Fantasy Life (26 page)

Lyssa looked from her grandmother to her mother. “What does that mean?”

Cassie swallowed and looked at her hands.

“Mother? Did you see something you’re not telling me?”

Cassie shook her head.

“Mother?”

Cassie closed her eyes.

“Grandma, it’s okay,” Emily said. “She didn’t tell you about Grandpapa Walters because she wanted me to be born. She loves me, Mommy. I’m supposed to be here. Everybody needs me.”

The words chilled Lyssa. Her daughter stated them so matter-of-factly, as if she had the same gift Cassie had.

“Is that true?” Lyssa asked Cassie.

Cassie nodded.

“You didn’t say anything because my daughter, the Walters-Buckingham hybrid, was going to be useful someday?”

“It’s not as crass as that,” Cassie said. “She’s a special child.”

“Yes,” Lyssa snapped. “She is. And I’m not going to let you people rob her of that.”

“Mommy, please.” Emily came farther into the kitchen, her quilt trailing after her. She looked like a little queen, giving orders to her subject. “Please.”

Lyssa finally turned to her daughter. “How do you know all this stuff? You’ve never said things like this before.”

Emily looked at Cassie, who nodded to her.

“Mother?” Lyssa said. “You know about this?”

“No,” Cassie said. “I have ideas, but I don’t know. What’s changed, Emily?”

“The house,” Emily said. “It shows me things.”

“What things?” Lyssa asked.

Emily shrugged. “Pictures. Feelings. Stories. I like it, Mommy.”

Lyssa sank into her chair. She hadn’t wanted this either. “I don’t like the sound of this,” she said, mostly to herself.

“It’s what Cliffside House does,” Athena said. “It amplifies our powers, protects us, and helps us keep the bridge between the worlds safe. Emily is very important to that bridge.”

“You’re saying she’s going to be telepathic, like Mom?”

“I don’t know what her powers are,” Athena said. “None of us do. You never let us develop them.”

“Stay here,” Cassie said. “We’ll figure this out together. I promise.”

“What do you know, Mom?” Lyssa asked. “What’s going to happen that is so important that we have to stay here?”

Cassie looked at Athena again. Lyssa wasn’t sure when the two of them had become so close. It seemed odd.

“I don’t know anything,” Cassie said. “Mom and I have had feelings, though. Something’s changing, Lys.”

“Because of me and Emily,” Lyssa said.

Cassie shook her head. “Something else. And it’s better if we’re all together. Apart, bad things might happen.”

“Like Daddy,” Emily whispered.

Lyssa expected her mother to try to dismiss that. Instead, Cassie said very simply, “Or worse.”

Lyssa wasn’t sure how anything worse could happen to her daughter.

“I want to stay, Mommy,” Emily said. “I feel like a person here.”

“Like a person?” Lyssa asked.

“She belongs,” Cassie said. “Maybe for the first time. Don’t take that away from her.”

“She’s a special child, Lys, and you’re in no position to take care of her alone.” Athena was blunt, as always. “We can help with the lawsuits, and the care, and allow you some time to
recover too. You’ve been worried about Emily, but you should look to yourself. I’ve never seen you so ragged.”

“You haven’t seen me for more than a decade,” Lyssa said.

“Stay,” Athena said. “The house will protect you, not harm you.”

“It hurt me already,” Lyssa said.

“It’s just trying to show you something,” Cassie said.

“Something about oil?” Lyssa looked at the tar ball. She’d never forget how that felt. “Something about the Walters?”

“Or maybe something to do with the old spill,” Athena said.

“Or maybe it’s a message from someone else.” Cassie’s voice sounded small, far away.

“Like who? Who would send me a message like that?” Lyssa asked.

Athena looked at Cassie, as if she was waiting for Cassie to speak. But Cassie looked down, clearly not ready to answer.

“We don’t know, honey,” Athena said after a moment. “But whoever it is obviously needs us all.”

Seavy County Sheriff’s Office
North County

The day dawned clear and cold. Gabriel Schelling was up early, surprised by the sun. It hadn’t been in any of the forecasts, which predicted lingering storms through the following week.

Instead, the sun was so bright, the air so clear, that he could see for miles. The faint outline of oil tankers and cargo ships looked like tiny bricks on the horizon line.

The sky sparkled as if it had been washed clean. The ocean, however, was brown with mud, sand, and debris churned up by the storm. Logs, seaweed, and bits of garbage floated on the surface, as if the ocean were doing a self-cleansing that wasn’t absolutely complete.

Gabriel had spent the first part of the morning driving around the village. Water still stood on the highway, gathering in the grooves, and along the sides of the road. Pine needles blanketed side streets, blown off in the severest winds. Tree branches were down, blocking roadways and scarring lawns.

By the time he reached the edge of town, he discovered another surprise. Highway department crews were already working on the road. He suspected that other crews were working on the entrances to the corridor and shoring up road damage in the mountains. He wouldn’t be surprised if the entire coastal highway system was at least patched by nightfall.

The roadwork put him in a good mood, such a good mood that he didn’t mind seeing the storm-made lake still covering
Highway 19 at the north end of town. The lake would recede, given time. And if the weather held, maybe the saturated ground would be able to dry out, so that the next series of storms wouldn’t devastate the area quite so badly.

He had hope, but he knew that this time of year such hope could be futile.

Gabriel arrived at the sheriff’s office at ten. The office was up a side street from the Anchor Bay post office. The post office had been built in the 1970s, but the sheriff’s office was older than that. It dated from the 1920s and had once been the only building in that part of town. Now it had grown rooms like fungus, and it no longer had real architectural structure—just additions that looked like accidents.

Still, he loved the place, and going into his job pleased him more than he liked to admit.

He parked in the lot next to Athena’s truck, and an unfamiliar car. He paused as he looked at Athena’s vehicle. He wondered how Lyssa’s homecoming had gone, then decided not to ask.

Two other cars were there, both squads. So neither Zeke nor Suzette was out patrolling. They were probably exhausted. He was surprised that he wasn’t. Sometimes, having a four-person crew could really put a strain on the team, especially during emergencies, like yesterday’s.

The entrance into the building was a glass door with
Sheriff’s Office
etched at eye level. The door was, perhaps, the most dangerous entrance Gabriel had ever seen in an official building, and he reminded the county of that at budget time every year. But since the door had never been broken, not in the forty years it had served as the entrance to the North County Sheriff’s Department, Seavy County officials didn’t see the point in spending the funds.

They didn’t seem to understand the value of prevention, and Gabriel didn’t know how to explain it to them.

He stepped inside to a warm building that smelled of freshly brewed coffee. His department hadn’t fallen for the Seattle froufrou coffees yet. Whoever arrived first brewed good, old-fashioned grocery-store coffee, not from those pseudo-fancy beans the local Safeway stocked, but from the cans that had been around since Gabriel was a child. Judging from the acidic edge to this morning’s scent, someone had brought in a can of Folgers.

Athena sat at her desk, clutching her coffee mug as if it were a lifeline. She looked worse than Gabriel had ever seen her—her skin so pale that he could see just how blue her veins were. She had shadows under her eyes, and the frown lines beside her mouth looked deeper than usual.

But she was impeccably groomed as ever. Her hair was pulled back in its customary bun, without a strand out of place. Her blouse—a cream color with just a hint of lace trim—looked as if it had been laundered five seconds before. She wore a black, ankle-length skirt that bloomed over her chair, and black ankle boots with just enough of a heel to add a touch of elegance.

She was always so put-together that she made him feel like going home and getting dressed all over again, hoping that this time he would get it right.

When she saw him, she gave a weak version of her usual smile.

“Who’d believe there’s sun today, eh, Gabriel?” she asked. She moved her mug aside, as if she hadn’t really been clutching it like it was the only thing that kept her afloat. Athena’s mood was always evident by which mug she chose from giant mug hanger he had put on the wall. This morning’s was an old one with the characters from the old (and much missed)
Bloom County
cartoon strip—Bill the Cat looking like he’d stuck his paw in a light socket, and the words “Ack! Stress!” beside him.

Apparently Lyssa’s homecoming had not gone well.

“When the rain stopped,” Gabriel said, deciding that ignoring Athena’s mood was the better part of valor, “it woke me up. I hadn’t realized how used to it I had become.”

Athena’s smile grew into something real. “I would miss the storms if we didn’t have them.”

“Me, too. I’m just happy for the break.”

Gabriel walked over to the coffeepot, which was full to the brim, and poured himself a mug. Unlike Athena, he didn’t use the mugs to define his mood; he just grabbed whatever was closest. This one was yellow with a smiley face painted on it. The smiley face had a single fang showing, and a drop of blood falling to the bottom of the mug.

Perhaps it did mirror his mood after all.

He stirred in some nondairy creamer and frowned. There were no voices, not even the radio.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

Athena started as if he had woken her up. “Oh, sorry. Suzette’s taking over dispatch for me tonight, so she’s not in yet. And Zeke’s in the back. You have a visitor.”

Athena usually wasn’t that mysterious.

“A visitor?” Gabriel asked.

“All the way from Whale Rock, and believe me, that’s some distance on a day like today.”

It was too. Even though Whale Rock was only twenty miles south on 101, when 101 was down, the only way from one town to the other was through the Willamette Valley. That added at least three hours onto a twenty-minute trip.

“Who is it?” Gabriel asked.

“Hamilton Denne. He heard about Zeke’s find last night.”

Gabriel had forgotten all about Zeke’s find. Gabriel carried his mug through the narrow, dimly lit hallway, to the room that served as a makeshift morgue, generally used only when a corpse had to remain in Anchor Bay until the medical examiner could arrive and take the corpse to Whale Rock.

The door was closed, but Gabriel could see through the single pane of glass. Denne was bent over the metal table, gloves on his hands, and white medical robe covering his clothing. Zeke lounged against the wall, one booted foot crossed over his ankle. He toyed with a toothpick in his mouth, as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

Gabriel opened the door—and nearly stepped backward from the smell of mud and wet fur. Those weren’t the smells he had been expecting.

Denne didn’t even look up. “Leave the coffee outside.”

Gabriel leaned into the hallway, took a giant sip from his mug, and set the mug on the floor beside the door. Then he came in, letting the door close behind him.

“What’ve we got?” he asked.

“Come see for yourself.” Denne was still bent over the table. Beneath his medical robe, he wore a pair of khaki pants and a pale blue dress shirt. An expensive brown sports jacket hung over a chair.

Zeke kept his gaze on the table itself, like a man who expected something to attack at any moment.

Gabriel stepped beside Denne and looked down. At first, Gabriel thought Denne was examining a toy, a little girl’s stuffed doll. Then he realized whatever it was had once been alive.

The creature looked vaguely female, although Gabriel couldn’t tell what, exactly, made him think that. It had two arms and two legs, a torso with no definition at all—no breasts, no waist, no nipples—and a long neck that led to a very human face.

The face, however, was no bigger than the palm of Gabriel’s hand. The eyes were closed, and the mouth slightly open, a bit of mud on the chin. The skin was grayish, and Gabriel couldn’t tell if that was natural or not.

“What is it?” Gabriel asked.

“Water sprite, I think.” Denne pointed gingerly at film that covered the top of the metal table. “See? Wings.”

Gabriel saw no wings. What he was staring at looked more like fresh Saran Wrap. “How do you know they’re wings?”

Denne picked up the body, holding it two-fingered by the torso. The Saran Wrap on the back rose with it, folding out flat and clear as if something held it in place.

Denne used the edge of his finger to outline the structure of the wings. They were see-through, but if Gabriel looked hard, he saw a hint of a rainbow, like looking at a bubble in sunlight.

“I’ve only read about these,” Denne said, “and not in very reliable accounts. Apparently they move under the surface of the water like a beetle or like a dragonfly will float on top of it. The wings keep them in place and hide them from predators that fly above them. I thought they were oceangoing only, but Zeke says he found this one on Highway 19.”

“I did,” Zeke said tersely. Sometimes Zeke and Denne rubbed each other the wrong way, particularly when they were left alone with each other.

“He did,” Gabriel confirmed. “He found it up there just after I left.”

Denne straightened. “What did you see?”

“It was facedown in a mudhole,” Zeke said. “My first guess was that it drowned.”

“How did you notice it?” Denne asked. He had obviously waited until Gabriel arrived before talking to Zeke. Apparently Denne was aware that they didn’t get along well either.