The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)(69)

“Oh,” I said softly. “She was your … you were together?”

“Well, don’t weep for me,” Janet said dismissively. “She was a day-tripper. She mainly liked me for what I could do for her. We had fun, but it never would’ve lasted longer than the summer.”

“The summer Althea found her way into the Hinterland.”

“Of course. We met at a bar in Budapest—she was a pretty American tourist who’d run away from her friends. I was an idiot who never could resist a tough girl. I told her about my fieldwork, and she decided over the course of a cheap bottle that she had to come with me.” Her eyes went unfocused; she plucked the string of her bracelet like a zither.

“Your fieldwork?”

“Doors. Doors between worlds. I started out doing coursework in fairy tales—my parents were professors, my mother at a time when it was rare for a woman to make it as far as she did—but the theoretical became quite real when I found a door in a book.”

“Not metaphorically speaking, I’m guessing.”

“Not at all. Most books’ power is in the abstract, but occasionally you’ll find one with very physical abilities. It was your average fairyland door, quite disappointing if you grew up imagining fairies as air sprites or woodland types—I was stuck underground most of the time. Once I got out again, months later in real time, I was hooked. I dropped the idea of getting a degree and went very hands-on.” Janet had the same strange Hinterland accent Ingrid did, but the more she talked about her past, the more the British in her came out.

“And you told Althea about the Hinterland door,” I prompted.

“I did. That kind of knowledge was around if you could pay the right price, which I could—knowledge buys knowledge, and a pretty girl of twenty-six has other currency, too.” She pursed her lips and looked prudish for a minute, daring me to judge her. When she saw I wouldn’t, she continued.

“I was celebrating a very promising lead when I met Althea, and between the liquor and her loveliness, I had loose lips. God, I’m glad I sent Tam out, she’d hate to hear this.” She shot a nervous glance toward the door.

“Anyway, I told her—too much. By the next morning, I already had regrets, but I couldn’t put her off. But she had a … she seemed to have the right spirit for it. Pilgrim soul and all. It was a whirlwind, the weeks we spent planning. Buying supplies, sourcing objects we thought we’d need—cloud powders, books, waterproof boots, a very expensive magical compass that, it turned out, worked in neither this world nor the last. We fell in love, or so I thought, and she never seemed to have a doubt about the Hinterland. I should’ve been suspicious, I know. I’d had years to get used to the idea of leaving the world behind. I’d cut my ties rather harshly. But she did it spontaneously. Thoughtlessly. That came clear when we got here. Painfully so.”

The door creaked open, letting in cold air and the spicy smell of the Hinterland woods. Janet went quiet and watched Ingrid come in, something complicated in her eyes.

Ingrid dropped a heavy armful of split logs in front of the fireplace. “Your refugee is staying the night, then?” she asked, feeding one into the flames.

“Of course she is,” Janet said sharply. “Ingrid, you’re such a snob. I was a refugee myself once, you ever think of that?”

Ingrid shook her head without responding.

“That’s the real problem with the Hinterland,” Janet said, ostensibly to me. “Nobody here has a goddamned sense of humor. Or a god, for that matter. Maybe you need one to have the other. The sense of being at someone’s mercy, so you can laugh about it.” She laughed like she was giving a demonstration.

“You’re tired,” Ingrid said without turning around.

“Too much truth for her,” Janet informed me.

I felt like I did the night I’d watched Ella get drunk on sherry and rip into Harold. It was two weeks after the wedding, and her wifey mask was starting to slip.

“You said Althea made a, um, dark deal to get out of here,” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “What was it?”

Ingrid turned around on her knees, eyebrows up. “What are you doing talking about that one? Where’s she come into it?”

“Alice is Althea’s granddaughter,” Janet replied regally. “And she’s the one who brought her up, not me.”

“A large coincidence, that is. I’m sure you hate having the excuse to talk about her.” But Ingrid said it without rancor, moving to stand behind Janet and rest her hands on her shoulders.

“What was the deal?” I repeated.

“What, so you can make the same one?”

“No, so I can…” I winced, grabbing my stomach. When I tried to lie, the stuff I’d swallowed twisted around in there like a snake made of acid.

“Oh, just tell her,” Ingrid said. “The damage is done, and she’ll hear a twisted version of it if she has to ask elsewhere. Everyone hears about the Spinner, sooner or later.”

“I’d rather it be later,” Janet muttered. She turned her cheek into Ingrid’s hand and sighed. “Things were bad here for Althea. There wasn’t someone like me yet, to tell us what to do, and there were very few refugees then. We had to find our way, painfully and slowly. She ran out of whiskey first, then cigarettes, then books to read, and the poor thing ran on all three. Think of a bored child on holiday, but imagine that holiday is forever. Until boredom made her do something very stupid.”