Downpour g-6

by Kat Richardson

  “Yeah, I don’t get that. Why did she rob the greenhouse of a plant that was growing on the ground outside it?”

  “I think she needed to rip the plant apart, but since she’s connected to the power there, she didn’t want to hurt one that was growing in the living soil around the lake. I’ve only seen her take things that weren’t alive. She knows things she won’t tell me, and, as far as I can tell, she takes a positive delight in messing with Ridenour.”

  “Sounds like mutual hate. It doesn’t seem like much of a reason to kill someone’s father, though.”

  “I’m still not sure about Ridenour.”

  “You kind of like him.”

  “I do, but that’s not a factor in guilt. I’m sure the ley weaver didn’t kill Leung or Strother. It’s not interested in human problems and it doesn’t seem to move away from its . . . sculpture or whatever you’d call it. It wouldn’t have to wreck a car since it could just draw the energy out of someone like Leung, and there’d have been no ghost left to tell me a crime had been committed. I’m reasonably convinced Willow isn’t responsible, either. That leaves Jewel, Costigan, and Ridenour.”

  “Unless there’s someone else.”

  I heaved a sigh. “The mysterious Number Five. I just don’t know. But I can’t get that anchor stone back without solving the murders, and I must shut down the loose power around the lakes. It’s not safe as it is and I’m not sure it’ll be better back the way it was. Jewel’s not the weak and gracious grande dame she wants people to believe her to be. She’s greedy, and until she got sick, she was powerful and dangerous, and people are still scared of her. But I think she usurped the power when she built the house. I don’t think it’s really hers, which may be why she’s sick now.”

  “So where are we going now?”

  “To find out who knew we were at Leung’s place.”

  Geoff Newman scowled at us when he opened the door, but he spoke in a low voice. “What do you want? And who’s this?”

  I ignored the latter question. “I want to know who sent a shambling army of walking corpses to visit me last night at your father-in-law’s place.”

  Newman’s mouth dropped open and his aura pulsed with alarm. “Who what?”

  I pushed past him into the house. Tendrils of yellow and sickly green energy stroked at my legs, but nothing stopped me. Quinton came silently in my wake.

  Newman shut the door behind us and stared at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Where’s Jewel? Maybe she does.”

  “Jewel’s resting. She had a rough night. The rain—” He cut himself off.

  A piece of the puzzle about Jewel’s illness clicked into place in my mind. “Rain makes her weaker, doesn’t it?” I demanded. Newman hung his head but didn’t reply. “At least I can assume she wasn’t out directing zombies to my door. But who was?”

  He looked back up, imploring. “Please . . . please keep your voice down. Come on in here and we can talk.”

  He motioned us to follow him toward the unused wing of the house. Well, not entirely unused, since the room we walked into was a kitchen that was plainly an active work area. It was a big space that led into a dining room facing the lake. An ill-advised little dining nook had been built at the end of the kitchen and facing the front of the house where it would never get the sun or a view of anything but the steep road up to the highway. The area had been converted into a makeshift office, and I wondered why Geoff Newman hadn’t taken over one of the doubtlessly empty rooms upstairs. I noticed that the writhing tendrils of energy didn’t penetrate very far into the kitchen, so maybe that was the reason he’d chosen it—a refuge from the demands of his wife.

  He shifted papers aside and closed up an open laptop computer to make room for us all at the small table. He sat in a white kitchen chair and faced us once Quinton and I were seated on the padded bench below the window.

  He played with an empty coffee cup, but he didn’t offer us any coffee.

  “Tell me about Jewel,” I prompted.

  “Sometimes the rain makes her sick. Not all the time, just storms like last night. I don’t understand it. Jewel always says the water is being taken away from her. I don’t see how that can be, since the water is falling down on all of us, but that’s what she says. Lately she’s been pretty sickly, like she just doesn’t have any energy at all most of the time.”

  “When did it start?”

  “It’s gotten worse over time, so it’s hard to say when it started. She’s been having troubles since we met and that’s why we’re here—she said building the house right here would be better for her, so we did that.”

  “Did it help?”

  “A bit, at first. After her stepmother passed was when she first started having bad days. When Jonah died, they happened more often. She talked about demons a lot. At first I thought maybe she was a little . . . touched in the head, but I know that’s not true now. I know there’s something about the lake that . . . I don’t know how to say it.”

  “It’s the source of her power,” I supplied. “Right now the power is uncontrolled, so anyone who knows how can take some of it. When they do, they drain power your wife’s been relying on and she gets sicker. When it rains hard enough, I suspect the power in the lake gets drawn to the surface, like osmosis, and it’s easy for other mages to suck it off and use it. They might not actually be trying to hurt her, but the effect is the same. The system is supposed to be held down by a single nexus point under this house. That’s why she wanted to build here, so she could control the nexus rather than drawing power from it at a distance. But right now the nexus isn’t anchored properly and others are using the power that Jewel’s never truly been able to control. That’s what she wants me to fix.”

  “I understand that. Sort of. What I don’t understand is why they have to kill anybody. Is someone going to try to kill Jewel?”

  In a bland voice I asked, “Would you care if she died?”

  Newman looked appalled, the energy around his head sinking into a clinging, muck green shroud. “Of course I would!”

  “Why? Don’t say you love her. I know you care about her, but that’s not the same thing.” There had never been any sign of the dancing sparks between them that I associated with love.

  “I do care! She’s a hard woman to like, it’s true, but she—she makes things better. Do you have any idea what it’s like to do good work? To know what you’re doing is difficult, but necessary, and that you’ll keep on doing it, even if no one notices and no one cares?”

  I’d done plenty of “right” things that went without acknowledgment or reward, but they weren’t the same. He wasn’t talking about Jewel’s trying to restore the lake; he was talking about his own part—the silent support. “I’ve seen it,” I replied, knowing it was sitting beside me, and for a moment I felt the same confusion and despair that had kept me awake in the night, studying the ceiling.

  “Then you know how I’d care. So . . . is someone going to kill my wife?”

  “I don’t think so. I’d guess they can’t touch her directly and they don’t really want her to go away, because then Willow would become the keeper of the nexus and they certainly don’t want a rogue sorcerer like her in charge of the power around the lake. She may seem like just a crazy young woman, but, if I’m right, Willow’s potentially very dangerous to anyone who is trying to grab power from the lake.”

  “I don’t understand. Why Willow?”

  “Willow is Sula’s daughter, and, until you built this house for Jewel, the nexus had been husbanded by Sula’s family for generations. All the other mages are Johnny-come-latelies, not people who were born here. They aren’t connected to the power; they’re just leeches. Magic tends to run in families and, in a place like this, old connections mean a lot; Willow, not Jewel, is the rightful guardian of the nexus.”

  Newman looked stricken, but he kept his gaze down. “Jewel never did like her. She said Sula had made Steven reject her after Willow was born
for being half-black, for not being Chinese enough, like Willow. I told her it couldn’t be true. Sula always had tried to be our friend and she looked after Jonah like her own son, even though he was—well, he was a bully, arrogant, and mean with it. He and Jewel used to be friends, but then they started to fight like cats and dogs. He used to say horrible things—horrible things to Jewel! He’d make her so angry and frustrated, she’d be sick for days. I wasn’t so sorry when he died and I’m not going to apologize for that.”

  “You don’t have to. Geoff, did it never seem strange to you that this county’s overwhelmingly white, but most of the . . . powerful people I’ve met around the lake aren’t? They’re black, or Chinese, or mixed like Jewel. . . .”

  “Did you ever notice how Western history is mostly white man’s history? Even when people of color do something important, it’s treated like a fluke or it’s buried under the contributions of whites. Washington is full of people who aren’t white and they get treated like they don’t exist, even though they worked just as hard or harder to make this place a safe home. They built roads and ships and cleared trees and hauled coal out of these mountains. They worked in logging camps and rail gangs and mines.”

  He looked up suddenly. “Hell, half the workers who made the highway out there weren’t white. And where do you suppose they lived while they were cutting roads and laying rails and cooking and cleaning for white folks at the fancy hotels down at the springs and on the lake? They lived out here where there was no running water or sewers or boardinghouses, because the trip up the mountain took too long if you worked twelve hours a day, six days a week. They lived in shacks and tents. And they were mostly black and Chinese and Indians. Why shouldn’t they be the ones to find some magic—if there is such a thing? Don’t they deserve it?”

  So it was a creole magic, shaped by the beliefs and practices of the people who lived here even when the weather was terrible, the ones who couldn’t afford to leave. When the magic got loose, it attracted magic users whose skills weren’t of the schooled and methodical practices I’d seen with Mara and Carlos. In its current state, it benefited the rogues and inventors more than it benefited the more traditional form Jewel used with her cards and her books.

  “Yes, they do,” I said, but I was thinking.... The natives had stayed away from the lake, fearing the spirits of those drowned under Storm King’s wrath. No one had laid claim to the magic or tried to govern and protect it until Sula’s family came along, quietly staying below anyone’s notice. They must have worked very subtly to keep the lake’s power in balance and under control, helping to shape it into a hybrid unrecognizable to most Western mages—until something had happened to set it loose and Sula died without passing that control on properly. Jewel had benefited from the disordered magic, at first, and usurped the nexus. She must have fought with her brother over it and they’d both shut Willow out—Jewel at the source and Jonah at the circle beside the family house. But Jewel wasn’t Sula’s child; she wasn’t the rightful owner. She didn’t have the right tools, and instead of controlling the nexus, she was now controlled by it. Whenever someone else used “her” magic, they drained her and she didn’t know how to stop them, short of destroying them all.

  But someone else was determined to control the lake—someone with little power, unable to oppose Jewel directly. So they got others to ruin her, encouraging other mages to draw on the lake, running her down until Jewel was too weak to stop them. And so long as Willow was on the run, she wasn’t likely to grab the power back—she didn’t even know it was hers to take.

  “Geoff, who knew you’d given me the key to Steven’s cabin?” I asked.

  “No one. I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Jewel must have known.”

  He gave a hard shake of his head. “No. Not even her. I—I wanted you nearby, in case . . .”

  “You never wanted me here.”

  “I didn’t. At first. But once I couldn’t stop you, I thought . . . well, I thought I ought to get you on my side and get you close at hand, in case things got worse. But you didn’t trust me. I didn’t know you were at Steven’s house. I swear. And neither did Jewel. I didn’t tell anyone I’d given you the key because I can’t trust any of them, either.”

  I couldn’t see any sign that he was lying in his body language or his aura. Neither of those is foolproof, but Newman hadn’t been a very good liar earlier and I had no reason to believe he’d suddenly learned how. “Well, one of them figured it out.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t say anything and I don’t know what to do now.”

  I pitied him, but I was also a little angry that he’d snuck around and manipulated and not told me the truth earlier.

  “I don’t know who tumbled to it, either. But I can find out. Talk to Jewel. Tell her she’ll have to lure the other mages here so I can see them all.”

  “Why would they come?”

  “Because your wife is the queen bee. Ridenour told me she runs the community. She’s still the nexus keeper, even if she’s not in complete control, and they are still afraid of her. She can’t trust any of them, but they’ll still come, even if they’re just curious to see how sick she really is. I don’t think the ley weaver to the south will come, but I already know about that thing and it doesn’t seem interested in human struggles. She shouldn’t waste her energy on it, but the rest . . . Tell her they need to be here tonight. Even her sister. Even Ridenour.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can solve her problem if she’ll do this. It’ll be over by tomorrow night if she does.”

  “You swear?”

  “What do you want me to do—prick my finger and sign in blood? Yes, I swear.”

  I was lying through my teeth, but if I couldn’t fix it all by tomorrow, we might have a bigger problem. Whoever was killing people had learned to send the monsters to do the dirty work, which meant he or she didn’t have to bash in heads in person anymore. No one was safe.

  TWENTY-NINE

  From the Newmans’, we headed toward the Lyre River and Elias Costigan’s house. Although I’d see him later, I still needed to figure out how he’d known about the house, and it wouldn’t be safe to try once the sun was heading down. down.

  “What do you think the anchor does?” I asked.

  “Um . . . anchors things?” Quinton replied.

  “I mean, how does it work? Something to do with its piezoelectric properties?”

  “I’m not thinking so, but I can’t speculate without data. You’re talking about the field interactions of an energy state for which there are no scales or standards. We can theorize based on what we know, but it’ll be a pretty rough theory.”

  “Then what do you roughly theorize?”

  “Well . . . is there more than one anchor?”

  “Apparently, and I’m led to believe there’s a total of four in and around the lake. When they were all in place, the lake’s energy was contained and channeled into the nexus where two major leylines crossed—about where the Newmans’ house is now, so that would be the top of the T or the middle of the X, depending on how you see it.”

  “Do we know if the other three anchors are in place?”

  “Not by eyewitness, but the general belief is that they are, and my observation of the leylines leads me to agree.”

  “Hearsay is not very convincing, but I’ll accept your observation as being persuasive enough. So one is out of place, and merely putting it close to its proper location—unlike in horseshoes and hand grenades—wasn’t good enough. I’d hate to see what happens when more than one of the anchors is pulled.”

  “But that’s not going to happen.”

  “We hope. Because if it did, the system would have no guidance. Huh . . . could it be part of a waveguide?”

  “Unknown term, geek-boy. What’s a waveguide?”

  “Waveguides restrict the radiation of electromagnetic energy into a linear direction. They’re kind of like pipes, but not really. Energy naturally radiates in spheric
al waves—outward in all directions at the same time and rate. That’s fine if you want an omnidirectional antenna for radio or television transmission, but some kinds of energy, like, say, microwaves, need to be a little more restricted or they dissipate and do damage. The waveguide has to be specific to the type and wavelength of the energy you’re managing. Broadly—and this is really generalized and a little squishy—by pairing the right conductive materials at the right distance, you essentially create an electrical trough for the energy to flow down that constantly reflects the waves back into the trough, rather than letting them radiate outward.”

  “OK. I’m not sure I get the details, but I get the idea.”

  “All right, so, if the anchor is part of a waveguide for Grey energy, it has to have an opposite polarity mate creating the ‘walls’ of the pipe. Removing one of the pair for either directional leyline basically lets the energy at that end radiate without proper control or direction. Since it’s anchored at the other end by the nexus and partially directed by its other half, what you get is something like a firehouse that’s hooked up to the hydrant at one end and flopping around loose at the other, spraying energy everywhere. With the way this particular energy is influenced by water, I’d guess that the lake itself acts like a conductive sink and lets the energy flow around until the lake’s too saturated, and then the magic starts leaching up through the ground wherever it can. Or wherever the thrashing pipe has hit the ground, creating transient hot spots and upwellings.

  “Normally, this system around the lake is restricted and the crossing leylines probably created a single sort of wellhead at the nexus. Once the anchor was gone, the magic became fair game for anyone who could use it. But, and here’s the slippery bit, the wellhead still exists and instead of pumping energy out to whoever’s in charge of the nexus, it’s now able to suck it back from that person when demand is high, which is why Jewel Newman experiences the sensation of drainage when someone else uses it or when it rains and the lake overflows, pulling more energy out of the sink.”