Fish Out of Water (3 page)

I tried to make the right kind of pissed face, the one he would expect. But I wasn’t really listening. Mom says back in Aegira they’re spooked and predicting the end of the world too. It’s all to do with the royal line and this damn prophecy.
Only one world can survive
.
Bloodtides
. And all that. I guess that’s enough to spook anyone.

Me, I haven’t got enough headspace for anyone else’s prophecies. I’ve been living under the shadow of my own personal End of Days prediction for thirteen years now.

But, as the song says, I’ve only got myself to blame.

There’s one rule about visits to the Seer back in Aegira. And I had to break it.

Don’t ask about the appointed hour of your own death
.

But hey, I was sixteen. And I didn’t think she’d really tell me.

I spent a long time after trying to convince myself it was all just so much horseshit. But then slowly, surely, all the rest of it came true. Dad went to jail. Queen Imd didn’t fall pregnant. And the biggest long shot of all: Faigerst really did ask Zali to the Evensong Ball.

And then I knew it for sure. I was screwed.

No-one had seen Blondie arrive. Or seen her die. Or even seen her dead (well, except for the guy who stepped on her, and he was feeling pretty sheepish about the whole thing really; Dirtwater folks are kinda genteel like that). It was the first night of the Dirt Wrestling Festival, and by nine most folks were at The Dirty Boar, well-lubricated with Dirty Dan’s home brew.

We only discovered two interesting things all night. First, the aquarium.

We found it stashed in some bushes near Blondie. Like a sliver of ocean in the Dirtwater desert. A half-full, reef-fish aquarium. Still with the fish in it. Six beautiful, multi-colored angels, swimming in a daze around their half-drained home. Big too. The aquarium, that is. And something else; one tiny little blue-green fish, barely noticeable, swimming innocently beside its magnificent cellmates.

Aldus decided immediately the aquarium had nothing to do with our girl. Despite the saltwater. “Too heavy,” he pronounced. “Skinny little thing’d never have lifted that sucker.”

I said nothing, but when he disappeared (thank God for that prostate or I’d never get any work done) I checked. And yep, I could lift it. I bet a million bucks Blondie could too.

I thought about that tiny blue fish. Maybe she hadn’t needed to lift it at all.

The other thing was the second stranger. Dan, who ran the Dirty Boar, had seen something out back, when he was banging the generator. A shadow. And a back, retreating. He remembered because he’d stood up quickly to get a look, and got this buzz in his ears. Worried his tinnitus was playing up again. Couldn’t say much. Tall, dark clothes. But he did say the guy moved like a boxer, light on his feet. He’d wondered if it was a wrestler, for the festival.

Missy Lovelace had seen something too, but was even less helpful. Admittedly, she was distracted and it had been hard to question her as she adjusted her bikini and mentally banked audience appreciation points. Man, dirt wrestling is just a whole other thing.

This town doesn’t really have a lot going for it, just people on their way somewhere else, or hiding out, or dropping out. So about ten years ago, the big men of Dirtwater started looking for a way to attract tourists. They thought mud wrestling had something going for it, but given that there wasn’t much water, there wasn’t much mud. So dirt-wrestling was born.

Anyway, I hit Missy up as she was preparing for her set, tugging on one improbable breast to bring it further into the action – a delicate task given that it already seemed unbelievable that you could expose that much breast without revealing nipple. Surely that little sucker was popping out any second. Watching Missy in her bikini, I cursed Mom’s sense of humor. I still couldn’t believe the theme for this year’s festival was Under The Sea.

I could hear the dull murmur of the crowd building, even from inside. The little dressing room was hot and impossibly wet. Missy told me she kept the shower running because the steam helped her false eyelashes stick. “It’s good to see you, Rania. Listen, I know I said it at the time, but I really appreciate…” Pause. Tug, tug on her bikini. “What you did, y’know.”

I tried not to look as she pulled on her bosom again. I shifted uncomfortably, as much at her words as at the whole bosom-fiddling thing. “It was nothing Missy, just part of the job.”

She shook her head adamantly and flashed me a Zoom-whitened smile. “No way, honey. You’re the best. I ain’t never seen nothin’ like the way you flew in there and pulled him offa me. And y’know? He ain’t bothered me since.” She looked at me for approval. “And y’know what? I did just what y’ said. Changed the locks n’all.”

I nodded, pleased Big Barry Buckford was leaving her alone. Missy and I had been in high school together. She was sweet but had a worse habit for ugly drunks than I did for pirates. I tried to do like Mom always said, just smile and say thanks. But I knew it was coming off like a grimace so I got down to business. “So, Missy. The guy Dan saw?”

“Yeah I saw him too. I was late, y’see.” She rolled her eyes, motioning to the star-spangled bikini. “Costume dramas. Y’know how it is.”

“Totally,” I lied. The room was even steamier than outside, the thick heat unbroken by the single, crippled fan sluicing through the air. It was making the shiny scar on my arm itch.

“How did you know it was a guy?” I doubted if Missy knew her own last name right now, she was so jangled about her upcoming performance.

“Dunno,” she offered unhelpfully. “But oh man, I knew. If there’s one thing I know, it’s guys. He looked hot too, y’know, from behind. Big. Yum. My kinda guy.” She chewed her lip and went on. “I was gonna call out to him, ask him if he was coming in, but my mouth got all gummy. Couldn’t talk. Nerves, I guess. You know, the competition.”

“I guess,” I agreed. “Anything else? What’d he look like?”

She shrugged.

“Would you know him if you saw him again?”

“Oh yeah, baby. Like I said, I know guys.” Another tug for good measure. I believed her. As she tugged some more, I was sure a thin pinkish-brown rim finally broke free of the bikini and I averted my eyes towards the shower before I threw up.

As I did, it happened.

The mildewy pink curtain billowed forward and a large shape crashed to the floor, right between Missy and me, wrapped in the voluminous plastic. Missy screamed.

My heart tapped out a tango and one hand went to my Glock without any conscious command as I tried to disentangle the curtain from the lumpy shape.

As I pulled it free, I had one of those moments. You know the ones. Where everything slows down and you know that for the rest of your life you’ll be able to describe it in vivid technicolor. Like the time I turned on the tv and saw that plane crashing into the towers.

He was almost supernaturally beautiful. And naked. A long trickle of thick red blood ran from the side of one temple down to a graceful jaw.

And he was lying on the floor half in and half out of Missy’s teeming shower.

Had he been there, in the shower, the whole time?

“Sweet Jesus,” Missy whistled, clearly impressed as she studied the region I was studiously avoiding. As beautiful as he was, it didn’t seem right to be copping an eyeful.

Especially when he seemed to be in pretty bad shape.

He was long and lean, dark blonde and strong like a runner. Golden hair glistened on his wet, brown body, but he was curled like a fetus and moaning softly. Something about the sight
of him, which should have screamed “get the pervert outta here”, touched me right down inside. Right down in my belly. And lower. I wanted to cover him up. I wanted to help him. And some parts of me wanted to do other things, but I wasn’t giving them any airtime.

“This the guy?” I barked at Missy. She shook her head.

“Go call Billy,” I barked again and she scuttled out with a petulant sniff.

As she left, his eyes opened. And even through the disoriented blur, we had a moment. His eyes widened as they connected with mine and I felt my mouth swing open. I tore my hands away as though burned, but my eyes weren’t being torn anywhere. His were indigo, and their hot stare was like someone waving a searchlight in my face.

Before I could act, one strong brown hand reached up and circled my wrist like a manacle, pulling me forward onto his wet, naked chest. With the other hand, he pinned me against him, crushing the small of my back and mashing my breasts and tummy against the length of him as he spoke. “You.” It sounded like a command, but his voice was deep and dark, like Lucky Strikes and home-baked toffee. Like the most delicious bad boy you ever knew.

It was only a second or two, but I felt a sudden, unhelpful flush spread across my chest and my breath speed up as my brain struggled to catch up. Even through my dark denim jeans and the calico of my uniform shirt I could feel every wet bump and sinew of him. My legs had landed astride him, and my crotch was crushed against the hardness between his hips.

He leaned forward and moaned into my ear, and as he did my mouth grazed his jaw. I tasted salty blood and smelled sweat and strung-out, dirty man. A thousand butterflies danced down my spine and landed in the pit of my stomach. My nipples puckered involuntarily, and the ensuing flash of self-disgust galvanized me to action.

I arched back but he was not to be deterred. He lifted one long arm seamlessly to bring me closer again. As he did, I caught a glimpse of the red gold hair of his underarm, flat brown nipples and a whorl of hair south of his belly button that led…

I twisted off him and leaped up with the instinct born of a thousand karate classes, ramming the heel of one calf-high black boot into the most sensitive place on his chest.

I opened my mouth to say “hands up, asshole”, but two things happened.

First, my mouth wouldn’t form the words, and second he collapsed back onto the linoleum floor as though his stealth attack on me, and my response, had sapped whatever strength he had. Those indigo eyes fluttered shut and he groaned softly.

Okay, so that wasn’t all.

Third, and worst of all, I knelt down to him again, removing my foot from its sensible resting place on his chest. My traitorous hand snaked out to stroke his red-gold hair, like some freakin’ Florence Nightingale. Luckily, my two-way barked at me. It was Aldus, and a welcome distraction. “Rania,” he croaked across the grainy line. “Whassup?”

“Ah…” I wasn’t sure where to start.

“Anything to do with the dead blonde and the fish?”

At the words, the beautiful man in my arms was suddenly taut, alert. “She’s dead?” His eyes lost the blur, and became almost black, locking onto mine like a gate clanging shut.

I spun away, needing some space to think, holding him as best as I could with one hand and holding the two-way and the Glock with the other. “You know her? The dead blonde?”

But before I could get an answer, he had jerked out of my arms with the strength of a boxer. He was up, and back in the shower. For a brief second, I got the full beauty of him, long and compact under the streaming water. He looked right into me as he opened his mouth and sung one low, perfect note. A note I knew too well from another time and a faraway place.

And then he was gone.

A tiny blue-green fish flapped frantically on the shower floor. And I was alone, with another mermaid puzzle to solve.

11:30pm

There are only two bars in Dirtwater. The Dirty Boar, and The End of Days, a fine establishment I prefer for three reasons. Firstly, it has this dark, ironic feel. Like a bad detective novel. Second, it’s one of the few places in town not named after dirt. Third, it’s where my good buddy (and the coroner) Larry Kramer likes to go to drop off the radar once in a while.

I needed a drink, but more importantly, I needed to find Larry. And given that he hadn’t been answering his cell phone all night, I was pretty sure I knew where to find him. When he goes AWOL, it’s usually because he’s fallen off the wagon.

And, for Larry, The End of Days is the softest place to fall.

I pushed through those swing doors that remind me of an old saloon, rubbing my stinging eyes and popping a No Doz on the way in. It wasn’t just the late call-out, the dead blonde and the naked babe, either. It was the dreams. Insomnia and crazy dreams are nothing new for me, but it wasn’t just the fire any more. It was other stuff. Stuff I can’t remember when I wake up, but that leaves me slick with sweat and panting. Like I’m being hunted.

I’ve been waking up wondering why I don’t get a different job.

Three weeks, I could do anything. I could do nothing.

I could do nothing on a beach. With a drink with an umbrella in it.

So why was I still working? And why the hell was I getting involved in something that was looking messier and messier by the minute?

I found Larry pouring drinks, and he looked happy rather than hammered. Marty, the usual barkeep, was kicking back, reading the sports section. “Dunno why you don’t give up the scalpel and admit you’ve found your true calling,” I offered as I slid up to the bar.

“Sweetheart,” he purred, ignoring Aldus for a moment and sliding a neat So’Co across the counter at me. “Guy like me working full time in a place like this? Ya think I’m in bad shape now? I’d be living under a bridge within two weeks.”

I nodded at the truth of it. Larry had been an army medic, and he’d done some bad war. Mostly, he was okay, and goddam if he was not the most gifted pathologist I’d ever seen in action. But sometimes it all crashed down on him. He turns off his cell, plays bartender.

Tonight I was in luck. Looked like I’d caught him at the sweet end of his bender.

Larry looked me up and down, sharp green eyes taking in blurry brown ones. “Ya look stressed.” He stretched well-muscled brown arms over his head in a faux warm-up and his worn plaid shirt rode up, exposing a waistline still remarkably trim for a guy nudging 65. “Wrestle?”

“Never get tired of getting whipped, hey?” I rolled up my sleeve as I lowered my aching back into one of the saddle-shaped seats and hooked my steel-capped boots over the footrest.