The Rose Witch and the Wolf

Chapter 1

The God of Blown Gaskets

Cyndi Lauper sings “True Colors” through Old Bess’s cracked dashboard speakers while the heater breathes one last lukewarm sigh across my ankles.

I thump a gloved hand against the steering wheel, partly to keep the beat and partly because the wheel has developed a shimmy I am choosing to classify as personality. Frost branches across the passenger window. My breath fogs the windshield faster than the tired defroster can clear it, and the road ahead is a narrow black ribbon laid through miles of white wilderness.

Seven twenty-nine on a Friday morning. I am one mile from the bank, two minutes behind schedule, and one mechanical surprise away from losing my mind.

Old Bess provides the surprise.

Clunk-chick-PING.

The sound punches up through the floorboards. The steering wheel jerks in my hands, and a sharp jolt climbs from my pelvis into the fused section of my lower back. My muscles lock around the old damage before I can brace.

“Shit!”

Steam bursts from beneath the hood. The engine coughs, shudders, and begins producing a metallic death rattle that sounds like a skeleton trapped in a commercial dryer.

Old Bess does not simply break down. She stages a Victorian tragedy.

I wrestle her onto the shoulder as the dashboard lights flicker. The heater dies first. The radio gives Cyndi one long, wounded warble and follows. By the time the tires stop crunching, dark exhaust is rolling past the rear windows like a funeral veil.

Of course it happens today. The regional review starts at eight. My branch manager has spent three weeks reminding us that senior processor promotions depend on “professional reliability,” which is corporate language for never possessing a body, a family, or a sixty-year-old hearse with opinions.

If I miss the review, I can probably kiss the promotion goodbye. Without the promotion, the monthly deposit into my B&B account stays exactly where it is: not enough.

You skipped the fluid flush in November, my inner voice reminds me as it settles into a mental lawn chair and puts its feet up. This is not mechanical failure, Mitch. This is vehicular manslaughter. You murdered the hearse.

“Thank you,” I mutter. “That is extremely helpful.”

Old Bess is a 1964 Cadillac Miller-Meteor ambulance-hearse, the automotive equivalent of an existential crisis on four whitewall tires. Uncle Joe let her rust behind our house until my sixteenth birthday. I had pictured a sensible little sedan with a working radio and perhaps a color found in nature. Instead, my parents handed me the keys to a vehicle that could not decide whether it wanted to save lives or escort them directly to the cemetery.

I have loved her ever since.

I also may have killed her.

Dillon warned me. Three days ago, the only mechanic within a hundred miles whose opinion I trust leaned beneath her hood and traced a grease-blackened finger along the engine block. Warped metal. A hairline crack. Coolant where coolant had no business being. His estimate had enough zeroes to qualify as a personal attack.

I have money. That is the cruel part.

For ten years, every spare dollar has gone into a separate investment account for the six-room timber farmhouse on the valley rim. I can already see the long breakfast table, quilts folded at the foot of each bed, sourdough rising before sunrise, and travelers warming their hands around mugs of real coffee. Not bank coffee, which tastes like somebody whispered the word “bean” over muddy water.

The account is my escape route. My future. Pulling money from it to buy four functional wheels would feel like stealing from Future Me.

At this rate, Voice observes, Bess will oxidize into the highway before Future You signs a deed.

A gust rocks the car. Snow lifts from the shoulder in thin white ribbons and snakes across the asphalt. The surrounding spruce stand black against the last of the night, their branches bent under yesterday’s storm. Above them, the aurora moves in green and violet folds, beautiful in the deeply unhelpful way Alaska often is when it is trying to kill you.

Daisy’s Cafe is less than a mile down the pass. Someone there can drive me or let me use the phone. Daisy will complain about the hour, pour me coffee anyway, and tell everybody in town that Mitchell Reed arrived dressed for a board meeting in a hearse that died of dramatic exhaustion.

I try my cell. The screen wakes long enough to display one percent battery, no signal, and three messages from Valorie.

7:14 - Big day. Where are you?

7:22 - Please tell me Old Bess did not finally win.

7:28 - Mitch?

“I’m trying,” I tell the screen.

The battery symbol flashes red. Before I can type a reply, the phone goes black.

Well, Voice says, Valorie knows the hearse is winning. That saves us one uncomfortable explanation.

The cold is already pushing through the floorboards and the thin leather soles of my pumps. Staying inside feels safer, but without heat the car is only a coffin with better upholstery. That is an unfortunate comparison under the circumstances.

I pull off one glove and draw a small smiley face in the frost on the windshield.

Draw an SOS, Voice suggests.

“A smiley looks friendlier.”

An SOS is more informative.

“An SOS says vulnerable woman alone in an antique hearse.”

The smiley says the vulnerable woman is cheerful about it.

“Exactly.”

The digital clock buzzes and dies at 7:31. Silence fills the car.

For one dangerous second, I let my head rest against the seat. Closing my eyes feels reasonable. Just for a minute. Just long enough to gather myself.

No. Voice is suddenly out of the lawn chair. Do not close your eyes, Mitchell. Get dressed. Move.

That tone gets my attention.

My emergency clothes are crammed into the back seat beneath a wool blanket, two grocery bags, and a box of brochures for bed-and-breakfast properties I cannot afford. Changing inside Bess requires the flexibility of a gymnast and the dignity of a raccoon caught in a trash can.

I kick off my pumps, bang my knee against the steering column, and wriggle out of my slacks. A hot electric line shoots from my back through my hip. I freeze with one leg trapped, breathe through my teeth, and wait for the muscle spasm to ease.

“We are fine,” I whisper.

Our left leg is wearing business slacks, our right leg is wearing thermal underwear, and our Wonder Woman panties are currently reflected in the rearview mirror. Define fine.

“Nobody can see us.”

There are bears with excellent night vision.

I laugh despite myself, which hurts less than the panic threatening to climb my throat. I fold the slacks and blazer with clumsy fingers and push them into my backpack. If I survive, I am still going to the bank, and I refuse to arrive looking like I slept in a ditch even if I nearly freeze in one.

The snow pants catch at my boots. My parka zipper jams halfway. By the time I force everything into place, sweat cools beneath my thermal shirt and my lower back is throbbing in time with my pulse.

Priorities, Voice says. Our corpse will be discovered in pristine business attire.

“Professional reliability.”

I shoulder my backpack and open the door.

The frozen seal tears loose with a shriek. Fifty-below air strikes the wet corners of my eyes and steals the first breath from my lungs. The tiny hairs inside my nose freeze. Cold this deep is not weather. It is a living thing that finds every gap in your clothes and asks how badly you want to keep your fingers.

My boots hit packed snow. Behind me, Bess sits crooked on the shoulder, black paint dull beneath a crust of ice.

“Stay,” I tell her.

Loyal to the end, Voice says. Also physically incapable of movement.

“Same difference.”

I step onto the road and follow the faded yellow centerline.

In the backcountry, the shoulder belongs to the trees, and the trees have teeth. The centerline gives me distance from the timber and a better chance of being seen by anyone coming through the pass. I walk it like a tightrope, one boot in front of the other, my hot pink parka making me visible from space.

The cold magnifies every sound: the crunch of my steps, the rasp of my breath, the faint hiss of wind moving loose snow over asphalt. My neck aches from scanning the timber. My toes begin to go numb.

Headlights bloom behind me.

Relief hits so fast my knees weaken. I turn and throw both arms above my head, waving like a frantic runway marshal.

“Please stop.”

Please be normal, Voice adds. Or, if this is a serial killer, please let him have heated seats.

An old half-ton pickup crawls toward me, one headlight slightly crooked and its grille packed with gray highway slush. The engine downshifts. Studded tires crackle over the ice. It slows beside me, and for half a second I believe the morning has decided to show mercy.

The driver’s window lowers exactly two inches.

Not enough to see a face. Enough to release a ribbon of stale tobacco, unwashed wool, and something underneath both: sulfur, wet earth, and meat left too long in standing water.

My stomach turns.

“You okay?” a man asks.

The voice comes from the shadows, low and flat. Green dashboard light catches his left hand on the steering wheel and the white scars circling his wrist.

Kenny.

I have not seen him in years, but I remember those scars. In grade school he kept his sleeves pulled over raw rope burns and sat in the back of the room as if expecting the walls to attack him. Nobody asked the right questions. Maybe nobody wanted the answers.

“Kenny? Thank God.” I step closer, then stop when every instinct I possess tells me not to. “Bess died back there. I just need a ride to Daisy’s. It’s less than a mile.”

He does not answer.

The empty passenger side of his bench seat is visible beneath the dash glow.

Smile normally, Voice whispers. Do not move closer to the door.

I fix what I hope is a calm expression onto my face. “I’m late for work. I’ll pay you for the trouble.”

“No room in the cab, Mitch.”

The lie hangs between us.

“Kenny, it’s fifty below.”

For one beat, I feel him studying me through the narrow opening. Not checking whether I am hurt. Not deciding whether to help. Measuring.

The window slides shut.

“Wait!” I slap one mitten against the glass as the truck pulls away. “I have cash! I have a full bag of peanut M&M’s!”

His tires spit frozen slush across my snow pants. The taillights shrink into two red dots and vanish around the curve.

I stand in the road with my arms hanging at my sides.

In Alaska, you do not leave someone stranded in weather like this. It is not friendliness. It is survival law. You stop because next time the body on the roadside might be yours.

“What the hell, Kenny?”

The sulfur smell lingers in my throat.

He did not stop to help, Voice says. He stopped to see whether the trap had worked.

A deeper cold settles beneath my ribs.

“What trap?”

Voice has no joke for that.

I start walking again. My back is tightening, my right leg has begun to drag, and fear is making the trees appear closer than they are. I straighten anyway. At five foot four, dressed in a hot pink parka that makes me resemble an angry marshmallow, intimidation requires commitment.

I add a swagger.

The swagger lasts six steps before pain turns it into an uneven power-waddle.

Ah, yes, Voice says, cautiously returning to its chair. The legendary Confused Raccoon defense. Bold. Visually baffling. Absolutely no survival value.

“The goal is to confuse predators.”

Mission accomplished. I am inside your skull and have no idea what you are doing.

I smile into the fur lining of my hood. The smile is small, but it is mine.

A branch snaps in the timber.

I stop.

Something large moves between the spruce, too broad and too quiet to be a person. A shadow against deeper shadow. My body screams at me to run.

Do not run, Voice says, all humor gone again. Running makes us lunch.

My heart pounds hard enough to shake my vision. I keep my boots planted on the yellow line.

“I see you!” My voice cracks across the pass. “And I have a firearm!”

I do not have a firearm. I have frozen peanut M&M’s, an expired tube of lip balm, and a mascara wand sharp enough to irritate an attacker.

The shadow does not move.

“A very large firearm,” I add.

Still nothing.

I resume the power-waddle without turning my back completely to the trees. My feet are numb now. My fingers ache inside my mittens, which is probably better than not feeling them at all. The cafe should be visible beyond the next bend, but the road keeps stretching into darkness.

Status report, Voice says quietly. Toes have left the building. Fingers are considering it. The badass swagger has filed for medical leave. We need a win, Mitchell.

“I know.”

Another gust blows down the pass.

This one carries warmth.

Not much. Just a breath of summer across my frozen face, rich with honey and green leaves. It cuts through the pine, exhaust, and lingering rot so cleanly that I stop in the middle of the road.

Warmth does not drift through an Alaskan pass at fifty below.

The scent comes again.

I turn toward the slope.

Fifty feet above me, blue light pulses beneath a cap of snow. At first I mistake it for moonlight caught in ice. Then the glow brightens, and I see leaves.

Living leaves.

A rosebush rises from the frozen hillside, heavy with blossoms the color of a midnight sky. Silver-blue light traces the edges of every petal. The flowers move though the wind has gone still, slowly turning toward me as if they have been waiting.

The shadow between the trees remains motionless.

Voice climbs out of its lawn chair and comes to stand beside me in the front of my mind.

For once, neither of us has anything clever to say.