Turning Tides (22 page)

Instinct told me to hide, and I didn’t ignore it. I ducked into the small shed Robin used as an office. Sera followed, drawing the door almost closed behind her. We stood close together and watched through the narrow opening as David and Lana appeared around the corner.

It was no wonder we’d heard them from a distance. They were arguing, voices raised and hands moving in sharp staccato gestures, each trying to make their point just a bit louder than the other.

“I told you I wasn’t going to leave. Do you even know how to fly a plane?” Lana’s words reached us first, a plaintive whine.

“I took lessons a decade ago. That’s not the point. Lana, we have to go. I can’t be on this island anymore. It’s just… I can’t be. And you’re not safe.” The last sentence felt like an afterthought. His eyes darted in every direction, hands clenching into fists and releasing. He looked more like an addict who’d missed his fix than a stable, boring stone.

“Do you need access to more rocks? I found a nice little outcropping not far from Fiona’s house.”

“I don’t need more rocks, Lana.” The words rushed together, frustration and anger speeding them toward their target. He swallowed and tried again, this time speaking with an exaggerated patience that wouldn’t fool anyone. “It’s just too much. This island is tiny. There’s no escape. Everywhere I look—” His words cut off, likely because his nervous eyes had landed on the shed’s poorly closed door and spotted two curious elementals staring back.

He turned back to Lana, giving no sign he’d seen us. “But I won’t go without you.”

Her eyes melted into twin pools of lovestruck goo. “Aw, David. I don’t want to be without you either.” He had one full second to relax before she finished her thought. “But it’s not right to leave my people in danger to save myself, and I won’t disobey the order to stay on the island. Now be a dear and stop asking me to be selfish. You’d never have fallen in love with me if that’s the kind of woman I was.” She bent her head to kiss him on the cheek, then turned and walked away, singing a quiet song as she headed back toward the north side of the island.

David stared at Lana, then looked at the plane with longing. At last, he followed his girlfriend up the rocky path without even acknowledging our presence.

“What just happened?”

Sera shook her head. “Told you he was suspicious. What kind of stone gets that worked up?”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it could actually be love. It does make us crazy.”

Her only reply was a disbelieving snort.

“Anyway, I don’t see anything here, and I need to check in with the council, see how long it will be before the next member arrives. At this point, I’m actually eager to hear I’ve been banished.” I wasn’t quite as anxious to get off the island as David, but it was pretty damn close. The longer I stayed, the more it felt like Alcatraz than a home.

Sera didn’t answer. I wasn’t even certain she heard me. All her attention was fixed on the corner of the shed, where Robin had stored packages while they waited to be picked up. She crouched, inspecting the ground.

I stepped behind her. “What is it?”

She pointed, and I fought the urge to run out of the shed before it exploded.

A thin line of white powder, no more than an inch long, rested on the floor.

“Do we take a sample?” I whispered, as if the volume of my words could affect the explosive.

“You carry forensic baggies with you?”

I moved gingerly backwards until I hit Robin’s desk, then slid each drawer open, looking for something to carry the powder. “We have a choice between a plastic grocery bag and a piece of Tupperware that she used to bring sandwiches to work. Sterility’s not that big a deal, right?”

Sera stretched her right index finger toward the substance, picking up several grains and examining them.

She sniffed. “Sera, that can’t possibly be a good idea.” Her tongue darted out and tasted the powder. I debated whether to run for my life or stay to watch my sister and best friend spontaneously combust.

She shook her head, annoyed. “Salt. Just a delivery of dry goods to the island.”

I was both relieved Sera wouldn’t be exploding that day and annoyed to find ourselves no closer to the truth.

She moved to the coffee maker, filling it with fresh grounds and water. “Call Carmichael and Johnson. Tell them what we know and ask them to email the most likely explosives. Just in case we were right.” She rattled off their number, and I was glad at least one of us still bothered to memorize contact information.

I made the call while we waited for the coffee to brew. They had no new information, but they would keep investigating. I was almost starting to feel guilty for giving Carmichael such a hard time.

No matter where I looked, I couldn’t find answers. People kept dying. I kept forgetting how to be sane. Mac and I kept doing our best to screw up our relationship before it ever began. It was a mess, and yet I’d keep going. I’d keep trying to fix things.

I just hoped I had enough time left to figure out how to do that.

Chapter 22

There was something I probably
should have done days ago, but I had a very good reason for avoiding it: I was a wimp.

I wasn’t squeamish, but neither did I look forward to time spent with dead bodies. I should have examined Robin’s body closely when I found her outside the cottage, but I’d been too happy to go along with everyone else’s belief that it was a fire, in some form or another.

Maybe it was. Maybe a seriously powerful dual magic was responsible for both her death and the explosions. I couldn’t be sure until I studied the burns.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t happy to have an excuse to procrastinate, and when I spotted Lydia Pond strolling along the southern beach, I figured I might as well check in.

Lydia walked through the makeshift court still erected along the shore, as if waiting for someone new to condemn. The older woman watched us approach, and though she kept a wary eye on Sera, she didn’t seem like she expected to burst into flames any moment.

“Is there any part of this island you haven’t seen yet?”

Pond laughed with little humor. “I think I’ve explored every square inch. I expected to be here for a day. Now, we’re all trapped here until another Lake or Strait arrives. I’ve been told it might take several more days.”

“You know, I’m perfectly happy to just accept my banishment and leave. We don’t need to make it official.”

“Deprive us of an excuse for ceremony? Never.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Besides, there’s a chance the newcomer won’t find you guilty. You must have figured out by now that you have my vote. One more innocent vote will make it tie, and you’ll be spared.”

“Why did you vote in my favor?” There’d been so many bigger questions over the last few days, I’d never thought to ask that simple one.

“Honestly, I probably would have said guilty, after the trick you pulled with Lake Tahoe, if it wasn’t for the planned punishment. That wasn’t just cruel. It was inhumane. And they call the shifters animals.” She spat the last word.

“Is that sentence still a possibility?”

“No.” The single word was terse, and it took her a moment before she relaxed enough to continue. “We only had a small supply of the drug. It’s time-consuming for the lab to make, I believe. Josiah destroyed most of it when he, you know.” She waved her hand, letting us finish the sentence on our own. “It’s no longer an option.” She sounded angry it was ever considered.

I thanked Lydia for her time. It was a surprise to discover at least one council member was still in my corner, but not an unpleasant one.

I should have just let her go, but a question had niggled at me for days now, and it seemed as good a time as any to ask it. “Lana said you took care of her family during some tough times.”

She waved off the comment. “Someone had to.”

“Did you…” For once, I thought about my words before I sent them out into the world, ensuring each one was perfectly neutral and gave none of my own knowledge away. “She told me her brother was in a mental institution. I can only imagine how difficult that would be for a family. I’m sure they were grateful for your help.”

Her face didn’t freeze. It locked down. Only her eyes remained watchful, studying my every movement, every expression. “Yes,” she said, her voice lacking any inflection.

She knew. She knew exactly what Trent was, and she protected him. It only made me like her more. I longed to tell her what I was, to compare experiences and learn what I could from her time with Trent, but reason asserted itself just in time. She was still a council member, still a member of the governing body that would order my death if they knew what I was. She might be sympathetic due to her nephew’s situation, but that didn’t mean she’d support me. We did all kinds of crazy things for family we would never do for strangers.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” I hurried on, trying to drop the subject. “It can’t be easy to watch a family member go through that.”

She nodded once, her eyes softening, then she walked away, leaving me and Sera to continue to the ice house where the bodies were kept.

Neither of us was in much hurry to get there.

“Is it time to escape with our dolphin army yet?” Sera asked. She stared at the sea, but I thought she was seeing airport parking in Reno, where her beat-up red Mustang patiently awaited our return. She saw the cabin and our friends and a dream of a quiet, predictable life where people stopped dropping dead and her sister wasn’t fighting tooth and nail for her sanity.

I watched the steady ebb and flow of the tide with her, weighing the puzzle pieces in my mind and trying to fit them into a cohesive image.

Despite having so little concrete information, I knew I was close. I could feel it. I’d been gathering facts for days now, and my subconscious had been busy fitting the information together in different ways. Each time, the picture was almost complete, just missing that final piece.

I let my brain churn through the possibilities. I imagined I was sitting at the breakfast bar in the cabin, writing out my thoughts in the early morning calm. I found the threads and pulled, examining each one on its own and then in relation to each other, until they started to make something akin to sense. It wasn’t the complete picture, not yet, but I thought I knew how to get it there.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I told Sera, “but I think I might have a plan.”

The next time
I came up with a plan, step one was going to be a long vacation on a tropic
al island. It would be a vast improvement over the current plan, which began with me studying the burnt remains of a friend.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” Sera picked up the sheet that covered Robin’s corpse, giving us both an unpleasant view of her roasted body.

“Anything that might explain why Edith exploded and Robin burned.”

I averted my eyes from the corner of the building where Rachel’s body has been placed. The sight reminded me too much of how she’d died, and I couldn’t afford the distraction. I needed to remain focused on the immediate task.

The island didn’t have anything like a morgue. When someone’s time came, maybe once every hundred years or so, the residents gathered for a quiet funeral at sea and gave the body to the waves. We had no cemetery, no undertakers. Death didn’t touch us often enough for those to be necessary.

This was different though. It hadn’t been either Edith’s or Robin’s time, and even my dingbat relatives had watched enough crime dramas to know the bodies were evidence and couldn’t be immediately delivered to the sea. Instead, they’d been placed in an old ice house, a remnant from the days before electricity came to the island, and then ignored until someone could figure out what to do with them.

“Too bad Vivian had to miss this,” Sera said.

A small laugh escaped. I wasn’t sure if it was disrespectful to make jokes over corpses or a necessary coping mechanism, but I didn’t think Robin would mind.

“We’ll take notes and tell her about it later,” I said, knowing our squeamish friend wouldn’t make it one minute before running from the room.

I studied Robin, trying to disassociate my emotions so I could view the woman on the table as a stranger. I registered the burnt hair and skin and the incongruous way the body looked almost relaxed.

“She looks so calm, almost peaceful. If it wasn’t for the ruined skin, I mean. Have you ever seen burns like these?”

Sera considered the corpse. “No. That doesn’t mean much. I’m often tempted, but I’ve never actually set someone on fire. I don’t know what it looks like.”

I did. I’d seen a body crumble to dust under Josiah’s flames, and it looked nothing like Robin. When I’d watched Josiah kill, what little skin the woman still possessed had been blackened, almost unrecognizable. Though it was red and misshapen, my friend had most of her flesh.

Plus, there was still the question why one woman exploded and the other burned. I looked between the corpses, unwilling to remove the sheet covering Edith. Or, more specifically, the various parts of Edith that hadn’t been washed out to sea. I may not be squeamish, but everyone had their limits. Dismemberment was apparently one of mine.

“Different murderer?” Sera asked, guessing my thoughts.

“That, or someone didn’t want to deal with the mess of a second exploding corpse.”

I bent closer to Robin’s body and studied the skin inch by inch. At first, it was difficult to see much through the burns, but I soon grew accustomed to the patterns created by the fire and was able to spot any anomalies.

I ran my eyes along the flesh of her shoulder, neck, and torso, looking for any wounds, any sign she’d been shot or stabbed before being set alight. There was no indication her death hadn’t been fire-related.

Grimacing, I placed one hand under her hips. Sera lifted the shoulders, helping me turn her.

I saw it instantly. “There,” I pointed.

Sera nodded. The skin at the base of her skull was split in two spots. The fire hadn’t done that.

“Someone hit her from behind, twice it looks like. Probably hard enough to knock her out. Maybe even kill her.”

“And then they set her on fire and left her on the porch.” Sera helped me lay her flat and covered her with the sheet. “To shut her up or incriminate me?”

“Why choose? It could be both.”

“You know, when this is all over, we should write a book about all the different ways elementals can kill people. We can go on the lecture circuit.”

I forced a smile. It was all we could do right now, keep smiling and joking until the universe gave us something real to smile about.

“Let’s head out. I want to see if the agents found anything yet.”

“Are you really going to forgive Carmichael?”

“It’s under consideration. Mac forgave him right away, said Carmichael did exactly what he should have if I was in danger.”

Sera sent me a wry look. “I’m not entirely sure you deserve that man.”

“All evidence suggests otherwise, I’ve got to say. But until he figures that out, I’m going with it.” I shut the ice house door, leaving the dead bodies behind. “And hey, this afternoon I’m going to save his life.
Again.
I get major points for that.”

“You really think you can pull it off? That you can get into a mental space where you want to break your connection?”

“I think I have to try.”

Sera looked like she wanted to continue the conversation, but I was already dialing the agents. I didn’t want to hear any doubts, any reasons why Mac and I should just accept the new normal and be joined at the hip for the foreseeable future.

The phone call to the FBI went to voicemail, and there were no new emails.

“You know, this plan would work a lot better if people got back to us.”

“Is it possible it’s less a plan and more a desperate hope?”

“Hey, to-may-to, to-mah-to.”

We stepped outside, feeling no desire to linger around the bodies. Little warmth awaited us outside, the sun once again dipping behind dense clouds, leaving the day chilly and dull.

I tightened my flimsy cardigan around my body and turned toward the houseboat. “You okay for a couple of hours? I can’t take the next step until I hear from Carmichael.”

“Do you really have to do this now? It seems it would be safer to wait till we’re home to do the whole magic recovery thing. Things are calmer there. Fewer explosions.”

“If we had any real idea of the longterm effects, maybe, but who knows what’s happening to his body while we wait? I’m at least going to try. Maybe it won’t be as difficult as my mother says.”

I knew she wanted to push, but in the end she only nodded and followed me toward the boat. I said little else, unsure if I was making the right decision and yet knowing it was the only one I could make.

This was close to being over. I almost had all the information I needed. I wanted to believe, when the murderer was unmasked, they’d blubber a confession on the spot. It would make life a hell of a lot easier.

In my experience, the bad guy was rarely so accommodating and had an annoying habit of fighting back. Lately, when I felt threatened, things hadn’t worked out so well. If that happened again, Mac couldn’t be the one to pay the price.

I needed to free him before my sanity slipped again, or disappeared altogether. I wouldn’t force him to be forever attached to a crazy woman.

I wanted him to be happy, and this was the only way to make sure he was.

We’d only been joking, but even so, Sera was wrong. Most of the time, I did deserve Mac. I just had to set him free before that was no longer the case.