Dark Currents (16 page)

Matthew tilted his head back, narrowing his eyes. “So you think you can handle me, huh?”

She regarded him. “Yeah, I do.”

One of the other Tritons, a doughy, thickset guy sitting on the couch beside me, laughed. “You don’t know who you’re messing with.” He hoisted his cup. “All hail Lord Matt, the original Master of the Universe.”

Someone said, “Hear, hear,” and drank; someone else attempted to hush them. Most of them looked uncertain.

“That’s what Thad said,” I offered. “The last time he texted me. He said he was gonna be a Master of the Universe. I just thought it was, you know, a figure of speech. Is that, like, a thing with you guys?”

There was a little silence, broken by the doughy Triton next to me bursting into low, racking sobs.

Unsure what else to do, I rubbed his broad back.

“Jesus!” Matthew Mollenkamp pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyelids. “Ron, Ronny, man, get it together. Get ahold of yourself. I know, okay, I know. But at least Thad went out trying; he went out a
man
.”

“It’s just—”

“I
know
.” He lowered his hands, glaring. “I need a drink. I need a motherfucking drink.”

Lurine slithered upright and beckoned to me. “Come on, baby sister. Let’s go find some glasses.”

I followed her into the kitchen, leaning on the counter to stabilize the spinning room while she ransacked the cupboards. “Ummm . . . I’m not so sure this is a good idea anymore.”

Examining dingy glasses, she glanced at me. “You’re a little drunk, huh?”

I peered at her. “You’re not?”

“Sweetheart, do you have
any
idea what my actual body weight is?” Lurine asked, buffing a glass with a semiclean towel.

“No,” I admitted. “Not a clue.”

She laughed. “To be perfectly honest, neither do I.” Lurine lowered the towel, her gaze serious. “This was your idea. If you want to leave, we’ll leave, Daise. It’s okay; I can drive. But if you want to stay . . .” She shrugged. “These boys are almost drunk enough to reach the confessional stage. You might not have another chance like this.”

“True.”

Lurine yanked a bag of pretzels out of the cupboard and poured some in a bowl. “Here. Eat.”

I shoved a handful in my mouth. “Thanks,” I said around a mouthful of dry pretzel crumbs. “You’re the best ex-babysitter, sort-of godmother, and pretend sister ever. Seriously. I really, really appreciate your doing this.”

“Oh, gods.” She sighed. “And
you’re
at the maudlin-drunk stage.”

“Nuh-uh!” I shook my head. “I’m serious!”

“Okay, cupcake.” Lurine patted my head. “Maybe it’s best if you let me do most of the talking for now.”

When we returned to the living room with clean glasses and a bowl of pretzels, the ranks had thinned. I was sorry to see that the doughy Triton who’d burst into tears was gone. If anyone was going to crack tonight, he’d seemed like the best bet. But Lurine zeroed in unerringly on Matthew, solicitously pouring a glass of scotch for him and resuming her perch on the arm of his chair.

His glassy-eyed gaze skated slowly up and down her spandex-wrapped figure. He might be playing it cool, but he wasn’t immune to her charms. Even dialed down a few notches, Lurine was still Lurine.

“How come you’re being so nice to me?” he murmured. “It’s not like I’ve done anything to deserve it.”

“You’re hurting.” She wound her fingers gently through his hair. “People lash out when they’re hurt.”

He exhaled a long sigh, closing his eyes.

“Plus, I’ve never met a Master of the Universe before.” Lurine’s tone was light and soothing, somehow maternal and seductive at the same time. “I thought that meant guys in the finance industry pulling down seven-figure salaries. Is that you?”

His eyes opened. Beneath the sheen of drunkenness, there was a cynical light in them. “Is that what you’re looking for?”

“It wouldn’t hurt.” She bent over and placed a lingering kiss on his lips. “But I’m guessing your answer is no.”

“I do all right.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Masters of the motherfucking Universe.” Matthew leaned his head back against the chair as though it were too heavy to hold upright, his eyes half-slitted. “The true sons of Triton. You know who Triton was, Trask sisters?”

“Some Greek god, right?” Lurine, who was in all likelihood related to the deity in question, hazarded a guileless guess.

“Like in that movie?” I added. “
Clash of the Tritons
?”

He laughed soundlessly. “Old Triton blowing his wreathed horn, right? Blowing his horn over the waves, summoning all the sea nymphs, every one of them bowing down before him, every one of them hoping to be chosen, every one of them hoping to get fucked by a motherfucking god. That’s what it’s all about.
That’s
what it means to be a Master of the Universe.”

Lurine and I exchanged a glance.

“Is that how Thad died?” I asked softly. “Trying to become a Master of the Universe like you?”

“Yeah.” Matthew’s eyelids flickered, sinking closed, then opening again. “I mean, I don’t know. Hell, I wasn’t there. But I think so.” He hoisted his glass, scotch slopping over the rim. “He died trying, anyway.”

I felt sick.

Twenty-six

H
alf an hour later, Lurine and I made our exit from Triton House.

We didn’t get anything more out of Matthew Mollenkamp or the other Tritons. Having divulged that much, they retreated from the subject and settled for drinking themselves further into oblivion. But as far as I was concerned, it was a good start.

I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, steadied by Lurine’s hand beneath my left elbow. “You think he was telling the truth?”

“No.” She steered me over an uneven patch of pavement. “But I think he was telling the truth wrapped in a lie.”

“Oops.” Despite Lurine’s guidance, I tripped over a jagged crack. “Yeah, me, too.” I peered into the darkness. “Hey, is that my car?”

“It is.” Lurine held out her hand. “Keys, please.”

Rummaging in my straw satchel, I found my car keys beneath
dauda-dagr
’s
deer-hide-wrapped length and handed them to her. “Thanks.”

“Your mom would kill me if I let you drive in this condition.” Lurine slid behind the wheel. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she eased Stefan’s pendant over her head. The subtle glamour faded, restoring her features to their usual unsubtle beauty. “Ah, that’s better.” She handed me the pendant. “Put that somewhere safe for the head ghoul in town. Been seeing a lot of him, have you?”

I tucked the pendant in an inner pocket of my satchel. “Not a
lot
.”

“Hmm.” Lurine turned the key in the ignition and began easing the Honda out of the parking lot.

“What does ‘hmm’ mean?”

“Just be careful with him, Daisy.” She gave me a serious look. “I told you, you’re like catnip to these things. He may be older and have more control, but that just makes him more dangerous.”

“Like you?” I asked as she turned onto the street. It was probably a boundary-crossing question, but what the hell. Drunk as I was, I had an excuse.

Lurine didn’t answer right away. The passing streetlights illuminated her face intermittently, and she looked different in their glow. Not older, exactly; for as long as I’d known her, Lurine had looked about twenty-seven or-eight, and assuming I remained resigned to accepting my own mortality, it wouldn’t be all that many years before I’d be able to pass for her older sister, which was sort of an unpleasant thought.

Anyway, it was a sense like age, as though I could see the shadows of antiquity stretching behind her.

“In some ways, yes,” she said eventually. “We do what is necessary to ensure our survival. In others, no. I am no danger to
you
. That does not mean I’m not dangerous to mankind.” She turned her gaze on me. “Do you really want to know more?”

The streetlights caught a hypnotic glitter in her pupils: not the avid hunger of a ghoul, but the steady predator’s gaze of a snake fixing its prey.

“Umm . . .” I swallowed. “I’m going to go with no.”

She turned her attention back to the road. “Daisy, you’re Hel’s liaison, and I will tell you anything you truly wish to know. But in the eldritch community, it’s not wise to ask questions if you don’t want to know the answers.”

“Gotcha.” The thought occurred to me that if Lurine had shed her borrowed glamour and turned that basilisk stare on Matthew Mollenkamp, he would have peed in his pants, begged for his mommy, and told us the whole unvarnished truth instead of bragging about being a true son of Triton. Of course, that probably would have resulted in half the town of Appeldoorn camping outside the infamous Lurine Hollister’s estate with pitchforks, which was the point of the glamour in the first place. “So what do you think about Lord Matt’s Masters of the Universe story?”

Lurine pursed her lips. “It all comes down to sex, doesn’t it? That’s the one thing that boy wasn’t lying about.”

“Uh-huh.” I attempted to nod sagely, and found my head was still a bit wobbly on my neck. “But with who? Or
what
?”

“Nothing human.” She pulled adeptly onto the highway. “But there’s no way it was one of the local water elementals.” She shook her head. “They wouldn’t dare lie to me. And there’s no way those boys could catch or lure one.”

“No.” I rubbed my temples, feeling the lurking onset of the hangover that awaited me. “But you’re right. That’s what they were looking for in Pemkowet. Not drugs. It all comes down to sex.”

Lurine crossed the invisible threshold that marked the return to Hel’s domain, and both of us relaxed a bit, feeling brightness restored to the world even in the dark of night. “It so often does, cupcake.”

The cards from my mom’s reading danced behind my eyes as I tried to put the pieces together.
La Calavera
, the victim’s grinning skull. Had it been just earlier today that I’d attended Thad Vanderhei’s funeral? Yes, it had.
La Botella 
. . .
Urgh
. My stomach turned sour at the thought of it.

La Araña
, the spider in its web sprawling over Jerry Dunham’s shoulder, his flat, dead gaze meeting mine as he spoke of headless chickens, and that had been this morning, too . . .

Las Jaras
, the arrows.

I didn’t have a fix on that one at all.

After that . . .

Lulled by the soft, steady sound of the Honda’s engine, I drifted into sleep, waking only when Lurine pulled into the driveway of her gated estate and put the car in park, shutting off the engine.

Lurine eyed me. “Under the circumstances, I think we’ll put you up for the night in one of the guest rooms, okay?”

I yawned, too tired to protest. “Okay.”

Ten minutes after we pulled into the drive, I was nestled in the depths of a bed with a feather-cushion mattress, ironed sheets with a ridiculously high thread count drawn up to my chin. Everything smelled fresh and clean and faintly of lavender. I wriggled with contentment and snuggled deeper into the mattress, my tail twitching in gentle approval. It made a nice swishing sound against the sheets.

Lurine deposited a glass of water on the bedside table. “There are toiletries in the guest bath. Got everything you need?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good.” Stooping, she kissed my forehead, sort of like she used to do when babysitting me, only not quite. “I’ll be out for a while.”

With an effort, I propped myself up on my elbows. “Where?”

“Down to the beach.” A dreamy look crossed her face. “Night’s the only time I can swim freely.”

“Oh.” Now, that would be a sight to see: Lurine in all the splendor of her true form, diving and cavorting through the white-crested wavelets of Lake Michigan on a midsummer night, the iridescent scales of her muscular coils glinting in the moonlight, their joyous rainbow hues muted to a complex monochrome palette. I was a little sorry to miss it and a little relieved, too. “Have fun.”

She smiled. “I will.”

I slept.

It seemed as though no more than a few minutes had passed before my phone chimed an incessant alert, but when I squinted my way awake, there was a faint, gray daylight behind my eyelids.

I fumbled for my phone. “’Lo?”

“Daise?”

It was Jen, and she sounded scared. I dragged myself upright against no fewer than five very soft down pillows. “Yeah, I’m here. What’s up? Is it your sister?”

“No, it’s Brandon.”

“Your brother?” I was still half-asleep.

“Mom and Dad had a fight. He took off in the middle of the night. I only just realized it.”

“Hang on.” I downed at a single gulp half the glass of water Lurine had left for me. “Okay, so Brandon’s missing. Did you report it?”

“Of course I did!” Now Jen sounded impatient. “Officer Mallick said boys will be boys. He told me to call back if Brandon wasn’t home by lunchtime.”

I pressed the cool glass of water to my temples. “Do you know where he went?”

Although I couldn’t see it, I knew that on the other end of the phone, Jen gave a helpless shrug. “Where does he always go?”

I knew the answer to that question.

In times of trouble, of which there were many in the Cassopolis household, Jen’s brother, Brandon, fled into the woods and marshes behind their house, where he could hunker down and hide. It was exactly the kind of stupid, dangerous place that appealed to an eleven-year-old kid, but he’d never stayed away for long.

Overnight was a record. Overnight meant he ran a serious risk of encountering something very unpleasant.

“Okay, okay! Don’t panic.” I scrambled out of bed. “I’m going to call Cody.”

“He’s not on duty,” Jen said. “I asked.”

I squirmed into my denim skirt. “I’m going to call him anyway. We need a tracker.”

There was a little silence. “Do you think he’ll do it?”

“I don’t know.” I switched the phone to my other ear so I could squeeze my right arm into my sleeveless top, then switched back to do the other, yanking it over my head. “But I’m sure as hell going to ask. I’ll call you back.”

Cody picked up on the second ring, sounding surprisingly alert for a guy who’d worked patrol on the night shift.

I explained the situation to him. “I thought maybe you could shift and track him for us. See . . .” I winced. “Jen knows.”

There was a silence, and it wasn’t little. If it weren’t for the slow, steady sound of his breathing, I would have thought he hung up.

“I’m sorry!” I said. “It’s just . . . Oh, crap, I’ll explain later. But she won’t tell anyone. And the thing is, it’s dangerous out there. If Brandon hasn’t come home yet, it probably means he’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Cody asked curtly.

“The green, slimy, and pointy-toothed kind,” I said. “There’s a mucklebones in the marsh.”

“A
what
?”

“A Jenny Greenteeth. Only Jen didn’t like sharing a name with it, so we called it Meg Mucklebones, which, yes, is from a movie. . . .
Gah!
It’s a marsh hag, Cody. They drown and eat children. Are you coming or not?”

“I’ll be there.” He hung up.

I was leaving a note in the kitchen when Lurine drifted out wearing a sheer, lacy nightgown and robe straight out of a Victoria’s Secret fantasy, only probably ten times as expensive. “What’s up, cupcake?” she asked in a sleepy, sultry voice. Honestly, I don’t think she was even trying for sultry; it was just her default mode. “I heard you talking to someone.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Hel’s liaison is on call. Got a possible eldritch emergency.”

Her gaze cleared and sharpened. “Do you need help?”

I shook my head. “Cody’s on his way to meet me.”

“Oh, good.” Yawning, Lurine stretched languorously. “Then I’m going back to bed.” She smiled at me. “I had a
goood
swim last night.”

Okay, that time she was trying. I suppressed a faint shiver. “All right, I’ll talk to you later. Thanks again.”

“Anytime.”