War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2)

by BR Kingsolver

  Chapter 16

  The drag about being dead was that it left me without a place to sleep. Danica James getting blown up was news, so we knew the media would stake out my house as well as the road outside the Findlay estate. Carmelita had the same problem, but she said a friend of hers was low-key enough that no one would know about him.

  “That’s what happens when you work all the time and don’t have any friends,” Kirsten said when I called her. “What are you going to do? Sneak into the greenhouse at my shop?”

  Both of us had done that a couple of times when we drank a little too much. It wasn’t bad, warm with a comfy old chair.

  I laughed. “The news media will probably have your shop staked out, too. No, I’ll ride up to Mom’s. No one will think to look for me up there, and the media are oblivious to us being related.” Hell, the media probably didn’t know my mother existed, in spite of her responsibility for supplying most of the electricity to the city of Baltimore.

  “And what are you going to do about your date with Aleks Janik?” Kirsten asked.

  I mentally checked a calendar and discovered it was Wednesday night. My date with Aleks was Friday.

  “I don’t know. I can’t call him if I’m dead. Which reminds me, can you call Olivia? I certainly don’t want her waking up to news that I’ve kicked the bucket. Whittaker should have the sense to call her and Osiris, but I’m not going to depend on it.”

  “Yeah, I can do that. I can call Aleks, too, if you want me to.”

  I thought about it. “I’ll have Mychal tell him. They’re buddies, right?”

  Novak smuggled us into the police station, where Carmelita’s boss gave her a new car and I retrieved my new bike. I called Mom, told her I was planning to spend the night, and took off, heading south. Once I got on the freeway, I turned north and let the motorcycle go. There was a slight possibility that someone in a helicopter might have been able to track me, but no one in a car was going to match my hundred miles per hour behind a magitek-enabled wind screen. And without the magitek device that made me invisible to the traffic monitors, any non-cop trying to follow me would be stopped before they went a mile.

  By the time I reached Mom’s house, I was close to being frozen solid and wondering if I could talk Mychal or Carmelita into helping me craft a magitek shielding device for the motorcycle. It was late fall, and winter was never any fun on a bike. The previous winter, I had driven my cop car most of the time, but using it when I wasn’t working was a violation of department policy. No one would say anything unless I really abused the privilege, but as a lieutenant, I was supposed to be a good example.

  “Hot tea?” Mom called out as I pushed through the front door.

  “Please,” I answered.

  I shed my coat, gloves and helmet in the alcove and went into the sitting room with the magikal ‘fireplace.’ Of course, no elven home would actually burn wood, but it looked and felt like a fire was roaring in the hearth. Two comfortable chairs sat in front of it with a low table between them.

  I knew I was prejudiced, but I had always thought my mom was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She seemed to have the most attractive features of both human and elf. For either race, she came across as exotic, with her white-blonde hair, slanted green slit-pupiled eyes, high cheekbones, and curvy figure. Her body and face were rounded and softer than a pure-blood elf but harder, sharper, and slimmer than a human. At six-feet-four, she moved with a grace that human dancers could only envy.

  From her, I had inherited my height, my boobs, the shape of my face, and the silver streaks in my brown hair, along with strength, speed, and reaction time beyond that of normal humans. According to her, I had also inherited elven empathy and a feeling for the world around me. And I inherited my magik from my father.

  My chair was always the one on the left. Since I was only a quarter-elf, I was pretty much ambidextrous, whereas Mom was left-handed, like almost all elves. As I sat down, she pushed a steaming mug toward me, along with a double shot of pale-green agavirna in a small crystal glass. I took a sip of the powerful elven liquor, then a sip of tea.

  “So, rough night?” she asked.

  “Not too bad. Someone tried to kill me with a magitek bomb. Amateurs.” I took another sip of agavirna and another sip of tea. Between the warmth within and the warmth without, I felt myself relax.

  “Another one of your relatives, or the same one?”

  “No, not Aunt Courtney or another Findlay this time. Revolutionaries. Anti-Magi, anti-Rifters. You know, overthrow the oppressors while lining their own pockets. They’re probably all under arrest by now. But I’m supposed to be dead, at least for a little while. So, I’m on paid leave. Need any help with anything around here?”

  I knew that all the participants in that meeting at Luigi’s were followed when they left. The plan was to arrest them at their destinations, along with everyone else found there. At least forty people had been arrested by the time I left the police station. Luigi had also been arrested, his restaurant closed, and he was out of business. That was regrettable because he was a great chef.

  “Feel like doing maintenance on the generators?” she asked.

  “Sure. Room and board?”

  “I’ll take that deal,” she said with a grin, holding up her shot glass. I clinked mine against hers, and tossed the liquor back, then took another sip of tea.

  We talked for a little while, she fed me a chicken pie when she discovered I hadn’t had dinner, then we went to bed. It had been a few years since I slept in my own bed, my own room. It seemed smaller than I remembered it.

  Before the Rift opened, the dam at Loch Raven Reservoir was just that—a dam. It held the water from two rivers in a flooded valley and provided drinking water for Baltimore City.

  As the polar and Greenland ice caps melted and it became evident that the oceans were rising, governments began paying serious attention to global climate change. Then many major coastal cities were turned into thermonuclear infernos during the Dislocation Wars. For some reason, Baltimore was spared from being bombed, as was Wilmington on the Atlantic side of the Delmarva Peninsula, and they became the major seaports on the east coast.

  With coal and nuclear-generated power becoming untenable, turbines were installed at both the north and south ends of Loch Raven Reservoir—where the Gunpowder River flowed in and where it flowed out. Those turbines powered electric generators to supply the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan electrical grid. Other sources included wind and wave generators on Chesapeake Bay and in the Atlantic, and turbines installed on the Potomac.

  My father, Lucas James, engineered the Loch Raven turbines. While they were being installed, he met the Gunpowder Falls Park ecologist, a half-elf named Amelie Jorensdottir, and they became friendly enough to produce me. And now that he was gone, I unofficially maintained the magitek enhancers on the generators that increased their electrical output by a hundred times. Mom could maintain everything except the magitek devices, and if I wasn’t around, she would call my grandmother and ask to borrow another magitek to do the work.

  I doubted that more than a couple of dozen people in the entire metro area knew that Findlay and James actually controlled a large portion of the electricity that fueled the city. Mom could really care less if the whole Metroplex went dark—she didn’t use any electricity herself, except for her truck—but she took the money the Families paid her to keep it running. Elves didn’t have much use for human technology, but they understood human economies and finance just fine.

  So, after breakfast, I wandered over to the dam and took an elevator down to where the turbines were located. I checked everything out and didn’t find anything that needed repair or maintenance, which I expected. Mom was a competent engineer, and there was nothing magikal about the turbines, but it was always a good idea to check the entire system from end to end.

  I took the elevator up to the generators. Water turned the turbines, which powered the generators, which produced electricity. T
hen a pair of magitek enhancers on each generator multiplied the electricity. Dad once told me that we could hook up a laser to one of the generators and probably barbeque a chicken in West Virginia.

  There were eight turbines housed within the dam, so sixteen magitek enhancers to service. Mostly it was checking to ensure they were working properly, not leaking magik or deteriorating due to age. Magikal spells didn’t last forever unless they were extremely strong. I finished half of them in the morning, stopped for lunch, then verified the other half before dinner.

  When I got back to her house, Mom had a stringer of yellow perch she had caught.

  “I wondered if you might like to grill these,” she said.

  There was a hopeful look on her face that almost caused me to laugh. Elves didn’t burn wood—not even dead, dried-out wood that had naturally died or limbs that fell from a tree. But my father had turned her on to fresh fish grilled over an open fire, and she loved it. After he left us, she would have me start a fire and cook the fish.

  “Sure, let me get washed up,” I said. “By the way, we need to replace an enhancer on generator six, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to do a full replacement on that entire turbine assembly. It’s out of balance and kind of wonky.”

  She nodded. “I have the funds in the budget. Will the enhancer hold out until the new turbine arrives? Probably take six to eight weeks.”

  “Yeah. It will take me that long to get the new enhancers built. Did I tell you we started a business, a factory? Mary Sue and I? Olivia’s financing it for a third of the profits.”

  Mom laughed. “Does that mean all my new enhancers will be pink?”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

  I set up the grill on a rocky beach on the river downstream from the dam, gathered dead wood, and started a fire. Mom came down with the fish, some fresh vegetables, a jug of her homebrewed beer, and a couple of wooden folding chairs she had made. I grilled the fish and veggies, she poured the beer, and we sat by the fire and ate as we watched the sunset.

  “It’s good to have you home, sometimes,” she said, a satisfied smile on her face. “We haven’t done this very much since you started on the police force.”

  “Kirsten and I were out here twice last summer,” I said.

  “I meant just you and me. Like when you were little.”

  I laughed. “I don’t remember you letting me drink beer when I was little.”

  She shrugged. We watched the stars come out, and when the fire died down and the night got cold, we gathered up all our things, and our trash, and hiked back to the house.

  Chapter 17

  The following day, I hauled my kayak out of the garage and paddled up to where the Gunpowder River flowed into the reservoir. Two run-of-the-river turbines were installed there. The output from them didn’t feed into the main power grid, and the funds to operate and maintain them came from different sources. One generated electricity for the Findlay estate, and the other sent electricity to the Findlay shipyard in Wilmington. The excess electricity was routed to the Novak estate at a below-market price.

  As I inspected the eastern generator, I thought about all the work I had done on that system since I was fourteen years old, and that until recently I had never met anyone from the Novak Family. Mychal and his twin were only two years younger than I was, and I found it curious that my grandmother never tried to marry me off to either of them. She’d certainly tried to set me up with every other eligible bachelor in the Mid-Atlantic.

  By the time I got back to Mom’s house, I was regretting my decision to travel by kayak. Muscles I hadn’t used in more than a year were signaling their profound displeasure.

  To my surprise, she had company. When I carried the kayak up from the river, I saw a fancy European car parked in the driveway. I put the kayak away and circled around the back of the house. I didn’t recognize the car, and I was officially dead.

  The back stairs led to the bedroom level, where I knew there wouldn’t be any visitors. For one thing, anyone the house didn’t know wouldn’t find any of the bedrooms, only a long hallway that spiraled up to the cupola, which my engineering training actually labeled as a belvedere. I doubted that the elves really cared about human labels, though, and the structure was usually translated as a cupola.

  Quietly advancing to the top of the inside stairs, I heard voices downstairs—my mom, Kirsten, Mychal, and then Aleks. I listened for another minute and didn’t hear anyone else.

  “Dani,” Mom called, “you can come down. Everyone here knows you’re alive.”

  Thanks, Mom. Aleks might know I was alive, but after a day of working on turbines and generators, not to mention paddling twenty-five miles, I doubted I was very attractive.

  “I’m a mess,” I called back. “Let me take a shower.”

  After the shower, which included washing my hair, I was presented with another problem. I didn’t have much of a selection in the way of clean clothing. The only clothes I brought with me from Baltimore was what I was wearing. I stood in front of my closet and perused the outfits in it. It was an interesting gestalt moment comparing my current tastes to those from my university days. Then I discovered the clothes proved to be a bit snug. Especially the tops. Nothing like an in-your-face reminder that I was maturing.

  Nothing to be done about it. I used a magitek device to dry my hair, applied minimal makeup, checked my image in a mirror, and went downstairs.

  The kitchen had a new table that wasn’t there that morning—or maybe I should say that the table in the breakfast nook had grown, as had the nook. The house reconfigured itself as needed. The four of them sat around the table with an empty chair between Aleks and Kirsten. A bottle of wine, five glasses, and a platter of bread and cheese adorned the table.

  Aleks practically knocked his chair over jumping to his feet. He pulled out the vacant chair for me. I remembered the lessons in manners and etiquette I had suffered through at Findlay House when I was younger. Although a lot of the mannerisms the Magi affected were somewhat over the top, and I absolutely didn’t need a man to take care of me, the demonstration of respect did feel good.

  “Thank you,” I said as I sat down. “Is that grape?” Referring to the wine. Mom’s hobby paid her more than her salary. Winery, brewery, and distillery. She was a wizard at turning healthy food into booze, and the Magi fell all over themselves bidding on what she produced.

  “Sour Cherry,” Mom said.

  I felt my face warm when I realized that I’d licked my lips. Aleks filled my glass, and I took a sip of some of the gods’ own nectar.

  “I am amazed at your mother’s wine,” Aleks said.

  I chuckled. “Most people are.” I leaned close to him. “She cheats. Magik.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Not just wine,” Kirsten said. “There’s nothing like a hot toddy made with her chestnut liqueur.”

  Mom shrugged. “Everyone should have a hobby, and living alone out here, I have plenty of time to play with various ideas.”

  I loaded a slice of bread with several different cheese samples. The wine and bread were Mom’s, the cheese came from various elven and human craftsmen. She usually traded her wine, beer, and spirits for those things she didn’t make, grow, or hunt herself.

  “So, what’s the news?” I asked between bites.

  “One hundred nineteen arrests as of the last count I heard,” Mychal said. “The one major name still at large is Susan Reed. She slipped the roundup and disappeared.” His face grew somber. “Someone discovered where Carmelita hid on Wednesday night. They broke into her friend’s apartment. She killed two men and escaped, but her friend was killed. She’s out at Domingo House now.”

  “So, is there any point in me continuing to play dead?”

  Mychal shrugged. “If I were you, I’d hang out and relax until Whittaker calls you in. When was the last time you actually had a few days in a row off from work?”

  Kirsten laughed. “She doesn’t know what to do with herself if
she isn’t dodging bullets or wrestling with monsters. What’s she going to do out here?”

  “Grill the fish we’re having for dinner tonight,” Mom said. “I have a couple of walleye that should feed this group quite well.”

  The fish turned out to be about five pounds each, enough to feed twice as many people as we had. We set up the grill and repeated the dinner Mom and I had the previous evening. It was a little louder and more boisterous. Mom seemed to enjoy it, and I couldn’t remember having that kind of party out there since Kirsten and I were at university.

  When our visitors got ready to go back into town, I suddenly ended up alone with Aleks outside.

  “Not exactly the date you had in mind,” I said.

  “I loved it. Your mother is quite incredible.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, she is.”

  He reached for me and pulled me into his arms. We were the same height, standing nose to nose, looking into each other’s eyes.

  “You are also quite incredible,” he said. And then he kissed me. It was a very nice kiss, and when he drew back, studying my face to gauge my reaction, I leaned in and tried it again. Nice the second time, too.

  “Maybe we can still do that dinner sometime,” I said.

  “I would like that. Let me know when you’re resurrected.”

  I laughed and kissed him a couple of more times before Mychal and Kirsten reappeared and they all drove off.

  The following day, I helped Mom cure meat and can fish for winter. We didn’t work very hard, though. Aleks called around noon, asking me out to dinner. I still hadn’t been officially told I could go out in public, so I suggested that he drive up to Mom’s and from there we could go to one of the bayside seafood shacks where I was unlikely to be recognized. It was nice to have a man offer to take me to a fancy restaurant, but I knew a dozen places with great food at half the price and a tenth the pretention.