Page 26 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

TEN

Before I left, Lura gave me a flannel cloth to wrap around the Aelvestone. “Don’t touch it any more than you have to,” she warned. “It gives great strength, but at a price.” It was exactly what Liz had told me.

I looked closely at Lura as she stood beside my car in the late afternoon sunlight. She was staring at my right rear tire, stuck in a pothole. Her hair, which had seemed momentarily golden inside the house, was dull gray again, her face even more ancient-looking than when I’d first seen her. The Aelvestone had given her youth—and something else.

“That’s how you were able to carry me out of the river,” I said. “You used the Aelvestone to give yourself strength.”

In answer, she bent down and hooked a tiny hand around my rear bumper. She lifted the entire chassis to the left to clear the pothole. She let it down—a little less gently than was likely to be good for my suspension system—and straightened up, arching her back until it cracked.

“Ah,” she said, “I haven’t used Aelvesgold in more than twenty years. I’d forgotten how it felt…It’s probably addeda few months onto my life, but I’ll pay for it. Remember that. Only use as much as you have to.”

I told her I would and promised that I’d do my best to stop the Grove from closing the door. I started to thank her for saving my life, but she spat on the ground and waved me away. Maybe half-undines didn’t like to be thanked any more than brownies did.

I drove back home slowly, concentrating on the curving backcountry roads in the gathering dusk. I probably shouldn’t have driven so soon after the blow to my head, but I didn’t have much choice. I certainly was not going to stay in Lura’s house—not that she’d asked me.

The sight of my own freshly painted, squared, and trim house—even with its missing roof tiles and twisted gutter—made me sigh with relief. I’d bought it impetuously and had since had cause enough to regret the decision, but right now I was grateful that I had such a welcoming home.

When I opened the front door and knocked over a tin pot full of water, soaking the mail lying on the foyer floor, the relief evaporated. I’d forgotten about the leaks. I had to find someone to fix them before my house started to look like Lura’s. Just the thought of those peeling walls and crumbling ceilings made me feel cold and damp—which, as a matter of fact, I still was,andmy dress smelled suspiciously of cat pee, which Ralph confirmed when he sniffed me. Wrinkling his nose, he disappeared into the hall closet (where he liked to sleep inside my shearling-lined winter boots).

Ugh!I couldn’t blame him. I picked up the bucket and the wet mail and carried them both into the kitchen, sticking the bucket in the sink and spreading the damp mail out on the kitchen table to dry—bills and flyers, mostly, which I could deal with later. What I needed now was a hot bath and bed. I’d rest up tonight and then tomorrow I’d call Liz and tell herthat I’d found enough Aelvesgold to power the circle. Heck, I thought, unwrapping the stone from Lura’s piece of flannel as I climbed the back stairs, this stone could power a dozen spell circles. When I reached my bedroom I stood by the window and held the stone under my desk lamp, feeling a pleasurable tingle in my hand. Instantly, I felt less cold and tired. But Lura had warned me to use it as little as I could. Regretfully, I wrapped it back in the flannel (the same tartan plaid as the shirt she’d worn, I noticed) and slipped it into one of the little pigeonhole drawers in the built-in desk. I kept an assortment of objects in those drawers—shells and stones, a fairy stone my father had given me, a piece of broken willow pattern china that Liam had brought back from one of his rambles…I took out the china shard, recalling Liam’s habit of bringing little tokens—stones and bird’s nests, pinecones and dried flowers—home from his walks. The house had seemed full of his spirit when he’d lived here…

Now the house felt empty. By banishing Liam, I’d rid Honeysuckle House of the spirit of the incubus who’d haunted it for more than a century. In the years she’d lived and written here, Dahlia LaMotte had struck a sort of truce with the incubus, periodically allowing him back into the house. By studying her notebooks I’d figured out that she used her interaction with the incubus to fuel her writing. He was her muse. But after he had served her purpose, she would banish him back to the Borderlands.

I opened another drawer—the only one that had been locked when I moved in—and took out the iron key I’d found there. It matched the one that hung around my neck. At some point long ago, Dahlia had locked the key away. She had broken her tie with the incubus. But I still wore my key.

Why? I’d unlocked Liam’s manacles when I saw him in Faerie. He was no longer bound by me. I was glad he was nolonger in pain but as I took the chain off and put it in the drawer with Dahlia’s key, I felt the loss of that connection. The place on my breastbone where the key had lain now felt as empty as my house.

And how much emptier would my life be if the Grove was able to close the door and my friends chose to leave Fairwick?

Feeling rather desolate, I got up from my desk, checked the drawer where I’d put the Aelvestone just to make sure I remembered where it was, I told myself, then went into the bathroom to run a much-needed bath. I put in the plug and turned on the hot water tap all the way. I’d learned that there was just enough hot water in the boiler to fill up the massive claw-foot tub. The water would start to cool when the tub was about half full and then mix with the hot, attaining the perfect temperature by the time the tub was filled. I’d thought of buying a bigger water tank—Brock had said that the one I had was pretty old and eventually would need to be replaced—but it seemed like a needless expense now that the only one using the hot water was me.

While the bath filled, I peeled off my grimy and odiferous dress, dropped it into the sink, and ran water and added scented shampoo to get out the smell. I brushed my hair, working out the tangles—and a few twigs—and rubbed in a little jojoba oil to condition it. I added some to the bathwater as well. Seeing Lura’s wrinkled skin—even if she did look damned good for a hundred—had reminded me of the necessity of moisturizing.

When the bath was full I turned off the tap and, with a shivery sense of anticipation, stepped in…to ice-cold water. Squealing, I plucked my foot out so quickly I teetered and nearly fell. Another opportunity to crack my skull, I thought, grabbing my robe and wrapping it around me. I studied thetaps and turned the one clearly marked hot. More ice-cold water poured into the tub.

Something was wrong with my hot water heater.

I put on flip-flops and stormed down the stairs, rubber heels slapping angrily as iftheywere mad at the house, not me. Why did it have to pick now to malfunction? I knew Brock had kept the old place in pristine condition, but was it really so sensitive that it started falling apart the minute Brock wasn’t here?

By the time I reached the basement stairs I’d calmed down a little. It was petty of me to make a fuss about some minor home repair problem when Brock lay in a deathlike coma, his spirit struggling in the icy fogs of Niflheim.

I remained calm, even when the basement light didn’t switch on. The bulb had burned out since I’d last gone into the basement—which wasn’t all that often. Truth be told, I hated the basement. It had a dirt floor and stone walls—a good solid stone foundation, Brock said—and many, many spiders. The only times I ever went down there were when one of the fuses went out or that one time I’d forgotten to refill the oil tank (who knew you had to order heating oil?) and the man from the oil company had had to “reprime the pump.” Whatever that meant.

I grabbed a lightbulb from the pantry and headed down, keeping one hand on the stone wall beside the staircase to keep my balance. I didn’t need any more falls. I went slowly down the stairs and stepped into several inches of water.

At least it wasn’t cold.

Resisting the urge to sit on the stairs and weep, I screwed the old bulb out of the overhead socket and screwed in the new bulb. The bulb burst into light and revealed the basement in garish detail. I’d hoped somehow that the puddle I wasstanding in would be the worst of it, but in fact the bit I stood in was high dry ground compared to the rest of the basement. The ground sloped down from where I stood and water covered the entire surface. The furnace and hot water heater were in several feet of water.

Which probably explained why the hot water heater wasn’t working. I scanned the water’s murky surface as if I might locate a plug I could pull to make it all drain away. Instead I noticed a dead cockroach bobbing on a current heading my way.

Shuddering, I backed up the stairs all the way to the kitchen, afraid that if I turned my back something might rise out of the water to grab me. Then I closed the door on the mess and sat down at my kitchen table and gave in to the urge for a good long cry.

I was alone in an ancient house that was falling apart. Brock was never coming back to fix it and that was my own damned fault. No one was coming to fix it. Certainly not Liam, because I didn’t love him. I probably wasn’t capable of love. My friends were all going to leave me and go back to Faerie. I was going to grow old all alone while my house decayed and fell apart around me until it looked like Lura’s house and I looked as shriveled and dried-up as Lura.

And smelled as bad as her.

I already smelled like cat pee.

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