Odd Stuff (23 page)

“Yes, it has been good to see everyone.”

“I will have Vickie back here on Sunday. Is four o’clock still okay?”

“Yes, James. Four is fine.” We had practiced cold politeness the last year or so of our marriage. When the yelling stops and you become polite strangers, everything is dead.

“Thank you. Vickie, kiss mom goodbye.”

Vickie came and I folded her into my arms. It was so hard to let her go. I knew that she needed her dad and vice versa. But I needed her, too. And it was much more difficult to let go when your mind said yes and your heart screamed no. I forced a smile to my eyes and lips. “Call me tonight before you go to bed?” 

“Yup. On my
cell
phone.” She wagged her eyebrows at me comically.

“Great. Have fun, and I’ll see you Sunday.” A final kiss and hug and they walked off. I watched her holding his hand, looking up at him. I watched him laughing down at her. And they walked out the front doors. 

What used to be a family was now split in two. Usually he was the one who had to miss her, so I couldn’t begrudge him his visits. But my heart ached, and I sat alone and bereft. And as I sat there, alone in a crowd, I wept.

When I dried up enough to see straight, I made my way back to my Focus. I sat in the seat, heater blowing, numb. Finally, I put it in gear and headed home. I went to the bathroom and washed my face clean of tears and used eye drops to get the red out. I swear, if it weren’t for pot-heads and single moms, they wouldn’t have a market for getting the red out in the first place. I grabbed my bag and headed downstairs. Gazing around the shop one last time, I realized that what had seemed so weird a few days before now was home. But it wasn’t my home and Mia needed rescuing, so I shoved that in a back corner of my mind with all the rest that I couldn’t afford to think about and focused. 

Out the front door, I saw a black PT Cruiser pull to the curb then a dark tinted window cracked open. Vance’s eyes glowed blue in the darkness from the slit. I lugged the bag out and locked up Odd Stuff, trying valiently not to consider the chance some of us might not make it home. 

I turned to the vampire who leaned on the car and sighed at the picture he painted against the shiny car. Again, he’d dressed like a rock star—black leather trench coat swirling around him in the wind off the lake, matching black leather pants and high black leather boots. A floaty white confection of what looked to be stiff cotton left his chest bare almost to the navel. Around his neck, he wore a pendant of a dragon with a drop of some gemstone which glowed red as blood in its talons. His hair hung like liquid night, strands of it blowing to caress a face carved of living marble, making him easily the most beautiful man I’ve ever met. 

I knew that I didn’t paint nearly as dramatic a pose. In tight blue jeans, and a suede button down top in a color like burnt butter, I mostly looked ordinary. My hair hung down since it didn’t matter if it waved on its own unseen breeze. I mean, we were off to fight the bad guys, why hide the gun, right? I was sure I must look pale. 

His eyes burned into me. “You are so beautiful.”

I snorted, ruining the moment. “Yeah, you
are
old. You should get your eyes checked, gramps. I put my bag in the back seat, but couldn’t bring myself to touch him. Apparently not picking up on my reticence, he slid a hand around my neck under my hair. It moved, cool as the night, around from behind to caress its way to the front of my neck, and I closed my eyes. He slid  lower, to cover my collarbone and bring me closer. His other arm slid across my stomach, hand stopping at my navel, to pull me flush against him. As he tilted his head down to rest his face against mine, I breathed in the scent of him. Warmth, soap, man, steak—a combination that I liked a lot. 

He held me like that for a moment, and I relaxed before he turned me. Bracing his hands on either side of my head, he trapped us in a cocoon of his hair and the car, lit by the glow of his eyes. Our lips touched, the barest whispers of contact until I caught his face and kissed him fully. Almost impatiently, he tugged my legs around his waist. 

“Missed you.” He nuzzled my neck.

“Yeah, right.” I tried to find the barriers that I was working so hard to construct. He pressed himself into me, leather making him more solid feeling even through denim. I bit back a moan.  

“Nothing is easy with you, is it? I am gone for the few short hours of an Ohio winter day, and already you doubt me?”

I smirked and slid off him. “Did I ever say I stopped doubting you to start with?”

He grinned. “Just wait. If I I’ve learned one thing over the span of my lifetime, it is patience.” 

“Virtuous.” I got into the car, he slid in after me and put it in gear.

“Now that I have found you, I have no plans on letting you go.”

I rolled my eyes. “Nice sweet talk, Batman, but you can save it. You have me in your bed. I think you already got the grand prize.” 

“Nope. I plan to keep you. That’s the grand prize.” 

“I’ve been down that road, I’m not so great at it. Can’t we just enjoy it and quit all the lovey-dovey chatter?” 

“You haven’t been down that road with me and I plan on living a very long time. When I talk long term relationship, I intend longer than a mortal lifespan. You probably should be nervous.” 

I patted his leg. “Like I said, save the sweet talk. Enjoy what we have now because I really don’t have anything more to offer you.” 

“We will see, little screamer.”

I sat back and turned up the radio as Ashtabula sped by like some Norman Rockwell winter-scape. Even knowing Vance was off the mark, I couldn’t keep a small smile from my face. It was stupid, but he made me happy.  

~

I woke blearily and wiped a bit of drool from the corner of my mouth as we approached the US customs on the border. I blinked at the lights. “How long have I been out?”  

“Less than four hours. All the way through Pennsylvania and New York.”

“We barely cross Pennsylvania to get to Canada,” I grouched.

“Yes, we’re about to cross the QEW and will be in Niagara-on-the-Lake in a few minutes. My brother is in charge around here, so if Mia is in Canada, I figure he is our best bet to find out where.” 

“You have a brother up here?”

“Mmm-mm.” He didn’t take his eyes off the road to reply to me. “He gets up later than me, but it is nearly ten thirty, so he should be up. He lives in Saint Catherine’s, but spends most nights at the wax museum.” 

“Where are we now?”

“Near the Falls.”

“Oh, do we have time to stop and see them?”

He looked at me, dubious. “You grew up in Ashtabula and never saw the Falls?”

“Nope, my mom isn’t big on traveling.” He pulled into what looked like a state park and parked in front of a bronze bust. I got out, grabbing the backpack loaded with Mia’s supplies, and could hear a very loud roaring in the distance. Reading the plaque at the bottom of the bust, I saw it was a representation of the first man to go over the falls and live.
Neat.
 

When I looked past the rail, I gasped. Niagara Falls does that—millions of gallons of water rushed over the edge at awe inspiring speed. I stared, enchanted by the power and majesty of it. 

“You think that is good, you should see it when it is turned on.” I looked back at Vance and then back at the black water rushing off the edge of a cliff that seemed to drop into nothingness.

“What do you mean?” I leaned over the rail.

“They turn down the water at night to keep it from eroding too quickly. Actually, it is never allowed to run at full power anymore. Most of the water gets redirected to a power plant.”

I stared at the water and felt a tug. How awful that something so powerful, so much a piece of nature, was controlled just to make it go the way people wanted.

Then I drew a parallel between myself and the rushing water—I kept a part of me, most of me, dampened to keep what I
thought
was right in place. Like people controlled the falls to keep what
they
thought was right in place. I was just as much a part of nature, a powerful part, as this natural power. I was the only one of me in all of history, also like this falling water. And, as the witches had said in the store, there are no mistakes in Creation. Everything has its purpose, whether we see it or not. The falls crumbled because they were meant to, but humans controlled them, took away from their power to keep them alive. I controlled me to keep me from crumbling, to keep me alive. Whether I could see it or not, I must have a purpose under Creation. And suddenly my life was as much, if not more, of a travesty of nature as this natural wonder brought to its knees by technology. 

I closed my eyes, letting the mist wash over me. I was confused. What was right? I had asked Old Mother and she had asked me, what
is
right? Should I continue to deny myself the ability to
be
myself, and succumb to what others thought was right for me? Or should I succumb to what every cell in my body cried out for me to be, to hell with what is supposedly right? 

Vance stood silent by my side and I came up with no answers, so after another minute listening to the scream of rushing water, I took his hand. “Walk with me?” 

We strode up a hill toward the many buildings, mostly hotels and tourist traps scattered the busy street. Bar doors opened letting out laughing people and museums stood grand in the light snow. “Look, the Ripley’s Believe it, or Not Museum. I used to love that show!”

“I wonder how much of the past week Ripley would believe?” Vance nudged me in the arm.

“Let’s go in!” I tugged on his arm, and we walked through to look at things like the world’s tallest man. We came to a huge, round globe of marble, suspended by water. You could touch it and it would move, still suspended and almost weightless in the water. I left Vance looking at something else and checked it out. 

“That is so cool.” I gaped around in awe. I touched it and it rolled a little toward a man in red on the other side. He smiled at me and rolled it back toward me. 

Game, I made it change direction and roll counter-clock wise again.

He smiled at me and lifted his hands out palms up. “Goodnight, sweetheart.” And then the marble rocked on its pedestal of water.

I backed up and water sloshed out before the rock began to roll. Water shot up to the ceiling behind the rock, and yet the rock paid it no heed. Rocks aren’t too easily impressed.

The murmur of rock on floor shifted. I cracked open an eye to see it had left its pedastal and fallen to the floor was in time to see it roll through the front windows of the museum. 

I blinked.

It hadn’t crushed me.

Oh, no
. There was a hill out there, and we were a good halfway up. That rock would kill everyone it hit, if it wasn’t stopped. Not sure what I thought I was going to do about it, I chased after the rock. Vance ran next to me and we managed to get in front of the rock. 

“What now?” he panted, God only knows how many tons of marble coming at us, people screaming around us. 

I closed my eyes. I sifted through my brain and tried to remember anything that might be useful to stop rock.

Why hadn’t it hit me?

Oh, yeah, mom’s side of the family.

I raised my hands again, as I had in the museum. Ice cold wind whipped my hair into a frenzy. I reached out with my mind and caught the wind.

I wrestled with it, tamed it and threw it at the rock. The wind caught the rock and it seemed to slow. I forced more wind to bend to my will and pushed harder. Inch by painful inch, I pushed the rock with the force of the wind and it began to roll back toward the museum. I could sense Vance still standing in the street.  

I moved the rock back to the water and dropped it with a splash onto the place it had come from. Water gurgled for a moment and then the marble began to roll in place as it had before it had been freed.

Applause broke out. The humans apparently thought it was a magic trick—I could just be another street magician, for all they knew, with a flair for the dramatic. I took a bow and went looking for Vance. 

He sat on a bench under a street light. “Someone was trying to kill me. We must be close to Mia.”

He shrugged toward the hill, and pointed at a wax museum at the top. “My brother should be up there. We can talk to him.”

He didn’t look like he cared much about that, though. “Floating, I can chalk up to the siren thing. I mean, I never knew one personally, so why not be able to float during sex—?” 

“That was me?” I asked. I had been sure it was him. 

“Yeah. I did the dancing, but the bit after that was all you. You didn’t even realize you were doing it?”

“Thought it was you.” I shrugged and sat beside him. There wasn’t going to be any turning back. He’d figured me out or would in a minute. 

“That rock bit, though, that wasn’t siren.”

“Nope, my mother’s side.” Yeah, I was toast. There was no way to lie my way out of this one.

“Who is your mom?”

“Mab.” My voice was flat.

“Mab?”

I sighed. “Queen Mab.”

“Goblin Queen Mab? Queen of all Faerie? Queen of Elves, fairies, that Queen Mab?” 

“Yup, but fairies, goblins, and elves are all really just the same thing in different forms. They are all one race.”

“You are telling me that a siren—” He stopped and shook his head. “Who was your dad?” 

“Listen, I—” 

“He wasn’t—” 

I sighed, again, “Yes. Erin. Consort to the Queen of the Sirens.”

“You are telling me that the king of the sirens—” 

“Consort. Sirens are matriarchal.”

“And the Queen of Faerie had a kid?” he barreled on, as if I had not spoken. 

“Yup.” My voice was quiet.
Flat. Dead.
 

“And you are their kid?” His perfect face contorted with a deepening frown and wide eyes, which showed his mixture of horror and disbelief. 

“Lucky me, huh?” I whispered. I dropped my face in my hands. I had just signed my death warrant.