A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

“Can’t really say, as yet. The Weed has seemed to cut itself a path, though I don’t know . . .” He stopped. “Yancey? You all right?”

She shook her head, knowing the smile she’d worked so hard over must be abruptly gone. “Just realized there’s a whole other round of chores needs doing—gotta swap out the linens.” She stretched up on tiptoe to gift him with a brief peck. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Yancey! Enough canoodling!” Pa was trying for a glare, but his voice held that slight crack she knew proved him more jocular than angry. With a wave to them both, she ducked her head and slid from the room, soon halfway to the second floor, where her true errand awaited.

Avoiding the hall’s creakiest boards, she eased her way down to the door of what Pa still optimistically insisted on calling the Bridal Suite—their largest bedroom, refurbished with an excess of lace doilies, fine quilts and pomanders. Certainly, the two guests who’d checked in a half-week back didn’t meet anyone’s definition of a honeymoon couple.

’Cept for their own, perhaps, she thought. And blushed for herself, at the very idea of someone of her tender age being well aware what that euphemism might mean.

A hotel was no fit place for a lady of true delicacy, she’d always heard. But then—from Yancey Colder’s point of view, safe was better than sorry. And to know was always safer, by damn far, than not.

Took one moment more for her to find the nerve she needed. Then she lifted one brisk fist to rap on the door—only to see it cracked open with unexpected abruptness, grey-brown eyes peering down hard at her through the narrow gap.

“Don’t need any towels,” growled the man, who’d given his name as “Chester,” on registration. (“Mister . . . Chester, that is. Senior.” “And your brother, sir?” “Well . . . he’d be Mister Chester too, ’course. Junior.”)

But Yancey, who could tell the ostensible irritation masked wariness, felt suddenly that much more confident.

“Not what I’m here for, sir. Would you let me in to check the levels in your oil lamps?”

“Would you go away, I tell you no?”

“Honestly? No.” Yancey didn’t smile, holding his hazel eyes with her own similar-coloured gaze. “Because, you see—I know who you really are, Mister Morrow. Both of you.”

At this, he just stared, open-mouthed. While she, in turn, indicated the unseen room beyond—along with its other, equally unseen, occupant.

“May I come in?” Yancey Colder repeated, patiently.

“Might as well,” Chess Pargeter replied, from inside.

Chapter Four

Five days back:

The dream took hold without warning—one moment Morrow was alone in his own skull, sunk deep in darkness and not missing all too much, so long as the pain in his jaw stayed gloriously absent. Next, however, he found himself sat up alongside Reverend Rook in one of a matched pair of chairs cunningly cobbled together from what looked—and felt, horribly—like bone: slim, slick, yellowed like ivory, bound haphazardly together with sinew and hexation alike.

What hit Morrow like a knife through the gut, though, was the where of it all: a wide plain, acres in size, wheat rippling like a wind-tossed sea. At the far edge, Morrow knew, a zigzag splinter-board fence divided their lot from its neighbour; a tall man silhouetted against the sunset light was using the day’s last hours to continue scything there, slow and steady. Morrow felt the land’s faint slope under his feet, rising gradually to the three-roomed farmhouse and silo behind him. The air smelled of grain, woodsmoke, and autumn.

Rook breathed deep, smiling. Huge, black-clad, framed in jagged yellow bone, his very presence made a tangible hole. “Now this,” he said, “is a place for the righteous, Ed. No wonder you got so much do-gooder in you.” He leaned back, hands behind his head. “I wonder if you even know just how lucky you were.”

Morrow shut his eyes a second; he didn’t want to remember those chairs, or Rook, in this place. “Ain’t it strange,” he said, carefully, “how the friendliest thing you ever said to me comes out like you mean it to insult.”

Rook chuckled, deep in his throat. In the distance, unseen, Morrow’s father kept on cutting. “Well, well. Guess you ain’t quite so scared of me as you used to be, after all. How’s the tooth?”

Morrow’s hand went to his face, involuntarily. “This’s just a dream, ain’t it? So I don’t reckon it matters a damn what it’s like, here.”

“Dream world, real world—no border’s exactly what it used to be, given what’s passed. You’ve already seen how hard it is to hurt Chess now, and make it stick; well, stand by him, stay close, and that’ll be you, too. Can’t have the Skinless Man’s prophet kickin’ off premature from something as stupid as tooth rot, either, even hex-imposed.”

Morrow considered that. “So . . . nothing can kill me?”

“Chess could.”

“He’s had more’n enough chances to, he wanted.” Morrow faced Rook square on, no longer afraid. “Which means . . . he don’t. And he won’t.”

Rook shook his head, chuckling again. “Ed, Ed! And you the one who pointed out to me how Chess’ll do any damn thing at all, the moment he thinks somebody expects the opposite. Oh no, believe you me, ‘Agent’ Morrow—” The smile faded. “He will turn on you, sooner or later, like he does everyone else. Won’t even be able to stop himself.”

“I think that’s yourself you’re thinkin’ of, Reverend.”

“We’ll see.”