Fox and Birch (The Rowan Harbor Cycle Book 3) Read online

  “Can I tell Devon what just happened?” Wade asked him.

  Fletcher nodded frantically, not caring about that as much as being free. He needed to escape and run and run and run.

  Wade shoved the door open, and Fletcher was squeezing through the second he could see a strip of daylight. Keeping his eyes on the roads for a battered SUV, Fletcher ran for the forest as fast as four legs would carry him.

  He didn’t stop or even slow to catch his breath until the trees closed in around him. He’d never felt as much at home as he did in the forest around Rowan Harbor. It was safe, beautiful, and the only place he’d ever been completely himself. Fletcher the fox and Fletcher the man were equally welcome among those trees. The nymphs and dryads acknowledged or ignored him, depending on their nature and mood, but no one ran from him or questioned his right to be there.

  He halted in a small clearing with a tiny pond. There was a water nymph who lived in it, but she never minded his presence. She even told him he could drink from the pool if he wanted to, and she was protective of her home. He thought maybe she liked him, as much as a nymph could like a human—or whatever he was. She treated him like a parent might treat a hopeless, foolish child.

  He’d been spending more time as a fox over the last month. Something about the way his fox brain worked, the book couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to it. It was the only time his head was quiet anymore.

  Breath coming hard after his run, he panted and lay down next to the pond, staring at its surface for a long time. Even in fox form, with the Gothic silent, all he could see was the man, the killer, smiling at him as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

  Instinct told him to do his job. He was a cop. He could arrest the man. He and his father were both witness to the man’s crime, and they could put him in prison for the rest of his life. If only it were that simple.

  Arresting the man would mean admitting to a group of murderers that Fletcher wasn’t human. Other murderers would hear about it, and they would come to Rowan Harbor. Even if Fletcher was willing to put his—and his father’s—life in jeopardy, he wasn’t willing to drag the whole town down with him. Murderers coming to the Harbor put every person in the town in danger.

  It wasn’t as though monsters like that differentiated between nonhuman and the humans who loved them. Fletcher’s father had learned that the hardest way possible.

  A watery face lifted from the still surface of the pond and looked him in the eye. “Are you well, friend?”

  He whined but didn’t answer.

  She ran a wet hand along the back of his head, scratching behind his right ear and looking sad. “You smell of poisonous things, little fox. Mistletoe and rowan and silver.”

  He leaned into her hand. It was nice to play the fox for a while and accept scratches and occasional belly rubs. The creatures of the forest seemed to accept without question that if he was the fox, he wasn’t interested in talking. Iolanthe, the nymph, was no exception. She just smiled at him and continued scratching for a while. He got a little wet, but he didn’t mind.

  When he finally stood, she removed her hand but looked at him very seriously and said, “Do be careful, droplet. We wouldn’t wish to see you injured. You’re very important to us.”

  She wasn’t using the royal “we,” but like most creatures of the forest, she spoke as a collective, as though they all agreed. For the most part, they seemed to. They all agreed with whatever Oak said, and Oak spoke for the forest. Fletcher wasn’t sure there would ever be a time he wasn’t in awe of the ancient dryad.

  He turned and loped through the forest, wandering past his usual haunts, nodding to the forest creatures he passed. He worried about them. Did they know to hide from the murderers? They had been around tame men for so long, it would be easy for them to assume that all men were decent and didn’t thirst for violence.

  Without even knowing where he was going, Fletcher found himself in Oak’s grove, looking up at the enormous tree. He didn’t belong there. He wasn’t important enough to bother Oak. A twenty-four-year-old sheriff’s deputy of no particular distinction, the only things interesting about him were that he was possessed by an unnatural book, and he was a shape-shifter who was so much less than his mother that it shamed him.

  His mother had been a wonder. She’d been able to become anything. Not just a fox, but a mouse, a lion, a fish, a bear—any animal that was a part of the natural world, she could be. Fletcher could be a fox, and that was it. He’d spent most of his youth trying to be more, to be better, and she’d always patiently told him not to give up, and that he’d get there. But then she’d been killed, and no one had told him that he could do more, be more. He’d been so busy taking care of his father that he’d stopped trying.

  He didn’t hold anything against his father. It wasn’t his fault Fletcher had given up. Despite the fact that he was still struggling with the scars, both physical and emotional, that the fire had left on him, Eric Lane had been a great father. He was a great man. Fletcher was proud of him and didn’t think he’d ever stop being grateful for having him as a father. He suspected a lot of men in his position would have given Fletcher up for adoption, or even just abandoned him.

  “The forest tells me that you are troubled,” Oak’s voice interrupted his spiral of shame, and he spun to face them.

  Given the size of their tree, he didn’t understand why they didn’t manifest as a dryad ten times the size of a person. Many of the elder dryads were bigger, but Oak stayed the size of an average human being. They were shorter than Fletcher in his human form, and that seemed wrong, somehow.

  Oak took a step forward, but paused, and Fletcher realized he was cowering. “There is nothing in me for you to fear. You are a friend to the forest. You are part of us.” They leaned down and looked at him, a frown marring their perfect, smooth features. “But there is something wrong with you, forest friend. What has happened?”

  The book. They had to mean the book. Something was wrong with him, and it disturbed Oak. Nothing disturbed Oak.

  For the second time that afternoon, he turned and fled.

  2

  Lessons from the Forest

  He expected to dream of the fire. He usually did after being reminded of it.

  People always said dreams were black and white and that you couldn’t actually feel the things that happened in them. Maybe it was only his imagination, or maybe it was because he wasn’t entirely human, but Fletcher knew they were wrong. Those people didn’t feel his left palm against the superheated wall of the RV in their sleep, a burn that had left a glossy flat scar and almost obliterated the fingerprints on that hand. The only reason it hadn’t been both hands was because he’d been trying to drag his unconscious father out of the flames with the other.

  Instead of the fire, he dreamed of writing. His hands weren’t his, but smaller, callused and ink stained, as though he wrote every day with a leaky pen. That wasn’t too shocking, since he was writing with a big, brown-and-white-striped feather, a quill pen. The letters were long and bold, and reminded him of Norse runes more than the English alphabet.

  Gothic, he guessed.

  He was dreaming of the damned book.

  The writing was slow and careful, like he was doing something precious. Fletcher supposed that if he were planning on being inside a book forever, he’d be careful how he wrote it, too. He hadn’t known before, but he was sure now, that the person who wrote the book was the same person in his head, whispering to him. It was whispering fast and urgent now, and he wasn’t sure if the voice was still in his head, or if it was a part of the dream.

  It was possible he was missing the point, but trapping oneself in a book forever seemed like a strange thing to decide to do. The words the voice was whispering got shorter and sharper, as though the speaker were annoyed, and a wave of frustration washed over him. While he felt it down to his toes, he was sure the frustration was coming from the outside.

  Great. Now the thing could make him feel its emotions. At le
ast there was less malice than he would have expected. It seemed a little like it was trying to explain driving to a five-year-old. If the book was trying to tell him about magic, that was a good comparison.

  There was a banging on the door, and he—they?—turned to look at it, fear curling inside him. It was the same fear he’d felt when he’d seen his mother’s murderer in the station. But it wasn’t his fear.

  He sat bolt upright in bed, and the frustration that filled him was his own this time. The knock had been important. Not just to the voice, but to him. He needed to know who it had been, and what they had wanted. Maybe it didn’t make sense, and he wasn’t sure why, but he was sure he needed to know. He was sweaty, and his heart was pounding as though he were in mortal peril, despite the fact that he was safe at home in his bedroom.

  For a second, he strained his ears, listening for any unusual noises. But he didn’t hear anyone prowling the apartment, or the distinctive sound of an SUV engine anywhere nearby. There was just the quiet ticking of the watch his father had given him for his twentieth birthday and the faraway sound of his neighbor getting her son ready for school. They were having their usual healthy cereal versus sugar-coated cereal debate. He was never sure why she bought the sugary stuff if she didn’t want the kid eating it.

  He flipped back the blankets and comforter before hesitating. It was Wednesday, and technically, his day off. He’d been planning to go in anyway, to catch up on paperwork, but the temptation to forget about it and go back to sleep was strong. It wasn’t likely he’d get back to the dream, but more sleep sounded nice anyway. He didn’t often have a chance to sleep past dawn when he was working day shifts, and he’d spent a lot of extra hours on the job in the past month.

  Instead of falling back asleep, though, he stared at the ceiling for ten minutes before giving up and getting out of bed.

  He went through his morning routine in a daze, mind replaying the dream and then the scene at the station the day before. He didn’t think he’d be in trouble at work. Sheriff Green wasn’t the kind of man who would complain about, well, anything, let alone one of his most dependable officers needing a little time off. Even that was only a concern if Wade and Jen had told the sheriff he’d taken off, and he doubted they had. Hell, Wade might not have even told Jen what had happened.

  Fletcher didn’t bother getting dressed, just threw on a fresh pair of sweats and headed for the kitchen.

  Pulling out his own box of sugar-covered cereal—he really felt for the neighbor’s kid every time he got denied—Fletcher poured himself a huge bowl and then drowned it in almond milk. He waited a minute for the frosting to soften up, as he had since he was a kid, before digging in.

  In the cold light of morning, he tried to convince himself that he’d been wrong about the guy at the station the day before. If you’ve seen one ugly, middle-aged murderer, you’ve seen them all, right? He could have been any white guy with brown hair and eyes who’d had too many tans and too many cigarettes, making his skin leathery before his hair had even finished going gray. It wasn’t a unique look for a man in that line of work.

  He knew, though. Something in his bones resonated with the connection and told him he’d been right.

  There was a knock on his door, and he almost dropped his cereal in surprise. His heart started pounding, bringing to mind the terror of the dream the book had been having. He tightened his grip on the bowl and carried it with him to open the door. Not many people would knock on his door at six-thirty in the morning, and all of them could handle the sight of him eating cereal shirtless.

  He was surprised, but not shocked, to find Isla MacKenzie on the other side. They’d become friendly in the month since she had arrived back in town, but he hadn’t thought it was the sort of friendly where you showed up at the other person’s home first thing in the morning.

  She rolled her eyes at him and motioned him back. “Inside with you, before you give your neighbor an eyeful. Not that she wouldn’t appreciate it, but I doubt you want that kind of attention.”

  Fletcher scrunched up his face. “Um, no.” Immediately, he backtracked. “Not that there’s anything wrong with her or anything like that, but—”

  “She’s more than a decade older than you, has a kid who’s barely a decade younger than you, and, oh yeah, wrong gender. That’s kind of the trifecta, isn’t it?” She peered into his cereal bowl and brightened. “Got more?”

  He nodded toward the box, still sitting on the counter. “Your mom owns a bakery and you’re here for frosted cereal?”

  She opened a few cupboards until she found herself another bowl and poured a generous helping. “Yes, she does. Can’t eat pastry for breakfast every day, though. Plus, Mom and I aren’t really talking right now.”

  “Again? Already?”

  She crossed to the fridge and opened it to grab the milk, and Fletcher retrieved a spoon for her, so she didn’t have to go hunting through the drawers. “She’s just so insufferable. I don’t know how anyone puts up with her. I swear, my brother is a saint.”

  Fletcher cocked his head one way, then the other, and shrugged. “Seems reasonable. I don’t hate your mom, but your brother puts up with stuff from her that I don’t think anyone else would.”

  “Not even Devon, who just smiles and lets her growl at him.” Isla sat down in one of the two chairs at the table, enough force behind the movement that the chair skidded back a few inches. She turned and looked up at him. “He was always a little like that. Practically made to be a diplomat. Drives me crazy sometimes, but it’s hard to be mad at him.”

  “I couldn’t,” Fletcher agreed. “But I’ve never tried, so I guess that’s not a surprise.”

  Isla snorted at that and dug into her bowl of cereal.

  “So, I don’t think you’re here to talk about your mother or eat my cereal. What’s up?” It wasn’t that he didn’t want her around, but Isla hadn’t come into his life bearing good news.

  He’d killed that vampire and been possessed by the book because she’d brought the damn thing with her to Rowan Harbor. He’d have done the same in her situation, or hoped he would have, but it still wasn’t a happy memory, or distant enough to have mellowed. Not to mention his partner nearly being killed, and how the incident had made Devon act scarily out of character. Fletcher shuddered. He was glad he wasn’t a werewolf, to have a mate who made him react so instinctively.

  Isla raised an eyebrow at him, and her scary face was almost as impressive as her mother’s. “Whatever you’re thinking I’m here about, it’s not that bad.”

  He tried to return her no-nonsense raised brow and pursed lips, but he was sure it didn’t work as well on his face. Everyone always told him he looked too friendly to play the bad cop. It was one of the reasons Sheriff Green had partnered him with Wade, because his partner was perfect for that role.

  After a pointless stare down, he broke first and looked back at his cereal. “Okay, what’s up?”

  “Oak asked me to come.”

  Fletcher froze. Crap. Whatever hideous magic the book had infected him with had offended Oak. The voice started whispering in the back of his head, one of the quasi-magical chants that left him feeling like his guts were trying to rearrange themselves. It was a little like when he’d first been learning to shift into the fox, but it also made his skin crawl unpleasantly in a way the shift never had.

  Isla watched him, head cocked to one side, eyes glued to his torso. “Is that you or it?”

  “It,” he said, and his voice came out hoarse and worried. It was Isla, he reminded himself. She knew about the book. She knew what it was like to have the thing whispering at her, and she knew more about magic than Fletcher ever wanted to.

  He was still hoping that she or the other witches of the town would figure out how to remove the magic, so he could go back to being plain old Fletcher. His life wasn’t much, what with his stunted shifting ability and “barely scraped by” high school education, but he liked it. He liked his job and his partner, and for t
he first time since he’d been fourteen, he’d finally been making friends. He wanted that back.

  The whispering faltered for a moment and then tapered off, and Isla looked back up to his face. “That’s why Oak wants to see you.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . Interrupt the, um, sanctity of—”

  “Oh for Hera’s sake, Fletcher. Sanctity? You’re talking about when you stumbled by Oak yesterday?” He nodded, and she rolled her eyes and sighed so dramatically Fletcher thought Jesse would have been proud. “Oak was not offended by your presence. They’re worried about you.”

  Fletcher blinked at her, feeling as though he’d been struck dumb. The book said something, and it felt like a question. For the first time, he half wished he knew Gothic, so he could answer it. “Oak is worried about me? Why?”

  “Of course they are, dumbass,” she said, then stuffed her mouth full of cereal. It was one of many things Fletcher had quickly come to love about Isla. She was who she was. She didn’t censor her language, eating habits, or thoughts. Fletcher liked people who were what they seemed to be, and he thought it was a more unusual trait than it should have been. When she finished the bite of cereal, she pointed her spoon at him. “You need to stop putting yourself on the outside, Fletcher Lane. You’re a Harborite and a goddamned Musketeer. You’re ours, and we care about you. Oak would never be bothered by you freaking existing. They’re worried about the fact that you’re carrying foreign magic in you.”

  Warmth infused Fletcher’s chest, and he didn’t think it was from the foreign magic. Being included in the circle of friends that Jesse, Devon, and Isla had since childhood meant more to him than he cared to consider, let alone admit. He tried his best casual shrug. “I didn’t want to bother Oak. I mean, they’re . . . the forest.”