The Witch and the Huntsman by Rod Kierkegaard Jr J.R. Rain Page B

here harassing her?”
    “ No...” Bernice sounded vague, like she was already focusing on more important stuff. You know, like giving birth. “She was bumming about the food there, I remember that. She kept going on about some kind of illegal game they were running.”
    Illegal game? Did she mean illegal game-hunting, like out of season? Or that they were hunting for illegal game—you know, animals that were protected species? Or something else completely. Like gambling, for instance.
    It wasn’t until I started my shift that I realized something else was bugging me about my conversation with Bernice. Marisa hadn’t thought she was talking to my friend—she had called me Allison ! So she knew exactly who I was—and said that I’d helped her through her mother’s passing, not Bernice! Which totally wasn’t true. Now nothing made sense...
    “ Everything makes sense once you put the pieces together, Allison ,” came Millicent’s voice in my ear.
    “ Well, why don’t you tell me everything I need to know, then, for once ?” I shot back at her while I loaded one of my silver serving trays with what looked like fatty pork.
    “ Because we can’t be certain of our facts yet, dear. This is a puzzle we’ll have to solve together. I just hope we’re given enough time. .. ”
    Grrrrr...
    “ And here, as promised, is your Langschweinefleisch, sir ,” I said to the rude red-faced fat guy in the Givenchy sweats from last night as I laid his dish in front of him. Tonight he was dressed more Hugh Hefner in purple silk pajamas and Chinese slippers. “I hope your guests will enjoy it.” It smelled more like chicken than pork, I decided. Everybody at the table beamed at me like I was Angelina Jolie.
    The truth? I was still totally aglow from the afternoon I’d just spent on the slopes. Most of it was just hard work, as I putt-putted around from one hunting blind to the next on a snowmobile in the dazzling sunshine, pulling along a little trailer-truck of food and drinks. The only fly in the ointment—aside from the ever-present bluebottles—were the business executives in the hunting party, who came in every assorted flavor of annoying jackass under the sun. To make matters worse, they never managed to bag anything, not even the gray squirrels a couple of them took pot-shots at.
    Most of them had been here before, according to Eric, but a few of the younger guys—and there were also two women executives with them this year—hadn’t ever shot a crossbow before. Eric took a few minutes to show them how to operate their bows.
    “ You, too, Allison—part of your job will be to teach the newbies.” He was towing a rack of stacked cases; out of them, he handed each of us our own huge crossbow. Mine turned out to be about half as tall as I was. It must have weighed about ten pounds and was covered in camo paint. “We hunt with only the best here at La Chasse,” he went on to everybody. “This is the gold standard in crossbows, the Tenpoint Pro Elite. It requires only five pounds of weight to draw and cock, and uses a laser sighting scope. I want all of you to take your first shot at that tree. The one with all the gashes in the bark. Remember to wait to retrieve your broadheads until everyone’s finished shooting. And also remember: these babies are lethal.”
    “ So how come you’re carrying a rifle in your case?” asked the younger and sassier of the women execs, a redhead.
    “ Because the one thing a crossbow won’t stop is a full-grown bear. That’s why I carry a .357 at all times, too.”
    He showed us how to load and draw the broadhead—that’s what the arrow thingy was called—to the cocked position, and then peer through the laser scope-sight, which was actually pretty cool. I aimed at the magnified birch tree and pulled the trigger. The recoil was really weird—down and forward, then back again, which was called ‘kickback.’
    Oh yeah, and I completely missed the tree.
    “ Not bad for a first