“Kit, I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Or thought he did. He might not even have spoken the words aloud. Regardless, Kitsune understood well enough. Anger and betrayal flashed in her jade eyes. Her brow furrowed and she glanced away, though she did not move. Her body was still pressed tightly to his.
“I understand,” she whispered. “You must have time.”
But he shook his head. She should not speak. For something was stirring in the room. A sound like a breeze rustling leaves far away reached him and a soft wind blew across the floor, eddying and swirling. It was not the girl that stirred.
Grains of sand danced across the wood floor. It began as a light spray, but soon a fine covering lay upon the floorboards, a dust devil of sand. When it began to rise, to sculpt a form, Oliver went rigid. He knew this was not their enemy, not the creature who had taken Collette, but it was an aspect of the same being. How could they predict what was to come?
The breeze died and a bit of sand scattered upon the floor.
The Dustman had arrived.
On Christmas morning, Sara Halliwell woke with the dawn. Warm sunlight streamed in the windows of her father’s house. She had slept on the sofa in the living room, falling asleep there in front of the fire. Sometime during the long night she had awoken in the dark with only embers glowing in the fireplace and the gleam of Christmas lights outside from other houses in the neighborhood, and she’d been tempted to move to her father’s bed.
But Sara stayed on the sofa instead, too tired and unnerved to move, troubled by the suspicion that sleeping in her father’s bed would constitute some strange admission that she thought him gone forever.
When the light of Christmas morning woke her, she turned over, burrowed into the sofa, and tried to go back to sleep. Her eyes burned and her head felt stuffed with the cotton of exhaustion, but no matter how early it was—surely no later than seven—she could not force herself to go back to sleep. Her neck ached and her mouth felt dry.
How easy it was to remember other Christmas mornings, when she had awakened before dawn and run to her parents’bedroom, jumping up and down upon their mattress and demanding that they rise and escort her to the living room—to the tree and the many beautiful packages that lay beneath.
In those days there would be plastic candles burning with warm orange electric light. Those orange bulbs comforted her. But this morning the house was dark. No Christmas tree, no orange glow in the windows. When she forced herself to rise and look outside, the whole town lay blanketed in crisp new-fallen snow. The blue sky was perfectly clear and the sun shone brightly on the snow, giving the whole world a feeling of unreality, as though the town itself existed inside a snow globe.
Christmas had arrived.
But not in here, Sara thought. Not in this house.
Even with the glare off of the snow, the sunshine could only reach so far and could not dispel the gloom in this house, in her heart.
With no hope of retreating back into sleep, she went to the kitchen and moved slowly through the motions of preparing breakfast. She expected to find very little that was edible in the home of a fiftysomething, divorced police detective and received a pleasant surprise when she discovered four eggs that had not fossilized, as well as a package of bacon and a half-eaten slab of cheddar cheese that had yet to turn green.
Sara fixed a palatable omelette with those remnants. She wished for toast but refused to attempt the crusty bread, even with its edges cut off. Spots of bluish mold had begun to grow on it. One final bit of luck presented itself in an unopened container of cran-apple juice. Not her first choice, but it would do.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, her voice a bitter whisper, and she toasted the empty house with warm cran-apple juice in a Bugs Bunny glass that had been—in the once upon a time of her own childhood—a jelly jar. Why her father had kept it mystified her.
He never throws anything away, she thought, and did not allow herself to wish for another reason, a deeper meaning and connection.
In the kitchen, drowning in silence broken only by the drone of the refrigerator, she stared around the room at the peeling floral wallpaper and the faux-tile linoleum floor and the lazy Susan on the table that carried salt and pepper and napkins—who did he ever have to spin it for? The answer was obvious. No one. The lazy Susan never spun, because there was only ever one person at the table.
The morning slipped by in a fugue of waiting. Sara felt both a terrible restlessness, her every muscle a frightened animal about to bolt, and a crippling malaise of the spirit that turned her into a ghost in her father’s house. She washed her own dishes and the frying pan by hand, then went out into the living room and began to sort through the mail that one of the investigating officers had left in a neat pile on the coffee table. A single postcard—a wish-you-were-here sort of thing from one of his fellow officers with large-breasted girls in bikinis on the back and a Florida postmark on the front—lay atop days’ worth of junk mail, credit card offers, promotions, and bills. Amongst them were precisely five Christmas cards, two of which were from old friends her father hadn’t seen in so long that Sara would not have recognized them on the street. One was from Sheriff Norris or, rather, from his wife, Sophie. The fourth had come from Sara’s mother, and it stunned her—mainly because she had been unaware that her parents still exchanged Christmas cards.
Don’t be an idiot, she chided herself. Mom sent one. Doesn’t mean Dad did. No, Ted Halliwell had never been that kind of father. He loved her, she knew that, but there were never any grand gestures from old Ted. Not even small gestures.
The fifth card had come from Sara herself. She wondered if her father would ever return to open it. It lay on the coffee table like a smoking gun, evidence that this was no nightmare, that he was gone.
The restlessness in her grew worse and somehow so did the fatigue. Sara checked her cell phone several times to see if she had any messages, but there were none. Christmas day, and everyone was off celebrating with their families. She existed in their worlds only peripherally on this day, outside of everything they cared about. Those friends who had been calling since learning of her father’s disappearance would forget about her today, and Sara was surprised to find that she did not begrudge them this freedom. If they needed peace on this one day, out of all of them, who was she to intrude?
For nearly two hours she set about tidying her father’s house. She was far from the neatest or most meticulous girl. When she had girlfriends, she spent nearly all of her time in their beds instead of her own. The sort of girls she was attracted to were almost invariably scared off by her slobbishness before they even had time to fall in love with her, so Sara tried to hide it well.
Yet here she was, cleaning.
But what else could she do?
Shortly before noon she plunked herself down on the couch and blew a stray lock of unwashed hair out of her face. A shower, she thought. God, how nice would that be?
Sunken into the cushions, she found her gaze straying to the stereo system that had been inserted amongst books and plants on a tall shelf against one wall. Any distraction would do, and so she rose and went over and turned the radio on. A static hiss filled the room and Sara glanced stupidly at the speakers for a moment as though they were at fault, then began to turn the dial.
The first channel she could tune clearly played an old Sinatra Christmas song. A shudder went through her and she twisted the knob. The next station had Bruce Springsteen singing “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” The one after that, a holiday song from Mariah Carey. Sara gave it one final chance and found the jazzy piano that Vince Guaraldi had written and recorded for “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
That last one brought a tear to her eye and made her bite her lip. She swore and punched the power button off, furious at her father for allowing her the bittersweet memories of her childhood and then tainting them with years of awkwardness and misunderstanding.
She stood leaning against the bookshelf, forehead resting against the smooth wood, and was in that very position when, a moment later, she heard the slow, purposeful crunch of tires rolling over snow. Sara glanced out the window to see a police car pull into the driveway and stop.
Jackson Norris climbed out of the driver’s seat.
Relief swept through her, but then she saw the expression on the sheriff’s face and she knew he had not come with good news. His features were as rigid as a mannequin’s, yet sympathetic.
Her blood ran cold as she went to the door and opened it, watching Jackson come up the front walk.
“Sara,” the sheriff said when he saw her there. “ ’Morning.”
Jackson Norris was a competent sheriff for the most part, but Sara had always wondered just how smart the man was. When he declined to wish her “Merry Christmas” or even “good morning,” though, Sara had all the proof she would ever need that the sheriff was no fool. Only a sadist or a fool would have wished her “Merry Christmas” this morning.
She nodded toward him, standing silhouetted in the doorway, blinking from the glare of the sun streaming across the perfectly blue sky. Somewhere else, probably nearby, people were enjoying the perfect Christmas weather. Children would be sledding in the new-fallen snow, fathers would be out shoveling.
As it should be on this day of joy.
“Jackson,” Sara said, nodding to the sheriff. “You have news?”
Down the street a couple walking their dog had stopped to chat with a neighbor who was behind the wheel of a minivan. They were far enough that she couldn’t have heard what was said, but she saw the way they pointed in her direction, expressions full of pity.
She resisted the urge to scream.
The sheriff shifted his weight from one foot to the other, glanced over his shoulder at the whisperers, and nodded toward the home’s interior.
“Maybe we ought to talk inside?”
“Oh,” she said, voice small. Sara shook her head. “I’m sorry. Yes, please come in. I’m just…not myself.”
She stood back to let him pass and closed the door behind him.
“ ’Course you’re not. Don’t worry about it,” the sheriff said. He scratched at the back of his head and glanced around as though expecting someone to be there.
Maybe he’s just not used to being here when Dad’s not home, Sara thought. Or perhaps it might have been that Jackson Norris wasn’t accustomed to making social calls at the Halliwell residence in recent years.
“Can I get you something?” she asked, slipping her hands into the soft cotton pockets in her pajama pants to keep them from fluttering about. “Water? Cran-apple juice? I’d offer you some coffee, but there’s nothing here I’d serve my worst enemy.”
The sheriff managed a wan smile. “No, thanks. I only stopped by for a minute. Wanted to check on you. I can imagine how hard this day is going to be, and I just wanted to remind you that you’re not alone. I’m here if you need me.”
Numb, Sara nodded. “I appreciate it.”
But Jackson Norris wasn’t in any hurry to leave. He frowned.
“What is it, Sheriff? You’ve got a lead on my father? What’s on your mind?”
Jackson shook his head. “No. Nothing on your dad. It could be nothing, honestly, but…well, I thought you should know we’ve had another Oliver Bascombe sighting. If Ted’s disappearance really is connected to the Bascombe case, finding this guy could give us some answers.”
She forced herself not to hope.
“Where is he? Where did they find him?”
The sheriff couldn’t meet her eyes then. “Austria. I know it sounds crazy. First London, then Scotland, now Austria. He’s not technically a suspect in anything, just a ‘person of interest.’ They put a watch on all of his credit cards and got a bunch of hits on his American Express. Figured they had him on the hook then, had all the credit companies freeze his cards. Now that they knew where he was, they didn’t want him going anywhere else. Next time he tried to use his credit card, it didn’t go so well. Bascombe took off, apparently. But the clerk picked out a photo of him, so it wasn’t just some thief trying to use his card. It was the real deal.
“They’re going to track him down, Sara. Get some answers.”
For several moments she breathed in and out through her teeth, a sick twisting in her stomach making her fear she might throw up. With difficulty she nodded and thanked the sheriff for coming, for caring.
“You’ll let me know when they’ve got him?”
“Of course. The very moment,” he assured her.
Then he was gone. Sara stood in the open door and watched him pull out of the driveway and roll off down the street, tires slushing on the road. She stayed there for half a minute, until at last she retreated into her father’s house once more.
Seeking solace, Sara went to the radio again and turned it on. A pleasant version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” was in progress, harmonies lush and lilting.
At the sofa, she sat and held between two fingers the unopened card she’d written to her father. For a time she carried it around, setting it on the mantel or the lamp stand or on top of the television, somewhere he was likely to discover it in his wanderings around the house.
As if it were that large…as if he had just become lost in his own home.
So much remained unsaid between them and she desperately wished for a chance to fix that.
The phone rang, startling her, and she stared at it as though it were some exotic beast. Who would be calling her father’s house on Christmas day that did not already know he had disappeared?
The answering machine picked up the call and she stared across the room, mesmerized by the sound of her own father’s voice in the greeting message.
“You’ve reached the home of Ted Halliwell. Please leave a message.”
Simple as that. Uncomplicated. That was her father. Hearing his voice like that lent her a comfort she would never have imagined. When the beep came, her mother’s voice took over, leaving a message meant for her, exhorting her to pick up, to call her if there was any news.