“Just mopping up a little spill,” he said, getting to his feet and tugging his cap over his eyes. “I didn’t want you to slip.”
“Thank you,” I said, handing him the check. “That was very considerate of you.”
He folded the check and stuck it into the breast pocket of the t-shirt he wore under his sweatshirt. Then he stuck the rag – a scrap of plaid flannel – into his back pocket where it hung out like a flag on the back of an oversized load on a truck. Bill wasn’t a spiffy dresser, but if he fixed my roof the way he’d fixed my hot water heater I was going to nominate him for Man of the Year.
“Should I give you a key?” I asked.
“I can just use the one under the gnome,” he said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. “If that’s all right?”
I hesitated, wondering how these things were usually done. I’d gotten used to Brock coming and going as he pleased. Was Bill worried I’d accuse him of stealing something later? Or maybe he thought I was naïve for trusting a total stranger with the key to my house. Maybe he was right. But every instinct in my body told me to trust Bill Carey. Then I remembered that Liz and Diana had said that no one wishing me harm could get to the key under the gnome. If Bill could use it, that proved he was as trustworthy as I thought he was.
“It’s perfectly all right,” I said. “I trust you.”
He lifted his head. For the first time I got a good look at his eyes – warm, golden brown eyes the color of good whiskey. They were shining, almost as if filled with tears. “I promise you I won’t give you any reason for ever regretting that,” he said in a rush, and then he turned abruptly and fled.
“I’ll see you later, then,” I called as he headed for his pick-up truck – a shiny new red Ford. He grunted and waved. What had happened in Bill’s life, I wondered as I closed the door, that made a simple expression of trust so moving?
I was heading upstairs to get dressed when my cell phone rang. I almost didn’t get it, but then I thought it might be Duncan Laird. I answered it without checking the number.
“Callie McFay?” a woman with a lilting Australian accent asked. “It’s Jen Davies. Sorry I took so long getting back to you.”
“Not at all, Jen,” I said sitting down on the bottom step. “I know you’re busy. I saw the piece you did on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe stylist. Nice one!”
“Yeah, I felt a bit like I’d found Deep Throat.”
We both laughed, but Jen stopped first. “Hey, I appreciate the good review but I don’t think you called about that. Have you heard about the meeting in Fairwick?”
“I heard the Grove is coming to discuss with IMP whether the door to Faerie should be permanently closed.”
Jen snorted. “That’s not the half of what they’ve got planned. I think we’d better talk. I got into town early …”
“You’re in Fairwick?” I asked, surprised that Jen would spend anymore time in the country than she’d have to.
“Yeah, the muckety-mucks sent me on first to scout out the lay of the land. I’m staying at a motel out on the highway. No offense to your pal Diana, but if I stayed in her inn one more time I’d never fit into my jeans again.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, remembering how Diana had stuffed me full of sweets and baked goods when I stayed at the Hart Brake Inn last year. Jen Davies, as I recalled, looked like she did Jivamukti yoga twelve hours a day and lived on agave protein shakes. She probably hadn’t eaten a carb in the last decade. “Where do you want to meet? You could come to my house?”
“Could we meet at the diner in town?”
“Sure,” I said, glad the meeting would include food. I was suddenly ravenous – probably from running through the woods all night. I hung up wondering how guilty I’d feel having toast and home fries in front of Jen Davies … and decided I was willing to risk it.
I walked into town, enjoying the sunshine. Now that the rain had passed it was a beautiful morning. The trees glistened as if polished by the rain and the pavement sparkled. I stopped to inhale the scent of freshly mown wet grass in the Lindisfarnes’ yard and Cherry Lindisfarne came out onto her porch to ask if it were true that Brock Olsen had fallen from my roof. I told her it was and that he was recuperating at his family’s farm. Evangeline Sprague came out when she heard us talking and asked after Brock as well. We all chatted for a few minutes about what a nice family the Olsens were and how their farm always donated food to Meals-on-Wheels and the homeless shelter in Kingston. “Good neighbors,” Evangeline said. “We need more like them, especially when the town is so full of strangers. Did you hear there was a break-in down at the motor court?”
I left Evangeline and Cherry talking about the break-in and walked into town. Main Street was indeed bustling with tourists and fishermen shopping at Trask’s Outdoor Outfitters and filling the outdoor tables at Fair Grounds and the red vinyl booths at the Village Diner. I might not have gotten a booth if the waitress Darla didn’t happen to be the mother of one of my students.
As she seated me at a booth behind one that was full to overflowing with three large men in identical plaid flannel shirts, she whispered, “I always try to make room for a local, even when we’re bursting with out-of-towners. I’ve never seen a more popular fishing season!”
“I’ve never seen the Undine run so full,” one of the men in plaid commented, having overheard Darla’s throaty whisper. “It’s like they’re trying to get out of town!” His comment was greeted by guffaws from the two other men in the booth. I smiled at them, realizing I’d seen them around town before. All three men had the same bee-stung lips and full round faces. In their identical flannel shirts and Orvis baseball caps, they looked like an illustration of the same man at different stages of his life: young, middle-aged, and old. Son, father and grandfather, I presumed.
I was studying the menu when Jen Davies walked in. Dressed in tight black leggings, a tank top, and her dark hair coiled in a long braid, she turned quite a few heads as she sauntered down the aisle, including all three of the men in plaid flannel. I heard the youngest one whisper to his father, “She must be one of those New York models!”
“You’re looking fit,” Jen said, leaning over the table to kiss me on both cheeks and then sitting down across from me. Her keen eyes narrowed at me. “Quite fit. I wouldn’t have pegged you as one of those witches who uses Aelvesgold to make themselves look younger.”
“I’m not …” I began to object, but was interrupted by Darla coming to take our order.
“What are these three strong men having?” Jen asked, turning her slim neck to look at the men in the next booth. I saw the youngest one blush from where I sat.
“Angler’s Special,” Darla replied. “Three scrambled eggs, wheat toast, home fries and sausage. It’s exactly the same as the Farmer’s Special, which is what the Stewarts here …” she winked at the men in the next booth “… have ten months out of the year, them being farmers, but during fishing season they like it if we call it the Angler’s Special.”
“I’ll have that,” Jen said. “Minus the toast and home fries.” Surprised – I would have pegged Jen for a vegan – I ordered the same thing, but with the carbs.
“I am not using Aelvesgold to look younger,” I whispered when Darla had finished taking our order. “At least not deliberately. I’m using it to … explore my power.”
Jen snorted. “Explore my foot! You’re wallowing in the stuff. But hey, I’m not here to criticize. I just thought I’d give you a little heads up.”
“Thanks, Jen, not to criticize, but you could have told me earlier that the Grove was coming here. I learned about it from my dean who doesn’t know I’m a member.”
“Fair enough,” Jen said equably. “I would have, only I didn’t know until two days ago. The higher ups have been very secretive lately. A bunch of them – including your grandmother – went off to London last month and when they came back they announced – announced, mind you, not proposed – that we were now affiliated with a club there. Th
e Seraphim. There was a bit of a controversy because the Seraphim is an extremely conservative wizards’ club that doesn’t allow women.”
“Why would the Grove – an all women’s club – affiliate with an all men’s club?” I asked.
“That’s what I wanted to know. So I started looking into the Seraphim and couldn’t find out diddly. Me, who got Sarah Palin’s stylist to talk! I couldn’t get to square one with this outfit. The only thing I could find out is that the club is older than Methuselah and richer than God … Oh, this is brilliant, love,” Jen interrupted herself to exclaim over the huge plates of food that Darla put down in front of us. When Darla had finished serving the food Jen continued, her voice low and conspiratorial. “And when those women got back from London they were all hepped up about going to Fairwick to close the door.”
“To close the door?” I asked. “Not discuss closing the door?”
Jen snorted so hard she got orange juice up her nose. “Grove women don’t discuss. Besides, they’ve already gotten half the IMP board on their side … mmm … this is fabulous. I bet these eggs are fresh.” Clearly Jen wasn’t going to tell me anything more until she had sated her appetite. I might as well eat. I took a bite … and nearly swooned. Had eggs always tasted this good? Why hadn’t I had home fries in so long? What was wrong with sausage anyway? Dimly I recalled the concept of weight gain, but, hey, if I ran twenty miles every night I could afford to eat like this. I’d probably lose weight.
When I had polished off my entire breakfast I looked up to find Jen Davies studying me. “Aelvesgold increases the appetite,” she remarked. “But no worries, it also speeds up the metabolism, so you’ll never get fat – or old – or, as far as we know, dead.”
“Really? It can make you live forever?” I asked, but Jen wasn’t listening to me; she was listening to the Stewarts in the next booth.
“… just plain vanished. They found his van parked at the top of the lower branch and his tackle scattered in the woods.”
“Wouldn’t be the first fisherman to go missing on the Undine,” the oldest Stewart remarked.
The middle-aged man made a rude noise and cried, “Don’t be filling the boy’s heads with those tales, Dad.” Unswayed by his son’s objection, the old man asked his grandson if he had heard the one about the mermaid and the old fisherman. The conversation quickly degenerated into dirty guy talk, the kind of hearty bluster that usually covered up real fears. Jen was furiously two-thumb typing on her iPhone. When she finished, she noticed me watching her. “Force of habit,” she said.
“Are you thinking of writing a story on fishing in the Catskills?” I asked.
Jen’s eyes slid to one side and she fiddled with the lid of the tin creamer. “The Grove sent me up to see if there was any unusual activity going on in town – or in the woods. They’re afraid that when word gets out that the door’s going to be closed there will be a mass exodus from Faerie. They want to know if there’s been any increased traffic through the door. That fisherman …” she looked over her shoulder at the next booth where the Stewarts were getting up to go, “… isn’t the only one who’s gone missing. And where there are missing fishermen, there’s likely to be an undine. Would you happen to know anything about that?”
I almost started to tell Jen about the undine run and seeing Lorelei last night, but stopped. “I might,” I said cautiously. “But I have a few questions of my own first.”
Jen tilted her head and smiled. “Well look at you, Cailleach McFay, proposing a little friendly exchange of information, are we? Fair enough. What do you want to know?”
“Two things. One, why does the Grove want to close the door?”
“That’s easy. They’ve hated the fey since the witch hunts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They believe that it was the association with the fey that got witches persecuted and that they are evil and destructive. To give them credit, they’re right about a lot of them. That creepy bird creature that attacked you and Phoenix last fall …”
“How did you know about the liderc?”
Jen rolled her eyes. “I have my sources, love, and they’ve informed me about a whole lot of dangerous creatures roaming at large in Fairwick. That incubus that preyed on you, for instance …”
“Let’s leave Liam out of this,” I snapped. I saw Jen’s eyes narrow with interest at my outburst and her fingers drum on her iPhone as if she’d like to make a note on it. “I get that the Grove hates the fey, but I don’t understand what they hope to accomplish by closing the door. A lot of the fey who are already here will stay …”
Jen shook her head. “Most won’t. When they know the door is closing, they’ll go back to Faerie. They have to. If they don’t return once in a while they fade. The Grove has been spreading rumors for weeks in the fey community that the last door is closing for good. Fairies and demons have been flocking here to be ready to leave.”
“Flocking? I don’t think so. I think I would have noticed a sudden influx …” Halfway through my objection a Winnebago rumbled past the diner, its silver surface winking in the sun. “The fishermen?” I whispered.
Jen nodded. “What better camouflage than a pair of giant waders and a booney hat?”
I looked around the diner at the innocuous looking clientele. Amidst a number of locals I recognized – one of Dory’s cousins having breakfast with a young couple who looked like city people house hunting in the country, Tara Cohen-Miller cutting the crusts off a grilled cheese sandwich for her little boy, Abby Goodnough picking up a to-go order – were a dozen or so strangers outfitted in fishing garb: t-shirts emblazoned with leaping trout, khaki shorts with multiple pockets, and wide-brimmed hats (the booney hats Jen had referred to) decorated with colorful fishing flies. Were they really fairies and demons in disguise?
“Okay,” I said, “but tell me this. Don’t the witches of the Grove need Aelvesgold for their magic and to stay young? Isn’t it …” I recalled Duncan’s phrase, “… the basis of all magic?”
“You are learning,” Jen said approvingly.
“So where will the witches of the Grove get Aelvesgold if they close the door?” I asked, determined not to be swayed by Jen’s admiration.
Jen leaned across the table and whispered. “They have another source. Don’t ask me where. It’s one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Grove. Not even I can get close to it. Now if you’re done with your questions …”
“Not quite,” I said, holding up one finger. “I’ve got one more. How are they planning to close the door?”
Jen shook her head. “I don’t know. But I did overhear Adelaide talking to one of the other women and your name came up. Your grandmother said ‘as long as we have a doorkeeper we’ll be able to close it.’”
“So they need me,” I said, not sure if this was good news or bad.
“Apparently. Are you thinking of refusing?” Her eyes glittered hungrily at the idea.
“Is that what you wanted to ask me?” I said, picking up the check that Darla had slapped down on our table.
“Not so fast, McFay. You haven’t told me about the undine yet. Is it true you let one through the door?”
“How …?” I began, but then realizing it was useless to question Jen about her sources – and probably useless to deny what she already knew – I answered her question honestly. “Yes. It was an accident. But that doesn’t mean the undine has anything to do with the missing fishermen.”
“Let’s hope so, for your sake,” Jen said, grabbing the bill out of my hand. “All those IMP members are bleeding heart liberals until they feel threatened. Nothing is likely to sway the vote better than an undine attack … unless, of course,” she added slyly, “it’s an incubus invasion.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I WALKED BACK home thinking about all I’d learned from Jen Davies … and all I hadn’t. It wasn’t encouraging. And what had Jen meant by that crack about an incubus invasion? She’d refused to say anything more about it, but I suspected she’d said it f
or a reason. Did she think that my incubus was back? Did she know something I didn’t?
I got out my cell phone to call Liz, but realized I had a problem before hitting her number. How did I tell Liz what I’d learned from a member of the Grove without telling her that I was also a member?
As I was trying to decide what to do, I saw Ann Chase on the opposite side of the street. She was coming out of a trim, pretty bungalow, its front path lined with thick clusters of zinnias and daisies, with a young woman. They were carrying piles of brightly colored fliers. Ann saw me and waved. I put my phone away and crossed the street, glad of a diversion from making a hard decision.
“I hope you haven’t lost a pet,” I said as I approached, thinking that the most likely reason for putting up fliers. The woman with Ann raised a stricken face. I saw immediately that she wasn’t as young as I’d thought – and that she had Down syndrome. “Not ours! Silver is safe at home. We’re not going to let her out until it’s safe.”
“That’s right, Jessica,” Ann said, patting her daughter on the arm. “Nothing’s going to happen to Silver. That’s our cat,” Ann added to me with a patient smile. “We’re keeping her in while there are so many … strangers in town.”
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” Jessica said, shuffling the stack of fliers in her hands. They had been Xeroxed in multiple day-glo colors. I looked at the one that they’d just stapled to the telephone pole and saw that it featured the face of a young man above the words “MISSING: Tobias Granger, age 26, last seen fishing on the lower Undine. June 14.”
“He’s been gone for two days?” I asked.
“He works at the animal shelter and he’s my friend,” Jessica said.
“I’m sure he’ll come home soon,” I told Jessica, hoping it was true.
Water Witch Page 14