The Hunter Page 0,28

found Dee. They did find Dee, to Jenny's relief, standing beside a door.

"I thought I'd better guard it to make sure it didn't go anywhere," she said after a perfunctory nod at Audrey.

Audrey had only one question. "Is he Nordic, that guy? They're supposed to be sexy as all get-out."

Jenny ignored this. "Since the doors move, how do we know this isn't one of the two we opened before?"

"We don't," Dee said and flashed The Smile. Dee's wild, leaping beauty always annoyed Audrey. "Of course, it doesn't have a key like the first one, but I guess we'd better get in monster position again. Anything could be inside."

She and Jenny did, ready to kick the door shut fast. Audrey's eyebrows lifted into her spiky bangs. "No,

thank you, she said politely. Not in a fitted linen skirt. Listen, you two, why are we doing this at all? Why don't we just sit down and refuse to play?"

"Didn't you listen to me before?" Jenny said. "If we're still here by dawn, we stay for good. We lose automatically."

"I've never lost anything by default," Dee said. Then she said, "Now."

Behind the door there was a forest.

Cool wind blew out, ruffling Jenny's loose hair against her cheek. It smelled like summer camp.

"God," said Jenny.

"Well, come on," Audrey said, flicking her perfectly polished nails in a gesture of readiness. "We might as well get it over with."

"It's too weird," Jenny said as they stepped inside -outside. "Dee's bedroom was a room, at least. But this..."

They were on the outskirts of a dark forest on a sloping hill. Above them the night sky was strewn with stars much bigger and brighter than the ones Jenny usually saw from her Vista Grande backyard. A moon of pure silver was rising.

The door had slammed and disappeared, of course, as soon as they stepped through. Behind Jenny were meadows and pastures; before her a tangled mass of pitch-black trunks and bushes. The girls were alone on the hill in the moonlight.

"Now what?" Audrey said, shivering fastidiously.

"Don't you know? It's your nightmare-you drew it."

"I drew a picture of me opening the Bloomies catalog and finding it blank," Audrey said. "That's

my worst nightmare. Don't look at me that way-shopping is cheaper than therapy."

And that was all she would say about it.

There were a few scattered lights in the valley below them. "But it's too far to hike," Jenny said, "and even if we did get down there, I don't think that there would really be any people."

Audrey looked at her strangely, but Dee nodded.

"It feels like one of those model-train landscapes -or like a stage set," she said. "False fronts. You're right, I don't think we'd find little houses with people in them down there. Which means-"

They faced the forest bleakly.

"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Jenny asked.

"Come on," Dee said. "Let's make it happen."

The forest looked solid, but with Dee in the lead they found a way into it. It was mostly pine and fir trees, with the occasional beech shining silvery gray against the darkness of the background.

"Oh, my God," Audrey said after they'd been walking some time. "High ground, evergreen trees, rocks-I know where we are now. It's the Black Forest."

"Sounds like something from a story," Jenny muttered, picking her way through the undergrowth.

"It's a real place. I saw it when I was eight, when Daddy was at the German embassy. It-scared me a little, because it was the forest, you know."

Dee threw a derisive glance over her shoulder. "The forest?"

"The forest where everything happened-where the Grimm brothers got all their fairy tales. You know, snow white. Hansel and Gretel. Little Red Riding-Hood and the-"

Audrey stopped in midsentence. In front of her, Dee had stopped, too. Jenny's knees locked.

Just ahead of them in the tangled blackness, yellow eyes glowed. Jenny even imagined she could see moonlight gleaming off sharp teeth.

All three girls stood very still. Seconds passed and the yellow eyes remained motionless. Then they seemed to shift to a different angle so that one went out. Both flashed toward the girls again, then both went out. Jenny heard underbrush crunching. The sound got fainter. It faded into a profound silence in which Jenny could hear her heart beating strong and very fast in her chest.

Jenny let out her breath.

Dee's shoulders heaved slightly. She reached down and picked up a long stick almost as thick as her own slim wrist. She settled it in her hand, waggling it, testing her grip. It made a good