Waking Storms (34 page)

Luce stared back and saw that tears were streaming into his snarled beard. He stood up, breathing hard, and scowled around at the empty sea. He looked dazed, and Luce saw him teetering as he walked off into the woods, knocking into the snow-laden trees so that clumps of white dropped to the earth behind him.

Then Luce was left alone with the invisible voices. They hummed toward her in a rattling cloud, throwing up flecks of snow and dead grass. Voices tore at the air like a hawk ripping into a still-struggling rabbit, then poured down over the shelf of rock to jostle around Luce’s head and scream straight into her mind.

They were enraged.

20

Something Real

“It’s exactly like you thought!” The young agent with the shaved head had practically thrown himself across Ben Ellison’s desk, and he was twitching with excitement. “We followed up on that geoelectric survey you ordered. Searched all the caves that showed up on the scan. The divers found two caves with underwater entrances and all kinds of stuff in them, like they’d been inhabited—the bigger one you can only get to through a tunnel that opens up seven fathoms under the waterline at
low
tide! No way it was people who dragged all that junk in there! We’re still working on an inventory. But one thing’s for sure: these tails like to
party.
Empty liquor bottles all over the place.”

Ben Ellison nodded wearily. Ever since the Secretary of Defense had decided to join forces with the FBI and throw as many resources as he could into tracking down the mermaids, Ellison had been working until well past midnight every night and then getting up again by five. The clock in the corner of his computer’s screen showed that it was already after one in the morning. He was so tired that he couldn’t even remember this young man’s name, and he didn’t particularly want to. It was all he could do to tolerate the hordes of incompetents who’d been assigned to work under him recently; keeping track of who they all were seemed like an unnecessary bother. He didn’t plan to stay in Anchorage any longer than he had to, anyway. “And the other cave?”

“A lot smaller. A lot less stuff. But what’s so incredible about that one—you’re not going to believe this—I brought the items they found to show you, because it’s too nuts unless you see it for yourself...”

Ellison was mildly annoyed by the suggestion that there was anything he couldn’t believe, and he glared impatiently as the pale young man hoisted a black leather duffle onto the desk and unzipped it, pulling out a small portfolio. At first Ellison winced at just how predictable the contents were. In fact, the portfolio held exactly what he’d been bitterly sure the search would turn up, sooner or later: Dorian’s drawings, creased and rumpled but utterly unmistakable, all showing the same darkhaired mermaid whose portrait Ellison kept neatly folded in an inside pocket.

Ellison looked up. “You say these weren’t in the main cave?”

“Nope. In a way smaller one, almost forty miles down the coast. But Agent Ellison, the drawings weren’t all that was in it...” The young man was unfolding something bulky with his pale, nervous hands, and there was a glow of obvious triumph on his face and a smirk twisting his chapped lips. “Look!” It was an olive wool parka, salt-stained and mildewed, with a bright orange lining. At first Ellison didn’t see what was remarkable about it until the pale hands waved it directly in his face and he saw the heavy black letters traveling down one sleeve.

“Dorian,” Ellison sighed. There was no way he could protect the boy now.

“Dorian! You see ... Doesn’t that prove ... It’s like Smitt kept saying: Dorian Hurst has been in collusion with them ... maybe plotting...”

“It shows he’s under their influence at least.” Ellison kept his voice measured. He wanted to defend Dorian, but he couldn’t afford to sound like he cared too much. “Not surprising, considering what we know about the power they have. Those are Dorian’s drawings as well.”

“They ... his drawings?”

“Yes. I found similar ones in his room. I noted that in my report at the time.” Ellison was disturbed to realize that his tone was audibly defensive. He had to be more careful, keep tighter control of himself if he didn’t want people to start suspecting him of sympathizing with their quarry. “Was that all you found? In the smaller cave?”

“There’s something else. I ... Maybe you can make sense of this, because I sure can’t...” A stack of books was hauled from the duffle bag. From the white numbered tags on their spines it was immediately obvious that they were library books.

Puzzled as he was, Ellison couldn’t help smiling. “I imagine those are overdue?”

The young agent didn’t seem to think that was funny. “They’re way overdue, yeah. And get this...” The young agent assumed an air of great significance. “They’re all checked out in Dorian Hurst’s name!”

Ellison felt a rush of exhaustion so intense that it threatened to sweep him into unconsciousness, and he leaned his head on his hand and gazed through half-closed lids at his keyboard and the scattered papers crowding his desk. He strained to understand the implications of everything he was learning, but his thoughts bent with dreamlike illogic. Maybe the separate caves meant that Dorian’s girlfriend lived apart from the other mermaids, or maybe she just kept a secret stash. Maybe the books had been brought to the cave by seals.

“Agent Ellison?”

He shook himself. “Yes?”

“There is ... I mean ... You’d agree that there’s absolutely no possibility that one of these tails knows how to
read,
right?” The young agent almost tittered the last words, but there was a look of anxious uncertainty in his eyes.

Ellison flinched with annoyance. The young man’s shrill tone grated on him, and he found the words distasteful as well. He wasn’t surprised that Secretary Moreland had taken to calling the mermaids “tails.” Moreland was a crude man, and it was the kind of ugly, demeaning language that Ellison expected from him. But there was no reason everyone else should copy him.

Instead of answering, he reached to pull a thick, glossy book off the stack in front of him.
The Complete Novels of Jane Austen.
It struck him as an incongruous choice for a fifteen-year-old boy. The pages were warped, and the cover’s image of a carriage passing among lush trees was dotted with mold. Ellison turned the volume in his hands, wondering what it meant. Something was sticking out between the pages, and he opened the book to see what it was. A leathery brown strip of dried seaweed fell onto his desk.

A
bookmark,
Ellison realized.

Had Dorian been teaching her how to read? Had he also taught her English? When Ellison had watched Dorian and the mermaid together he’d been a good distance away, wearing excellent noise-canceling headphones in case she started singing, but there were moments when her lips were certainly moving; it might have been some kind of English lesson. If she’d mastered human language already, well, she was an astoundingly quick learner. But Ellison preferred this idea to any of the unthinkable alternatives. Still, it was hard to see how a mermaid could enjoy Jane Austen or even have the foggiest idea of what her stories were talking about. A mermaid would have no way to comprehend descriptions of horses or houses, dresses or dining tables...

The young agent stared slack-jawed at the dried seaweed, then turned to Ellison. “That isn’t...” he began, and then gulped pitifully.

“I wouldn’t make too many assumptions about what the possibilities are here,” Ellison told him as coolly as he could. “At this point we all need to keep our minds open and simply consider the evidence.” He felt a little sick, though. His
daughter
liked Jane Austen. Once again he thought what a terrible shame it was that Dorian hadn’t followed through on Ellison’s request for an introduction to this mermaid. Ellison couldn’t imagine anything more fascinating than actually talking to her and hearing what she might say for herself or about her life in the sea. Her reasons for killing...

Blearily Ellison glanced at the other books and then began to laugh.
Our Endangered Seas, Moby-Dick...

“We don’t need to consider possibilities that are crazy!” the young agent shrieked. “Some freak of a tail was
not
reading Jane Austen!”

Once he got some sleep, Ellison thought, he’d see about having this idiot reassigned to some much less important investigation. But he’d have to remember who the hell he was first. And, he recalled with an effort, there was something else he needed to know. Something urgent. He rubbed his hand across his face and then remembered.

“These caves were both iced over?” Ellison asked.

It took the young agent a moment to catch up with the change of subject, but then he nodded his stubbly head. “Foot-thick ice in both of them, yeah. The teams had to use drills to open up a way through to the shore. Rotten conditions everyone’s been working in.”

“And of course...” Ellison pursued. “Of course I would have been informed immediately if there was any indication that the inhabitants were still using these caves or that they’d been in them recently? Any sign that...” He couldn’t think clearly enough to finish the sentence.

“Oh—the caves were abandoned weeks ago!” The shaved head nodded emphatically.
“That’s
obvious.”

“Why obvious?”

“Well—the ice, the garbage. Mold on everything...”

“So you’re also making the assumption that mermaids are good housekeepers, then? They don’t read Jane Austen, and they certainly can’t stand a mess?” Ellison asked sarcastically, but he didn’t actually care about the answer, and he barely listened to the sputtering reply.

If the mermaids were gone, even temporarily, then he didn’t need to keep worrying that Dorian would be murdered. At least not for now. In the morning he’d give orders to have both caves continually monitored in case the mermaids returned.

The stubble-headed young man was still talking as Ellison got up, not pretending to pay attention anymore, and dropped to lie flat on his back on the worn beige carpet. He didn’t even know if the gray haze that clouded his mind was sleep.

***

Steve and Ryan had been bickering over their new lyrics for so long that Dorian got bored and slumped down in an armchair in the corner, his sketchbook propped on his knees. Drawing Luce felt like falling into a familiar dream: a long, wave-rocked story that always seemed to pick up where it had left off but never actually got any further along, much less reached a conclusion. There was the same dark, spiky hair taking shape now on the page; the same long, smoky eyes; the mouth he’d kissed until the icy air numbed the rest of his face and all he’d felt was her. He hadn’t understood how awful it was going to be: waking up every day and performing all the normal, repetitive tasks without any way to know whether or not she was still alive. Drawing her was the closest he could come to touching her. He could call to her face where it lived like a secret deep inside him and watch it emerge onto the page, a ghost formed from paper and black ink.

At first, drawing Luce had made missing her just a little easier, eased the hollowness in his chest. Recently, though, his drawing had started to make him feel even worse, but he still couldn’t stop. Now he drew the sinuous curve of her tail in one smooth stroke of black, then added the fins sweeping up behind her head. In the past whenever he’d reached into the water to stroke Luce’s fins they’d curled in a shocked, sensitive way around his fingers. He remembered those fins now, pale green and translucent and sleek with silvery lights...

“Working on your comic book again?” Dorian hadn’t noticed Zoe coming over to him. One fuzzy black sleeve of her oversized sweater brushed against his neck as she perched on the armrest and leaned in. She pulled her legs up against her chest, rubber heels digging into the upholstery, and wobbled precariously. Apart from the sweater she was wearing tight black jeans and combat boots carefully splattered with hot pink paint that matched her shoulder-length hair, at least when the dye job was fresh. Right now her hair had two inches of brown roots and streaks where the pink had faded into a peculiar peachy blond. As usual she was leaning too close to him, until she seemed to be on the verge of tumbling into his lap.

“Oh—yeah,” Dorian muttered absently. Practice drawings for a graphic novel he was starting. That was what he’d told everyone. He’d also told them that his family had died in a plane crash. He wished everyone would stop asking him questions so that he could be relieved of the constant need to lie. It got tiring.

“It’s not something you’d expect a guy to draw all the time. Mermaid after mermaid after mermaid. “Where are all the
guns,
man? No one’s going to read your story without more guns.” Zoe’s voice was mocking as she bent messily out over the page, her sweater brushing across Dorian’s nose as she leaned down to take a closer look. He smelled lavender soap and musty wool. “Actually it’s always the same mermaid, huh? Is that like your main character? Of the whole story?”

“She’s going to be. I’m still mostly doing character sketches.” Dorian tried to shift away a little.

“Do you ever draw real stuff? From life?” Zoe lost her balance on the armrest and caught herself by throwing one leg across Dorian’s lap so that her boot slammed into the seat cushion next to his hip, then smiled at him crookedly as she pulled the leg back much more slowly than she needed to. She was sixteen, with a snub nose and soft cheeks. Her greenish hazel eyes were round and thickly lashed, gazing into his face as if they were trying to discover something there. Dorian noticed that Steve was scowling at them from the far side of the room.

Dorian tried to act oblivious. “I mean I have. I took this community college class in Chicago where they brought in models sometimes. But I don’t usually.”

“Because I could pose for you. Right? Wouldn’t it be more of a challenge to draw something real?” Now there was a distinct edge of contempt in Zoe’s voice, and she flicked her hand toward the page on Dorian’s lap. “Instead of just getting all obsessed with some
fantasy
?”