Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Ben knew there was absolutely no question of his going back to the cottage tonight, not with a shadow stalker roaming around out there.
When he suggested to Sidney that he should crash on the couch, she didn’t offer even a second of objection, instead telling him she’d get some blankets and an extra pillow for him, and that she knew there were a couple of toothbrushes still in their packaging in the second-floor bathroom.
As she went upstairs to fetch everything, he walked over to the eastward-facing window in the dining room and pushed the curtains aside.
Everything was utterly black out there, thanks to the continuing power outage, and even though the stars and the waning moon should have been extra bright with no competition from manmade light sources, the ever-present clouds obscured the sky, making him feel as if Sidney’s big Craftsman-style house was floating in a blank void somewhere, not entirely connected to the earth.
He had to believe that somewhere not too far from here, people were furiously working to get the grid back online, but if this latest pulse had been strong enough, it might have blown something significant, and that could possibly take days to fix.
Not a very appetizing notion, the idea that Silver Hollow might be without power for such a long stretch when an entity that fed on the dark could be out there somewhere, just waiting to strike.
A chill went through him, and he let the heavy linen curtain drop. It wasn’t as if he would have been able to see a shadow stalker out there anyway, not when everything was already black against black.
A creak made him turn his head, and he saw Sidney descending the stairs, her arms full of blankets and sheets and a pillow, a toothbrush in its little clear plastic box riding precariously on top of the pile. “You can use the powder room to brush your teeth,” she said.
“That works,” he said.
She deposited the pillow and blankets and sheets on the sofa after lifting the toothbrush from its perch so she could place it on the coffee table. When she looked up, her face was pale, even in the warm candlelight.
“Ben, I’m scared.”
At once, he went over to her and pulled her into his arms. Maybe just the slightest resistance at first, as if she was ashamed she’d admitted her fear out loud, but then she pressed up against him, her head a welcome weight on his chest as she leaned in.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “I’m kind of scared, too.”
After he made that comment, she lifted her head so she could gaze up at him, the faintest ironic curl at one corner of her full mouth. “The fearless chupacabra hunter is frightened?”
He chuckled. “Like I said before, I don’t hunt them.
Anyway, chupacabras are flesh and blood creatures, just like the griffin and the unicorn.
Shadow stalkers seem to be something else entirely.
I don’t like the idea of one of them being out there.
But there’s safety in numbers, which is why I’m here. ”
For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Then she gave a reluctant nod. “I suppose you’re right.”
He hadn’t wanted to add that if the shadow stalker was going to attack this place, it most likely would come in through one of the ground-floor windows.
Just another reason why he thought it better to be here in the living room.
That way, he could be her first line of defense…
even if he had absolutely no idea how someone could fight a creature of darkness and shadow, one that wasn’t precisely corporeal in the way that most people thought of such things.
But he knew if he mentioned anything along those lines, Sidney would insist that he sleep upstairs.
Not in her room, of course — they’d kissed multiple times, but she also hadn’t signaled him that she wanted to take matters further, at least any time soon.
No, he had a feeling there was probably a guest bedroom upstairs where he could have slept.
He didn’t want to do that, though. If anything tried to get in, he’d have to try to stop it.
Exactly how, he had absolutely no idea. Shadow stalkers weren’t the kind of creatures that could be felled by a bullet.
Like vampires, they could only be defeated by the coming of day, which felt a long way off right now.
Doing his best to sound cheerful…but not too cheerful, or Sidney would know for sure that he was faking it…he said, “All we have to do is wait for daylight. After that — well, we’ll be in a better position to see what’s going on with the power and everything else. It will be fine.”
She looked up at him, gray eyes tinted almost golden by the flickering candlelight that surrounded them.
“You really think so?”
“I do,” he said, so firmly that he almost believed it.
Almost.
As couches went, this one hadn’t been too bad. Ben woke up with a slight crick in his neck, but that appeared to be the only real downside to sleeping here rather than in his bed at home.
Because the drapes had all been pulled shut, the room was still dim. However, enough pale daylight seeped around the edges of the fabric that he could tell he and Sidney had survived the night.
Before he could process much more than that welcome piece of news, however, someone pounded on the back door.
“Sidney! Sidney!” came a man’s voice, urgent.
At once, Ben sat upright and grabbed his jeans from the place where they’d been draped over one arm of the couch. Since he’d slept in his T-shirt, it didn’t take long before he was decently covered…even though it still had to be patently obvious that he’d spent the night here.
Just as he was buttoning the top button of his 501s, Sidney came hurrying down the stairs.
She wore her UC Davis sweatshirt and some leggings covered in a whimsical cow print and had her hair pulled back into a scrunchie, and he would have thought she was pretty damn adorable if she hadn’t looked so worried.
“That sounds like John Henderson,” she said breathlessly as she hurried past Ben and into the kitchen.
“Who’s John Henderson?” he asked, following her.
Yes, the person shouting probably wasn’t a shadow-stalker, but right now, Ben thought he couldn’t be too careful.
While he’d bumped into many of Silver Hollow’s residents during his tenure here, he wouldn’t pretend that he knew all of them, or anything even close to that.
“He and his wife have a farm on the other side of town,” Sidney replied, then opened the kitchen door.
Standing out on the back stoop was a man who looked like he might have been five or six years older than Ben, so in his mid-thirties. His thinning hair was mussed, and his T-shirt appeared to have been put on inside-out, indicating that he’d been in a hell of a hurry when he left the house.
“What’s the matter, John?” Sidney asked. “Do you want to come in?”
“No,” he said. He would have been pleasant-faced if he had looked so concerned, and right then it seemed as if he didn’t have any time to worry about niceties. “Can you come to the farm? It looks like something’s been at our goats. Two are dead, and two others are just hanging on.”
At once, Sidney glanced over at Ben, her face pale. Although she didn’t say anything, the question still hung in the air between them.
Shadow stalkers?
All he could do was lift his shoulders. He had no idea what they were capable of, so he didn’t feel qualified to comment, even if he had come across an account or two of them attacking livestock.
But….
“It’s daylight,” he said quietly. “It should be safe.”
John Henderson frowned at that remark, but it seemed he was too worried to waste time puzzling it out. “Patty says it was wolves, but we don’t have wolves around here. Or…do we?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard of,” Sidney said. “Give me a minute so I can grab my bag, and then we’ll come to the farm with you.”
The man looked down at Ben’s bare feet and frowned slightly, but again, he didn’t seem inclined to worry about minor details like that. “Sure.”
So they left him waiting at the back door while Sidney hurried off to get her bag, and Ben went into the living room to pull on his shoes and socks.
By the time he was done, she’d returned, now carrying what looked like a black doctor’s bag and with her own feet covered in a pair of well-worn gray Uggs.
A big, mud-splattered Dodge truck waited in the gravel lane that led to the home’s detached garage. John Henderson led them over there, waiting with some impatience while Ben squeezed himself into the back seat in the extra-cab and Sidney took shotgun.
Once they’d backed out of the driveway and were heading west, she ventured, “Did you call Hope Hayakawa? She really would’ve been closer.”
“Phones’re still out,” John said briefly, hands clutched around the steering wheel. “And we don’t know her that well. Patty said I should just come to your house.”
Sidney accepted that explanation without comment, although even from the back seat, Ben could see the way her jaw set.
She’d mentioned to him how a lot of the residents of Silver Hollow still viewed her as their veterinarian, even though her DVM degree was in limbo and Hope was a perfectly competent alternative.
He knew that was why John Henderson had come to Sidney’s house despite living way on the other side of town. Around here, old habits died hard.
The farm looked big and prosperous, with picturesque split-rail fences and a white two-story house with French blue shutters and a red barn. However, as they got out of the truck, Ben saw it wasn’t quite as picture-perfect as it first appeared.