The Witch and the Huntsman Read online

  The other really great thing about him? He always works late, and seems to have no life. Pretty much like me. Actually, we’d have made a great couple—if only he didn’t look like the Pillsbury Doughboy. And if only my life wasn’t so weird.

  He answered his cell on the first ring. Which was when I realized I didn’t even know his first name. ‘F. A.’ was all it said on his desk plate.

  I explained the situation to him as quickly as I could. Spoken aloud, I guess it sounded kind of lame—but he hadn’t heard the terror in Marisa’s voice. I finished with: “So I was kind of wondering if there was anything detectivy you could do. You know, like trace the cell phone call back to where she made it. Or at least the closest tower or whatever, so I’d have some idea of where she was.” I noticed I was already speaking of the poor woman in the past tense.

  “No, I’m afraid I can’t do that, Allison. I’d like to help—you know I don’t doubt your, um, abilities and instincts about the supernatural, not after what we’ve been through together. But it would take a court order to cough up your Psycho Hotline company’s caller records, and even if I could get a judge to sign on, which is never gonna happen, it would still probably take another week to get PacBell or whoever to comply.”

  “What about the tower? Can’t you trace it that way? I’m always reading on the Times site that you guys are running your own illegal towers to snoop on cell calls. This is an emergency! Somebody’s life may be at stake!”

  “You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the Internet, Allison. Besides, even if unsubstantiated rumors like that were true, we’d still be looking for a needle in a haystack. She didn’t call you on your own cell, right? If she had, things would be a lot easier.”

  My heart sank. I knew he was right.

  “Look, it will be twenty-four hours before I can even put out a MisPer BOLO out for her.” This was cop-talk for a “Be On the Look Out for a Missing Person.” That much I knew from hanging around the station. “In the meantime, do some of your witchy stuff and try to bring me in something a little more solid—shall we say first thing in the morning? There’s nothing more either of us can do right now. Might as well sleep on it, am I right? You’ll feel better about this in the morning, I promise.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Like I had a choice.

  “Goodnight, Allison. Sleep tight.”

  Was it my imagination or had his voice sounded sort of tender when he got off? Big deal, I told myself. It’s just that he’s as lonesome as you are.

  ***

  He was right. I did feel better in the morning.

  Maybe it was just the coffee, or maybe it was because I was a woman on a mission, but I felt freshly charged up and energized like a little Eveready bunny as I drove over to the Beverly Hills police station bright and early the next morning. Somehow, things looked better in the daylight —though I knew Sam wouldn’t have agreed, being a vampire and all.

  Sam was not handicapped like poor Victor, who could only go out at night—which worked because it was actually kind of normal for Las Vegas, where we lived, but still was a giant pain for both of us. Sam, on the other hand, possessed a magical ring to ward off the effects of the sun’s rays. This had been forged for her by the occult librarian at Cal State Fullerton, Archibald Maximus.

  The very cute librarian, even if he was really, really old. Because he totally didn’t look it.

  Actually, right now, even as I drove down North Rexford to the station, I was wearing a ring he’d made for me, too. The thing was, I wasn’t quite sure what it actually did. I was still learning its powers. Whatever they were, they certainly didn’t include getting a good non-metered parking space anywhere near the stationhouse.

  “So what have you got for me?” Smithy asked after I finally found a spot for my banged-up old Toyota Camry and walked into his office. He was the only Robbery-Homicide detective at Beverly Hills, so that meant he got his own office. It was called the “squad room” or the “bullpen” in other stations, he’d told me; the main one downtown was half the size of a football field.

  His wasn’t—it was about the size of my kitchen.

  “Consulted all your spooks and spirits?” He meant Millicent.

  “Nope.” I cleared a stack of file folders off the seat of the single chair across the desk from him and sat down. He’d cleaned up for my visit, I could tell; shined his shoes, put on his newest suit, and even trimmed his nose hairs. I felt flattered.

  “I still can’t raise Millicent. She’s not a morning person, anyway.”

  “What about your human partner, Ivy?”

  He got that hungry, wistful sound in his voice that all men get when they ask after Ivy. She’s a knockout is why—and about ten years younger than me. She’s blonde, has a perfect figure, and glamorous good looks. He was probably hoping she’d tag along this morning, too. In fact, I realized that was probably why he’d gone to all the trouble with his appearance. Sigh.

  “Sorry, you’re out of luck. She’s off on a film shoot in Baja.”

  Did I mention that Ivy’s talented, too? It figures she’s an up and coming actress. If we weren’t so bound up together now with this trifecta business, I’d probably hate her.

  “Anyway, I did come up with an idea or two for you in the night,” I went on. “It was the ski lifts in the distance that made me think of it. So first thing when I got up I went online and Googled ski lodges in the US. I’m pretty sure that’s where she was—is—and probably pretty close by, too. Because I’ve never actually established a close psychic link with anybody overseas.”

  In point of fact, I’ve never even known anybody overseas, aside from in the military, but I didn’t need to tell him that; Smithy thought I was enough of a yokel as it was.

  “So I checked out a few ski lodges here in California, but they’re all closed right now because it’s summer. And you know, there’s a drought and all.” As I was speaking, Smithy was nodding and tapping away at his own keyboard while he stared at his monitor. “There’s only one ski lodge in America that’s open for skiing all year round—La Chasse Lodge in Oregon.”

  “Got it,” he said. “Good work, Allison—you’ll be up for my job at this rate. You sure this is the place?”

  I nodded, beaming at the compliment. I’m a sucker for a well-earned compliment. Anyway, I was pretty sure it was the place; something inside me had sort of hummed when I first saw its web page. My Higher Self, the part of me that’s attuned to Mother Gaia.

  The Great Detective brought up their Wikipedia page on his desk computer. “Let’s see...La Chasse Lodge, halfway up Mount Hood, opened in 1937, dedicated by President Roosevelt, blah, blah...looks kind of like that hotel in The Shining, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re not cheering me up.”

  “Sorry about that. Oh, I see. Turns out that all the exterior scenes for the movie were shot there, so not just my imagination. Let’s see, nearest police station is in Sandy...damn, that’s pretty far away. Oregon State Police has a substation in Government Camp, that’s pretty near. Hold on, I’ll give them a call.”

  It took him a while, but Smithy finally got through to a sergeant on duty, who was named Robinson Doberman. Helluva name for a cop. Smithy next told this guy his name—still just the ‘F. A.’, no Fred or Frank or Ferdinand—and asked him if they’d had any reports of a missing hotel guest named Marisa, no last name.

  “No missing guests or strange women wandering around in the snow up there? Okay, well, thanks for your time, Sergeant—I’ll stand you a cold one next time you come down here to the Southland. Ha! Cold day in hell, he says,” Smithy said after he hung up. “Wonder why it is that everybody in Oregon hates California so much? I like it here.”

  Which made me wonder if he was originally from someplace else. But I didn’t have time to ask—I was already on my cell scrolling for plane reservations.

  “What’s the nearest city to this God forsaken place?” I asked him.

  “Portland. It’s about an hour’s drive awa
y. What the hell, Allison, you aren’t seriously thinking of flying up there, are you? On your own dime? Just on a crazy hunch?”

  “Welcome to my wild and crazy world, Detective,” I told him with a smile. But the smile was fake.

  The truth was that inside, I was scared shitless. I had an eerie premonition about this trip—and it totally wasn’t that it was going to be my dream vacation. Normally when I psychically look ahead to things, I get a clear vision of myself doing something afterwards, too. You know, some event like next Christmas at my folks or just me returning home again and turning on the coffee machine or opening a bottle of wine. This is called ‘clairvoyance.’

  But this time, I couldn’t see anything past the moment I arrived at the Chasse. And no matter what I did, I still couldn’t get the picture of that movie, The Shining, out of my head.

  Damn you, Stephen King.

  Chapter Three

  Three hundred and five dollars a night it was going to cost me to stay there!

  And that was for the cheapest rooms they had, the little squished-up ones that overlooked the parking lot! Plus $500 for a round-trip ticket to Portland on Alaska Airlines, the cheapest I could find on such short notice. And speaking of parking lots, I’d have to leave my Camry in short term parking at LAX—and who knew for how long? Smithy was right; throw in a rental car, and this crazy trip to rescue a person I’d never even met before was easily going to cost me two grand! Holy crap! My Visa card was going to be underwater for the rest of the year.

  “What was that?” snapped my boss. “I didn’t hear it.”

  “I didn’t say anything.” At least I thought I hadn’t. Not out loud. Maybe I had, though—this was going to be two thousand dollars I couldn’t really afford. Especially if I was losing a whole week of paid work.

  “I don’t think a week’s suspension is unfair in this case,” continued Donna, like a true mind reader, which she claimed to be. Not that that was any tough trick at the moment.

  I’d gone in for my punishment at noon, as commanded. Her ‘offices’ consisted of a single loft over a pool hall that was filled with tables and banks of phones. And her desk. All the furniture there looked like it had been inherited from a bookie’s office, which it probably was.

  “It could have been two weeks, you know. Or we could have just fired you. You’ve been blowing off the thirty-minute rule a lot lately.”

  The ‘thirty-minute rule’ is how long we’re supposed to keep the client engaged in chatting on hotlines. The first twenty minutes’ profit all goes to Donna; after that, our commission kicks in. After thirty minutes, a client will begin to relax and pour out all her personal details—and in our business, it’s almost always a “her” — so reaching that golden $150 hour, when you’ve established a relationship and the big money call backs are in the cards, gets easier and easier from there.

  “Look, Allison,” Donna went on, her voice softening just like I was one of her palmistry marks back in the day, “you’re one of my best readers, and I personally don’t want to lose you. We feel you’ve got really great potential. But you need to pay more attention to the micro-economics of the industry. Take this week to brush up on your Cheshires and get your act together, okay?”

  Cheshires are these flexible scripts we read from where we’re supposed to get personal info and do ‘high-dollar’ readings. Why they’re called Cheshires, I have absolutely no idea. And Donna’s not the worst in the business by a long shot—she’s like Honest Abe compared to some of the other outfits I’ve worked for. At least she doesn’t use ‘fishing and baiting’ techniques to illegally obtain credit card info or do ‘curse removals’ for an extra fee.

  Beware any psychic who tells you there is a curse on you, by the way; those are always phony. Unless, of course, it’s me saying it...

  Since I really am a psychic, I mean. For instance, right now I could read Donna’s bullshit like a book. For all her talk about how great I was, she just plain didn’t like me.

  I fumed about our conversation on the plane all the way to Portland. I kept coming up with petty little ideas for revenge. I mean, I was a witch, for crying out loud! I should be able to hex her pretty good in revenge for that week I’d been suspended—nothing terrible or tragic, you understand, but just a sort of subconscious reminder that it’s not nice to mess with Mother Gaia. I’d read about a magic spell called the “Curse of a Hundred Small Things” in one of my Wicca books, so I started daydreaming about all the nasty little booboos I could bring down on that bitch right now, like paper cuts, runs in her stocking, coffee spills in her lap, maybe a bright blue screen on her computer...

  Suddenly I heard the faintest of whispers: “Beware of what you wish for, child...”

  “Millicent!” My innermost thoughts replied to her, not my vocal cords. “You’re back! Wow, am I ever glad to hear your voice! So much has been happening—and I really need your help.”

  By now, I was so used to having my dead friend’s voice in my head that it was like having a part of myself restored to me again. But her words, when they came, were still as quiet and distant as a wind from the far side of the moon. A place Sam Moon knew well. Long story, and one I’m still not one hundred percent sure I believed.

  “When you open yourself up to magic, Allison, it is not just the light that comes in. The dark is waiting, too...”

  Hey, the dark can feel pretty damn good sometimes, I thought.

  “Allison! The dark side can corrupt you, can make you do its bidding. You’ve glimpsed the demon that Samantha wrestles with daily—you’ve seen the evil that can possess and destroy those you care about.”

  Yeah, okay, I guess I had. And a little too intimately, sometimes, like when I’d witnessed the Englishman Billy and his daughter being taken over by the creature from hell that had haunted their house. I suppressed an involuntary shudder.

  “It can begin so innocently, just by being selfish and using your gifts to punish those who would help you.”

  “Huh? You mean, Donna? She’s helping me by laying me off for a week?” I snorted. This time I really did do it aloud, and the noise startled the guy in the seat next to me, even though he was wearing headphones.

  “Yes, she is, dear. What you did to those girls at the slumber party was wrong, and you know it. They were little more than children. With magical powers such as yours comes great responsibility. A witch who becomes corrupted by evil can become greater and more powerful than any demon.”

  “Wait—you know about that? I thought you were still keeping radio silence then.”

  “You forget I can always read your mind. But Allison, that isn’t why I’m reaching out to you now—I need to warn you. This...this...journey you are undertaking...” but her voice was weakening again. It really was like trying to tune in my dad’s old transistor radio in the garage.

  “...you must not...there is great danger, Alli...so much darkness ahead...”

  But then the captain’s voice came over the loudspeakers in the cabin and drowned out Millicent’s words inside my head. Great. His totally useless warning had kicked Millicent out of my head completely. At least, for now.

  Portland International Airport smelled like mildew and was filled with surprisingly dark and malign vibrations, like it was built on a Native American burial ground or something. Maybe I should go freelance, I thought. Maybe I could get hired to turn Oregon ghost-free...

  Instead, I took the Dollar bus to my Kia rental car and drove up the Mt. Hood Highway, through the little town of Sandy to the even littler town of Government Camp in the gathering gloom. I couldn’t raise Millicent again, no matter how hard I tried. She was already right about one thing, though; there was much darkness ahead. It was almost pitch-black by the time I got to La Chasse Lodge. Only the snow glowed faintly gray all around me as I followed the little two-lane Snowline Highway that snaked steeply up the mountain. The road surface was covered with a slick sugary sprinkling that reflected my headlights, even though it was midsummer.

&n
bsp; I’m not in Los Angeles anymore...

  Anyway, I was the only driver on the road for those last few miles before the highway ended and became a two-lane road that led to the Lodge. In fact, I might have been all alone in the world.

  That illusion lasted for about two more minutes. Then I crested a long curve and saw lights and a sign directing me to turn right onto a long one-way La Chasse access drive, which was lined with parked cars, some half-buried in snow. Outdoor lights glowed everywhere like snow lanterns, and the historic main lodge, looking nothing like its movie self, was dazzlingly lit up like a Christmas tree surrounded by boxy brick service buildings masquerading as presents. Right now, my worst problem wasn’t fighting off any evil emanating from them—it was finding a place to park.

  To make matters worse, I was sideswiped into a snowbank by a delivery van pulling out of one of the brick boxes. It had ‘Jaeger Specialty Game Meats and More...’ painted on its side panels.

  The little Kia’s all-weather radials spun and whined, but finally I skidded out of the snowbank and drove around to the main lot, which was about the size of a football field and had plenty of spaces free. But from there, I had a long, freezing walk I totally wasn’t dressed for, hauling my suitcase across the parking lot where a famous Hollywood director once had his head chopped off by a helicopter, according to Google.

  If I’d been my vampire friend Samantha Moon, I could have stopped and maybe had a chat with the director’s ghost, because Sam sees spirits everywhere. I can see Millicent, even feel her physically sometimes—and there was the embarrassing fact that I’d hung with her son Peter several times without even realizing he was a ghost and not a real living person. And, okay, I’d seen demons, too—but so far, no other dead souls.