Page 37 of Crossroads Magic
Olivia gave me a wave of her white hand. “Never mind. I could be quite wrong. It’s early days yet.”
I shivered, despite the warmth in the big car, and couldn’t find a single thing to say for the rest of the ride back to the town. Every question that I wanted to ask sounded insane. Besides, Olivia was too good at killing nosy questions stone dead.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted answers, anyway.
?
Olivia didn’t park in the parking lot beside the inn, this time.
When we reached the intersection, she put on the indicator to turn left and glanced prudently left and right.
So did I, but I was curious, not safety minded. The greenway stretched to the left and right, a narrow road covered in weeds and moss and small patches of snow, with tress growing to either side whose canopies met overhead, forming tunnels of dim light.
Olivia turned the car onto the greenway, driving alongside her house’s side fence.
The greenway was rough under the wheels. We bounced and jolted over corrugations that I suspected were years old.
Olivia turned the car into a driveway at the back of the house and stopped in front of the closed door of a garage. The door was an old one that looked as though it lifted up in one flat piece.
I got out of the car with a good degree of gratitude. I had too much to think about and I suddenly wanted to see Ghaliya, to make sure she had survived the morning. And I was hungry.
I thanked Olivia again as she moved around the long square hood of the car. She paused at the nose and nodded. “You will do the same for any of us, I’m sure.”
I shivered again and pulled the coat in around me, turned and headed for the intersection. There was no sidewalk and I walked through untouched snow, my boots making it crunch. Right at the corner of the intersection was a sign post I’d not noticed until now. Approaching it, I could see two of the signs.Main Streetpointed to the west, andRoute 224pointed to the east.
Curious, I stopped next to the post to check the other two signs. Both saidHaig Way,one pointing north, the other south. This pair of signs, though, were not the same as the other two, which looked modern and normal. These signs were white, with black lettering, and the letters looked slightly uneven.
Had someone in the Crossing made them? I didn’t think Haig Way was a gazetted, formal road, so a federal authority wouldn’t issue signs….
Haig Way.
I pulled out my phone. With the town network, I could get a fast answer. I plugged “Haig” into Google, and got a lot of earls and lords and people with the last name of Haig.
I’d had a morning of non-answers, so I mentally rolled up my sleeves. I pulled up an etymological dictionary and typed in “haig” again and got another earl.
I didn’t give up, but I became aware that I was shivering and this time, it was from the cold.
I put my phone away, crossed over to the inn and went inside.
There were people here, more than when I had left this morning. I could hear more than one conversation in the bar. I peered up the wide stairs and contemplated heading up to check on Ghaliya. Instead, the buzz of conversation drew me like a moth to the flame.
I ducked under the curtain and stepped into the bar.
The same four local men, Wim and Benedict included, sat at the table by the fireplace. They were talking quietly, and shooting glances toward the other occupants of the bar.
Six men and two women had pulled three of the tables together, and were sitting around the table, drinking and talking. It wasn’t their first drink, for glass mugs with beer froth clinging to their sides were scattered over the tables, along with many cracked peanut shells. Their conversation was at a volume that said they’d relaxed.
All eight of them looked perfectly normal. Excessively so. None of them were overweight. None of them was skinny or weak looking, either. They looked exceptionally fit, and their faces were tanned, telling me they spent a lot of time outdoors.
I thought I had them pegged and went over to the bar, where Hirom was pouring another round of eight mugs of beer. The tap didn’t seem to be flowing fast, and he kept shooting glances over his shoulder toward the eight.
“Hey, Hirom,” I said softly. “Hikers?”
He actually looked relieved to see me. “Ms. Anna.” He put a full mug on the tray next to two others, hooked down another mug and moved back to the barrels.
“What’s up?” I asked, moving along the counter so that we could speak quietly.
“These folk want lunch. And I can’t break off here to get so much as a sandwich. They’re drinking too fast.”
