Love and Other Wild Things

by Molly Harper

  Jillian placed a white banker’s box on Zed’s desk. “I found a bunch of journals and stuff in her house. I thought you might help me look through them. I haven’t read much, but it looks like she really was conducting her own research. She wanted to write her own book about the rift, and part of her research was determining whether the rift could be expanded.”

  “Does it say anything in her notes about trying to kill me in the library?” Dani asked.

  Jillian shook her head and handed Dani the brown, leather-bound diary. “Nope. I don’t see a section about ‘planned assaults.’ But I haven’t read very far, maybe it’s more toward the end.”

  “Is there any way of knowing how much damage she inflicted on the rift?” Zed asked.

  “Not really. I can say that I feel more energy leaking out of the rift than I did before, but I don’t exactly have a scale for this sort of thing,” Dani said. “I just don’t understand why. Why would someone do this?”

  “Because they want to cause a panic and sabotage the League’s efforts to gently integrate magique into the world,” said Jillian.

  “Or because they’re trying to create more magique,” Zed suggested. “It could feed into the whole panic motive. Or it could be another Simon Malfater, trying to get magical powers for ordinary people.”

  “Is there any way to fix what was done?” Bael asked.

  “Sure, it could take me a few months, but I can do it. Of course, every single human in Mystic Bayou could be a magique by then,” Dani said.

  “We should warn people,” Bael told Zed. “Give them the choice.”

  Zed nodded, a grim expression on his face.

  “I’m sorry. I wish I’d said something sooner,” said Dani.

  “Well, yeah, that would have been handy, but no use getting upset over it. It’s not like we can go back and fix it.” Jillian paused and glanced at Bael. “We don’t have anyone who can go back in time to fix it, right?”

  Zed and Bael shook their heads. “No.”

  Jillian frowned. “The one magical power we don’t have around here.”

  15

  Dani

  Dani slid a freshly baked apple crumble out of Zed’s oven and set it on a cooling rack. The man had become downright pouty about the fact that she’d baked one for everybody in town except him, so she’d finally broken down and crumbled a bunch of apples. The contemplative exercise of peeling, slicing, and mixing had been good for Dani’s mental clarity. Everything felt so jumbled up since Maureen had been found dead, she couldn’t seem to think one thought at a time.

  Tox results on Maureen hadn’t come back yet, but Ivy reported that nothing about her body seemed abnormal. It was more than likely Maureen’s body had simply succumbed to the effects of working with the rift. Still, her death nagged at Dani, in terms of its lack of logic and why Dani had believed her bullshit story in the first place. Dani liked to think she was a better judge of character than that, but clearly, she needed to up her cynicism quotient.

  Why would Maureen go to these lengths to manipulate the rift? Why manipulate the rift at all? Dani had never met another dynakinetic who wanted to open a rift. They were too unpredictable, too dangerous. Maureen pretended to have experience, but how much of that was a lie?

  And when she thought about the attack at the library, really thought it out, did Maureen have the strength to wrestle Dani to the floor? Could it be that Maureen wasn’t working alone? Could there be someone else out there, looking to unravel Dani’s work and hurt Mystic Bayou?

  Dani had worked extensively at the rift site in the week since she’d made her confession about her “coworker” to Jillian, and never alone. Zed had accompanied her to the site every day, watching her back. She’d managed to repair most of the damage to the rift, convincing Zed that maybe an emergency warning to the Bayou’s citizens was unnecessary for the moment. But the work left her so exhausted that Zed had to practically carry her home every night.

  And so, Zed would come home to his own apple crumble.

  Watching the steam rise off her perfect brown and bubbly creation, Dani realized, she was baking for a man. And waiting for him to come home to their cave. She glanced down at the apron she was wearing to protect her favorite sundress.

  Dani sighed. “I’m sorry, feminism.”

  She wondered if feminism would forgive her if she explained that magical thing Zed could do with his tongue?

  She took off the apron and checked the time. She’d planned on dropping by Jillian’s office and then coming right back to the cave for an early dinner and a thorough oral workout for Zed. She liked to think she was striking a healthy work-life balance.

  Just as she picked up her purse, an unknown number from an international area code she certainly didn’t recognize lit up Dani’s phone screen. Frowning, Dani swiped her thumb across the screen and pressed it to her ear. “Hello?”

  Her father’s rich baritone filled Zed’s kitchen. “I don’t know what you’re up to Danica, but you can’t send people here to the ashram looking for me, disrupting our peace. You really upset the guru. I’m on kitchen duty for a month. Do you know badly you’ve upset my community?”

  Dani blinked rapidly, trying to process what the hell her father was talking about. She hadn’t sent anyone to India. She didn’t really know that many people from India, much less in India—

  Wait.

  She suddenly remembered Zed calling Rajesh Agarwal from his office and shutting the door behind him before the conversation got interesting. Had Zed sent some friend of Rajesh’s to the Unnamed Ashram to look for her dad?

  Yeah, sorry feminism, Zed deserved this crumble.

  “You know, Journey, I really could not care less,” Dani said, slapping her apron against the counter.

  “I don’t care what negativity you’ve spread in that backward country you call home,” Journey seethed. “I’m not leaving India. I haven’t reached my enlightenment yet. I need more time.”

  “More time? How much more time? A few weeks, a year? Just enough time for the statute of limitations to run out?” Dani scoffed.

  “Statute—what are you talking about?”

  “I know, Journey. I know all about the loans and the mortgages you took out on the farm. I can’t believe you would do that—strike that, actually, I can completely believe you’ve done this, because as far as I can tell you have the moral compass of a brick.”

  “I didn’t take anything my own mother didn’t offer me freely, out of love,” Journey insisted, his tone becoming reedier and shrill. “Because that’s what family does for each other. That money was my birthright and I’m putting it to much better use than any good it might do in Elkhorn.”

  He spat the word “Elkhorn” like it was a mortal insult. Asshole.

  “It’s funny that you were so strong in your convictions that you couldn’t tell Grandad what you were doing,” Dani shot back.

  “Because it wasn’t any of his business. I can’t believe you’re so focused on something as fleeting as money. You’re focused on the past. I’m focused on the eternal.”

  “The past? As in primordial 2016?” she snorted.

  “Why can’t you just forgive? Why do you have to be so negative?” he whined. “Why can’t you remember all of the things I’ve done for you instead of all the things you think I did wrong?”

  Dani groaned. “You know, you should record the things you say and play them back, so you can hear the same level of dumbass that I do.”

  “I won’t accept this abusive language from my own child.”

  “Here’s something you need to accept. Despite all your fuckery, I found a way to keep the farm in the family,” she growled. “You didn’t manage to accomplish whatever sad, adolescent revenge you were trying to get against Grandad. And another thing—I will find a way to get you back home. For once in your life, you’re going to be held accountable for your actions.”

  Journey gasped. “Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m your father!”
/>   “No, you’re my sperm donor. You’ve never been my father.”

  Over Journey’s tirade about “family” and “forgiveness,” Dani ended the call and buried her face in her hands. The whole episode reminded her so much of her last interaction with Journey, after he’d come home for Gramma’s funeral. During the private viewing, he had spent a lot of time trying to convince Grandad that it was a waste to bury Gramma with her wedding ring. He tried to argue that Dani would like to have it, but Dani knew if Journey got his way, he would be driving away from the farm with the ring in his pocket. Grandad was determined that his wife would be buried with the ring. So Dani spent most of the visitation planted between Journey and the casket.

  It had taken hours to distract her father with some other shiny object and when her self-appointed guard duty was over, she ran down the hallway and threw up in a wastebasket near the “processing” area. She would never forget the way that hallway smelled, like overblown roses and antiseptic and—

  Dani’s head shot up so hard she whacked it on a cabinet. That smell. She knew what the over-sweet chemical perfume smell was. Formaldehyde. Who in town would smell like—

  Aw, hell.

  Ivy Portenoy.

  Ivy Portenoy had attacked her in the library. Ivy Portenoy had tried to strangle her.

  But why?

  Personal resentment? Dani couldn’t think of any way she’d harmed Ivy, other than turning down her invitation to join the weekend card games. And no one took Magic: The Gathering that seriously. Well, some people did, but still, trying to smash Dani’s head over the rejection seemed like an overreaction.

  Professional rivalry? Ivy had nothing to do with the rift. She worked in a completely different department and didn’t seem to know anything about Dani’s work.

  Maybe Ivy was secretly in love with Zed?

  Zed had made his preference for Dani pretty clear to anyone in the Bayou with eyes, and he wasn’t exactly subtle in his disdain for the “creepy little Wednesday Addams girl.” But if Ivy had feelings for Zed, that would definitely make Dani a target.

  Before Dani could contemplate it further, she grabbed her purse and ran for the door. Ultimately, the library attack didn’t matter nearly as much as more important questions—did Ivy have something to do with the damage to the rift? Or with Maureen Sherman’s death? What if the person investigating Maureen’s “heart attack” was the person who caused it?

  Dani jogged toward her car, dialing Zed’s number. Before the call could connect, a glowing orange sphere, like a small sun, came flying over the lawn and struck Dani right in the belly. Dani’s legs flopped forward as she slammed into the ground like a rag doll, her breath knocked clear out of her lungs. Her hand hit the ground with a thwack and Dani heard the crunch of breaking glass. She assumed that was her cell phone, which wasn’t good.

  “Ow . . . Fuck.” Dani wheezed, attempting to force breath into her lungs. Lara Gershwin’s face floated over her. The weirdly focused receptionist from Jillian’s office grinned down at Dani, waggling her fingers. She stomped on Dani’s phone, shattering it completely.

  “Shit,” Dani mumbled before losing consciousness.

  Dani woke in a wheel-barrow, her legs flopped over the sides, ferns smacking her in the face as Lara pushed her through the underbrush. She wasn’t sure why, but being hauled through the swamp in the same conveyance her Grandad used for cow manure was incredibly insulting to her wobbly sensibilities.

  “What in the fuck!” Dani attempted to sit up, but found she didn’t have the motor functions to make that happen. Her central nervous system seemed to have yelled “nope” and shut down. “What in the hell did you hit me with?”

  “Oh, just a little construct I’ve been saving, just for you.” Lara chirped.

  Dani flopped back into the metal bucket, watching the foliage pass overhead. The smell of honeysuckle was unmistakable. “I’m assuming you’re taking me out to the rift?”

  “This can be the one time that you don’t make an ass out of you for assuming!”

  “Why? Why would you do this?” Dani asked.

  “Same reason as you. I’m being paid to. Not by the League, of course, but by outside parties invested in opening up the rift for their own purposes.”

  “What outside parties?”

  Lara shrugged. “I’ll be honest. I don’t really know. They’d heard of my work, sent me a deposit, instructed me in how to apply for a job with the League. It was easy enough once I was hired. Once my reputation for being competent was established, I just had to wait for my opportunity to get assigned to the Mystic Bayou project. Not that many League employees were fighting for the chance to move down here.”

  “Why would outside parties be interested in opening the rift?” Dani asked.

  “Again, I don’t know. I don’t care. They were willing to pay handsomely and their checks cleared. That’s good enough for me.”

  “Were you working with Maureen?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, I’d heard of her from her deluded posts on the internet where she pretended to understand our talent,” Lara said, rolling her eyes. “And I lured her here, offered her money for private research on the rift, but told her to pretend to be with the League in order to fly under the radar around town. I told her there would be fewer questions that way.”

  “For plausible deniability?” Dani guessed.

  Lara’s smile was downright evil in its glee. “It never hurts to have a scapegoat. I get to do my work behind the scenes as she flings her half-assed work around accomplishing nothing. And if anything went wrong, I’d pretend not to know who she was and call League security on her. We never met in person after all. She couldn’t prove I was the one corresponding with her.”

  “I’m assuming something went wrong? What with her being dead and all?” Dani suggested.

  “The pompous bitch wanted an appointment with Jillian,” Lara said, all indignity. “Just strolled into my office and demanded to see Jillian, because she was sure that Dr. Ramsay would want to know all about her breakthroughs with the rift. She wouldn’t take no for an answer! She told me she was going to report me to the League for ‘impeding the progress of science!’ She tried to approach Jillian away from the office!”

  “The nerve,” Dani muttered.

  “So I did the only thing I could do. I went to that grubby little house she was renting and offered a slice of your apple crumble as an ‘apology.’ Jillian has been hoarding it in her mini-fridge for a week. Maureen swore she never ate sweets, but she wolfed it down quick enough. She didn’t even ask about the secret ingredient I’d sprinkled on top. A little powdered foxglove, right out of that awful Clarissa Berend’s garden. Just enough to set off that nasty heart condition of hers. All I had to do was keep her meds out of reach and the digitalis did all the work.” Lara reached into her shirt pocket and removed a tiny glass vial filled with a fine gray powder.

  Dani gasped. “You used my Gramma’s crumble recipe to murder someone? That’s it, stop the wheelbarrow, I’m kicking your ass.”

  “I don’t think so. I think you’re probably just going to sit there in that wheelbarrow, trying to breathe properly, until I take you out to the rift site and kill you. I’ll make it look like an accident. You were just so upset over your failure to contain the rift that you spent too much time out here. You took on too much and your poor heart couldn’t take it. I mean, you are carrying around a few extra pounds, your heart’s probably pretty strained already.”

  “Fuck. Off,” Dani shot back.

  “Any more questions?” Lara asked.

  “Why in the hell do you smell like formaldehyde?”

  Lara laughed. “Film processing. It’s part of the final wash. Call me a purist but I just don’t think you can call yourself a real photographer unless you print from your own film. The problem is that no matter how many times you wash your hands, you can still smell it for days.”

  “Well, that explains it. I’ve only used a digital camera.”

&
nbsp; Lara glowered at her, as if this was a grievous offense, worth killing Dani over as a matter of principal.

  “I owe that creepy little girl at the morgue a big apology,” Dani said. “Did you use digitalis on Bardie Boone? To make her sick the night you tried to strangle me at the library?”

  “No, dragons don’t respond to digitalis, so I had to use some good old-fashioned arsenic. She metabolized it quickly and with only a little bit of stomach trouble, but it was enough to take her out of commission for the night,” she said. “And before you ask, yes, I tried to kill you. Because you were annoying me and I have occasional snaps of temper just like everybody else.”

  “Most people have snaps of temper than don’t involve attempted murder, you psycho.”

  “Well, fortunately for you, I’m over it,” Lara said. “But unfortunately, you stumbled into my plans like a chubbier version of Scooby Doo—

  “Fuck you, I’m awesome.”

  Lara ignored her. “And now you know everything and there’s no way you’ll keep your fat mouth shut.”

  “I’m thinking you’re projecting some pretty serious body-image issues, Lara. Along with being a murderous psycho.”

  “So I’m going to have to kill you. I’ll drain you dry, and dump you here, and make it look like you just crumpled under the pressure from the rift,” Lara said casually, as if she was discussing grocery shopping. “You’d been struggling lately, keeping up with the demands of the rift and I doubt your skills have ever really been what you claimed they were.”

  “Again, fuck you, because I’m awesome.”

  Dani could feel that they’d reached the rift, even before Lara dumped her out of the wheelbarrow like garbage. She flopped to the ground, dead weight, unable to so much as raise her arms to break her fall.

  Lara nudged her with her boot, flipping Dani onto her back. Dani wheezed, “Are we done with the crazy supervillain monologue portion of the proceedings?”