Free The Dogs of Winter by Kem Nunn

be.” Pam paused for a drink. “Personally, I think Drew is an asshole. I doubt he had anything to do with this girl. Why would he buy the trailer, for Christ’s sake?”
    “It would be his.”
    “What?”
    “I mean . . . in this weird way . . . it would be his. He would want it.” But she was only half thinking about these answers. Her mind was still upon what she had said before. Yes, she had said, yes.
    Pam blew smoke through her nostrils. “That’s one weird answer,” she said. She gave it a moment’s thought. “Something is happening here,” she announced. “I think you should see Deborah, maybe.”
    Deborah was a Caucasian woman who lived in town. The women in Pam’s circle seemed to believe she was adept at reading auras. Kendra had her doubts. Nor was she altogether certain she wanted someone looking at her aura. She found the prospect faintly distasteful, the kind of thing her father might have indulged in.
    “I’m serious, Kendra. There’s something here you ought to get to the bottom of. And it doesn’t have anything to do with Drew. Or Amanda, or that fucking trailer you spend too much time alone in. It’s something with you. Deborah might help. The coven might help. The rituals might help . . .”
    “Pam. Please. Give me a break.”
    “I’m trying to.”
    “Deborah watches Melrose Place on television, for Christ’s sake. I’ve seen her.”
    “What is it, really?” Pam asked her. “Afraid it won’t work, or afraid it will?”
    Kendra found herself smiling.
    “Now what?”
    “I don’t know. Nothing.”
    “Come on. What?”
    Kendra drank her wine. “Maybe it isn’t all gardens and faery queens,” she said. She was set upon by the sudden desire to be gone. She took the check from the table, creased it down the middle, and slipped it into her purse. “He’ll never find it here,” she said.
    “He?”
    “The mad professor.”
    Pam looked confused.
    “You know, Felix the Cat. The cartoon.”
    “I remember the cat. That’s about it.”
    “Well, there was this mad professor. He was always stealing Felix’s bag of magic tricks. And then Felix would have to steal it back. And he would fold it into a triangle and stick it into his side. And he would say, ‘They’ll never find it here.’ ”
    Pam shook her head.
    “It was a joke,” Kendra told her. “I saw the check, I flashed on the cartoon . . .”
    Pam turned to the men at the bar. She looked at Kendra. “Stay here,” Pam told her.
    Kendra watched as Pam went once more to the cooler, at which point she made her exit. She was really rather reckless about it, no doubt rude as well. She was halfway down the stairs before she realized she had not paid Pam for her share of the wine. But she did not want to go back up and she decided it would have to wait.
    She was in the parking lot, getting into her truck, when she saw the logger again. It was the man from the landing. She heard someone call to her and when she turned she saw the man leaning against the side of a truck. She was not sure what the man had said. She saw another man move around from the back of the truck. The rain had picked up. The afternoon was growing dark and there were two men.
    Kendra slid quickly behind the wheel, then drove without looking into the path of an oncoming logging truck. She heard the horn at about the same time she saw the immense vehicle bearing down upon her. Her mind seemed to snap a picture of it, something she would carry to look at later—the driver, in some attitude of panic, hunched over the wheel, wrenching it toward the bar, the cut logs swaying as if made of rubber. She believed she shut her eyes, expecting impact. The driver missed her, however, and when she saw him again, he was on the running board of his jackknifed rig, middle finger extended, as the afternoon broke about him into shimmering liquid sheets.
    •  •  •
    Kendra drove on. She crossed the river and entered the woods and not till she came to