Chapter Eighteen
“What’s with all the baking?” Johanna bit the leg off a gingerbread man. She stopped by for a late lunch after working in the field all morning.
Rolling out dough for Kaiser-Pl?tzchen across the table, Astrid replied, “I have a gentleman caller coming this evening, and I want to impress him.”
The forest ranger choked on her cookie. “This evening?” she sputtered, pounding her chest. “Before dark, I hope, or he’s going to be someone else’s snack.”
A wry smile stole across Astrid’s lips. “Maybe that ‘someone else’ is the visitor.”
Johanna furrowed her brow, not immediately understanding. Eagerly rendezvousing with the reigning forest monster was too absurd a notion to be anyone’s first thought. But as the dots began to connect, her eyes widened. Dropping the uneaten parts of the gingerbread man to her plate, she leaned forward, hands braced against the table. “You don’t mean that someone else is the... Astrid, are you seriously telling me that Wald Vater is coming by later for a ‘friendly’ visit?”
“Gudarīks, actually. That’s his real name. And yes, I think he likes me.”
“Wow. You’re serious. How exactly does one get on a first-name basis with a forest monster?”
Thumbing off a clump of dough stuck to her rolling pin, Astrid tried to keep the anger from her voice when she recalled the circumstances that brought him to her. “He heard me yelling and came to chase off a group of hikers that were wrecking my property.”
Johanna sucked in a sharp breath, concern overtaking her features. “Are you okay? I noticed the damage to your garden, and the newly turned soil, but I’d thought maybe Fritz or Liesel had gotten out of their pens and had themselves a Yuletide feast.”
“Not on their own—the hikers let them out. We’re all right, but it’s going to take a few weeks for the garden to yield again.”
“Do you need anything? I can bring groceries on my next trip up.”
“Maybe some fresh herbs and produce? My pantry is otherwise stocked.”
“Of course.” She sipped on a cup of tea. “So, what exactly happened? They let out the goats, wrecked your garden...”
Astrid continued the story, explaining how her unwanted visitors harassed Fritz and Liesel, ruined her offering at sunset, and put her life in danger. No details were spared—except for the ones involving throwing an ax at tourists.
Some things you just don’t tell your human friends.
“And then he came. He watched me from the woods as the hikers ran off.”
Eyes wide as saucers, Johanna covered her mouth with one of her hands. “How’d you get out of being eaten?” Even with Astrid standing right there in the flesh, indisputably alive and well, the forest ranger leaned toward her, waiting to hear the rest of the story with bated breath.
“I thought I was going to die, I won’t deny that, so I laced some Springerle with death cap and offered him a snack.”
Johanna’s jaw dropped, but she rapped on the table approvingly.
“But then we got to talking.” Her cheeks warmed. So much had changed from their first conversation to their last. The way he sought her touch in the garden, never wanting to be too far away. Or how attentively he listened to her childhood stories and asked for more. Not to mention when she was struck by vertigo, and they both held on to each other just a shade too long, she felt him, every wonderful bit of him, pressed up against her thigh...
Last night’s almost kiss.
“I didn’t end up poisoning him, and he didn’t end up trying to eat me. In fact, he went out of his way to rescue Fritz and Liesel. The hikers scared them off, and they got lost in the forest.”
“Wow. That’s quite the fortunate turn of events.”
“Couldn’t’ve asked for a better outcome,” Astrid agreed. With a wicked smile, she added, “Gudarīks is hot by the way. He’s got these great big antlers and a skull face, but he’s also tall and slightly furry. Doesn’t really wear clothes, like, at all, and he was kinda turned-on when we first met.”
Johanna arched one skeptical brow.
“I’m explaining it badly. He’s actually very sweet. Two nights ago, he helped me replant my garden.”
“Hard at first sight, was it?” Johanna nibbled on another gingerbread limb, wary. Without her usual jovial luster, every one of her fifty years showed in the deepening lines of her face. “That’s quite...memorable. But, Astrid, are you sure? I know you’re a scary Hexe who can take care of herself, but this is Altes Geweih we’re talking about. He EATS people, and he thought about eating you. He stalked you like prey just the other night.”
Astrid waved a dismissive hand. “If he still wanted to eat me, he’d have done so already.”
“What if he wants to fuck you, then eat you? The English have a saying for this—it’s having his cake and eating it, too.”
“He’s been too thoughtful.” Her voice softened as she bent to tabletop level to check the dough’s thickness. “Too gentle. And it doesn’t feel disingenuous.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” Johanna rubbed her forehead. “I’m just worried. We checked out the poacher’s campsite this morning and are having the blood tested to verify it’s wolf, just some due diligence for our records. If something bad happened to you...”
Now was probably the time to mention the poacher who broke into her home, but why give Johanna something new to worry about when the situation was well under control? The next time the man dared step foot on her property, her magical wards would burn and peel the flesh from his bones. And that was just the sort of information Johanna would like not to know.
“I can send a message after we meet if you’d like.”
Her friend exhaled. She didn’t look pleased, but she did agree. “Does your ‘gentleman friend’ by any chance know where these poachers are? Any reason why he hasn’t eaten them already?”
“Johanna.” Astrid placed a hand over her heart. “Are you encouraging the eating of people?”
“Poachers,” she corrected. “Just poachers.”
“Don’t they count?”
“Not really, no.”
“Legally?”
Johanna rolled her eyes. “Well, of course, legally. Just let me have my one murderous thought a year, will you?”
Astrid pushed the plate closer to her friend. Sighing, Johanna reached for another and bit off a gingerbread man’s head.
“Gudarīks was with me at the site when I found the wolf’s blood,” Astrid confessed. She’d left that out before, not wanting to overwhelm her friend, but Johanna needed to know that even the mighty Wald Vater hadn’t the faintest clue what was going on. “And at least a couple times when I was not. He can’t find the poachers. The old magic I told you about? They just disappear. Perchta is baffled, too.”
“That’s comforting.” Her tone said otherwise. “And just when were you going to tell me this?”
“Precisely this moment.”
The rest of the gingerbread man disappeared into Johanna’s mouth, followed by loud crunching.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Of course, I was going to tell you! But I wanted to see if we could figure out something more useful first. ‘Sorry, all the oldest forest monsters are stumped’ isn’t very helpful. Or comforting, as you said.”
A heavy sigh. “I suppose that’s a fair point.”
“There is something that might help.” She could give Johanna a physical description of the man who broke into her home, for all the good it would do, considering he was among those vanishing at will. But if it sped up identifying him, and helped with the case Johanna was building, then maybe it was worth something. “We found cigarettes at the site. Several days ago, a man smoking ones just like them ventured near my property. Something about him rubbed me wrong, but at the time, I didn’t think he might be one of the poachers.”
“It’s okay. The information will be useful now. What did he look like?” Johanna pulled a notepad and pen from her coat breast pocket and jotted down notes as Astrid described him.
When they finished, Johanna checked her watch. “Sunset is in three hours. Remind me again why your latest plans for debauchery couldn’t involve a nice, polite satyr? Whatever happened to Demos and his friend?”
“The ménage à trois?” Astrid snorted. “Satyrs are many things, and often fun, but I wouldn’t call the encounters you’re alluding to ‘polite.’” Teasingly, she added, hoping it would reassure her friend, “I came out of that situation on top—both figuratively and literally.”
Dropping her head back with an exasperated groan, Johanna stared at the ceiling. “Fine. Just remember to text me.”