Eva drove Pia’s SUV again. Everyone maintained the same positions they had traveled in the day before. All the psychos wore black. Pia couldn’t decide if that actually dressed them up or made them look like drug dealers. Maybe both. It did make them look scarier, at least as far as she was concerned.
She tugged at the edge of her lavender Dior wool Grisaille Bar jacket and checked her patent leather, peep-toed pumps for scuff marks. Beluviel was famous for her beauty and style, and Pia had looked hard for the right kind of outfit to wear for their first meeting. With the help of Stanford, the personal shopper Dragos had retained for her, she had settled on a suit that conveyed a sense of Jackie Kennedy’s suits—or at least she hoped it did. The jacket, matching dress and shoes cost as much as a quality used car.
Just months ago she would have been really happy to own that car. She and her mother had lived frugally throughout her childhood, while her mother had put their diminishing resources into hiding escape packs with cash and new identities in various places throughout New York.
Her mother’s version of setting aside nest eggs for a rainy day had been more like preparing for immediate evacuation in case of catastrophe. After her mother’s death, Pia had honored those choices by leaving the escape packs untouched while she had lived on the modest income she made tending bar.
She thought it might boost her self-confidence if she wore something high-end and classic when she met Beluviel, but instead that morning the expensive suit just added to her nervousness. She was going to spill something down the front of that gorgeous wool suit or break a heel, she just knew it.
You can take a girl out of a Target store, she thought, but you can’t take the Target store out of the girl.
“Stop fussing,” Johnny muttered under his breath. “You look fine.”
Pia took a deep breath and looked sideways. Johnny had his nose buried in his video game again. Compared to the others, his narrow bone structure was almost delicate. “How can you tell? I don’t think you’ve looked up once since you turned that thing on.”
An angelic-looking smile touched his lips, an expression that was there and gone again so fast, she would have missed it if she hadn’t been watching him. “Scoped you out when you came down the stairs earlier. I’d commit murder to borrow that suit. Those shoes would be too small for me though.”
She turned to look at him again. In the front seat both Eva and James had gone still and watchful, and while she applauded their protective instincts, it wasn’t necessary.
She said, “Are you any good with makeup?”
Johnny’s gaze lit up, and he looked from his game.
Eva snorted. “He’s better than anyone I know.”
“Wish somebody had told me that sooner,” Pia grumbled. “I could have used some help when I got ready earlier. I had to redo my eyes three times before I got them right.”
Eva and James relaxed. Johnny’s grin returned, wider this time. “Next time give me a holler. I’ll see what I can do.”
The two SUVs made the correct turn and traveled at a sedate pace up an immaculate avenue lined with massive old-growth southern live oaks. The iconic trees towered around fifty feet tall, their gigantic thick limbs rippling outward in twisted sprays.
A three-story mansion sprawled at the end of the avenue. Lirithriel House was a perfect example of Greek Revival architecture. The building was balanced and spare with a front gable design, Ionic grand columns, tall elegant windows and a spacious front portico. Built with a light yellow sandstone facade, the house was famed for its golden glow in the early morning hours.
Behind the house lay extensive flower and herb gardens, complete with a labyrinth maze. Beyond that towered Lirithriel Wood, a dark massive presence that was so intense everyone in the car drew a collective breath. Land magic saturated the air, witchy and intoxicating. The lure of the Wood was so strong Pia could hardly look away. The wild creature that lived inside of her yearned to plunge into the tangled green mystery.
The size of Lirithriel Wood was estimated at around eighty square miles, including a secluded stretch of beach between the barrier islands that dotted the coastline.
The Wood was roughly a fifth of the size of its neighbor, the Francis Marion National Forest. In 1989 Hurricane Hugo had devastated the national forest until virtually none of its old growth survived, but Lirithriel Wood had somehow remained unscathed, dense and wild with ancient trees and a profuse tangle of undergrowth.
Aerial photographs invariably showed an impenetrable canopy of green, the Wood so dense that little of the underlying landscape was visible. A river meandered to a coastal outlet, but it never seemed to run the same path from one photograph to the next.
A river didn’t just change its course arbitrarily. Since the Wood contained the crossover passageway to the Elven Other land, speculation had it that the magic of the passageway warped both digital and chemical photos alike.