Dark Waters (20 page)

Belatedly she looked around. There was no sign of Betty McNally. Everything was gone except for Rachel’s discarded clothes. She gazed into the dark woods, and then out at the lake, wondering where the woman—or was she a woman?—had gone. The Lady of the Lakes would have a hot tip for the police, if Rachel could figure out a way to keep her and Ethan out of it.

She stared down at the pool. All she could really think about was Ethan battling that creature. Surely the gunshots had been enough to stop him? Surely he hadn’t turned and slain Ethan?

Please
, she begged the universe,
please send him back to me alive
.

She shrieked when he suddenly burst up from the water and sat sputtering in the spring. Her heart pounding, she rushed around the tree, jumped into the water, and threw her arms around him.

“Oh my God, I was so afraid you weren’t coming back,” she cried as she flung herself against him.

He put his arms around her and drew her into a kiss. Then he looked around in sudden confusion. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said breathlessly. “There’s nothing up there but my clothes.”

He looked down at his chest. Passing through the water had washed away the blood. “I need a shirt.”

“Not from where I’m sitting,” Rachel said, and began to giggle.

THEY WALKED BACK
to Rachel’s car and drove across town to Hudson Park.

As they got out of the car Ethan said quietly, “Have you seen a ring of small rocks anywhere around?”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “Why?”

“Show me where it is. Your friends told me what we need to do.”

When Rachel did, Ethan kicked the stones aside, dispersing the circle. Then he picked up the individual rocks and threw them as far as he could into the water.

The circle had been a lock, the old woman told him, placed there by Artemak to isolate the good spirits in the lake. As long as it remained intact, they could influence nothing beyond their watery confines, nor communicate with their avatar when she came to them. Once they were weakened in this way, Artemak planned to trap them in Rachel’s heart, after which he could then destroy them utterly. This would free his fellow evil spirits in Lake Wingra.

But his brother Teculor, locked in his own bodily prison by the good spirits, got there first and trapped them in Garrett Bloom’s heart. Teculor hoped the gift of the captive spirits would induce Artemak to help break the spell that confined Teculor. But Artemak had been unable or unwilling—not even the old woman knew which—to help, and in the end neither brother got what he wanted.

Rachel and Ethan snuck quietly down to the water, and Rachel looked up at him doubtfully.

“You’re sure?” she said. “We don’t have to cut it open?”

“Not according to what they told me.”

She looked down at the bag. “So you saw them. You talked to them.”

“I don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe it was all in my head. But if it was real, then yes, I did.”

Despite everything she’d been through, Rachel felt a surge of self-pity. “Why didn’t they come out while I was still there? Why didn’t they talk to me?”

“I don’t know.”

She choked down her tears and wiped her eyes. “What were they like?”

“Young, mostly. Very good-looking. They all had white hair. And …”

“What?”

“It’s hard to describe, but you know how sometimes you just instinctively know something about someone?”

She grinned slightly. “Like the hot guy who just appears in your diner one day?”

“Something like that. Anyway, I just knew they were good people. Are good people. Are good … whatever they are.”

Rachel handed him the bag and quickly disrobed. She looked out at the water, her emotions a swirl of desire and apprehension. “I hope so. I hope they still … like me.”

“I think they do,” he said, and opened the bag.

She reached in with both hands and lifted out Garrett Bloom’s heart. It felt strange and disgusting as she cupped it in her palms.

She looked up at Ethan. “I’ll be back soon. One way or the other.”

He nodded. “I’ll be here.”

She stepped into the water and walked until it reached her elbows. Then she took a deep breath, lowered the heart to the water, and opened her hands.

The heart floated for a moment, then sank.

She stood there quietly, waiting.

The hands pulled her under slowly, into the wet darkness. They caressed her the way a diamond cutter might worship a valuable gem. She held her breath, afraid to trust them, but eventually she had to breathe again and found she could. She began to cry, and as the touches grew more erotic and insistent, she felt lips on her ear, and a voice, familiar from her recent adventure, said,
Hello again
. She could feel the lips form a smile, and she turned to let them kiss her.

ETHAN SAT ON
the wet grass and watched the surface of the water. He was more tired than he could ever recall. He felt a sense of triumph, but it was tempered with the feeling that events were still out of his control. After all, the woman he loved was in the water, indulging in a supernatural orgy.

The skyline along the opposite side of the lake sparkled with light. It was the world he knew: concrete, steel, wood, blacktop. In the army he’d destroyed them; as a civilian he built them. There was little room for talk of spirits.

He watched the lights of a plane as it rose above the city. How would this relationship play out in the long run? Would they get married, have children, grow old together? Would he be parked here in a wheelchair someday, watching Rachel use a walker to reach the water? That seemed implausible.

That is, unless the rules were a little different.

He stood up and undressed. It was time for the spirits to understand that they didn’t always get the final say-so.

He waded into the water, took a deep breath, and fell slowly back into the water. He’d done this once before, to communicate with the spirits when Rachel had been kidnapped. They had welcomed him then. Would they do so now?

The air began to burn in his lungs. He would have to surface soon. He reached out but felt only water and the silty bottom.

Okay, guys, it’s me
, he thought.
I know you didn’t pick me, but we’re part of one another’s business now, and we might as well get along. If you’ve got a shred of compassion in you, you’ll give Rachel some peace away from the water as well. I promise I’ll never make her choose between us, if you do the same
.

He waited for a response, but there was none. When he could stand it no more, he put his legs beneath him and pushed. He burst from the chest-deep water and took a long, desperate breath.

He shook his head in disappointment until Rachel’s voice cried, “Ethan!”

He looked up. She stood on the bank, fully dressed, her face wrenched with concern. “Jesus, I’ve been out of the water for almost half an hour! Are you all right?”

I was underwater for half an hour?
he thought. It had seemed like the length of one breath. He said in wonderment, “I’m fine.”

“Well, come on, it’s nearly daylight. You don’t want anyone to see you!” She laughed, amusement mixing with concern. He walked toward her through the water.

CHAPTER THIRTY

M
ARTY WALKER LOOKED
down at the body draped across the same picnic table where Garrett Bloom had died, beside the half-demolished mental hospital. The sunrise cast amber beams through the treetops and turned a wide swath of Lake Mendota bloodred.

The corpse was nude, unmarked, and intact. Beside it on the ground were a pile of clothes, a purse, and a canvas satchel.

He’d examined the ID and knew the woman’s name. It was the only certainty in the whole thing. “Now who in the hell,” Marty asked no one in particular, “is Betty McNally?”

“She ran an art gallery and was obsessed with the Lo-Stahzi,” Julie Schutes said as she came down the hill.

Marty turned and scowled at her. “And how do you know that?”

“I have sources.”

“Or a police scanner.”

“Well, that too. But once I got the name, the rest was easy. She teaches pottery, reads tarot on the side, and sells bad art at good prices. And she was once arrested for trying to steal a rare book on the Lo-Stahzi from campus.”

“And she’s dead in the same place we found Garrett Bloom,” Marty said, and shook his head. “Don’t suppose you know how they’re connected?”

“Hey,” one of the technicians said, “this satchel is soaked with blood. And look at this.” He carefully held up a long, thin knife before slipping it into an evidence bag.

“If the blood’s human, get it typed right away,” Marty said. He looked steadily at Julie. “Do you happen to know Garrett Bloom’s blood type as well?”

“No, but I can find out.”

“Don’t bother. It’s A-negative.”

Julie’s eyebrows went up. “You think this woman was killed by the same man who killed Bloom?”

“No,” Marty said, and held up an evidence bag with a pill bottle inside. “This woman killed herself with an overdose, I’m pretty sure. This bottle was in her hand, and she’d thrown up some of them. And she did it at the same place Garrett Bloom was killed, with a knife that could’ve killed him in her possession.”

Julie said, “Okay, wait, I want to get all this down.”

“Oh, no,” Marty warned. “This is all off the record. I could be way off base. But
if
the knife matches the stab wounds, and
if
the blood in that satchel turns out to be Bloom’s, then we may have his real killer.”

“Not the Matre woman?”

“No comment,” Marty said, “until I get the forensics report.”

“So where’s his heart, then?”

Marty turned and looked out at Lake Mendota. “Maybe she dumped it out there.”

His cellphone rang. He answered and listened in growing disbelief at the report from officers at Lake Wingra. Two morning joggers had found the drowned body of the actor Kyle Stillwater.

RACHEL AND ETHAN
arrived at the diner just after the doors opened at 6 a.m. They had not changed or showered, and Ethan was still shirtless, so they drew stares when they entered. Helena looked them over and said, “I don’t want to know about it right now. But I
do
want to know. Especially since I’ve had to get ready to open by myself.”

“It’s a fair trade,” Rachel said with a smile. “Just … can you call Clara or Roya in to help this morning? I’m beat.”

Helena looked at Ethan. “Have you two worked out your issues, then?”

Ethan, his arm across Rachel’s shoulders, pulled her close against him. “Negotiations are proceeding.”

“Uh-huh.”

The door slammed open, and Patty cried, “Rachel!” Before Rachel could react, the girl wrapped her in a hug and spun her around. “I’ve been trying to find you!”

She scrunched up her nose at the muddy smell and stepped back. Then she took in Ethan’s bare-chested presence. To Rachel she said, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Rachel said with a laugh. “I’m glad to see you too. I was worried about you. You said you met someone and then you never answered my calls.”

She blushed. “I’m sorry, I was just … I want you to meet somebody,” she said, and ran back outside. A moment later she brought in a tall, dark-haired boy.

“This is Andrew,” Patty said. “Everybody calls him Ace.”

“Hello,” Ace said, looking down nervously. Rachel realized that thanks to her disheveled appearance and his own nervousness, Ace didn’t recognize her. She went along with it, saying, “Nice to meet you. I’d shake your hand, but I might leave a tadpole in it.”

“Oh, you’ll be seeing plenty of him,” Patty assured them. “This one isn’t made of water vapor and silt.”

“She keeps saying stuff like that,” Ace said. “I have no idea what it means.”

Rachel winked at him. “It’s all right. It’s a private joke.” Then she turned to Ethan. “I’d offer to make you breakfast, but if the health inspector came by and saw me in the kitchen in this condition, he’d close us down.”

“That’s okay,” Ethan said.

To Helena, Rachel said, “We’re going upstairs to take a shower. You sure you’ve got it under control?”

Helena couldn’t help smiling. “I’d say all’s right with the world.”

RACHEL AND ETHAN
lay in bed beside each other, their noses touching, her leg across his waist. The sheets were damp with sweat from their exertions. She sighed and ran a fingertip along his jaw, feeling his stubble.

“Did that really just happen?” she breathed.

“You’ll have to tell me.”

“That’s the first time I’ve ever … ever come away from the water.”

“How was it?”

She closed her eyes and sighed with amazed contentment.

“I’ll take that as a positive response,” he said, and kissed her. “Give me about twenty minutes, and we’ll try it again.”

“You know, you were very brave last night,” she said.

“Bravery had nothing to do with it. It was instinct.”

“Right,” she said mock-knowingly.

“Besides,
you
saved the day. You dove in after him. I just followed you.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking. Instinct?”

“Instinct. Still, without you, we’d be dead. You saved both of us, just like you did those girls in the cellar.”

They kissed, their tongues caressing as their hands sought familiar areas. With a soft trill, Tainter jumped onto Ethan’s side of the bed and nuzzled the top of his head into the man’s neck.

Ethan broke the kiss and laughed. “Is he trying to get me out of bed?”

“I think he’s saying he accepts you.”

He reached over his shoulder and scratched the cat behind his ears. “I like you, too, Tainter.” He kissed Rachel. “And I love you.”

“I noticed. I love you too.”

He stretched, and Rachel luxuriated in watching the muscles of his chest and arms flex. “I don’t ever want to get out of this bed. Except to go to the lake with you.”

She felt a little twinge of the old fear. “You’re still sure you don’t have a problem with that?”

“Still sure. You never lied to me, and you never kept secrets. I don’t have a problem.”

She kissed the tip of his nose. “I don’t know if I’ll ever give them up. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to.”

“I’ll never ask you to.”

She was about to tell him her other secret, that she was the mind behind the
Lady of the Lakes
blog, but before she could, he kissed her again. She slithered closer and pressed her body to his, and was surprised to feel him stir against her again. She would take that as a sign that, for now, she should keep that secret. Although she might leave him a clue here and there.

Besides, like her mother always said, every relationship needs a little mystery.

POSTED BY THE
Lady to the
Lady of the Lakes
blog:

Take a moment to thank your partners today, people. Finding someone loyal enough to follow you down into hell and then make sure you both get back is a rare and precious thing. Don’t take it, or them, for granted. And remember that the world you see around you might not be the only world out there. Tread lightly, do good for others, and cherish the ones who love you.