Page 24 of A Midlife Vanishing Trick

“Everything.” She seemed to consider that for a moment. “You can start by telling me why there are dead cows on our property.”

Except for them, the kitchen was empty and silent, as was the rest of the house, just like the last time he’d been in here. Only this time, there was no electric spark in the air between them that made him want to part her legs and bury himself deep within her. The silence that hung in the air was pregnant with unspoken questions.

He broke eye contact instead regarding the coffee mugs on the oak table. Allison had made herself black coffee as usual. Stanley added an extra cube of sugar to his. Coffee had never been his go-to drink, but after what he’d seen outside in the field, any drink would do.

I’m going to give you the death you should’ve gotten back in the cave.

His inner snow leopard growled at the memory. Johan’s words had remained vivid in his mind ever since he’d attacked him in the middle of the street, a reminder of how dangerous he was. And now the man had brought trouble to Stanley’s doorstep. Frowning, he plopped another sugar cube into his mug. He’d been expecting Johan to come after him, just not so soon and certainly not in his home. Then again, it had been only a matter of time.

He'd been resting in the barn shortly after he saw Allison’s truck leave the property—when he heard the cowhands yelling. Julian had come running to meet him, claiming he’d spotted the dead cows while riding near the field. Once Stanley saw what had happened, he and the cowhands had searched the property. They’d found no one, but that hadn’t surprised him. The second he saw the deep gashes in the cattle, he’d known exactly who was responsible. Johan had snuck onto the property to leave him a message.

The Collector’s message had been clear:I know where you live. I’m coming for you.

He ground his teeth. Despite everything Johan had done, attacking him back in Kirnham and shoving him into the pit in Grim Jim’s cave, he’d held no animosity toward the man. At least he hadn’t died like he feared he would. But Johan clearly wanted that to change.

The thought made Stanley’s blood boil.

“Stanley?”

He blinked, and it dawned on him that his grip on his mug had tightened. Relaxing his hand, he faced his wife.

“Sure,” he said. “But to do that, I’ll need to explain a lot more. You need to know about Frost Mountain.”

Her eyebrows twitched slightly. She nodded. “I’m all ears.”

“Right.” It had taken three dead cows and a murderous Collector to get her to decide she was ready to listen to him. Stanley wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

He lifted his mug to his lips, keeping his eyes on her as he sipped. Allison shifted slightly in her seat. Her face was tight with tension, although it was impossible to tell whether it was because of Johan’s attack or the man sitting right across the table from her.

“Frost Mountain,” he began, setting the mug down, “isn’t any ordinary mountain. It isn’t even a part of this world. You could say it’s ... a dimension, a dimension separate from Earth.”

He paused to gauge her reaction. For the most part, she seemed unmoved, although he thought her eyebrow had risen an inch in the last few seconds.

“So, it’s a dimension,” he went on, “a magical one. The mountain is the entire space. There are no islands or seas or countries. It’s just Frost Mountain. Like Mount Everest, only there’s no bottom. The mountain’s all there is.”

“That makes no sense,” Allison said with a frown.

“Magic rarely ever does make sense. And the witches who created that place did so intending to mess with the head of anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves trapped in it.”

“Witches?”

Stanley was aware that he was already starting to sound less and less believable, but he pushed on.

“I learned the truth—or at least, what people believe about Frost Mountain—a year after I got there. It’s centuries old. And it was designed to be a prison.”

“Awhat, now?”

He shrugged. “Centuries ago, there was a war on Earth between a coven of witches and shifters. It was a brutal one, and the witches won by using dark, dangerous magic. They created Frost Mountain as a prison to hold the shifters, literally doomed them to spend the rest of their days on a freezing, snow-covered rock with all kinds of nasty surprises.”

Allison sat back and seemed to remember her coffee then. She brought the mug to her lips and took a loud sip before setting her mug back down. She stared at him for a few seconds before asking the question he’d already seen coming.

“What does that have to do with you disappearing?” she said.

Stanley sighed. “The shifters in that war weren’t the only ones who were punished. Over the years, their descendants, born on the mountain, also had to struggle to survive. And there are portals on Earth linking this world to Frost Mountain, appearing randomly and claiming people, whether human or supernatural. Half the missing cases the police never manage to solve are people who stumbled into a portal and ended up there. Some survive on that mountain, like I did. Many don’t.”

He grimaced as the image of a skull half-buried in the snow flashed across his mind. He’d stumbled upon dozens of those in his first year on that mountain. They were the remains of those who hadn’t made it, a constant reminder of what happened to the weak and foolish.

More times than he cared to count, he’d nearly ended up as a grinning skull in the snow.

---