by Gabi Moore
“You have me there,” Dion told her. “I don’t watch a lot of TV and I wouldn’t know of anything from the commercials. I like to get the news from the papers. In the evening after it had a chance to settle down a bit. The local paper only comes out once a week.”
“You sound like my dad,” Sean said. “But he reads the city paper in the morning. After he grumbles a bit he gets into the car and heads off to work. I look at it when he’s done, but only when he’s finished. I try to keep it from my mom because if she finds an advice column which agrees with her, I’ll have to listen to her read it aloud.
“Beats finding a clipping next to the cereal bowel,” Emily said. “My dad’s quiet and it’s how he likes to leave his comments.”
Dion was busy looking at the map. The guideline didn’t trace out the best way to the store this time, which meant it was safe to go there without any interference from them. This could all change in a moment. The security guards didn’t appear anywhere either, so they had to be in the middle of some kind of plan. What it was, he was certain to find out soon enough.
The map showed a much bigger location than he’d ever seen before. This store was huge and took up enough space for three or four storefronts. He traced the outline with his finger and noticed it extended out into the parking lot. There had to be some kind of protective barrier around it from the way it was placed on the map. Inside the exterior perimeter of the store was a selection of circles and ovals. He turned to his friends.
“Alright,” Dion began. “Can someone please tell me what this place sells?”
“Swimming pools,” Lilly said. “My parents were going to put one in a few years ago, but they decided the insurance was too much. I guess it scares insurance agents if they think some kid might drown on your property. So they decided not to put one in and we continued going to the local pool, even if the membership fees kept going up.”
“So that is what these circles and ovals represent,” Dion spoke up. “They must be display models of some kind. Then why does it have so much space inside?”
“Filters, chemical supplies, floatation devices, the rest,” Sean pointed out. “My dad thought about one too and I’m glad he didn’t get one. I knew a family who had one and the maintenance is a mess on those things. If you don’t keep up with them, they turn into a swamp with algae growing on the bottom and worse. They came back from vacation and found all kinds of aquatic bugs in the pool. It was a mess.”
“It must take quite a few people to run this operation,” Dion said. “Anyone ever been inside it?
“I have,” Emily said. “Last year, a guy I was with wanted to see the hot tubs they sell.”
“Frank?” Sean asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh, him.”
“We went in and looked around for a while,” Emily tried to ignore Sean. “But I don’t think there was anything that he was interested in. He’s an older guy I knew through one of my friends back at school and he started to make me uncomfortable, so I had him take him take me home.” She gave Sean a ‘there satisfied?’ look and continued.
“Anyway I think one of the sales clerks mentioned the place is only open six months out of the year, so they’ve just started up. They pay for the space all year around, but they shut down the facility in the fall and don’t reopen it until the spring because there aren’t enough indoor pools to justify keeping it open all year around. Or maybe they keep it open with a skeleton crew; I never did get the story straight. If you look at the front it’s not got a high profile even though it’s pretty big on the inside.”
The spot on the map flashed again and Dion looked down at it. “It just gave me the name of the owner. I expect she’s still there.”
“What is it?” Lilly asked him.
“Salacia Delphi,” it says. "Anyone ever hear about her?”
The table was silent. Dion didn’t read the news; they could tell if he didn’t know who she was. He was from out of town and it explained quite a bit. However, each of them had lived with the name for years. It was legendary around the town and they’d all heard it spat out or praised over the years.
“She’s one of the rich ladies in town,” Lilly finally spoke up. “If you’ve lived around here long enough, you’d hear it every other day. She owns a lot of businesses. I guess the pool store fits right in if she’s the water elemental person you need to find.
From what Dion learned, Salacia Delphi made an appearance one day from out of nowhere. She just showed up and rented a store to sell jewelry. This prospered and she got into the beverage business. She had the local market to herself after a few years. From there she branched out into restaurants and gas stations. Before long, she owned just about any business worth having in the town.
She sat on several boards to directors for the town and managed to use her position to find out when any good government projects or opportunities were on the horizon. She always made sure her bids were in on time and she got them more often than not. Still, few people knew about her or where she’d come from.
One theory had her as a gangster’s woman who used the money she inherited when a hit was carried out to finance her first business. Other people claimed she knew the dark arts and was able to talk to spirits and find out where buried treasures were located.
She had a tie-in with the local powerboat racing team and sponsored their races every year. It was claimed she saved the life of a boat pilot one year when she managed to get him out of the water quickly after a collision. No one knew how she did it, but the man was seen to emerge from the boat before it sunk and was pulled across the lake. He came straight to her on the shore, but never remembered crawling out of the boat.
“She bound an elemental to get him out, “Dion concluded when Lilly told him the story. “It would have been easy for her to do it, being a Grandmaster.
“Someone told me she never calls the water truck in to fill up her own pool,” Sean said.
“I’m told she wears blue all the time,” Emily added. “She once said it was her favorite color.
“Her company is listed as ‘Queen of Water Cups,’ Sean said. “I had a friend who did yard work for her and he showed me the check she gave him.”
“Settles it,” Dion said. “She has to be the woman we’re trying to find. Does anyone know if she wears anything with aquamarine on it?”
“Never been that close to her,” Emily said. “She’s private and doesn’t leave the house very often from what I understand. She bought an old bank building and remodeled it. I think someone said she uses the vault for her own valuables.”
“She might be keeping a really big elemental in there,” Dion said. “If she’s an elemental Grandmaster, she could easily do it. I’d be afraid of anything she needed a vault to lock up.”
“What do you think it might be?” Lilly asked.
“Hard to say. There are all kinds of things she wouldn’t want out in public when it comes to the water element. Elementals that can cause floods or freeze water. You unleash the wrong one and the town could find itself in the middle of a disaster. They’re nothing to mess with, especially if you don’t understand them.”
“I think she’s Greek,” Emily said. “Someone told me he heard her speaking in Greek on the phone when she was at one of her businesses.”
“The Elemental Grandmasters can come from anywhere,” Dion said. “They don’t have to be tied into any one country or land. I know one of the Air Grandmasters was from the Khalari.”
“How long does it take to become a Grandmaster?” Sean asked. “Is it something you’re born into or do you have to train?”
“Like everything else, some of us have a little bit more ability than others. I was given my ability when I was born, but it doesn’t mean I’ll always have it. Furthermore, everyone has some ability to control the elements, but most people don’t know and wouldn’t want to put the work into acquiring it. So it’s a little bit of both. You can learn and you can be born with more than the next person ca
n. But if you don’t work and develop what you have, it will soon be gone. There is no guarantee you will always have the ability. It’s why I train as hard as I do.”
“I wish it was possible to just summon up a picture of her,” Lilly said, “and then we would know exactly what she looks like.”
“That day has not yet come,” Dion said. “I can’t even conceive of that level of ability. I would think it would happen by technology before it would be something you could use an element to create.”
Chapter 4
Ohio had more than its fair share of backyard swimming pools. Much of the state spent the spring months paying for water trucks to come in and fill their backyard lakes. It was part of the local culture and nowhere was it more evident than the subdivisions outside the city of Scipio. An entire industry evolved around men who wanted to place small oceans behind their houses because it gave them status and the kids something to do in the summer months.
The working class families would pay for above ground pools, in the hopes they could do the installation themselves. It was possible to do it, but it was no easy task to carry out.
First of all, the ground had to be dug out in a radius much larger than the pool itself was going to occupy. Most of the time it was for maintenance, but some families liked the placement of crushed stone or small river pebbles around the pool to make it easier to work on the yard around it. Once the dirt was dug out, it needed to be transported somewhere. In some cases, the dirt could be hauled to the side of the house and dumped against it. If there were no better way to eliminate the dirt, it would need to be hauled out to a dumpsite. This was not too hard to do if you had children at home who were eager to get the pool up and become the talk of the neighborhood.
Next came the layer of sand beneath the pool, which had to be hauled in to the yard. Only the cleanest sand could be use as there could be no rocks or other imperfections beneath it. Once the sand was in place, it had to be smoothed out. This was often done with a big roller that was weighted down to accomplish the task. The sand needed smoothed to a mirror finish, nothing else would do.
Because the next phase involved the liner itself. Made of the highest quality vinyl polymer, the liner needed a smooth base, which would not puncture it. Once the liner was placed, the aluminum wall would be assembled in a perfect circle around the sand. The final part of the assembly took place when the liner was mated to the wall around the pool. The junction needed to be perfect so no water would leak out. When the liner was in place and the wall up, it was inspected for suitability, as any leak or warp in the wall could bring it down in seconds, sending a useless tidal wave across the yard.
The water truck would arrive and the neighborhood children would become quiet as the pool was filled. There was a special moment of silence as the fresh and clean water filled the pool. After the water was placed inside it, the parents would appear and check the pool for sturdiness. Only when the pool was pronounced safe were the neighborhood children allowed to make use of it.
Pool culture ranged everywhere in this Midwestern town. To the north of Scipio, there was an entertainment complex, which consisted of a drive-in movie theater and a swimming pool. Across the road, there was another swimming pool. Private pools where you had to pay an annual membership and pass approval by a committee where everywhere. Too far from the coasts for surf culture to exist, the young kids nevertheless created their own water culture around small fishing boats wherever they could find a lake. It was a thing particular to that time and place.
This is why Salacia Delphi’s big pool store did such great business in the spring months. Already the families were lining up to see what new pools she had for them this year. She’s spent the cold months unloading prefabricated pools and finding just the right balance of art and practicality for each one. It was a work of art to find the right look for each display and she was often seen spending hours to get the perfect effect.
Salacia Delphi was not a large woman, but she was not one to be trifled with. Woe be to the delivery van driver who thought he could drop his items and get out without giving her exactly what she ordered. Salacia was known to spend hours examining the manifest to find just one missing bucket of water treatment chemical. It was said she could tell you exactly where any item was at a given time in the any one of her stores. She was known to drop in at an unexpected moment and do an inspection.
Few people were aware of her abilities as a Water Element Grandmaster. She wanted to keep it that way. The less people knew about what she could do, the better. She would wait a good five minutes after everyone left before she would go out to her private pool and see what her water nymphs were up to that day. She’d brought a whole class of them from Greece with her that no one knew about. She’d found them at the bottom of a well on the island of Patmos and bribed them into coming with her. This batch could create a tidal wave with very little trouble. Since they would be inland, there was very little opportunity for a disaster of that scale to take place.
However, there were many other things this species of elementals could do and she planned to take advantage of them. Right now was not the time to make use of their powers, it would come later. So she kept them in her private pool when she was home and placed them back inside the safe while she was gone. It continued to worry her about what might happen should a thief try to crack her safe. He or she would be in for quite a surprise.
***
“So, now that we know the location of the Water Grandmaster,” Sean said to Dion. “Do we just walk over there?”
“We might as well. If they try to stop me reaching her, and they will, they won’t try anything until we get near the store.” Dion rolled up the map and put it in his jacket.
“I think they already have something planned,” Lilly said as she nodded toward the swimwear place across from them.
Dion looked at it and saw the swim team putting on their tracksuits. They formed a line and went to the back of the store where each one picked up their own suit and slipped into it. Next, they formed another line and marched out of the store, much to the disappointment of the men waiting on the outside. The swim team line swam out of the store and headed down the main concourse of the mall.
“You think they’ll go toward the pool store?” Emily asked Dion.
“They’re going in the right direction. Guess we’ll head there too and find out.”
The four friends stood up from the table and walked down the concourse in the same direction.
They didn’t notice any of Karanzen’s security guards watching them. However, it wasn’t important since the mall had plenty of new security cameras. The cameras covered only the areas with the heaviest traffic, but they still could track their movements through the mall. Right now, the officer was probably in his office doing the slow burn over the four of them gaining entrance to the mall. Dion kept in mind the offensive maneuver by Karanzen might’ve been a ruse to make them think he didn’t want them inside. The swim team elementals had appeared conveniently when he blocked the entrance.
The foot traffic picked up once they entered the main part of this section of the mall. There were quite a few people who made their way, as the day was good for an excursion to the mall. No one gave four young people walking together a second glance as they were assumed to be out shopping, just like everyone else.
The pool store had a small profile on the inside of the mall. Since it was open only six months out of the year, the mall had rented them a corner section that didn’t allow for much window space. It meant the windows could be cleaned with little trouble, but the potential customers couldn’t see the vast interior of the store. It compensated by having a large exterior display, which was where the actual pools were kept. The patrons of the store would enter from the outside through a gate or from another door inside the store.
When they reached the pool store, the water elementals were already there. Crowds of them stood at the entrance and blocked it as they chattered on with the store manage
r. Dion looked, but couldn’t see the owner who he needed to reach. He hoped she was inside the store somewhere.
The swim team made their way inside and soon had the same effect on the pool store’s patrons as they did on the ones in the swimsuit store. From the outside, they watched them walk through the store and talk with the staff. They would swarm around and check out the products on display. Once again, mass chaos had broken out.
Dion took them inside the store with him. No sales clerk greeted them, as they were all busy with the sudden appearance of the swim team. Still he could not see the form of Salacia Delphi. They wandered around the isles watching the nymphs in human form pull things off the shelf and put them back.
“Can I help you with something?” Dion heard one clerk ask one of the elementals as she picked up a box containing a raft from the stack and look it over. The nymph ignored him and placed it back, then grabbed one of the exact same types and looked at it.
This continued while Dion attempted to ask any of the staff about the lady who owned the place. None of them could help him because he was too busy ensuring the nymph he watched didn’t walk off with a product from the store. In effect, the staff was overwhelmed.
“Let me try,” Emily told Dion.
She walked into visual range of a sales clerk who was restacking a display the nymphs had torn down a minute ago. Emily gave him her best ‘little girl lost’ look as he made eye contact with her.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said to him. “Is Ms. Delphi in today? I needed to see her about a pool.”
“No,” he said, “I’m afraid she won’t be in until this afternoon. I can help you with anything you might need once they’re finished.” He glanced in the direction of the swim team, still picking over the store merchandise.
The moment he spoke, one of the nymphs discovered the outside display. She yelled to the rest of them who proceeded to file out the rear door in the direction of the pools. The sales clerks on the inside where relieved to see them go, but their problems were far from over.
