Carousel Sun (15 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Friday, June 16

High Tide 2:54
A.M.

Sunrise 5:00
A.M.
EDT

“So,” Peggy said casually, as she slowed the Prius for the stop sign at the top of Archer Avenue, “are they
friends
of yours?”

I had been thinking—and thinking hard—about what it meant that Joe Nemeier had been among the invited guests at Joan Anderson’s reception; that he arrived with a a
jikinap
-enabled houri draped around him like a fox stole; what if anything was I going—was I
obligated
—to do about either of those things . . .

“Kate.”

I blinked, realized I had heard her voice, but hadn’t registered the words. “Sorry; I missed what you said.”

“I
asked
if they were friends of yours—Joe and Ulme.”

“Friends . . .” I turned in my seat, as far as the seat belt would let me, and looked at the shadow of Peggy’s face in the darkness.

“Peg, Joe Nemeier is a very dangerous man.”

“Archer, I’m from Jersey; I get that.”

I opened my mouth to tell her just exactly how dangerous—and closed it again.

For one thing, and Jersey or no Jersey, Peggy was a normal, everyday human person. A discussion of
jikinap
, Ozali, and interlinked worlds was therefore dead before it even got under way.

For another thing—despite the best efforts of the Coast Guard, the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, and the
trenvay
of Archers Beach, Joe Nemeier remained at liberty.

And the question you had to ask yourself, if you were me, was—why exactly was that?

Possibly there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant taking him up. Everybody in town knowing you’re a drug lord just doesn’t hold up in court like hard, indisputable
evidence
that you’re a drug lord.

Or . . . and this was the scary one . . .

What if the MDEA had their evidence and were keeping an eye on their man, waiting for him to
lead them to the Big Guy
?

Peggy turned right down Walnut Street. I could feel the patience coming off of her in waves.

“Sorry . . .” I said again, “crowds take me that way sometimes. So—no. Joe Nemeier isn’t a friend of mine, sort of the opposite, actually. And I met his lady friend for the first time about two minutes before you showed up.”

She nodded.

“What’s the nasty between you and Joe, if you don’t mind my asking?”

At least the answer to
that
was nice and straightforward.

“Property line dispute,” I said promptly.

“Well, that’s something that can get ugly. Any chance of you guys kissing and making up?”

“Not too much. He not only rejected my lawyer’s suggestion that he was in the wrong, he tried to make his point stick by setting my property on fire.”

“On—! Kate, not your house!”

“No, no. I own another piece of land in town—a mixed wood lot. The family goes ’way back, like I told you, so there’s not only Archer Park, up where the old homestead used to be, there’s the parcel over on Heath Hill.”

“What’s old money doing operating a merry-go-round in a run-down amusement park?”

She braked for the stop sign at the end of Walnut Street, looked both ways, and took an easy right onto Grand.

“We here in Maine have a phrase for families who’ve held parcels of property for a long time, and still have to work for a living—
land poor
. And the carousel belongs to me, too, you know. A woman needs an occupation.”

Peggy laughed.

“What do you
really
do, Archer?”

“I run the family carousel,” I said. “Really. I was away for a couple years, slinging code and hacking programs, but it got old.”

“So you came back home.”

“So I came back home.”

She made the turn into Dube Street.

“What’re you gonna do when you get bored?” she asked, sliding the Prius in next to my Subaru on the gravel carport behind Tupelo House.

“I’ve asked myself that, but so far, I haven’t been bored.”

“How long you been home?”

“Eight weeks,” I confessed, and she laughed.

“Jury’s still out. Hell, the evidence isn’t in.”

“True.” I hit the button, retracted the seat belt and popped my door.

“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” I said, as we walked around the corner of the house.

“We should have a date night once a week,” she said. “Girls need to—”

She stopped—talking and walking, her attention completely centered on the steps leading up to my front door. I’d left the porch light on, but there were still plenty of shadows . . . and then I saw what—
who
—she was staring at.

The land exploded into riotous, noisy hosanna, damn’ near knocking me off my feet.

I kept my balance—barely—and walked forward, trying to quiet the racket at the same time.

“Hey,” I said, softly.

“Hey, yourself,” a deep voice answered from the shadow closest to the wall of the house, and now my stomach—or maybe my heart—joined the land in doing cartwheels.

“Everything all right, Kate?”

That was Peggy, right up beside me, glaring at the big shadow reclining on my steps. “You need me to call anybody?”

“No, it’s fine,” I told her. “Really. Borgan, this is Peggy Marr, replacing Jens as midway manager. She’s renting the studio for the Season.”

“Glad to meet you, Peggy Marr. Always glad to meet one of Kate’s friends.”

He didn’t get up, which was probably reasonable. If it wasn’t something else entirely. I felt a tiny shiver of worry, while the land continued to holler and yell its unparalleled delight.

“Likewise,” Peggy said, and turned to me. “You’re sure everything’s okay?” she asked, by which she meant,
Is it safe for me to leave you alone with this guy?

“I’m sure,” I said, by which I meant,
Yes, I’m safe with him
.

She hesitated, then took my word for it.

“’Kay, then. G’night, both. Got to get my beauty sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day!”

“See you then,” I said, and Borgan added, “Sleep sound, Peggy Marr.”

That . . . was suspicious, given the habits of
trenvay
and Guardians, but there wasn’t anything overtly dangerous about laying a sound sleep on somebody coming home late from a party, with a big day directly ahead of her.

She nodded, and walked past us, giving the stairs a wide berth. I heard her heels tapping on the stone, the grate of the key entering the lock, the faint creak of hinges. The door closed with a decisive
thump,
followed by the snap of the deadbolt.

“Sounds like I might’ve disrupted some plans,” Borgan said, as I came closer to the steps.

“Last I knew, Peggy had just recently fallen in lust with Joe Nemeier’s new girlfriend, who is a
jikinap
user, by the way.”

“If you say so,” he shifted on the step, putting himself into what light there was, and suddenly I could see his face—broad and brown, black eyes glittering like obsidian under strong black brows. He was . . . thinner than I remembered, the lines at his mouth and eyes etched ever-so-slightly deeper.

He was wearing a dark—blue, maybe?—sweater. A thin braid snaked over his shoulder; here and there a bead caught what light there was.

“That’s a nice outfit, Kate. Rich lookin’.”

“Glad you like it; I’m afraid Peggy took the shine right out of me.”

“Not hereabouts.” He tipped his head slightly to look up into my face, which was as novel a viewpoint for him as it was for me. “Looking fine.”

“I wish I could return the compliment.” I reached out, fingers finding his braid. It was warm and heavy . . . seductive, and I knew better, but—

I didn’t let go.

“I s’pose I’m not healed whole, yet,” Borgan said, smiling up at me, and igniting a slow burn in my stomach. “Heard you call, though, and knew you wouldn’t fetch me back unless it was important . . .”

Guilt shot through me. I dropped his braid.

“Hey, now.” He extended a hand, shook himself, and let it drop before he captured my wrist. “So why
did
you call me?”

I took a breath—and another one. He wasn’t well; I’d inflicted
far
more damage than I had thought—which was going a ways, since I
thought
I’d killed him—and I had been selfish enough to just
arbitrarily decide
that he’d been away long enough . . .

“Kate?”

“I missed you—” I blurted. “I just . . . wanted to . . . talk to you. That’s all.” I bit my lip and looked away, disgusted with myself.

“Well now . . .” he said. “That gives a man some hope, to be missed so bad after a week—”

I looked up.

“Eight weeks,” I said.

Borgan’s face went still, the smile fading from his eyes.

“Say again.”

“You’ve been gone eight weeks. This is June fifteen—well, sixteen, by now. You went—you went into the sea—”

“On April twenty-seventh,” he interrupted. “I remember.” He looked past me, apparently at nothing, or at a memory.

“No, I won’t ask if you’re certain of the dates—unless sweet Peggy’s fuddled, too.
Eight weeks?
It was a hard blow you dealt me, Kate, but—I missed all of May, then?” He looked back to me.

“Who’s fishing Hum’s boat?”

“Finn,” I said, relieved to be able to set his mind to rest on this point, if on nothing else. “I—guess she didn’t give you the message?”

“She?” he asked, eyebrows rising.

“Daphne,” I elucidated and, when no nod of recognition was forthcoming, expanded on the theme. “I walked down to the harbor last week, just to—and
Gray Lady
was at dock. There was a woman aboard who told me her name was Daphne. She said she served the Son of the Sea. I asked her to give you a message, from Mrs. Vois—that she missed your visits and hoped to see you again, soon.”

“What’d she look like, this Daphne?”

“Blonde, slender, taller than me”—that didn’t really narrow the field much—“cheekbones that she probably insures. Not awfully pleasant, and wanted to make sure I caught the fact that she’s not a fan. Told me that the land doesn’t order the ocean, and that Mrs. Vois was nothing to concern a Son of the Sea.”

“The fog’s starting to burn off this,” Borgan said. His mouth lifted at one side, but I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or . . . something else. “Daphne this time, is it? Well.”

“You know her?”

“Let’s say I know her kind,” he answered. He stretched out a hand, this time touching me, oh-so-lightly, on the back of hand.

I shivered in delight, in . . . desire.

“I thank you, for calling me back. You were right, Kate; I’ve been gone too long.” He grinned, wide and slow. “Though I’m not sure I’m so encouraged now, that it took you
eight
weeks to miss me.”

He paused. I did
not
step up to the plate to tell him that I’d missed him the instant the sea had taken him to its bosom, leaving me standing alone in the surf.

Borgan chuckled, reached up, grabbed the rail and pulled himself to his feet.

“I’ll just be running along, then. Wish I could stay, but I’d better tend to this business now—tonight.”

He stepped down onto the walkway beside me, and my perspective returned to the normal one, where I looked up—’way up—into his face.

“Where are you going?”

“Out to the rock, to see Nerazi. I need her to help me settle this.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No, you won’t.” He grinned.

“Now, Kate, don’t look sudden death at me! I’m not trying to keep you away from seafolk secrets, and I’m not scampering off so I don’t have to talk to you. I
want
to talk to you, woman, about anything—about nothing! But first I need to get the
ronstibles
off of my boat, and back to the muck that spawned them.”

“That sounds like fun,” I said, looking at how thin—not just his face—how thin
he
was, the sweater was hanging ’way too loose. “I could help.”

“You’ll ruin your nice clothes,” he said to me. “Not only that—you need your beauty rest, too. Season starts in less’n twelve hours.”

“Borgan—”

“Hush,” he said gently, and brushed my lips with his fingertips.

I shivered . . . and hushed.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Kate,” he said, low and firm. “By which I mean Saturday morning, seven-thirty, at Bob’s. We’ll get breakfast and you can catch me up. All right?”

I nodded.

“That’s fine, then.” He stepped aside and swept his arm out and up, showing me the way to the porch.

There being nothing else for it, I climbed up the stairs, and put my key in the lock.

The door came open, and I heard his voice from the bottom of the stairs, “You sleep sound, Kate Archer.”

And whether it was, in fact, a sea blessing, or only my own tiredness, I did sleep sound, and woke at eight, rested like I’d slept the clock ’round, clear-headed and full of peace.