Fantasy Life (32 page)

He had also heard about omens and portents in his travels through Europe, and never once had he come across anything that really seemed as if it were foretold. That didn’t stop him from believing that Cassandra Buckingham occasionally had the ability to see the future, but her abilities also seemed limited, isolated incidents.

He went back to his office and put his feet on his desk, where he spent a good ten minutes on hold with the Oregon Department of Transportation. He’d already looked on the ODOT Web site for updates on the current road conditions and found that the site hadn’t been changed since 5
P.M.
the night before—warning him that road conditions might get bad, that they were bad in a few areas, and advising him to stay home.

So he e-mailed down to South County where the Seavy County Web site was maintained and reminded them to keep their road updates current, since ODOT wasn’t.

He sipped his third cup of coffee, ignoring the growling of his stomach, and listening to “lite rock” through the phone receiver, some innocuous combination of James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, and Olivia Newton-John.

He found the music offensive—the music of his childhood, bringing all that baggage along with it.

Then Gabriel’s door opened. Denne came in, his mouth in a determined line, his blond hair slightly mussed. He brought with him the sharp, pungent scent of industrial-strength soap, and Gabriel glanced at his hands.

Glove-free. Denne, for the moment at least, was done with the water sprite.

“You heading to Whale Rock?” Gabriel asked. “I think there’s one lane open on 101 South.”

Denne waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll check before I go.”

The tinny music had shifted to ABBA. Gabriel winced.

“I need to talk to you,” Denne said. “Can you call whoever it is back?”

Gabriel shook his head. “And waste fifteen minutes of hold? You’ve got to be kidding.”

Instead, he pressed the speakerphone button and hung up the receiver. ABBA’s close harmonies and bouncy rhythms infected the office.

“What the hell’s that?” Denne asked, staring at the phone as if he wanted to smash it. “A suicide hot line?”

“Our tax dollars at work. I’ve been trying to get an update on road conditions before I head out to 19.”

“What’re you going there for?”

“To see if there are more sprites, lying dead in the woods.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Denne said. “I think I figured out what she died of.”

“Convinced it’s a she, are you?”

“I still need to do some work, and it would be nice to have a sprite of the opposite gender, if there is such a thing.”

“You’re still operating on the worm theory of sprites?”

Denne smiled. “More like the butterfly theory, but none of it’s for sure. However, what I do know is pretty astonishing in and of itself.”

Gabriel put his feet on the floor and leaned forward. His chair squeaked in time to the music.

“Give,” he said.

“Our little sprite has lungs and gills just like the fish women do. Which isn’t a surprise, since Athena’s been telling us for years that the fantasylife is mostly amphibians. But, like that fish woman we found, this sprite died because her gills and her throat were clogged with oil.”

Gabriel frowned. “You thought that the fish woman was an isolated incident. In fact, you were convinced of it.”

“Well, it didn’t seem like a lot of oil, nothing else died, and we had no oil spill. So I figured some pleasure boat was leaking a bit, or some yahoo tourist changed the oil in his car in a beach-side parking lot, and the oil ran into the ocean.” Denne ran his hands through his hair, something he had apparently been doing a lot this morning. “I know that these fish women come ashore often. We’ve both heard the stories about them.”

“You more than me,” Gabriel said.

Denne nodded. “I just figured she ran into something close to the shoreline. In fact, I even warned some of the local fishermen and clammers that there might be a small spill on one of the beaches.”

“But you didn’t let the Department of Environmental Quality know?”

Denne raised his eyebrows. “I’m supposed to call the state branch in where—Salem?—and tell them I’ve found a creature that they have no idea exists in nature, and that she died because oil got into her gills, lungs, and throat, and she suffocated? Oh, yeah, and I’m not sure where she got into the oil, but they should search anyway?”

“You would have to assume that it was in Anchor Harbor,” Gabriel said, “since she was found on the beach here.”

“I don’t assume anything. I don’t know how far our fish women travel. In fact, I don’t know much of anything.” Denne stood up. He moved restlessly around the room.

The music on the phone switched to Neil Sedaka. Gabriel did not find it to be an improvement.

“I thought the sprites were only surface dwellers, but I’m getting hints otherwise,” Denne said. “I’d love to find out how that little body reacts to increasing pressure. Maybe these things can go deep. Maybe the wings have some other function. Maybe they’re not wings at all.”

Gabriel suppressed a sigh. He found all this interesting, but not quite the way Denne did. Besides, Gabriel wanted ODOT to pick up their damn phone, and he wanted to find out how the road was. If he didn’t get an answer soon, he’d just go up there, taking the back roads, even though he didn’t want to do that again, and see if the storm-made lake had spread to the subdivision entrance.

“I keep thinking the torso is made of some kind of blubber or something. Maybe that’s why it’s so thick and unyielding. But I’d have to do tests, and even then I’m not sure what I’d find.” Denne stopped, looked down at the phone, which was going on and on about lost high school romance, and shook his head. “They’re never going to pick up.”

“I’m beginning to agree,” Gabriel said. “Look, Hamilton, as interesting as these creatures are, what I’m more concerned about is the oil. Can we find out where it’s coming from?”

Denne sank back into his chair. “This probably isn’t the same spill. From July to November is much too long a time.”

“Actually, it’s not if we don’t know about it,” Gabriel said.

“I’ve seen the satellite pictures of other oil spills. Those things are visible from miles up.”

“The large ones,” Gabriel said. “But what happens if we’re
just dealing with some garage that’s decided to dump the oil it collects into the ocean or one of the creeks rather than go through all the regulations the government’s heaped on them over the years.”

“No one’d be that dumb.”

Gabriel smiled. “We have a lot of antigovernment types in the mountains. Everything runs into the ocean. If they’re dumping oil rather than disposing of it properly, sooner or later it’s going to end up in seawater—and in the same place.”

“We just have to find the place.” Denne leaned back in the chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “I wish we knew more about these creatures.”

“Athena might. She said she didn’t know much, but sometimes what she considers much and what we consider much are two different things.”

Denne nodded. “There’s Lucy Wexler down in Whale Rock. She follows some of this stuff too.”

“I’m sure a lot of locals have expertise on these things,” Gabriel said. “We just have to find them.”

“Hello?” a tinny voice asked. It took Gabriel half a second to realize he had finally gotten through to ODOT.

He picked up the receiver and said hello. While he was gathering traffic information, Denne stood again, pacing. He picked up the photographs that Gabriel kept on top of the filing cabinets—one of Gabriel’s favorite place in Greece, another in Rome, and one in London. Gabriel switched the photographs every month to remind himself of the places he’d been. Sometimes he didn’t want to think about how he was isolating himself in a small community, even if the small community was as interesting as Seavy County.

The ODOT dispatch told him they had crews all over this part of the state. One lane was open on 101 going from Anchor Bay to Whale Rock. Most of the trees across the highways in the corridor had been cleared. But Highway 19 was
still closed on the valley side because a large chunk had fallen away.

“So you have no idea if the western end of 19 is all right,” Gabriel said.

“Last we heard it was underwater,” the woman said. “Considering how saturated the ground is, I wouldn’t bet that water would disappear anytime soon.”

Gabriel sighed. Several other roads in the county were still closed, but Highway 101 around Anchor Bay was open again. In other words, his town was accessible, and even people from the valley could get here, if they wanted to take the long way like Denne had.

As Gabriel hung up, he said to Denne, “Looks like you can go directly home.”

“Great. That’ll help me figure out what’s going on with our little specimen. Sure wish I had specialized in fish or marine creatures. I would be able to solve this a lot quicker.”

“You could take it down to the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport,” Gabriel said.

“And lose it to their scientists. No thanks.” Denne shook his head. “I’ve tried working with those people. They want control. And this is a Seavy County project.”

It was a Hamilton Denne project, Gabriel thought, but didn’t say. He stood too. “I’m going to head out with you. I’ll let you know if I run into more of these. Maybe a herd of them or a school or whatever you want to call it got trapped in your oil slick.”

Denne pulled the door open. “Zeke did say he was following a chemical rainbow to find this creature. Maybe I’m wrong about these creatures just being oceangoing.”

He stepped into the hallway.

“You’re not wrong.” Athena’s voice came from down the hall. Gabriel stepped out of his office. Athena stood at the bend in the hallway, as if she had been coming here. “They’re just
oceangoing. The river sprites are different—greener for one thing—and they aren’t as delicate, if I remember right.”

“We’re going to have to check,” Denne said. “I’m going to need to talk to you about all of this, Athena.”

“I figured as much,” she said.

Gabriel pulled his door closed. “You need me?”

“I’m thinking we might need a crew,” Athena said. “There’s something going on in the center of town.”

“What kind of something?” Gabriel asked.

“I’m not sure exactly. We’ve been getting strange reports about things fleeing the sea.”

Denne paused and looked over his shoulder at Gabriel. “Rabbits before a wildfire.”

“What?” Athena asked.

Gabriel ignored them. “Who called this in?”

“Two calls from the elementary school: one from that new hot dog stand that’s illegally perched on the beach near the Wayside, and one from some motorist who can’t get across 101, says there’s a whole stream of weird little animals running toward the school.”

“The school?” Denne said.

“They’re not getting inside,” Athena said, “and they sound pretty harmless. It’s just strange.”

“There’s been a lot of strange lately.” Gabriel opened his door, grabbed his jacket, hat, and the keys for one of the squads. “Tell them I’ll be right down there. Have Zeke meet me.”

Athena nodded and headed down the hall.

“Give it one second to let me make sure our little specimen is on ice, and I’ll come with you,” Denne said.

“I don’t need civilians,” Gabriel said.

Denne got a faraway look in his eyes. “When it comes to Seavy County, I’m anything but a civilian.”

Anchor Bay Elementary School

The car rocked with the weight of hundreds of creatures flinging themselves into it, on top of it, over it. Lyssa huddled in the driver’s seat, wishing she still had a cell phone. Then someone would know she was in trouble.

Surely people saw these creatures. Surely the authorities—Athena, Gabriel, someone—knew what was going on.

Her car had become dark, despite the sunny day. The creatures blanketed it, always in motion, scrambling past. They weren’t all the apple-faced humanoids that she had initially seen.

Some were froglike and left a trail of green slime across her windshield. Others had flippers that made flat prints in the green goo. Still others were large and ethereal, reminding her of drawings she had seen on posters of fairies, their entire beings suffused with light.

Only they weren’t light. They were heavy enough to keep rocking the car.

Lyssa had turned herself toward the ocean, and when she could see out the passenger-side window, all she saw was a stream of movement, almost as if the creatures themselves were a sea.

The noise was unbearable. Different levels of chatter, some with words, some with sounds—pongs and peeps and chirrups—as overpowering as the pounding on the metal sides of her car.

No one had come to help her. No one was doing anything. She felt almost as if she were alone, as if, somehow, she had made this up and it was happening only to her.

Perhaps it was happening only to her. After all, no one had seen that attack in the closet either, and she had nearly choked to death. Maybe her mother and grandmother were wrong. Maybe this was something else, something directed toward her.

Maybe she shouldn’t have come back here at all.

Things kept launching themselves at the car. Some of them had human faces, albeit tiny, and she wondered at their intelligence. Humans would have gone around the vehicle, but these creatures didn’t seem to be going around anything. Over, under, on top of—but not around, as if they were in a blind panic.

Some of their eyes looked that way—glazed, almost empty. That expression on a human would have indicated terror, but she wasn’t sure what these things were. Certainly, they weren’t anything she had had contact with before.

Something slammed into the roof of the car, denting it. Lyssa reached up, touched the dent, as another pounded into place. The dents were twice the size of a human hand and shaped like a frog’s leg.

Only the frog creatures she had seen didn’t have the weight to create a dent like that. Not even if they had hit from a great height.

Lyssa sank down in her seat. If she started the car, would these creatures go around? Or were they so blindly panicked, so focused, that they would keep coming at her?