat from your body. Inside a car, at least, you could build up a bit of warmth just from your own breathing. Not to mention the fact that I had no idea how far I would have had to walk to find another farm, and there's always the risk of getting lost. Cops and snowplow drivers are trained to stop for cars with red flags tied to the antenna to look for people trapped inside.

As a native Minnesotan, I knew all that. I was about to acknowledge my failure in winter safety rules when she added, "Don't either of you two have a phone?"

"No," I said miserably.

Sebastian just shook his head. "I don't suppose you do?"

She flashed a thin smile that held only a hint of self-righteousness. "Of course." She pulled a sequin-studded flip case from the interior pocket of her parka. I raised my eyes at the s.h.i.+ny appliques as I handed it to Sebastian.

He snapped it open and frowned. "No signal." Then, "And...now your battery is dead." Handing it back to me, he mouthed, "Cursed."

"That's strange," she said when I gave it back to her. "It was working a half hour ago."

"I'm cursed," Sebastian said out loud this time, matter-of-factly.

The woman gave us a crook of a snow-white eyebrow and pulled back on to the road. "So," she said, sounding anxious to get rid of us, "where are you headed?"

I didn't take it personally. I was sure we made a strange pair-me, bundled up like some kind of accident between a Russian babushka and a Goth supermodel, and him, grumpily cryptic and ridiculously underdressed.

I looked to Sebastian for an answer to her question, but he stared out at the graying sky. I had to snap him out of this. He was being downright antisocial and rude.

"If you're headed to town," I tried hopefully, and when she didn't deny it, I added, "Anywhere close to State Street would do us."

She nodded, her eyes on the black strip of asphalt. Wind threw streaks of powdery snow across the road where it slithered like snakes, twisting and turning before merging with the drifts on the opposite side. "You kids off on a date?"

"His birthday."

She nodded as if considering something. I braced myself for a Christmas comment or joke. Finally, she simply said dryly, "Nice day for it."

Thunder rolled outside, strangely synchronous with her tone.

Sebastian roused himself from his brood enough to inquire, "Was there supposed to be a storm coming in?"

"Oh yeah," said the driver, in a pitch-perfect Minnesotan accent. "National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning."

"This just gets better and better," Sebastian grumbled.

I gave him a punch in the arm, as if to say, "Be nice!"

"I feel terrible," I said. "I should really have introduced myself. I'm Garnet Lacey, and my delightful companion here is my boyfriend, Sebastian Von Traum."

She nodded her greeting. "Fonn Hyrokkin." In the flash of a pa.s.sing car's headlight, something sparkled in her eyes like ice.

Hyrokkin sounded a lot like the Finnish surnames I'd grown up with in northern Minnesota, but something about the way she said it, as though it were more of a t.i.tle, made me pause.

I looked with my magical vision, but it was too dark to get a good read of her aura. Auras are like halos of refracted light around a person or an object, and they can't be seen without some kind of illumination. I've found artificial fluorescents work best, but light of some kind is an absolute must. The glow of the dashboard just wasn't cutting it.

Despite my growing unease about our driver, we fell into a silence.

You can't live in the upper Midwest without having to deal with quietness. I grew up in Minnesota, so I should be used to it: but I'm a chronic chatterer. I even commit the cardinal sin of enticing strangers into conversation in elevators. When I can't talk, I tap my toes and drum my fingers. It was strange, but one of the things I like about my adoptive state of Wisconsin is that people around here seem to be much more willing to engage in copious amounts of small talk. Just my luck, the one Norwegian in all of Wisconsin would have to pick us up.

I glanced at Sebastian for support as my feet started their nervousness dance. He just glumly watched the darkness roll past the window.

Pulling at the fingers of my gloves, I looked back at Fonn. She stared resolutely ahead. Our shoulders touched when the truck bounced over uneven patches in the road, and each time they did I would have sworn I could smell dog more sharply. I told myself that maybe her golden retriever liked to nap on her coat. I mean, I was sure some of my clothes smelled of cat. Barney snoozed in my dresser drawer any time I accidentally left it open. Anyway, why should that make me so nervous? As someone who kept a pet, I tended to see animal owners.h.i.+p as a positive personality trait. The people who didn't have animals when they could always seemed a little suspect. So what bothered me? Was it that the dog wasn't anywhere in sight?

I listened to the sound of the engine growling as we continued to b.u.mp along the deserted county road. I wanted to ask Fonn about the dog I could smell but couldn't think of a polite way to bring it up. "Say, I notice your truck stinks of wet pooch. So what kind is it, and where is it anyway?! Oh, that's actually your body odor? My bad," seemed just a little bit tactless.

On the side of the road, Christmas lights festooned a one-story ranch whose lawn was littered with illuminated and motorized reindeer, elves, snowmen, and a glow-in-the-dark plastic creche. Three pairs of eyes turned to watch the extravaganza disappear behind us, but, in true Midwestern fas.h.i.+on, we kept our own counsel.

Lightning flashed across the sky. Snow sprinkled the winds.h.i.+eld.

"What the heck?" I said, looking at tiny kernels of snow that the wiper brushed away. "It's far too cold to snow." I might have failed winter safety, but I knew that there were temperatures at which snow couldn't form. It was simply not possible.

Something very strange was happening outside. Something unnatural.

"Storm," Fonn whispered reverently. "It's going to be a big one."

Deep in my belly, Lilith grumbled.

Sharing a body with the G.o.ddess Lilith meant that sometimes She felt free to editorialize. The snarl surprised me, however. It struck me as threatened...or even territorial. Though I knew it wasn't audible to anyone else, I put my hand over my stomach.

I glanced over at Sebastian to see if he registered Lilith's complaint. Thanks to a blood-bonding spell, Sebastian could sense Lilith's moods.

He inspected Fonn with sudden interest. I followed his gaze to see what it was about her that suddenly fascinated him and concerned Lilith. In the bluish glow of the dashboard lights, her facial features were sharp, yet broad, and her skin stretched tightly across high cheekbones. She had a certain regalness about her, but nothing I hadn't seen in countless faces of the farmers in Finlayson, Minnesota, where I grew up.

The only thing that struck me as particularly odd was the faint hint of a smile. She stared out at the wind and snow like something about it tickled her fancy...or made her proud. Yeah, that was it. She was staring at the growing storm like a mother would watch a baby taking its first steps.

Creepy.

Sebastian and I shared a look that said, Something here isn't right. After all the silence, I was grateful to be communicating with Sebastian again, even if it was only about the bizarreness of our situation. He flashed me a crooked smile which seemed to say, Isn't this just our luck? I nodded in quiet agreement.

Wind pushed against the truck hard enough to cause us to coast slightly toward the center line. Fonn corrected for it with a twinkle in her eye.

So, my first thought was that Fonn was some kind of demented storm chaser, except that Lilith rarely gave me the nudge when people were just plain odd. If She did, I'd be getting poked a lot, given the type I tended to attract. No, there had to be something supernatural going on here, but what?

If Fonn wasn't a deranged meteorologist, what else could she be? Severe weather made her ecstatic, she was out on a cold night alone, and her truck smelled like dog. Seemed to me it was time to play twenty questions. Yet how to interrogate her without raising suspicion? "So, Fonn," I said, trying to affect the vaguely disinterested conversation style of a church bas.e.m.e.nt social gathering. "You from around here?"

"Nope."

Argh! Foiled by a yes-no question and a wily yet taciturn respondent.

"Where are you from?" Sebastian asked, picking up the dropped ball.

"Came over from the Old Country."

"Me, too," Sebastian said. "I was born in Austria. You?"

"Norway."

Okay, we had something on her. Not that it helped much. I looked to Sebastian, but he just shrugged. He didn't have a clue what sort of magical being she might be, either.

The wind howled around the truck. Sheets of snow spattered against the windows. That was another oddity. The snow had changed from tiny ice pellets into large, fluffy flakes. The temperature must have s.h.i.+fted dramatically. It was just plain strange to see that kind of snow transformation so quickly. Normally, you saw one kind of flake or another, or if they changed at all, it was gradual, like over the course of several hours. Not minutes.

This storm challenged all my well-honed Midwestern senses. It was seriously freaking me out. Somehow Fonn was behind it, I was certain.

So, okay, maybe Fonn wielded some kind of weather magic. Did I know any Old Norse otherworldly beings in charge of snow? To be honest, the only Norwegian female baddie I could think of was a Valkyrie, and somehow I sensed that wasn't right. It seemed to me that you had to die in battle to meet one of those-oh, and you should probably also be a Viking. Unless something really weird had happened without my knowledge, neither Sebastian nor I fit that particular bill. Well, okay, Sebastian was dead. And he had died in a battle, like the Crusades or against the Huns or something, but that was a long time ago and he definitely wasn't Norse.

Fonn turned the truck onto a major thoroughfare. The snow became a blur of fast-falling, large flakes. Despite the wider, well-traveled road, all I could see ahead of us was a vague sense of the center line and ice crystals glistening in the headlights. The truck barreled ahead confidently, but I snaked a hand over to Sebastian's and squeezed tightly.

Lilith rippled across my abdomen-a warning.

Okay, so Fonn was crazy magical, but what was Lilith saying? Was Fonn dangerous, too? How?

Despite the Ford's heater going full blast, I felt an icy breeze on the back of my neck. My muscles tensed involuntarily. I snuggled a bit closer to Sebastian, who seemed to be feeling the chill also. The arm he wrapped around my shoulder shuddered slightly.

"Cold?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he said, raising his shoulders as if to ward off a wind. "Just now."

"The storm is picking up," Fonn said, as if that explained why the temperature suddenly affected my undead vampire lover. "We might need to find shelter," she added, using her gloved hand to turn the wipers up a notch. They beat furiously against the gla.s.s.

"We've got to be getting closer to town," I muttered to myself. Sebastian's farm was no more than ten minutes from the edges of Madison's suburbs. It seemed like we'd been driving twice that long, especially given that when we'd broken down we were almost halfway to the edge of town.

"I may have missed a turnoff," Fonn said. "Visibility sucks. I think I might have gotten turned around. We're a bit lost."

We're not lost, I thought. We're being taken somewhere. Madison wasn't exactly a bustling metropolis. Okay, sure, it was the capital city of Wisconsin, but there weren't that many roads that led in and out of it. Provided you stayed pointed in the same direction, getting lost was actually kind of difficult. Fonn knew where we were, I was sure of it, especially when I noticed that slight, malicious smile twitched across her lips again. I was just about to call her on it when Sebastian piped up.

"A bit lost? Isn't that like being a little pregnant?" Sebastian asked, though his question was clearly rhetorical and sarcastic. "Lost. That's fantastic."

I rolled my eyes and shrugged out from under his arm. "This is not your curse," I said with a long-suffering sigh.