17

The phone rang; Jesse abandoned his painting, and raced downstairs to get it.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Jess.”

Gisela's voice. “Hi. Nobody else is around, if you're looking for someone in particular.”

“I'm looking for you in particular. Busy?”

“Just painting Kev's and my bathroom. I can leave it if something's up.”

“Will you do something for me?”

“Sure.”

“Come meet me in the village? I'll wait for you in front of the library, okay?”

“Yeah, I'll be there shortly. Just let me get cleaned up, I'm all paint. Everything okay?”

“Just... I need you to come. Please? I'll explain when you get here. Don't kill yourself getting here, you better take a shower if you're that much of a mess, but don't take all night.”

“No problem.”

“See you in a little while, then. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Puzzled, he had a quick shower, getting rid of as much of the pale-blue paint as he could—he'd never claimed to be neat about painting—and changed into his own clothes instead of the older jeans and T-shirt Flynn had given him for messy work. He left the house and headed for the village proper at a fairly rapid walk, clean, if perplexed.

Gisela was perched on the wooden bench in the middle of the library's grassy yard, waiting impatiently.

“It's about time. Come on, I'm thirsty, I want to go get a drink.”

“Why did I have to come down here right now?”

“Oh, relax. I'll tell you in a minute.” She got up, and started down the sidewalk. He fell into step behind her, around the corner, and to the end of that block.

“There's a cool place called the Brewery,” Gisela said. “Kevin told me it's a bad pun on witches' brews, but I don't know if he was teasing me or not. That might actually be it, 'cause the owner is related to Kev and Lori and he was Kevin's teacher in magic. There's no sign, that way no tourists wandering through can find it.”

“So why are you telling me?”

“Because you aren't an outsider any more. And you won't tell anybody else. You can see it from here, any guesses?”

Jess considered the street. There was a post office, and a garage, and a store with a sign that said Venus Alive, and a hairdresser, and otherwise only a few huge old-looking houses, most with impressive yards, some with small signs visible suggesting that they were now at least partly businesses rather than homes.

“No idea.”

Gisela bounced up onto the porch of the house at the corner, the one with the privacy fence around the back yard. “This one.” The porch was large, spanned both outer faces, and all along the top were carved fantastic animals: dragons, strange-looking birds, hybrids, something he seemed to recall was a gryphon. Just over the door was a carved cauldron with a bird with a long trailing tail flying out of it. A bench was built along the wall, the arms and legs and the ridge along the back similarly adorned. The steps up at the corner led to double doors. Beyond them was a second set of doors.

Within lay a wild cross between modern and medieval. The floor was hardwood, wooden beams and pillars supported the ceiling, the tables and chairs were all made of genuine heavy wood. The room was L-shaped, with a bar along one of the walls diagonal from them, patio doors on the other showing only the last traces of snow at the moment. Winter in Haven was milder than he'd expected so far north; he could only assume some kind of supernatural influence. Although Cynthia would probably say that everything a witch did was within nature.

“Come on,” Gisela insisted when he paused to scan the room warily. She caught his hand, and led him to the back part of the L-shaped room.

“Well, hello there,” a familiar voice said teasingly from one of the larger tables. Kevin waved to the two empty seats between him and Flynn, the only ones vacant at the crowded table. “Do join us.”

“I'm getting the distinct feeling this is a set-up,” Jesse said, but took the seat beside Kevin when Gisela took the other.

Deanna laughed. “Y'see, you weren't here for your birthday, which we found out was exactly two weeks ago, so we decided to celebrate it today.”

“Better late than never,” Gisela said. “How old did you turn?”

“Uh... eighteen. I didn't even remember my damned birthday!”

“Well, we did for you,” Flynn said. “Happy birthday belatedly.”

“Gotcha,” Gisela said gleefully. “And you thought I was in trouble.”

“So, let's party,” Cynthia said. “Money's no problem.”

Nick came over to deliver menus.

“Finally got you here, huh? Want me to get drinks right away?”

Quick decisions, and he left to get them while they spent more time on choosing food. Most of the appetizers on the menu, to be shared between them, before the range of entrées.

After supper, they went for a lengthy walk in the cool spring night, and stopped to rent a couple of movies. There were presents, when they got back to the house.

His mind offered up images of Christmas mornings and birthdays, of expensive presents that for the most part he didn't want and yet was expected to be grateful for. He winced away from the memories. He'd be just as happy to forget holidays altogether.

Except here he was sitting in a circle with six people who each had a present for him, and he had no doubts at all that this was utterly different.

Flynn's was a single silver earring, he said to replace the old silver crescent stud through Jesse's left ear; the new one was a crescent moon on a short chain. There was a necklace to match, the same crescent on a silver chain. He switched immediately, and clasped the necklace into place. Moon symbolism had always appealed to him, maybe because of his natural tendency to be nocturnal, and these were simple but just right.

Kevin's was silver and bronze in a very different form: a dagger with a six inch blade, and interestingly, the minimal adornment on the graceful hilt and sheath was all lunar.

*It took me hours to fix the spells on my knife, y'know.* Jesse started, found Kevin watching him, grinning. The words formed clearly in his mind, unmistakably Kevin's voice. *If you ever, ever touch any of my tools again...* There was laughter behind the threat.

“Why are you blushing?” Deanna demanded. “Kev, what did you just say to him to make him blush that red?”

“Oh, nothing,” Kevin said innocently. *Since you were so interested in mine, I thought I'd get you one.*

The dagger felt good in his hand; he drew it, half expecting another painful shock, but nothing happened. Only metal. It felt... almost familiar. Comfortable. He slid it back into the sheath, and laid it beside him on the floor to see what was next. Doing his best to get his blushing under control. He should've expected Kevin to know, after everything he'd seen the mage do!

Deanna's was a length of wood, bent so the ends were crossed and lashed together, with what looked like a silvery spider's web woven in the middle, small beads shimmering like dewdrops in it, and feathers dangling.

“It's a dream-catcher,” she explained. “You hang it by your bed, and the good dreams are funnelled through the hole in the middle to you, and the bad dreams are caught until sunrise when they die. I made it.”

“Hey, that's cool. Who invented them?”

“They're a Native tradition.”

Cynthia gave him a new Walkman, which delighted him—his old one had gotten beyond all repair a month ago, and he hadn't had a chance to steal a new one yet. This one was better than any he'd ever had, she'd even included an upgraded set of earphones, and he decided instantly to keep it out of sight when he went back to the city.

He opened the box that held Bane's, discovered a new pair of black jeans, and a black leather vest. The jeans were the right size; he stripped off the sweatshirt he was wearing so he could try the vest. Why wasn't he surprised it fit?

“You look good,” Deanna told him.

Gisela lingered on the fringes until he was done the rest, then handed him a small box. Inside was yet more silver—a ring, shaped like a snake holding its tail in its mouth.

“That's a promise-ring,” Deanna said, plainly surprised. “What promise, kitten?”

Gisela looked down, and blushed. “Just... friendship. And truth for truth, always.”

“That's about standard,” Kevin said, flashing Gisela a quick smile. She returned it, tentatively.

Jesse tried it on. It fit perfectly on the ring-finger of his right hand. How did they manage things like that? It was one thing for clothes, easy enough to check anything he wasn't wearing, but ring size? Truth for truth... that was something to think about.

“Now I'm all set,” he laughed. “C'mere, you.”

Uncertainly, she came. Squealed when he hugged her, but she hugged him back before escaping.

Eventually, they did get to bed.

Jesse left the silver-and-bronze dagger in reach, on the table by the bed, and hung the dream-catcher above him, in the window.

No nightmares troubled him, but his dreams were a confusion of trying to choose the path through a forest that would take him where he so desperately wanted to go, when the map he held showed him only a path that led the wrong way into a desert.

* * *

All the world seemed dark and quiet, sleeping peacefully; Sam sat by the living room window, gazing out over the vacant street below her. Alfari lay on her lap, relaxed and alert at once the way cats had mastered beyond any other creature, purring while Sam stroked her. The sky was bright with stars, but this was the night the moon hid her face from the world.

Things were not as serene as they seemed on the surface. Out there, somewhere, just on the fringes of her awareness, something searched that meant only evil to the one it sought. How it had come here from the demon plane to this, whether called for some purpose or lucky enough to slip through a crack between planes, mattered not at all; it was here.

Its presence stirred old memories in her mind: the wolves descended from Alessandria's seventh child Cassandra and her Native shaman mate; the community that had formed a century and a half before, at first to support Cassandra's line when they felt rejected and misunderstood by Haven, then they'd found that it brought good to them all; Unity that had been built on hope and love to be their own home, bringing them all together physically.

A terrifying night of unearthly music from the lake, a storm like nothing she'd imagined could be real, and by morning she was alone and feared only she had survived.

Unity, she had realized much later, had died at the hands—or whatever—of the bad sort of demons and of something unknown that lived in the deep lake Unity had been built at the edge of. Demons like the one that now hunted in Haven for Jesse.

Surely here, amidst so many other wolves and other races and seeking a target who didn't even know himself, it would be unable to find one wolf that still carried demon blood and thus was still a threat to any hostile demon who manifested on the material plane.

“Sam?” Bryan said softly. She didn't bother to glance back as he padded barefoot across the carpeted floor to lay his hands on her shoulders. “What is it?”

She started a bit, then realized he wasn't asking about the presence outside, only about what kept her up at this hour.

“There's something out there that shouldn't be.”

“Dangerous?”

Only to Jess, only if it finds him. I don't matter, no matter what I know, I'm only human. “Not as things stand right now. I don't think it'll find what it wants. Then it'll go away.” For a while, at least. They must suspect something, to look here.

Absently, he began to rub the muscles of her shoulders and upper back; she hadn't known until then how tense she was. “I have a hunch I shouldn't ask.”

“I can't tell you.”

“All right. Are you going to sit here all night?”

“Until it leaves, I think.”

“You'll be too sleepy to open the shop tomorrow.”

“I'll be okay. You can go back to bed.”

“Call me if you want me.”

“I will.”

Bryan gave Alfari a good-night rub under her chin, and went back to his room; Sam listened, noticed in affectionate amusement but no surprise that he didn't close his door. She'd been lucky a thousand times over when he found her, she could ask for no truer friend.

Alfari resettled herself more comfortably, quite content to hold vigil with her. It couldn't stay past dawn. Only a few more hours at most, before she could relax and know that once again Jesse had escaped.

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