Margaret Carter- Foxfire

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FOXFIRE
Margaret Carter.
Author’s Note
All the powers attributed to Kenji come from authentic Japanese mythology. Two
Internet sources I used for kitsune legends are Kitsune Lore,
www.comnet.ca/~foxtrot/kitsune/kitsune1.html, and The Kitsune Page,
www.coyotes.org/kitsune/ kitsune.html..Margaret Carter
Chapter One
Anger and frustration hammered at Tabitha like a fist pounding on a door. She felt
like clamping her hands over her ears to shut out the racket, but plugging her ears
couldn’t block noise that existed only in her brain. Besides, her sister would get the
wrong idea. It wasn’t Chloe’s voice that made Tabitha’s head hurt, but the feelings
behind the words.
“I know damn well you don’t want me here, Tabby.”
Tabitha winced at that nickname. The kittenish overtones clashed with the negative
emotions and made her skull jangle even worse. “I never said that.” She kept her tone
low in hopes of soothing Chloe. Sometimes her curse of perceiving other people’s
emotions enabled her to give them a gentle nudge in a different direction.
“You don’t have to. If I’d phoned first instead of just showing up at the door, would
you have invited me to come?” Her anger bounced off the walls like a steel sphere in an
old-fashioned pinball machine. Her chin quivered like a sulky toddler’s, oddly
contrasting with her porcupine-spiked, blood-red hairdo, the black jeans and halter top,
and the silver ankh necklace. Tabitha, with her brown hair, light sprinkle of freckles and
discount-store wardrobe, felt drab by contrast, but she liked herself that way,
comfortably inconspicuous.
“I might have tried to talk you into making up with Mom and Dad. That doesn’t
mean I don’t want you around.”
“You don’t want anybody around. Why else are you hiding on a mountaintop in
the middle of nowhere?” A wave of Chloe’s hand, fingernails polished with silver
glitter, encompassed the living room with its wood paneling, braided rug, bare ceiling
beams and the pine trees visible through the window.
“Not quite in the middle of nowhere. There’s a town less than half an hour away.”
Tabitha rubbed her forehead. She couldn’t deny she lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains,
though on more of a hillside than a mountaintop, to keep her distance from other
people. That didn’t mean she never wanted to see her family again. She just wanted to
confine that contact to small doses. It didn’t help that her parents suspected she was a
little nuts. Chloe, who seemed to have a faint trace of the emotion-sensing talent Tabitha
had inherited in such unwanted abundance from their grandmother, might have
understood, except that most of the time she preferred to deny any such ability existed.
“Look, Chloe, I understand the folks can be a giant pain about guys and stuff. And I
don’t mind having you hide out here for a while. But aiding and abetting you with
outright disobeying them is a whole ’nother thing.”
“Bottom line, you won’t help me.”
6.Foxfire
“I thought letting you crash here was helping. Bottom line, I won’t let you meet
your boyfriend in my house. Mom and Dad would never let me hear the end of it.”
Their parents would phone from Norfolk and badger her for hours about supporting
her little sister’s rebellion. Listening to them yell hurt less when distance kept her from
sensing their anger directly, but she still wanted to avoid the ordeal. Chloe’s anger felt
almost as harsh. Desperate for fresh air, Tabitha opened the door and stepped onto the
porch to inhale the pine-scented mountain breeze.
Her sister trailed after her. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t understand. It’s not
like you’ve ever dated much.” Planting her hands on her hips, Chloe fired the lethal
shot. “You being a freak and all.”
The scorn in her voice stung like a swarm of wasps. Tabitha sensed the accusation
as half sincere, half chosen because her sister felt how much pain it would cause.
Unfortunately, Chloe’s mild hint of empathic talent didn’t seem to serve any other
purpose. It certainly hadn’t won Tabitha an ally against their parents, who found her
ability embarrassing when they didn’t deny it altogether.
“This isn’t about me. It’s about you disappearing. Mom’s worried. She called a few
hours ago, before you got here, asking if I’d seen you.”
“So now I guess you’re going to phone and tell them I’m here?”
“Not yet. Don’t know what I’ll say when they get desperate and call me again.
You’re not eighteen yet. They’ll drag you back home sooner or later.” Tabitha sighed. “I
wish you’d go on your own though. A guy who’d expect you to vanish and let the folks
think you might’ve been slaughtered by a serial killer or something can’t be worth
much.”
“Like you know anything about guys. You turned down every boy who wanted to
go with you.” Chloe’s words felt the way petting a porcupine probably would.
“That’s not exactly true.” Tabitha had accepted a few dates in high school and
college. Every time, close contact with the feelings of a casual acquaintance had made
her feel like creeping into a burrow and hiding like a rabbit. Especially when those
feelings became intense—male sexual desire mingled with worries about how she
would respond and whether his performance would live up to his own image of his
studliness. “Why don’t we calm down and talk about this later, maybe after dinner?”
She visualized herself stroking those porcupine quills very carefully, in the right
direction to make them lie flat.
Chloe drew back like a cat with ruffled fur. “I don’t want to calm down and quit
trying to make me.”
“What do you mean, make you?” She knew her voice sounded defensive because
she’d gotten caught trying to steer her sister’s emotions onto a smoother track. Their
grandmother had possessed the power to calm people. Tabitha wished she’d inherited
more than a trace of that.
7.Margaret Carter
“You’re sneaking into my mind, the way you used to when we were kids.” The
only person who really believed in Tabitha’s wild talent, Chloe had never gotten
straight the difference between emotion-reading and mind-reading.
At this moment, Tabitha felt more glad than usual that she couldn’t decipher her
sister’s exact thoughts. The part she could perceive was bad enough. “Think what you
want. I’m tired of fighting. I’m going for a walk.”
“Yeah, go on, run away like you always do.”
Tabitha stomped down the porch steps, already ashamed of acting like a brat
herself. She couldn’t stand the hostile emanations any longer though. The atmosphere
inside the house felt like a toxic fog that made her stomach churn. The moment she got
a few yards away, and Chloe stormed inside and slammed the door, the air felt clearer.
Negative emotions still buzzed around her, but the closed door dulled the impact.
She savored the crisp aroma of the pine trees and the lush fragrance of
honeysuckles that festooned a nearby fallen tree trunk. Eager to escape the remnants of
her sister’s anger, she jogged down the gravel driveway to a one-lane road that
connected her land with the highway a couple of miles down. She didn’t exactly live in
the middle of nowhere, the way her family always put it. The ten acres she’d inherited
from her grandmother bordered another residential lot, inhabited by a man who
seemed as much of a recluse as Tabitha herself. She was thankful that she hardly ever
saw him. She preferred loneliness to the stress of armoring herself against random
emotions from strangers.
By the time she reached the end of the driveway, she couldn’t feel Chloe at all. Birds
and animals lurked, easily ignored, in trees and underbrush. Those creatures had
refreshingly one-dimensional feelings—hunger, thirst, fear, aggression, lust. With none
of it aimed at her, she could treat it as background noise like the breeze rustling the
leaves overhead. Human emotions, too complex and too strong, battered her mental
walls to splinters. She’d often gotten into trouble by caving in to avoid that assault.
Agreeing to let Chloe stay at her place instead of phoning their parents the minute her
sister had appeared at the door that day was just the latest instance. She didn’t gain
much by providing a hideout because she still had to deal with verbal and emotional
whiplashing. She drew the line at letting her sister use her house to hook up with the
boyfriend their parents had banned.
When had her relationship with Chloe become such a wreck? When she’d acquired
a little sister at age seven, she’d felt protective toward the new baby. Unlike their
parents, she could identify the cause of each cry and tell Mom what the baby needed.
Though Mom and Dad had never stopped acting leery of Tabitha’s ability, they’d
accepted her help with translating the baby’s demands. For a while, she enjoyed the role
of useful child instead of difficult child. “Difficult” was how Mom described Tabitha as
an infant and toddler, constantly screaming for reasons her parents couldn’t figure out.
Now, from an adult perspective, she knew she’d sensed the pain, anxieties and anger of
people around her and reacted with panic.
8.Foxfire
Shaking off the memories of her parents’ disapproval, she left the road and veered
into the woods, following a narrow trail where she often ran. Her skin grew damp from
the late afternoon heat, with her shorts and T-shirt sticking to her. She slowed her pace,
pushing up her collar-length hair to let the breeze cool the back of her neck. A feeling,
not her own, drifted toward her with the breeze. A glow of admiration she could bask
in like sunshine, if only it would stay at that level. That kind of reaction always
morphed into something more demanding though.
A split second after she sensed a watcher, she caught sight of a moving figure
among the trees ahead. Kenji McGraw, her nearest neighbor, strode in her direction,
gliding through the brush so smoothly she couldn’t hear his footsteps. She halted about
ten feet from him. When his glance met hers, he stopped too. He brushed a stray lock of
black hair, growing to just above the nape of his neck with raggedly trimmed bangs in
front, off his forehead. She sensed his discomfort in the hot, humid air. Feeling his eyes
on her, she realized the T-shirt clinging to her moist flesh outlined the curves of her
breasts and the peaks of her nipples. She wore no bra, as usual when she planned to
spend the day at home. A blush spread over her face. She waved a greeting to him, and
he raised his hand in reply. Though his face showed no more than a faint smile, she felt
heat rising from within him to match the warmth of the summer day. His cheeks
reddened too.
He wore less clothing than she did. Besides sneakers, he had on only a pair of satin
jogging shorts that clung as tightly as hers. They’d talked only a few times since she’d
moved in. After that, she’d occasionally glimpsed him from a distance during her daily
run but never this close before. He always detoured in the opposite direction when they
stumbled upon each other. Every time, they exchanged casual greetings and headed
their separate ways, as if he preferred to avoid people too. That behavior pattern suited
her fine.
Now he changed course to retreat into the denser growth. She leaned against a tree
and watched him. Only a few inches taller than her own medium height, he had a
compact build without a visible ounce of fat. She’d never seen him shirtless before, and
she enjoyed the glimpse of muscles flexing under the skin. The shorts outlined a tight
rear end, a view that provided a welcome distraction from the fight with her sister.
Even if Tabitha’s sensitivity to others’ emotions kept her from dating, she figured she
could still indulge in an occasional fantasy. Good thing he couldn’t read her reactions
the way she did his.
So why did he radiate embarrassment? Simply because she’d noticed him watching
her? She felt something else from him, a wave of arousal that made her skin tingle. The
cloth of her shirt abraded her nipples into harder peaks. She hugged herself to press her
forearms against them. Kenji’s excitement drifted toward her like a spicy-scented mist.
Awareness of inciting that desire made her breath catch in her throat like a trapped
butterfly. Warm liquid welled between her legs.
By now he’d disappeared from sight behind a misshapen giant of a fallen oak tree
festooned with ivy and honeysuckle. He hadn’t withdrawn out of sensing range
9.Margaret Carter
though. She still felt his arousal. If anything, it grew stronger by the minute instead of
fading. She knew she ought to turn around and run until she couldn’t feel him
anymore. Eavesdropping on emotions he wanted to hide amounted to voyeurism.
Besides, why torment herself with the aroma of a banquet she could never taste?
Her body didn’t listen. Her throat went dry, with her heart racing and her breath
accelerating to keep up. In spite of the breeze, the temperature seemed to rise until she
felt as if she stood in front of a roaring campfire. The blaze came from him, no more
than twenty feet away. If she charged up to him and touched his naked chest, it would
scorch her.
But of course she wouldn’t do that. He would think she’d gone crazy. She fell to her
knees on the leaf-strewn ground and cupped her breasts with her palms. The ache
spread from her nipples across her chest as if a pair of hands larger than her own were
splayed over her bare flesh. Her breasts felt heavy, too swollen for the clinging T-shirt.
Invisible ants scurried over her skin. She wanted to rip off the shirt and rub herself
everywhere at once.
The air thrummed with passion like the beat of music amplified to a deafening
level. Not her own passion, but it engulfed her and made her heart pound in cadence
with it. She could almost see the waves distorting the world around her, blurring her
view of the trees, like a mirage on heated asphalt. Her whole body felt like a single
expanding and contracting heartbeat.
She squeezed her breasts, trying to bind her awareness to her own flesh. They’re his
feelings, not mine! But the pulsation only grew more intense by the second. The
emptiness between her legs hungered to be filled. A rush of hot wetness made her press
her thighs together, trying to quell the gaping need. At the same moment, she felt a
hardness that yearned to thrust into that cavity and bury itself in that moist embrace. A
rising pressure on the verge of explosion.
I’m feeling his erection! She struggled to block the relentless waves of arousal. Too
late. His need swept away her mental shield like a dam of twigs in a flooding river. She
couldn’t pretend the excitement didn’t belong to her as well. She wanted to strip off her
pants and plunge her fingers deep into her sheath, as a substitute for the male organ she
never expected to welcome there. Instead, she just cupped her mound through her
shorts, pressing hard in rhythm with the accelerating contractions.
A crimson haze veiled the trees around her and the path under her knees. She
closed her eyes, but the redness glowed behind her lids. The flesh between her legs
started to throb. She felt the pressure reach its peak with a starburst of blinding sparks
on the insides of her eyes. Her hips involuntarily jerked with each spurt of hot liquid.
Her vagina and clitoris contracted in a dozen short, sharp pulses. In the background,
scarcely penetrating her awareness, the keening of some animal ripped through the
silence. She bit off a cry, curled into herself and soared with the whirlwind of sensation
until it faded.
A languid sigh of relief loosened the tightness in her chest. His relief. Hers too
though. Had she screamed aloud in her climax? A flush of embarrassment swept over
10.Foxfire
her. She couldn’t deny her ownership of that last feeling. In the back of her mind, she
sensed Kenji’s presence becoming fainter, drawing away, finally fading completely.
She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest, tears leaking from her eyes. If only she
could share that experience, face to face, with a man who cared for her. But she knew
she would never get any closer than what had just occurred, a spontaneous merging
with a near-stranger. Such a thing had never happened to her before. She’d shied away
from men who lusted for her before their arousal could trigger hers beyond control. She
would have to make sure it didn’t happen again. Worst of all, she couldn’t face Kenji
again, couldn’t even cherish a daydream of friendship.
11.Margaret Carter
Chapter Two
When he practically ran into his neighbor jogging through the woods, Kenji
indulged a few seconds of fantasy. He could stop and say hello instead of fleeing in the
opposite direction. They could carry on a normal conversation, the way he’d sometimes
chatted with her grandmother. The old lady had radiated a calming aura. Having her
for a neighbor hadn’t threatened his peace at all. He’d carved a coffee table out of an
oak tree stump for her, and she’d praised his craftsmanship. He wondered whether her
granddaughter still used that table. Why didn’t he drop by sometime and ask?
Because of the inescapable difference between an elderly widow and a sexy, single
woman almost his own age. Because every time he laid eyes on Tabitha, he wanted to
lay hands and other appendages on her, and that couldn’t happen. He couldn’t forget
the disasters that had resulted every time he’d tried to get close to a woman. So he
allowed himself only a peek at Tabitha’s nipples outlined by the damp T-shirt and her
legs exposed by the brief, snug shorts before he retreated into the undergrowth.
One peek turned out to be too much, combined with the salty scent of her clean
sweat. He couldn’t resist inhaling deeply even while he walked away. No perfume, just
the tang of her female flesh. The breeze wafted the fragrance toward him, tormenting
his senses. He knew his face turned red to match the pinkness of hers. Had she noticed
the bulge of the hard-on in his shorts? He definitely had one by the time he got out of
sight behind the bulk of the fallen tree.
His keen ears, as well as his nose, told him that she’d stopped instead of moving on
down the trail. Why? He sniffed the humid air and smelled female secretions. She felt
an attraction too. Their brief meeting had made her wet. His erection grew, tenting his
pants. It felt so long and hard he could close his eyes and imagine it jutting out like a
steel rod.
Crouching on the ground, he pressed a hand to his aching shaft. No way would he
make it home now. Already he could feel the shifting joints and muscles and the
prickles under the skin that sexual cravings always triggered. All strong emotions had
that effect, but none worse than this kind. She couldn’t see him. He’d be safe enough
seeking his release right here. In the back of his mind, he knew he’d do it even at risk of
her catching him in the act. Her intoxicating scent wouldn’t let him crawl out of range.
He hungered to savor that aroma while he relieved the pressure it caused. He peeled off
his shorts, not wanting to get tangled in them while his excitement ran its course, and
shuffled out of his shoes and socks with one hand already massaging his penis. He
shouldn’t have let so many nights go by without sexual release. His mother had warned
him, in an awkward speech when he’d turned twelve, how he would have to feed that
craving regularly. She hadn’t explained how to take care of the need when he couldn’t
12.Foxfire
risk seducing women. He’d figured out the makeshift solution on his own soon enough.
By now, he should know better than to let the tension build up this way. If he hadn’t,
he’d be able to control himself long enough to get to shelter.
Too late now though. His sharp ears picked up the acceleration in Tabitha’s
breathing. He could tell she tried to suppress it, probably worried about his being close
enough to hear. No normal man could have, at this distance, but he had no trouble
catching every nuance, every hitch in her throat and rustle of leaves when she rolled on
the ground. The tang of her scent confirmed the cause of her restless movements. He
was already squirming himself.
He imagined plunging deeply into her, reveling in the union he’d never shared
with any woman. He visualized what he could never know in reality, soft arms around
his neck, lips parted under his, smooth legs clamped around his hips. For a second he
flushed with self-contempt at the memory of the only way he had experienced mating,
but need quickly drowned shame. He rubbed his cock harder and faster, his breathing
labored as the pressure intensified beyond bearing. He imagined her slick sheath
clenched around him.
A spasm of ecstasy on the edge of pain contorted his body. His joints cracked as his
limbs shrank, bent and realigned. A crawling sensation coursed over his bare skin. His
nose elongated while his ears grew pointed, fangs sprouted in his jaws, and a new
appendage erupted from the base of his spine. The world fractured around him then
reshaped itself in his altered vision. The light breeze carrying the woman’s musk to him
tickled his whiskers. Panting, he tasted the air. All scents instantly became more
pungent, so vivid he could almost see them shimmering in the humid atmosphere,
making up for the sudden change in his vision that attenuated colors to pastels and
grays. His nostrils flared to inhale the smells of moist loam, pine needles, small animals
scurrying through the underbrush, and above all the humid flesh of the female a short
distance away. He could almost feel her pussy squeezing his eager cock.
He no longer had hands to pump his erect organ. Instead, he dug the claws of all
four feet into the soil and sprawled on his belly to thrust through the final convulsions.
A high-pitched howl burst from his throat at the same instant that he shot his juices into
the leaf-mold.
He lay on his side, panting, until his heartbeat slowed to normal. He picked himself
up and slunk homeward, leaving his clothes on the ground to collect later. If he could
have shed tears in his nonhuman form, they would have leaked from his eyes now. In
this shape, he only dimly recalled the cause of his despair, but the inarticulate state of
his thoughts made them no less painful.
* * * * *
The near-miss encounter only confirmed Tabitha’s usual practice of staying out of
Kenji’s way. Not that she disliked what little she knew of him. He earned his living by
custom woodworking, and last fall she’d commissioned him to make a set of
13.Margaret Carter
monkeypod salad bowls as a Christmas gift for her parents. In casual conversation,
she’d found out his father had been an officer in the Navy who’d married a Japanese
woman. Both were dead, and Kenji had lived alone on the mountainside for several
years longer than Tabitha had owned her place. During her two visits to his house, first
to discuss the job and later to pick up the finished product, she’d felt that warm glow
from him. It had disturbed her less than similar reactions from her few dating partners.
Kenji had seemed embarrassed about noticing her figure, eager to withdraw from
contact rather than determined to foist his attention on her like most men. She
remembered how he’d practically pushed her out the door with her purchase the
second time she’d dropped by his place. He seemed as reluctant to associate with
people as she was.
On the way home, she couldn’t help comparing what she’d just experienced to her
few dates in high school and college. Suppose she did work up the nerve to pursue a
relationship with her neighbor instead of avoiding him? If that kind of passion
overwhelmed them when they met face to face, would she react any less disastrously
than she had with other men? She remembered writhing in silent embarrassment in the
passenger seat of a boy’s car after leaving a movie one Friday night. The movie itself
had shielded her from the full force of his desire, which skulked around the edges of
her mind like a coyote stalking a flock of sheep. In the car, with no distractions, she had
to keep pushing away his lust like a hairy, clumsy dog jumping on her. And he hadn’t
even touched her since they’d left their seats in the theater. She remembered how she’d
tensed up when he’d parked the car under a tree on a dark side street outside a vacant
house. His lust had felt greedy, a hunger she couldn’t possibly sate. It crept under her
skin and made her body tingle in response, but she knew that need belonged to him,
not her. She hadn’t even found him that attractive. As a casual friend and president of
the chess club rather than a class leader or star athlete, he’d impressed her as somebody
she could date without feeling threatened. The feelings that lurked behind his bland
exterior knocked her off balance. His craving for her flesh had smothered her, even
though he’d ventured no more than a lopsided, wet kiss. At that point, she’d insisted on
going home.
He hadn’t asked her out again. Most of her attempts at dating followed the same
pattern. She’d expected more complex reactions from her college classmates, but it
turned out men that age just had more skill at masking the outward signs of their
appetites. Whenever she took the risk of spending time with a man who actually
appealed to her physically, uncertainty over whether the desire she felt was truly hers
or a byproduct of his spoiled her pleasure in kisses and caresses. By the time she had
enough experience to distinguish her feelings from those of the person touching her,
she’d become too skittish for anything resembling intimacy. Over the years she’d grown
more sensitive to others’ emotions rather than less. Now she’d reached the point where
even her infrequent trips into town for groceries strained her control. Often her only
human contact for weeks consisted of an occasional greeting from the mailman, whose
mind usually emitted nothing more stressful than discomfort from rain, cold or heat.
14.Foxfire
In front of the house, she paused to extend mental antennae and sample the
vibrations inside. The uproar she’d fled from had died down. She slumped onto the
sagging porch steps and sat there for a minute, letting the evening breeze cool her
flushed cheeks. The house’s comfortably shabby facade, with brown boards weathered
almost to gray, usually made her feel safe. Having started life as her grandparents’
vacation home, it retained a rustic cabin look despite the winterizing and modern
appliances added in later years. Grandmama’s serene aura still seemed to cling to the
worn rugs and faded wallpaper. Tabitha resented having her refuge tainted by the
family turmoil she’d retreated here to escape.
With a sigh, she stood up and braced herself to face her sister. When she went
inside, she found Chloe at the computer in a corner of the living room. From the
doorway, Tabitha could see the Internet in use but of course couldn’t read anything on
the screen. Chloe glanced at her with a muttered “hi”, hastily sent the e-mail she’d just
written and closed the browser. “Checking my mail. Hope that’s cool with you?”
Though she obviously tried to keep her tone casual, her mind felt jagged with
nervousness.
“Sure, that’s fine. Sorry I bailed like that.” Tabitha knew she would get nowhere
asking what Chloe was hiding. Challenging her evasiveness would only start another
fight. “It’s getting late. I’ll throw a couple of burgers on.”
She laid a grill pan over a pair of burners on the gas stove in the kitchen while
Chloe set the table in the dining alcove with a picture-window view of the woods.
Neither of them spoke, which Tabitha thought was just as well. She’d always been able
to tell when Chloe was lying, just as she had with other people. Dissonance between
words and intentions had made her skull jangle like an out-of-tune bell ever since she’d
learned to talk. She mentally winced at the memory of blurting out to a middle-aged
single friend of her mother’s, crooning about how much she loved little girls, “No, you
don’t, kids make you feel creepy.” In first grade she’d contradicted her teacher’s
declaration to an unruly class, “Now, I don’t want to have to take away your playtime
today,” with “That’s not true. You like punishing us”. Instead of praise for honesty,
she’d received a harsh scolding for rudeness.
By the time of Chloe’s birth, Tabitha had started learning to curb her tongue around
less-than-frank adults. When her baby sister had grown old enough to lie, though,
Tabitha took it for granted that their parents would want the truth about who’d
accidentally knocked over a vase or let the cat escape out the back door. They didn’t,
not after the first few incidents. She got sent to her room with reminders that nobody
liked a tattletale. A few years into elementary school, she learned to keep her mouth
shut except when directly addressed, a habit that earned her a reputation for shyness.
She didn’t dare talk much for fear the wrong words would tumble out. On the plus
side, burying herself in books had turned her into a straight-A student. After a couple of
years of office work following college, she’d networked into freelance copyediting and
technical writing jobs she could do online, from home. Inheriting this secluded house
15.Margaret Carter
had formed the final step in her plan to construct a life where she never had to
encounter people unless she wanted to.
So, yeah, Chloe had a point in accusing her of running away from things. Who
could blame her, Tabitha thought, considering what happened when she did associate
with family members, such as now? Although the two of them didn’t raise their voices
or make any hostile remarks, the atmosphere continued to twang with tension through
dinner, dishwashing and an hour in front of the TV watching sitcoms on satellite
channels. Tabitha, relieved when Chloe withdrew to her bedroom at nine, retreated to
her own room to distract herself with a new mystery novel. She made sure to stow her
purse, with car keys zipped inside it, in her closet. If she had to take temporary
responsibility for her sister, reasonable precautions against impulsive acts such as
“borrowing” her car made sense. That way, her parents couldn’t accuse her of letting
Chloe run wild during the visit that, with luck, would be brief.
* * * * *
She woke to darkness and silence, except for crickets chirping outside the open
window. The fragments of a dream shredded and drifted away, a luscious dream of
rolling in Kenji’s arms on the cool, pine-needle-carpeted forest floor. Her nipples and
clit tingled. She pressed a hand against the wetness between her legs and waited for her
heartbeat to stop pounding in her head. Within seconds, her breathing slowed to
normal. For a minute she strained her ears, wondering what had shattered her sleep.
Nothing. When she woke to full consciousness, she realized she sensed a vacuum where
a hazy cloud of muted emotions should emanate from Chloe’s dreaming mind. Tabitha
glanced at the luminous digits of the clock on the nightstand. Five minutes past
midnight.
She got out of bed, her skin prickling with the coolness that nightfall brought to the
mountains, even in mid-June. Without stopping to throw on anything warm over her
flimsy nightgown, she tiptoed into the hall. Maybe her perceptions had failed her for
once, and Chloe hadn’t really left the house. She turned the doorknob of the other
bedroom inch by inch until she could ease the door open. One glance showed her that
the sheets were flung back and the bed was empty. A quick check of the bathroom
confirmed her sister’s absence.
Don’t tell me she went for a walk in the woods in the middle of the night! I can’t imagine her
stumbling around under the trees in the dark.
Unless she’d gone only as far as the driveway, for a little fresh air. Tabitha had
trouble visualizing even that much of a midnight foray, considering Chloe’s pose of big-city
boredom with nature in the almost-raw. Another thought sent her to the kitchen,
where she found one of her two flashlights missing. So Chloe had expected to need
light, a bit of preparation that indicated she’d planned her expedition. Tabitha flicked
on the floodlight over the back deck, slipped her feet into the flip-flops she kept by the
16.Foxfire
kitchen door and hurried outside. No sign of her sister behind the house. A circuit of
the yard brought no results. Chloe had definitely sneaked away.
If she’d simply wanted to leave, she’d have waited until daylight and said so,
probably asking for a ride to town. So she must have a reason for secrecy. Remembering
Chloe’s nervous behavior at the computer, Tabitha went into the living room and
booted it up. She knew her sister’s screen name, of course. She typed “ScarletWings”
into the box. As for the password, when Tabitha had lived at home, Chloe had used the
same three passwords for all Internet activities and not bothered to hide them from the
rest of the family. With luck, she’d remained predictable that way.
She had. The second letter combination Tabitha tried, RavenX, accessed the account.
Without the least twinge of guilt, she opened the in-box and clicked on the most recent
message, dated that afternoon. Somebody labeled ShadowElf wanted to know where
Chloe was and when they could meet. Tabitha switched over to the “sent mail” folder
and quickly found the reply: “I’ll be on Route 29 where my sister’s road joins it about
12:30 tonight. Wait for me if I don’t get there right on time ‘cause I’ll probably have to
walk.” The e-mail then described the landmarks that identified the crossroads of Route
29 with the narrow lane meandering up to the house.
Fuming, Tabitha logged off. It didn’t take much of a leap to figure out “ShadowElf”
was the forbidden boyfriend. So much for trusting Chloe not to get herself and Tabitha
into deep trouble with the folks. On the other hand, if Chloe intended to run away
permanently, she wouldn’t have to face the trouble. She’d have left it all for other
people to clean up.
Especially me, Tabitha grumbled to herself. It occurred to her that she still had time
to head off this rendezvous. Without access to the car keys, Chloe had to reach the
highway on foot. Catching up with her before she met the boy shouldn’t pose a
problem. Tabitha scrambled into jeans, a T-shirt, tennis shoes and a lightweight denim
jacket and tied her hair out of the way in a lopsided ponytail. Grabbing her purse and
the flashlight, she dashed to the car, backed out of the driveway and headed down the
hillside. She gritted her teeth, fighting anger that for once she recognized as entirely her
own, and debated whether to phone their parents to collect Chloe before or after
shoving the brat into a bedroom and barricading the door.
17.Margaret Carter
Chapter Three
The winding, one-lane road had no street lamps. Tabitha had to drive slowly,
scanning the shoulders by the headlight beams alone. Unless Chloe glimpsed the lights
around a curve and hid in the bushes, though, she’d be impossible to miss. With the
windows down and her mind wide open, Tabitha would sense the girl even if she
didn’t see her right away.
But she felt only the fuzzy consciousness of night birds and small animals she
couldn’t identify. No hint of movement, aside from shadows thrown by her headlights,
broke the stillness of the road. She drove to the Route 29 intersection at a crawl, much
slower than she usually covered the distance. Surely Chloe couldn’t have beaten her to
the spot. No, not even at a run.
At the bottom of the lane, Tabitha parked the car under the trees and got out,
locking the doors. With her purse slung over her shoulder and the unlit flashlight in one
hand, she crept toward the highway, though her sixth sense told her nobody waited
there. The night remained silent except for the chirping of crickets. A lamppost across
the road cast a circle of light whose outer edge she avoided. She lurked behind a huge,
double-trunked oak tree looming next to the wooden sign that was supposed to mark
the turn-off toward her house. Years of weather had worn the words “Honeysuckle
Way” to illegibility. With only two properties on that road, hers and Kenji McGraw’s,
the loss didn’t matter. Anybody who’d visit here would get directions from one or the
other of them.
She leaned against the tree, watching fireflies and checking the time every few
minutes. Chloe must have tried a shortcut through the woods. Dumb thing to do, but
her behavior hadn’t demonstrated much wisdom so far. Still, if she kept going
downhill, she had to end up at the highway eventually. Tabitha nibbled on a fingernail
and tried not to worry. If her sister got hurt wandering around the mountains at night,
their parents would skin both of them alive. With a nervous laugh, Tabitha reminded
herself how tame this “wilderness” was, even with the Shenandoah National Park a few
miles away. Bears weren’t common enough to constitute a realistic threat. Lesser
predators avoided people. What do I think could happen to her, she’ll get gored by a deer?
Or maybe she might stumble over a skittish skunk, a fate that would serve her
right, except that Tabitha would have to live with the fallout too. She sighed and rubbed
her eyes, longing for her bed and the interrupted dream. Before her thoughts could drift
too far in that fruitless direction, a car engine broke the silence. She peeked around the
tree.
Some kind of sports car roared to a stop, a two-seater with a motor too loud for its
size. The driver turned off the ignition, stepped out and lounged against the hood. A
18.Foxfire
boy in his late teens with silver-tipped black hair, he wore dark pants and a T-shirt, cut
off to expose his abs, with a logo of an unidentifiable fanged monster on it. She read
nervousness and impatience in the glances he darted from side to side. He took a pack
of cigarettes from his pocket and struck a match.
No sense dragging out an unpleasant scene. Tabitha strolled around the tree and
said, “ShadowElf, I presume?” She couldn’t help gloating a little when he jumped and
dropped the match on the pavement. A spike of alarm shot from his mind.
When he saw only a woman, he calmed down. “Sorry, I’m waiting for somebody
else.” He fumbled the matchbook open again.
“Don’t bother to light up. You won’t be here long enough.” She folded her arms
and glared at him.
He frowned back at her. He didn’t need to speak for Tabitha to sense his resentment
at her giving him orders.
“I know you’re supposed to meet Chloe. She’s not coming.” She saw no need to
mention that she had no idea where Chloe was at this moment. Let the guy think he’d
been stood up.
“You’ve got to be her sister. The weirdo who reads minds. What did you do to
her?”
Tabitha ignored the tiny stab of hurt caused by those words. By now she should be
used to that kind of reaction. “Not a thing. But she isn’t going anywhere with you. You
might as well split.”
“You’ve got no right to tell us what to do. I’m not leaving without her.” His
simmering resentment heated toward anger.
“Then you’ll have a long wait.” The cloud of negative emotion emanating from him
started to seep into her head and fill it with a dull ache.
“Where is she? Did you lock her up or something? How do I know she’s okay?” He
took one stride toward Tabitha.
She fought the impulse to back away. “No, I didn’t lock her up. What makes you
think she didn’t just change her mind?”
“She wouldn’t. We love each other.” In the light from the street lamp, a blush
showed on his face. Anxiety tinged his anger, along with embarrassment at making that
claim out loud. “Come on, give us a break. Why are you siding with your folks? You’re
not that old yet.”
A flush of annoyance swamped her momentary sympathy for him. “Old enough to
want to stop her from acting like an idiot. Love, huh? What did you plan to do, run off
摘要：

FOXFIREMargaretCarter.Author’sNoteAllthepowersattributedtoKenjicomefromauthenticJapanesemythology.TwoInternetsourcesIusedforkitsunelegendsareKitsuneLore,www.comnet.ca/~foxtrot/kitsune/kitsune1.html,andTheKitsunePage,www.coyotes.org/kitsune/kitsune.html..MargaretCarterChapterOneAngerandfrustrationham...

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