Many Waters

by William Woodall

  Chapter Thirty-Six - Cody

  On Monday afternoon, I got home whistling under my breath. I’d gone into town to pick up a pizza for supper, and Lisa had stayed behind, saying she was tired.

  I was glad to be back; it was blustery and wet outside, with showers of cold rain blowing in the wind. My mind was full of warm food and a warm fire, and maybe a few warm kisses if Lisa happened to be awake. But not much else.

  I trotted to the porch hunched over from the rain, fishing my house key out with one hand. The front door was already unlocked when I got there, which might have seemed a bit strange if I’d thought about it; Lisa usually kept the door locked if she was home alone. But at the time I didn’t think much of it, and went inside without a care in the world, but quietly in case Lisa was still asleep.

  The first thing I noticed was that the drapes were pulled tightly shut to block out the light, which didn’t particularly bother me except that it made things almost pitch dark inside. Then I flipped the light switch and discovered that the power was out.

  That was nothing unusual when it stormed, so I put down my keys and the pizza on the table and shut the door to keep the cold air out, feeling my way forward in the darkness to open the curtains. I almost stumbled over the bear-skin rug, and then I was startled when I felt Lisa’s arms encircle me. I jumped a little, and then laughed and hugged her back.

  “You shouldn’t do stuff like that in the dark, Lisa; you startled m-“ I began, and then she cut me off with a passionate kiss. One hand began to play with the hair on the back of my head and the other lay flat against my chest. She was warm, and the taste of her lips was sweet and smooth as vanilla. I wondered fleetingly if she’d found some new gloss or some such thing. It seemed so unlike-

  That was as far as I got, because a second later she kneed me right between the legs, hard. I went down in agony, and hardly felt the kicks and blows she rained on my body thereafter. I couldn’t even breathe to ask her what she was thinking.

  Nor did I have to wonder for long. Seconds later she ripped the curtains open, and through a haze of pain and utter astonishment I saw none other than Layla Garza standing there, with a smile of triumph on her face.

  I couldn’t lift a finger to fight her; not right then, and she obviously knew it.

  “There now, Cody. I’ve been wanting to do that forever,” she said, and I wondered whether she meant the kiss or the kick. I would have much preferred the kiss, if I got to choose.

  “Well, you got it,” I gasped.

  “Yes, I did. Just as good as I always thought, too. See you around, sweet stuff,” she said cheerfully, and aimed another sharp kick at my face before she headed out the door. I managed to duck that one, but it didn’t seem to faze her. She simply walked out and slammed the door hard enough to knock picture frames off the wall. There was no way I could chase her, so I didn’t even try. That could come later.

  As soon as I was able to get my breath, I hobbled painfully to the bedroom to check on Lisa. She wasn’t there, and for a second I was terrified that Layla might have done something to her. I found her in the junk room, though, tied up with a big bruise on the side of her face. I untied the nylon rope she was bound with, and she soon woke up when I started rubbing her wrists and ankles.

  “What happened?” I asked, as soon as she was able to sit up.

  “I don’t know. A girl wearing a scarf came to the door, and the second I opened it she punched me. That’s the last thing I remember till you woke me up. Who was she? What did she want?” Lisa asked.

  “It was Layla. I guess she must have survived after all,” I said reluctantly.

  “Yeah? So why didn’t she finish us off, then?” she asked.

  I started to answer her, but then I was overcome with a sudden wash of sick horror. Layla’s power was to take the life from a young man with her kisses, like she’d done with James Fitch. . . and the Guardian Stone was still at the jeweler’s.

  I felt ill.

  “She kissed me when I first came inside. It was dark and I never thought about anybody else being in the house. I thought she was you at first,” I said.

  “At first?” Lisa asked, and I couldn’t tell if the question was a joke or serious.

  “Yeah, for about two seconds or so. Right up till the point when she kneed me. That kinda spoiled the whole illusion, you know,” I reminded her.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s find her, before she gets away. You didn’t happen to see what she was driving, did you?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it was a red Camaro, or something like that,”

  “She must have moved it out of sight before I got here, then, because I didn’t see anything. Did you notice the tags?” I asked.

  “Uh. . . yeah. I don’t remember the number, though,” she said.

  “Do you remember any of it? Even just the state would help,” I said.

  “No, but I think the license plate had a lighthouse on it,” she said.

  “That’d be Mississippi, then. I see those out on the interstate all the time. So I bet she’s headed east,” I said. It was a gamble, but it was the only clue we had.

  We got in the truck and immediately headed out, knowing the chances were slim to none that we’d ever catch up with Layla. She had too much of a head start. I drove so fast I risked flipping the truck, but by the time we got to Linden I sighed and slowed down.

  “It’s a lost cause. She could’ve gone three or four different ways from here, if she even went this way at all,” I said, admitting defeat.

  We glumly turned around and went back to Goliad, driving a lot slower this time. I called Matthieu to pass along the information and tell him what happened, not that I expected it to help much. Even if Layla was really in Mississippi, she might move on at any time.

  And in the meantime, I had worse problems to worry about.

  The second I got out of bed the next morning, I knew something was different. It was hard to put my finger on what it was, exactly, but it was almost like having a cold, when my body was stiff and achy.

  I felt a thin prickle of fear, and when I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror, that fear was confirmed. My hair was turning colors. It wasn’t easy to tell yet unless you paid close attention; just a few strands of gray here and there. The stubble on my chin was much worse; nearly half the hairs were sugar-white. Not only that, but I was sure I saw faint lines around my eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday, although that might simply be because I was still tired. I had a vivid memory of a thousand Oil of Olay commercials that promised to erase fine lines of aging, and I would have barked with laughter if I hadn’t been so terrified at what it meant. James Fitch came to mind again, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what lurked in my own future. In days, weeks; who knew?

  I carefully plucked out all the gray hairs I could find and shaved away the salt-and-pepper stubble so Lisa wouldn’t notice anything, and then washed out the sink so she wouldn’t see it there, either.

  She woke up while I was brushing my teeth, and silently came to put her arms around me from behind and kiss the nape of my neck. She must have felt the tension in my body, or sensed it some other kind of way, because almost immediately she looked up at me in the mirror.

  “What’s wrong, Cody?’ she asked, in a tone that meant she knew perfectly well that something was. Even in the midst of my fear and distraction, I marveled all over again at how well she could read me sometimes. It was almost eerie.

  “I don’t guess you’d believe me if I said it was nothing, would you?” I asked, hoping it would make her smile. It didn’t.

  “Nope, not a chance,” she said.

  There was no help for it, and soon enough no hiding it either, so I gave in gracefully. I put her arms down so I could turn around, and stuck out my chin so she could see it in the light. Even shaved, it was easy to tell if anybod
y looked close enough.

  “Look,” I said simply.

  She must have realized what it meant without needing to be told, because she put her arms around me again and put her head on my chest, and I soon felt the warmth of tears soaking through my t-shirt. I put my arms around her without saying a word.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she finally said, hugging me tighter. Her words were muffled against my body, but I understood them.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean it doesn’t matter. I love you, and I’m still going to marry you on Thursday afternoon even if it kills me,” she said fiercely.

  I couldn’t say anything to that. All I could do was hug her a little tighter, and wonder what good thing I ever did to deserve someone who loved me so much.

  “Lisa, there’s got to be a way to undo this. Somehow, some way. I don’t know what it is, yet, but I can’t believe it’s got to end like this,” I finally said.

  “Maybe the Guardian Stone will fix it. We could try that first,” she said.

  “Yeah, that’s definitely the first thing. Or maybe we could find something in Matthieu’s library, like he suggested,” I said.

  She let me go, and I quickly slipped a dry shirt over my head before grabbing my phone from the desk where I’d left it to charge the night before. Then I quickly punched in Matthieu’s number.

  And got his voicemail.

  “So?” Lisa asked hopefully.

  “Got his voicemail. I’ll have to wait and let him call me back later. I didn’t think about it before but I bet he’s in class this morning,” I said.

  “Yeah, I keep forgetting that,” Lisa said.

  “Yeah, me too. But maybe he’ll call back at lunch time,” I said.

  “Maybe so,” she agreed.

  “In the meantime, let’s go pick up the crystal,” I said.

  So that’s what we did, and I slipped it back around my neck the instant it was in my hands.

  “Hopefully it works,” I muttered as we left the store, and she could only squeeze my hand and agree.

  Matthieu did call back at lunch time.

  “You’ll have to come to Natchitoches, if you want to find out anything else. I don’t know if there’s anything more in here about the Guardian Stones or Layla’s magic or anything else that might help, but if anybody knows anything, this is where it’ll probably be,” he said almost immediately when I told him the news.

  “What time?” I asked.

  “Anytime after three o’clock is fine,” he said.

  “We’ll be there about three-thirty, then,” I agreed.

  Lisa had overheard the entire conversation, of course, so there was no need for me to tell her what was going on. She quietly limped to the bathroom to change clothes and fix her hair, not even bothering to ask me if we were going or not. Her leg still bothered her sometimes, but it was getting better.

  “Do you think we should take Marcus?” she asked when she got out.

  “I was just thinking about that. All we’re really doing is going over there to look at some old books. I’m not sure if he’d care anything about that or not, but we’ll ask him,” I said.

  It turned out Marcus had had enough road running for a while, so me and Lisa ended up going alone that time. Natchitoches is only a little more than two hours’ drive from Avinger, so we still had plenty of time to get there by three o’clock.

  “I’m sorry you got dragged into all this,” I said.

  “No, don’t be sorry. I made my choice with both eyes open. I got you, and that’s enough to make me happy for the rest of my life,” she said, and I smiled.

  “You really think so, huh?” I asked.

  “I know so,” she said firmly.

  The rest of the trip passed uneventfully, and not long after three o’clock we pulled into Matthieu’s driveway.

  “Well, let’s go see what we see,” I said, getting out. She followed, and we walked up to the front door holding hands. I pushed the doorbell, and chimes sounded from inside. After a few minutes Matthieu opened the door.

  “I thought y’all would never get here. Come on in; I’ve already got some of the books laid out on the dining room table, but there are still a lot more to go through,” he said.

  “How’s your leg?” Lisa asked, and he smiled.

  “Better. It’ll leave a scar, I’m sure, but nothing worse than that. What about you and Marcus?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m mostly better. Him too, I think,” she said.

  “That’s good. I was a little concerned about how things would turn out. Here are all the books I was able to find so far that have something to say about Guardian Stones, or sorcery, or anything similar. There’s actually some method to all this disorder, believe it or not. My dad knows where everything is, if you give him a minute to think about it,” Matthieu said, and then we got down to business.

  “This is interesting,” Lisa said after a while.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “This book talks about attaching one of the Stones to a specific person, like Hannah did with Cody. It says you have to place the Stone in a spot of special significance both to you and to them. If it ever leaves that spot then it reverts to protecting whoever holds it,” she said.

  “That’s good to know, I guess, but I don’t see how it helps, much. We already knew the Stones could be attached to a single person,” Matthieu pointed out.

  We kept searching till we covered every book on the table and quite a few others we pulled from elsewhere. But in spite of hours of searching, that pitiful little tidbit was the only fresh information that we found all day. It hardly seemed worth it, and we left Natchitoches that night more discouraged than ever.