17. Seventeen
SEVENTEEN
W hen Evan and I returned to town, Aunt Tillie was nowhere to be found. We went to Hypnotic after coming up empty on our loop through the Main Street area.
“It’s not possible,” Clove insisted, shaking her head. She didn’t even look at us as we entered. “There’s no way there are two Aunt Tillies. It’s just not possible.”
“You’re just afraid.” Thistle looked smug. “Two Aunt Tillies is a sign of the apocalypse. Do you think it will be zombies or plague?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Or maybe it’s a bunch of Bigfoots.” She turned to me for confirmation. “Right? We’re due for one of those.”
I shook my head. “Why are you getting her going?”
Evan ignored both of them and walked to the playpen, where Calvin was watching the scene with wide-eyed wonder. “You guys are going to get him riled up.” He tossed the baby in the air and caught him, causing Calvin to giggle. “He can sense your emotions. You’ll make him neurotic, Clove.”
Clove pinned the vampire with a glare. “You get more and more like Aunt Tillie every day.”
Evan shrugged as he moved to the floor with Calvin. There was a small play area set up for the baby. “I’m just saying that if you freak out, the little guy will freak out. You don’t want that.”
I’d never really seen Evan interact with the baby. He was good with him. He had Calvin in hysterics as he made faces and moved so fast that it looked as if one of the stuffed animals was dancing on its own.
“You’re good with him,” I noted, not realizing I was going to speak aloud until it was already out of my mouth. “Do you want kids?”
Evan shrugged. “At one time I did. I don’t really think being a day-walking vampire will work for raising a child.”
“Not even with Easton?”
He shot me a cool look. “Did Scout put you up to this? I don’t want to talk about Easton.”
Did that mean there was trouble in paradise? “I was just asking.”
“I know this is difficult for a Winchester, but maybe you should mind your own business.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.” I strode over and flopped on the couch. “I take it you’ve been informed of the new development regarding Aunt Tillie.”
Clove’s expression was dark. “There can’t be two of them.”
“I think there are.” I focused on Thistle. “It’s the only thing that explains everything.”
“You talked to her,” Thistle said. “What is she like? If she’s cooler than our current version, maybe we could trade up.”
“Don’t.” I jabbed a finger at her. “This is serious. We have Feds in town—right now they’re with Landon and Chief Terry looking over the cabin again—and we cannot explain two Aunt Tillies. We need to find Millie and…” I had no idea what we were supposed to do with Millie.
“You think Aunt Tillie created her,” Thistle pressed. “That’s the only way this could have happened.”
“We have a few holes to fill in,” I hedged, “but that makes the most sense. She told me Aunt Tillie had her out once before. Maybe she’s from a mirror world or something, because the alternative is that Aunt Tillie created a doppelg?nger to serve a specific purpose and kept her locked inside herself for years. ”
“Do they look the same age?” Thistle was focused on the mechanics of it all, and I couldn’t blame her. “Does Millie look younger?”
“When the spell first occurred, there was a younger version of Aunt Tillie that appeared. I saw them both together and freaked out for a second. When we got the spell under control, the younger Aunt Tillie disappeared. I assumed it was just a memory but maybe it wasn’t.
As for how she looks, she looks the same as Aunt Tillie. ”
“But you’ve only dreamed about her,” Thistle said. “You haven’t actually seen her. Maybe she wanted to fool you in your dream.”
“We saw her yesterday,” I argued. “Millie had the four-wheeler—which suggests she’s been at the inn at least once—and Aunt Tillie had the scooter. They looked identical except for the color of their capes.”
Thistle tapped her bottom lip. “Well, what’s the plan? How do we catch her? More importantly, what do we do with her when we find her?”
“We need Aunt Tillie to tell us exactly what she is. We don’t know where she came from at this point and theorizing does us no good because we can’t come up with a firm plan until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“I take it Aunt Tillie isn’t talking.”
“She ran out of the inn when I posited my theory. She was angry, which tells me she believes I’m right. Evan saw her leaving the greenhouse with a sword.”
Thistle was bland. “Well, that can’t possibly end badly.”
I shrugged. “We have another problem.” I leaned forward. “Evan and I were just out in the woods where the bodies were found. He had the idea of flipping the runes on the trees around, so they were mirror images. Then he recognized them.”
Thistle’s eyebrows hopped. “You tell a story like Aunt Tillie,” she complained. “Tell us what the rune is.”
“It’s the mark of a naiad,” Evan replied. “I saw it when I was studying back in the day. We had to be able to identify every paranormal creature for various tests.”
“Isn’t a naiad a mermaid?” Clove asked.
Evan shook his head. “No, but I can see how you might confuse the two. There is a water component for both.”
Thistle moved toward the books on the shelves, studied them for several seconds, then grabbed one of the thicker ones. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” She flipped through the book, then grimaced. “Here we go.”
This was what we had come for. I needed background on naiads. I’d never faced off with one before, so this would be a new experience. As if dealing with a second Aunt Tillie, arachnids, and the Feds wasn’t enough of a new experience.
“It has multiple meanings,” Thistle started. “In Greek mythology, it was an aquatic insect nymph.” Her upper lip curved. “Could that somehow play into the arachnids being here?”
“It’s something to consider,” Evan replied. “It’s also possible that the naiad simply came across a handful of arachnids that had been recently displaced from Hawthorne Hollow and took advantage.”
“Right.” Thistle went back to reading. “The Greek mythology naiads live in and control bodies of water, lakes and rivers. The name comes from the Greek word naiein and means ‘to flow.’” She considered it for several seconds, then continued.
“Naiad can also refer to the nymph of an aquatic insect, like a dragonfly, damselfly, mayfly, or stonefly. It can also be a plant and is the name of one of the moons of Neptune.”
“I think we’re most likely dealing with the Greek mythology,” Evan said.
“That probably makes the most sense,” Thistle agreed, ignoring his sarcasm. “So, naiads were often revered by cults and considered essential to humans. Kids—both boys and girls—donated their hair to the local naiad at the spring closest to their village.
“There were ritual cleansings to worship the naiad and—ooh, gross—animals were often drowned as an offering.” She gave me a look. “Better lock up Peg and Winchester.”
I had been second-guessing my decision to keep Winchester at the inn because Landon missed him so much. Now I was glad I’d made the decision to leave him with my mother.
“There are a lot of stories, and we’re going to take these with a grain of salt,” Thistle cautioned.
“Naiads supposedly took beautiful humans, kidnapping them from villages. I have no idea what they did with them—I’m guessing it was of a sexual nature—but these incidents are reported throughout the stories of the time.
“They could be jealous of the beautiful person, looking for an individual to cheat on their mates with, or maybe even ultimately fused with the individuals they stole for sex,” she continued. “Sounds like they were a bit sexed up.”
I tried not to dwell on that part.
“They’ve been studied by scholars,” Thistle supplied. “It’s theorized that these mythic kings were often paired with naiads to give women a part in the story. The woman was, of course, villainized and turned into a sexual being.”
“That’s because men wrote the history books,” I said.
She bobbed her head. “Pretty much. All the descriptions suggest they can pass for humans. Beautiful women, one and all.”
“That’s mythology,” I argued. “We all know that some stories from ancient Greece are true. Others are not. The gods, for example, were demons masquerading as gods. It could be the same for the nymphs. They might’ve been lower demons who enjoyed hanging out by bodies of water.”
“That fits,” Thistle said. Her gaze moved to Evan. “What do you know?”
“I was a good student, for the record,” he started.
I chuckled. “You do have ‘book geek’ practically stamped on your forehead.”
“I like learning about other creatures,” he confirmed.
“All of that fell by the wayside when I became a vampire. I lost who I was there for a bit. I am back to reading some, but I haven’t spent any time with naiads because I’ve never actually seen one.
All I know is what I heard when I was in Detroit. ”
“There are naiads in Detroit?” Thistle’s eyebrows moved toward one another. “That’s weird.”
“Why?” Evan challenged. “Detroit is surrounded by water. There’s the Detroit River, and Lake St. Clair is close. South of the city you have Lake Erie. There’s plenty of room for naiads to roam.”
“But I thought they were supposed to like nature,” Thistle countered. “Detroit isn’t a rural utopia.”
“There are rural areas to the north. And Canada is on the other side of the river. You can see Canada from Detroit. That’s another thing people forget.”
“Does that mean your group took on evil naiads?” I asked.
“I bet Bigfoot lives in Canada,” Clove said. “He probably just comes here for the occasional visit.”
I ignored her and kept my eyes on Evan. “You’ve never seen one. You mentioned you had co-workers who dealt with one when you were down there. What about Scout?”