River Marked mt-6

by Patricia Briggs

  “Otterkin. Edythe had a sanctuary built for them near the swimming hole. They should have been happy there, but they disappeared from it, and we haven’t been able to find them for about six months. None of them were in good health when we put them there, and we assumed that they were gone until Edythe suddenly decided to send you.”

  “Tell me about the otterkin,” said Adam.

  “You should feel a kindred spirit with them,” Uncle Mike told him. “They are shapeshifters who can take human form though their true shape is otter. As humans, they tend to resemble someone with severe autism. In the past, it got many burned at the stake.”

  “Do they kill people?” asked Adam.

  There was a rather long pause.

  “Not for food,” said Uncle Mike.

  “Neither do werewolves. Nonetheless, there are bodies wherever there are packs. Are there bodies where there are otterkin?”

  “Not of the kind that would bring attention,” said Uncle Mike. “They are territorial. Sometimes people drown near otterkin lairs.”

  “And you put them near the swimming hole.”

  “Which is protected by rune and magic,” snapped Uncle Mike. “They couldn’t even drown a baby in that swimming hole. They can swim and fish, but they can harm none therein.”

  “So they moved to where they could,” Adam said. “We found them a few miles upriver. Are we supposed to stop them?”

  “For that we wouldn’t need you.” Uncle Mike’s voice was impatient. “There are seven of them. You could eat them for lunch and be hungry by dinner. They have very little magic of their own though they are clever with what they have, and they cooperate with each other. When there were hundreds of them, they were dangerous. There are otter-shaped fae who are powerful—but they are still back in the Old Country and doing fine.”

  “Otterkin are minor fae,” I told Adam. Not too long ago, I’d read a book about the fae, written by a fae woman. It took me a while to remember them because they’d gotten the barest mention. “They used to be very common, but they aren’t powerful. Probably no more trouble than real otters would be. River otters usually avoid people, which is good for the people.”

  “Ah, is that Mercy I hear? What does she say?”

  That didn’t mean that Uncle Mike couldn’t hear me. Maybe he just didn’t want Adam and me to know that he could hear what we said. Still, Adam politely repeated my words to Uncle Mike.

  “Otterkin were supposed to be friendly and helpful,” I added.

  “Right,” Uncle Mike agreed. “Being hunted to near extinction changes a lot of things. Still, they’re not big enough to seriously threaten anyone.”

  Unless he was hurt and defenseless, as Benny had been.

  “Ask Uncle Mike if they’d be able to do what something did to Benny’s foot,” I said. I couldn’t see how they could, but it would be stupid not to ask.

  After Adam relayed my question, Uncle Mike said, “No. They might be able to sever a toe or finger. They could kill someone, I suppose, just as a regular river otter could under the proper circumstances. But it would be because they opened up an artery.” Then slyly, he said, “Sort of like a coyote might kill a werewolf.” Which I had done—and didn’t plan on doing again anytime soon. Sheer dumb luck is not something I felt like counting on.

  “And Edythe thought that it was important that we check out seven otterkin?” Adam said.

  Uncle Mike made a neutral noise. “Her premonitions aren’t specific to the fae,” he said. “Something bad is going to happen unless the two of you somehow manage to stop it. Or not. Her predictions aren’t perfect.” His voice got very serious. “You have to understand. This is not a favor you are performing for the fae. It may have nothing to do with the fae at all. We just saw to it that you are in the right place.”

  “Fine,” said Adam coolly. “Have it your way for now. We’ll discuss this again when Mercy and I return.”

  He hung up the phone.

  “I was wrong,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “Gordon Seeker wasn’t as bad as the fae. At least he didn’t engineer our presence at a disaster.”

  “You think seven otter-sized fae with very little magic comprise a disaster?”

  “No,” I told him. “But something bad is coming. It doesn’t sound like Edythe has premonitions about stubbing your toe or even about some poor guy getting his foot taken off. And Uncle Mike knew it when he sent us here.”

  6

  ONE OF THE REASONS I HATE TO TAKE ANTIHISTAMINES is because of the dreams. They never make any sense, but they are consuming and difficult to throw off the next day.

  That night I dreamed I was encased in stone. No matter how hard I struggled, no matter how hard I fought, I could not move. I grew hungry, and there was no surcease, no ease of the great appetite of my captivity.

  I dreamed that I was freed at last, and I feasted on an otter that filled me more than an otter should, appeasing my hunger for a moment. So I didn’t eat the other otters who swam around me.

  They looked like the otters who had watched me pull Benny’s boat out of the brush.

  I woke up with the dry mouth and feeling of impending doom that were not unfamiliar after I’d taken antihistamines. I felt the same way after vampire, demon, or fae attacks, too. After, because, not being prescient, I never knew when the sword of Damocles was going to fall.

  It didn’t matter that I knew quite well that the dream meant nothing. It didn’t take a Carl Jung to see where the otters had come from. And I suspected that the imprisoned feeling was the effect of the antihistamine itself, which left me sluggish. The hunger? That was even easier. I’d been hopping back and forth from human to coyote yesterday; it would make anyone hungry.

  I almost matched Adam’s appetite when we sat down for breakfast—cooked in utter civilization on the quarter-sized stove.

  “Bad dreams,” he said matter-of-factly. The mating bond had clearly given him insight at an inappropriate time again.

  “Are we ever going to be able to control the mating bond when it does that?” I asked, shoveling in hash browns as fast as I could without having them dribble out the side of my mouth. “Did you get the whole thing?”

  He smiled and nodded. “Otters and all. At least you ate one of them.” He ate almost as fast as I did, but he was better at it. Unless I really paid attention, I never noticed him getting the food from his plate to his mouth. It was not so much a matter of speed but of exquisite manners and distraction.

  “How’s your leg and feet?” he asked as I washed up. He’d cooked, so I cleaned.

  I wiggled my bare toes and did a few deep knee bends. “The calf aches a little, but the feet are fine.”

  * * *

  “ARE WE DOING THIS BECAUSE GORDON SEEKER TOLD us to?” I asked Adam, as he drove us the short distance to the Maryhill Museum of Art.

  “I’d intended to take you this morning,” he answered slowly. “But I have to admit that I’m curious.”

  I put my hand on his thigh, and said, “We could head home—or drive to Seattle, Portland, or even Yakima and find a nice hotel.” I looked out from the highway and down onto the river. From where the highway was, the river looked small and relatively tamed. “I have the feeling that if we stay, things might get interesting.”

  He gave me a quick smile before looking back at the road. “Oh? What gave you that feeling? People getting their feet bitten off? The ghost of your father? A mysterious old Indian who disappears at the river without a sign of how he left? Maybe Yo-yo Girl’s prophecy of the apocalypse?”

  “Yo-yo Girl?” I yelped. “Edythe is Yo-yo Girl? Yo-yo Girl sent us here?”

  He showed his teeth. “Feeling scared yet? Want to go somewhere safe?”

  I couldn’t help myself. I set my cheek against his arm and laughed. “It won’t help, will it?” I said after a moment. “We’d just run into Godzilla or the Vampire from Hell. Trouble just follows you around.”

  He rubbed the top of my head.
“Hey, Trouble. Let’s go find out what your mysterious Indian wanted us to know.”

  * * *

  IN SEATTLE OR PORTLAND, THE MARYHILL MUSEUM would have been a nice museum. Out in the middle of nowhere, it was spectacular. The grounds were green and well tended. I didn’t see any of the peacocks as we walked from the parking lot to the entrance, but I could hear and smell them just fine. I’d seen it from the highway on the other side of the river while driving to and from Portland, but I’d never actually been in it before.

  The first time someone tried to tell me about the museum, I thought they were crazy. In the middle of eastern Washington state, a hundred miles from Portland, a hundred and fifty miles from the Tri-Cities, the museum contained the furniture of the Victorian-era Queen of Romania and work by Auguste Rodin.

  That was the first question answered by the slick brochure they handed us at the front door. Sam Hill, financier and builder of roads and towns—and this museum, which was meant to be his home—was a friend of Loïe Fuller. Loïe Fuller was a dancer of the early nineteen hundreds, famous in Europe for her innovative use of fabric and veils—and she was a friend of royalty and artists, notably Marie, Queen of Romania, (who designed furniture as a hobby) and the French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

  Thus came the furniture of the Queen of Romania and a good-sized collection of Rodin’s sculptures to the middle of nowhere.

  Given its isolation, I expected that Adam and I would be the only ones in the museum, but I was wrong. In the first room, where the furniture and assorted memorabilia of the Victorian age held court, there were several groups of people. A pair of older women, a family of five that included a stroller, and a middle-aged couple. The room was big enough that it didn’t seem crowded at all.

  I found the heavily carved furniture beautiful, but stark and uncomfortable-looking—more suitable for a stage production than as something to have in your living room. Maybe a few cushions would have softened the square contours and made it more inviting.

  The remainder of that floor was given over to a collection of paintings displayed in a series of interconnecting rooms.

  Adam and I separated in the first room of paintings, taking different paths around the artwork. Most of it was very good, if not spectacular, until I came to an oil piece by a familiar painter. I must have made a noise because Adam slid up beside me and put his face against my neck.

  “What?” Adam asked, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the other visitors.

  “Do you see that?” I said, nudging him toward the painting I was looking at.

  It wasn’t the most beautiful painting in the room, not by a long shot. There were also others more detailed, better executed even, but it spoke to me in a way the others did not. Here among English and Greek landscapes, portraits of maids and wildflowers, the cowboys looked a little out of place.

  Adam leaned forward, which pressed him more tightly against me without being too flagrant, to read the display information. I snorted at him in mock dismay.

  “I can see that you are not a true Westerner, or you’d have recognized him right off.”

  “No, ma’am,” he drawled mildly, though I could see a dimple peeping out. I loved his dimple—and I loved it even more when he dropped into the accent of his youth. I especially loved the warm strength of him against me. I was so easy. “I’m a Southerner.”

  “Just like most of the cowboys he painted,” I told him. “The West was populated by Southerners who didn’t want to fight in the War Between the States—or who came here after they lost. That, my dear uncultured wolf, is a Charlie Russell—cowboy turned artist. Without him, Montana’s history would just be a footnote in a Zane Grey novel. Charlie drew what he saw—and he saw a lot. Not a romantic, but a true realist. Every once in a while, some old Montana rancher still finds a few of his watercolors rolled up and forgotten in the bunkhouse. Like winning the lottery, only better.”

  Adam’s shoulders shook. “I sense passion,” he said, his voice soft with laughter, tickling my ear as he spoke into it. “But is it the art or the history that speaks to you?”

  “Yes,” I said, shivering. “I showed you mine. Which one is your favorite?”

  He pulled away and directed me to a painting on the next wall. The woman sat in a cave, a dim waterfall to the left and behind her, a pool of water at her feet. The extraordinary thing about the work was the luminescence of the central figure achieved by some alchemy of the color and texture of her skin and of the fabric of her clothing combined with the shape of her pose. Solitude was its title.

  This had none of the dirt and roughness of detail that appealed to me in the Russell painting. This wasn’t a woman who had to get up and wash her clothes and fix dinner. Yet . . .

  “Okay,” I said. “I wouldn’t get tired of seeing that on a wall, either. But I’m warning you, it will look odd next to my Charlie Russells.”

  He kissed my ear and laughed.

  The American Indian exhibit was in the basement. Sam Hill had, apparently, collected Native American baskets along with his artwork. Lots and lots of baskets. Over the years, other things had been added—some terrific photographs, for instance, and large petroglyphic rocks. Still, the overall effect was a million baskets and a few other things, too.

  Here, too, we weren’t alone. The family from upstairs was examining the petroglyphs. The oldest, a girl, pulled free of her parents and put her face against one of the Plexiglas display cases.

  There was a middle-aged Indian woman on her own. Her face was serious, though it was a face that was more comfortable with smiles than with grimness. There were lines of laughter and weather near her eyes and mouth, and all of her attention was on Adam and me.

  It made me a little uncomfortable for some reason. So I turned from the stone carvings near the doorway to the baskets, putting my back toward the woman.

  The baskets were extraordinary. In some of them, the designs of almost-stick-figure animals were surprisingly powerful in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible with such extreme stylization as required by the weaving.

  “It’s a good thing I wasn’t born back then,” I told Adam. “I took an art course in college, and one of the projects was weaving a basket. Mine looked sort of like a disproportionate hammock complete with holes. I never could get the handle to stay on both sides at the same time.”

  But not even my history-driven passion could keep me interested in the million and twelfth basket, as beautifully made as they were—and I outlasted Adam by a fair bit. These weren’t the kinds of baskets used on a daily basis. Most of them were made to sell to collectors and tourists.

  They reminded me of a history professor of mine who mourned the loss of everyday things. Every museum, she said, had wedding dresses and christening dresses galore, Indian ceremonial robes and beaded or elk-tooth dresses worn only on the most special occasion. People don’t save Grandma’s work dress or Grandpa’s hunting leathers.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what Gordon Seeker had wanted us to see here. The family had moved on—I could hear the children talking in the hallway outside this exhibit room. I didn’t see the woman who’d been watching us.

  I paused by the big chunk of stone near the hall that led to the rest of the basement exhibits. There were several blocks of stone, with petroglyphs incised into their surfaces, in the room. From one, a giant predatory bird glared at me.

  “I wonder when this was done,” I said, letting my fingers hover over the stone. I could have touched it—others were touching the gray rocks—but I couldn’t quite make myself do it. As if the press of my fingers might damage it, when hundreds and maybe thousands of years of wind and rain had not. “And how long it took to carve it.”

  “These were taken out of the original site when the river was dammed, and the canyon they were in was flooded,” Adam said thoughtfully, reading the little card next to the exhibit. “I’d figure it was carved a long time ago, or you’d see more roughness from the creation process. A thousand years al
most certainly. Could be ten thousand, I suppose.”

  We had sandwiches in the museum deli, right next to the Rodin exhibit, then headed out to Horsethief Lake, about fifteen miles west of the museum.

  * * *

  JANICE LYNNE MORRISON WAS A THIRD-GRADE TEACHER and a camera nut. Her photos would never grace a museum, but she loved to scrapbook her adventures. This adventure, in particular, needed scrapbooking because she was unhappily certain that her life was about to fall apart.

  They had stopped at a picnic area on the Columbia for lunch—after this it would be restaurants until they reached Lee’s parents’ house in Wyoming. Everyone had eaten, the remnants of the food were packed away for snacks, and the boys were playing on the rocks.

  Lee was in the car taking a phone call. She wasn’t sure when she first noticed the phone calls, maybe after school got out, and she was home more often. Her husband worked from home, and it was not unusual for him to get business calls and take them in private. But these calls came at the same time every day—eleven fifteen. When he got off the phone, he would make a great effort to do nice things for her—the kinds of things that someone who was feeling guilty would do. More damningly, he wouldn’t meet her eyes, not right after one of the calls. Either he had a bookie or someone on the side.

  After their vacation, she would talk to him about it—so she wanted to save all the memories she could.

  She couldn’t get both of the boys in the shot with the right light, so she kicked off her sandals and waded out into the water a few feet and tried it again. The light hit her digital screen so she had to use the regular viewfinder and put the camera up to her eye. It still wasn’t quite right. She needed just a little more field of view. She took one more step back—and there was nothing beneath her feet.

  As she fell backward, something snagged her leg and pulled her upstream. She struggled for a moment more, then grew calm. Peaceful. The water rushed past her and took all of her cares away.

  Green eyes examined her with interest while some light-colored and fluttery tentacles that formed a fringe around its sharp nose caressed her. It opened its mouth, and she saw long spiky teeth before a wave caught her and pushed her away.