Indigo Springs (9 page)

The following morning Astrid awoke to the sound of tapping at her door. “You in there?” It was Jacks.

“Yeah, come in.” She sat, making sure her T-shirt was pulled down, before rubbing her ringing head. It was bright outside—too bright—she had slept in again.

He slipped inside. “You’re lucky I wandered past. I thought you were up at dawn and gone as usual.”

“I have to get an alarm.” She yawned, mentally ticking through her client list. “I can’t keep sleeping in.”

“You need to eat more,” he said. “Besides tired, how are you feeling?”

“My head hurts.”

He peered into her eyes, expression friendly but detached: his rescue-worker face. “No sign of the blue goo on your face.” He turned her hand over, searching.

Blue goo. The chantments, Jacks’s watch, the fireplace, and the odd fluid. Astrid had forgotten completely.

“What is it?” He was still assessing her. “You okay?”

“Maybe I need some air.”

He opened her balcony doors. Dew covered the lawns of Mascer Lane in glittering silver beads. Two months into the growing season, the rhododendrons were fading. She could see hints of color among the rosebushes as they prepared to bring in the next wave of blooms.

A trio of local kids dressed in blue baseball uniforms was walking through the alley. One of them waved, an ordinary gesture that made her feel inexplicably teary.

“Hey,” she called, waving back.

Taking a deep breath of the morning air, she looked at her hand, searching for any sign of the blue stain. Bruisy color seemed to puddle under her fingers, then vanished.

Maybe the magic was gone.

Jacks had followed her outside. “You’re not okay.”

“I am. I was just…thinking of Dad,” she lied, and he folded her into a hug. She leaned her aching head against his chest, smothering guilt. Saying it was grief would keep him from dragging her to a doctor.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, suddenly awkward. She remembered dancing with him at Dad and Olive’s wedding. They’d been the same height then; now he towered over her.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I have to get to work. Thanks for waking me.”

He locked glances with her, still assessing, and she tried to look even-keel. “Call my cell if you need to.”

“I will.”

“Good. And no playing with the blue goo until we’re all home tonight.”

“I promise.” She saluted.

Once he was gone she lurched over to the dresser, trying on the lipstick and staring at her reflection anxiously. Rumpled, worried Astrid became a picture of tousled glamour; she sighed, reassured, and opened her drawer. If the blue fluid had disappeared from her skin…

But no—it was there, caught in a sealed pint jar.

Relieved, she donned her gardening uniform—a layer of sunblock, boots and jeans, T-shirt and a ball cap.

“Ssst!” Sahara’s hiss drew her across the hall.

“You rang, milady?”

Sahara was preening in front of her mirror, clad only in a bra and pan ties, an outfit in each hand. “Interview clothes,” she said. “The suit too much for rural America?”

The suit was a straw-colored two-piece, slacks and a jacket with a pale green blouse. “Let’s see you in it.”

“Lecher.”

“You have an interview?”

Sahara jerked her head in the direction of her laptop. “Local radio station needs a nighttime host.”

“You’re looking for work in Indigo Springs?”

“I have this addiction to money. Without it I get all hungry and strung out. The withdrawal’s awful.”

“What happened to ‘This is a stopover on the way to Los Angeles’?” Astrid asked. “Or ‘you’d better keep me entertained if I’m going to last three weeks—’?”

Sahara winked. “Believe me, I’m entertained.”

“You’re staying?”

“Don’t you want me?”

Astrid blushed. “Is your interview with Matt Goode?”

“Yeah.”

“Wear the skirt, then. And act like you’re glad to be out of the big bad city.”

“Shucks, sir, I always was a country girl at heart.”

“Lay it on half that thick and you’re a shoo-in.”

Tossing the suit aside, Sahara pulled the dress over her head. “I could just mermaid him into hiring me.”

“You need magic to get a job in your own field?” Astrid asked.

“Of course not,” Sahara said. “How do I look?”

The dress was cream-colored linen, stylish but reasonably conservative. “Perfect,” Astrid said.

Sahara unrolled a pair of nylons and slid into them, every move graceful. “Hey, were you serious about wanting to fall in love?”

“Why?”

“Classifieds. Same webpage as the job listings. ‘Shy guy, thirty, just discharged from army, loves hiking, fishing, watersports…’”

“I am not answering a personals ad. Anyway, that would be David Crane.”

“The guy who used to spit on people’s desk chairs at school?”

“Exactly.”

“Then how are you going to get yourself a man?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“Want a make over?” Turning to the profusion of bottles and brushes on her dresser, Sahara selected a comb and began working on her hacked-up hair.

“Thanks, no.”

“Let me help you find some new clothes, at least. Your good stuff got trashed by the Crumbler, didn’t it?”

“The what—oh, the magic pocketknife.” Astrid tilted her head. “I might agree to clothes shopping.”

“I bet you and Jacks can tell me exactly how many available men are in town.”

“Just men? Are we shopping for you or for me?”

“Well, I am on the market too. Besides, if there were any single lesbians in town besides Jemmy, you’d have made your move.” To Astrid’s surprise, the hair was taking shape, curling around Sahara’s face as obediently as if it had been professionally styled. She spritzed it with something that smelled of pineapples and chocolate.

She fiddled with the mermaid pendant. “Maybe this isn’t a good time for an Astrid romance project.”

“There’s never a good time. Love is by definition a vast inconvenience.”

“Cynic.”

“We’ll just make a list of candidates, okay?”

“Not now—I’m running late.”

“Wait, don’t go! There’s something else.”

“What?”

Reaching for the laptop, Sahara clacked keys. “I’ve been surfing for references to magic on the Web.”

Astrid sank to the bed. “Find any?”

“About what you’d expect. Fake psychics, UFO nuts.”

“Anything about the blue goo?”

“Not yet. But that word you keep using—
chantment
—I found it in one discussion thread.” She began reading: “‘I have a stickpin that makes people feel happy, but whenever I use it, I have to eat big meals over the next few days. It burns me up like firewood.’”

“Firewood,” Astrid repeated.

“Then another poster, Eldergodz, answers, ‘I’m always hungry and exhausted, I’m losing weight like crazy.’ That leads to a bunch of off-topic stuff about dieting, but after
that
a third person—Marlowe she calls herself—says she has a bookmark that can answer tough questions.”

“What kind of questions?” Astrid asked. “Does it say?”

“Yeah.” Sahara flipped ahead. “How can my brother keep from losing his house, where did my neighbor’s missing cat get to, what do I tell the IRS when they audit me?…”

“Wish we had that one,” Astrid said.

“Yes, except Marlowe says she was wasting away from helping her friends with their various problems. She was having fainting spells and seizures. She couldn’t eat enough to keep up. It sucked the life right out of her.”

“Makes sense.”

“Happypill—the one who has the magic stickpin—seems to know the most. She’s the one using the word
chantment
, and she refers once to an ‘angel’ who gave her the pin.”

“Great. Does that mean Dad was getting the chantments from angels?”

“I don’t know,” Sahara said. “Hopefully we’ll find out. This Happypill person seems to think there’s another way to power the chantments.”

“Is that something the angel said?”

“It doesn’t say.” Sahara scowled. “Doesn’t it seem unfair that magic takes energy? Always a catch, huh?”

“It’s why I’m sleeping in,” Astrid said.

“I’d hoped I was so hungry because of Jacks—the crappy food, you know? But it must be my little mermaid.” Brushing on blush and eye shadow, Sahara selected a plum lipstick a shade darker than her own lips, and completed her transformation into a polished job seeker.

“I’ll keep reading the thread,” she said. “Information is power, right?”

“Definitely. The more we know, the better.”

Turning to the mirror again, Sahara nodded in satisfaction and reached for the mermaid.

Astrid caught her hand. “Seizures and fainting fits, remember? Matt will give you the job.”

“It’s not for him. I’m going to sell the gold dust to a jeweler today.”

“But—”

“How else can we launder it here in the boonies?”

Launder, Astrid thought uneasily. A crime word. “You’ll be careful?”

“Soul of discretion, I swear.”

“Don’t you think you’d better check on Ma first?”

“What—make sure I haven’t fried her brain before I do someone else?”

“Exactly.” Astrid searched her friend’s face, to see if she was offended by the insinuation, but Sahara nodded.

“Right. Ev first, then—if she’s okay—the jeweler.”

Astrid hugged her. “Thanks. Tell Ma I’ll call, okay?”

“I’m just keeping busy. Jacks made me swear I’d leave the blue goo alone until after you’re both off work—”

“Work! Dammit, now I’m late.”

“Then get out of here,” Sahara said, smacking Astrid lightly on the backside to send her on her way.

The gardening business, like much of her life, was something she had fallen into. Dad had been a high school dropout too, unemployed and unemployable until he got married. Ev was widely pitied for having saddled herself with him. As soon as she fell pregnant, goodwilled Springers began trying to redeem Albert with job offers.

By the time Astrid was old enough to crawl, her father was tending a handful of lawns and yards around town. He had been little more than an odd-job man at first, a mower and weeder, a clearer of debris. Then he’d discovered a natural flair for landscaping. From cursory gardening for old ladies who couldn’t keep up with their yards, he slowly built up a client base.

Albert’s real break in the direction of legitimacy came when he landed a caretaker’s job for a row of cottages at Great Blue Reservoir. When he began, the sad row of weather-beaten cabins looked half-ready to collapse into the scrubby meadows of long grass and dandelions that surrounded them. Albert slapped a careless layer of paint on the structures and got to work. A few years later they were flower-strewn and verdant. The abundant blooms and greenery gave the cottages an air of noble fatigue.

By then Astrid was sixteen and working for Albert part-time, mowing lawns in town and helping with the gardening. But something was already nibbling at Albert’s marginal success—his mania for antiques had worsened. Junking devoured his time, drawing him farther from town and clients. Astrid raced to keep up with his workload, cutting classes to hang on to jobs. Her B grades dropped to C’s, then shivered on the edge of a real nosedive.

The idea that she had to preserve the business—that Dad would come to his senses one day—kept her going. But then Ma realized Albert had stopped paying Astrid’s wages, and their marriage finally died.

Astrid dropped out of school then, splitting her time between her divided parents and the business. She managed to hang on to most of Dad’s garden contracts, preserving his business for the day he recovered from his compulsive antique collecting. She couldn’t accept the permanence of his change, even when he got himself jailed. Prison will turn him around, she promised herself.

But when he got out, Albert didn’t even try. He got into debt instead, borrowing every cent Astrid could give. When she was tapped out, he’d married Jacks’s mother.

Her father vanished into junking, leaving her his vocation as a warped consolation prize.

Astrid’s first client today was one of the town matriarchs, a woman who had hired Dad in the early years and never ditched him, even in bad times. Leeda Flint had five acres of land just off the highway to Wallowa. Most of that was pasture for her horses. Expensive warmbloods, seven of them: Leeda loved those horses so much, she kept a donkey too, so none of her precious babies would be at the bottom of the equine pecking order. She was sixty-two, and rode every single day.

Her yard was simple, with beds of flowers bordering the property and walkways. The rest was lawn, an expanse of green wide enough to accommodate trench warfare and—thanks to Astrid—meticulously groomed as a golf course.

Astrid unlocked the lawn mower and began working careful circles around the grass, keeping an eye out for weeds or other blemishes and returning to check suspect areas after she mowed. Two precocious dandelions were scouting out the territory near the driveway; Astrid, wielding a long plucking fork, ripped them out by the roots.

As she picked them off the fork and tossed them into a bucket, another Albert memory tickled her consciousness. Vitagua, Astrid thought, stopping short. The blue goo is called vitagua.

She closed her eyes, trying to remember. Her and Dad, here…when?

Nothing.

“Now who’s going nuts?” She fetched some border plants from the truck and knelt at the edge of the flower beds, reaching out to pluck a chickweed that had stretched into the sunlight from its nest underneath the tulips.

As her fingers closed over the stem of the plant, brushing the topsoil, words slid through her mind like oil: chantments, vitagua, the unreal, the Spring.

She placed her hand flat on the ground and a string of memories unspooled:

Dad had been showing her how to weed a stand of foxgloves and dahlias. Working her fingers down to the shaft of the unwelcome plants, tugging to gauge how loose the soil was before the slow progressive pull…

She’d plucked her first dandelion successfully, bringing up the whole root, sprinkling dirt everywhere.

“Let’s take a break,” Dad said, holding out a cupped hand.