The path curved downhill, and she held the sun and stars and her cottage in their places and fought against that curving. Stone barred her way, and she drew still more Power from the unborn baby. It struggled and then stilled. Fiona wasted a second's glance, finding the heartbeat and a trace of dreaming. The girl still lived.
And she dismissed that care. Impossible snow touched her face and the flow of Power weakened further and she gained ten more paces. The forest stream crossed her path, rimmed with ice, and the trees showed black frost-nipped edges to their leaves. Her lips pulled back from her teeth into a feral smile. So summer ended? The forest's magic began to fail.
The child squirmed again, her protest a sharp rolling pain in Fiona's belly. The dark witch turned her eyes inward for an instant and smacked the brat with a stunning spell. No more distractions.
She crossed the stream and climbed the slope beyond it. She remembered the old trail and forced it into being once again. Another hundred yards and she'd reach the forest's edge, see the keep in front of her across mindless, powerless grass. Sweat tickled her brow, and she swiped her sleeve across it. Walking the forest had cost her more than she'd expected.
She drew Power from the child and climbed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The road blurred in front of Maureen, and an antique horse-drawn hearse formed out of wind-driven rain, long black-lacquered glass-sided four-wheeled coffin box draped in black and with black plumes bobbing on the team, square in front of her hood. She slammed on the brakes, slewing sideways on wet pavement, sat for a moment, and then a chorus of blaring horns snapped her back to reality.
Hallucination. She hadn't hit anything. Nothing had hit her. Her hands shook, and the road stayed blurry. Windshield wipers didn't help. Blurs were on the inside, on her own goddamn eyeballs. She restarted the stalled engine and pulled over to the side of the road. Flipped on the emergency blinkers. They even worked. Hadn't tried them in years.
Damn, damn, damn, damn! Mom. Dad. Brian. Jo.
She buried her face in her hands, giving in to tears. The voices returned, whispering, accusing, sneering. You're crazy, you know that? Still schizo, after all these years. Find a loving man, what do you do? Try to claw his eyes out. Your father murders your mother and then commits suicide, you just stand there dry-eyed staring at the shattered corpses like they were a pair of discarded mannequins lying on the dump and say "Good riddance." Your sister comes to you drowning in grief and remorse, and you walk off and leave her with a fucking bottle of wine for a life-preserver.
Rain spattered on the metal roof overhead, rattling into sleet, echoing her mood. She remembered the thunderstorm she'd drawn to the forest and the keep, and wondered if she was responsible for this sudden squall or if it was just normal shitty Maine spring weather.
Brian had left her. Out of all the shit that had happened, she kept coming back to that. Wrong, wrong, wrongo. He didn't leave. You drove him away. You would have killed him if he stayed. The man did his best. How could he live with a psycho witch?
Something tapped at the window beside her, and she swiped tears from her eyes. A blue raincoat and plastic-shrouded cop hat loomed through the rain-streaked glass. She rolled down the window, heaving at the rusty groans and stiffness of the old crank.
"Are you okay, ma'am?"
She saw a skull between the turned-up collar and the hat, polished ivory bone and black pits for the eyes and nose and mouth. Blue fire lit in the depths of the eye-sockets, and she blinked. The apparition flowed and changed into a human face, one of the cops she'd met at the station, giving her statements. Small town, small police force. Get through this, she'd know every one of them by name, know their wives and their kids' batting averages and the names of their pet dogs.
"'M fine. Cat ran across the road, nearly hit it."
Liar.
The policeman shook his head and sniffed, then sniffed again and shook his head again. "Ma'am, I should ask you to step out of the car, do a sobriety check. You've got an opened bottle of whiskey there on the seat. But you don't smell of booze, and I've heard all that you've been through. I've got fender-bender calls out the wazoo with this storm. Please just give me the bottle and drive more carefully. Go home. If you need a drink, have it there."
Whatthehell . . . She glanced sideways. That damned bottle of Bushmills had followed her. Her hand shook as she picked it up, splashing the contents into foam. She nearly dropped it when she handed it to the officer.
He walked over to the side of the road and emptied the bottle. She could smell that good whiskey over the rain and burned oil and acrid hot brake pads. She wanted it. God, she wanted it.
He tossed the empty into the trunk of his cruiser, good man, didn't add to the roadside litter. Then he climbed back into the car, flipped on the blue-blinky lights, and pulled out. The rain and sleet turned back into a snow squall, veiling the road. Ghosts drove past, walked past, crowded around her windows with accusation and threat on their faces. Dad, Mom, Dougal, Sean, Buddy Johnson. Maureen's teeth chattered. She cranked the Toyota's heater to full blast.
That won't warm your soul a bit. Like trying to thaw a glacier with a handheld blow-drier.
She'd been looking for David, a set of loving arms and a familiar body to hug warmth into Jo. Couples did that, provided each other
