Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649) (12 page)

“I'll walk backward, okay?”

Down the steep path? “Don't be absurd. Go. Listen if I call.”

“You really are a worrier, aren't you?”

“World-class. It runs in my family, on my father's side. I'm sorry; I don't mean to be a nag. That's from my mother's side.”

“Don't apologize. It's kind of cute.”

Cute? I'm waiting to be turned into a charcoal briquette and he thinks it's cute? “Are you sure your thing will still work if you're out of sight?”

“My thing is working fine.” He gave a devil's grin. “My fireproofing works unless I'm unconscious. That's the only way to turn it off. A doctor from DUE tested when I was a kid having my tonsils out. They checked again during the last surgery. Not in the OR, of course. But one of their agents tried to use a cigarette lighter before I recovered from the anesthesia. The lighter worked.” He got out of the car. “I'm wide awake now. You and Edie will be fine. Trust me.”

I did, except. Except Elladaire was cranky and tired of being in the car and he was gone for hours, it seemed. So what if my watch said ten minutes? What if he'd fallen and was unconscious after all? I wrapped the baby in a hairy dog blanket from the trunk. I drew the line at giving her a dog biscuit to teethe on, but I thought about it—and picked my way down the path with her in my arms. The cottage was a sad heap of charred timbers at odd angles, facing what must have been a beautiful view of the bay on a clear day. People loved coming here once, I thought, with the beach in their backyard and no neighbors in sight. Of course if there'd been neighbors, someone might have noticed the fire before it got out of control.

Piet circled the house. He'd stoop, put something in a plastic bag, then circle again, farther and farther away from the ruins. At last he pointed back up the path. I handed him Elladaire, who'd gotten heavier by the minute, then hurried to the car ahead of him to start the engine and warm us up. When he got in, he told me he'd found some dead beetles. Once we got back to my house, we'd look through the books to see if they were a recorded species or not. The arson squad would never think anything suspicious about bugs in the undergrowth, I conceded, and Big Eddie would ignore their smell as a natural part of the countryside.

Sight unseen, I was sure they were my fireflies. And guilty, like everyone assumed. Damn. I didn't want to think of the lovely creatures as malicious criminals.

Piet picked up on my upset. “A couple are squashed.”

“Sure, with all the firemen dragging in their equipment, then the investigators going over the area.”

“I don't think that's it. If your bugs set the fire on purpose, they wouldn't have killed their buddies. Two were missing wings. I think they were tortured to make a blaze.”

“Who could do such a thing? They're gorgeous and shine with all the colors of the rainbow, and they're smart enough to fly in patterns. You'll see tonight, if they come.”

“How can I see? I'll shut the fires off.”

“They're magic. Maybe yours won't work.”

“You better hope my magic is stronger than theirs or I can't help.”

 

Janie looked exhausted when she came to fetch Elladaire that afternoon. This was the first time I'd ever seen the hair stylist with her own hair in a rats' nest. She was haggard, but relieved.

“I was worried I'd get here to find the place surrounded by fire trucks and police, I'm glad you had no trouble, but now I'm afraid to face another night with her, I'm so tired. I stay awake the whole time in case she wakes up and starts crying.”

“Why don't you leave her here tonight?” I heard a stranger saying. Cripes, the stranger was me. “She isn't crying fire anymore, but I don't know what will happen if she's away from Piet.”

She never heard my two-syllable pronunciation. “Pete, you are a godsend.”

“No, only a one-trick pony. I don't know if I can cure her. Maybe with another day or so the bug juice or whatever will pass through her system. She's a sweetheart. I'll be happy to look after her tonight so you can get a good sleep. Your niece is going to need you well rested when she gets home.”

“You can't imagine how grateful I am.” Janie threw her arms around him. “I'll fix up that beard for you whenever you're ready. You'll be as handsome as a fairytale prince or an English lord when I get done.”

I caught the reference to my former fiancé, Lord Grantham. And the slight to my new partner. “Piet is handsome right now.”

Piet smiled. Janie said, “Oh, by the way, Willy, you need to fix those roots.”

 

I had a lot to think about, besides what to wear to my grandmother's for dinner. While Piet played with Elladaire, I considered that the fireflies might not be guilty of the recent mischief. Elladaire only spit flames when she was upset, frightened, or hurting. Perhaps the lightning bugs did the same, like when Barry swatted at one of them and Buddy snapped at another. Both got burned. So maybe some kid thought it'd be fun to stuff one in a mailbox with no escape, the way adolescents tossed cherry bombs. Or crush one and throw it in a trash can to see what happened. Then the pranks escalated into something dangerous and nasty. Who hated Paumanok Harbor that much?

I didn't know. I tried to think about my writing instead while I took a shower. I still had no new ideas, rejected my old ones. That left something borrowed, something blue. What could I do with the Creature from the Blue Lagoon?

Or with the hero who offered to give Elladaire a bath because I was afraid of drowning the slippery kid?

 

Dinner at my grandmother's started fine. She made incredible vegetable lasagna, and wrapped Elladaire in a towel to keep her clean. She didn't pick on me or interrogate Piet, not at first anyway.

When I mentioned how we thought the fireflies had been forced to defend themselves, she told us that talk around town had them spotted out in the wetlands east of Paumanok Harbor. It was a flat stretch of land on the bay, intersected with drainage ditches to keep the area from flooding. Clams, mussels, and all kinds of shore birds made their homes in the muddy, brackish manmade creeks. Men made osprey nests on poles, too, to bring the fish hawks back from extinction. It was a wild, empty area, full of reeds and weeds and phragmites, the perfect setting for my swamp monster.

“They also say a beaver is out there, because of all the destruction some clammers saw.”

“Come on, we haven't had beavers on Long Island since Indian times.”

My grandmother insisted one had been seen last spring in East Hampton, with a lot of gnawed and felled trees to prove it. The naturalists reasoned that one had swum or rode a log over from Connecticut. “There's no reason that poor lonely creature couldn't come east, looking for more of its kind.”

“There are no trees in the flood plains, nothing for it to eat or build a lodge out of. No beaver in his right mind would come there.”

“I suppose you're right,” Grandmother Eve said, passing around the salad bowl. “Besides, people are always swearing they see monsters out in the swamp. We used to tell children that the bogeyman lived there, so they wouldn't think of exploring the sinkholes and stagnant water.”

“So what's there now?” Piet asked.

My new, old, borrowed idea. I lost my appetite.

CHAPTER 12

S
OME COOKS GET ORNERY when their efforts and artistry are ignored. Grandma Eve got even.

“I suppose that father of yours told you about the hulking monster living in the marshes. And you believed him, didn't you? If so you were the only child in Paumanok Harbor to take the fairy tale seriously after they turned ten. For that matter, you're the only one who ever held stock in any of the doom and gloom that man spouts. We all swear that's why you're afraid of the dark and everything else.”

“I did not believe a swamp monster lived in the lagoons—that is, the wetlands.” Then. Now I had my doubts. “Any more than I believe some poor beaver is hanging out there. And I am not afraid of the dark.” Lots of people slept with a night-light on. “And my father's premonitions always come true, simply not in expected ways.”

“Hah!” My grandmother wiped Elladaire's face so hard the kid had towel burn.

“Your father is a precog, isn't he?” Piet asked in an effort to fend off an obviously ongoing family argument, at least until he finished the best meal he'd had in weeks.

“Pea-brained worrywart, more like,” Grandma told him.

I glared across the table, but told Piet, “Yes, he senses the future. Future danger, specifically, for people he is close to. Like many other oracles throughout history, his warnings are subject to interpretation. He's very protective but not very precise. At least he tries to be helpful,” I said with another glare.

“Hah!” came again from the family matriarch, which Elladaire took for a laugh so she imitated it.

I wasn't laughing, not when the old biddy belittled my father. “Dad never pretended to be a rustic countryman. He prefers the city and the dangers there to whatever lurks in swamps. My grandmother thinks it's heresy to find fault with Paumanok Harbor.”

Since Grandma Eve knew she wasn't going to shake my faith in my father, she turned to Piet. “So what do you call yourself?” she demanded of him.

He put down his fork, reluctantly. “Uh, Piet, with two syllables.”

“No, what
are
you?”

“Dutch, mostly.” He eyed the plate of toasted garlic bread, hoping she'd pass it.

Not until she was finished grilling him, it seemed.

“Do not be impertinent, young man. What do they call what you do?”

“Oh. Lucky, mostly. But the record keepers at Royce list me as a fire-damp.”

I waited to see if he had nerve enough to ask my grandmother what people called her. Most terms were unspeakable in front of Elladaire. I suppose an herbalist would describe her strength. She could make anything grow, and she could make any plant into something tasteful, healthful, or effective, for whatever effect she wanted. She was always cooking up something to cure heartburn or heart attacks or heartache. And she could read tea leaves.

If it walked like a duck, quacked like a duck, Eve Garland was a ducking witch.

Which meant I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the meal.

“Tea?” she asked.

Not on your life. Or mine. I said we didn't have time to stay that long, even if she had mixed berry pie. “It's past Elladaire's bedtime, and Piet traveled all last night and—”

“And you don't want me to look into your future. I understand that, Willow. What I don't understand is how your mother raised such a thick-headed child.”

Eve had been demanding to read my fortune since I was seventeen. And she wondered where I got my stubbornness?

She didn't speak to me, but to Piet: “Her lummock of a sire wanted her raised like an ordinary, unexceptional child. He refused to let anyone test her. Now look where we are; she doesn't understand what she does or know how to control it. We all suffer for her ignorance.”

Before I could try to defend what was, in truth, the truth, Piet spoke up. “From what I hear, Willow has done incredibly well in difficult situations no one could anticipate. According to the department, her talent is so rare no one could tutor her. They also told me that your little enclave here might have been wiped out without her.”

“Hmph. If there is a monster in that bog, it's her fault, I swear,” she muttered, but brought out the pie. “Well, everyone wants to know if you two are going to get rid of those plaguesome bugs. May I read your leaves, Mr. Doorn?”

“No, ma'am, I hate tea. Never drink the stuff. Besides, I know I can shut the bugs down when I find them. You've seen what happens when I don't.”

“Then you don't believe the outcome is already decided, waiting to be actuated?”

“I believe anything is possible, ma'am, because I've seen a lot that is impossible. Willow and I will do our best no matter what the leaves say, and that's all anyone can ask.”

“Very well.” She gave him a jar of her special salve for his burns. “Do you believe this will work?”

“If you say it will, then I have confidence the scars will heal.”

“What I say is not the point. If you don't believe for yourself, the recipe won't be effective.”

“It's a placebo, then?”

“Why would I spend all afternoon in the stillroom if I doubted its success? You have to help it along, is all.” She turned to me. “You should take that to heart, Willow. Believe, and toughen up your backbone . . . and get your roots dyed.”