“Newport,” Alejandro said, his tone curt.
It was. Natividad had not even noticed the exit signs, but the bus was slowing for the turn off the highway. Newport: the town where all the bus routes finally ran out. Just visible past Alejandro’s shoulder, Lake Memphremagog glittered in late afternoon light. Natividad liked the lake – at least, she liked its name. It had pizzazz. She stretched to catch another glimpse of it, but then the bus turned away from the lake and rolled into the station and she lost sight of the bright water.
Newport was the town closest to Dimilioc that did not actually fall within the borders of the Northeast Kingdom. It was smaller than Natividad had expected. Clean, neat, pretty – all the towns this far north seemed to be clean and neat and pretty. Maybe that was the snow lying over everything, hiding all evidence of clutter and untidiness until the spring thaw should uncover it. If there was a thaw. Or a spring. It was hard to believe any spring could thaw this frozen country. As she got off the bus, Natividad pulled the hood of her coat up around her face and tried to pretend she was warm.
“You must get out of the cold,” Alejandro said abruptly. He closed one long hand around Natividad’s arm, collected Miguel with a glance, and led them across the street toward the hotel on the opposite corner. He scanned the streets warily as they moved, scenting the cold air for possible enemies.
Natividad made no effort to calm her brother. She hoped and believed they’d left all their enemies behind them – even Vonhausel would not dare intrude on Dimilioc territory – but they were intruding here, so how could Alejandro be calm? She didn’t argue about the hotel, either. It looked alright. It looked like it might be expensive. But everything in Newport was probably expensive, and her brother needed to feel like he was in control, and they would only be there one night, after all.
Miguel heaved their pack up over his shoulder and hurried to catch up. “We need to find a car–” he began.
“Not today,” snapped Alejandro. “It gets dark too early here. You can’t go alone to look at cars, and Natividad is tired and cold and needs to rest.”
Miguel, catching Alejandro’s tone and not needing Natividad’s warning glance, said meekly, “Maybe tonight I can find a newspaper with ads. Then I can figure out which cars we should look at tomorrow.” Alejandro nodded curtly, not much interested.
The hotel was expensive, but they only needed one room. They got a room with two beds, but Alejandro wouldn’t sleep, of course – certainly not after dark. He stretched out on his stomach on the bed nearer the door, on top of the bedspread, his chin propped up on his hands, his eyes open and watchful.
“One night,” Natividad said, counting the money they had left. “I think we can afford one night – if we don’t have to pay too much for a car. We won’t need–” she stopped herself, barely, from saying that after tomorrow, one way or another, they probably wouldn’t have to worry about money. She said instead, “Try to find a car for less than two thousand dollars, Miguel, but we can pay more if we really need to.”
Miguel muttered a wordless acknowledgement, not looking up. There had been newspapers in the hotel’s lobby, and he had collected them all. Natividad read the stories while her twin looked at the ads for cars. Big headlines shouted about recent werewolf violence. The part about the weather included warnings about the dates of the approaching full moon as well as about expected snow. All the way north, in one hotel and bus station after another, the headlines had been like that.
Certainly the newspaper people were right about the great increase in “werewolf” violence, though the writers did not yet know enough to distinguish between true black dogs and mere cambiadors, the little moon-bound shifters. What ordinary people thought they knew about “werewolves” was still mostly wrong, even now, when the vampire magic that had fogged human perception for so long had thinned almost to nothing. The vampires had not been gone long enough, yet, for people to figure out the real shape of the world. Miguel said that human ignorance about the sobrenatural could not last very much longer. Natividad wasn’t sure. She thought people wouldn’t want to think about or believe in scary monsters that hunted in the dark.
“Your maraña mágica,” Alejandro said abruptly.
Natividad looked up in surprise. “You think it’s important? Here?” Even if Vonhausel had managed to track them all the way north – which was impossible – but anyway, even Vonhausel would hardly attack them here in this nice hotel so close to Dimilioc.