Hill opened his eyes and forced himself into a jog, pushing through bushes and undergrowth.
Home was that way.
He slowed to a stop as he approached the lake house. The party—the one on this side, at least—was over. The muzzled dead that remained milled around in small, nervous groups as they were herded around by grim-faced Hounds and stork-headed dead.
From the way even the Hounds fell back when the Storks passed, it seemed that they were in charge.
Hill caught an odd, suspicious look from someone he thought was a server—their muzzle just paper and print. He turned away and caught a glimpse of himself in a window, his face scarredwhere the bridle had scored the skin and his lips rimmed with ash. Even if no one recognized him, he realized as he reached back to grab his hood, he didn’t look like he belonged.
As he yanked the hood up over his head, he felt something bump against his side in his pocket. He reached in to see what it was and felt the bony angles and sharp, jabbed point of Hen’s stolen beak. The memory of the bridle’s weight made him hesitate, but when he glanced back he saw the server murmuring to someone else. There was a finger pointed in his direction, and then they turned to look for…the Hounds, probably.
It looked like he didn’t have much choice. He pulled the chicken skull out of his pocket. It was deceptively light in his hand as he gripped it, the beak jabbed down into his palm. There was no time to think it through. He lifted the mask and pressed it against his face.
Nothing happened at first; then he had to bite back a scream as he felt the familiar pain dig in. He could feel skin and flesh peel away from his bones, absorbed by the mask as it grew new bone spurs to hook onto his skull.
Someone grabbed his shoulder.
“Who—” the Hound swallowed the demand as he jerked Hill around long enough to catch sight of his face. His lip twitched and a sneeze flared his black nose. “Sorry, Sir. Fucking help think there’s a reward. They said…the polter was here.”
“Well, you better hope he’s not,” Hill clipped out. He could feel the click the beak made around the words, but it still felt like his mouth and tongue that made them. It was an effort not to look confused by that. Instead, he tried to pretend he was Fraser, the same irritated ‘I’m surrounded by idiotsandI pay them’ weariness that he had when someone was on his last nerve. “Last I heard, your people had custody. I’d hope they could finish this without any more fuck ups. Or did another of you get bridled?”
The Hound put his ears flat. Those mostly dog eyes looked woeful as he hunched thick shoulders up.
“Hope not, sir,” he muttered. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
He shuffled backward and then loped away. Hill watched him go and then felt his face surreptitiously. He found an unexpectedly warm, dense beak and the heavy, rough-textured sag of the chicken’s wattles.
Hopefully it would buy him enough time to find Davy before…
Reminded, he looked around, but, right now, he couldn’t remember where any of the clocks were. He turned and made eye contact with the server who’d tried to turn him in.
“You,” he said as he crooked his finger. The man shuffled reluctantly over. Hill didn’t bother with pleasantries. “What time is it?”
That got him a confused glance over his paper mask, and then the server shrugged. “It’s nearly midnight,” he said. “Ten minutes and the doors will close again until next year. If we aren’t back in Dudley town limits by then, we lose our visas. We might get stuck out here with the hooded men and the horrors.”
Hill stared at him. The horrors. Death really made you want to live, he thought with an odd, distant panic.
Ten minutes.
“Well, Happy Christmas,” he parroted in a tight voice that didn’t hide his panic as well as he’d hoped. He took a step back and clicked his beak nervously. “You can go. Tell them I said so. I have more important things to do than herd contractors.”
The server didn’t wait around to make sure that Hill meant that. He just looked relieved and took off at a jog, arguing and pointing back at Hill when a Hound tried to stop him. Hill left them to sort it out as he ducked inside the house.
He could still feel the faint tug of ‘home’ when he concentrated on it. It was hard to tell if it had really gotten fainter as the Veil got ready to close, or if that was his imagination. Hill tried notto think too hard about that as he followed the tug of it toward Davy and his body.
As he hit the steps up to the second floor, though, he felt the resistance of the air thicken. Every step felt like there were lead weights on his feet. He had to drag himself up, one painful step at a time, like a fish swimming against the current.
Somewhere downstairs, he heard a door slam open.
“Rosen!” Seb’s rough voice echoed through the dead reflection of Hill’s childhood home, rattling the dusty baubles from Christmases long gone that hung from the stairs. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. I know you’re here, but there’s no time left to win. So just give up.”
Hill really hoped the dog-faced man wasn’t right about that.
Chapter Twenty
Dec 24, 11.40pm
“I’ll admit,” Davy saidas he wadded up his costume and pressed it against the bloody wound in Fraser’s thigh. He hoped Hill hadn’t planned to try to return the outfit tomorrow. There was no way he could pull off ‘I didn’t wear it’ now. “Things have gotten out of hand.”
