You’re not expecting to find a vampire in the woods, are you, Lori?”
“Of course not,” I said, avoiding his eyes. “What kind of an idiot do you think I am, Kit? I don’t believe in vampires.”
“Just checking,” said Kit. “You said you wanted to find Rendor, who, according to Rob and Will, is a soul-eating king of vampires, so I thought you might—”
“I used the name for convenience’s sake,” I interrupted. “I don’t care what we call the creep who was spying on the boys. If it’ll make you more comfortable, we can call him Mr. X.”
“I don’t mind calling him Rendor,” said Kit, smiling, “as long as you don’t expect me to string garlic around my neck and add a wooden stake to my emergency gear.”
I chuckled appreciatively, though I shifted my pack uneasily on my shoulders and continued to look anywhere but at Kit.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “I’m looking for a real monster—a voyeur or a child molester—not a make-believe one. And I’d like to start in the exact spot where Rendor appeared to the boys on Sunday.”
“The spot where Rendor allegedly appeared,” Kit corrected. “I knew you’d want to start there, so that’s where I’m taking you. It’s about three-quarters of the way up Emma’s Hill.”
Emma’s Hill was one link in a continuous chain of hills that stretched north and south for twenty miles or so, rising like a knobbly spinal cord between two fertile river valleys and shielding Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter
49
Anscombe Manor, Aunt Dimity’s cottage, and the village of Finch, among many other places, from the harsh winter winds that blew in from the east. Since cartographers had never named the hill directly behind Anscombe Manor, Derek Harris had taken the liberty—time-honored by all great explorers—of naming it after his wife.
I’d climbed Emma’s Hill more times than I could count. I knew the trails that led to my cottage, the ones that led to the humpbacked bridge in Finch, and the ones to avoid during rambling season, when tranquil byways became superhighways crammed with day hikers, bird-watchers, and long-distance backpackers. I knew the best picnic spots, the best overlooks, and the best places to ford the spring-fed stream that tumbled downhill on its way to join the river that ran through Finch. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Emma’s Hill.
Kit, however, had grown up at Anscombe Manor—his family had once owned the estate—which gave him a slight advantage over me when it came to local knowledge. The path he selected for our assault on Emma’s Hill was entirely unfamiliar to me. It was, by the looks of it, known only to Kit and a host of small wild animals, and its entrance was concealed by encroaching hawthorn bushes that hadn’t yet shed their leaves.
“We could follow the bridle path,” Kit informed me, pushing the hawthorns aside, “but I thought we’d take a shortcut. The sooner we reach the old tree, the sooner you’ll learn to ride.”
“You’re awfully sure of yourself,” I observed, ducking to avoid a whipping, dripping branch.
“Yes, I am,” he said, and left it at that.
The shortcut was steep, rough, narrow, and so annoyingly slippery that I began to suspect that Kit had chosen it in order to discourage me from carrying out my search. I seemed to slide down one step for every two I took up, and I collected so much mud on
50 Nancy Atherton
the soles of my boots that I felt as if I were wearing ankle weights, but I was up to the challenge. Nothing brought out my stubborn streak like an attempt to discourage me.
All the same, I was relieved when Kit ended the punishing climb by turning onto a long and fairly level shelf that ran parallel to the hill’s ridgeline. I clumped after him through the sopping underbrush, silently blessing the inventor of water-resistant hiking gear.
Had I worn my customary blue jeans and sneakers, I would have been soaked to the skin within seconds of leaving the path.
After ten minutes of steady walking, Kit stepped over a decaying log, entered a tiny clearing, and placed his right hand on the trunk of an ancient apple tree that had seeded itself a long way from the nearest orchard.
“Here we are,” he announced. “The twins and I were down below, on the bridle path, when they saw Rendor. They told me that he was standing right here, looking down at us. When I came up later, to take a look around, I realized instantly that they’d mistaken my old friend here”—he patted the tree’s trunk affectionately—“for a man.”
I paused at the log to scrape the mud from my boots, then subjected the tree to a critical examination, circling it slowly in order to see it from all sides.
“Are you sure you have the right tree?” I asked, coming to a halt in front of Kit. “I don’t think it looks like a man.”
“You would if you saw it from the bridle path on a misty day,”