Water To Burn Part 21

While I'd been gawking at Triton, I'd missed noticing that we had company on the beach. Two people had come down from the dunes, and they'd obviously seen the wolf pack. Up on the dry sand a man and a child stood staring at us. He looked around thirty, the little girl was maybe six, and they shared a sandy-haired, freckled Norman Rockwell kind of face that marked them as dad and daughter. They both wore jeans and the heavy jackets of locals, not tourists. At first I wondered if they were actual people or more Chaotic projections. I cast a quick ward, which had no effect on either of them.

When Father Keith stood up again, they apparently decided he was approachable, thanks to his holy-orders robe, most likely. They walked over to join us, though they stayed about ten feet back from the lolling tongues and white teeth of our pack.

"Uh, excuse me," the man said. "We were just wondering what kind of dogs they are. They're pretty big, huh?"

"Yes." Father Keith looked completely fl.u.s.tered. "They're uh um-"

"Caucasian Lion Hunting Dogs," I broke in. "A very rare breed in this country, though there's plenty of them in Georgia and Kazakhstan."

"No wonder I never heard of them." The man smiled, but the little girl clutched his hand tighter still. She leaned against him with the same gesture that Samantha had just displayed with me.

"They won't bite," I told her. "But you're right to hang back like that."

"Yep," her dad said. "Never go right up to a strange dog. You know, I didn't realize that there were lions in that part of the world."

"There aren't anymore," I said. "They were hunted to extinction a long time ago."

"There used to be lions all through the territories around the eastern Mediterranean." Father Keith could never resist a chance to teach. "In what's now Iraq and all around the Black Sea as well as Turkey."

"That's right!" the man said with another smile. "I saw some pictures once of an old wall or something."

"The a.s.syrian lion hunt reliefs, probably."

The man nodded, a contemplative gesture.

"We'd better go," I said to Father Keith. "It'll take us a while to dry them off enough to get them back into the car."

"I'm glad that's your job, not mine," the man said. "They're sure big. And pretty dirty."

With a pleasant wave, he and his daughter walked on past, heading for the water's edge. We went in the opposite direction, stumbling across the soft sand toward the rise of dunes and the Great Highway.

"Lying is sinful," Father Keith said, "but I'm glad you're so good at it."

"Thanks. Let's just hope he doesn't look the breed up on the Internet."

When we got back to the building, the first thing I noticed was that wretched Chaos symbol, blatantly back on the wall. The second thing was even more ominous. Ari was sitting on the front steps, simmering. That is, his arms were tightly crossed over his chest, his mouth was shut tight, and his eyes-glaring doesn't begin to describe it. When he rose and came down the steps, the wolves cl.u.s.tered around me in defense and growled.

"Uh-oh," I said. "I think I'm in trouble."

Ari managed to remain civil while I introduced my uncle. He even went upstairs to fetch some old towels so we could clean the wolves off. Once we'd gotten everyone back into the SUV and on their way home, I scooped up the towels and hurried up the steps ahead of him to the downstairs flat. He followed me into the front room, shut the door, then stepped in front of me before I could escape.

"I told you to stay inside," he said.

Before I answered, I tested the flow of Qi. At the moment, at least, he had his rage under control.

"Oh, come off it!" I said. "I didn't feel the slightest touch of ASTA or SAWM. If I had, I'd have stayed home."

"Oh? What if you'd felt them when you were already on the beach? How fast could you have reached safety?"

"No one was going to threaten me with the wolves right there."

"I noticed how they protected you, yes, but what if someone had a sniper's rifle? He could have killed you from several hundred meters away. The wolves might have brought him down in the end, but it wouldn't have done you one sodding bit of good."

"Well, okay. I overlooked that."

He snorted. The flow of Qi stayed steady and normal.

"But are you angry," I said, "because of the danger, or because I didn't follow your orders?"

"Oh." He considered this seriously. "Both, I think." He paused, then shrugged. "I'll go get the hose. When I got back from the gym, I found that Chaos mark waiting. I asked the neighbors about it, but they insisted they'd seen nothing."

"That's really odd."

We trooped outside again. I glanced at the downstairs neighbor's window, but they'd closed the drapes. So had the upstairs set. The Chaos symbol looked smug.

"Huh," I said. "Stenciling the thing on like that would have taken a while."

"So you'd think." Ari considered the apartment house with narrowed eyes. "None of them look like the type to have done it, but I wonder."

After I threw a couple of wards at the symbol, and it had stopped sizzling, he washed it down with the hose. I wiped the resulting smears off the wall with the old towels.

"Give me those," Ari said. "I'll take them down to the launderette if you promise me you'll stay inside while I'm gone. Upstairs. Away from windows."

"Okay, it's a deal. I might even get domestic and cook something. Aunt Eileen stocked the refrigerator for us."

He mugged shock and took the dirty towels.

That evening I called Michael and told him that I had the baptismal certificate. He responded with a whoop of triumph, or at least, I took the whoop to be triumphant. It's hard to tell with whoops.

"That's only step one," I said. "We've got a long haul ahead of us."

"Well, yeah," Michael said. "But Aunt Eileen said I could bring her here now, so she wouldn't have to turn any more tricks. But she said you have to agree."

Even though I would have preferred to have all the paperwork in hand, I shared my aunt's desire to spare the girl more trysts with radioactive customers.

"Okay," I said. "But look, you can't go on having s.e.x with Sophie in Aunt Eileen's house."

"I know that." He sounded so indignant that I knew he hadn't thought of it till that minute.

"Just making sure. And why the name Chekov? You didn't get that from Star Trek, did you?"

"Yeah, it's the only Russian name I could think of."

"Why Russian?"

"I was thinking about all the rads Lisa-I mean Sophie's been exposed to. What if she needed to see a doctor one day, and they noticed?"

"It seems likely they would, yeah."

"So she could be from Ukraine, I thought, you know, where they had that big nuke plant blow up whenever it was. It was near some city or something, but Kiev's the capital, so I figured she could have been born there."

"Your knowledge of foreign affairs is astounding," I said. "Okay, that makes sense. Sophia Chekov she is. But you'd better look online and see if you can find some CDs for learning Ukranian. It's not the same as Russian, and she'd better know a few words of the lingo, just the things she would have learned as a little kid."

"I'll do that for sure."

"Good. One last thing. You've got to break up with Lisa, the one here I mean. Tonight."

A long paused followed, then a deep pitiful sigh.

"You're right," Michael said. "It would only be, like, fair."

Later that evening, when Ari was muttering in Hebrew over his laptop as he filed some sort of report-and no, I didn't ask what or to where-I logged onto TranceWeb to pick up my e-mail. I'd set my computer desk up in a corner of the living room, where there was a phone jack for the scrambled DSL. NumbersGrrl, our expert in alternate world theory, had answered my queries. I read that first. She told me that every cell in the human body is replaced roughly every seven years. If Lisa-Sophie stayed here for that many years, eating our food and drinking our water, her substance would, as NumbersGrrl put it, "come into conformity" with the matter of our world level.

It looked like Walking Stewart was right about those atoms, after all. To be on the safe side, however, she suggested that we try not to let the two Lisas meet.

"Folklore," the e-mail continued, "says that if you meet your doppelganger, you'll disappear, and it'll take over your life. Or maybe you'll merge into one person, or maybe you'll both disappear, but it doesn't sound good no matter which. It could just be bulls.h.i.+t-or maybe it's some old kernel of truth."

I printed out the information for Michael, though of course I removed all the headers and routing information first. Despite all the firewalls on my system and his, I didn't feel safe in sending the message through ordinary e-mail.

I also received a short note from Y, saying that he needed more information before he could set about getting Sophia papers. I sent him her new name and the data on the baptismal certificate. The object of all this activity, Michael, called me later to report that he'd called the our-world Lisa and done the breakup.

"It was gross," he said. "She cried."

"I guess she really liked you. Did she want to know why?"

"Yeah. I told her I h.e.l.la liked her, but that this old girlfriend of mine, she'd moved away, y'know? But now she was back in town."

"You'd better work out a good story with Sophie."

"I will, yeah. I just sent her a message by critter mail."

"Okay. We'll talk more later. Go do your homework."

Michael laughed and signed off.

Ari wandered into the living room just as I got up from my computer chair to stretch my back. He caught me by the shoulders and kissed me. I reached up and ran my hand through his hair. I loved the way the curls twined around my fingers.

"You look happy tonight," I said.

"True." He smiled at me. "You forgave me for being what I am. I'd love you forever for that alone, even without the tremendous s.e.x."

I could only stare at him. If I had tried to speak, I would have stammered.

"No need to say anything," he said. "But I wanted you to know why I love you."

He let me go, then turned and walked off down the hall.

Watch it, O'Grady! I told myself. You're melting again. Be careful, or you'll end up really falling for this guy. He's got issues, Mira had said at Kathleen's party. So he did, and so did I, and I could see an emotional train wreck in my future if they ever met head-on.

CHAPTER 10.

I SUPPOSE I FELT NERVOUS ABOUT MEETING CALEB for lunch. I woke up too early on Sat.u.r.day, at any rate, and staggered into the kitchen to make coffee. I'd just poured myself a cup when my cell phone rang. I yelped and nearly spilled the coffee. On the fifth ring I answered it.

"Hey, Nola? It's me, Mike."

I sighed in relief. "You're up early for a weekend."

"Yeah, Or-Something just turned up. It barfed a letter onto my bed. I guess I shouldn't have given it all that strawberry ice cream last night. The barf looked just like-"

"I don't want to know," I said. "What was in the letter? Could you read it?"

"Yeah. It was from Sophie. She's kind of upset. Jeez, I hope she can get away after all this."

"You hope? What do you mean, you hope?"

"Well, she's got to lie to Jose. He's not going to want to let her go. She's in his stable. So I was wondering, like, if you and Ari could come over, when it's time to fetch her, you know? Because if Ari's there with a gun or something, then Jose won't cause trouble."

"Uh, Mike, just how much trouble are you expecting?"

"Maybe none. I dunno."

"I thought you said Jose was cool."

"He is, but he's had a hard life. Seriously. Y'know?"

I did know, which is why the obvious occurred to me. "Have you thought about buying her from Jose? Trading him the kind of goods the gang can use."

Silence hummed on the phone for a couple of seconds, before Michael said, "Hey, that might work! But I don't have a lot of cash to buy stuff with."

I groaned, but I'd gotten myself into this, and Ari did have a fabulous expense account from his deep cover agency. I figured he could come up with the whole rent if I spent too much of my salary to pay my share. "I'll front you the money," I said.

"Cool! Then I can go over tonight and get Sophie to calm down. She's, like, h.e.l.la worried."

"About these nighttime visits, bro, the ones in the middle of the week. How are you staying awake in school?"

"I've got study hall first period, and I sit way in the back."

I took this as meaning that he slept for an hour instead of studying. I decided I wouldn't complain about something so trivial, considering everything else my sneaky little junior agent had going on.

"I'll be over tomorrow after ma.s.s," Michael went on. "Ari's going to teach me how to shoot."