Authors: Chloe Neill
Drink Deep (14 page)
Not that I had any better theory, but it seemed too convenient to blame shifters, a group with whom nymphs and sirens clearly had a tempestuous relationship.
A man suddenly walked through the front door, a handful of cut logs in his hands.
Despite the chill in the air, he wore grubby jeans but was naked from the waist up, his torso soaked with sweat. He smiled and kept walking through the living room to the other side of the house.
Grubby clothes or not, he was undeniably gorgeous. He was tall and well-built, with short wavy hair and a day’s worth of stubble along his square jaw. He had long, dark brows and deep-set eyes, and curvy lips above a dimpled chin.
When he disappeared through a door on the opposite side of the room, I looked back at Lorelei. She smiled knowingly.
“That, of course, is Ian. We’ve been married for four years. He knew me before I became siren, so he’s immune to the songs. He was thoughtful enough to follow me out here to the middle of godforsaken nowhere. I try to accept my lot gracefully.”
As soon as she’d gotten the words out, she put her hands on her forehead and bent over, clearly in pain. The woman who’d answered the door hustled into the room, muttering words in Spanish. She leaned beside Lorelei and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Be well,
niña
,” she said, and then whispered more words I couldn’t understand.
niña
,” she said, and then whispered more words I couldn’t understand.
I stood up, taking the hint. “Thank you for your time. I don’t want to bother you anymore.”
“Merit.” I glanced back. Lorelei had lifted her head again, tear tracks visible on her cheeks. “If this doesn’t get fixed soon, it will be too late.”
I promised her I’d do my best . . . and then I hoped I’d made a promise I could keep.
I let my [="3t .self out and walked back around the house to the path. Ian was outside again as well, and the air was thick with the scent of fresh resin.
Axe in hand, he stood in front of an upturned log. A second log stood vertically atop it. He pulled the axe over his head, muscles rippling, then heaved the axe down. The log split cleanly, its twin halves falling to the ground. Ian put another log onto the stump, then glanced up. His breath was foggy in the chill.
“You’re here about the lake?” he asked, wiping sweat from his brow.
“I am.”
“This isn’t her fault, you know. None of it. She carries the burden for someone else, and now she’s sick—or worse—because of that burden.”
He swung his axe up again, then cleaved the second log in two.
“I didn’t accuse her of anything,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”
He stood up another log. “Then figure it out. And if you don’t, we’ll be here when the world ends.”
With no good response to that, I made my way back to the helicopter.
CHAPTER SEVEN
PARADIGM SHIFT(ER)
T
he ride back was miserable. The wind had picked up, and we were tossed around with enough force that the pilot’s hands were white-knuckled around her controls. She spent half the trip praying under her breath.
he ride back was miserable. The wind had picked up, and we were tossed around with enough force that the pilot’s hands were white-knuckled around her controls. She spent half the trip praying under her breath.
I’m pretty sure I was green when we reached the helipad again. I made it to my car without incident, but sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes, unwilling to brave the drive home until I was sure I wasn’t going to ruin the upholstery. The last thing a boxy, twenty-year-old Volvo needed was the stench of airsickness.
While I had a moment, I checked my phone. I’d missed a call from Jonah, and Kelley had left a voice mail checking in. I did my duty and called her back first.
She answered the phone with a squeal. “You are amazing!”
“I’m—what now?”
“You! The lake! I don’t know how you did it, but you are a miracle worker!”
I had to shake my head to catch up. “Kelley, I just got back to the city, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Merit, you did it! The lake’s back to normal. Just all of a sudden, boom, and the water’s clear again and the waves are flowing, just like nothing happened. I don’t know what you told Lorelei, but it totally worked. It mattered, Merit.
You
mattered. Do you know how much this helps the House? The protestors have actually gone home tonight. This might get the GP off our back completely.”
You
mattered. Do you know how much this helps the House? The protestors have actually gone home tonight. This might get the GP off our back completely.”
I’d only been out of the helicopter for fifteen or twenty minutes, tops, and the lake hadn’t looked any different from the sky or when we landed. As much as I appreciated the praise and the possibility that I was giving the House room to breathe, I was skeptical. I’d believed Lorelei, and there was nothing on that island that made me think she had anything to do with what had happened to the lake, much less that she could stop it an hour or so after my visit. Something else had to be going on.
“Kel, I’m not sure it’s that simple. I mean, I’m glad the lake is back, but I ^="3t nty mi didn’t do anything, and I don’t think she did either. In fact, I don’t think Lorelei had anything to do with the lake at all. She’s weak like the nymphs are.”
“Occam’s Razor, Merit. The simplest solution is usually the true one. The lake went bad, you talked to Lorelei, the lake is back again. Maybe you scared her straight. Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, right?”
I frowned. That those things happened in order didn’t mean they were related to each other. Lorelei certainly hadn’t worked any magic while I’d been there. Would she have had time to do anything after I’d left?
This wasn’t the first time I’d been presented with an answer that seemed too easy. Celina had confessed her involvement in the V trade while standing in the middle of a public festival. That had briefly seemed like a miraculous end to our drug-related drama, at least until we discovered she’d been under Tate’s magical thumb.
Nothing was that easy. But maybe, for now, Kelley needed to believe we were making a difference, that we’d actually managed to solve a problem. The entire House probably needed to believe it. Maybe forgoing the truth was occasionally the right thing to do, so I gave her what she needed to hear.
“You’re probably right,” I said. “It would have been a pretty big coincidence otherwise.”
“Right? Anyway, go play! Take the night off. I’m just thrilled. Excellent job, Sentinel. And I’ll make sure Cabot knows it.”
The phone went dead, but that didn’t do anything to quell my anxiety. If I couldn’t discuss my findings in Cadogan House, I’d find a more receptive audience. Problem was, my best audience—the Ombud’s office—might not be all that receptive, either. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of telling Jeff that Lorelei blamed the Packs for the lake, and decided that confession needed to be made in person. Telling him shifters were my new suspects wasn’t going to go over well.
On my way to the Ombud’s office, I called Jonah to check in. He answered on the first ring.
“Well done on the lake,” he said.
“Thanks for the performance eval. But it wasn’t me. Any word on the nymphs?”
“I’ve heard they’re getting more healthy and hale by the minute and are big fans of yours right now.”
“Crap.”
“That wasn’t the reaction I expected.”
“I’m ruining the punch line here, but I didn’t actually do anything at the lake. Lorelei and I just talked.”
“You just talked?”
“That’s it. She was also weak and getting weaker, and she denies having done anything to the lake. I tend to believe her.”
“And I’m guessing you aren’t going to be content with the fact that the lake’s back to normal?”
I wasn’t sure if I should be flattered or insulted by the sentiment. But either way, he was right. “You would be correct. I’m gonna visit my grandfather and pick his brain. You wanna join me?”
“No can do. I’m in the middle of something. You want to meet later to debrief?”
“We can do that. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
“I’ll bring popcorn,” he promised, then hung up.
Traffic was light, so the drive to the south side didn’t take long. The office of the Ombudsman was located in a low brick building in a working-class, residential neighborhood. I parked on the street and headed to the door, hitting the buzzer to signal Jeff, Catcher, my grandfather, or Marjorie, my grandfather’s admin, that I was there.
Marjorie was an efficient woman, and she answered the door the same way she answered the phone—handing me off to someone else as quickly as possible.
“Good evening,” I told her after she uncoded the door and held it open for me, but by the time I got out the words, she’d relocked the door and was headed back to her office. Maybe supernatural diplomacy buried her in paperwork.
The building sported some serious 1970s décor, and Catcher and Jeff shared an equally ugly office down the hall. Metal desks probably grabbed from a city surplus auction filled their small room, and posters of River nymphs lined the walls.
I found Jeff and Catcher at their desks, but they were so heavily immersed in conversation they hadn’t even heard me enter.
“Her hair’s a lot darker,” Jeff was saying, while simultaneously typing on one of the rainbow of keyboards that covered his desk. “So I’m pretty sure our kids would have darker hair, too.”
“That’s not necessarily the case,” Catcher disagreed. He was folding a sticky note into a tiny, origami something-or-other. “I mean, they could get your genes. And your hair is lighter. You’re taller than Fallon, too.”
“True. True,” Jeff said.
Was this for real? Were these two magically oriented, problem-fixing, ass-kicking guys talking about what their kids would look like?
Jeff leaned over and offered a bag of pistachios to Catcher. Catcher smiled genially—and without even a bit of snark—dropped the origami and plucked a few from the bag. Jeff split the hull on one and chewed it.
“You ever think about coaching baseball, that kinda thing, when you and Mallory have kids? You know, doing the whole soccer dad routine?”
Catcher threw a pistachio in the air and caught it in his mouth. “While hoping they don’t fry the universe from day one? Yeah, that thought has occurred to me.” He sat up straight and looked at Jeff. “Can you imagine some little girl with Mallory’s hair? The blond, I mean.”
“Heart. Breaker,” Jeff said. “You’ll have to keep a shotgun by the front door just to ward off the players. Or, I guess, you could have Mallory do it for you.”
“I could,” Catcher allowed, then—realizing I was in the room— looked up and glared right at me. “I’ll do that right after I have her kick Merit’s ass for spying.”
I grinned and stepped inside, offering each a wave. “Hello, proud papas of children not yet conceived.”
Jeff’s cheeks blossomed crimson. “You could have given us a heads-up.”
“I guess the siren didn’t drown you?” Catcher dryly asked, getting me back to the point.
“Not even close. She was pretty nice, actually.”
“She must have been,” Jeff said with a grin. “I mean, you convinced her to do the right thing. The lake is back to normal.”
“Thank Christ,” Catcher said. “Did she make the trip worthwhile and confess to fucking up our lake?”
“As a matter of fact, she didn’t,” I said, pulling out a chair of my own. “Let’s call in my grandfather. He’ll want to hear this, too.”
I didn’t mean to set a dramatic scene, but I wanted them all in the room at the same time when I laid down the facts about our lake siren.
After a few minutes, my grandfather walked in, offered me a hug and a smile. But then his eyes changed, the joy flattening as he prepared to get down to business.
“Lorelei has been the lake siren since she took possession of the
Piedra de Agua
, the water stone, which somehow imparts its power to the holder. She’s weak—looked pretty awful, actually—and seems to be in pain. She’d actually hoped the nymphs had been responsible. We flew back to Chicago, totally uneventful, and I’m told when we arrive the lake is suddenly back to normal.
Magically
back to normal.”
Piedra de Agua
, the water stone, which somehow imparts its power to the holder. She’s weak—looked pretty awful, actually—and seems to be in pain. She’d actually hoped the nymphs had been responsible. We flew back to Chicago, totally uneventful, and I’m told when we arrive the lake is suddenly back to normal.
Magically
back to normal.”
There was silence in the room.
“It wasn’t her,” my grandfather concluded.
“Not unless she was lying and worked some really fast magic.”
Catcher frowned and began to rock in his ancient metal office chair, which squeaked in time to his movements. “So we’re dealing with something unknown.”
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