Lake Silence

CHAPTER 56

Them

Windsday, Sumor 5

“You need to send someone out to unplug a toilet,” Yorick said.

“Do you have a plunger? Have you tried to unblock the toilet yourself?”

“No, I don’t have a flipping plunger.” And he wasn’t about to put his hands in a bowl full of floating turds.

Damn Pamella. She just plunked her ass down and pooped before realizing there wasn’t a thing she could use to wipe her ass. So what did she do? She used the scarf she was wearing! Why was the woman wearing a long filmy scarf in this heat? But that’s what she had, and somehow the scarf went down before the turds—along with enough water that the turds didn’t end up floating on the bathroom floor. But now the only toilet downstairs was blocked, and none of the rest of the bathrooms in the main house had any flipping toilet paper either. So he needed the damn plumber to get off his ass and come out here to deal with it.

“Is that the only toilet in your house?”

“Doesn’t matter if it is or not, I want you out here pronto!” Gods, what a place. Couldn’t get service from anyone.

“We’ve got a full schedule for the next few days, but I’ll send someone out as soon as I can. Where are you located?”

“The Jumble.”

“Oh.”

Yorick waited.

“You’ll have to find someone else. Word around the village is someone stirred up the terra indigene in The Jumble, and I won’t send my son out there until things calm down.”

What the . . . ? He couldn’t believe it. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“A guy who plugged up his toilet.”

“I’m Yorick Dane, the owner of The Jumble. You’ve heard of my family?”

“Yeah, I have. You people have a reputation around here. We’re definitely not coming out.”

Yorick stared at his mobile phone for a full minute after the plumber hung up. How dare a sewer jockey speak to him like that? Refuse to do the work?

And where was he supposed to find a new phone book that covered Crystalton and Bristol, the two closest human towns to this place? He’d been lucky to find a phone book for Sproing. The damn thing was years out of date, so he’d been lucky that the plumber hadn’t changed the number. Had been lucky that the plumber was still in business.

That was the biggest problem. A new phone book hadn’t been issued since last year, and with the number of people who vanished during those terrifying attacks last summer, there was no way of knowing if a business had gone under or the owners had died—or had run to some other place to escape.

Leaving the kitchen, Yorick went to the office, trying not to resent Vaughn’s appropriating the desk to make some calls. Vaughn might have the vision of what they could do with this place, but Yorick owned this place, and if someone had to be shuffled off to use the kitchen counter, it should have been Vaughn.

Hearing the fury in Vaughn’s voice, Yorick leaned against the wall near the open door and listened.

“I don’t give a flying fuck if all your trucks are making deliveries today, and I don’t want to hear any whining about having to drive all the way to fucking Sproing. If you want to remain a club member in good standing you will load the box springs, mattresses, and frames for four double beds, and you will get them to a place called The Jumble before the end of the workday.” A pause. “If you move your ass, your men can get here, get the beds set up, and get back home before dark. If you drag your feet, they’ll end up sleeping in the truck at a rest station.”

Yorick shivered. There was no mercy in the wild country, no safety in the dark. The rest stations were supposed to be a neutral place where humans could spend a night without being attacked or killed. But “supposed to be” wasn’t a guarantee.

The sun must have gone behind some clouds because the hall was suddenly darker than it had been a moment before. Gloomy. Forbidding. And Yorick had an uneasy thought: if The Jumble was considered wild country, were any of the people going to be safe here after the sun went down?