It was nearing eight pm by the time we pulled up in front of Miranda’s cute little Victorian. Lights were on inside, which probably meant she was home. Alone, or with company we’d have to get rid of? Or maybe Michael was there. If he’d gone to her house after eluding me, that would make things easier.
“Do you want to go up by yourself?” Nola asked me as we pulled into a parking spot by the curb. “She might feel overwhelmed if we three descend on her.”
“No,” I said. “We’re in this together. Besides, I think it would be good for her to feel overwhelmed. Intimidated might be even better. Edwin, you can do intimidating, right?”
He smiled and then set his face into a hard, frozen glare that sent a ripple of nerves up my breastbone.
I blew out a breath. “Yeah. You can definitely do intimidating.”
His face relaxed again.
We got out of the car and walked up the driveway and then the little flat-stone path to her front door.
“Knock politely or pound?” Edwin said.
“Definitely a polite knock.” I reached up and rapped my knuckles against the door.
She threw the door open and looked expectantly at us.
“Where’s Michael? You couldn’t free him?” Her voice chilled. “You came here to tell me the witches still have my brother!”
“May we come in?” I said, my voice friendly and light.
Miranda froze a moment, seeming to need time to decide. I knew I wasn’t one of her favorite people. I wasn’t sure what I would do if she started to close the door in our faces. Blow it open and storm in, I supposed. Not a good way to start with her.
Miranda sighed and opened the door all the way. She stood aside to let us in.
“We found Michael,” I said. Best to start off with the good news, I thought. “We freed him from the witches and the curse. Nola,” I glanced her way, “broke the curse.”
Miranda’s shoulders and back visibly relaxed. “Where is he now? Why didn’t he come with you? He wasn’t hurt, was he?”
“No, he was fine the last I saw him,” I said.
“Good,” she said, and then, “Why isn’t he here?”
I made that flip of the hand motion that meant I didn’t have an answer she was going to like. “We were attacked when we got back to the car. Michael got free of his captors but ran off. I hoped he’d come here.”
“He didn’t.” A sly look crossed her face. “But you’re hoping I’ll give you the Mermaid’s Lament anyway.” She laughed under her breath. “That isn’t going to happen. You bring Michael here and I’ll fetch the necklace and break the curse I’ve put on it. You’re not getting it any other way.” She crossed her arms over her chest as if to emphasize her refusal.
Edwin had put on his intimidation face at the door and kept it on. I didn’t think Miranda had half-noticed he was even there.
“Miranda Rawlings,” he said in a voice I’d never heard from him before. A voice that was low, rumbling, and carried such threat in it that the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Miranda clearly heard the threat as well. She drew herself up tall.
“Who are you that I should be frightened?” she said. “My magic is strong. Those who oppose or threaten me live to regret it.”
Edwin chuckled, a sound so cold it made me rethink everything I thought I knew about him.
“I doubt Lady Califia and the goddess Calypso are among those your paltry magic can touch,” he said. “But fine, hold on to that string of pearls. A word in certain ears and the witches of your coven will know you have the Mermaid’s Lament. Both goddesses will know, as well as Calypso’s son, Saylor who also very much wants those pearls.” He turned to me. “And who else did you say was after the necklace?”
“There was that ghoul.”
“Right.” Edwin said. “Ghouls are such nasty sorts, eaters of the dead and all.” He smiled coldly at Miranda. “I’m sure the ghoul would find you a tasty snack.”
I set my hand lightly on Miranda’s arm. “Give us the necklace and we will all go to bed safe and happy tonight.”
She kept the defiant pose on her face, but I could see Edwin had frightened her and she was cracking.
I saw something else, too. “You never planned to give me the necklace, did you? You thought you could get Michael back and keep the Mermaid’s Lament. How did you plan to do that?”
Edwin’s voice changed from harsh to soft. “Tell the truth, Miranda.”
Nola said, “I’m not too shabby at casting spells. A truth spell might be just what’s needed here.”
Miranda gaped at Nola who was shifting her backpack around so she could get into it for supplies.
“No,” Miranda said forcefully. “No spell.”
Edwin smiled and held a hand out toward her. “Tell the truth, Miranda.”
She drew in a shaky breath and let it out slowly. “I had a copy made. I was going to give you the paste copy and take the real necklace for myself. And for Michael. I thought we’d have plenty of time to disappear before the fraud was discovered.”
I wondered what Miranda was so afraid of revealing if she were under a truth spell that she’d tell us the truth about the necklace to avoid the spell? I didn’t doubt she’d told the truth. It felt too true. When I glanced at Edwin, I could see he believed her too.
Did she fear saying something about the Mermaid’s Lament? About Michael? About a thing we knew nothing about and she was afraid we’d discover? And what did they plan if they’d managed to keep the real pearls? Selling it to the highest bidder?
“Why don’t you go get the necklace for us?” Edwin said his voice pitched so his request seemed the most intelligent and reasonable thing in the world. “We’ll keep it safe.”
Her shoulders slumped suddenly, as if she were a marionette whose strings had been cut.
“I’ll get it.”
She disappeared into another room.
“She’s not going out a window or back door is she?” Nola said.
Edwin shook his head. “Nope. She’s gone to get the necklace.”
“The real one, or the fake?”
“Shay will know which the moment Miranda hands them over,” he said. “She can sense things.”
Nola shot me a look, and I shrugged.
Had the Mermaid’s Lament been here all along? No, I thought. Miranda had gone somewhere and fetched them while we’d been out freeing Michael. If the necklace had been here when I’d come before, her demeanor would have been different.
Miranda returned with a thin white box in her hands. She opened it and held the Mermaid’s Lament out to Edwin.
“Have you removed your curse?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
Something in her tone set my senses on edge. I took the necklace from her and cradled the pearls in my hands. Their magic hummed against my skin. I nodded to Edwin.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “We’ll be going now. I hope Michael gets in touch with you soon. If I hear anything about where he is, I’ll tell you and do my best to get him back to you.”
Miranda’s eyes brimmed with tears, but I didn’t know if they were in gratitude for Edwin’s promise or in pain that she’d given up the pearls.
24
A sliver of moon rode among the stars by the time we turned onto the private road to Lady’s house. Lights were on in the house, but instead of seeming welcoming, there was something cold about the gleam. A nervous twitter flew up my breastbone. I clutched my purse with the Mermaid’s Lament inside close to my chest.
“This doesn’t feel right,” I said.
“No,” Edwin said as he slowed the car as we entered the long driveway, “it doesn’t.”
“It’s too quiet,” Nola said.
Edwin nodded. “I’d have expected Lady to come out to meet us when she heard my car. She’d want to know if we’d gotten the necklace or not.”
“So, do we stay or do we go?” Nola asked.
“Stay,” Edwin and I said in uni
son.
“And fight,” I added, because it seemed clear to me that something was amiss and that something was probably Saylor. Or maybe Calypso—the sea goddess wanting to ensure that Lady couldn’t return the Mermaid’s Lament by grabbing it from us before we could hand it off. Or someone, or something, else. It seemed an awful lot of entities were after the necklace.
Edwin turned the engine off but sat a moment, not moving to open the driver-side door.
“I’m going to count to three,” he said. “On three we all jump from the car at the same time and race for the house.”
I heard Nola shift in the back seat and assumed she was doing the same thing I was: taking hold of the door handle in preparation.
“One,” Edwin said. “Two. Three.”
We swung our doors open and leaped from the car. Nola and I ran for the front door. Edwin, I saw, had veered left, as if to go around the side of the house to the back yard.
He’d planned that all along, I thought. Why?
There wasn’t much time to wonder. A scream from overhead made me look up.
“Ghouls,” Nola yelled.
A half dozen of them. The single ghoul who’d run my car off the road had led me to believe she was employed by someone even a ghoul found disreputable. The ghoul had sent me back to Miranda. Miranda sent us to the witches. Were they all in it together—Michael, Miranda, the ghouls, and the witches? Working together—to what end?
Ghouls are part of the djinn family and the fuckers can fly. They flew at Nola and me, soaring down from the treetops, their rotted-corpse faces twisted in maniacal glee. Fire wouldn’t hurt them; they were fire themselves from somewhere in the dim recesses of time. But water could harm, maybe kill them. Could ghouls be killed?
My purse strap was over my shoulder, the purse flapping against my side. I shifted it to my chest and flung my arms over it to secure it in place and ran a zigzag route toward the house. I zigged and a ghoul who’d focused his flight line to collide square on with me only hit my right shoulder on his way to crash onto the driveway.
A different ghoul dove at Nola. She ducked in time to avoid being rammed into and the ghoul flew past her. She popped right back up to her full, tiny height and pointed toward the sky.
“Witches incoming,” she yelled.
I was busy focusing my power to soak the ghouls and didn’t spare even a second to look up. There was a pond the size of an Olympic swimming pool in Lady’s garden. Faster and easier to use that water than to condense it from the air, make clouds, and then rain.
“Get the fuck off me,” I heard Nola say.
I glanced over and saw two ghouls were on her and had pinned her to the ground. I didn’t know if Nola had any magic beyond curse breaking and some light spell casting. One of the ghouls had his scarred, fleshy hand over Nola’s mouth and nose, trying to suffocate her. Another sat on her chest.
Okay, water for the ghouls, fire for the witches.
Except the witches flew right past us, around the side and toward the back of the house, the way Edwin had gone.
I concentrated on forming the water from Lady’s pond into a large ball. I used swirling air around the ball to help hold the shape, and called the water to me.
A ghoul landed on my back, knocking the air from my lungs, and dragged me to the ground. I flipped over and shoved the ghoul hard in the chest to knock him off and scrambled to my feet. The ghoul was on his feet almost as quickly. He drew back his arm, fingers closed in a fist, ready to slug me. I ducked under his punch and, hugging my purse to my side, ran toward Nola. I needed us together to draw all the ghouls to one place.
I’d lost control of the water when the ghoul had dropped me. I felt the water splatter on the ground and begin to sink into the dirt. I focused my magic and called the water back out of the soil and into the air.
Magic surged in me, roiling through my body, desperate to manifest itself somehow. Strong emotions did that to me. I called the water from the pipes running from the street to the house.
Pipes began bursting in the yard from the pressure of the water rushing from the street toward Lady’s house. If the pipes at my own house hadn’t burst, I never would have thought to do this. I didn’t want the pipes breaking inside her house, though. I pulled the water already in the house and the water from the street to meet in the front yard. A geyser shot up, rising maybe fifteen feet and then splashing down, drenching Nola, the ghouls, and me.
The ghouls were screaming. They scattered to get away from the geyser.
But they were slow, the water weakening them. They ran not like swift-footed ghouls but lurched like TV zombies. A few tried to take to the air but landed face down on the wet grass with more water pouring over them. Steam began rising from their bodies.
I pulled the water that remained in the pond, added it to the water that had been in the first water ball, and pulled it all to me as a surging flood.
More pipes burst, sending more water spurting into the air. I grabbed that water and added it to the surge. Lady’s front yard, where we were, was wide but the ghouls were so slow now they hadn’t gotten far apart when the wave hit.
It hit me, too, knocking me off my feet and dragging me across the grass-covered lawn. My purse was torn from my shoulder and dragged away by the surging water. I struggled to get my head up and breathe, but the current was too fast. I didn’t know where Nola was but assumed the water had knocked her over as well. I had no idea where Edwin was. He’d disappeared around the side of the house and hadn’t returned since the witches had chased after him. I hoped he was okay.
The water pushed me toward the street. Luckily, it was a private road, not one with traffic. My lungs were starting to burn from holding my breath. My shoulder slammed into a tree trunk. I flung my arms around the trunk and managed to pull myself up enough to grab a gulp of air before the surging water tore me away and into the gravel-lined road.
I saw my purse, with the Mermaid’s Lament inside, rise to the surface. I grabbed for it, but it was out of my reach. Moments later it disappeared under the water. I tracked the line I thought it had taken and scrambled after it as best I could. At least the water was pushing me and my purse in the same direction. I always bought purses that zippered and kept the zipper closed. Thank God for that, I thought. At least the necklace wouldn’t fall out and be carried who knew where by the water.
Thank goodness for my jeans and shoes, which were saving my legs and feet from getting torn up on the gravel the water was pushing me over. My hands weren’t faring as well. They were going to hurt like hell when this was over. I jammed my palms down behind me, bent my knees and put my feet flat on the road, and pushed.
I got my head, shoulders and chest above the water just in time to see a dragon fly overhead.
A fucking dragon. Witches and ghouls weren’t bad enough?
It seemed to have a target in mind, but I couldn’t see what it was aiming for. My purse? Was this one more entry into the Mermaid’s Lament sweepstakes? A wildcard player coming late onto the field because witches, ghouls, and the son of a goddess weren’t enough?
Fuck.
I pulled my focus together and stilled the water in the pipes and began sending the pond water back where it had come from. I thought I should send wind to knock the dragon off whatever trajectory it was on, but it was taking everything I had to control the water.
Where had the witches gone? Had they cast some spell and coalesced into the dragon now diving for something on the lawn?
25
The dragon dove straight toward Nola.
Before I could work up enough wind to knock the dragon away, it swept down and grabbed Nola by the back of her shirt and lifted her into the air. She hung from the dragon’s mouth like a child’s stuffed toy. I couldn’t tell if she was unconscious or dead.
I swallowed hard. If it was either, it was my fault for brining her into the case. I didn’t know her family to notify them. I didn’t even know her last name.
Jesus.
<
br /> I scrambled to my feet. The dragon, carrying Nola, had flown over the roof of Lady’s house and dropped down somewhere behind it. I wanted to run to the back, see if she was alive. If she was behind the house. The damn dragon could have flown off anywhere with her.
I spotted my purse lying caught between a tall tree and a high hedge. I couldn’t leave it. The pearls were inside. Okay. Grab my purse, then look for Nola. And Edwin. Where the hell was Edwin?
Saylor stepped out from the backside of the hedge. Fucking Saylor. Where had he come from?
I lunged for my purse, snatched it up, and took several steps back. I was soaked. My hands burned from where the gravel had torn the skin. Nola had to be found. Maybe a dragon dealt with. I was in no mood for Saylor.
“Back off,” I said as I readied fire, in case he didn’t quite catch what the tone in my voice meant.
His eyes were as hard as twin coals but his mouth curved in a smile. “You have it, don’t you? The Mermaid’s Lament is in your handbag. I’m going to walk over to you now and you will hand the necklace to me.”
I felt the pull of his words, the desire to do what he said. Evidently he’d inherited some of those godly persuasion powers. But his were nothing compared to the persuasion powers Lady had, and I’d overcome them the day she interviewed me.
“I think not,” I said.
Saylor kept smiling as he walked toward me. “But you will. You want to give the necklace to me. You want to give it to me as much as you’ve ever wanted to do anything. Handing me the pearls will make you very happy. It’s what you want to do.”
Almost involuntarily my eyes strayed to my purse. I almost undid the zipper. Almost, but I didn’t.
But Saylor had seen where my gaze had gone.
“You want me to have them. Just stand there, doing nothing, and I’ll take care of everything.”
I had to do something. Throw down a wall of fire between Saylor and me. Make the earth shake. Something. But I so wanted to simply stand there and watch, making no effort.
And I might have, but I flung a fireball the size of my two fists together straight toward his head instead.
The Mermaid's Lament Page 15
