by Lena North
“Guess you’ll find out anyway,” he muttered, and stared firmly at the ocean in front of us when he went on, “It’s mine.”
I got up on my feet immediately and moved toward the doors.
“I’m not staying here,” I snapped.
“Snow,” he said and followed me inside.
When I tried to drag my bags out of the room, he blocked the way.
“I’m not making you leave your home,” I said.
“It’s not a problem,” he retorted in an infuriatingly placating voice. “I haven’t stayed here for a long while anyway, and I’ll be with one of my cousins, or my –”
“No,” I snapped.
“Snow.”
“No.”
Nick growled loudly, and I took a step toward him, not sure if I wanted to slap him or just growl right back.
“Hello.”
I spun around to look at the woman who had entered the house. She was small and old, but when I saw her smile, I knew exactly who she was.
Nick’s grandmother.
“Grandmama,” Nick sighed.
She ignored him and turned to me
“Hello, you must be Snow,” she said. “We spoke on the phone.”
“Hello,” I mumbled, collected myself and added stupidly, “We were just discussing my living arrangements.”
She chuckled and glanced over at her grandson.
“You were right, boy. She’ll stay here.”
“No,” I objected but when she aimed her dark brown eyes at me, I stopped speaking immediately.
Yikes. The old lady had sounded soft and friendly when I talked to her on the phone, and she looked ancient, but this was not a woman to mess with.
“You’ll have dinner at the restaurant tonight,” she said.
I nodded immediately, knowing that this wasn’t a question as much as it was a command. Nick knew it too and moved to my side.
“I’ll pick you up –”
“The girl has legs, doesn’t she?” the old woman interrupted him immediately.
“But –” he protested and got cut off again.
“Boy,” she said quietly.
There was so much power in her voice, I took a step back.
“Yes, Grandmama,” he murmured immediately.
“Good,” she said, and added, “Don’t you have things to do?”
“But –”
She opened her mouth, but before she could utter a word, he glanced over at me and walked toward the door.
“Can you teach me how to do that?” I asked in awe.
“I can hear you, Snow,” Nick shouted from the front of the house, but there was suddenly humor in his voice.
“Of course you can, Nicky,” I retorted.
I heard him laugh, and then the door slammed shut with a little more force than necessary. I stared at it, and then I couldn’t hold a small giggle back.
When I turned to the old woman, she looked pale, and I moved toward her immediately.
“Are you okay? Let’s –”
I wasn’t sure what to offer her except some water and to sit down, but she collected herself with visible effort and smiled at me.
“It was just the heat,” she murmured.
“Are you sure, Mrs…” I trailed off realizing that I had no clue what she was called.
“You can call me Mrs. Mariah,” she said. “Most do.”
“Mrs. Mariah,” I said and smiled because the woman who had been married to my grandfather in Marshes was called Mrs. C, and it felt so familiar.
“Come,” she said. “Let’s make some coffee, and sit down for a while.”
I didn’t protest, partially because I suspected it would be useless but mostly because I didn’t want to. The old woman was quite a character, and I wanted to get to know her. She wanted to get to know me too, apparently, and asked so many questions my head started spinning after a while. She noticed my confusion and began describing the new house she had just moved into instead, going into every little detail with obvious satisfaction. It sounded really nice, and I told her so.
“My boys, Snow, they take care of me. Take care of everyone, remember that,” she replied and nodded to emphasize this.
I smiled politely, and wondered which of her boys that paid for the house, but didn’t dare to ask.
Chapter Six
Darkness
I walked into the restaurant and found Nick standing with a group of men who mostly looked like him. They were all tall, all had dreads in various lengths, the same caramel colored skin, and there was so much muscle mass in the group I wondered if there were some kind of steroids in the water they drank on the Islands.
“Cousins,” Nick said dismissively as he indicated the others with an impatient gesture.
A flurry of names echoed, and I repeated them as I shook hands with Nick’s cousins, but the only one I remembered was Joao, partly because he was the one who resembled Nick the most, although mostly because of the intensity in his pale blue eyes. The image of Hawker Johns flashed in my mind, but I shook it off and turned to Nick.
“How many of your cousins are here tonight?”
“Probably thirteen,” he said calmly.
“Thu…” I said, choking on the beer someone had given me.
“Two are dead, two work on the mainland and one is traveling. My guess is neither of them is here,” he said, with a crooked half-grin. “The other thirteen probably are.”
“Holy cow,” I whispered.
“That’s a really dumb expression, Snow,” he murmured, although he did it laughing.
The rest of the evening was a blur of faces and names. Someone put a pizza slice in my hand, and I ate it while chatting with a girl who was engaged to one of the cousins. She was pretty in a hard way, with a little too much makeup and she was overdressed in a way that I thought was silly. She was giggly and friendly like everyone else, though, and like everyone else – incredibly nosy. They were very much like the people in Marshes, so it didn’t annoy me, and I felt at home, answering the questions I felt like answering and avoiding the rest.
“What do your parents do?” the girl’s fiancée suddenly asked.
He had introduced himself as a cousin, and he was ridiculously handsome with the same auburn hair that Jamie had and a lean, fit body. I’d already decided to try to get away from him because he’d let his dark brown eyes slide over my thin dress in a way that felt like he was undressing me with his gaze. I swallowed a sip of beer slowly, trying to buy time to compose myself enough to hide how much I hated when people asked about my parents.
“My parents are dead,” I finally said calmly, hoping that my face was as relaxed as my voice.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the man said. “They must have been young?”
“Yes,” I replied and was about to turn away when he continued.
“Was it an accident?”
I wondered if he was drunk, pressing me for details like that, and fought hard to not snap at him that it was none of his goddamn business how my parents passed away.
“Don,” Nick suddenly murmured behind me. “Not cool.”
He moved a little, and I leaned into him, drawing strength from his warmth against my back as his cousin started babbling.
“Oh, wow. Sorry, Snow, I didn’t mean –”
“Go talk to someone else for a while,” Nick said calmly.
“Yeah. Sorry,” the man murmured and walked away.
Nick was still mostly behind me, so I tilted my head back and twisted around to whisper in his ear, “Thank you.”
Someone bumped into us, and he took a few steps back, pulling me along and separating us from the crowd.
“You okay?”
“Yes,” I said, turning toward him. “Don’t like to…”
“I noticed,” he said when I trailed off.
Crap. Had I –
“No one else did, don’t worry,” he murmured. “It’s getting late.
”
“Walk me home?” I asked, and his face softened.
He got us out of there in no time at all, somehow making it not seem rude at all that I didn’t say goodbye to everyone. Joao watched us leave, and made some kind of gesture toward Nick, who nodded, and then we walked along the waterfront to my temporary home that in reality was his.
I sat for a long time on the back porch when he’d left me, watching the dark ocean and wondering if the pain from my parents’ deaths would ever go away. I was annoyed with the cousin who had made me uncomfortable in his clumsiness, although I mostly felt stupid reacting in a way that people noticed.
When my restlessness didn’t fade away, I decided to take a look around the neighborhood. I’d told Wilder I would start my mini-investigation by snooping around to get a good picture of where the different members of Jamie’s family lived.
There had been plenty of people in the restaurant that evening, and some of them were probably Jamiesons, although I didn’t know because no one introduced themselves with anything but their first name, or some kind of nickname. I’d meant to study the list of Jamie’s relatives on the plane, but the papers were still in one of my bags and I felt a bit bad that I’d spent the time chatting with Benito instead.
I set out dressed in black yoga pants, an equally black, long sleeved, tight t-shirt, and with my hair in a ponytail high on my head, following the beach away from the village. Lights flickered through the gnarly trees that grew by the beach, and I thought I’d just pass by a few of them to see what they looked like.
Lay of the land. That’s what Wilder had said I should start by figuring out. As I walked through the darkness, I tried to figure out what that could mean because I hadn’t wanted to look like an idiot, so I hadn’t asked her.
“Snow!”
I raised my face toward the sky and smiled.
“Bird!”
“Nice-nice-nice place,” she said. “Long way here but I like.”
“Good,” I said.
The area I’d reached seemed mostly full of trees, and I started thinking that maybe I should go back to the house. It had been a long day, and it would be better for the bird to get some rest after the long flight.
“See with me,” she murmured suddenly.
I stopped by a tall tree and focused on her. We rarely used this part of our connection, but after a little time, my vision changed and I saw through her eyes.
Joao was getting out of the water, and holy cow, he didn’t have a stitch on. I closed my eyes which didn’t help at all since the images were in my head and not on my retina.
“Bird,” I said hoarsely.
She giggled, and I wondered if Nick’s cousin in his naked glory was the reason she’d wanted me to share her eyes. He had looked nice, I thought and felt my cheeks heat up. Then three more men came out of the water, but the bird must have turned her head because all I could see were trees. I felt my brows go high on my forehead. They were skinny dipping in a crowd? Or was Joao the only one? Either way, it was certainly not the way we did things in Marshes. A giggle bubbled up my throat at the thought of my rather old-fashioned cousin skinny dipping. I was pretty sure he’d never done that in his life.
“It will be here within the next few days,” one of the men said.
“Yeah. We have to make sure no one gets in the way, though,” another man muttered.
They were moving into the shadows among the trees so I couldn’t see them anymore and they must have moved away from my bird because the only thing I could hear were a few single words. They seemed to be talking about a boat, arguing some about who would be on it, or with it.
“Did you find anything?” a man murmured as he walked up to them.
Nick.
I didn’t hear the reply to his question because they suddenly started moving toward me and I quickly stepped backward, hoping that they wouldn’t see me. It was dark, and I was a few steps away from the path, hiding behind a tree, so with a bit of luck, they wouldn’t notice that I stood there. Their footsteps faded away, and I relaxed, wondering what in the heck I’d been thinking, snooping around with no clue how to do it, or even what I was looking for exactly.
“Hey there.”
I yelped when Nick murmured into my ear.
“Nick, what the hell?” I said sourly.
“Taking a walk?”
Was he laughing at me?
“I was restless,” I murmured.
“Hiding behind trees helps with that,” he said seriously.
Yeah, he was definitely laughing at me.
“Joao was naked,” I blurted out. “I had to get out of the way.”
He made a hoarse sound.
“Forgot my trunks,” Joao said calmly out of the darkness on my other side which made me yelp again. “It’s dark, my buddies don’t embarrass easily, and I wasn’t expecting cute little girls lurking around at this hour.”
Oh. Well, that actually made sense, which made me feel stupid.
“You’re right, it’s late,” I muttered, trying to get away from the topic of Joao and his nakedness.
I studiously kept my eyes away from him and my hands behind my back because I didn’t know if he’d put his clothes back on and really didn’t want my hands to accidentally touch something. He moved a step closer, and I moved too, bumping into Nick.
“Snow?” Joao said, and it sounded as if he found the whole thing funny.
“Are you still naked?” I whispered.
They both started laughing out loud which could mean anything, and I took another step toward Nick.
“I’m covered,” Joao snorted finally.
“Excellent,” I snapped, trying to bluster my way out of embarrassment. “You looked surprisingly sumptuous, Joao, but there’s really no need for me to get another look at your stuff again, is there?”
“Sumptuous?” Nick asked slowly, sounding weird.
“Luscious, grand, magnificent,” I clarified, thinking that he didn’t understand the word.
“Know what the word means,” he growled. “How close were you to them?”
“The moon is out and I didn’t have to be very close to see all of that,” I said, although I realized immediately that it had come out the wrong way. “All of him, I mean. All of him.”
“Snow,” Nick groaned.
“Jesus,” I exclaimed. “I was trying to give Joao a compliment, in the futile hope that we could stop talking about his nudity.”
“Much obliged, Snow,” Joao said and I could hear through the darkness that he was still laughing. “What I’d like to know is why my, uh… magnificence was so surprising.”
“I –”
“Don’t answer that,” Nick interrupted. “Let’s stop talking about my cousin’s dick and go home.”
I hadn’t, actually. At least, not specifically, so perhaps I should clarify that I’d meant the overall impression I’d had of his cousin’s naked appearance.
“I wasn’t talking about –”
“I’ll walk you home,” Nick cut me off.
“Yeah, Dee, you do that,” Joao said. “Talk to you tomorrow instead, yeah?”
“Sure,” Nick said but he was already pulling me along, and I had no choice but to follow because he had a firm grip of my hand.
We walked in silence all the way back to the house, and up on the porch.
“Go inside, babe. It’s been a long day,” he said gently. “Lock the door.”
“Are you mad?” I asked.
“Can’t be mad at you, babe. Not for real,” he replied. “Next time you feel like skulking around at night, give me a call, though.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering what they were up to and fearing that it was something bad.
His hand slid across my cheek softly, and then he was gone.
Chapter Seven
Curry
The phone woke me up the next day, and I mumbled my name into it.
“Snow, did I wa
ke you?” Jamie said
“Yes, you did,” I confirmed, although I guessed from the laughter in his voice that he already knew that.
It was a quarter to seven in the morning, and I wondered what the heck he was doing, calling me at such an early hour.
“Good,” he said.
“What?”
“Samples?” he asked.
Shit. Jamie was right, I was supposed to start collecting water-samples each morning, and I’d forgotten to set the alarm the night before. It wasn’t a good start to my assignment.
“Crap, You’re right. I forgot to set the alarm,” I said and got out of bed, rummaging through my bags for something to wear.
“It’s important that you collect them at the same time each day,” he said, and I frowned.
Did he call me to deliver a lecture? This early in the morning? Really?
“I know,” I said, focusing on the fact that he’d called to wake me up and if he hadn’t, I would have been sound asleep still.
“Of course,” he murmured calmly. “Go get them, Snow, and call me when you’re back. I’m off until lunch.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
My bags were not full of dresses like I’d told Nick. One of the bags was packed with instruments and a big batch of plastic tubes that I was supposed to fill with water from the ocean each morning. I’d take two tubes each time, analyze one myself and note down any anomalies I found, and save the other. Once a week, I’d send them with the plane to Prosper so the professor, or more likely his lab assistants, could do further analysis of them.
I’d asked if there were any particular locations where they wanted me to collect the water, but the only instruction I got was that it should be at seven in the morning, and not from the harbor. It seemed strange to me, and I wondered about the microbes they were supposedly researching because they were pretty well documented. Perhaps Jiminella had forced them into setting up a fake project or just scared the living daylight out of them, I thought.
It took five minutes to collect the water, and another fifteen to run my tests. It seemed like pretty ordinary water to me, but I logged my results, and then I called Jamie.
