Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649) (19 page)

T
HE OTHER PROBLEM with having a lot of alpha dogs on a team was they all wanted credit for the success. Everyone who didn't have to go back to work wanted to go celebrate, at a nicer bar where Barry wasn't. They invited Piet, who looked to me like he wanted to go. Here were people with talents almost as oddball as his, who didn't ask questions, who didn't consider him a freak. Besides, he'd had nothing but female company for a couple of days now, me and Elladaire and dinner at Grandma Eve's, so I told him he should go talk boy talk: fire engines and computers and poker. Edie and I would go food shopping.

“Without me?” He nodded toward the baby, who was giggling at Mrs. Ralston's funny faces. The town clerk had arrived in time to get Edie into a fresh diaper, more securely than I'd ever managed. She didn't want to give her back.

“Yes, without you. You said she'd be safe and I trust you.”

He smiled. Mrs. Ralston didn't. “You weren't sure when you handed her to me both times?” Now she was eager to get rid of the baby.

“I was fairly sure.” I went to lift the kid into her stroller, but she decided she wanted to walk now that she half knew how. “No, baby, we have to go to the store. You know, bananas and cereal and dog food.”

“You're feeding her dog food?”

Piet laughed and left in the fire captain's car. He'd be home—at my home—in time for dinner. I wanted to make a decent meal for him. Or get one from the deli section of the supermarket in Amagansett.

Then Elladaire unbalanced and fell and started to cry. Everyone stopped what they were doing to see what would happen, from a safe distance. I held my breath. “Come on, Edie, you're not hurt.” I was getting used to Piet's nickname for her, and Elladaire started using it herself, or close to. She was Deedee, Piet was Pipi, and I was Lo. Figured. Except when she was tired or hungry or hurt or frightened, like now. Then I was Mama, no matter how many times I told her I wasn't her mother. I have to admit it felt nice. Until miscellaneous firemen and cops started snickering.

“Looks good on you, Willy.”

“You ought to get one of your own. Keep you out of trouble, kiddo.”

“Your mother'll be thrilled, Will.”

I gathered Edie and my dignity and drove off. Then I backed up to pick up the stroller.

 

Anyone considering parenthood should be forced to experience the horror of a cranky toddler in a store. That cute little cherub in their minds? Uh-uh. Ugly, scrunch-faced devil's spawn, more like. Edie didn't want to get in the cart. She didn't want the safety belt on. What she did want was to walk, to grab everything she could reach, and she wanted it now, in her mouth, immediately, or else. At least she didn't set the place on fire. Or embarrass me too much with her upset “mama” cries. I didn't know anyone in the store, so I didn't care. I was afraid if I kept saying I wasn't her mother people might wonder why I had someone else's crying baby, when I was so obviously inept at childcare. I waited for someone to call the cops.

Her plaintive cries tore at what little confidence I'd developed by conquering the baby seat harness contraption. So I hurried through the shopping to get out of the place as quickly as possible.

I found raisins and bananas and cereal and the baby aisle, but what could she eat after that? I had no idea, so I followed a woman with a little kid in her wagon and another one holding on alongside. Both of them were better behaved than Edie. Hell, Little Red would have been better behaved.

I bought whatever the Good Mother ahead of me did, apple juice and watermelon and blueberries and sweet potatoes that I knew how to cook and baby carrots. She ordered turkey wraps at the deli, so I figured they were okay. And I got an already roasted chicken fresh off their barbeque machine. I added a bag of prewashed salad, chocolate pudding pie, and some ice cream. A fine dinner, if I said so myself. I got some broccoli, too, because it was healthy and looked good in macaroni and cheese. More chocolate kisses, more pretzels, and dog food. I got the dogs some new biscuits too, because I felt guilty giving Edie so much attention and leaving them alone so much. Damn, I was a neglectful dog surrogate mother, too; I'd forgotten to bring Buddy back to Dr. Matt to have his burned lip checked. It looked fine to me when I put the salve on it, but I know my mother demanded the best for her rescues. And Matt Spenser really was a nice man. I'd take care of it soon. Crises and catastrophes had to come first.

On the way home I gave Edie a little box of raisins. Mom's car was never going to be the same.

Piet loved the dinner. “You cooked all this yourself?”

“Most. Some. The sweet potatoes.”

“They were my favorite part.”

My favorite part was watching him enjoy the meal, cutting tiny pieces of chicken for Edie, laughing at her efforts to feed herself. Sure, he didn't have to swab the table and the chair and the baby. (The dogs cleaned the floor.)

Piet already looked better after the few days of Grandma Eve's burn potion. Not that he wasn't attractive before, in a rough, wounded-hero kind of way, but now you could see where he'd be drop-dead gorgeous without the angry red marks, when his sandy hair grew a little longer and the scraggly, scar-hiding beard either got trimmed or shaved off. I couldn't decide if he'd look better with it or without.

I wondered if he'd stay long enough for me to find out.

When he carefully wiped his chin to make sure no crumbs stuck to the hairs, I also wondered if I'd like kissing a man with a beard. That was a rhetorical question, of course. I did not intend to find out.

But he smiled across the table at me, laugh lines crinkling around his green eyes. Maybe the question wasn't so rhetorical. I gave myself a mental kick and ate another forkful of chocolate pudding pie. One decadent pleasure was as good as another, right?

We were partners. I couldn't let hormones ruin our working relationship. We were growing into friends, which sex usually destroyed. Love affairs disordered one's brain, too, which I couldn't afford right now.

Tonight we felt like family. Not my family, of course, with its sniping and faultfinding and unmet expectations, but a warm, cozy, loving family. Did I say love? I had more pie.

Maybe I'd have a family like this one day now that I saw how it could be. Not with this baby, of course, and not with this man. Edie belonged to Mary Brown; Piet belonged to DUE. And I? Tonight I belonged to the bugs I might have brought into this world.

 

While Piet got Edie ready for bed, I changed my clothes. I wanted to see the flyboys tonight, to try again to communicate with them. No matter what the mayor convinced Barry he hadn't seen, there'd be more sightings and more fires, if I couldn't get the Lucifers to go home. If not Barry, other reporters would come. If not reporters, government investigators, which was just as bad.

To make sure I saw the lightning bugs, in their full glory and no confusion, I put on a skimpy ribbed white long-sleeved jersey. Yup, you could see my nipples, and yup, it had the effect I wanted. Not on the bugs, but on Piet.

“What are you trying to do, kill me?”

“Just trying to keep your mind occupied so the bugs won't be afraid to come.”

“You're playing with fire, woman.”

I reached over and stroked his cheek. The whiskers weren't coarse at all. “No, I'm not. The bugs won't hurt me.”

“I'm not talking about the bugs.”

“I know.” I smiled and turned away, making sure he could see the back of my tight jeans. After the chocolate pudding pie, they were so tight I couldn't bend over, but Piet groaned, so the discomfort was worth it.

The fireflies came, lighting up the backyard. Then they disappeared.

“What are you doing?” I asked Piet. “You are turning them off.”

“Thinking about your grandmother, what she'd look like in your clothes.”

Talk about a turnoff.

In the interest of saving the world, I grabbed his shoulder, pulled him close, and kissed him.

He cursed. The sky lights came on.

Piet went back in the house. “You talk to your friends. I need a cold shower.”

He came back before I could finish a scratchboard picture of an angry man stomping on sparks. This time he had Elladaire in his arms.

“She wasn't asleep yet, and she should see this.”

Except the lights instantly dimmed. The beetles were still visible, so they didn't panic about finding each other. They knew to gain altitude, to gain more fire power, but most of them flew off, leaving a comet's tail across the night. The remaining swarm came down, closer, dimmer, perhaps curious.

“What if they remember Edie biting one of their kin?”

“They cannot hurt her with such low strength. And they don't appear aggressive at all.”

I don't know if Elladaire remembered them, or what happened afterward, the flames, the fire, her mother being taken away in an ambulance, but she was frightened now.

She cried in Piet's arms, struggling to get away. No, she wasn't trying to get away from the bugs, she was trying to get to me.

“Mama!”

She held those little arms out to me. Her lip quivered, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Mama.”

If she didn't have my heart before, she had it now. “Poor sweet baby. I'm here.” I took her from Piet and held her close, rocking. She hid her face in my chest, pulling my shirt down. Like magic, the fireflies got brighter.

They came closer. So did Piet. I felt warmer, especially when he rubbed the back of my neck.

“Stop that!”

“Then stop the peep show. You're confusing all of us with your mixed messages.” He came closer still and leaned toward me.

I started to lean forward, but then I remembered I had a kission. That is, a mission. I stepped away, out of danger. The fireflies went back to quarter-power. Piet was on the job.

I couldn't use the scratchboards, not with Elladaire in my arms, so I tried to reach out with my mind even though I was not a telepath and did not know their language. I gathered pictures, emotions, sensations in my head: flying, happy, safe, the beauty of the fireworks display, the fear of my neighbors, the burnt cottage, anger, dread, trespassing, breaking vows, flowers and fish and fire.

And words unspoken:
Please go home, please don't stay where people might hurt you. Please don't start any fires. Please.

I closed my eyes and imagined them bright in the sky, over a different world, with elves and trolls and halflings waving to them.
My friends. Your friends.

I desperately tried to
feel
my thoughts, my images, so they could sense what I wanted to tell them, see the pictures. I felt Piet's hand on my back, supportive, caring, trying to help when he didn't understand what I was doing.
And don't let me fall for a fire wizard.

Nothing.

I felt like crying. Instead, I shouted out loud, “Talk to me, Lucifers. Show me. Give me a hint.”

The few bugs over our heads formed a rough fishlike sketch, smaller than before, naturally, with fewer glimmers making up the outline.

“I got that already. What is it?”

All I heard in my head was an echo of Elladaire's woebegone “Mama.”

She was asleep and getting heavy. I handed her to Piet.

Mama
.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Oh, boy. The sound came again, right when I was looking at him and the baby. Her lips never moved. Besides, the plaintive sound seemed to come from up, above me. I pointed up. “What do you see? Right now.”

“Fireflies, I guess. Bigger than I've ever seen. Not as many as before.”

“What color are they?”

“Plain brown, with a greenish glow except near the tail, where something looks like an ember.”

“No green wings, no blue eyes or iridescent luster?”

“That's what you see?”

“Yes, and I think they are finally trying to talk to me.”

“I didn't know you could communicate. I thought you were a Visualizer.”

I thought I was crazy.

CHAPTER 19