Maureen watched until Fiona reached the edge of the meadow. "And if you think you can escape by walking between the worlds, the forest knows how to trap stronger Blood than yours. Remember the legends of Nimue and Merlin."
Fiona's shoulders slumped, and she turned halfway back. Then she shuddered and walked on. The woman and the cat vanished under the trees.
Maureen stared after her, shrugged, and shook her head, as if wondering if she'd made a mistake by honoring her word. Then she turned to Brian.
"You came back."
"I didn't mean to leave in the first place."
"Yeah. Well, you could have left a goddamn note." She bit back words and swallowed.
Then her face softened. "Sorry. I think we need to have a long talk with Father Oak. Both of us need to make some changes in our lives. You're a family man now, with responsibilities."
He winced. Then Maureen smiled at him slowly, seductively. "And I haven't had a fucking drink in " -- she checked her watch -- "at least forty hours, and I really could use a little positive reinforcement." She tugged on Brian's arm, the one without the bandage, and they limped off into the woods with the baby.
Jo blinked. It looked like Maureen had finally figured out why men existed. Speaking of which . . .
Warm sun, soft grass, a man, an empty clearing. Jo lay back in the grass, tugging David down beside her. He lifted one eyebrow but didn't put up much resistance.
"We need to talk about a bunch of stuff."
"Later." She ran her fingertips up and down his left arm, the closest bit she could get her hands on.
"Maureen wants us to take over the castle, as soon as they figure out how to break some kind of curse on it. She hates the place. Wants to live in the forest." He sounded positive, as if he'd found his own kind of balance with this land of magic.
"We've got more important things to discuss than castles." She closed his lips with her own and rolled over on top of him, sinking into the kiss.
{We'll tell the cats not to wait up.}
Jo blinked her eyes open. The clearing wasn't quite empty. The fox seemed to be laughing again. It winked at her, turned, and trotted off into the forest.
Excerpt from The Summer Country
Book One in The Wildwood Series
Chapter One
That man was still following her.
A gust of sleet stung Maureen's face when she glanced back into the night. Winter in Maine, she thought, you'd at least think the weather would have the decency to dump snow on you.
February had been a run of sleet and freezing rain, no damn good for skiing or anything--it just made the sidewalks into bobsled runs and the roads into skating rinks. People always pictured New England with those picture-postcard mounds of fluffy white stuff. Instead, most winters plastered the city with yellow-gray ice full of freeze-dried dog shit and dead pigeons.
She hated it. She ached to be out of it.
And that bastard had followed her through four turns to head right back towards the Quick Shop. He kept his distance, but he was still there. It wasn't chance. She hadn’t seen another person or even a car in the last fifteen minutes. What were her options?
The midnight streets vanished in a vision of green grass and trees, sunshine, warm breezes, and streams of peat-stained water the color of fresh-brewed tea. She breathed summer country, a cabin-fever dream she wanted so much she could smell the clover.
Wish, the whisper came, out of nowhere. Wish. And hard on the back of the thought came a memory of Grandfather O'Brian's voice, "Be careful what you wish for, my darlin'. The gods just might be givin' it to you."
The thought brought tears to her eyes, or maybe it was the sleet. She had been far closer to the old man than to her own father, and now Grandfather was fifteen years dead. Funny such a devout Catholic should talk of the gods in plural. Funny she should think about him, slopping through the dark streets of Naskeag Falls and thinking dark thoughts about the entire male race.
Maureen's nightmare still followed her, half a block back--a squat black shadow under the streetlights, framed by the double rows of dark storefronts and old brick office buildings. Everything was closed and silent, brooding over her search for someplace warm and dry and public.
The scene reminded her of a hodge-podge of old movies--Peter Lorre stalking the midnight streets with a switchblade in his pocket. For some reason, the movie image relaxed her. Maybe it made danger seem less real, the sleet turning the night into grainy black-and-white flickers on a silver screen.
Maureen pulled her knit cap down tighter on her head and went back to concentrating on the ice underfoot. She was reading her past into the future. No self-respecting mugger or rapist would be out on a night like this. The voices in her head could just take a fucking hike.
Besides, her mood matched the foul weather. She’d had a rotten evening at the Quick Shop, and the chance to blow some scumbag to hell carried a certain primitive attraction.
Maybe while she was at it she should put a slug through the carburetor of that damned rusty Japanese junk-heap that had refused to start and left her walking. And pop the night manager with the roving hands who had reamed her out and docked her pay for being late, before suggesting they could maybe arrange something if she chose to be a little "friendlier."
Hell, go big-time and shoot all the paper-mill cretins from upriver who stomped in for their six-packs of beer, steaming their wet-dog smell and dripping slush all over the place so she spent half her shift mopping up after them.
Definitely blow away the oh-so-precise digital register that had refused to tally when
