by Sharon Lee
He was still with us, standing off to one side, maybe a victim of gridlock, now, himself.
“These ladies need wine and something to eat. Could you possibly guide them to the buffet?”
“Sure thing,” he said cheerfully, and bestowed an impartial grin on Peggy and myself. “Anytime you’re ready.”
“They are ready now!” Joan Anderson declared, which was a clear and present dismissal.
I nodded to Kyle.
“Lead on, Macduff.”
Half an hour later, wineglass in hand, I slid through the edges of the crowd. Peggy had at long last let go of my arm and was adrift elsewhere in the sea of people. I had seen Marilyn Michaud, Jess Robald, Michelle of the Garden Cafe, Anna and Tony, Tom Violette, Ahzan Dhar, Maria Belleville, and Henry again, with Janice Wing in close attendance.
Chamber President Dan Poirier had taken over one of the rare corners and was talking to a half-circle of admirers. I even thought I caught a glimpse of the town manager, and was duly impressed.
It was, I thought, a good thing that Gran had opted out. I was beginning to feel the strain and I wasn’t an elderly dryad who had stressed her system with a long absence from her tree.
In fact, I was starting to think about heading home. I’m not a big fan of large, confined crowds. First, though, I’d have to find Peggy and let her know that I was leaving, so she wouldn’t spend time looking for me when she was ready to go.
Among those things I wasn’t used to, was going places with a date.
I turned slightly in place, trying to remember the last place I’d seen Peggy—
“Hey there, doll. How come you ain’t down at the club, dancing the night away?”
I turned back, looking up into a recently familiar face.
“Hi, Daddy. How come you’re not tending bar?”
“Joanie’d kill me dead if I didn’t come to her party after she sent me an invite,” he said. “’Sides, what’d I be doin’ for business?”
“She didn’t invite everybody in town, did she?” I asked, only half-serious, considering the crowd.
“Sure looks like she did,” Daddy answered, echoing my thought. He hefted the bottle he was holding and had a swallow of beer.
Daddy cleaned up nice, the gray silk sports jacket over black turtleneck, and black jeans looked just fine for the event.
“Known Joanie long?” he asked me.
“Just met her. I got curious about what was going in, so I came in and introduced myself.”
He nodded. “Me and Joanie go all the way back to elementary school,” he said, and had another swig of beer. “Glad she’s back. Hell, glad I’m back.”
“I’m glad you’re both back,” I said, surprising myself with the sincerity of that sentiment—and Daddy, too, if I read the look he gave me right.
“No place like home, right, doll?” Another swig of beer, which apparently emptied the bottle, because he sighed and looked over his shoulder toward the place where the bar was set up. “Good to see you again,” he said. “Come by the club sometime when you’re off the clock. Bring a friend.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Sure you will,” he said, and with a grin and a nod, he pushed off into the crowd.
“See you,” I said to his retreating back. He didn’t, I thought, think I’d show up at his club. Might be nice to surprise him. I could bring Peggy with me and surprise all of us.
Speaking of Peggy . . .
I straightened up as tall as I go, resumed my interrupted pivot—
And damn’ near ran my nose into the golden clipper ship holding Joe Nemeier’s tie in place against his bright white shirt.
“Well, Ms. Archer, isn’t this a pleasant and unexpected delight!”
I went back two hasty steps—pure instinct, clearing enough room to bring my blade out, if it came to that—and looked up into his face.
Not a bad-looking man, Joe Nemeier, in an overgroomed, big-city sort of way. His nose was a little too short, and his face a little too narrow, but it was smooth and expensively tanned, like a face you might buy, mail-order, out of a models’ magazine.
His hair was blond, just starting to go to silver, cut sharp as glass. His eyes were that pale blue color you find inside snow banks on really cold January mornings.
In addition to the white shirt, he was wearing a navy blue suit, and accessorized with one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life—and that includes women from the Land of the Flowers, where everyone except the halflings are beautiful.
The jikinap at the base of my spine . . . stirred.
The land . . . quivered, ears perking.
Joe Nemeier . . . smiled.
The woman—girl, actually—was dressed in a simple, sleeveless mocha-colored dress. Her skin was alabaster, her hair the orange of a friendly campfire, and her eyes were amber. She was tucked between his arm and his side, one shapely hand on his breast pocket, one snaked ’round his back. Her head rested on his shoulder, orange hair spilling every which way; her belly was pressed against his side, and one long, shapely leg was wrapped ’round his knee.
She looked at me from under heavy lids, without interest, as if she were drugged.
Which, I thought with a shiver, she might well be.
“Here’s someone I want you to meet,” Joe Nemeier said, apparently to the girl. Her eyes opened wide; her face firmed.
“This is Kate Archer, Ulme,” Joe Nemeier said.
She raised her head to stare at me, suddenly more aware, the animosity in her face heating the air between us.
“You will stop hurting Joe,” she told me, her voice was quiet, but decisive, and bore a faint, seductive accent.
“I’m not doing anything to Joe,” I pointed out, keeping my tone reasonable.
She shook her hair back from an oval face as lovely as the moon, and I felt the touch of jikinap—of someone else’s jikinap—slide, ever-so-softly over my skin.
I shouldn’t have reacted, but that touch—bad, bad memories woke at that touch.
“Stop that!” I said sharply. And I flicked just the tiniest warning at her, like a spark against her fine white skin.
She laughed, low and throaty.
“Joe, I like her.”
“Well, good,” he said, looking at me with a chilly smile. “I’m sure you girls will get along fine. Now, if you’ll excuse us—”
“Kate!”
Peggy arrived at my side from who knew where, pink hair a little wilted, pink face flushed a darker pink, with wine, or the crowd, or both.
“Oh.”
She paused, and I felt her looking at Ulme.
“Introduce me to your friends,” she said, digging me in the side with an elbow.
Sighing, I did so.
“Peggy Marr, this is Joe Nemeier, and his . . . friend, Ulme. Mr. Nemeier, Ulme, Peggy is the manager of the midway.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Joe Nemeier said politely.
“Good evening, Peggy Marr,” Ulme murmured, her head back on Joe Nemeier’s shoulder, her eyes somnolent.
There was a pause in which Peggy simply looked at Ulme, then she turned to me.
“You ready to go? ’Cause I tell you what, I’m beat—and tomorrow’s Opening Day!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Friday, June 16
High Tide 2:54 A.M.
Sunrise 5:00 A.M. EDT
“So,” Peggy said casually, as she slowed the Prius for the stop sign at the top of Archer Avenue, “are they friends of yours?”
I had been thinking—and thinking hard—about what it meant that Joe Nemeier had been among the invited guests at Joan Anderson’s reception; that he arrived with a a jikinap-enabled houri draped around him like a fox stole; what if anything was I going—was I obligated—to do about either of those things . . .
“Kate.”
I blinked, realized I had heard her voice, but hadn’t registered the words. “Sorry; I missed what you said.”
“I asked if they
were friends of yours—Joe and Ulme.”
“Friends . . .” I turned in my seat, as far as the seat belt would let me, and looked at the shadow of Peggy’s face in the darkness.
“Peg, Joe Nemeier is a very dangerous man.”
“Archer, I’m from Jersey; I get that.”
I opened my mouth to tell her just exactly how dangerous—and closed it again.
For one thing, and Jersey or no Jersey, Peggy was a normal, everyday human person. A discussion of jikinap, Ozali, and interlinked worlds was therefore dead before it even got under way.
For another thing—despite the best efforts of the Coast Guard, the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, and the trenvay of Archers Beach, Joe Nemeier remained at liberty.
And the question you had to ask yourself, if you were me, was—why exactly was that?
Possibly there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant taking him up. Everybody in town knowing you’re a drug lord just doesn’t hold up in court like hard, indisputable evidence that you’re a drug lord.
Or . . . and this was the scary one . . .
What if the MDEA had their evidence and were keeping an eye on their man, waiting for him to lead them to the Big Guy?
Peggy turned right down Walnut Street. I could feel the patience coming off of her in waves.
“Sorry . . .” I said again, “crowds take me that way sometimes. So—no. Joe Nemeier isn’t a friend of mine, sort of the opposite, actually. And I met his lady friend for the first time about two minutes before you showed up.”
She nodded.
“What’s the nasty between you and Joe, if you don’t mind my asking?”
At least the answer to that was nice and straightforward.
“Property line dispute,” I said promptly.
“Well, that’s something that can get ugly. Any chance of you guys kissing and making up?”
“Not too much. He not only rejected my lawyer’s suggestion that he was in the wrong, he tried to make his point stick by setting my property on fire.”
“On—! Kate, not your house!”
“No, no. I own another piece of land in town—a mixed wood lot. The family goes ’way back, like I told you, so there’s not only Archer Park, up where the old homestead used to be, there’s the parcel over on Heath Hill.”
“What’s old money doing operating a merry-go-round in a run-down amusement park?”
She braked for the stop sign at the end of Walnut Street, looked both ways, and took an easy right onto Grand.
“We here in Maine have a phrase for families who’ve held parcels of property for a long time, and still have to work for a living—land poor. And the carousel belongs to me, too, you know. A woman needs an occupation.”
Peggy laughed.
“What do you really do, Archer?”
“I run the family carousel,” I said. “Really. I was away for a couple years, slinging code and hacking programs, but it got old.”
“So you came back home.”
“So I came back home.”
She made the turn into Dube Street.
“What’re you gonna do when you get bored?” she asked, sliding the Prius in next to my Subaru on the gravel carport behind Tupelo House.
“I’ve asked myself that, but so far, I haven’t been bored.”
“How long you been home?”
“Eight weeks,” I confessed, and she laughed.
“Jury’s still out. Hell, the evidence isn’t in.”
“True.” I hit the button, retracted the seat belt and popped my door.
“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” I said, as we walked around the corner of the house.
“We should have a date night once a week,” she said. “Girls need to—”
She stopped—talking and walking, her attention completely centered on the steps leading up to my front door. I’d left the porch light on, but there were still plenty of shadows . . . and then I saw what—who—she was staring at.
The land exploded into riotous, noisy hosanna, damn’ near knocking me off my feet.
I kept my balance—barely—and walked forward, trying to quiet the racket at the same time.
“Hey,” I said, softly.
“Hey, yourself,” a deep voice answered from the shadow closest to the wall of the house, and now my stomach—or maybe my heart—joined the land in doing cartwheels.
“Everything all right, Kate?”
That was Peggy, right up beside me, glaring at the big shadow reclining on my steps. “You need me to call anybody?”
“No, it’s fine,” I told her. “Really. Borgan, this is Peggy Marr, replacing Jens as midway manager. She’s renting the studio for the Season.”
“Glad to meet you, Peggy Marr. Always glad to meet one of Kate’s friends.”
He didn’t get up, which was probably reasonable. If it wasn’t something else entirely. I felt a tiny shiver of worry, while the land continued to holler and yell its unparalleled delight.
“Likewise,” Peggy said, and turned to me. “You’re sure everything’s okay?” she asked, by which she meant, Is it safe for me to leave you alone with this guy?
“I’m sure,” I said, by which I meant, Yes, I’m safe with him.
She hesitated, then took my word for it.
“’Kay, then. G’night, both. Got to get my beauty sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day!”
“See you then,” I said, and Borgan added, “Sleep sound, Peggy Marr.”
That . . . was suspicious, given the habits of trenvay and Guardians, but there wasn’t anything overtly dangerous about laying a sound sleep on somebody coming home late from a party, with a big day directly ahead of her.
She nodded, and walked past us, giving the stairs a wide berth. I heard her heels tapping on the stone, the grate of the key entering the lock, the faint creak of hinges. The door closed with a decisive thump, followed by the snap of the deadbolt.
“Sounds like I might’ve disrupted some plans,” Borgan said, as I came closer to the steps.
“Last I knew, Peggy had just recently fallen in lust with Joe Nemeier’s new girlfriend, who is a jikinap user, by the way.”
“If you say so,” he shifted on the step, putting himself into what light there was, and suddenly I could see his face—broad and brown, black eyes glittering like obsidian under strong black brows. He was . . . thinner than I remembered, the lines at his mouth and eyes etched ever-so-slightly deeper.
He was wearing a dark—blue, maybe?—sweater. A thin braid snaked over his shoulder; here and there a bead caught what light there was.
“That’s a nice outfit, Kate. Rich lookin’.”
“Glad you like it; I’m afraid Peggy took the shine right out of me.”
“Not hereabouts.” He tipped his head slightly to look up into my face, which was as novel a viewpoint for him as it was for me. “Looking fine.”
“I wish I could return the compliment.” I reached out, fingers finding his braid. It was warm and heavy . . . seductive, and I knew better, but—
I didn’t let go.
“I s’pose I’m not healed whole, yet,” Borgan said, smiling up at me, and igniting a slow burn in my stomach. “Heard you call, though, and knew you wouldn’t fetch me back unless it was important . . .”
Guilt shot through me. I dropped his braid.
“Hey, now.” He extended a hand, shook himself, and let it drop before he captured my wrist. “So why did you call me?”
I took a breath—and another one. He wasn’t well; I’d inflicted far more damage than I had thought—which was going a ways, since I thought I’d killed him—and I had been selfish enough to just arbitrarily decide that he’d been away long enough . . .
“Kate?”
“I missed you—” I blurted. “I just . . . wanted to . . . talk to you. That’s all.” I bit my lip and looked away, disgusted with myself.
“Well now . . .” he said. “That gives a man some hope, to be missed so bad after a week—”
I looked
up.
“Eight weeks,” I said.
Borgan’s face went still, the smile fading from his eyes.
“Say again.”
“You’ve been gone eight weeks. This is June fifteen—well, sixteen, by now. You went—you went into the sea—”
“On April twenty-seventh,” he interrupted. “I remember.” He looked past me, apparently at nothing, or at a memory.
“No, I won’t ask if you’re certain of the dates—unless sweet Peggy’s fuddled, too. Eight weeks? It was a hard blow you dealt me, Kate, but—I missed all of May, then?” He looked back to me.
“Who’s fishing Hum’s boat?”
“Finn,” I said, relieved to be able to set his mind to rest on this point, if on nothing else. “I—guess she didn’t give you the message?”
“She?” he asked, eyebrows rising.
“Daphne,” I elucidated and, when no nod of recognition was forthcoming, expanded on the theme. “I walked down to the harbor last week, just to—and Gray Lady was at dock. There was a woman aboard who told me her name was Daphne. She said she served the Son of the Sea. I asked her to give you a message, from Mrs. Vois—that she missed your visits and hoped to see you again, soon.”
“What’d she look like, this Daphne?”
“Blonde, slender, taller than me”—that didn’t really narrow the field much—“cheekbones that she probably insures. Not awfully pleasant, and wanted to make sure I caught the fact that she’s not a fan. Told me that the land doesn’t order the ocean, and that Mrs. Vois was nothing to concern a Son of the Sea.”
“The fog’s starting to burn off this,” Borgan said. His mouth lifted at one side, but I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or . . . something else. “Daphne this time, is it? Well.”
“You know her?”
“Let’s say I know her kind,” he answered. He stretched out a hand, this time touching me, oh-so-lightly, on the back of hand.
I shivered in delight, in . . . desire.
“I thank you, for calling me back. You were right, Kate; I’ve been gone too long.” He grinned, wide and slow. “Though I’m not sure I’m so encouraged now, that it took you eight weeks to miss me.”