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Kit’s face was pressed into the wood on Holzhausen’s kitchen table and her arms were wrenched behind her as Campbell frisked her for weapons. Water sluiced off her pants and into Fain’s shoes, which spilled over with every step. She was about as presentable as a half-drowned kitten and felt embarrassed by the shambles the rain and mud was making on her boss’ floor. She wasn’t being rained on anymore, but there wasn’t a single part of her body that hadn’t been drenched on the way over.
“Campbell,” Holzhausen said, and Kit was never so glad to hear his deep, comforting voice. “Please let her go. She’s expected.”
“She?” Campbell said.
“I’m not Fain. I’m Melbourne in disguise.” Kit spoke into the table top, using the side of her face that Campbell wasn’t mashing into the wood. From her angle, she could see the ancient refrigerator in 1980’s almond color and the even older china hutch next to it. One of the knives from the knife rack had been removed. The kitchen smelled like onions and cooking meat. Like most vampires, Holzhausen’s house was dimmer than humans found comfortable, and the light hanging over her head put out about as much light as a candle. She could see the door leading to the porch but not the farmhouse sink or the hanging copper pots.
“It is a convincing disguise.”
Holzhausen must have gestured to Campbell because the hand pressing her face into the table pulled away, leaving her to stand freely. Holzhausen stood just to the left of the refrigerator.
“Melbourne, there has been a misunderstanding between you and my old master.”
“Melbourne,” Sorrow said, using an overly smooth voice, like a salesman, or maybe like a psychiatrist at a mental institution. He was sitting at the table to Holzhausen’s right, half a glass of port in front of him as though she’d interrupted two old chums catching up over drinks. “You left so soon we didn’t get a chance to talk.”
“Sorrow was especially impressed with your warding skills. When you are a master, that may be the specialty you are known for,” Holzhausen said, and stoic though he was, Kit caught a hint of pride. He pivoted to refill his glass, which had been on the counter, and then took a seat at the table again.
“And I’m sure you will progress quickly with my assistance,” Sorrow said, lifting his glass gently. “My dear friend was modest with his description of your abilities. You are beyond an apprentice. You already have great skill, and great potential. He says you most wish to control your telekinesis abilities. I can help with that. I just need some time alone with you in a quiet room.”
“We shall discuss how to schedule training time,” Holzhausen said. “Tonight, perhaps. We could set up the library as a practice arena.”
“No, sir.” Kit froze in terror. It was as if she had run crying from her bedroom, afraid of the monster in her closet, only to find her parents drinking tea with the monster and discussing how they were going to get bunk beds so she and the monster could spend more time together. “I won’t be alone with him. Sorrow said he is Ix Yew. He threatened to torture me.”
Sorrow smiled, but he didn’t get up from his seat. This wouldn’t work if he were sitting. “That was a joke.”
“A joke!” Kit said. She glanced toward the door, wondering if she could make a run for it, get to the screened in porch or at least be between Campbell and Holzhausen on that side of the kitchen. No, that wouldn’t work, because Sorrow might follow her, and he had to be near the window. “You said you wanted me to be a vampire because it would take longer for me to die!”
“I’m sure you misunderstood.”
“I don’t think I did.” Kit had her back pressed up against the sink. This wasn’t going to work. She had to be on the edge of the room. Campbell was still by the door, which left the side closest to the pantry. She began to edge very slowly to the left.
“Fain claimed he could convince you to accept him as sire. I explained to Holzhausen that was not part of our arrangement,” Sorrow said, gesturing with an open hand to Kit’s boss. “But Fain had his own plans. I didn’t know he intended to turn you against your will. So many are desperate to become vampires. It seemed strange that you should protest. After all, you are part of a Vampire Guild, aren’t you?”
“What about the Apples?” Kit asked, taking another half step. But, even before Sorrow answered she knew that Yseulta had not turned Clan Apple back into faeries. Kit knew it as sure as she knew anything. She felt that Yseulta would not capitulate, even if she had sufficient time, even if she knew the danger. Kit extended her awareness deep, stretching it out, touching the dead wood of the table to connect to her goddess. She felt the trees outside. She wasn’t alone. They were a team.
Sorrow smiled blandly. “I assure you; I have no idea what you mean.”
Outside, the rain began to pelt against the windows, startling Kit with the noise. She turned around but of course saw nothing as the windows were covered in light-blocking fabric to protect the vampires from sunlight. At least her pivot could disguise the other half-step she took towards the far side of the room.
“Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand, Melbourne?” Holzhausen said. “I find it easy to believe that Fain intended to turn you against your will. But can you not also believe that Sorrow had no part of that plan?”
“He threatened to torture me.” Kit shook her head. She glanced sidelong towards the door, where Campbell stood watching the conversation. What if this failed? Could she get past him? Could Sorrow see her if she were invisible? How far would she get, sprinting through mud that showed her tracks? “Only an idiot would call that a joke.”
“Melbourne,” Holzhausen said. “Please don’t be rude to my guest.”
“Boss, he said that what was done to Omuda would feel like the gentle kiss of rain in comparison,” Kit said raising her voice to be heard over the rain outside. She took two more steps to the left, sidling around the side of the table. “He lied to all of us. He played all of us. You don’t threaten to torture someone as a joke. He had no intention of making me his apprentice. Everything he told you was a lie.”
“I’m sorry you see it that way,” Sorrow said, spreading his hands wide and looking up at Holzhausen as if Kit were Holzhausen’s toddler having a meltdown. “I didn’t realize your feelings were so easily hurt.”
“Sir, he’s duplicitous. He lied to Fain too.” Kit began to shiver. She backed up against the cabinet, pushing the wood door shut. Touching wood. That was good. That would help her give the signal. “He was telling Fain one story in English and me another in Vargel. He knew that even Fain would balk at torturing me.”
Holzhausen looked exasperated. “Melbourne, I don’t know why you’re acting this way. I’ve known Master Sorrow for close to a century. He’s never tortured me. He’s never hurt me. Perhaps your understanding of Vargel isn’t as good as you thought.”
“My Vargel is flawless, sir.” Kit’s shivering turned to full-fledged shaking. She felt so cold. She would have given anything for some warm towels, or Fenwick’s warm chest against her. At least she could touch wood. “He wants to torture me as vengeance for something done before either of us were born.”
Sorrow scoffed. “So dramatic. Where do you get these ideas? I’ve come here at great expense to do a favor for my former student, and this is the way I’m treated?”
“Melbourne, I think you should apologize to Sorrow,” Holzhausen said.
It was too much. If Sorrow was inside the city ward, and if she had no ward on her house ... Kit began to cry. If this didn’t work, they were screwed. How quickly could she and Fenwick pack up the kids? Where could they move that Sorrow couldn’t find them? She looked up at Holzhausen, but he was just shaking his head as if disappointed in her, which made her cry harder.
“I can see you’re overwrought, Melbourne. Let’s discuss this tomorrow evening. I’ve invited Sorrow to remain here for several months, but if you’re going to insist on these hysterical accusations, I wouldn’t blame him for refusing to teach you at this point.”
“Perhaps if she apologizes, I might reconsider,” Sorrow said. He half turned, facing Holzhausen. “Is she prone to these emotional outbursts?”
“I’m sure she’ll apologize,” Holzhausen said. “Melbourne, Sorrow is a very respectable master of House Sanguinatus. Think carefully before you say something you can’t take back. It won’t look good if you try to damage his reputation by leveling these accusations against him.”
“I know what I heard,” Kit whispered. She pressed her fingertips into the wood of the cabinet. Outside the branches whipped against the house, scraping against the windows with ear-piercing screams. “I’m sorry you don’t believe me.”
“Melbourne,” Holzhausen pleaded, both hands wrapped around his port glass. “Please apologize.”
“He lied to us. He betrayed both of us.” Water dripped off Kit’s hair, off the cuffed sleeves of Fain’s shirt, and now tears poured down her cheeks as well. Outside, the rain poured down on the forest, loosening soil, filling rivers, dampening bark, washing down gullies, undercutting roots. “He’s the liar, not me.”
Sorrow sighed heavily as if disgusted with her idiocy. He stood up. “I don’t have to take these insults.”
“Master Sorrow,” Holzhausen said, with a pleading and conciliatory tone that Kit had never heard from him before. He stood, one hand outstretched. “Please forgive my student. She’s usually not so foolish. I’ll speak with her and make her see reason.”
“No, I’m the foolish one,” Sorrow said sadly. He set his glass down. “I should have known better. Humans, especially human women, are simply too emotional for the rigors of serious magical instruction. You and I both know it’s true. But I wanted to make an exception for your sake.”
“Melbourne, you have disappointed me.” Holzhausen said, answering Kit’s question as to whether or not she could feel more miserable. “I hope your attention-pulling stunt was worth it.”
“I’m not lying,” Kit said. She wanted to go home, to her husband and kids and Kaa. She wanted to lie in a warm bed feeling Fenwick’s body along her back and hearing her kids sleeping in their rooms and dreaming of forests. But she had one more job to do. She touched the wood, maintaining the connection.
And then Sorrow walked around the table to set his glass in the sink, and Holzhausen took a step closer to Campbell by the door. Kit pressed herself flat against the cabinet, hoping they’d gotten the angle right. Opening herself to the forest, she gave the signal, a wordless mental map of her position relative to the others and three sharp raps against the wood of the cabinet.
All three vampires glanced up quickly as if hearing something outside, and then Kit heard it too, a ripping of roots through soil.
The wall exploded in water and wood and wind. Enameled tin pans clattered and shards of broken glass exploded into the room. Kit felt something brush by her face close enough to sweep a lock of hair in front of her shoulder. The kitchen light swung wildly and went out. In the darkness, rain poured down.
Campbell began to shout, and then Holzhausen. Kit stood still, not sure if it was safe to move without impaling herself on a broken branch. Holzhausen turned on the light over the stove and the darkness took shape.
They had judged the angle correctly. The dead Douglas fir had ripped a jagged gash out of the side of the kitchen wall when it had fallen against the house. She assessed the vampires. Campbell had been cut on the side of the face, but it looked like it was already healing. Holzhausen held his arm as if it had been struck, but he didn’t have any branches sticking him.
A healthy vampire such as Sorrow should have been able to lift even the weight of a giant tree off himself, but the branches had impaled him, pinning him against the table, and the other branches tangled up with the kitchen chairs. Holzhausen grabbed one of the branches and heaved, but the movement made Sorrow cry out in pain. Holzhausen let go and stepped back, assessing.
The tree was a dead one, not a living one. No more of her people would die to protect her creature. Kit recognized that the thought was not her own, and this time she was ready. Instead of forcing Yseulta to shove Kit aside as she had when the witches saved the dryads, Kit respectfully lifted her hands from the wheel and allowed the goddess to take control of their body.
Yseulta had only to reach out a few inches to grasp the nearest branch. They were wood and rain and wind. They were the fungi in the bark and the bacteria already working on turning the dead wood back into humus. And something flowed from her, the same something she saw flickering in her knife, the one that enabled her to make the wooden stakes that killed vampires. Kit didn’t see anything, but she felt it, felt the wood under her palm and then the tree was her entire body, from root to stem. Whatever fey magic she enchanted her stakes of rowan or apple with to make them deadly to vampires imbued this entire tree as suddenly as water sluicing from a gate. Sorrow’s cry of pain turned into a long rattle as air left dead lungs, and then he was silent.
Holzhausen leapt back from the branches with a yelp. He glanced at his palms as if they were burned. Sorrow stared at the sky, not even blinking as the rain pelted his face.
“Yseulta believes me,” Kit said.
She barely remembered scrambling over the branches through the ripped gash in the side of Holzhausen’s kitchen wall. She climbed carefully along the slick dead wood until she was outside, then dropped to the muddy turf below. Her house was usually a short walk away, but that night it seemed interminable, even as the thunderstorm abated to a light drizzle. By the time she walked across her lawn towards the front door, she was so cold she could barely feel her fingertips. She knocked on the front door, shaking, sniffing away tears and a runny nose and the drizzle of rain that plastered her hair against her face.
Fenwick opened the door with an expression of shock and confusion.
“Hey, it’s me, I know I—”
Fenwick pulled her into a hug. He felt so warm and dry, and his arms completely encircled her. His chest smelled pleasantly like him, his woodsy masculine scent mixed with dryer sheet and a stain of what looked like spaghetti sauce. “I know you’re not Fain. You smell like you,” he said.
“You do too.” She closed her eyes and pressed herself against him. He picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, leaning against his shoulder, as if she were Jade or Gus. A moment later, Kit felt something warm and soft and dry draped around her, which turned out to be a giant fluffy towel, still warm from the dryer.
Fenwick shut the door behind her and leaned over. “I want to hear everything that happened, but first let’s get you out of these wet clothes.”
Kit threw her arms around his neck and gave him the kind of warm, wet kiss which best precedes taking your clothes off.