Hydraulic Level Five (1) (17 page)

You’ve certainly hit on something, Caro. That’s what’s missing—Kaye’s thoughts. Her REAL thoughts, not the ones I’m guessing at. I think I’ll ask for her help.
~SC

We’ll discuss in person.
~Caro

Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

I heard it again. That obnoxious cricket, rudely yanking me out of my much needed dream time, just when I’d drifted off to sweet oblivion with my blankets pulled over my head.

Chirp-chirp…chirp-chirp…chirp-chirp…

And the other cricket.

ChirpchirpChirpchirpchirpChirpChirpchirpChirpchirpchirpChirpchirpChirp…

And the rest of the two dozen crickets echoing through my home. I burrowed further beneath my down comforter. This was my second fitful night’s sleep since I returned from Lyons to find my apartment above the TrilbyJones mansion infiltrated by crickets. I’d had fun with them last night, pulling out my guitar and playfully strumming chords around their happy chirps like a fricking fairy-tale princess. But when three o’clock hit and I still hadn’t slept, I stumbled from my bedroom to my brainstorming room downstairs and blissfully crashed on the hard office sofa. The first item of business yesterday morning was to pick up a granular bait pest control and liberally sprinkle it around the baseboards.

That should have done the trick, but the evil little Jiminies were back with a vengeance, gleefully chirping in every nook and cranny. They scooted behind my refrigerator. Hopped into my closet. I even spotted several lazing about in my claw-foot bathtub.

I pretended I was camping, tucked into my sleeping bag while the soothing sounds of a nighttime wilderness enveloped me.

CHIRP…CHIRP…CHIRP…

Nope, didn’t work. I peeked at my alarm clock—four twenty in the morning. With a frustrated cry, I flung back my comforter and blindly tripped from my bed, feeling for a light switch.
Nasty bugs. Damn them!
Snatching my robe from the floor, I wrapped it around my body and grabbed
The Last Other
from my nightstand. I’d have to call an exterminator later this morning. Until then, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

I tucked a throw around my legs and settled into my cushy leather armchair, flipping open to where I’d left off…

The sirens of the Alpine lakes were slick, wicked creatures with seaweed hair and exotic faces. Neelie had never seen beings so ethereal, so erotic. Men and women with willow limbs twined toward them, enticing them into the water…

This had to be it. Neelie was a goner, the evil sirens would capture her and rip her to pieces. But surprise, she escaped—barely. A whoosh of breath escaped my lungs, and I dug deeper into the book. After a while, I was able to shut out the crickets, firmly planted in Neelie’s world…

The town of Val d’Isère was heavy with snow and skiers, both weighing down wooden inns, blanketing folk streets. It was the ideal place to blend, recover without the Others tracking them. Neelie breathed, reveling in how a single puff of air crackled and turned to a horde of ice crystals, glinting in the fading light and street lamps. The Alps towered high, forewarning the path they had yet to travel. Their massive shadows inched over the town, pulling it into darkness.

Neelie held up her hand. It trembled, slightly. She grew weaker. Her family could never know…she’d rather die than have them believe she couldn’t battle the Others, that she wasn’t strong enough…

Rats. The sirens had cursed Neelie after all. So it was to be a slow death, hmm? Nothing like two hundred pages of death scene to lift the spirits. Yet I plowed ahead.

For the longest time, I’d avoided Samuel’s books. I couldn’t do it—allow myself to be shrouded in his thoughts. But curiosity (and, admittedly, wistfulness) eventually drove me to read
Water Sirens
. Anger over his exploitation of my personality carried me through the other books. Being angry made me feel as though I was accomplishing something, that somehow, I made him hurt just as much as he’d hurt me. Even now, I felt a stirring of annoyance at him while I followed Neelie and her crew through the Alps, from France to Geneva. But it wasn’t roiling, and I couldn’t call up the fierceness of years past. Perhaps time had deadened the rawness, leaving me with only a hunger to satisfy that dull ache.

Once, the iced air raised bumps along his arms. Once, they would have built a fire to stave off the chill, frozen limbs pulsing as they roared to life like the hissing logs. Now, Nicodemus’s feeble bones needed neither warmth nor cold. His body decayed as lake algae decayed. If he sank to black depths, mud would preserve his bones, a fossilized ammonite churning circles in the sediment layer that had been his nacken life. His body was dead—a rock memorial for an era passing away before him.

But his mind was not dead. And his spirit certainly wasn’t. Nicodemus considered his three friends as they tucked their packs into the darkness of the mountain enclave, hidden away from these things that chased them. He watched as Noel settled a weary Neelie against the wall, making her comfortable.

His arrested heart beat for them, his family, these vibrant flickers of life. As long as they burned, he would, too…

I folded my bookmark over the page and pressed the book closed. Nicodemus’s pain hit too close to home, and it twisted my gut. I needed to pause, to think. Something in Samuel’s story—the direction it had taken—was extremely troubling.

It hit me that the point-of-view had shifted to Nicodemus.

Why Nicodemus, why now? Readers were never given much from Nicodemus. Typically, the story was told through the eyes of the other three Bear Creek sirens. I’d always assumed Samuel didn’t like writing Nicodemus because there was too much of himself in this particular character, things he didn’t want to share outright with millions of readers. (Of course, he didn’t have qualms about sharing the rest of us with millions of people.) But at this point in the story, Neelie still recovered from her near-death encounter with the sultry lake sirens in the French Alps, and was just plain loopy. Noel and Nora, freshly reunited, were too wrapped up in their love to tell the story. So the job fell to Nicodemus.

And how much of this was truly make-believe? Samuel had hammered into my head that Neelie Nixie was a fictional character, and this alone kept me from hurling the book across the room whenever I found something about Neelie I didn’t like. Nicodemus, though, was undoubtedly Samuel—I could see it even more so in this book than in any of the others. And when Nicodemus spoke of death, of the need he had for his family…

Did that mean Samuel was lonely, so far away in New York? Did he regret leaving Lyons behind?

My alarm clock blared from the bedroom. Taking the book with me, I turned it off and headed to the kitchen to dish up Oatie-O’s.

My vengeful side wanted to revel in Sam’s misery, if he was indeed lonely. When our marriage ended, I was the lucky one who got to keep our close-knit Lyons circle. Samuel was the one in exile across the country, in a strange place with strange people. But leaving had been his choice. He’d exiled
himself
, choosing a life of “mind-altering experimentation and artistic endeavors” (as Sofia delicately called it), and goodness knows what or who else he’d dabbled with until he’d gotten busted.

Was I reading too much into this? Projecting fictional heartaches onto a flesh-and-blood man? I had to admit, I had a hard time believing he was unhappy. He’d achieved what he set out to do—he’d broken into a ruthless publishing industry in a Cinderella move that made him the Prince Charming to a world full of women. His body of work was well-respected, hadn’t had a single dud. He was frequently linked to the high echelons of Manhattan artist circles, so he had to have a happy-hour acquaintance, at least.

I stuck my bowl in the dishwasher and headed to the shower.

Samuel hadn’t made friends easily. He was shy, hated being the center of attention. If his closest relationship was with Caroline…

Caroline. Of course. I could kick myself. Samuel would have been writing
The Last Other
nearly two years ago, before he’d started to date Caroline, or even Indigo. Two years ago, when he’d come home for Thanksgiving…that disastrous Thanksgiving, which had dissolved into petty name-calling. Perhaps he’d worked through his loneliness since then. Perhaps Caroline helped him to do so. I cringed, remembering Molly’s words to me through a merlot-induced haze:
You can’t expect him to be alone forever.

Can’t I?

Early morning purple lightened to gray and gradually, the crickets’ chirping ceased. I finished brushing my teeth and again opened the book, rereading the disconcerting thoughts of Nicodemus.

“As long as they burned, he would, too…”

I needed to talk to Samuel about this book, plain and simple. It wasn’t just my well-being at stake anymore. I could be the bigger person, invite him back to Friday lunch, maybe even ask if he’d like to fly out for our next whitewater trip. He’d enjoy the Shoshone stretch. The idea of sharing a kayak with him, paddling with him as we conquered rapids was appealing…

But he wouldn’t share a kayak with me, would he? He’d be with Caroline. Nevertheless, I could invite him. And her. Maybe. Enough time had gone by, right?

When I arrived at work, barely put together in a black dress and flats, the first thing I noticed was the crickets had migrated downstairs. The chirping had stopped once the sun came up (supernatural little beasts), but several darted across the hallway, staking their real estate claims in prime, dark closet space.

“Call an exterminator,” our webmaster said to me before I even uttered a hello.

“Believe me, I’m all over it.” I rubbed my tired face. Why the heck had crickets picked TrilbyJones mansion to infiltrate, of all places?

His eyes crinkled. “Sleepless night?”

“Yup.”

The second thing I noticed was our graphic designer interns, fresh from college, peering at me over their cubicle walls.

“Ah…you gals have good weekends?” I glanced over my dress to see if it was tucked in my underwear. No.

Intern Number One’s toothy grin broke free. “I think we should ask
you
the same thing.”

“Perfect, wonderful weekend, got to catch up with friends. I haven’t gotten much sleep the past couple of nights, though.”

“I bet! Lots of ‘catching up,’ if that’s what you call it.” Intern Number Two winked at me, and they erupted into fits of giggles.

Odd. Gah, I needed caffeine. “Coffee’s on?”

They nodded, still laughing.

I detoured to the coffee pot before I even stumbled to my office, topping off my mug with pure, strong, fragrant brew. If coffee companies really wanted to make an impact in advertising, they should show desperate, sleep-deprived people crawling on hands and knees to the desert oasis that is the office coffee machine, not rosy couples rolling out of bed on Saturday morning, embracing over steaming mugs of French Roast. I blew across the top as I flipped through the phone book for pest control services.

“Preekit’s Pest Control,” a gruff voice answered.

“Thank goodness! I need you, right away.”

“What sort of pests are you having trouble with, ma’am?”

“Crickets. Hundreds of crickets.” I described my sleepless nights, how they were all over everything, chirping, chirping, chirping. The man a-ha-ed along until I finished my tale.

“Are you sure it’s crickets, ma’am?”

“Of course I’m sure. They’re black with long legs and antennas. They hop. They chirp all night long. A couple even had top hats.”

“I just need to make sure. See, crickets are seasonal. They typically don’t enter homes until September, October, when it cools down.” I frowned. What was he getting at? “So unless someone loosed a whole bucket of crickets in your house, I don’t see how it’s possible.”

“Look, I’m telling you…” No. NO. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t
dare
.

“Do you have anyone who’d want to play a joke on you, ma’am?”

Oh, of all the frickin’ cricket-loving, malevolent things to do…