KIT TROMPED INTO THE FOREST. IT WAS DRIZZLING, TURNING THE EVENING DARK EVEN EARLIER THAN USUAL, AND HE wore a rain parka over his leather jacket and flannel shirt. The large box under his arm had a spare parka over it to keep it dry. Inside the box was a milk steamer, stolen from a home goods store in Olympia with the blessing of his magical immunity. He would have bought it, but seven years of scrounging gold and other junk for the goblins had cleaned him out. A small-town auto repairer and part-time chainsaw-carving artist didn’t make all that much cash. If only their magic could have topped up his bank account instead of granting him license to steal.
He had at least left a five-dollar bill on the shelf in the store, where the milk steamer had sat. He always tried to offer what he could.
He whistled in the darkness of the woods. They whistled back. A path appeared: broken oyster shells on the ground this time, their pure white glowing in the gloom.
When Redring dropped down and morphed into her bathrobe-and-pajama-clad form, Kit removed the spare parka from the box. “Here. Your milk steamer.”
She seized the box and sniffed it. “You said four days. It’s been a week.”
“Well, I have a life. Now you can have lattes. There. Can I go?”
“Don’t you worry we might get up to mischief when you take so long?”
A few others giggled in the trees.
Kit narrowed his eyes. “Should I worry?” He’d heard nothing in town about anyone being attacked in the woods, but then, people didn’t always say anything right away. In fact, in the few past cases he’d heard about, people had been enchanted in such a way that they couldn’t say anything about it.
“Oh no, we are angels,” Redring assured.
The others cackled.
Kit turned halfway to go, but pointed at her. “I better not hear of anything. You’re getting what you want, you just leave everyone else the hell alone.”
“But we always want new things.” Redring’s tone started as a wheedle, then turned sinister. “You aren’t our boss, Sylvain. Only our liaison.”
Too furious to say another word, he glowered and stalked away. He’d have heard if anyone got hurt. It was probably nothing. They were just trying to get to him.
But long, slow pieces of mischief that unfolded over months—or generations—were another of their many specialties. He knew that firsthand.
Livy Darwen’s kayak glided noiselessly through the water. Puget Sound was glassy smooth this morning, clear and dark, a color between seaweed green and black. Wisps of mist drifted atop the surface, and Livy’s breath joined them in tiny clouds. It was the last day of December, and the town dock had been slick with frost when she launched her boat.
Today, she thought, probably belonged to Water. Although perhaps Air; something in the frozen, scentless quiet of winter tended to suggest Air to her. She was an environmental scientist and had therefore taken more than enough organic chemistry to know that nature contained far more than four elements, but the traditional Earth-Air-Fire-Water system of organization still appealed to her. There was something human and emotionally real about looking at nature that way, and she often found herself categorizing the feel of each day under one of the four.
Working for the Forest Service as she did, the importance of those elements was especially obvious. Understanding the forest meant understanding the soil, air, and water, and, much as they unnerved her, the wildfires.
At least winter had been good and soaked, free of forest fires, the way she preferred life. Dealing with a fire season on top of Skye’s problems would be altogether too much.
She frowned at something crinkled and silver marring the water’s surface. She steered the kayak toward it, jabbed the blade of her paddle at it, and fished it out.
“Fuck you, Mylar balloon,” she told it, and dumped it into the boat between her feet.
Lately she addressed too many inanimate objects that way. Used to be she would fish garbage out of the water and declare in triumph, “Haha, potato chip bag! No Pacific trash vortex for you.”
Now she swore at it. Same with the invasive plants she pulled out of the forest when she was working. Instead of her old, “There you go, trees, bet you can breathe easier now,” it had become, “Fuck you, ivy. Fuck you, knotweed. Fuck you, blackberries.” It had been like this ever since Skye fell ill.
Or depressed. Or whatever she was, exactly. Two weeks now, and the three doctors they’d seen weren’t sure what the problem was. A sudden-onset depression was their best guess, and they’d treated her accordingly—some pills, some therapy. Nothing was helping yet. Skye still barely spoke or ate, and looked unhappy all the time. She continued to work at the cafe, but not as many hours, and she didn’t draw or paint as much as she used to.
Livy let the paddle go still, resting it across the edges of the kayak’s cockpit. Why would Skye be depressed? It was such an abrupt change. Up until now Skye had been a resilient, happy person with so much going for her and plenty to look forward to. And lately Livy would have sworn she detected trauma in Skye’s eyes, as if something had happened to her. But then why wouldn’t Skye tell her? She knew she could tell Livy anything.
A scraping sound coasted across the water. Livy looked toward shore. She floated a hundred yards off the northern point of Crabapple Island, one of the many small islands stranded in the middle of their long inlet of Puget Sound. On the island’s rocky shore, a man was trying to haul a waist-high chunk of driftwood up the slope toward his truck.
Livy grimaced, swung the bow of her kayak toward shore, and paddled forward. The curt reminder about taking driftwood from public beaches withered on her tongue, though, when he stopped and jerked upright as if in pain, hands planted on his lower back.
Her kayak slid onto the beach. Its fiberglass hull scraped against the rocks, and the man turned. As she expected: Kit Sylvain. Scruffy dusting of beard, shaggy brown hair sticking out from under a ball cap, teeth flashing in a wincing smile as he spotted her.
“Here. Let me help you.” She shipped the paddle and climbed out of the boat, stepping into the shallows in her knee-high rubber boots. She dragged the kayak higher onto shore where the tide wouldn’t pull it away. Small round rocks slid under her feet as she plodded up toward Kit. “Bad back?”
“Yeah. Tweaked it the other day when I was moving a Mustang engine.”
“Ouch.” She took hold of two of the twisted protuberances on the driftwood stump. “I’ll take this side.”
“Thanks.” He grasped the other side, and together they hefted the stump to his truck, and shoved it into the open tailgate.
“That’s a big guy,” Livy said, breathing hard. She ran her fingers down the stump’s bumpy surface, chaotically striped in all colors of brown. “Cedar, I think.”
“I think so too. Should be a good one.”
“Going to carve something with it?”
“Yep.” He grinned. “Guess you recognize me, then.”
“Course I do. Small town. I’m Livy Darwen, though, if you didn’t recognize me.”
“Course I did. Small town.” He thumped the tailgate shut, then gave her another smile-wince. “It’s illegal to take driftwood, isn’t it?”
“From a beach that isn’t yours, yeah. Technically. But I’m not going to bust you.”
“Really? I thought you worked for the state or something.”
“Forest Service. But I’ve got to admit, I like seeing your carvings when I drive in and out of town.”
“Thanks.” He patted the stump. The wind gusted and she caught the comfortable scent of his battered brown leather jacket. “Would’ve brought my cousin to help me carry it, but he’s busy at the auto shop.”
“You have a cousin in town? I hadn’t heard that.”
“Yep.” He smiled at her. And for a second, despite her numb hands and wounded soul, she remembered why girls in school always used to gaze at Kit Sylvain, and why grown women surely still did. “His name’s Grady,” Kit said. “A little younger than me, twenty-one. His branch of the family lives out in Moses Lake, but Grady loves it over here on the Sound. So I’m letting him stay with me till he finds somewhere affordable in Seattle.”
“Could be a long wait. City’s getting expensive.”
“Sure is.”
An awkward silence fell between them.
“Well hey, can I buy you coffee?” Kit said after a few seconds, and Livy was so startled she stared at him. “I owe you for this.” He slapped the driftwood with the flat of his hand. “And for not busting me.”
“Oh. Thanks, but—” She flipped her thumb toward her boat. “I’ve got the kayak. Have to get it back to the dock in town, where I parked.”
“I can fit it in here.” He nodded toward the truck bed. “Plenty of room.”
She was tempted for a second, which was bizarre. Kit was so not her usual type—her usual type being older guys with a couple of college degrees and a tranquil love of science. Not that those had been working out so well. In school, Kit had belonged to one of the years between Livy’s and Skye’s classes. She remembered him as a rebel with torn jeans who didn’t talk to people much, but who could sometimes be seen making out with a girl in his truck cab in the high school parking lot. Which, she had to admit, always inspired some curiosity in her, but she and Skye had both kept their distance from him.
Maybe that had been snotty of them. Maybe she ought to give him a chance, now that they were older.
Then she thought of Skye back home, of the doctor appointments she had to take her to, the symptoms and treatments she had to Google, the way her life had a pall thrown over it lately. She was only twenty-six, but these days she felt old and tired.
Livy shook her head. “I just got started. I ought to finish the paddle, get the exercise.”
“You sure?”
She nodded.
“Okay, well.” He jingled his keys in a pocket. “Come find me at the garage if you want a raincheck. I’d be happy to, anytime.”
“All right. Thanks.”
“Happy New Year.”
“You too.”
She walked down the beach as he went around to the driver’s side of the truck. Automatically she picked up a juice-box straw lying in the tide line of sticks and seaweed.
His truck door squeaked open. She frowned at the straw as if it were of deep significance. A few seconds after the engine revved to life, she dared a glance up. His eyes met hers in the side mirror, and he splayed his fingers in a wave. She returned a weak wave with her numb hand. The engine revved and Kit drove away, the cedar stump bouncing in the bed as if excited about its new journey.
Kit glanced again in the rearview mirror. Livy’s form descended toward her kayak, reduced by distance to a collection of items and muted colors: navy baseball cap, green rain jacket, brown boots. Nothing fancy. She was still cute, though; always had been, even chilled and without makeup. But then, she’d never been the nail polish and hairspray type, as far as he could remember. They’d never been classmates, but their school was small, so he’d seen her around plenty. To his mind she was a babe with a nice rack and blondish hair that curled in a way he liked, and sweet pouty lips.
To her mind, he was evidently not worth accepting coffee for. Kit smirked, coming to a half-stop before steering onto the island’s loop road. Oh well. A guy in his position couldn’t get tied down in a relationship anyhow.
That didn’t stop him from casual dating. Ordinarily he let the women do the asking, which happened often enough in the form of vacationers coming through town and needing cars repaired, or stopping to delight in his chainsaw carvings. But by December, he usually had been going a couple of months without many vacationers around. So when fate threw him together with a fellow local, he thought he’d give it a shot.
Or get shot down. Whichever.
Could be she was seeing someone, though. Maybe nothing personal.
He glanced at the hunk of driftwood in the mirror, and told it, “She was nice, anyway. Gave me a hand.”
Deciding he’d make Grady help him haul the stump out of the bed later, he drove off to get coffee. Alone, for now.