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Teus put his arm around me, trapping my arms against my torso, and dragged me away from the door, his hand still on my mouth. “Keep your voice down,” he hissed.
Soon as we landed against the thick glass separating the room from the water, I glared at him and yanked against his hold. “Mmph oph mm mm.”
“Hush, I beg you. It took too long for me to call you here, and there’s too much to discuss for me to risk losing you again so suddenly.” He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes so deep blue they was almost black. “If I remove my hand, will you please whisper?”
I nodded, short and sharp. He eased away from me, releasing me one tiny bit at a time. I held still, glaring hard. Soon as he let go, I balled up my fist and popped it hard against his upper arm.
He stepped out of reach, rubbing his arm, his handsome face twisted into a frown. “Why did you do that?”
“For not answering when I called,” I hissed. “That’s just for starters. Where’s Miss Jenny?”
The frown deepened, and that’s when I noticed something odd: Teus was rumpled from the top of his black-haired head to the tips of his bare toes. Instead of a suit or a GQ approved casual outfit, he wore flannel pajama bottoms and nothing else, showing enough pale skin to worry me. He was still fit as ever, but he looked like he hadn’t been out in the sun for weeks.
Which weren’t like Teus a’tall. The man was a god of water. Shouldn’t he’ve been out sunning on a beach somewhere, ‘stead of hanging out in his home under Lake Burton in Walmart pjs?
I hooked my hands on my hips and tacked a sharp stare on him. “What’s wrong? Where’s Miss Jenny?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, holding his upper arms, and his eyelids slid shut. “In stasis. It seems an old enemy was aiming for me, and when I couldn’t be found, they targeted Jena instead.”
My hands balled up into fists on my hips, and it was all I could do not to punch him again. “An old enemy,” I said, my voice so flat and hard, he flinched.
“When you live as long as I do—”
“Zip it, mister. That ain’t no excuse. When you started dating Jenny, I expected you to protect her.”
“I was protecting her.” He shrugged a shoulder and some of his usual arrogance filtered back into his expression. “She wanted to go shopping. I was called out of town and sent guards along with her.”
“What kinda guards?”
“The kind one pays good money for.”
I snorted, earning another frown. Not that I cared. Teus could take his manners and shove ‘em where the sun don’t shine. “Where is she?”
“In another room.”
“So that’s where we’re going.” I started past him, and stopped dead when his hand whipped out and caught me around my upper arm. I looked way up, seeing as how he was at least half a foot taller’n me, and said, real mild, “You’d best let go of my arm now.”
His grip eased, but he didn’t let go. “We have a complication.”
“Who’s this we?” I snapped.
A thud sounded outside the bedroom door, and Teus muttered a foreign curse word under his breath.
“You’re about to find out,” he said.
The door swung open so hard, it bounced against the far wall and back into the guy what’d opened it. And what a guy. The man ducking through the door had to be seven feet tall, maybe more, and near about as wide as the doorframe. His skin was burnished, like he spent a lot of time outside, and his hair was dark and cropped close to his head. Another man followed him into the room, so close in looks and build to t’other I thought they was twins.
Funny thing, though. When I tried looking at their eyes, my vision blurred, and for a second, seemed like they only had one eye each, set smack dab in the middle of their foreheads, instead of the two my brain insisted they was supposed to have.
Teus sighed and drawed himself up as he faced the newcomers. “Sunshine, allow me to introduce my half-brothers, the cyclops Pello and Bob.”
“Bob?” I said
“Yes, Bob. They’re here to protect the members of my household.”
From the way he said protect, I reckoned they was doing nothing of the sort.
“Cyclops?” I muttered. “They kindly look like regular folk, just a lot bigger’n normal.”
“Odysseus exaggerated,” Teus said. “As usual. That man.”
The protection detail was all the way inside the bedroom now, taking up so much room that I had to fight the urge to step back. The bedroom was plenty big enough for all four of us, filled though it was with the kind of luxurious doodads Missy woulda spent all day cooing over. Give me simple any day, but I didn’t have to live among it, so I couldn’t rightly judge.
Pello looked me over real good, like he was memorizing ever detail, then turned to Teus. “How many women do you need, brother?”
“Sunshine is my servant,” Teus said, his voice a balance between haughty and careful. “I have need of her services.”
Bob grinned, baring teeth what was a hair too sharp and pointed to be human. “I want her services.”
I stepped in before that line of thought could take root. “Nobody gets that kinda services from me except my boyfriend, thank ye kindly. Now if somebody could take me to see Miss Jenny, I’d be mighty appreciative.”
The cyclops brothers lost their grins.
“Time to go,” Pello said.
“A moment more,” Teus said, but it was too late. Before I could blink, Bob yanked me away from Teus and frog marched me out the bedroom door into a hallway so tastefully furnished, the décor didn’t even register on me. A minute later, we was in a large room with a cathedral ceiling. Like in Teus’s bedroom, the walls were glass. Beyond them, fish darted among lake weed, chased by a large shadow.
“I thought I killed that catfish,” I said.
“You did.” Teus’s voice come from behind me, back in the hallway. “Please don’t kill the kraken. It’s a pet.”
Pello opened the front door on a wall of water. “Hold your breath, sweetheart.”
Bob shoved me forward, and my heart tripped into a gallop right into my throat.
“Now, wait a minute, fellers,” I said.
“Goodbye,” Bob said as he pushed me again.
I had maybe two seconds to catch my breath before I went tumbling through a thick, invisible barrier right into the frigid lake water beyond the door.
Then the water enveloped me and the door shut, closing off the light, and I was left alone at the bottom of the lake with no air in my lungs and no idea which way was up.
––––––––
Cold water seeped through my clothes and into my bones in a heartbeat. It stung my eyes and pressed down on me, trying to push the air outta my lungs, seemed like. I resisted the urge as my feet slid along the lake’s bottom, searching for purchase.
Panic rose sharp and swift in my gut, drowning out any relief that at least I’d found down. Something brushed across me, then several somethings. Fish maybe, but there was a pressure rushing toward me through the water, like a tidal wave.
I scrambled away from it, flailing my arms and legs. Bumped into the side of Teus’s house and rebounded off the shield thingamajig holding the water at bay. That pressure reached me, shoving me back again. Something long snaked around my waist and yanked me forward, and my body slid along a hard, slick surface.
Then I was yanked again, this time up, so fast my neck threatened to snap from the force of it. I curled into a ball around the thing wrapped around my waist, and a few seconds later, me and whatever it was popped through the surface into the cold, late-winter air.
My lungs give out right then and I gasped real big, sucking in handfuls of air tainted with the stench of lake water. I choked, coughed, ducked under again, and was lifted almost gently this time by the...thing.
It popped up beside me. In the dim light of the moon, I made out a pointed head and a sharp beak. Teus’s words drifted to me from somewhere.
Please don’t kill the kraken.
My coughing fit wore itself out, and I blinked water and sopping wet hair outta my eyes. Well, that’s what a kraken looked like, this octopus-like thing floating beside me. It weren’t much bigger’n a good-sized bull. The body, leastwise. Truth be told, I thought they was supposed to be bigger, the way the legends had it.
Or maybe that was from watching Clash of the Titans on TV with Daddy a few times too many.
The tentacle thing slid away from my middle, and I got me a good gander at where I was other’n the middle of Lake Burton. Sure enough, we was floating far enough from shore for my chilled bones to dread the swim. My teeth rattled together. Treading water weren’t gonna keep me warm, that was for sure. But which direction did I need to go?
No sooner had I thunk it than I recognized where I was, not too far from the lakeside entrance of Greenwood Cove. I’d been here before, out in the middle of the lake at night, struggling with one of Teus’s monsters. The difference between now and then weren’t just the monster sharing space with me. Then the lake’d been autumn mild. Now the water was so cold, if I didn’t get out of it soon, I was liable to succumb to hypothermia.
It’d be a dang shame to freeze to death with Missy waiting supper on me.
Nothing for it, then. I headed out toward the cove in a swim that was half breaststroke, half treading water. My clothes weighed about a ton and a half. I woulda liked to take my boots off, but I was all too aware of the water’s temperature and the way the mist seemed to freeze above the lake’s surface.
The kraken swam ahead of me, ducked under water, and circled back around. If I didn’t know better, I woulda said it was playing with me. Ever once in a while, it poked me with a tentacle. About the third time, I stopped dead in the water and yelled, “If you wanted to go faster, you shoulda just took me on to the dock, ya big galoot!”
It sunk down into the water faster’n you could say spit. I woulda regretted it going if I’da had the energy to spare. Being alone in the lake at night weren’t all that much fun. As it was, I gritted my teeth and headed out once again, aiming for the lights of the nearest dock.
I got maybe three strokes in when that tentacle wrapped around me and yanked me underwater. I yelped and swallowed half the lake, felt like, then me and that kraken was speeding along, fast as a torpedo.
I ain’t gonna lie. I closed my eyes and prayed with ever thing I had that I’d make it to the dock in one piece, let alone with air to spare. The way my luck was running, that danged ol’ kraken’d smash me into shore and leave me for dead. It’d probably serve me right for yelling at it.
But no, it slowed down a mite, then heaved me up and let go, and I dropped onto a dock hard enough to knock the breath outta me.
“A little gentler next time,” I gasped, and it splashed a little and sped off again.
I rolled onto my back, shivering so hard, my bones felt like jelly. My clothes near about froze to my skin, and as much as I wanted to rest there long enough to catch my breath, I couldn’t risk it. Slow as molasses in a blizzard, I shifted onto my stomach and pushed myself up onto all fours, then into a stand. Saw the boathouse to my left and recognized it, praise be. Belinda’s dock, or her soon-to-be ex-husband’s.
Whatever. I’d made it this far. If I could muster enough want-to to make the climb up to her house, David’s weren’t far beyond. If he weren’t home, I knowed where the key was. I didn’t think he’d mind me warming up in his house a’tall.
Even if I hadn’t opened up his letter yet. Or listened to the message he left on my phone.
I laughed through my teeth’s chattering and forced stiff limbs to move. Riley was gonna be madder’n a wet hen, but he’d just have to wait ‘til I got cleaned up to yell at me.
––––––––
There’s a small problem with the climb from the dock to Belinda’s house: about three million stairs. Least it felt like that many while I was trying to coax stiff, shivering flesh between the two, one step at a time. I braced against the rail, using my fist to propel me along. The fingers of that hand was so cold, I couldn’ta pried ‘em open enough to grasp the wooden rail even if I’da wanted to. I tried real hard not to think about things like frostbite and amputation. Probably woulda lost that battle if my brain weren’t as sluggish as my body.
The world narrowed down to me and them stairs as I hauled myself ever upward. I couldn’t think on nothing else, not Riley and his mad, not Missy waiting supper on me, not Fame and how worried he was gonna be that I just up and disappeared. There weren’t no room in my brain for such as that.
I thought so, anyhow, ‘til I hit the second landing and my boot caught on the next tread. Down I went, face first into stained wood, so hard I thought my limbs shattered, like an ice sculpture tumbled onto the floor.
Then my hands throbbed painful as a hot poker stuck against my skin, and I moaned and pushed, trying to get up. And fell flat again. My energy was gone. I used it up getting this far in weather hovering in the low forties, soaked to the bone, shivering up a storm.
If I’d had anything left in me, I woulda laughed. Why not? It was about the funniest predicament I been in for a good, long while.
Soon enough, though, my humor died down and I faced some hard facts. I was alone out here in the cold. Nobody knowed where I was, not even Teus, blast his dadgum hide. This time of year, chances was good the houses on this side of the lake was empty, what with most of ‘em being summer homes. Nobody was gonna see me. Nobody was gonna come help. And I was so cold and tired, I didn’t think I coulda moved even if I’da wanted to.
Part of me wanted to. There was somebody waiting for me, somebody who loved me, and folks was counting on me to pick myself up and carry on.
I rested my cheek against the deck floor. Felt like it was froze there anyhow, so what was the point of trying to turn my head? What life was left in me was slowly trickling out. Instead of thinking on what I had to live for, I remembered something I hadn’t thought to look forward to ‘til I was old and gray and my body plumb wore out.
Henry was waiting for me.
My lips twitched and a small shaft of joy gathered in my heart. That’s right. Henry was waiting for me, waiting to see his mama, just like I been counting the days ‘til I could see his sweet smile and them big ol’ dumbo ears of his.
Lord, I’d missed him something fierce. All I had to do to see him again was let go. All I had to do was give up and he’d be mine again.
Just give up. Dear merciful Father, I wanted to, so bad. Was a time I woulda done anything to have him back, and now here I was, half a heartbeat away from seeing him again.
Let go, Sunny. Let go and you can be his mama again.
The joy lit a spark inside me, and it warmed and burned.
A tiny voice whispered move.
It was joined by another voice
move
and another
move, Sunshine
and another, ‘til my mind was flooded with voices, all of ‘em different, some strange, some familiar, some so near my heart, it about broke in two.
Move, baby girl, Daddy called to me, right on top of his daddy’s voice, which weren’t near so tender and kind.
Get up, Sunshine, Johnny whispered, his weathered face looming large in my mind. Get up or I’ll eat your flesh next time the painter gets hungry.
He laughed that deep, sly chuckle of his, and so help me, the want-to flooded back into me and thoughts of joining Henry faded from my mind. I woulda cussed my grandpappy up one side and down t’other for interrupting my journey to the Great Beyond, but just then, I heard feet pattering down the steps from somewhere above me and the last person in the world I wanted to see hollered, “Oh, dear God, don’t die on my steps. I just had them stained!”
