CHAPTER 33

Vicki

Sunsday, Juin 20

My hair was long, golden brown, and straight except for a slight curl at the ends. That should have been my first clue. The filmy nightgown that was slipping off my nicely defined shoulders and pushed up to my slender thighs should have been the second. But the man held my attention, making my heart pound as he approached the bed. He wore skintight black pants and an open-to-the-waist white shirt with big sleeves. His smile was assured, almost smug.

“There’s nowhere to run, so you’re going to do as you’re told,” he said. He sounded like Yorick—had Yorick’s voice, anyway, although Yorick never sounded that sexy except when he was having an affair and wanted me to know what he could be like with someone else.

Oh yeah? I thought, feeling defiant and scared. I got away before and I can do it again.

“First lesson.” He held up gold nipple clamps connected by a chain, but the clamps were the size of the thingies mechanics connected to batteries to jump-start cars.

His face morphed into someone who looked like Grimshaw’s nastier brother. That only lasted for a moment. As he leaned over me, smiling because I couldn’t seem to move enough to get out of reach, his hair darkened, and the face, now lean and sculpted, had a thin scar beneath the left cheekbone. Then the gray eyes changed to melted-chocolate brown as he settled the clamps over my big toes and said . . .

“Caw?”

I snapped awake. My left arm had gotten tangled in the top sheet, securing me to the bed, creating the sensation of not being able to move.

Jingle, jingle.

I lifted my head off the pillow and looked at the Crow perched on my big toes. The charm bracelet around its neck jingled as it wibble-wobbled on my toes, its nails digging in as it tried to maintain its balance.

“Aggie?”

“Caw.”

Freeing myself from the sheet, I rubbed my hands over my face— and then whimpered because the area around my left eye was still living in the Land of Ow.

“Could you get off my toes? I need to use the bathroom.”

Aggie hopped to the mattress. A jingle Crow is not a stealthy Crow. Then again, since she had access to purchased food and whatever was growing wild in the kitchen gardens that I hadn’t had a chance to restore, maybe her meals didn’t require any more stealth than mine did.

I wobbled my way to the bathroom. I had a low-grade headache and my stomach felt a little swoopy. Those might be symptoms of setting off the ow around my eye, but it was also my body’s typical response when the weather turned so humid it felt like I was breathing water.

That thought froze my brain for a moment. I turned on the bathroom lights and studied my neck carefully to make sure I hadn’t acquired gills overnight. Of course, I hadn’t eaten the strange food that was the only sustenance given to the plucky woman who had been abducted by the mysterious pirate who was taking her to his secret island.

I carefully splashed cold water on my face and checked my neck again. Still gill-free. I made a note to myself that, for the next few days anyway, I should read a milder form of romance before bedtime.

I returned to my bedroom to find Aggie exploring my jewelry box. I didn’t have much that wasn’t costume jewelry, and even the nicer pendants hadn’t been worn in a while because the chains had knotted sometime during my move to an apartment in Hubbney when Yorick and I first separated and then to The Jumble, and I couldn’t seem to untangle them.

Apparently a Crow’s beak could do what human fingers couldn’t. Aggie had worked out the knots on four of the necklaces and had laid them out on the dresser.

“Thanks.” Maybe Pops Davies would have a jewelry box that would allow me to hang up some of these pieces. Just because I hadn’t noticed something like that at the general store didn’t mean Pops didn’t carry it.

Barely awake and I was already tired and crabby and achy. The to-do list never seemed to get shorter, and if I didn’t get into a routine to handle the day-to-day I would never be able to handle having more than one lodger and provide them with amenities in the main house, to say nothing of providing some kind of cleaning service in the cabins.

But I didn’t have any other lodgers besides Aggie. I didn’t count Conan and Cougar because they weren’t paying me anything to use the primitive cabins. Of course, I wasn’t paying them for whatever they were doing around The Jumble as a trade for the lodgings.

Maybe I should ask what they were doing besides blocking the access road so that people couldn’t just drive up to the main house. Cougar had been around every morning to watch me breathe and decide if I was still alive or now qualified as a snack, but I hadn’t seen Conan except for the story-time evenings. The Bear showed up then in human form, but I had the impression that was the only time he wasn’t seriously furry.

Tired of working, tired of worrying, tired of thinking about why someone who might or might not be Yorick wanted The Jumble enough to cause so much trouble, I grabbed my bathing suit and went into the bathroom to change. Sure, Aggie was a girl, and she was so engrossed in discovering what else might be tangled in my jewelry box it wasn’t likely she would even notice if I changed out of my nightie, but I had a full load of body image issues, so being seen by someone else did matter to me.

I put on the bathing suit, a little surprised that it fit a wee bit better than it had a couple of weeks ago. Pulling on a beach cover-up, I returned to the bedroom and found my sandals next to the bed. I studied the golden-haired pirate on the cover of the romance novel I’d been reading last night. Yep. Could have been Grimshaw’s less trustworthy brother.

So not something I was going to mention to the large police officer who had a gun and handcuffs and already thought I was a pain in his ass. Teasing Grimshaw would be like rolling up a newspaper and whacking Cougar over the head. I would expect the results to be pretty similar.

I packed two beach towels into my big woven bag, along with a bottle of water and a smaller bottle of juice. I also stuffed one of the Alan Wolfgard novels into the bag’s pocket. Then Aggie and I left the house. She flew off and I went down to my private beach.

Some of the shoreline that was part of The Jumble was stony, but a long stretch nearest to the house was sand. I had been meaning to ask if that was typical of the Finger Lakes, but in the end I didn’t care. It was a pleasant place to walk even when the water was too cold for swimming, and I had a feeling someone had done some work to make this beach as nice as it was.

I spread one towel, anchoring it with the woven bag. I put the cover-up in the bag and used the sandals as a second anchor. Then I walked down to the water, letting it wash over my ankles. It was still early enough in summer for the water to be cold, but you could go out a few yards before the gradual slope turned into a steep dropoff, and the shallow water felt more like a refreshingly cool shower. So I waded in up to my knees, then my thighs. Finally I lifted my legs and tipped back into the water, spreading my arms as the water covered everything but my face and my hair floated around my head.

The water felt delicious. Every so often, I kicked my feet and used my hands to steer. Every so often, I righted myself and touched bottom to confirm I hadn’t slipped into deep water. Finally starting to let go of all the various worries, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the water.

Then a hand touched my shoulder, gently pushing it down.

My body turned with the push and I went under. I came up sputtering and scared because I hadn’t heard anyone enter the lake. Planting my feet in the sand, I shoved my hair away from my face and got ready to blast the person who had no business being there. Then I got a good look at her.

From the hips up, she was water, shaped like a human female. I knew she was water because I watched minnows leaping out of her torso, creating little splashes as they returned to the lake. She had a delicate build, slender and sinuous. She had webbing between her fingers. She had dark eyes, but I couldn’t tell if the eyes came from another terra indigene form she could assume or were formed from shadows. Even her hair was water, but it was the color of shale.

“Don’t you like my lake?” If the sound of water murmuring over sand could be shaped into words, that was her voice.

“Yes, I do,” I replied. “It’s a lovely lake.”

“But you remain anchored to the land.” She didn’t seem upset; more curious about my behavior.

“I know how to swim, but I’m not a strong swimmer. Not yet, anyway. So I feel more comfortable swimming the length of the beach and being able to touch bottom rather than swimming into deep water.” I didn’t mention the potential danger of being struck by a rowboat or canoe, or that the deeper water was still too cold for a human to be in for any length of time. She might understand the danger of being struck, but I didn’t think water temperature would mean much to her.

“I’m Vicki.”

“I know. You are the land’s caretaker now.”

I waited but she didn’t offer a name. Maybe she didn’t have one humans could pronounce. Maybe she assumed her identity was obvious.

“Ineke—do you know Ineke?—and I were talking about doing some trail ride beach parties for her boarders and my lodgers. Would it be okay with you if other humans came swimming at this beach?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well . . .” I waved an arm toward the center of the lake, my fingertips trailing in the water. “This is your home. We’re guests.”

She smiled, clearly pleased that I understood. “Your guests will be my guests.” Then she raised a hand and looked stern. “But no motor-things.”

“No motor-things.” Since we were chatting, it was my chance to ask. “Why no motors? Do they spoil the water?”

“Some Elders live in the northern end of the lake, but they hunt the length and breadth of my home. The sound of the motor-things is the sound of both prey and challenger—and the sound annoys them, so they will attack even if they are not hungry.”

Oh golly. “What about the way humans splash around when they’re swimming? Sharks are attracted to that sound because it sounds like a fish in distress. At least, that’s what I’ve read.”

She laughed. “There are no sharks, or Sharkgard, in the Feather Lakes.” She thought for a moment before adding, “The Elders in the lake are smaller than many of the old forms of terra indigene, but they are fast and fierce. However, they do not attack humans who behave as guests—unless those humans enter their home water at the northern end of the lake.”

The Elders in the lake might be smaller, but there was at least one form of terra indigene living in The Jumble that was big enough to pick up a grown man and twist him. How big was the biggest Elder living in the lake? And what were we talking about? Something that looked like an alligator but was big enough that it could ram a motorboat? And what about the smaller ones? Were they dog size? People size? And if they did get hungry, just how fast could a human be consumed?

My brain stuttered. Was that a minnow trying to nibble on my ankle or something else?

I focused on my companion. It was like watching water ebb and flow in a human-shaped container. She watched me as if I was the most entertaining thing she’d seen in quite a while. I wondered if that was true.

“Vicki? Vicki!”

I turned toward the shore. “That’s my friend Ineke. Would you like to meet her?”

“Not today.” She sank to the waist. Then the human shape rose on a column of water, like one of those leaping game fish. As she reached the apex of the leap and headed down, her shape dissolved until only a spray of sun-sparkled water met the rest of the lake.

I stumbled out of the water, stopping where the wet sand changed to dry—and hot—sand.

“Vicki?” Ineke’s voice sounded worried.

“Here!”

She appeared a minute later. “I thought you might be cooling off. It’s a good day for it, and . . . Gods! What happened?” She led me to the towel, dug in my bag, and opened the bottle of juice. “Drink some of this. You’re white as a sheet.”

“I just met the Lady of the Lake.”

Ineke stared at me. “What’s she like?”

“Watery. And quite nice.” I drank some of the juice. “She has no objections to our beach days as long as we give her home the same care and respect as our own.”

Ineke took the juice and drank some before giving the bottle back to me. “Sounds fair.”

I leaned toward her. “She said Elders live in the lake. Their home is the northern end of Lake Silence, but they hunt in and along the whole of the lake, and they’re the ones who don’t like things with motors.”

“Then we should be safe enough.” She eyed me. “Right?”

“Right.” But the next time I went to Lettuce Reed, I was going to see what books Julian had about alligators and ancient freshwater predators. Just in case.

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