22. Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
W e worked in the library for hours and developed a solid list that included workers and management.
“Okay,” Landon said as he looked it over. “I’ll have Spencer reach out to all of them.” He hesitated. “What should we tell them?”
“Tell them that the person they killed at the construction site has a very angry friend,” I replied. “You have to go with the truth. There’s no other option.”
Landon considered it, then nodded. “Okay. We’ll play it your way.” He stood, then glanced around at Scout, Stormy, and Gunner. “Are you staying for dinner?”
“We’ll take a rain check,” Scout replied. “As much as Gunner would like to eat whatever Winnie has on the menu, I’m not sure I’m ready to be part of the team yet.”
“I’m kind of hemming and hawing too,” Stormy said sheepishly. “I don’t know if it’s smart.”
“It’s fine,” I assured her. “I have no interest in outing you. We’ll take it from here. Thanks for your help.”
“Hold up.” Scout extended her hand. “If you need help, I want you to call. Don’t go after that thing alone.”
“You don’t think I can handle it?” The question came out more aggressive than I anticipated.
Scout made a face. “Don’t take it to a weird place. It’s better to be safe. You don’t want Landon turning into a pathetic mope because your ego got too big and you fell victim to the wrong paranormal thanks to your ego.”
“Definitely not,” Landon answered for me. “Nobody is going after the naiad alone.” He pinned me with a serious look.
I wasn’t in the mood for an argument. “I didn’t have any intention of going after the naiad alone.”
Multiple snorts erupted.
“I didn’t,” I argued. “You guys are making assumptions.”
“Just keep us in the loop.” Scout was grim. “Naiads are powerful. This one sounds like it doesn’t want to kill you.”
“It wants me to do nothing while it kills other people.”
“People who might deserve to die.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it. “Let’s see if we can get the real story from these workers tomorrow. After that, we’ll decide.”
Scout nodded. “What about Millie? What if she comes back?”
“Oh, she’ll come back.” I was grim. “In fact, something tells me we’ll be seeing her before the night is out.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She feels emboldened after lunch. Nobody questioned her. She likes that.”
“Will she try to swap places with Tillie?” Stormy asked. “What if she decides to kill the real Tillie and take her place?”
“I really hope that’s not her plan.”
“If Millie was here this afternoon, that means nobody has seen Tillie since this morning,” Scout pointed out. “She might’ve already made her move.”
That was a sobering thought. “I’ll get on the Millie situation tonight. I probably shouldn’t have let her go after lunch. I just thought…”
“I know what you were thinking,” Scout assured me. “Whether you want to admit it or not, she’s dangerous. She’s obviously holding a grudge.”
“Aunt Tillie with a grudge,” Landon noted. “We have no idea how long her anger has been festering. Maybe it’s better to deal with Millie and then worry about the naiad.”
“Millie isn’t killing people,” I argued.
“That we know of.”
“You’re right. Dinner is in an hour. If Millie shows up, we have to deal with her.”
“How do we explain that to Steve?” Landon asked.
That was a very good question. “Maybe Steve needs to get a full look at the craziness in this house,” I said. “He thinks everything is cool, the occasional arachnid fight being the worst we deal with. He was thrown by that because I handled it so easily.”
Landon nodded. “You get to set the tone, Bay. It’s your show.”
“That doesn’t seem fair. You have a say in this relationship.”
“Not when it comes to magic. My job in this instance is to back you up.”
He was saying all the right things, still, I wasn’t happy. “That’s a lot of pressure,” I groused.
“I’ll be there to give you a massage when you’re done making the decision.” He held out his hands. “I can’t make this decision for you.”
“You have infallible instincts, Bay,” Scout said. “Follow your gut.”
“No pressure,” I drawled.
She smirked. “No pressure.”
SCOUT, STORMY, AND GUNNER WERE gone twenty minutes before Spencer and Steve arrived for dinner.
They were talking excitedly amongst themselves.
Apparently, they’d found tracks outside the cabin and taken casts so they had something new to enter into their database. To them, it was all a grand adventure.
They were about to get a hard dose of reality.
“It’s pot roast night,” Landon announced when they joined us in the dining room. He had wine in front of him. I’d opted for iced tea because my inner danger alarm was dinging, and I didn’t want slow reflexes if I had to take on Millie. “You’re going to love it.”
Steve smirked. “I adore pot roast.”
“Me too.” Spencer was smarter about the paranormal world than his boss. His eyes immediately went to me. “You’re plotting something.”
It wasn’t a question. “‘Plotting’ probably isn’t the right word. There are a few things we need to catch you up on.” I glanced at the swinging door. Aunt Tillie—or Millie—hadn’t made an appearance yet. I decided to start with that problem. “There are two Aunt Tillies running around.”
Steve smiled as if I was joking. Spencer, however, went rigid. He knew this wasn’t a game.
“Two Aunt Tillies?” Steve asked. “Is this part of the dinner theater I’ve heard so much about?”
He was clueless sometimes. I looked at Landon for help.
“The dinner theater is actually not dinner theater,” Landon explained. “It’s usually magic—or Aunt Tillie being Aunt Tillie—that is explained away as dinner theater.”
“I don’t…” Steve trailed off. “Huh. I feel as if I should’ve figured that out myself.”
Landon’s smile was rueful. “It’s okay. These things take time to grasp.”
“You’re going to have to grasp it fast,” I supplied. “There are two Aunt Tillies running around town. That explains what happened in front of the diner. She wasn’t doing costume changes.”
“Wow!” Steve’s face drained of color.
“The second Aunt Tillie calls herself Millie.” It was better to get all the information out, no matter how uncomfortable I was.
That was the only way he was going to fully grasp what was going on.
“She appeared right after we cast the spell on Mrs. Little, the one that was meant to adjust her memories so she no longer struggled.
I saw Millie that night without realizing. I talked to her in the lobby.
“We also talked to her at lunch today,” I continued. “She pretended to be Aunt Tillie but got a few things wrong. We’re not certain what her goal is, but she’s a problem.”
Steve worked his jaw. “I don’t know what to say.”
I flashed a flat smile. “There’s more. We know what killed those men.”
Landon reached for his wine. “You’re just going for it, aren’t you?”
“I told you I was.”
“You could give him a moment to adjust.”
“We don’t have time.” Brutal frankness was the name of the game at this point. “Millie is going to make things difficult.”
I pressed my lips together and gathered my wits. “The creature doing the killing is a naiad. Do you know what that is?”
“Like in mythology?” Spencer asked. He was much calmer than Steve, although that wasn’t saying much.
“Essentially,” I confirmed. “Greek mythology often gets a lot of things wrong—the gods mentioned in those stories were mostly demons preying on humans—but it gets many things right.”
“Please explain,” Steve said.
“Naiads like rivers and streams. They’re magical. I’ve never been up against one. I got a few tips from a friend, but the naiad she encountered was off her rocker. She was old and protecting a small island in the Detroit River.”
Steve’s eyes bulged. “Are you joking? I can’t tell.”
“I’m not joking. I almost never joke about things like this.” I sipped my iced tea to center myself. The next part was going to be the most difficult. “Two naiads established a home near Torch Lake. I have no idea how long they’ve lived there.
“Recently, permits have been authorized, and that land is going to be turned into a resort,” I continued. “Equipment and supplies have been delivered … and workers have been to the site.”
“The three victims were contracted to do cement work,” Landon explained.
Steve was silent as he took it all in, so I continued.
“Naiads are notoriously territorial,” I explained. “They fight for their homes, so the realization that this piece of land was about to be taken from them likely set them off. We believe the naiads argued with the construction workers. Somehow one of the naiads was killed.”
I swallowed hard and took a gulp of iced tea. “She was put in a shallow grave. My guess is the construction workers killed her and panicked, thinking she was human. The other naiad either escaped and came back or was injured and saw it all. She’s out for blood.”
Steve stared at me. “You’re saying the construction workers murdered this naiad.”
Was I? “I believe the naiad might have been aggressive with them,” I hedged. “It may have been self-defense. All we know is that she’s dead and her sister wants revenge.”
Steve fell back into silence as Spencer stirred.
“I’ve heard about naiads,” he offered. “I’ve never seen one. At least I don’t think I have. They’re powerful.”
“This one is angry and wants revenge,” I said. “Today we started tracking down individuals who were at the construction site in the last week. I went out with a friend this afternoon. At one of the homes, we ran across the naiad.”
Steve sat straighter. “Did she attack you? Are you okay?”
“She told me she didn’t want to fight with me. She also suggested she wasn’t done. Then she opened a hole in the earth because there was a well underneath and dropped me in it.”
Steve’s mouth fell open. “I don’t understand.”
“Naiads can control water. That makes them especially dangerous.”
“We have to kill the naiad.” Steve cocked his head. “Do we need a specific type of weapon? If the construction workers managed to kill one, I’m guessing any weapon will do.”
He wasn’t getting it. “I don’t know that we should kill the naiad.” I cringed when he frowned. “We don’t know that she did anything that wasn’t warranted,” I added hurriedly.
“She killed three people,” Steve argued.
“We don’t know how the other naiad died,” Landon interjected quickly. “We need to know exactly how it went down before we can make decisions on that front.”
“She killed three people,” Steve repeated.
“What about the people who killed the naiad?” I challenged.
Steve looked caught. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Naiads have no rights under our current laws.”
“That’s the problem.” I didn’t realize I was going to say the next part until the words were already out of my mouth. “That’s the reason no one trusts the government. The naiads have been here a lot longer than we have. When it comes time to deal with these things, we have to weigh everything.”
Steve disappeared into heavy thought. Before he could respond, the swinging door opened to reveal Aunt Tillie.
I studied her for a moment, recognized the outfit from earlier in the day, and allowed my bad mood to get a foothold. “Hello, Millie,” I drawled.
Momentary surprise flitted across her face, then she smirked. “I wondered if you’d figured it out,” she said. “I wasn’t sure. It was the fact that I sat in the wrong chair, wasn’t it? The table I ate at with you lot last time was round.”
I thought back to my childhood. Mom and the aunts had a round table in the old house, before it was upgraded for the inn. That gave me a timetable to work with. “You were here before, when we were kids.”
“You don’t remember me? That’s insulting.”
“We didn’t know to look for you,” I replied. “What do you want?”
“What makes you think I want anything?” Millie’s sly smile was straight out of Aunt Tillie’s playbook.
“If all you wanted was your freedom, you would’ve disappeared as soon as you realized you were back in the real world. You’re still here. I’m guessing you’ve been playing games with Aunt Tillie.”
“Tillie is no longer a concern.”
My heart skipped. “Where is she?”
“Who can say?” Millie held out her hands.
“You didn’t kill her.” Or maybe I just hoped that was true. “If you’ve put her somewhere?—”
“Believe it or not, I don’t want her dead,” Millie said. “I also don’t want her in my way.”
“Listen—”
“No, you listen.” Millie vehemently shook her head. “I played Tillie’s game last time and lost. You can’t create a being, set it loose, and then lock it away when you get bored with it. That’s cruel and unusual punishment.”
Weirdly, I didn’t disagree. That didn’t mean I was going to let her steal Aunt Tillie’s life.
“Now, I have a plan,” she continued. “There are a few things I need to get in order. Once that happens, I’ll be out of your hair.”
“And Aunt Tillie? What happens to her while you get your things in order?”
“She stays where she is.” Millie was grim.
“I don’t need her sniffing around and trying to mess things up for me.
When I’m gone, I’ll send a message back and tell you where to find her.
Before you think you can negotiate with me—or bully me—know that won’t happen,” she added quickly.
“You’re incapable of threatening me. I’m not afraid of you. ”
I was about to tell her where she could stick her ultimatums when she spoke again.
“If you move on me, you’ll never find your precious aunt,” she said. “She’ll die out there, alone. If that’s what you want, by all means, push me.”
I wanted to slap the smug smile off her face. “What makes you think you can keep Aunt Tillie captive somewhere?” I challenged. “She won’t accept that.”
“Maybe I’m smarter than her.”
I snorted. “You’re not.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” This time Millie sat at the head of the table. She glanced around. “What’s for dinner?”
Did she really think we were going to allow her to have dinner with us knowing that Aunt Tillie was out there somewhere, likely in danger. Before I could tell her where to stick her dinner, the room started to vibrate.
The swinging door flew open. Magic rushed into the room, flowing around us like a golden wind. Aunt Tillie was right behind it.
Her hair was wild, her nostrils flaring. Her chest heaved as she sucked in a deep breath and glared at Millie. “Honey, I’m home,” she drawled.
Millie’s eyes went wide. “How…?”
A smile took over my face. “I believe this is the part of the conversation where I say ‘I told you so,’” I said.
Aunt Tillie extended her hand, conjured a ball of magic, and let it loose in Millie’s direction.