Hydraulic Level Five (1) (48 page)

“Mom! Your Free Love card is being revoked.”

“What? It’s getting cold out.” She smirked and ducked out of the room. Shaking off my utter humiliation, I locked the door, opened the book again and plowed ahead.

He’d hoped for this. Death. The lashing, the destroying, and now the peace. Wherever Death was, she was. He’d failed to bring down the last Other—this was his fate. But now the fight faded, and he wanted nothing but to feel the stone filament creep through his veins, thicken his blood until his body was encased in the sediment lake bottom. Until his brain petrified. Dear God, he wanted this. Lost…Lost…Lost…

“Get the hell off of him, you repulsive bastard,” a vicious, feminine voice snarled at the creature. From the haze of fossilizing eyes, he saw a beloved face, twisted in hatred and brandishing a well-known weapon…

“Son of a—!” I read on. No way. No. Way.

“Kaye?” Alan Murphy called behind the door, having returned from the party. “What happened? Is my book torn?”

Ignoring Alan’s panicked cries, my eyes flew over the page. Cripes. Cripes! It was
her
—Neelie.

Nicodemus watched helplessly as his lover and the last Other writhed and tore at one another, her deadly blade flashing against the creature’s neck. The beast flung her from his back and leaped onto her tiny body, pitilessly seeking to crush her.

Now Nicodemus cursed the scum weighing him down, rendering him inadequate. With a savage cry, he fought to lift an arm—just a single arm. But it was enough to distract the thing. The Other whirled around, hissing at Nicodemus. He dragged a limp Neelie behind him as he stalked closer…closer.

Nicodemus saw the slightest stirring in Neelie’s hand as it brushed her discarded knife. Her steady fingers reached for the hilt and she kicked away, toppling the creature. Without mercy, she raised her hand high—

Alan pounded on the door. “Kaye, come on! Talk to me!”

—The Other loosed a last, fierce growl and grew still. Between them, they heaved the dead weight of the black, hulking thing behind the thatched hut. It was there, beneath the fractured ice of the Alps, they burned the last Other…

“If you don’t open this door, I’m going to get Mr. Cabral!”

“I knew.” Nicodemus framed his world, this face, between his fingers. “Neelie, I hoped. How I hoped. I was turning to stone without you, can you believe it?”

Neelie pushed away the film of her tattered sleeve, displaying soft, ivory skin. She wiggled several fingers and Nicodemus saw they weren’t ivory but gray…stone gray. Warming gray. Gray fading back to flesh, like his fingers.

“I believe it…”

“That’s it. I’m going for help!”

“Oh for the love of all that’s holy, Murphy, this is the best part!” I leaped up from the bed, unlocked the door and swung it open, staring down a baffled Alan. “You told me Neelie died!”

“Well, she did. At least you’re supposed to think she did.” He twisted the leather
WS
bracelet circling his wrist. “Wait, you just now figured it out?”

“I…I hadn’t read that far.”

He snorted, making me feel like I missed something obvious. “If you’d paid attention to the rest of the series, you would have guessed at it. Cabral has been setting it up for the past two books, now.”

“Faking her death?”

He nodded.

“But why? Why would Neelie let her friends and family believe she was dead?”

He rolled his eyes. “So she could lay a trap for the Others. See, Neelie figured out a long time ago they weren’t after her, remember? They were after Nicodemus. And in the process, they planned to take out Neelie, Nora, Noel, anyone who could lead an attack against them. So she faked her death, quietly traveling the same path as Nicodemus and picking off the Others until she could strike. Get it?”

“Yeah, I g-guess,” I stuttered.

He scratched his head. “Um, look. I don’t mean to be a jerk, but can you finish that thing up? I really need to leave.”

“Oh! Sure, just a sec.” He slid down the side of the wall as I tucked into the last chapter.

It was as I’d remembered before, when I skimmed it on the way to Samuel’s book signing. Nora and Noel, taking up the reins of power. The mythological creatures rebuilding their world after years of oppression at the Others’ hands. No Neelie. And no Nicodemus—now I knew why. Like Arthurian legend, they’d vanished into the Alps, vowing to return when there was need of them.

So epic. So Samuel.

I turned the final page and closed the book.

“That doesn’t make sense, though.” I flipped pages under my thumb. “I never helped Samuel fight the Others.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s why it’s
fiction
.” Alan carefully extracted the book from my hands. “Happy endings occur more often in stories than in real life, that’s for sure. Maybe Cabral just wanted to write a happy ending. I dunno.”

He fled the room, precious book in hand, and I slumped against the bed and fought to make connections to Neelie.

Neelie had swollen keyhole eyes—battle wounds. Now that was definitely me, watching Samuel plow ahead in his constant need to shield, to pave the way. I could see now how I’d been blind to so many things when it came to Samuel, like his reasons for leaving and his overwhelming sadness. I shuddered as the gruesome things he’d revealed to me about his parents burrowed through my mind.

And Neelie had been touched by the curse of the wicked sirens, whatever the hell that was. If the Others were Samuel’s demons, then what was the curse?

Both Neelie and Nicodemus were turning to stone without each other, their love bound them together so inextricably. Samuel’s whole “symbiotic relationship” theory again, taken to the extreme. But again, it didn’t make sense. Until we’d talked at Button Rock Reservoir, Samuel had believed I was happy. He’d wanted me to be happy. So why was Neelie turning to stone?

“Did you like the rest of the book?”

I jumped. Samuel stood in the doorway, sober eyes on mine as he munched a piece of wedding cake.

“I ran into Murphy downstairs, muttering about getting a galley proof because you’d wrinkled the dust jacket. There’s no chance I’m giving him a galley, by the way. It would be online in a minute.”

I self-consciously tugged up the strapless bust of my dress. “Sorry about that. And yes, I loved the ending. You gave Neelie and Nicodemus a happily ever after, so what’s not to love?”

Samuel smiled. “I had originally intended to kill off Neelie and Nicodemus. I knew you hated them.”

“I don’t hate them anymore.”

He offered me a bite of cake, and I refused. Discarding his plate on the dresser, he settled next to me on the comforter. “Also, it wasn’t healthy for me to keep writing about us, dwelling on us.”

Just like an addiction,
my mind answered. I hastily repressed the thought.

“So I resolved to end them and move on. But when the time came…I just couldn’t kill them. I’d left a second option open—Neelie faking her death—and I used it.”

“It’s refreshing, I suppose. You don’t get a lot of happy endings in real life.”

“No, you don’t.” He played with the ruffle of my skirt. “Grief is a natural part of life, like happiness. But honestly, Kaye, if I see you get your happiness, then I can find mine, too.”

“I know what you mean.” My voice was soft. I tapped my forehead. “Symbiosis and all.”

“No, not there.” He lifted my fingertips from my forehead and pressed them to the pulse-point on his wrist. “Symbiosis,” he corrected. His eyes not leaving mine, he slowly moved them to the pulse at his neck. I gulped. When he slid them along his collarbone to his sternum, I felt the swift pounding of his heart. My own heart mimicked his. Suddenly, I was very conscious that I lounged on a big, beautiful bed while Samuel bent over me, and all I wanted to do was tangle my fingers in his tousled hair and yank him down to my body. I shyly pulled my fingers away.

“Are you going back to the party tonight?”

“No,” he breathed, inching closer to my face.

“Okay.”
Talk time, Kaye, talk time.
My stomach fluttered with nerves. I glanced at the duffel bag I’d left here this morning. “Um, I’m going to go change out of this dress,” I mumbled, grabbing the bag and slipping past him, up to Danita’s room.

As I pulled out the rumpled yoga pants and tee I’d worn that morning, I chided myself.
Way to go, Kaye. Only last night you tell the man you shouldn’t have any sort of physical relationship, and now you want to lick frosting off of his chest. What the heck is wrong with you?
It didn’t escape me that ten years ago, my seventeen-year-old self wouldn’t have thought twice about stripping off my dress in front of Samuel and yanking on comfy clothes. Funny, how much had changed. Huffing, I slipped my discarded dress onto a hanger and grabbed my flip-flops, not caring that my fancy up-do was completely incongruous.

I found him in his bedroom, zipping up the last of his suitcases (now potting soil free), tux discarded for jeans and a T-shirt and still six feet of delectable, lanky limbs. I schooled the lust out of myself, silently cursing and rejoicing over his departure tomorrow morning. If this friendship thing was going to work, I had to get my sex-starved libido away from him. Yet, when he took my hand, I linked my fingers with his.

“All packed. Where do you want to go?”

“The ball diamond.” I scanned his room one final time, smiling when I couldn’t spot our framed graduation picture. He was taking it with him to New York.

He didn’t ask why I wanted to go there—he didn’t need to. Instead he grabbed his old, tattered stadium blanket and tugged me from the room, away from the reminders that tomorrow, he’d leave Lyons behind and resume his fast-paced publicity tour.

“Grab your laptop, please. Oh, and we’ll need a lighter.”

We hopped into Samuel’s roadster and weaved through the remaining cars in the driveway. The night air had bite now that we were away from the heat of the party, and I soon realized I should have brought a jacket. Gooseflesh popped up all over my arms. I rubbed warmth into them.

“Cold?” Samuel fidgeted with the heat. “There’s a sweatshirt in the backseat.”

I felt around the clutter-free car until my hand hit fabric. I put the black hoodie to my nose and inhaled.

“It’s clean, I swear. I haven’t been jogging in it.”

I pulled it over my head, embarrassed. “It smells nice, that’s all.”

It was even chillier when we reached the windy, wide-open baseball field, completely black save for the lone streetlight washing the loose-graveled parking lot in pale orange. We’d spent long hours here in our youth. Dani and I tagged along, taking up perches in the bleachers while Samuel and Angel practiced hitting. Then there were the times Samuel and I came here alone and spread a blanket in the middle of the field. We’d watch the sky and chat. When we were older and clichéd horny teenagers, we’d move our rendezvous under the bleachers where he pushed an eager tongue into my mouth and I wrapped jean-clad legs around his waist in youthful oblivion.

The wooden benches were as rickety as ever. We climbed up and down, chipped paint flecking our feet.

“This is a lot smaller than I remember.” Samuel gazed over the old ballpark with a faintly wistful turn. “Time tends to do that, doesn’t it? Change our outlook of what is big.”

“Location does that, too. You’re used to New York City—skyscrapers, armies of yellow cabs. Of course the park’s going to look a lot smaller. Lyons probably seems incredibly dumpy to you, now.”

I don’t know why I was suddenly snippy. Samuel, ever-perceptive, picked up on it. He rested a hand on my shoulder, halting me.

“Hey. This isn’t the end, Kaye. I’m coming back this time, I promise.”

I nodded. “Rocky Mountain Folks Festival.”

“Rocky Mountain Folks Festival. Sooner, if you like. I told you, whatever it takes.”

I gritted my teeth, trying to be strong and not beg him to stay, if for no other reason than to prove to Caroline that she was wrong, that I wasn’t stringing Samuel along. After all, a lesser woman would have jumped his bones by now.

“Let’s go down to the field, okay?” I said.

He dumped his laptop bag and spread the stadium blanket across the outfield grass, on the edge of the diamond. We sprawled next to each other, my head resting on his stomach. Samuel took a deep breath, causing my head to loll.

“So, are you going to tell me what your epiphany was? It sounded foreboding.”

“It’s not, trust me. You know how you told me a few weeks ago you were never really a true friend to me? Which I disagree with, but that’s beside the point.” The bottom of his lightly-scruffed chin bobbed once.

“Okay. So…I was listening to Danita and Angel’s wedding vows, thinking about how we really screwed up. Both of us.”

“Kaye—” he started to protest, but I silenced him by bouncing my skull against his abs.