Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649)

by Jerome, Celia

  Piet handed them to me. “I scooped them up before anyone noticed their size or oddity.”

  Anyone like Martin or Barry.

  They almost filled my palm, feeling cool. Their wings fluttered against my fingers in what I sensed as distress. I sympathized. Any creature would hate being without its defenses, but Piet’s magic had saved them from discovery. “Shh,” I whispered to them, and tried to transmit peace and security. “It’s Willow, your friend.”

  Was that relief I felt or was I inserting my own emotions? I couldn’t tell. “It’s okay, you’re back where you belong. Now go find M’ma. Your fires will come back way before you get there. Tell him I am working on keeping him safe. See if a bunch of you guys can flap your wings fast enough to get the air moving, to waft the smell away.” I pictured wings moving so rapidly they blurred, and then I puffed my cheeks and blew out.

  The two Lucifers flew away. Piet shook his head. “Do you really think they understood? Those were complicated instructions considering your buddies can’t understand English.”

  “They understood. M’ma does, anyway. But go back to the fires. Were any others, um, mutilated?”

  He took one out of the other shirt pocket. Dead. It had no wings and a blackened body. “Oh, my God, how could someone do that?”

  “People don’t look at bugs the way you do. They sure as hell don’t hold conversations with them.” Once again, he sounded jealous, or maybe resentful that I could do something he couldn’t. “I’d like to go see Mama for myself.”

  “It’s M’ma, I think, and he needs to rest. Maybe it’s part of the process of his rejuvenation. We need to make calls first.”

  We decided Piet should phone his contacts at DUE before anyone else, to get them to call off the environmental people and the Coast Guard, whose presence could only muck up the situation worse. DUE had influence at the highest levels, including the White House.

  While Piet waited for the call to go through the encrypted, password-protected channels, he asked, “You’re sure they’ll all go home after the metamorphosis?”

  “I can’t be positive of anything. I do know the beetles will not go before then, not leaving their babies and their host mother. M’ma cannot fly or swim.”

  I wandered around while he was on the phone. Little Red was upstairs on my bed, sulking that he’d been left alone so much. I missed Elladaire. My arms felt empty. The house felt cold.

  So I called my father. He warned me about fire, finally. Except he thought he’d seen Saks go up in flames. He’d also seen his friend Leila’s car get wrecked.

  “Did you warn her, Dad?” I could see the end of that relationship if he started forecasting doom.

  “No time. The diaper truck skidded straight for us.”

  “You mean that was real, not a vision? Are you all right? What about what’s her name? Was her car really wrecked?”

  “Diapers all over the street, but we were fine. Better than Saks.”

  I checked the Internet. Saks was still intact everywhere.

  Then I called the police station and asked for Chief Haversmith. I told Uncle Henry about M’ma and begged him to fend off any local investigations of the nesting area, like they did for the piping plovers. And maybe see what the weather people could do about dissipating the smell.

  The chief listened, grunted a couple of times, then told me his news, which was worse than that the fireflies were here for awhile.

  That fire at Rick’s? One burning boat sank at its slip, but Rick’s dock hands towed two others out of the harbor to protect the rest of the marina, where the harbor’s fire boat could pump more water at them. The problem was one of the boats, a big trawler, sank before they reached open water. The Coast Guard sent down divers, who reported the trawler was breaking up, which meant the full fuel tanks and oil reserves would leak out soon. The mix would come ashore in a day or two, depending on the weather and the current and if there were storms in the area.

  “Your guys can keep storms away! We can call in skimmer boats, booms, anything. Maybe the Coast Guard can siphon off the gas before it gets in the water. Keep it away from the marshes!”

  “It’s a federal case now, cleaning up a coast. They won’t listen to us. By the time they decide what to do, it’ll be too late.”

  Images of the Gulf of Mexico and those pelicans covered in oil almost made me sick again. I know our situation was nowhere near the calamity in the Gulf, but we also depended on clean beaches for tourism and clean water for the fishing industry. “Where do they think the spill is headed?”

  I knew what he was going to say before I heard it. That’s how my luck went.

  “Depending on storms and full moon tides, it’ll reach the salt marsh soonest, and worst environmentally. The vegetation won’t survive, nor the clams and mussels and fish eggs that need the grasses, then the sea life and shorebirds that feed on the bottom rung of the food chain.”

  And M’ma.

  “Can’t you manipulate the winds to keep everything offshore?”

  “Sure, the bunch of us could. But not with the boys from Washington watching. It’s not a huge amount. There won’t be permanent damage.”

  Except to M’ma, maybe.

  “Fishing and clamming will be shut down, but it’s almost the end of the season anyway. The scallops and the lobsters are in harm’s way, but we can reseed them and replant the eelgrass they need. The area will recover, we hope.”

  Hope wasn’t good enough.

  A couple of days ago, all I had to worry about were Roy and Barry and Martin, the fireflies and their mother, the baby and my intentions not to get my heart broken. And my creativity, or lack thereof. Those were traumatizing enough to keep me rattled for months. The only thing I had going, until ten minutes ago, was that I didn’t have a boil on my ass.

  Now I did, kind of.

  I had oil in the grass.

  Good try, Dad.

  I won’t go to Saks.

  CHAPTER 32

  WE TOOK ATVS THIS TIME: absolutely terrifying velociraptors also known as all-terrain vehicles. They were open and fast and bumpy and noisy, especially in the numbers we had coming through the salt marsh toward the shore. The chief had called in a lot of equipment, on land and in the bay, with an esper in every seat, except for Matt. Everyone was unhappy to have him, except for me. I insisted we required his medical and veterinary skills. The chief made him ride with Mayor Applebaum, in case he saw too much.

  The mayor forgot where they were going and would have been lost if Matt hadn’t corrected their direction, to my satisfaction.

  “See?” I shouted to Piet as I clung to the side bar of the golf cart on steroids. “He is useful.”

  I couldn’t hear Piet’s mutters over the engine noises as we raced toward the water, but I thought it had something to do with frogs and bicycles. Good thing I didn’t hear it all, or I might have accused him of being paranoid in addition to jealous. Matt was trustworthy. I knew it.

  The air smelled better, too. Maybe the beetles had understood my orders to stir up a breeze to dissipate the stench, or maybe M’ma was closer to being free of the rotten flesh. Either way, we could breathe without face masks, without getting nauseous.

  When we got to the narrow strip of sandy muck that passed for a beach, everyone lined up their vehicles, turned off the engines, removed their helmets, and unloaded their gear. As few people as possible were going to walk back to M’ma’s position—which Matt would point out to them, I pointed out—to defend him, or get a good look at what we were lying to dozens of government agencies about. The rest of our army of police, firemen, weather wizards, water dowsers, and telekinetics were going to deal with the oil spill from the shore.

  Before Uncle Henry started to issue hushed assignments, we saw a faint light on the water, where no boat was supposed to be. The Coast Guard, after a bit of subliminal persuasion, had agreed to stand back until morning and close the entire area to water craft. Whatever vessel was out there had most of its lights off
, which was suspicious in itself.

  The chief held up one hand and we all listened: voices and laughter came from down the beach, so the trespassers had already landed in smaller boats. The voices sounded young, high-pitched, excited. Kids, we all decided, out for the thrill of forbidden danger. Most likely they’d taken out one of their parents’ boats without permission, too.

  We waited. The chief prepared to put the fear of God into the youngsters and send them on their way before we got down to the serious business of saving alien species. Only they weren’t all kids.

  When they got close enough for us to see their flashlights, one of the firemen turned on a portable floodlight.

  “Oops.” The feminine voice ended in a giggle. “Busted. Hello, Dad.”

  Her fireman father let out a string of curses from his days in the Marine Corps. Then he went after the man who led the pack of three kids, all with flashlights and butterfly nets. Two of his fire department friends held him back before he could bury Martin Armbruster in the sand.

  “You brought your students here, when it was strictly forbidden, Armbruster?” the chief of police demanded.

  “These aren’t my students. They are former students, now in the high school science honors program. It’s not an official school outing.”

  “You still broke the law. These are posted lands, with signs everywhere.”

  Martin blustered, although he kept his distance from the firemen. “No one can read signs in the dark.”

  “You knew damn well this was a closed area, possibly toxic, probably dangerous, yet you brought the kids anyway, teaching them to break the laws? For what, so you could catch a firefly?”

  “Barry says they’re a new weapon, maybe escaped from Plum Island.”

  “That man hasn’t spoken a true word yet,” Uncle Henry swore, popping a Tums in his mouth in memory. “Now take the kids and get out of here before I have to arrest you again.”

  But Martin could not lose face in front of his former students. He scuffed at the sand, like a bull about to charge. Then he caught sight of me and went totally apeshit, his control over his temper as thin as his hair.

  “She can be here, but I can’t?” he shouted, pointing a finger at me and kicking sand in my direction. “Who’d you fuck this time, bitch, to get preference?”

  The girl in her father’s arms giggled again, more nervously this time. Her father pulled her behind him, as if that could keep her from hearing.

  Martin wasn’t finished. “First the Brit with a title, then the rhinestone cowboy, now you’re screwing the scarface jerkoff who plays with fire? He using his hose on you good, Willow?”

  I couldn’t decide whether to be mad that he’d called me a bitch and Piet a scarface, or yell back that I wasn’t sleeping with him, only thinking about it.

  Piet settled it. “I’m no jerkoff, I take fires real serious, and Willow is no bitch. You are a dickhead, though.”

  I knew I liked him for a reason.

  Martin didn’t. He charged, head down. I screamed, so did the girls.

  Next thing I saw was Martin on the ground, Piet on top, and no one trying to stop the punches he was throwing. I was ready to give Martin a kick in the ass myself when I saw two more kids appear out of the tall marsh reeds.

  The girl stayed back, but the acne-faced boy asked, “You okay, Mr. Armbruster?”

  How okay could he be, flat on his back with blood pouring from his nose and five more strong men—and me—ready to hit him if he tried to get up? If this was the caliber of our best science students, we’d never solve the problems of global warming or renewable energy.

  The new girl laughed so hard she started swaying.

  “Damn,” Bill from the hardware store yelled, “that’s my brother’s kid, and she looks drunk.” He smelled her breath and her clothing. “Or stoned.”

  The boy tried to toss a beer can into the weeds, along with a joint, which had gone out this close to Piet.

  The chief of police went over to Martin, pushed Piet aside, and pulled the teacher to his feet. “You brought children here against all warnings, and provided underage minors alcohol and illegal drugs? You are in such deep shit, you’ll never teach again, when you get out of jail.”

  Someone handed Martin a towel to hold on his broken nose. We could barely make out his words around it, but we heard enough to know he’d lost his bravado along with his job. “I . . . nothing to do . . . beer . . . or dope. Ask the reporter.” He pointed his bloody towel back the way they had come.

  Bill bellowed, “Jensen, you son-of-a-bitch drug pusher, get out here now.”

  Barry staggered out of the tall grass, zipping his fly with one hand, and holding up another teenage girl with his other. She giggled. He pushed her away. No one claimed to be her uncle or father, so she sat down in the sand.

  Martin pointed at Barry now. Without the towel, we understood him perfectly: “He brought the filled cooler and offered them joints. I told him not to mess with the kids, but he said they all do it anyway.”

  “Shit, dude, it was only a joint,” the pimply boy tried to say. “He wouldn’t share the good stuff.”

  Now the girl in the sand snickered. “He would for a price. You know, a little blow for a little blow job.”

  The chief kneeled next to her. “How old are you, miss?”

  “Seventeen, but I’ll be eighteen in November.”

  “She said she was eighteen!” Barry yelled.

  “Gee, other people lie, too? She’s not lying now.” Uncle Henry used his walkie-talkie to get police from the roadblocks to come in and get Martin and Barry out of his sight. “Cuff them and read them their rights,” he told his men on the beach.

  Barry held up his press pass. “What about my story and freedom of the press? I know you’re trying to cover something up. It’s the people’s right to know what.”

  The chief held up his badge. “Trumped. Nothing entitles you to rape a child or contribute to the delinquency of a minor. To say nothing of possession of controlled substances. And trespassing, of course. Maybe threatening an endangered species.”

  Barry swung at Baitfish when the young policeman tried to put cuffs on him.

  “Add resisting arrest,” the chief told his men. To Barry, he said, “You can write lots of stories about the conditions in prison. A good-looking guy like you ought to have enough material for five to ten years. At least. And the label of child molester. That doesn’t go over so big with the inmates, I hear.”

  Barry screamed obscenities into the night.

  “Oh, and you’ll have to register as a sexual predator. Good thing your father owns the scandal sheets. He’s the only one who’ll hire a pig like you.”

  Before one of the younger cops clipped Martin’s handcuff to an ATV, the chief told the former teacher they were confiscating his boat to get the kids home. Martin could face their parents tomorrow. “As for you,” he addressed the teenagers, who were not giggling anymore at all, “maybe this is a lesson. Maybe not. Maybe spending the night in our cozy little police station will drum some sense into those empty heads of yours. You ought to have known better. I’ll be talking to your parents, too, and your school principal.”

  The girls started crying, clinging to each other. One of the boys wailed something about his college applications while the other male wiped his nose on his arm.

  “Now get this mess out of here,” Chief Haversmith ordered his men. “They’re littering the beach.”

  The rest of us waited until we couldn’t hear the ATVs or the boat’s engine anymore, then about ten of us followed Matt to the path we’d made to M’ma. We didn’t really need him as guide, because as soon as we pulled the driftwood tree trunk aside, we could see light up ahead, like a giant sunset though the marsh grasses. The maggoty glow worms were still blanketing their breakfast. The fireflies guarded their young.

  Better than the parents who let their kids go off with two jackass adults.

  On the way I tried to project an image to M’ma
of help coming, of the oil on the water, of the special people I was bringing. I got no response back, which was worse than the blood and the curses and the frightened kids.

  As soon as we got within Piet’s range, the lights ahead of us went off. Matt did not say anything, he simply adjusted his flashlight.

  Some of the men were breathing hard when we finally reached M’ma. They still gasped when they saw the huge mass of decay covered in writhing grubs with hummingbird-sized beetles hovering nearby. I was happy to see one of the firemen throw up in the grasses, proof that I wasn’t the only one affected by the sight.

  No one spoke, including M’ma. Damn.

  Matt did what he’d done that afternoon, brushing some of the maggots aside so we could see the firm skin beneath, and the faint movement of the creature’s own body.

  “See? It’s alive.”

  “Doesn’t look alive to me,” Mac, the fire captain, said. “That’s the tide coming in, moving the sand.” He gulped. “Or the maggots.”

  “He’s alive,” I insisted. “Just resting.”

  Everyone looked to Chief Haversmith, who always recognized the truth. He nodded. “Willy says it’s a male, it’s a male. She says it’s alive, it’s alive. So I guess we better go keep the oil from killing it.”

  Most of our small troop headed back to the others on the shore. Piet had to stay behind to guard M’ma and the beach grasses from the fire we were going to set to burn off the oil in the water. We couldn’t light a match with him nearby, of course, but no one wanted to admit that in front of Matt. Or that the firefighting canister he held was filled with nothing.

  I stayed behind to talk to the beetles. Matt wasn’t leaving my side, no matter how many glares Piet sent his way.

  I tried to explain to M’ma and his minions what we had to do, without using any words. Matt didn’t need to know about the mindspeak either.

  I fixed pictures in my head, pushing my brain to transmit the information, sending my emotions to emphasize the danger. Who knew if any of them understood about chemicals and their potential side effects?