Eleven
C
ody and I drove in relative silence back to Pemkowet.
“Sorry about that,” I said at length. “I didn’t mean to lose my temper.”
One corner of his mouth quirked. “Short fuse. I can’t say I blame you. It doesn’t matter; Jim Vanderhei’s not going to back down until he gets his way.”
“I don’t get it. Why are they so uncooperative? Their son died! You’d think they’d want to do everything possible to find out the truth.” I frowned. “Do you think the Vanderheis are hiding something?”
“Could be.” Cody shrugged. “But not necessarily. It could be they honestly believe it went down the way the other boys said, and they just want the chance to grieve and move on. Could be they think we’re muckraking, trying to drag their son’s name through the dirt as payback for their supporting Prop Thirteen.”
“You know about Prop Thirteen?” It surprised me a little.
He glanced at me. “I’m not stupid, Daisy. It could have affected my entire clan if it passed.”
“True.”
“Anyway, it could also be that the Vanderheis don’t
want
the truth uncovered. They might not know what it is, but they have a bad feeling about it.” Cody turned in the direction of Pemkowet. “I lean toward that theory.”
I thought about my mother’s reading.
La Botella
, the bottle. “At least we know the boys were lying about the scotch.”
“Mm-hmm. But they could have gotten it anywhere. All three of them were old enough to buy.”
“So why lie about it?”
He sighed. “Good question, but it’s going to have to wait, along with the Masters of the Universe. Once we get some more leverage, we can try questioning the boys again. Right now, I’ve got to concentrate on tracking down Ray D—and speaking of uncooperative, you’re still on naiad duty. What’s your plan for getting them to talk?”
“Oh . . .” I temporized. “I have a friend who has some influence with them.”
Cody glanced at me again. “What kind of friend?”
“Oh, no.” I shook my head. “If you don’t know, I’m not telling, Officer Down-low.”
“He’s in the closet?”
“Not exactly, not in the eldritch community.” I pointed at him. “But you are, or at least your clan does its best to stay there. And my, um, friend has a better reason than most to be discreet. You can’t expect to receive a trust you don’t extend to others.”
“Fair enough.” He gave a slight nod. “For what it’s worth, I trust
you
.”
“You do?” That surprised me, too. A lot.
“Yeah.” Cody pulled into the alley alongside the bakery. “At least, I’m starting to. Call me later; we’ll touch base.” His gaze drifted toward the dented Dumpster. “And think about what I said about staying somewhere else for a few nights.”
“I’ll think about it.”
His gaze hardened, green flashing behind the topaz. “If it happens again, if you hear
anything
suspicious, call me immediately, okay?”
Sunlight was glinting on the bronze stubble on his jaw in a distracting manner. I fought the urge to touch it, reminding myself that Jen wasn’t speaking to me for this very reason. Okay, fine, I actually sat on my hands. “I will.”
Leaning across me, Cody opened the squad car passenger door. “Good.”
I dashed upstairs to the apartment to put on fresh lipstick and run a brush through my hair. Lurine Hollister isn’t judgmental like the lesser water elementals, but trust me when I say she’s
not
someone you want to encounter while looking distinctly subpar. It has to do with preservation of the ego. Even for me, and Lurine had known me since I was barely out of training pants.
After filling Mogwai’s bowl, I trotted back downstairs and fired up my mostly trusty Honda Civic again, heading for the lakeshore.
There were a lot of spectacular homes along the tree-lined Lakeshore Drive in Pemkowet, every bit as imposing as the Vanderheis’ place, and most of them considerably older. Once upon a time, most had been modest summer cottages, but over the years, far too many quaint cottages sitting on large plots were torn down and replaced with mansions that occupied every inch of space that local zoning laws allowed. The only thing they retained of their original character was their name: names like Sans Souci, Pinehaven, or Gray Gables, proudly displayed on hanging placards at the end of winding driveways, adorned with coats of arms either real or invented. Due to erosion, none of the houses along this section of Lakeshore Drive directly overlooked Lake Michigan. They were set back on the opposite side of the road, but all of them enjoyed lakefront access, usually in the form of a long series of wooden steps and decks leading down to private beaches.
A lot of them were still euphemistically called “summer homes,” as they served as seasonal residences for wealthy citizens of Chicago, Detroit, or St. Louis, but as far as I was concerned, they were mansions.
For sure, Lurine’s place qualified.
I couldn’t help but feel out of place as I turned into her drive and pulled up to the gated columns. Rolling down my window, I pressed the button on the loudspeaker and announced myself. “Um . . . hello? Hi. Daisy Johanssen to see Ms. Hollister.”
It was silly. I’d known her since she was Lurine Clemmons, living in a mobile home in Sedgewick Estate, establishing her current identity. She lived two units down from my mom, babysat me regularly when I was a kid, and served as a willing confidante when I was a teenager, before she moved out to Los Angeles. On the surface of things, Lurine was one of those friends every young person should have: old enough to serve as a role model, young enough to identify when a parent couldn’t.
Still, a lot had changed since those days.
My tail twitched restlessly while I waited for a polite voice to reply over the speaker, “Ms. Hollister will see you, Ms. Johanssen.”
There was a buzzing sound, and then the gates parted silently, swinging open on well-oiled hinges. I drove through them, and they swung silently closed behind me.
Lurine Hollister, née Clemmons, née God-knows-what in the early days of history, had done very, very well for herself. As far as I could tell, she always did.
“Ms. Johanssen.” Lurine’s—what? her manservant? housekeeper? butler? I guess he was all of the above—greeted me at the door. He had a closed, lugubrious face and impeccable manners. “Welcome.” He inclined his head in a slight bow. “Ms. Hollister is enjoying herself in the pool. She bids you join her there.”
“Great, thanks.”
I made my way through the house, past the movie stills, the promotional posters, the larger-than-life portrait in oil paint featuring Lurine in an ivory satin gown, her shoulders bare, her décolletage on pulchritudinous display.
Yeah, okay, it was kind of tacky, but in a totally awesome way.
It was painted shortly after Lurine left her career as a B-movie starlet to marry octogenarian real-estate tycoon Sanford Hollister. Naturally, there was some Anna Nicole Smith–esque tabloid scandal when he died within the year and left his fortune to her, but unlike the sad train wreck that was Anna Nicole, Lurine kept a low profile. As soon as the challenge to the will was overturned, Lurine retreated from the media spotlight altogether, returning to Pemkowet to live a fabulous and idyllic life.
For the record, I don’t actually know if she was responsible for her husband’s death, and I really, really don’t want to.
“Daisy, baby!” Lurine’s languid voice called to me as I opened the French doors onto the pool terrace. “There’s champagne in the fridge. Be a doll and bring a bottle and a couple of glasses, will you?”
“Sure.”
It was one of those high-end refrigerators that doesn’t even look like a fridge, with silky wood paneling on the doors. One whole section contained a built-in wine rack. I pulled out a bottle of Moët & Chandon, plucked a couple of champagne flutes from the gleaming, glass-fronted cupboard, and carried them out to the terrace.
Lurine’s house was situated on two wooded acres. The backyard, with its garden terrace and immense pool, was utterly secluded.
For most former B-movie starlets, that would afford the opportunity for sunbathing in the nude. For Lurine, it meant that she could luxuriate in the pool in her true form.
“Good to see you, cupcake.” Lurine lolled in the deep end of the pool, her arms slung carelessly along the edges, wet tendrils of golden hair spilling artfully over her deservedly famous breasts. At some point during the course of history, I’m pretty sure those boobs
did
lure men to their doom, possibly watery. She gave me a slow, lazy smile that hadn’t changed a bit since her mobile home days, dispelling any lingering unease I felt. The vast, sinuous length of her lower half filled the rest of the pool, looped and entwined coils gleaming with shifting hues of green and gold and blue, interspersed with iridescent crimson spots. It stirred the water with effortless, muscular grace, and my own little tail gave an involuntary twitch of envy. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I need a favor,” I admitted.
She patted the edge of the pool. “Bring that champagne over here, sit down, and tell me all about it. Ooh!” Her cornflower-blue eyes widened. “Is this police business? Is this about the boy who drowned?”
“Yes, and yes.” Kicking off my sandals, I sat next to her and dangled my feet in the water. “But you
cannot
repeat anything I tell you.”
“Cross my heart.” Lurine suited actions to words, then uncorked the champagne with a deft twist and a muted pop, filling both flutes. “Now tell.”
I laid out the bare bones of the case, and my dilemma with the naiads and other water elements.
“Dumb bitches,” Lurine commented, her voice taking on an unfamiliar edge. “Don’t they know if any one of us is involved, it could mean trouble for all of us?”
“Apparently not.” I sipped my champagne. Yeah, I know, I shouldn’t on duty. But it wasn’t like I was an official badge-carrying cop, and there’s the hospitality thing. It’s very important in the eldritch community. “Will you talk to them for me?”
“Of course,” she said promptly, studying me. “You seem kind of down, cupcake. Is it just the case, or is something else bothering you?”
I shrugged. “It’s stupid.”
And yet within ten minutes, I’d spilled the entire story of my long-standing crush on Cody, and how I’d interfered with him and Jen, and now Jen wasn’t speaking to me. Lurine was a good listener; she always had been. Not all of her gifts were obvious ones.
“See,” I said when I’d finished. “It’s stupid! Seriously, it’s like I’m still in high school!” I put my head in my hands. “And I can’t believe I’m even thinking about it at a time like this.”
“Oh, baby girl!” Lurine said with sympathy. “It’s okay. Life goes on even at the worst of times, and there are some ways no one ever grows up, no matter how long they live or how many lifetimes.”
It made me feel better. “Really?”
“Absolutely.” She pointed at my purse. “Now you get out your phone, call your friend, and apologize to her. If she won’t answer, leave a message. Or text her. Isn’t that how you kids today communicate? Get it off your chest. If she’s a good friend, she’ll forgive you sooner or later.”
After I’d done it, that made me feel better, too, even though Jen didn’t pick up. “Thanks, Lurine. Any advice on the Cody situation?”
Her look of sympathy returned. “What can I tell you? Those clans keep to their own kind, cupcake. If you go chasing after him, you’re likely to get your heart broken.” Her shoulders rose and fell. “Then again, you’re young. There are worse things in the world than heartbreak. Finding that out is a rite of passage.”
“Great,” I said glumly.
Lurine poured herself away from the edge of the pool in one fluid movement, diving below the surface. The water roiled, slopping over the sides as she undulated from one end and back in serpentine glory. Resurfacing, she gave me her slow, lazy smile, this time with more than a hint of wickedness in it. Her gleaming coils stirred suggestively around her. “You want to come to mama, baby girl? I’ll make you feel
all
better.”
A shiver ran from the nape of my neck to the base of my tail, making it spasm involuntarily.
Okay, here’s the thing. When it comes to ordinary, mortal humans, I’m pretty much straight, but the eldritch have a whole different Kinsey scale.
Yes, it’s twisted.
And yes, I find Lurine in her lamia form kind of hot. I can’t help it. Something about those deadly coils . . .
gah!
I can’t explain it.
I looked away, feeling my face get warm. “Oh, for God’s sake! Cut it out! You know, you used to babysit me.”
“Age is relative, cupcake.” There was a prodigious splash as Lurine heaved herself out of the pool. “Isn’t that what I was just saying?”
I sneaked a glance at her and relaxed. Lurine had assumed her human guise and stood two-legged, barefoot and dripping on the sun-warmed concrete, looking amused and pleased with herself as she wrapped a towel around her
Playboy
-centerfold figure.
That, I could handle. “Okay, so, dawn tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” She twined a second towel around her wet hair in a turban. “Why wait?”
Twelve
I
’d known that Lurine carried a lot of clout among the water elementals. I hadn’t known exactly how much.
At her suggestion, we drove over to Sedgewick Estate.
“It’s all the same river,” Lurine said in a pragmatic tone. “And it’s secluded enough out here in the sticks. We’ll get Gus to stand guard.”
Of course, we had to visit with my mom first. She and Lurine exchanged greetings like long-lost friends, even though I knew they talked on the phone every week. But I guess that’s not the same as meeting face-to-face. They had a bit of a falling-out when Lurine tried to give Mom a check big enough to pay off the mortgage on her lot and then some, but that was years ago.
“How’s the investigation going? Have you found the spider yet?” Mom asked me, a little furrow between her brows.
“Spider . . . ?” I remembered her reading again. “No, not yet. We’re here to question the naiads.”
She nodded in understanding. “I’m sure Gus will be happy to make sure everyone keeps their distance.”
Sedgewick Estate is a pretty tight-knit community in its own little way. It’s always drawn a fair number of eldritch folk, maybe because it’s a bit isolated and close to nature. Still, for Lurine’s sake, it would be better not to have an audience.
Gus’s unit was the farthest one on the estate, a single-wide situated under a big willow tree. The exterior was draped in camouflage netting, giving it a sort of cavernous, moss-covered-hillock appearance, which was appropriate, since Gus was an ogre.
To the best of my knowledge, Gus hasn’t eaten anyone in the last century or so, at least if we’re talking people.
Cats and dogs, I’m not so sure about.
Gus answered our knock right away, unfolding his mammoth seven-foot-tall frame through the doorway and ducking under the netting. To the mundane eye, he looks a bit like Andre the Giant, and if you don’t know who that is, you really need to watch
The Princess Bride
. To the eldritch eye, he looks like Andre the Giant if Andre the Giant were hewn from boulders and stitched together with leather.
“Good evening, ladies,” he said in a deep rumble, baring teeth like smaller boulders in a shy smile. “What can I do for you?”
“Lurine’s going to summon the naiads,” I said. “Can you make sure we don’t draw any spectators?”
His smile broadened. “Of course.” He glanced at Mom with puppy-dog eyes. “Present company excepted, I hope?”
Um, yeah. Gus the ogre has a crush on my mother.
“Of course Marja’s welcome.” Lurine patted Mom’s arm. “She’s an honorary member of the community.”
I fidgeted. “This
is
a police investigation.”
“It’s okay, honey.” Mom smiled at me. “I’ll stay on the shore with Gus, out of hearing range. I just want to watch. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a naiad; they don’t usually come out this far.”
I sighed. “Fine.”
We trooped down toward the river. Some yards away from the shore, Gus planted his looming figure on sentry duty. It was late enough in the day that the sun was riding low in the west, beginning its slow descent toward sunset, and a few people were out on their decks, manning barbecue grills.
Gus raised his hands and cupped his mouth. “Better you should go inside for a little while, okay?” he boomed. “Go inside and close your curtains! Important community business here!” There were a few groans and catcalls, but everyone obeyed. For an ogre, Gus is an amiable fellow, but not someone you want to cross.
“Ready, cupcake?” Lurine asked me.
I nodded. “Yep.”
At the river’s edge, Lurine shucked her sundress and waded into the murky water, her bare feet stirring up eddies of muck. “Let me call them first. I’ll come back for you.”
“Okay.”
In the blink of an eye, she shifted, her shapely human lower half giving way to those vast, glistening, muscular coils. If you crossed a giant anaconda with a rainbow, that’s pretty much what the bottom half of a lamia would look like. Propelled by her undulating coils, Lurine glided across the surface of the river through a thicket of sedge grass, her torso disconcertingly upright and towering in the air. When she reached open water, she halted.
Her immensely long, powerful tail thrashed, churning the water. She raised her voice and summoned the naiads in a foreign tongue, every word precise and ringing with bronze-edged irritation.
I don’t know what she said, but she sounded pissed.
There was a long moment of silence, echoes dying across the bay. And then the water rippled with myriad arrow-headed wakes as the naiads, undines, and nixies came in swift answer to Lurine’s summons, rising to bob in the river, heads lowered in acknowledgment.
Lurine’s tail snaked back toward me and proffered a loop, the iridescent tip beckoning. Not exactly what I’d expected when she said she’d come back for me. When I hesitated, she glanced over her shoulder with mild annoyance. “I’m not playing, Daisy. Are you coming or not?”
“Coming.” I pried off my sandals and stepped onto the offered loop of her tail. It dipped slightly beneath my weight, and I nearly slipped. “Whoa!”
A coil wrapped around my waist, steadying me. “Gotcha, cupcake.”
Okay . . .
gah!
Lurine retracted her coils, me within them, and in one swift rush I was floating above the river and the aquatic mean-girls club, securely encased in a lamia’s grip. Yep, definitely hot—also pretty exhilarating, like the weirdest amusement park ride ever.
The head naiad bobbed and glared at me beneath her lashes. I cleared my throat. “Um . . . hi again.” I raised my left hand, the one marked with Hel’s rune. “Remember me?”
Her voice was subdued, but icy. “Yes, of course. The sun has not set on our brief acquaintance.”
Lurine’s tail thrashed in warning. I rode out the convulsions, my bare toes gripping her water-slick coils, one hand clutching her shoulder. “Level with me. A boy
died
, okay? Just tell me what you saw.”
They conferred in their silvery voices. The sun sank lower, turning the rippled surface of the water to hammered gold.
At last a pair of timid undines with pearls from my morning’s offering twined in their translucent hair came forward. “The boy didn’t drown in the river,” one of them said in a faint, wispy voice. “They put him there.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Who did? His friends?”
They exchanged a glance. “We don’t know. It was dark,” the other one said. “They were in a boat without lights.”
“How many people?” I asked. “Human or eldritch?”
“Four,” the first undine said. “Two were human. Two were not. The two who were not put the boy in the river.”
“You said the boy didn’t drown there.” I frowned, thinking. “So he was already dead, then?”
The undines nodded in unison. “Drowned.”
“Drowned, but not in the river? You’re sure?”
“All of us know what drowned men look like, halfling,” the head naiad said with disdain. “We have seen many hundreds of them.”
“No doubt.” I wouldn’t be surprised if she was responsible for a few of them. Ignoring her, I concentrated on the undines. “Okay, the two who weren’t human. What were they?”
“Pale,” one said.
“Hungry,” the other offered.
“Vampires?” I hadn’t considered the possibility that the kids were blood-sluts in the making. But by the look of him, Thad Vanderhei hadn’t been drained, and I’d never heard of vampires drowning anyone.
The undines shook their heads. “No.”
I grimaced. “Ghouls?”
They did their nod-in-unison thing again. I wondered whether undines were a bit simple. It might explain why the naiads were so bitchy, having to share the river with them. “Maybe,” one said. “Not for sure.”
“Okay, so they put the boy in the river. Then what happened?”
“We don’t know,” the other said. “We swam away as fast as we could.”
Lurine muttered something under her breath, the end of her tail lashing ominously. The undines looked scared.
“It’s okay,” I assured them. “I don’t blame you. I would have run away, too. Can you tell me anything else about the people in the boat? Were the humans the boy’s age?”
“Yes,” both of them said. “We think so.”
“Good, very good.” I nodded encouragingly. “What about the other two men? The maybe-ghouls?”
“Not men,” one corrected me. “One man and one woman.”
Huh, interesting.
I pressed them for as many details as they could remember. All I got was that the man and woman were not young, but not old either. The man had dark hair, but they weren’t sure about the woman. The boat was a small motorboat, not a sailboat or a houseboat, but the kind you would take on a short pleasure cruise or fishing trip. Since that described a hundred boats in Pemkowet, it wasn’t a lot of help.
Still, it was tons more information than I’d had an hour ago.
When I couldn’t think of any further angles to pursue, I thanked the undines for their help. “I appreciate it. This is very, very helpful.” I glanced from them to the head naiad. “Why were you so reluctant to share it? Why did you make it so difficult?”
The undines were silent.
“Because it is dangerous to get involved in such affairs, halfling,” the head naiad said with exasperation. “We do not know who killed the boy or why. There are those who have hunted our kind for sport over the ages.” She waved one alabaster arm, indicating the broad sweep of the river. “In this age, it would be altogether too easy to take vengeance on us. Mortal folk have all but poisoned the waters through carelessness. Imagine what one of the soulless ones could do out of spite.”
As much as I disliked her, I had to admit she had a point. “I’ll do my best to keep my sources off the record.”
The naiad gave me a tight smile. “That may work in the mundane world. In the eldritch community, everyone will know it was a water elemental who gave you this information.”
“Yeah, and most of them will be grateful for it,” I pointed out to her.
She tossed her hair. “It is the ones who will not that concern us.”
Lurine said something foreign and scathing. Her coils stirred, waving me absentmindedly in the air and making my stomach lurch. Remembering my presence, she steadied her coils and switched back to English. “Your concerns are small and selfish, little sister. You do not understand the stakes. If those who did this are not brought to justice, the eyes of the mundane world will turn to Pemkowet.” Her eyes flashed. “There will be talk of rooting out evil. There will be talk of destroying the underworld, of razing the city beneath the sands. If that came to pass, Hel would perish, and the rest of us would follow. As below, so above. Do you understand?”
This time the naiad really did look chastened. “Yes,
kyria
. I understand.”
“All of you?” Lurine persisted. “And if there is anything else you remember, anything else you learn, you will come forward with it?”
There was a silvery chorus of agreement from the bobbing figures of undines, naiads, and nixies.
“Are you done with them, cupcake?” Lurine lowered me so she could look me in the eye.
“Yeah, thanks.”
She dismissed the assembled water elementals with a foreign word that sounded like a thunderclap. Once again, they scattered like minnows—like scared minnows. I had to admit it was infinitely more satisfying this time.