Rogue's Pawn Read online

  At the end of the road a few buildings clustered beneath the bright light on the pole, the same blue-tinged spotlight every rural homestead in Wyoming seemed to have, as if they came free with cattle-guard grates, woven wire fencing and sheet-metal tool sheds. A new-looking Jetta was parked in front of the house that didn’t look like a lodge. As I walked up to the door, another sign said Welcome. Piano music tumbled softly within.

  Okay then. I rang the bell.

  “Hi there!” said the guy who opened the door, as if I were a neighbor who stopped by frequently.

  I hesitated on the doorstep. He wore several beaded chokers around his neck, framed in the open collar of his faded work shirt. A white mustache stood in stark relief to his tanned, wind-roughened face. An ex-hippie.

  “I’m Frank,” he said, holding out a hand. It seemed he might be about to hug me, but then thought better of it.

  “Dr. McGee,” I answered automatically.

  “You got a first name to go with that title?”

  “Oh—sorry. Habit. Obnoxious habit,” I amended, embarrassed. “Jennifer.”

  He shook my hand. “I’ve always liked Jennifers. Come on in!”

  “Is this a lodge? I’m looking for a hotel or something.”

  “I have four rooms, all empty, you can take your pick. When the rooms are full, you can camp in the yard. Come any time!” He turned and walked back through the mudroom. A shelf ran along the wall with various hiking boots and climbing shoes ranged along it. A scribbled sign said Shoes, with a helpful arrow pointing to the shelf. I slipped off my pumps and set them there with the outdoorsy footwear. Frank waited for me inside the house, by the now-silent piano.

  “I’m sorry to come so late, without notice…” I began. Maybe this was a bad idea.

  “Hey, I figure everyone who comes to this door is brought by divine inspiration of some kind—Buddha, God, the devil, whatever you believe. It’s my job to help you on your way.”

  Definitely an ex-hippie. But harmless, obviously. I sure wasn’t driving any farther tonight if I could help it.

  “So, M.D. or vet?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Doctor, right?”

  “Oh.” I waved my hand, regretting my slip. “The PhD kind. I’m a professor at UW.” I left out that I studied neurophysiology. Somehow I could never make that come out right. It was like telling people you were actually a rocket scientist. They never looked at you the same again.

  Frank nodded to the hallway on my left. “You look tired. Take the Burning Daylight room. It’s our honeymoon suite. In the morning you’ll see sunrise on Devils Tower.” He said it as if there was no greater experience. Maybe to him there wasn’t. And I could barely keep my eyes open.

  To hell with it.

  “Do you need to swipe a credit card?” I reached to open my purse, but Frank just waved a hand at me.

  “We can do that in the morning, after pancakes.”

  I fell asleep to the sound of piano music. Ironic to find myself in the honeymoon suite, when I’d finally walked away from Clive. He was, no doubt, furious over yet another example of my erratic behavior. Illogical and dangerously emotional. Lying in that lodge bed, I really wondered what had possessed me. Maybe I needed to consider seeing a counselor. Out my window, the tower loomed, blacker than the night sky, a silhouette that blocked the stars. An absence of light that somehow still beckoned me.

  I dreamed of the Dog, yet again.

  The room was warm and steamy, lined with stones. The floor, ceiling, walls were all formed of rounded cobbles. I stood at the edge of a black pool. At least, it looked opaque in the flickering torchlight. At the shallow edge, near my toes, I could see that the water was transparent. The floor sloped down, the pool growing deeper and darker, until it disappeared into shadow. No end in sight. I must have been planning to bathe, because I was nude.

  Then the Dog was there.

  The angel hairs on the back of my neck lifted. I spun around. Like a statue of a hound carved out of black glass, the Dog sat on the stone steps that led down from above. Trapped. His amber eyes glinted with relentless hunger, and I wanted to flee but couldn’t. His jaws dropped into a canine grin, white fangs echoing sharply pointed ears. I waited for him to attack, knowing I had no other choice.

  He cocked his ears and tilted his head, waiting for me to answer a question. I didn’t understand what he wanted. I just couldn’t quite grasp it.

  * * *

  I awoke, drenched in nightmare sweat, to bright light and a sunny Devils Tower. It was always the same dream. Always the edge of disaster. Somehow that made it worse.

  After a quick rinse-off in the shower, I dug my contacts out of the water glass I’d soaked them in for the night. I had to put my same panties back on—still slightly damp from the rinsing out the night before. Nothing I could do with my hair and makeup. Not that I’d look a whole lot better even if I had all my stuff. I slipped my necklace and earrings into the pocket of my purse, since the gold was too garish in the morning light. I still looked a little too like a coed doing the walk of shame in last night’s cocktail dress and makeup, but there was nothing to be done.

  Frank gave me the promised pancakes and said nothing about my appearance, if he even noticed. The windows were filled with Devils Tower—and the spaces between had photos, paintings and etchings of the tower.

  “Want me to help you climb it?” Frank asked, pouring strawberry yogurt an inch deep over his pancakes. “I take people up there all the time. I can loan you clothes and shoes.”

  I mulled that over. “I don’t feel a need to climb the tower.”

  “Afraid of heights?”

  “No, I never really have been.”

  “That’s probably why you don’t need to climb then. Your fear lies somewhere else.”

  I shivered and didn’t look out the window. Though I knew perfectly well the Dog wasn’t there. Then I had to look, just to make sure. Bright sunlight on Devils Tower. Nothing else.

  “I’m not sure every fear has to be faced,” I told Frank. “Some are just…figments. Bad wiring that got laid down early.”

  “Or they’re not what you think they are,” Frank agreed. “I find most things have two faces—like the tower there. Like love and hate. There’s a dark and light side. Makes all the difference where you decide to climb.”

  “Good and evil?” I smiled at him.

  “No.” Frank cocked his head at me. “Just different aspects of the same thing. It was the Christian settlers who named it Devils Tower, when the natives told them it was the place of dark gods. For the whites, that meant only one guy. Not everybody sees the world that way.”

  “Who are these dark gods then?”

  “Good question.” Frank nodded. “Many cultures, of course, have believed in all kinds of supernatural creatures populating the world—both divine and mischievous. Faeries, for example.”

  “Tinker Bell and her ilk?”

  Frank tsked at me. “You come from a Celtic background—you should know better. Our ancestors took messing with the fae very seriously. Of course, once they’d decided to mess with you, there’s little recourse.”

  For no reason, a hot chill washed over me, goose bumps pricking in vestigial response. “I don’t believe in any of that.”

  Frank shrugged. “You don’t have to.”

  I left Frank’s, fully intending to get back on the highway, get home and start dealing with my life in a rational way. He hadn’t conceded the argument, I realized. Frank had wished me luck in a knowing way, like people do when they think you’ll need it.

  When I got to the end of his road, I turned left, back to the tower parking lot. I’d come this far, I could at least walk around Devils Tower once. It had nothing to do with facing fear or reconstructing my life, what I did or did not believe in. Or look
ing for whatever I didn’t find last night.

  A sprinkling of cars occupied the lot now. Mostly Wyoming plates and a few from nearby South Dakota and Colorado. Locals, more or less, out to see the sights before the serious tourist season began. The immense rock loomed above me.

  The blacktop path, bordered by some gray government railings, led up into the trees and brush that surged up against the mountain in a slowly greening tide. If I could stand for three hours in my heels at one of Clive’s events, I could walk the advertised 1.3 miles around the tower in them.

  I locked my old Honda by pulling out the handle and flipping the lock, a lazy trick that bypassed the key and never failed to annoy Clive, who predicted horrific locked-out-of-my-car predicaments. In deference to the spring morning chill, I took the fork to the southern side first, walking as briskly as the slick spots and granite outcroppings allowed. The sunny face of the mountain beamed warmth down on me. The air smelled of melting snow over warming pine needles. Swallows swirled in dizzy patterns overhead, their repetitive chimes ringing against the stark granite. A flicker answered, russet tail feathers flashing.

  Then I rounded the north side to increasing shadows and snowy patches. Now the tower’s dark face brooded down on me. The calls of birds and rustling of squirrels gave way to grave quiet. A two-faced mountain, indeed.

  A cold breeze sifted through the pines, making the needles rattle. The small hairs lifted on the back of my neck. I shivered, fighting the urge to glance over my shoulder.

  The Dog is not behind me. The Dog is not real.

  I walked faster. Moldy leaves covered the asphalt trail, so my footsteps made no sound. Around an outcropping of house-sized boulders, a cluster of aspen stood in a hollow between the path and the tower. Fetishes and bits of ribbon hung from the limbs. This had to be where they came, the local tribes, to make their petitions to the dark gods, whoever they might be.

  Fear trilled over me.

  Okay, fine, I’d face it then. I stepped off the path. The air thickened as I approached the aspen grove, seeming to promise something. Their luminous trunks gleamed through the damp air, buds thick on their fairy-thin limbs.

  Aspens’ white bark with jagged scars always looked to me as if lovers had long ago carved their initials into them, careful hearts drawn around, to seal the two together. Silly, romantic and something else I’d never done. The tears that had been rising since I left Frank’s pricked at my eyes.

  Impatient with myself, I set my purse down on a sharp granite outcropping, pulled off my gloves and dug out a pocket knife. I traced a black pattern that could be my initials, digging in to make them really mine. My blade caught on a stubborn bit, hesitated and bit in.

  Bemused by dull pain, I stared at the bright blood welling on my finger where the sharp edge had nicked me. An idea popped into my head, like a bubble bursting.

  I swept the fall of my hair around and found a lock from the back of my neck, from the underside, where it wouldn’t show, and sawed off a piece about half as big around as my pinky and as long as my forearm. I painted the hair with the blood from my finger.

  No, of course I’d never done anything like that before.

  Let’s not even discuss that the blade wasn’t disinfected. Logic and I had parted company when I walked out of Clive’s party.

  As with that precipitous exit, this felt right. Liberating.

  Flipping the knife closed, I tossed it back into my purse, reached up and tied the lock of hair around one fine limb above my initials, so that the ends fluttered free. I stared at it for a moment. Watching its trancelike flutter.

  That was the last thing I remembered—the ribbon of bloodstained dirty-blond hair waving from the tree limb, my red Coach purse on the boulder, my leather gloves crumpled next to it, like the discarded skin of a snake.

  Chapter Two

  In Which I Fall Through the Rabbit Hole

  I awoke on soft grass.

  This surprised me because I didn’t recall falling asleep. As with general anesthesia, when the doctor had you count backward while the fluid flowed into your arm…and then you awoke without ever having been aware of losing consciousness.

  I sat up, blinking against the dryness of my contacts, and found myself on a small hill. A glowing green countryside rolled out below, copses of trees scattered about in pleasing clumps. Morning sunlight still shone down on me, but both warmer and softer than the familiar Wyoming variety. Quite a bit warmer. I shrugged out of my heavy red wool coat, leaving my shoulders bare except for the spaghetti straps of the dress. After a moment, I slipped off my heels, too, and dug my toes into the silky grass.

  No place I’d been to had this shade of emerald. Or a truly sapphire sky like this. It was as if I’d gone from black and white to Technicolor. Dorothy at the cusp of technology.

  In a rush, it came back to me.

  Cutting myself—my finger still throbbed, but the slice had scabbed over. And my hair… I reached up and touched the shorn bit at the nape of my neck. Wild, unreasonable behavior.

  And, shit, my purse was nowhere to be seen.

  A shudder racked me and a sob welled up. What the hell had happened? This was like some fairy tale, where the hapless heroine wandered into a glen and ended up in a magic land. Maybe my escape velocity had hurled me clear into psychosis, colored heavily by Frank’s suggestions of dark faeries.

  I instructed myself to get a grip and be logical. What did I know to be true? I listed it in my head.

  1. I had no idea where I was.

  2. Nothing about myself was changed.

  3. I had been unconscious long enough for my finger to scab over.

  4. This sure as hell didn’t look like Wyoming, much less any place in the world I’d seen. For what that was worth.

  5…

  I got stuck after that. But at least my heart had calmed.

  I hauled myself up and scanned the countryside. Hills, trees, meadows. None of it looked farmed. I turned in a slow circle, ankle-deep in the thick grass. No signs of habitation anywhere. I had hoped to spot some kind of road, to take me to, well, somewhere else. A path, maybe a dirt road of some sort.

  I completed my turn—and there it was. Just as I had imagined. The unreality of it slammed through my mind, making the edges of my vision shimmer.

  Psychosis—looking more and more likely.

  There lay my coat and shoes, just as I’d tossed them, only now they lay on the verge of a road that had not existed a moment before.

  A road that ended—or rather, began—at my bare toes.

  This had to be a dream. A new chapter in the old nightmare. Sometimes I’d get so swept up in a dream that I’d think it was real. Until something really illogical happened and I’d think, as I had just now, Wait! This is a dream, isn’t it? Once I’d caught on to the trick, it was as if I’d solved a puzzle correctly and my subconscious would relent, the dream dissolving away.

  No such luck here. The world remained, dazzling, sharp. Improbably vivid, reminding me of the images in mirrors.

  Okay then, I had wanted a road and now I’d gotten one. I looped my coat over one arm and picked up my heels in the other hand. While the sun shone warm, I might as well go barefoot—I might be walking for a seriously long time. Hopefully the road wouldn’t be too rocky. I found, after a few steps, that the road wasn’t rocky at all, but rather a soft dust soothing to my feet.

  It felt surprisingly pleasant to simply walk along. Though I grew warm. The coat draped over my arm annoyed me and I shifted it to my other arm. A drink of water would be nice, to offset the dust. That stuff felt good on the feet but not so great on the throat.

  As if in answer to my thirst, around the bend a clear brook flowed. It looped out from the trees and back in again, dancing brightly over rounded stones.

  I set my shoes down and dropped
the coat gratefully, wishing I’d left it back at Devils Tower with the other things. I scooped up some water in my hand, then paused. I sat back on my heels, studying the crystal drops. What about giardia? What about…something worse than that?

  The ubiquitous velvety lawn was not Kentucky bluegrass, or any grass I’d ever seen. Botany might not be my forte, but I could recognize most tree species in general—and none of these trees were familiar. The leaves were shaped all wrong, with feathery tips and funny points. And it was quiet. No birds. No insects.

  Not real.

  Observation Number One still stood: I had no fucking clue where I was.

  This might seem to be a fantasy version of Ireland, but it could be Hades’ realm, for all I knew. Which would make me Persephone, trapped here forever if I ate or drank anything. Not to be superstitious, but if I admitted that I’d been somehow transported from Devils Tower to Elsewhere—which would be difficult to argue against—then the Underworld could be as possible as anything else. Or Faerie.

  I racked my brain for the old tales I’d never paid much attention to. There always seemed to be banquets and falling asleep for hundreds of years.

  Regardless, it wasn’t wise to drink water I knew nothing about. I went to wipe my hand on my dress but, feeling suddenly paranoid, turned to wipe it on my coat instead.

  Which was now gone.

  Happily my shoes still lay on the grassy verge, though all alone. As if the coat had never existed.

  Or, as if I had left it behind with the other things. At last, I had another observation to add to my list.

  5. My wishes were coming true.

  Deep, cleansing breaths.

  I gazed at the water, clearing my mind. Let the sound of the ripples soothe you. Relax. There must be some explanation for this.

  Then the angel hairs lifted on the back of my neck in familiar dread.

  No, it can’t be.

  The Dog sat on the opposite bank.

  A high whine rushed past my ears. My face heated to flashpoint. My stomach dropped in panic and every pore prickled with cold sweat.