“Return to port,” Elgin was shouting to the boats that had come to see the fireworks. “There has been a chemical spill. The vapors are noxious. Repeat, leave this area. Do not breathe.”
Piet laughed. I had to smile, despite being alone out on a five-foot-wide patch of muddy sand, in the dark, miles away from the car, with a foul monster somewhere in the marsh. Then Piet took my hand. I wasn’t alone.
He led me to a fallen log where the kids had been sitting, pushed the hood of my raincoat back, and kissed me.
The fireworks were back.
No, those were the stars I was seeing. And the heat I was feeling. And that feeling that I was safe, wanted, lo—No, I was not going there. Or here, not on a damp log with the smell of swamp and beer and grass, the illegal kind.
I pulled back. “What was that for?”
“For wanting to all night. For seeing if you tasted as good as you look in your clown costume. For scaring off your monsters.”
“I don’t think we scared anybody but some stoned kids and some curious boaters.” But I wasn’t half as fearful now, so maybe he was right. He was definitely a great distracter, and a great kisser. “Now what?”
“Now we wait to see if your friends come back and tell you what they want. If not, we call for the Harbor Patrol boat to come get us so we don’t have to trudge those miles back to the car. He’ll be standing by in the bay waiting to lower the life raft.”
I could definitely get to love this guy who thought of everything, if I let myself. Since that wasn’t in my best interest, I scooted over on the log so we weren’t touching. I drank some water. Piet had a beer.
“Call them,” he said.
Easier said than done. I tried picturing a meteor shower headed our way, or a rocket, or the aurora borealis. This wasn’t the right time of year for an already rare sighting of the Northern Lights in our area, but they were beautiful, and not so paradoxical if anyone saw them. I thought high, higher than Piet’s magic.
He was humming. “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that.” So we both sang, “Glow little glow worm, glow and glimmer.” Neither of us could remember the next line so we hummed. And laughed, since neither of us could carry a tune in a bucket, either.
There they were. That glowing nimbus separated from the moon and drifted our way in shimmering bands of color, high overhead.
“Ooh.” That’s all I could say.
Piet stopped singing and let out a long breath of awe. Me, too.
“Well, hello, gorgeous,” I whispered, standing to welcome them, to thank them for putting on a display that almost made me weep for its beauty.
The colors came closer, flickering now like a million tiny candles. “No, don’t get any near—”
The lights went out, and I felt like my best friend kicked me. I kicked Piet instead.
“Dial it down. You can do it, I know you can. And without thinking dirty thoughts.”
He closed his eyes and lowered his brow in concentration.
The sky stayed dark. “I tried. It won’t work.”
Damn it, I had to take one for the team. I pulled him toward me and locked my mouth to his, and teased his lips with my tongue. I felt warm and tingly and damp. Must be the raincoat, the swamp, and the muddy log. Or the fireflies. They were back, dimmer but still visible, and dancing.
Sure, they loved a good mating ritual.
Piet had his hand on the back of my neck, stroking, caressing, asking for more. Too bad I had more important things to do. “Hold the thought while I try to talk to them.”
To make sure he did, I held his upper thigh, not touching anything crucial, but close enough to have him suck in a breath, knowing I could.
“Okay, guys, talk to me. What’s going on here, and what’s the smell?”
Mama.
Oh, boy. Was that the only word they knew? “I am not your mama. I’ll be your friend and try to help you get home, but I am not adopting you like a litter of kittens.”
Mama.
Persistent devils. And trying to tell me what I already suspected. “Your mama is here?”
The bands of color shifted again, this time into wiggly lines and intersecting rows.
“Plaid? A chain-link fence? Is she caught in a fishing net?”
The lights got dimmer as Piet’s mind switched to the new puzzle. I squeezed his thigh and moved my hand an inch. Now I could see that one square of the grid was filled with the soft flames. “A map of the drainage ditches! That’s what it is, isn’t it? And she is there?”
The lines danced across the sky.
“But how will we find her? Show me where we are now, in relation.”
Another box in the map grew brighter, then they all went out.
Damn, my firefighter had the attention span of a flea. I tried to move my hand, but he grabbed it with his. His other hand was holding a stick, drawing the map in the mud at our feet. He kept looking up, as if to check his accuracy, but the more he looked at where the Lucifers were, the less chance they had of being seen. I could hear the whirring of their wings and almost inaudible chitters . . . and Piet’s teeth grinding.
“Fly high,” I called, and thought and projected. “He can’t help himself.”
And I didn’t dare kiss him again or we’d be naked in the mud, putting on a peepshow for the pyro-opters. And maybe Elgin, too.
“It’s okay. I think I got it.” Piet had his phone out and switched it to camera mode. The flash went off a couple of times as he changed position. He checked the playback, checked our location.
“It’s that way.” He pointed up the beach. “And inland, about a mile, I’d guess, judging from the number of drainage ditches.”
“If the guys can count.”
“They didn’t have to count, just copy the pattern they saw below them. They got here, didn’t they? So they had the map in their heads.”
“Unless they followed the smell.”
He looked up. “Can insects follow a scent like a bloodhound?”
I had no idea. Bees found flowers, mosquitoes found fresh blood in the dark. “But I think the map points to where we first saw the fireball.”
“Me, too. It should be easy enough to find whatever they’ve got out there.”
“I think it’s their mother.” I didn’t want to tell him I heard the word in my head. That was too weird, even for me.
“Bugs have mothers? I know bees have a queen who lays all the eggs, but I never heard of any other colony as big as this”—he pointed up—“with one matriarch. And don’t fireflies flash to attract mates?”
“These seem to flash to get our attention. I don’t know much else about their social system, but I’m pretty sure their mother is out there, in trouble. Maybe the big fish thing has her, or the swamp creature.”
“We’ll know when we follow the map. I think we ought to wait until morning to go looking.”
He’d considered the alternative? Hiking another mile of smelly salt marsh in search of something that could eat us, in the dark? Maybe he’d breathed too much smoke after all. “That sounds good to me. We can get Chief Haversmith to send in the cops and the fire volunteers. Maybe the road crews and the Harbor Patrol guys. They can fan out and—”
“And find the lightning bugs’ mother? See what no person on Earth is supposed to? If you call out that many people, the rest of the village will know, besides. They’ll want to come see what’s lost in the swamp. If you turn them back, they’ll want to know more. People like your reporter friend.”
“He’s not my friend. And maybe he’ll leave.”
“And maybe there won’t be anything out there in the daylight. Did you think of that? We never see the fireflies during the day.”
I hadn’t thought of anything except getting out of here.
“So what you are saying is . . . ?”
“You and me, kiddo. You and me. By boat, so we can count the openings to the bay. By daylight because it’s easier. By night if we don’t find anything.”
“I
vote for daylight.”
“Good, because I have other plans for tonight.”
Me, too, a hot shower being first on the list. “What are your plans?”
He started to pack up everything we’d brought, plus what the kids had left. “To finish what we started here.”
“To map the wetlands?”
He raised an eyebrow. “To do what we both want.”
“Have an ice cream on the way home?”
He pulled me up off the log and tipped my head back so he could kiss my neck and my eyelids and my cheeks. “This.” He kissed my lips. “And this.” His tongue flirted with mine while his hands left a heated path on my back, my ribs, my breasts. Oh, my.
“And a lot more.”
I thought about it—especially the lot more part—on the way home, and while I got Elladaire settled in her crib and took that hot shower. Why not? The whole town assumed we were sleeping together, so why not live down to their expectations? It’s not as if I am a virgin or anything, or committed to another man. It’s not like I sleep with every chance-met stranger, either, like my cousin. Piet was a partner, a friend. We shared secret knowledge and a trek through the wilderness and really, really hot kisses. Most of all, he made me feel good. I knew he could make me feel a lot better.
Now I had to figure a way to tell him I was willing, without having to say the words. Maybe if I paraded around in my sexiest nightgown he’d get the idea. Which was a great idea, except I didn’t have any sexy negligees. I gave them to Susan when I decided not to marry Grant or run off with Ty. Wrap my shower towel around me and ask him to check my back for ticks?
Or maybe I shouldn’t go down that path. Not the one with the ticks and spiders and poison ivy, but the one that could leave me aching and hurt and twice as alone.
I didn’t have to decide. His beeper sounded, his cell phone chimed, my mother’s phone rang, and sirens came tearing up our dirt road.
“I came to get you on my way to town,” Mac shouted from the fire captain’s car. “The bowling alley’s on fire.”
CHAPTER 21
PIET RAN TO HIS TRUCK to get his gear.
I couldn’t go, not dragging Elladaire out of bed again and into a fire. I couldn’t help them anyway, and I might even be a hindrance. No one suggested I come, either.
I could tell Piet about the old building and the apartment upstairs, though, so I raced after him in my towel. While he grabbed a heavy fire jacket and helmet and gloves from a hook on the back door of his camper, I shouted that Joey Danvers lived over the bowling alley by himself now, and he used crutches. Piet didn’t need to know that his wife was in jail. Maureen actually resided in a hospital for the criminally insane after running Joey over in a fit of madness. She backed up and ran him over again. I guess she was really mad.
“The captain will fill me in on the way.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and ran for the fire department’s SUV.
“Joey has a dog!” I yelled after Piet. “Be careful.” I didn’t mean be careful of the dog, who was one of my mother’s rescues, a sweet hound mix. I meant don’t run into the burning building. Don’t think of me in nothing but a towel in case you lose concentration. Don’t get hurt.
I watched the dust from the dirt road billow up as they tore off. Piet waved his hand out the passenger window.
The house felt cold, though I knew it wasn’t. I put on warm pajamas and wrapped up in the dog quilt from the living room but still felt chilled. Elladaire’s cheeks were warm, but I tucked another blanket around her anyway. I made a pot of tea. Now that Piet was gone, I could use the top of the stove.
Now that Piet was gone, I felt like an old-time whaler’s wife, watching my man sail away for years, if he returned at all. How did soldiers’ wives do it? How could firemen’s wives watch their husbands speed off to infernos? What about cops’ families, when the police got shot at every other day in the news?
They sucked it up, I supposed. Stiff upper lip, the show must go on, no pain, no gain. Bullshit. I wasn’t that brave or stoical or altruistic. I wanted to call Piet on the phone and tell him to come back. His last burns weren’t all healed. This wasn’t his town. Let the volunteers do their thing.
Little Red jumped in my lap. Dogs understood when their humans needed comfort. Or that they usually had a cookie with their tea.
I hugged the Pomeranian and regretted telling Piet about Joey’s dog or his crutches. The dog was old, and Joey’d thrown a bowling pin at Maureen. They weren’t worth dying for.
Little Red growled. I was squeezing too hard and not sharing enough. And I was a rotten person.
Sherry was a sweet dog, and both Joey and his wife had been hit with the psychic nightmares that stormed across the whole village. They all deserved rescuing.
“Just don’t outrun your magic,” I whispered into Little Red’s soft fur, as if Piet could hear my prayers. “Come back. I lo—” No. I could not go through this every time a siren blew. “Come back. I want to make love with you.”
And what about the Coleoptera? The fireflies needed him, too. I couldn’t read maps for the life of me, but I had the feeling their mama’s life depended on it. On me and Piet.
“Don’t be stupid,” I whispered again.
So Little Red stopped looking for crumbs and charged at the whole bag of cookies. Smart dog. Smart fire meister. He’d be back.
He didn’t get home until nearly six in the morning and sank onto the sofa, exhausted.
“I’m filthy.”
“So are Mother’s dogs, but they sit there, too.”
I pulled his boots off, hung his jacket over a chair, and brought him coffee and what was left of the cookies. “Tell me.”
Yes, the fire was out. No, no one got hurt. Joey and the dog were waiting outside when the fire engines pulled up.
The building was big. Piet had to circle around it twice to put out all the flames, avoiding the volunteer firemen with their ladders and hoses. Then he went inside to extinguish any embers. He let the locals think their efforts worked, which took him longer. The hardwood lanes were destroyed by the water, the apartment upstairs only had smoke damage. Yes, it was definitely arson.
“And?”
He rested his head on the back of the sofa, leaving his coffee untouched. He took a plastic sandwich bag out of his pocket.
Oh, hell.
Five charred carcasses sank to the bottom of the bag. I shook them, to get a better look.
“Yes, they’re your guys.”
“But they’re flat, as if—”
“Someone stepped on them,” he finished. “I think I got them all, so no one else gets any ideas. That’s what took me so long, waiting for the fire squad to leave. I want to send them to the labs at DUE for analysis.”
“But they were with us, out in the wetlands.”
“Not the ones who visited here first, remember? Maybe they stopped off in town before joining the others at the ditches. Hell, maybe they wanted to bowl a frame or two. Mac thinks it’s the same guy who torched that cottage.” He yawned. “Could be. You’ve got to get them out of here.”
He was in no condition right now to go looking in the salt flats. “You go on to bed.”
“Mmm.”
“By yourself.”
“Okay.”
“I decided I can’t have sex with you.”
“Hmm?”
“I take things too seriously, that’s all, not that I don’t want to or don’t find you attractive, because I do. But if we make love, I am going to want to do it again, and spend more time with you. Then I’ll get used to having you around and maybe fall in love with you.” If I hadn’t already. “And then I’ll be heartbroken when you leave.”
“Uhm?”
“And I can’t fall in love with someone so much in harm’s way. I couldn’t sleep all night, worrying about you, and you were right here with the entire fire department, and most likely the neighboring villages, too, from all the sirens. I know you can put out fires, but you’re brave and
kind and noble and you might do something heroic and get yourself killed. I couldn’t stand that, especially if we made love because to me that’s like sharing part of yourself, so part of myself would die a little, too. Every time you went out on an emergency call. No, every time the phone rang. So we better not make love, okay?”
He snored. I could never love a man who snored.
I wished I could sleep while Piet did. Sure he’d been fighting the fire, but I’d been fighting incipient panic all night. I couldn’t nap; Edie was awake.
To keep Piet’s rest undisturbed, I took Elladaire and Little Red into town. I wanted to hear what people were saying about the fire.
Some thought we had a pyromaniac among us. Some thought Joey’d set the blaze to collect the insurance, rather than buy out his wife’s share. Or Maureen had hired a hit man. Janie at the beauty salon, after hugging and kissing Elladaire, whispered: “It’s your bugs, isn’t it?”
“They’re not my—” Why waste my breath? “Someone’s been catching them and using them to start the fires. They’re not doing it themselves, not on purpose. I’m putting up more posters telling people not to harm them.”
After a few more stops, I wheeled the stroller out to the more residential blocks. Little Red couldn’t go so far, or so fast, not with three legs that were short to begin with. I didn’t trust him in the stroller with Elladaire, or her with him for that matter, but he was content to ride in the mesh bag behind the seat, on top of the extra diapers and animal crackers.
I asked Mr. Merriwether if he had any numbers for me. He and his wife had four cars, three houses, two cabin cruisers, and heaven knew how many offshore bank accounts, all from picking the right numbers on sweepstakes, lotteries, roulette wheels, and bingo cards. He scratched his head.
“I’m thinking the number you want is 3,549, but that makes no sense. You don’t want to play Pick Four or anything like that in the lottery, do you?”
“No.”
“Forget a password? Lock combination?”
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