20. Twenty
TWENTY
S tormy, Gunner, and Scout were excited when they arrived in town.
“Who are we torturing today?” Scout asked, her blonde hair pulled back in a braid that hung over her shoulder. If her hair wasn’t down, she meant business.
I’d been vague in getting them to Hemlock Cove. I figured telling the story once was preferable to going over it several times. To ensure privacy, I took them inside The Whistler to catch them up.
“Where is Evan now?” Scout, no longer laughing, asked.
“We left him at the resort site,” I replied. “He wanted to look around. That was about two hours ago.”
“He’s fine,” Gunner said when I shot Scout a questioning look. If she wanted to go after Evan, we would do that. “He can take care of himself, even against a naiad.”
“Have you ever faced off with a naiad?” I asked Scout.
She was grim. “Well, kind of.”
That was an evasive answer. I waited for her to expand. She didn’t. “Would you care to share with the class?” I asked when she’d been quiet for far too long.
“I’m not being difficult. I’m just … thinking.” She rolled her neck. “There was a naiad on the Canadian side of the Ambassador Bridge once. She was one pecan shy of being princess of the nut barn.”
“Is that your clinical diagnosis?” Gunner asked.
Scout shrugged. She was used to her boyfriend messing with her.
She gave him a hard time right back. Their relationship wasn’t all that different from the one I shared with Landon.
“She was attacking people trying to come into Canada. She didn’t care if people left the country, only if they were coming in. ”
“I guess she was anti-immigration,” I teased.
“She didn’t want anyone crossing into her territory. She was powerful, but she was older. Her magic had started to become erratic. She couldn’t control it any longer.”
“I didn’t realize that happened with naiads.”
“It can happen with any creature,” she replied. “It happens to humans and paranormals alike. I tried talking to her. She wasn’t all there. Eventually, because she killed a few people, she had to be put down.”
“Did you have to do it?”
She nodded. “I made sure it was quick. She was already so far gone that she didn’t have much fight in her. Something tells me we’re dealing with something different this time.”
“Three men are dead.” I pulled out my phone so she could see the photos from the site where we had found the bodies.
“How did they die?”
“They were choked to death,” I replied.
“Two of them just stood there while one of them was being choked?”
“Can naiads glamour people?”
Scout considered it. “The one I saw was having a negative effect on the people in her vicinity. She was angry and they grew angry. It’s possible they can affect the moods of humans. That’s a form of mind control, but…”
“We don’t know if the dead naiad was a sister, or maybe a girlfriend.”
“It could’ve been a friend,” Gunner offered. “Maybe they were just hanging around.”
“Either way, I thought we could form two teams. We need to find the naiad. Landon is providing a list of people who have been at the construction site in the last week. We figure something bad happened out there and the naiad is out for blood.”
“My guess is that the naiads didn’t like the construction team invading their space,” Scout volunteered.
“They probably put up a fight and the construction team decided to fight back, not initially realizing what they were up against. When it became obvious they killed one of them—maybe in self-defense—and then they panicked.”
“Did they bury the other naiad?”
Scout tilted her head back and forth as she considered the question. “It could have gone either way. Did the naiad look as if great care had been taken in her burial?”
“Not really,” I replied. “She was only a few feet down. She was hard to look at because of the bruises and marks on her body.”
“I think the construction workers chased off the other naiad and buried the dead one. It’s possible the one out there hunting doesn’t know what happened to the mate … or sister … or friend.”
I pursed my lips, considering. “Maybe taking her to the body will be enough to get her to leave the area.”
“It wouldn’t be enough for me.” Scout was brutally frank. “I would want to put my loved one to rest my way. I would also want revenge.”
“The construction workers panicked and didn’t realize what they were up against.” I shifted from one foot to the other, doing a little dance as I worked it out. “They might believe they killed a human.”
“Do you think they realize they’re in trouble?” Stormy asked. She’d been quiet for the duration of the conversation, taking it all in. “I mean, three guys dying all at once has to be frightening.”
“I would think so,” I replied. “We don’t know that anyone else was involved. It may have been just the three of them.”
“It’s our job to figure it out. You need to be careful. The Feds are in town. They know about me—mostly—but they don’t know about you.”
“We’ll be fine,” Scout assured me. “Give us the list. I can lie to the Feds just as easily as I can lie to the cops.”
“Yes, she could do it professionally,” Gunner teased.
I grinned. Nobody acted as if I was putting them out by calling for help. This was the sort of thing I didn’t want Thistle and Clove involved in. They didn’t have active powers. I wanted to keep Landon and Chief Terry at a safe distance too, although they insisted on being kept in the know.
“Let’s see where we can get in the next few hours. Gunner and Scout, you can take the east-side contacts. Stormy and I will take the west. We’ll meet when we’re done and see where we stand.”
STORMY WAS NEW TO THE MAGIC GAME, SO she had a lot of questions. Apparently, she wanted to ask all of them as we worked through our portion of the list.
“What else is real?”
The question baffled me. “What do you mean?”
“I know vampires and shifters are real. I know demons are real … and evil witches … and spider people.” She shuddered. “Naiads are the stuff of legend, though. I never even considered the fact that they were real. I want to know what else is real.”
I took a moment to consider it. “Well, you know gnome shifters are real.”
Her expression grew dark. “Yes, I’m well aware.” She was being hunted by gnome shifters.
“Pretty much everything you can fathom is real,” I admitted.
“Aliens?”
I shrugged. “Aunt Tillie claims she’s been probed multiple times.”
Genuine horror washed over Stormy’s face. “Seriously?”
“I don’t actually believe that. That would be an example of her lying.”
“Ah.” Stormy relaxed a bit. “What about Bigfoot?”
That was a trickier question. “I guess I believe it’s possible Bigfoot is real. Don’t tell Clove I said that, though.”
Stormy giggled.
“It’s also possible that all the Bigfoot sightings—the legit ones—were actually shifters,” I continued.
“I hadn’t thought about that.” She nodded. “Lamia are real. We know that thanks to Scout. They seem to have a lot of crazy paranormals in Hawthorne Hollow that we don’t have in Shadow Hills and Hemlock Cove.”
“It’s not that they don’t come to our areas, it’s that they see a higher concentration in Hawthorne Hollow because they have a nexus. On top of that, they actively hunt them. I don’t get as worked up over spriggans and jackalopes as Scout does.”
“She does hate the jackalopes,” Stormy agreed. “What about gods? Are they real?”
“Like Zeus and Aphrodite?”
She nodded.
“Those were demons pretending to be gods to control the masses.”
She bobbed her head. “I get it.”
“Some gods are real. Like Pan and Cernunnos. The loas are real, which means the voodoo gods are real. The big gods were fake.”
She was quiet a beat, absorbing it all. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“It is, but you should never have to deal with gods.”
“That’s good. I have my hands full with gnome shifters.”
I grinned. She might have been new, but she was adjusting well. “You’re doing great,” I assured her as I pulled into a driveway near Long Lake. “Okay, this house belongs to Dustin Carrington. He was at the resort site twice this week. He’s going to be working on the irrigation system.”
“Do you really think a bunch of construction workers banded together to kill a naiad?” Stormy asked as she unfastened her seatbelt. “It seems so … dark.”
“They may have believed they killed a human,” I replied. “Or they may have thought they killed a monster and assumed no one would believe their story if they went to the authorities.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
I held out my hands. “I don’t know what the answer is here. We need the full story before we can start making decisions.”
We were out of the car and on our way up the sidewalk when a hint of movement caught my attention to the left.
The houses in this area were fairly isolated, trees separating everyone from their neighbors.
Dustin’s house had a partially deconstructed dirt bike on the lawn and several children’s toys strewn about.
The person standing in the tree line was not Dustin.
I knew who she was the second I laid eyes on her. She was in an ankle-length dress, barefoot, and her hair was wild. Dirt was smudged on her cheek, and there was what looked to be a hint of blood on the hem of her dress. When her gaze locked with mine, I was met with cool calculation.
“Hey,” I said.
Stormy jerked her head around, confused. When she finally caught sight of the naiad, she went stiff next to me.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the naiad said. “This isn’t your place.”
Fear gripped me. Was Dustin already dead? There were no vehicles in the driveway, and I’d been convinced we’d have to head to the next house without getting any answers. Apparently, that wasn’t going to be the case…and not for the reasons I initially envisioned.
“Where should I be?” I tried to keep my tone light.
“Not here,” she replied, her eyes narrowing. “Go away.” She turned to disappear into the trees, but I broke into a run to catch up with her.
“Wait!” When I reached the tree line, she’d retreated thirty feet from where I’d first seen her. She seemed agitated when she turned back to me. Now, so close, I didn’t know what to say to her. “Why are you doing this?” I asked finally.
“You know why. I saw you out there. You … dug her up.”
I frowned. Well, that answered that question. “I wasn’t certain you knew where she was,” I said. “If you need help putting her to rest properly?—”
She cut me off with a firm headshake. “That’s not her. When her light went out, she went with it. That’s only a shell.”
“Still, you’ll want a place you can visit.” That was, of course, if I didn’t have to kill her.
“She’s always with me.” The naiad said. “My fight is not with you, witch. I wasn’t certain when you interrupted my ritual—you shouldn’t have taken them from the forest or killed my soldiers at the cabin—but I’ve watched you enough to recognize that you’re not my enemy.”
“I’m not,” I agreed. Or, at least I hoped I wasn’t. “I need to know why you’re doing this.”
“I didn’t peg you for stupid.” There was no give to the naiad’s features. She was angry, and I really couldn’t blame her.
“The men at the construction site killed her,” I said. “I’ve figured that much out. I want to know why.”
“Why do humans do any of the things they do?” The naiad almost looked bored now. “They came, they saw, they conquered. The world was a better place before the demons ceded control to the underlings.”
“Um…” I glanced at Stormy, uncertain of my next step. She looked mesmerized by the naiad.
“I don’t want to kill you.” The naiad was matter of fact. “But I will if you get in my way. I’ll end your entire line.” Her gaze moved to Stormy. “And hers. Last time I checked, the world was short on hellcats. They really can’t afford to lose her.”
I wasn’t thrilled with being threatened. I wasn’t okay with what had happened to the other naiad either. And I needed more information.
“What happened?” I asked. “How did your … mate … die?” I took a chance. Turns out, I took the wrong one.
“Sister,” the naiad shot back. “We were sisters. We don’t mate with other naiads.” She looked horrified at the thought. “We multiply by magic. We are not humans. There is no … physical … mating.” The way she said “physical” was the way I would’ve said “liver and onions.”
“Okay.” I sent her a placating smile. “I’m sorry about that. I just assumed because you’re so upset.”
“Just like you would be if your sisters were taken from you. The one with the purple hair and the one with the baby. You would avenge them.”
Obviously, she’d been watching us. I wasn’t certain how to respond. Clove and Thistle weren’t technically my sisters, though we had been raised as such, and she was right; if they’d been taken from me, I would’ve gone on a similar rampage.
“I’m sorry.” I meant it. “But I need to know why it happened.”
The naiad sent me a withering look. “It happened as it always does. The usurpers came in and tried to take our home. We rebelled. This time, I underestimated them. They surrounded her. I couldn’t get to her in time.” The naiad teared up. “They will pay for what they did to her.”
I grimaced as the scene became clearer. “I really am sorry, but you can’t go around killing people.”
“I can’t let her death go unavenged.” The naiad was deadly serious. “I will make them pay for what they did.”
“Listen—” I took a step toward her, which turned out to be a mistake. The ground beneath me began to shake as the dirt gave way to water. It must have been a well—that was the only thing I could think—and before I could react the earth fell inward beneath me, and I tumbled down.
I managed to grab a root to stop my descent. Stormy scrambled above me and reached down. “Grab my hand!”
It took two tries, but I finally managed to link my hand with hers. She pulled, but much like me, she didn’t have a lot of upper body strength. I had to use my magic to propel me upward.
When I was back on solid ground, Stormy pulled me into her for a hug. The naiad was gone.
“Well, that was intense,” Stormy said when she was no longer gasping.
I nodded.
“Do you think she killed the guy who lived here?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think he’s here. We’ll have to check, but I don’t think she got him. The others…” I trailed off.
“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” she asked, her eyes soft.
“Big trouble,” I agreed. “She’s angry—deservedly so—and she’s going to kill all of them. We need to talk to the others and come up with a plan, one that doesn’t include the naiad’s death.”
“Is that realistic?”
“Probably not, but I’m going to try. I can’t live with the alternative.”