The thirteenth day of August was the kind of a day to get Cooper all superstitious about numbers, despite his protestation that life was all about logic and engineering. Jared moved into the row house with the entry to the tunnels, but not even the gleam of the newly finished floors and the cheerful surfaces of the freshly painted walls could dispel his sense of doom.
Foresight wasn’t his gift, Cooper reminded himself. It was his grandma’s, and all he had was earth-sense. That, however, he had in spades.
So why was he so twitchy? He’d gotten laid. He ate right, he had meditated again, he... he was connected to Ash, and Ash was pacing like a tiger in a cage.
Ah – the connection. Maybe it had to do with more than just the meshing of their power signatures. Curious to see what got the usually mellow Ash all worked up, Cooper got away from his computer and peeked into the bedroom. “Ash?”
But his lover wasn’t there. Only the made bed on the floor attested to his former presence, because Ash turned out to be rather particular about stretching the sheets in the morning, and arranging the pillows just-so.
He wasn’t in the kitchen, but the door to the porch was open, and through it, Cooper heard the light footfalls of bare feet against cedar planking.
“Hey,” Cooper announced his presence as he stuck his head out. “Is everything okay?” Everything should be okay. Jared was in the “key house,” which is what they called the third house from the right, which had an entry to the tunnel in its basement. He brought along Cooper’s old twin-size bed and his Honda full of boxes and bags, and now was probably busy settling in. They had their apartment all to themselves again.
Ash stopped and turned toward him. There was no mistaking that pissed-off expression on Ash’s face, lips pressed together and eyes blazing. Not that he would say anything. Ash seemed the type who’d stew rather than explode.
He waved a piece of paper toward Cooper. “Some asshole wants to buy the land by the river,” he said in clipped tones.
Oh? Interesting. “Why?”
“They didn’t say. It’s just a company, and it’s a shell owned by another shell. I tried to look them up, but they’re privately owned. I lost track, but anything this opaque is suspicious in my book.” Ash forced an exhale.
“May I?” Cooper took the letter and read it carefully. It was an offer all right – through their lawyer, some guy down in Crafton. “I knew the property prices were rising, but this is crazy,” Cooper said. “You paid ninety-eight grand for that land, and it was that low only because it has issues. And they’re offering over half a million?”
“Six hundred and fifty thousand,” Ash clarified. “It’s not unreasonable, if you’re from out of town and don’t know much. Except they aren’t from out of town. It’s not exorbitant enough to make it look like they want it too much, but an amount like this would solve our cash flow issues for quite a while. Get us a bit of breathing room.” From the way Ash was talking, half a million bucks was a convenient amount, but not a vast fortune. Despite his apparent ups and downs, Cooper wondered how much money Ash’s transactions typically carried.
Still, though. “Are you thinking about selling?” Cooper asked in a hesitant voice.
“No. I can’t possibly, not with the rogue node underneath. And that’s what’s suspicious, too. Had they wanted to buy the renovated row houses, that would’ve made some sense. Find out the original purchase price, estimate what it has cost us, add a bit of profit. Come up with a number.”
Despite Ash’s distress, Cooper noted the way he had said what it has cost us. The warm fuzzies at the sense of inclusion almost, but not quite, distracted him from his line of questioning. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”
“I have,” Ash said.
“And now they want just the overgrown parcel of contaminated soil, with an old railroad running through it.” Cooper nodded. “Which is an issue in itself, because the railroad still has an easement on it, right?”
Ash shook his head. “No. That railroad is a spur. They used it for loading and unloading, which is why it’s next to the river dock. The thing is... the railroad still owns it. I’m just adversely possessing it.”
“You... what?” The term rang a very small, faint bell in the recesses of Cooper’s memory. He had to pass that course on real estate and deeds and permits and such – but that was back in Rhode Island, and course material was so remote, he might as well have read that book a lifetime ago.
“When you use land that’s not yours, and you use it OCEANA.” Ash’s look was both expectant and impatient. “When your use is Open, Continuous, Exclusive, Actual, Notorious, and Adverse? If you do that for the right period of time, which varies from seven to twenty-one years, depending on the jurisdiction, that property then becomes yours.”
“But I don’t see how this matters,” Cooper said with a frown. “You’ve owned that land for just a few months!”
“Sure,” Ash said with a nod. “But the prior owner had been there for seventeen years, and that adverse possession was part of the sales agreement, so if things go well, we get the old spur – except that’s not public knowledge. So... as far as they know, it’s been just a few months. It makes no sense to want to buy it. The part that must be officially accessible by the railroad company is maybe a third of the property, if you include the railroad set-back. And they won’t be using it again, not for trains, anyhow. And whoever is willing to pay for this land just doesn’t care that the railroad company could show up and turn the waterfront into a public trail.”
“Do you care?” Cooper asked.
“Yes. I want to make sure the node is neutralized before anything happens.” He lifted his eyebrows, his grin now wry. “If somebody puts a public bike path out there, you just may get your wish for a nice, big stone wall, beloved, but when I bought the property, I understood that this might happen.”
The both chuckled, but that didn’t answer the question. Who wanted Ash’s land, and why?
––––––––
THE DOOR BELL rang, and when Cooper opened it, he was greeted with a short woman dressed in jeans, a black leather jacket, and carrying a motorcycle helmet. Cooper remembered her as a little, freckle-faced girl with pigtails who had perpetually skinned knees and who liked to climb the trees for the apples that were highest up.
“Hey, Ellen!” Cooper picked her up, towering over her five foot three, and spun her inside the hallway. “Good thing you’re riding a motorcycle,” he said. “If more people show up, you’ll be out of parking space. Here, I’ll show you where to park in the backyard, under the porch.”
Ellen went on like a babbling brook, talking about her fun ride from Michigan and not minding the curious neighbors, who lifted their heads from reading, or watching their kids, or enjoying their after-work beer on their front stoop. Curious activities at 518 Mary Street had, apparently, become a new form of neighborhood entertainment.
“I heard you guys would be moving to some real houses?” Ellen glanced up and down the street, apparently searching for something that would be at least close to Cooper’s original description of the row houses by the river, where all the cousins and friends of cousins might end up living.
“Long story. Let’s go inside, and I’ll tell you.” He hoisted the duffel bags which Ellen pulled out of the panniers of her Harley, waited for her to park the bike in the nook under their little kitchen balcony, and held the door open for her to come in. Only once the front door to the house was close, Cooper began his tale of woe. Out spilled the story of ley lines, the contaminated property, and the beautiful and fully restored houses which were now too close to a rogue node. A node, which was an unfettered and currently growing power source, the kind that had already proven dangerous to people with more than just a noticeable level of talent.
“So what you’re saying is, we have nowhere to live until we fix it?” Ellen had always been a straight shooter and spoke to the point.
“Maybe?” Cooper didn’t shrug. Her question was genuine. “Everything depends on how you react to those energies. Jared has no problem being around it, but I do. So does Ash. You go visit tomorrow, see how you react.” He narrowed his eyes and peered a few inches below her chin.
“Hey, buster! My eyes are up here!”
Cooper grimaced in his effort to suppress a laugh. “I’m not checking out your boobs,” he said. “First of all, they do nothing for me, and secondly, I knew you when you was a kid. Don’t get weird with me. I was just wondering, do you have a ground-stone?”
“Oh.” Ellen shook her head. “Nope, never needed one.” She gave him a quizzical look. “Why, do you?”
And now, Cooper was standing in the middle of his kitchen, feeling like an illiterate idiot who didn’t even know how to ground and center by his own self. He cleared his throat self-consciously. “As a matter-of-fact, I do. I... I don’t know what you have heard about me, but it’s probably all true.”
“That you are pretty much untrained? And that your lover is half-trained and dangerous? Yeah, I heard all about that. It doesn’t scare me, if that’s what you were wondering.” She gave him an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry. I worked with Uncle Owen, too. Everybody has an issue or a problem here and there. Everybody learns differently! You’ll be fine, and I trust you. And if you trust Ash, then I guess I’ll have to trust him, too.”
Cooper was tempted to point out that Ash was always a perfect gentleman. Then, like a slow child on a bad day, he realized that Ellen had been referring to Cooper’s Ash not as a man, or a lover, or a plain another human being. Rather, she talked about both of them like about guys who just might blow her up.
Suddenly, their adventure took on an entirely different and more sinister spin.