Fantasy Life (7 page)

“Rumors that might be true.”

“Don’t play with me, Mom. I don’t know if we have the time.”

Athena shuffled in her chair. It made a familiar squeaking sound, and Cassie could picture her, back straight, her aristocratic features in their primmest position. If someone walked into the sheriff’s office at that moment, Athena’s expression would scare them away.

“Cass, there were rumors about a year ago that Reginald Walters was mentally ill. He was at some funny farm in Austin, getting his brain rewired.”

Cassie gripped the phone tightly. She almost corrected her
mother—fanny farm, brain rewired,
they weren’t things people said in polite company. And then she realized that she was objecting, as she always did, to her mother’s words when it was the content that disturbed her.

“Do you think that’s true?” Cassie asked, her voice almost a whisper. But she could answer the question herself. Even though she had raised a barrier to Lyssa’s emotions and, because of Lyssa’s request, Emily’s too, Cassie could still feel a vague sense of them, almost like the background hum of the ocean.

She had the feeling if that hum went away, they would be gone—killed in a car accident or taken from her by the violence that seemed so much a part of American life.

So far the hum had remained. But it had changed in the
last year. It had become sadder, angrier, and frightened. Very very frightened. Cassie had used all the restraint she had to keep her curiosity at bay, figuring if things got bad enough, Lyssa would call.

But maybe Cassie was wrong about that. She always tried to take the best view of her relationship with her daughter.

Lyssa had always had a strong sense of independence, that was all.

Surely, she would come home if she needed to. She was stubborn, but not stupid.

Right?

“Yes, Cass, I think that’s true,” Athena said. “I did some digging at slow times at work, and I found a lot of things that supported the rumor.”

Cassie twisted a strand of her black hair around her forefinger, a habit she hadn’t indulged in since she was a girl.

“Why wouldn’t she have called?” Cassie heard the plaintive note in her voice and wished it weren’t there. But her mother already knew how isolated Cassie felt. It was the story of her entire life. “If they were having problems that serious, we could have helped. Even if she didn’t want any magical assistance, she would need help with Emily, right? She would call us for that, surely.”

“Cassie.”

All it took was that single word, filled with compassion. Cassie blinked, her eyes burning, and tugged on her hair, freeing it from her finger.

“Sometimes you need family, Mom, no matter what your disagreement with them is.” Cassie knew this one from personal experience.

“You forget,” Athena said, her voice gentle. “Lyssa always wanted to be normal. Bringing us in would just reinforce how abnormal she really is.”

Cassie bit her lower lip, tasted blood, and made herself
stop. “Find her, Mom. Maybe you should just tell her that you saw those gossip rags and you were wondering if the stories were true.”

“Cass, that would work with someone who isn’t familiar with your talents, but Lyssa knows them better than anyone. She’ll know you had a flash and that you sent me to find out what’s going on.”

Cassie was gripping the phone so hard her fingers hurt. It took all of her strength to keep from losing her rigid control on her emotions. She and Athena had had one version of this discussion every year of Lyssa’s life.

Athena never got between the two of them, not even when she could have done some good.

“Mom.” Cassie made sure her voice was even and calm, even though she wasn’t feeling that way. “The flash—it was really scary. Lots of violence and horrible things. Please. Help me.”

“I’ll see what turns up with the department’s connections,” Athena said. “I’m not going to promise anything else.”

Fine,
Cassie wanted to say.
Then I’ll just do it myself.
But she held that impulse in reserve. If Athena didn’t find anything, Cassie would break her promise to Lyssa.

After all, a woman could only be pushed so far.

“Thanks, Mom,” Cassie said, and hung up before she really spoke her mind. Then she set the phone back in its cradle, got up, and walked to the main room.

She picked up the crystal ball, wondering if it really worked. There was so much magic in the world, so much she didn’t know about it, and she had studied it every day of her life.

If only she could see a half a year into the future. Or a half a day into the future.

Or if she could have perfect vision instead of these flashes.

What she needed to know was so very simple.

She needed to know if her daughter and her granddaughter were all right.

Whale Rock. Oregon

The False Colors smelled like fish. The odor hit Gabriel as he pulled open the heavy oak door, and he almost turned around and headed back into the parking lot.

It would be a day or two before he could eat fish again. That dead creature had smelled fishy, and the scent lingered on him, even though he hadn’t so much as touched her. He wondered how Hamilton Denne would smell after he finished the autopsy, then decided not to think about it.

Denne had asked Gabriel to meet him for dinner in the False Colors, a restaurant in the town of Whale Rock. The coroner’s office was in Whale Rock, even though Seavy Village was the county seat. That the coroner worked out of Whale Rock showed just how much pull Denne really had.

Denne lived in a gated community just south of Whale Rock, and had argued, apparently, that Whale Rock was a lot more convenient for his office than Seavy Village. It wasn’t just because he lived in Whale Rock; it was also because Whale Rock was more or less in the center of the county. Whenever Denne had to report to a suspicious-death scene, he would have less driving time if he was coming from Whale Rock.

Gabriel figured that driving time was the least of Denne’s worries. Mostly, Gabriel believed, Denne just wanted the privacy of an office that was difficult to get to. State officials often visited Seavy Village; they rarely made it all the way to Whale Rock.

Denne’s office was filled with marvelous toys and equipment no Oregon county, no matter how wealthy, could afford. Denne had set the place up as his own private laboratory, and he
protected it as vigilantly as any mad scientist. Gabriel could count on one hand the number of times he had been allowed inside the place.

But Gabriel was used to Denne, and so, when Denne left the beach and proposed they meet at the False Colors, Gabriel had agreed. He now knew better than to argue that they had to get together in the coroner’s office. Denne would show him pictures, and maybe, if Gabriel played his cards right, Denne would let him see the interesting parts of the body itself.

If Gabriel could handle that fish smell.

He exhaled through his nostrils and stepped deeper into the False Colors, willing the fish smell away. It seemed to have faded just in the moment of his pause. Now the air smelled of frying foods, garlic, and beer.

Those were the scents he associated with the False Colors anyway. The restaurant served some of the best food on the Oregon Coast, but only the locals knew that. Tourists wandered in and, in local parlance, ran away screaming.

The decor wasn’t that bad, and the incidents of screaming never really happened, but it was true that tourists usually only visited the False Colors once. That was because the restaurant’s pirate theme had been seriously overdone. The black-and-white skull and crossbones over the door would have been fine by itself, but combined with the skulls over the fireplace, the sea chanteys with lyrics about death and mayhem blaring from the speakers, and the wooden furniture so rustic that a diner occasionally got splinters, the place seemed forbidding in summer sunshine. Add the rain and windstorms of the winter, and the False Colors seemed like a setting in a Hitchcock movie.

Gabriel tolerated the False Colors. He came here often with Denne, and sometimes with Seavy County politicians. No one worried about outsiders listening into the local conversations. When no tourists came to the place, the owner turned the sea chanteys off and put on some nice jazz (which would be
replaced midnote if an outsider walked in), and the atmosphere became almost pleasant.

A waitress Gabriel had never seen before led him to a booth near the fireplace. Because it was the height of summer and the sun hadn’t yet set, no fire burned. Still the faint scent of woodsmoke lingered.

Gabriel had just ordered a Rogue Ale when Denne walked in. He had changed clothes—now wearing a button-down shirt, open at the collar, and a pair of khaki pants that looked neatly pressed—and his hair was wet.

So the smell had gotten to him too. Gabriel smiled and made himself look at the menu. Lots of little pirates, with scarred faces and greasy hair, decorated the pages. He looked at the specials card, which no one had had time to dress up, and made his decision.

“Figured I’d get here first,” Denne said as he slipped into his chair.

Gabriel closed the menu. “Nope. I didn’t have a lot to do. I canvassed, but I didn’t find any witnesses, at least to the death. No one saw the body wash ashore either, although it had been lying there all morning before someone realized it looked human.”

Denne set his menu aside. “She. She looked human.”

Gabriel put his menu on top of Denne’s. “She’s not human, is she?”

“No, but she is female, and damn close to human, close enough that I feel odd calling her ‘it.’”

“You think there was an intelligence there.”

“I know there was.” Denne picked up his water glass and took a sip. Then he leaned back in his chair and looked over his shoulder.

The waitress who had seated Gabriel held up a hand. “Just a minute, sir,” she said to Denne.

“Is June here?” he asked.

“She’ll be here soon, sir.”

“Sir.” Denne set his chair back down on all four legs. “Crap. She’s new.”

“That’s all right, isn’t it?” Gabriel asked, not sure how it mattered.

“Always have to educate the new ones,” Denne said.

The waitress came over, and as Denne ordered, Gabriel began to understand why someone new irritated him. His order wasn’t on the menu, and it was complicated, and every time she told him that his request wasn’t possible, sir, he told her to check in the kitchen.

When Denne finished and Gabriel had ordered, and the waitress had gone back to the kitchen, Gabriel said, “You know, you could have just told her you were a regular and you’d done this before.”

Denne grinned, which made him look like a cherubic prepschool student. “There’s no sport in that.”

Gabriel shook his head. “I’m never going to understand you.”

“And now you sound like my ex-wife.” Denne finished his glass of water and set it at the edge of the table, so that the waitress couldn’t miss it when she returned.

Another waiter came by and dropped off Gabriel’s pale ale, along with Denne’s Scotch.

“So you didn’t get anything from the canvass?” Denne asked as the waiter left.

Gabriel wrapped his hand around the glass of ale. The liquid was slightly cool, nearly room temperature, the way they served beer in England. He liked it that way; the warmer the beer the more flavor it had.

“I didn’t say that I didn’t get anything,” Gabriel said. “No one saw her wash up, is all. What killed her?”

Denne shrugged. “I’m taking it slow, but I’m thinking that she suffocated. Her gills were filled with that gooey substance
we saw. I haven’t gotten to her lungs yet, but I suspect they’ll be filled with it too. Then again, I’m just guessing. I’ve never autopsied one of these creatures. I have no idea if the goo is a natural substance or not.”

“I thought you said the physiology was similar to ours.”

“The physiology of an ape is similar to ours too,” Denne said, “but there are enough differences that I wouldn’t trust myself to know exactly what killed one—if whatever it was was subtle.”

“And this was subtle?” Gabriel asked.

“I was hoping for a bullet through the abdomen, or spear hole in the back or a smashed skull, something that would tell me unequivocally what killed this thing. But I didn’t find anything like that. For all I know, she died of old age.”

“Like a whale washing ashore.”

Denne shook his head. “This is mysterious in a whole different way. When whales beach, they’re usually alive. We just can’t get them back out to sea. I’ve always thought it’s like animals in the wild. The old ones somehow know they’re going to die, and they leave the pride or whatever and go off on their own, so that they don’t jeopardize the herd.”

“A herd is not a pride,” Gabriel said, a smile playing at his lips. He loved the chance to correct Denne the expert. Gabriel took a sip of the ale, savored the taste of slightly sweet hops, and swallowed.

“You know what I mean,” Denne said. “I think the whales are beaching themselves so that they’ll die here—like a suicidal man will dive into the ocean. I always had the sense that beached whales get very annoyed with humans who try to save them.”

“You don’t think she did that, though,” Gabriel said.

“I found no sand in her mouth, and nothing to indicate that she was alive when she reached the beach. Judging from her position in the sand, she came in with the tide.”

“But didn’t go out with it?”

Denne sipped his Scotch, winced, and set it down. He had a constant battle going with the False Colors to get them to buy the higher-end Scotches.

“I have a hunch the water moved her around. She wasn’t in the best of shape, and if she were human, I would say she’d been in the water for a while. But she isn’t, and I don’t know if that rubbery feel to her skin is natural or not. None of my usual cues work in this case. I’m not even sure the smell is one of decay or her usual odor.”

Gabriel’s stomach turned and he set his ale down. “Thanks for that reminder.”

Denne smiled. “You didn’t have to spend all afternoon with her. You should have been there when I opened the body cavity. You could practically see the odor molecules.”