No contest. Being nearby was the only way to succeed.
Hargreaves drank half his iced coffee. “I’ll apologize for sticking you with this assignment if that makes you feel better. But, Wayne? Consider what might be happening in Sproing right now if someone connected to Swinn and the rest of them had answered that call for assistance instead of you.”
CHAPTER 35
Them
Sunsday, Juin 20
Useless, incompetent dickheads. How could so many of them screw up something so easy and get killed on top of it?
“The bitch is still there, still in control of our asset,” he told the other three men. He didn’t look at the dick his cousin had married—the fool who had tossed the property away in the first place. Once they had control of the property, he would find a way to cut the asshole out of the deal. And wouldn’t his cousin bust the fool’s balls over that?
Served her right for not choosing someone who was top tier.
“What are we going to do?” the oldest man asked.
“What we should have done in the first place.” He smiled. “Take care of it ourselves.”
CHAPTER 36
Vicki
Watersday, Juin 24
It rained for two days. All the green things needed the rain, and even the rain barrels that collected water from the downspouts had been close to empty. So while I didn’t complain—not out loud, anyway—the initial storm taught me how isolated I would have been at the main house if I’d been on my own. Which I wasn’t, but I can’t say with any honesty that wet Panther or wet Bear smells any better than wet dog.
When the storm rolled in across the lake on Thaisday evening, I’d been at the renovated cabins, giving the two unoccupied ones a quick dust and vacuum and helping Aggie change the sheets on her bed. We gathered up the sheets and towels and stuffed them into large carry sacks. Then I saw the flash of lightning and heard the boom of thunder.
We went out on Aggie’s porch.
“The Elementals are playing,” Aggie said. She stepped closer to me. “Or they’re angry about something.”
Flash. Boom.
“What makes you think the Elementals are doing this? It’s just a storm.”
“Thunder and Lightning are running together.”
Flash. Boom!
Aggie looked toward Silence Lodge, which was hidden behind a wall of rain making its way across the mile-wide lake. “And Ilya Sanguinati says if you don’t leave for your house now, you should plan to stay in the cabins here until the storm quiets.”
“How long will that take?”
She shrugged.
There wasn’t any food in the unoccupied cabins, and I wasn’t sure if Aggie had anything stored—or if what she had was something I, being human, would want to eat for any reason short of desperation.
Flash. Boom. That spear of lightning struck the lake.
“I’m going to make a run for it.” I looked at Aggie, who carefully didn’t look at me. Where were her kin? Would they join her here to huddle on the porch, somewhat protected from the weather? Or did they already have their own shelters? “If you want to come with me, stuff a couple of changes of clothes in a bag, and do it fast. And remember to bring your toothbrush,” I shouted when she dashed into the cabin.
The storm seemed to stall over the lake for a few minutes—long enough for Aggie to pack and make sure the cabin’s windows were closed. She didn’t lock the door, and I didn’t comment. After all, if she wanted to let her kin have use of the cabin during the storm, I wasn’t going to be mean about it.
I had left the door of the screened porch unlatched, and I was glad because someone had kept the storm on a tight rein just long enough for us to reach the porch. Then it came thundering over The Jumble.
I unlocked the kitchen door and dumped the carry sacks. “Close the windows,” I said as I ran around the house doing exactly that. Not fast enough in some cases—the wind scattered papers in my office, knocked over a lamp in another room, and soaked the curtains in a couple of rooms.
Breathless, I ran back to the kitchen and pulled out the sheets and towels, handing the hand towel and facecloth to Aggie. “These need to be washed anyway, so let’s use them to wipe up any water on the windowsills and floor.”
She didn’t ask questions, didn’t indicate if this was a familiar human behavior or a new experience.
Flash! BOOM!
The weatherman on the TV news had talked about a storm coming in from the west that could be fierce enough to cause some flooding and close roads. Viewers had been warned to have emergency lanterns and food for a couple of days in case they were cut off from nearby towns. I had assumed the warning was for the farmers and vintners, but I suddenly realized the warning was also meant for someone like me. And I was glad that Aggie had chosen to join me at the main house.
When I returned to the porch to see if I’d left anything that could be damaged by water, I found a wet Cougar and equally wet Conan waiting for me by the kitchen door. They were in their furry forms and each carried a sack that I assumed contained some human clothes.
I stepped aside in invitation. “Aggie is here too. Do you want to join us?”
They entered the kitchen and dropped their sacks next to the ones Aggie and I had carried from her cabin. They came back out with me while I did a quick check of the porch. Since the porch ran the length of the house, a quick check to rescue a couple of books and move a couple of plants from tables to the floor wasn’t all that quick and I was clothes-clinging wet by the time I returned to the kitchen. Conan and Cougar had tipped over the lightweight chairs on the porch—an activity I appreciated when a blast of wind knocked me into Conan. I wasn’t sure the Bear even noticed; I was pretty sure I would have some interesting bruises the next day. I couldn’t wait to explain those to the doctor—or Ilya Sanguinati. Or Officer Grimshaw.
It wasn’t my fault. The wind knocked me into a Bear.
I wasn’t sure Dr. Wallace would want to believe me. After all, he was one of the Sproing residents who had lived in the safe little bubble of believing the Others were Out There before the events of the past few days had shown everyone that Out There really meant Right Here.
I went to my suite and changed into dry clothes. I looked at my hair and put enough clips in it to hold it away from my face, planning to take a hot shower later and use extra hair conditioner in the hope of combing out all the tangles.
When I returned to the common rooms, Cougar and Conan had shifted to human form and were dressed. They still smelled a bit like wet animal, but I decided not to comment about that since it occurred to me that I had no idea what a wet human might smell like to them.
On Firesday, the first full day of rain, I made hourly checks of the rooms, reassuring myself that I hadn’t left a window open or had any leaks that I could ill afford to have fixed at the moment. One of my companions came with me during each inspection, watching everything I did but not asking why I needed to check something I’d already checked. They just rotated keeping me company. In between inspections we napped or read. I turned on the TV to watch the noon news. Serious faces advising viewers to stay indoors as much as possible. Some flooded roads; some blocked by downed trees.