I had a plan.
Mel looked more cheerful with a half pint of ice cream in her, but her expression darkened as I came into the bedroom. “What’s wrong? Are the kids okay?”
“The kids are fine.” I sat on the edge of the bed. “What time’s Billy get off work tonight?”
“Seven, if there aren’t any crises. Why?” Melinda tightened her fingers around her plastic spoon like she’d use it as a weapon against me. I twisted my mouth, studying her and trying to judge how much truth I should impart. “Dammit, Joanne,” she said, “stop looking at me like that. I’m a cop’s wife. I can handle it. What the hell is wrong?”
“There’s a monster in your kitchen.” I winced as the words came out. Mel’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch.
“You mean besides my terminally hungry eleven-year-old son?”
I smiled a little. “Yeah, besides that. There’s, um… Crap. Before you got assigned to bed, did you see, like, weird animals and things around?”
Melinda exhaled, her shoulders dropping. “Of course I did. The last two days, everything’s been nasty. The weather’s too hot and everyone’s crabby, like they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. My grandma was a bruja, Joanne. Me and Bill met at a paranormal events convention fifteen years ago. Oh, and don’t give me that tight-mouthed look. You think I don’t know what’s been going on with you? Even if you hadn’t gone tearing off from the equinox dinner like your tail was on fire, Bill tells me everything anyway.”
“Yeah?” I smiled weakly. “Did he caper around you saying, ‘I told her so’?”
“Yeah, some.” Melinda grinned, but it fell away almost immediately. “So what’s in the kitchen?”
“A serpent. I mean, not just a serpent, but a sea-serpent. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s huge. I want to call in some backup and see if we can get rid of it. I’d rather have you and the kids out of the house, but I’m not sure we’ve got that much time.”
Melinda started to sit up farther. I put my hand on her shoulder, shaking my head. “No way, no how, sweetheart. You’re staying in bed. When Billy comes home he can pick you up and carry you out of here, but you’re not walking around, young lady. And I honestly don’t think there’s any immediate danger.”
Mel eyed me skeptically. “Honest,” I repeated. “I’m gonna cancel the solstice party and get my friends to come over. With any luck we’ll get this thing out of here before Billy even comes home, and I think that’ll make you feel better. Meantime I’ll keep an eye on it and the kids and you. If anything starts to look worse, we’ll figure out a plan B, okay?”
Melinda sucked her cheeks in and glared at me. “All right,” she said. “All right, but you’ve got to keep me in the loop, Joanne. It’s the only way to make it work.”
I grinned lopsidedly as I stood up. “Is that police procedure, or relationship advice?”
Melinda’s eyebrows quirked again. “Some of both.” She nodded at the door. “Go on. Get that Thing out of my house.”
CHAPTER 28
By six-thirty, the serpent overflowed the kitchen. Rounded stretches of scales and muscle curved through the walls and spilled onto the backyard lawn and into the dining room. Robert’s bedroom was directly above the kitchen; when I looked into it, the serpent lifted its head through the floor and gave me a flat, silver-eyed stare. The house was still standing, even though if I put my hand against one of the creature’s shining scales and pushed I felt resistance before falling through. I had a half-assed theory at the back of my mind that because I was sentient and able to accept the thing as real, it was more real for me than for the house, which dealt solely in things which were there or not there. There was no in between stage. I had a few moments of longing for the days when there’d been no in between for me, either, but the wish didn’t last long. It was easier to accept in the thick of things than from a remove of a couple months, or even just a day or two.
“Joanne?”
I pulled out of Rob’s doorway and closed the door behind me. Garth stood at the head of the stairs, smiling so hard it felt like he might lighten the mood in the whole house. No one was exactly grumpy, but everyone, even Erik, the two-year-old, was nervous and twitchy. Melinda was gnashing her teeth with the frustration of being useless. Faye’d taken up a post at Mel’s bedside, keeping her occupied with stories while everybody else arrived. “Hey, Garth. You made it. Is that everybody?”
“Marcia’s not here yet. But there’s somebody downstairs who wants to see you.”
Morrison. Cold nerves laced around my stomach and tightened so hard I burped. Garth blinked and grinned. I rubbed my hand over my stomach and managed a smile. I couldn’t think how the hell Morrison had found out what was going on here, or why he’d care. Well, Billy would’ve told him, maybe, but why would he care? I straightened my shoulders and put on my best brave soldier face. “Okay.” I thumped down the stairs behind Garth.
Colin, looking ridiculously healthy, sat in a wheelchair in the living room, beaming around at everyone. He turned the chair as he heard us coming down the stairs. I could see the shadows of his spirit snake around his shoulders, but the weight didn’t seem to affect him at all. His grin got wider. “Amazon!”
“Colin! My God, they let you out? You look fantastic.” He did. My inverted vision didn’t bother me at all anymore. It seemed normal for his hair to be black and streaming bits of light when he moved his head. His color was better and there was more meat on his bones, although how that could be affected in the two days since I’d last seen him, I wasn’t sure. “My God, you look great!” I bent to hug him and kiss his cheek. His temperature was a little high, but everyone’s was, in the hot weather.
“I’m just out on temporary leave,” he said. “One of modern medicine’s miracles, they keep telling me. Never seen a reversal like this. I made the big eyes at them until they agreed to let me out for a couple of hours. I’ve got to get back before nine.”
“I hope you don’t mind him coming along,” Garth said behind me. The smile in his voice buoyed me up.
“Nah, of course not. A little good news’ll help us all get through the rest of the night.”
Garth’s voice lowered. “Is it going to be bad?”
I shrugged my eyebrows. “Looked in the kitchen yet?” He shook his head no, and I tilted my head in the right direction. “Go see for yourself.”
He came back a few moments later pale and wide-eyed, just as everyone else had done. “How’re we going to take care of that?”
I shook my head. “I wish I knew. I don’t really understand spellcrafting, Garth.” I sat down on a couch, rubbing the scar on my cheek. The couch sucked me in; four bouncy kids did in even the best of springs. I edged forward, trying not to disappear entirely into the cushions. “I’ve watched it tear a hole in the sky and another one in the earth. Can we make a spell to just move something?”
“Translocate,” Marcia said from the doorway. I lifted my head, relieved. “This isn’t exactly where we agreed to meet,” she said as she came in.
“I know. Something came up. What’s translocating? I mean, how do you do it?”
“There has to be an exchange. We can’t simply move something from one place to another. We have to take something back in order to make up for the mass of the thing we’ve placed elsewhere. Where is it?”
“The kitchen.”
Marcia was grim, not pale, when she came back from the kitchen. “I don’t know if a translocation spell will work on something that’s not solid. It may, and then all we’ll have to translocate is air, which would be the best-case scenario for the house.”
“But,” I said, hearing it hanging on her words.
“But it may not be possible. The ritual to bring the spirits across, and Virissong with them, may have to be completed before we can make the exchange.”