Read Online Dreamwood by Heather Mackey - Free Book Online Page A

down, unlit.
    Lucy settled for scooting down on her backside. The stranger had taken the stool she used to climb up on, so she had to turn around and dangle for a second before jumping to the floor.
    â€œYes,” she said once she’d landed. “He’s my father.”
    He swiveled on his stool to face her, his handsome face animated, eyebrows arched in surprise.
    â€œThen you must be Lucy. But you’re supposed to be in San Francisco.”
    Now it was Lucy’s turn to be surprised. “Yes! How did you know? Have you seen him? Where is he?”
    â€œWhoa there.” He rested an elbow on the bar as his dark eyes swept over her. “I do know your father. I met him here, in fact. I’m Angus Murrain.”
    â€œThe head of Pentland Timber,” the toothless drinker told her, adding in an awed whisper, “A
very important
man.”
    Angus smiled tolerantly. “It’s my mill, so that means a great deal around here,” he said, as if amused by how much importance people gave to this little detail. “But your father was doing significant work. He told me he could find a cure for Rust.” He leaned back, smoothing his luxurious silk tie. “I told him I’d give a thousand dollars to any man who could deliver the cure.”
    It went silent inside the Climbing Rose as everyone contemplated this sum, something so vast it was like trying to grasp the size of the universe.
    Even Pete was jarred out of his thoughts. “Jiminy,” he said and whistled quietly.
    Lucy couldn’t speak. Was this the breakthrough her father had written her about? William Darrington had always been careless of money. Had he finally grown tired of being poor, stopped looking to understand spirits, and simply decided to use his scientific abilities for personal gain? It didn’t sound like him.
    â€œA pity,” Angus said, stroking his chin. “I thought he was the first person who stood a chance. Your father’s a very convincing man, Miss Darrington.”
    She couldn’t have stood on a bar stool now; her confidence was too shaken by the timber baron’s casual attitude—about all that money, about her father’s disappearance. “Wha-what did he say about the cure?” she asked. “Did he tell you what he thought it was?”
    â€œHe told me he believed it could be found on Devil’s Thumb.”
    It was as if a wild animal had come into the room. Eyes went wide, chairs scraped.
    A man in a chalk-stripe suit with a handlebar mustache slammed his glass on the bar. “If it’s on the Thumb, it may as well be in hell.”
    The men around him muttered agreement.
    Lucy had an image of Anya’s brown thumb sticking out into the white of her bread dough. Her stomach sank. From the moment she heard of Devil’s Thumb she’d been carrying a fateful dread that that’s where he had gone. And now it was confirmed.
    Another man spoke up. “No one’s come back from the Thumb in a hundred years.”
    â€œYou forget,” said a giant lumberjack. “Brocius Pile went in five years ago and
he
lived.”
    â€œBut not to tell,” said the gentleman in the striped suit, his eyes blazing. He raised his voice, his mustache quivering with emotion. “Whatever he saw in that forest stole his wits. His brain’s a mass of jelly now.”
    â€œBrocius Pile was a strong man, but no one would ever call him an intellect,” Angus countered. “Who’s to say the Thumb had anything to do with the state of his brains?”
    The man in the deerskin jacket had been watching all this from under his battered hat; now he spoke up, revealing a thin, sallow face. “I do.” He set his glass quietly on the bar. “There’s something there that wishes humankind ill.”
    â€œScare stories,” Angus said with a shake of his head. “Superstition.”
    At their table, the group of Lupine men were