Fantasy Life (31 page)

The woman finally entered the main portion of the restaurant. She peered past the waiter, shrugged slightly, then turned around to leave.

That was when she saw Cassie.

Cassie stiffened. Emily looked up from her menu, frowned at Cassie, then turned and followed her gaze.

The woman lifted her narrow eyebrows, and a small smile played at her very red lips. She walked across the restaurant with purpose.

Cassie made her body relax. She didn’t want to seem at a disadvantage, although she already was.

The smile continued to play on the woman’s face as she walked. She wore a black suit, with a skirt that came down to the tops of her ankles. Little leather boots covered her feet, and in her right hand, she held a beaded purse that was better suited to evening wear.

It was her only mistake.

She stopped beside the table like a waiter would, and Cassie caught a faint musky scent. Emily must have too, for she squinched up her nose and gave Cassie a pointed frown.

“Cassandra Buckingham?” the woman said. Even her accent sounded familiar. Her pronunciation was crisp and flawless, but the accents she placed on the syllables were wrong.

Most people emphasized the second syllable in
Cassandra.
This woman accented the last, as well as the
ing
in
Buckingham.
The difference was subtle, but noticeable, and marked the woman as a nonnative English speaker.

“Yes,” Cassie said.

The woman’s smile had a softness to it that made her look as if she were posing for a cheesecake shot. “I am Roseluna Delamer. Perhaps you have heard of me?”

“No,” Cassie said.

Emily watched the exchange with interest. She set her menu on top of the child’s menu, as if to hide it.

“Really?” Roseluna said. “I have heard of you.”

She clutched her purse in front of her like a supplicant. Cassie wanted to tell her to go away, not to bother them, but she
didn’t know how to be that kind of rude in front of her granddaughter.

“Might I join you?” Roseluna asked after a moment.

“This is our special time,” Cassie said, stopping herself from adding,
my granddaughter and me.
“We were hoping to be alone.”

“It will only take a moment.” Roseluna sat on Emily’s bench, forcing Emily to scoot over.

Emily gave Cassie a confused look.

“We really don’t have the moment,” Cassie said.

“You need to have it,” Roseluna said. “Besides, among my people, such things are courtesy. We are family, after all.”

Cassie stiffened again. She couldn’t help it. She wished she had the ability to control her movements as Athena did, but like so many things Athena did, this was something Cassie hadn’t learned.

“You’re a Buckingham?” Emily asked, and for the first time all day, her voice held awe. It was as if this exotic woman impressed her, as if being related to someone like that helped her own self-image.

The woman turned her soft smile on Emily. “Regretfully, no, child. Cassandra and I, we are related by marriage.”

Cassie made a small gesture with her hands, hoping to stop Roseluna.

“Marriage?” Emily asked.

“Yes,” Roseluna said. “I am sister to Daray, Cassandra’s husband.”

“You’re married, Grandma?”

Cassie felt her cheeks flush, and her eyes fill. She blinked hard, willing the tears back. “I was, once.”

But her evasive answer didn’t help. Roseluna knew from the moment Emily spoke, maybe even the moment she saw her.

“This is your grandchild?” She didn’t want for an answer. “So she too is family.”

Cassie sighed. “She’s Daray’s granddaughter.”

It felt odd to say his name. Cassie tried not to speak it aloud. Her voice trembled as she did so, and she cleared her throat to cover the momentary loss of control.

Roseluna shifted on her bench and leaned forward so that she was closer to Emily.

“Look at me, child.”

Emily raised her head slightly. Roseluna took Emily’s chin in the thumb and forefinger of her hand, turning Emily toward the light from the windows.

“It is in her eyes,” Roseluna said. “She has the dark.”

“She does.” Cassie had noticed it when Emily had been a baby. The dark was the way that the iris bled into the whites, so that there was more darkness than light in Emily’s eyes. Unlike in Lyssa’s, in Emily’s eyes the darkness wasn’t quite as pronounced. A person had to look at her closely to see the difference.

“Dark?” Emily asked, her voice tight because she was trying not to move her chin.

“It marks you as ours,” Roseluna said, and then her hand moved up, into a caress of Emily’s cheek, before falling away.

Emily touched her chin as if Roseluna had hurt her. “How’re we related?”

“I am your . . .” Roseluna paused, as if searching for the word. “Your. . . great-aunt.”

She looked at Cassie for confirmation. Cassie nodded, then blinked hard one more time. She didn’t want to see this woman. She certainly didn’t want to talk to her.

But neither Roseluna nor Emily noticed Cassie’s distress. Emily was looking at Roseluna, and Roseluna laughed.

“Although I do not think of myself as old enough to be a great,” she said.

She certainly didn’t look old enough. She looked no more than thirty.

“How come you and Grandma don’t know each other?” Emily asked. “Didn’t you come to the wedding?”

Roseluna turned her head toward Cassie, not quite meeting her gaze. She clearly wanted Cassie to answer the question, but the answer was complicated.

“Your grandfather and I didn’t have a big wedding,” Cassie said.

“Like Mommy and Daddy,” Emily said. “Nobody came to their wedding either.”

She spoke so matter-of-factly, as if her parents were still alive and still happily married. Cassie felt her breath catch. Emily was giving her the answer.

“Sort of,” Cassie said.

“You are how old?” Roseluna asked Emily.

“Ten,” Emily said.

“This is in human years?”

“Huh?” Emily looked at Roseluna as if she had asked an insane question. From Emily’s point of view, she had.

“Yes,” Cassie said. “She knows no other way.”

Roseluna’s mouth tightened slightly, and she nodded, moving her head just once. At that moment, the waiter came over.

“Will there be three?” he asked.

“I should like some coffee,” Roseluna said, “and the shrimp cocktail without the ridiculous sauce.”

Apparently it would be three then. Cassie sighed, ordered, and waited while Emily ordered as well. Emily had opted for the fish and chips, which made Roseluna wrinkle her nose.

So they shared that gesture at least, although Cassie didn’t point it out. She didn’t want to see all the similarities between Roseluna and Emily, because that would make Cassie think about all the similarities between Roseluna and Daray. And thinking about Daray, at least like this, was more painful than she wanted to admit.

“You’re not looking me up today because you’re suddenly feeling like hanging out with family,” Cassie said as soon as the waiter left. “What’s up?”

Her fear was that Roseluna knew about Emily, that somehow word of Emily’s power had reached Daray’s family, and they too would want a piece of her.

Lyssa would hate that. Emily wouldn’t understand it—at least not yet. Cassie needed time to prepare her, to ease her into her abilities, to let her know what was in trust to her, both here in the town of Anchor Bay and in the ocean itself.

Roseluna took the plastic glass from the pile of 1970s amber glasses stacked in the middle of all the long tables. Then she grabbed the water pitcher and poured. Her movements were languorous and graceful.

“I am an emissary,” she said. “I have been sent to speak to you.”

“From the family?” Cassie asked.

Roseluna shook her head. Her fingers, which were surprisingly stubby and thick, played with the lip of her glass.

“From my tribe. Daray made us promise that we would seek you out.”

“What kind of help do you need?” Cassie asked.

Roseluna’s fingers stopped moving. She raised her head slightly. “We do not need help.”

“Then I don’t understand,” Cassie said.

“Daray bound us, our peoples, with a promise. We were to warn you when the time came.”

Cassie’s mouth was dry. Emily had frozen in position, her hands clutching the edge of the table as if it held her in place.

“Warn us about what?” Cassie asked.

“The end of our alliance,” Roseluna said. “We have decided to defend ourselves.”

Cassie shook her head. “Defend yourself against what?”

“The end of our people.”

The waiter brought Roseluna’s coffee, and her shrimp cocktail, which was just a cocktail glass with ice and shrimp hanging off the rim. She didn’t touch it.

She didn’t move until he left again.

“Your people? No one’s planning anything against anyone,” Cassie said. “I would know.”

“It’s not the planned events that are the problem,” Roseluna said. “It is the unplanned ones.”

“Has there been an accident?” Cassie asked.

Emily was staring at them, as if trying to understand.

“Not in the way you mean,” Roseluna said.

Cassie hated the way Roseluna was dancing around the topic and wondered if that was because of Emily or because Roseluna expected Cassie to understand.

But Cassie couldn’t read Roseluna. She couldn’t read any of the selkies unless they let her. It was as if, when they shed their pelts, they put on a different guise, one that protected them from her telepathy.

“I don’t understand,” Cassie said. “What are you warning us about?”

Roseluna sighed. “I am telling you to leave Anchor Bay. I am telling you it will be destroyed.”

Seavy County Sheriff’s Department
North County Office

They left Denne to his work with the water sprite. He wanted to look at it more closely before he took it back to Whale Rock. Maybe after an hour or so, he had said, the road south would be open again, and he wouldn’t have to drive quite as far.

Gabriel would check on that for him as soon as Denne was ready to leave. But it would be at least an hour before Denne was done in his makeshift morgue, and Gabriel had a few things to do.

As he left the room, he grabbed the coffee he had set on the floor. The mug was cool to the touch and the coffee no longer steamed, but he didn’t care. He drank it anyway, needing the caffeine more than the taste.

Then he went back into reception, poured himself another cup of coffee, and added more cream. The coffee steamed, but it didn’t smell much better than the first cup.

Athena was thumbing through the morning paper, looking just as exhausted as she had when he’d arrived.

“Did you see what Hamilton has back there?” Gabriel asked.

Athena closed the paper. She looked up at him as if she hadn’t realized he was there.

Something was wrong with her, something more than staying up all night to welcome Lyssa home. Athena seemed listless, and sad, as if a part of her had gone missing.

“I haven’t taken a good look,” Athena said.

“He thinks it’s a water sprite,” Gabriel said.

“It’s the right size.” Athena said that matter-of-factly, as if people were bringing dead water sprites into the office all the time.

“What can you tell me about them?”

“Not a lot,” Athena said. “They avoid people as much as possible. I don’t remember anyone ever seeing one before, let alone finding a dead one.”

“Like the fish woman.”

A slight frown creased Athena’s brow. “You know,” she said slowly, “we should talk to some of the locals. I wonder if there aren’t more.”

“Locals?” Gabriel said, suddenly feeling lost.

“Bodies. Dead things from the sea.” Athena picked up her coffee mug by the top, then grabbed the handle with her other hand. “The fish women, the water sprites, they aren’t solitary creatures. They don’t travel alone, not ever. In fact, the sprites are always in a flock or a pack or whatever you want to call it. You shouldn’t have found one. You should have found a dozen.”

“There might be more up there,” Gabriel said. “Zeke didn’t look. I’ll check.”

Athena nodded. “Let me call around to some of the fishermen, see if anyone has taken some trophies from the beach.”

“You think they would have?”

“Hamilton isn’t the only person who is fascinated by the fantasylife in Seavy County. I’m sure if other people found souvenirs, they’d keep them.” Athena rubbed her eyes with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand.

“You all right?” Gabriel asked against his better judgement. “Suzette could take dispatch if you need to go home.”

Athena gave him a tired smile. “Sometimes my body reminds me how old I am. When I was your age, I could stay out all night and work harder than anyone else the next day.”

Somehow, Gabriel didn’t doubt that.

“I’ll make the calls,” Athena said, “and see if we’re right.”

“What do you think is going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you tell me if you did?”

She smiled at him. “If it concerned the sheriff’s office.”

“Well, it concerns the sheriff.”

Her smile widened. Despite her age, despite her exhaustion, she was still one of the most beautiful women in Seavy County.

Then her expression became serious. “It concerns me too. These are omens, Gabe.”

“Of what?”

“Something big. Something very big.”

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

“Have you asked Cassandra?”

Athena nodded. “She doesn’t know either.”

Gabriel sighed. He wondered if the water currents had changed or if something had happened within the ocean. A few years ago, there was a big fish die-off near Coos Bay because the ocean currents had become too warm—due to some El Niño effect or some La Niña effect or something else he didn’t understand.

The year before that, whales had beached themselves all along the coast, all the way down to San Francisco, and whale scientists—whatever that was—were at a loss to explain the “mass suicide.”

As long as Gabriel had been in Seavy County, he’d seen strange things. And people often spoke of omens and portents, although each incident he’d encountered had seemed isolated, just as most of the crimes he ran across were isolated.