Unbound (4 page)

“Thank you.” She pulled away, her movements tight. One hand touched her tree where Deifilia had died. “I can still hear her sometimes. Only whispers and shadows, impressions of who she was, preserved in the wood like insects in amber.”

I wasn’t sure how to react to the revelation that Lena’s oak contained the echoes of a woman who had been prepared to kill us both.

She must have seen my concern. “They’re little more than memories, Isaac.”

“I’m glad you have them.”

It was the right thing to say. She smiled and kissed me. “Do me a favor,” she said as she pulled away. “Don’t stay up until three in the morning again searching for answers that might not exist.”

“There are always answers,” I said automatically.

“That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to find them,” she shot back. “Or that the cost of those answers is worth paying.” She pulled me in for another kiss, ending the argument quite effectively, and in a way that left me with no complaints.

“Promise me?” she asked when we broke away. “If you can’t sleep, fine, but no reading anything related to ghosts, Jeneta, Gutenberg, Bi Sheng, or the imminent end of the world.”

“I promise.” I waited while she entered her tree, her flesh merging into the wood like the bark was clay molding itself around her. I put a hand on the tree once she had disappeared, but felt nothing of Lena or the power in her oak. “Good night, love.”

After a brief debate the following morning, we ended up taking my pickup truck to Wisconsin. Neither my convertible nor Lena’s motorcycle could comfortably carry three, and the last time we used Nidhi’s car to do something magic-related, wendigos had pretty well totaled it. Nidhi was still fighting the insurance company over that one.

Lena drove, giving me time to read. I had kept my word the night before, trying to lose myself in an old Terry Pratchett novel and finally falling asleep around two in the morning. But
I hadn’t made any such promise about today. I leaned against the passenger door, books and papers around my feet, trying to track down any references to the Ghost Army from the past five hundred years.

Nidhi sat in the back, working on what I guessed to be case notes, though I couldn’t be certain since I didn’t read Gujarati. Smudge rode on the dashboard, contentedly watching the passing scenery.

I doubt any of us said more than a dozen words until we reached Marinette. Nidhi guided us to a large house less than two miles from the Michigan/Wisconsin border and even closer to the waters of Green Bay. Twin spruce trees stood in the middle of a circular driveway. The American flag flew from a pole in the front yard.

“Euphemia and Carl work out of their home,” Nidhi said.

There were no signs to distinguish it from the other extravagant houses along the road. Most people who worked a magical day job tended to do most of their business through word of mouth, since it wasn’t the kind of thing you could advertise.

They seemed to be doing quite well for themselves. A brick walk led past beautifully precise landscaping, full of purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans. To either side of the house, decorative spruce trees grew along the front of a brown privacy fence, blocking the backyard from view.

I could see Lena studying the flowers and taking mental notes. Her garden had been destroyed by the oak grove in our backyard, but she had hinted about plans to turn my front lawn into a floral jungle.

Tall, etched windows framed the storm door, which was a single rectangle of stained glass showing a sailing ship on the waves. A disproportionate amount of the glass was devoted to the water, showing plants and fish of every color imaginable. The ship appeared cramped in its relatively small rectangle of sky at the top.

Nidhi rang the doorbell. A silhouetted head peeked through
the blue glass, and then the door swung open to reveal a middle-aged man in plastic flip-flops and a green Speedo. His wet hair was slicked back, and water dripped down his well-rounded stomach, creating random swirls in his graying chest hair. He grinned at Nidhi. “Doctor Shah! How long has it been?”

“A little over a year.” Nidhi stepped to the side. “Carl, this is Lena Greenwood and Isaac Vainio.”

I shook his hand, then dried my palm on my jeans.

He beckoned us to enter. “Euphemia’s been in the pool all morning. How was the drive? Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Cherry Coke?” Lena was staring unabashedly at our host. He was hardly swimsuit model material, but then, neither was I. Lena had much broader standards of beauty than most.

“You got it. Isaac, if you need privacy, you can change in the sauna.”

I blinked. “Change into what?”

“Your swimsuit.” He paused. “Didn’t Doctor Shah tell you?”

I folded my arms and turned toward Nidhi. “No, Doctor Shah forgot to mention anything about needing a suit.”

Nidhi looked like she couldn’t decide whether to apologize or laugh. “Euphemia didn’t say anything . . .”

“No sweat,” said Carl. “I used to be closer to Isaac’s size. I’m sure I can find him something that will fit.”

He ducked through an arched doorway. As soon as his back was turned, Nidhi mouthed the words,
I’m sorry
.

I debated making a run for it. “If he comes back with another Speedo—”

“I like him,” Lena announced, grinning merrily at my discomfort. “If he can’t find anything that meets your standards, I get the feeling he’d be okay with letting you go skinny dipping instead.”

Anything I said to that would only dig me in deeper. Instead, I studied the three long aquariums that lined the hallway, their filters and pumps humming quietly. The closest
looked like someone had carved a chunk out of the Great Barrier Reef. Another brimmed with goldfish. The third held guppy-sized fish in neon colors.

“Go on out back,” Carl shouted. “Through the hall, then take a right. I’ll be right there.”

A door to the left opened into what appeared to be Carl’s office, judging by the license and diplomas framed on the far wall. To the right, a glass door led onto a small patio.

Lena took one step outside, pointed to the pool, and said, “I want one.”

“Where would we put it?” Larger trees and the privacy fence surrounded what was more a lagoon than a pool. Enormous orange carp swam lazily along the algae-green bottom, and a turtle sunned itself on a log near the edge. Flowers and plants, mostly tropical in appearance, bordered the pool. I spotted hibiscus and some kind of stunted palm, along with large red and yellow blooms I couldn’t identify.

“Isaac Vainio?” The question came from a woman on the far end of the pool, her face partially shaded by an overhanging palm. I wondered briefly how they maintained these plants in the distinctly nontropical climate of the Midwest.

“Doctor Euphemia Smith?” I guessed.

The way she glided through the water reminded me of a swimming serpent. She swam not with her arms or legs, but with her body. One look, and I understood the speech impediment Nidhi had mentioned. An inch-wide strip of scar tissue slashed the left side of her neck, vivid pink against the deep tan of her skin. The scar thinned in the middle, and the raggedness made me suspect some kind of bite. Given the angle, I was amazed the wound hadn’t killed her.

The gray in her hair and the lines on her face made her look a good ten years older than her husband, though for all I knew she could have been Gutenberg’s age. Her hair was thick and matted, like seaweed. Or feathers. Sirens were sometimes said to have had birdlike characteristics.

“I’m not a doctor.” Her words rasped, reminding me of my
grandmother in her last days after a lifetime of smoking. “I dropped out midway through my first semester.”

“Here you go, son.” Carl emerged from the house, and I was relieved to see him holding a thigh-length pair of red-and-white Hawaiian-print trunks. He pointed me toward the wood-walled sauna a short distance away.

“Let me know if you need help,” Lena offered.

The sauna was spacious, clean, and utterly lacking in personality. It looked like a kit built from a box. The slats of the walls and benches were too perfect, too identical. The electric heater with its uniform gray stones caged atop the heating elements could have come out of a Sears catalog. There was even a small flat-screen TV built into the wall behind a layer of glass or plastic to protect it from the steam. My father, proud Finn that he was, would have refused to dignify it with the name “sauna.”

I turned the heater on low and set Smudge’s cage atop the grate, then stripped down and folded my clothes on the wooden bench. I should have been excited. Anxious. I was about to experience a form of magic I’d never seen or heard before. Instead, there was only impatience.

I yanked on the old swimsuit. It hung a bit loosely, even after I tightened the drawstring, but that shouldn’t matter. When I emerged, Carl had joined his wife in the water, dragging an inflated yellow raft behind him.

Lena grinned when she saw me. “I like the look, but we have
got
to get you outside more often. You’re so pale there’s a very real danger you’ll get yourself staked as a vampire.”

Carp shot away as I eased into the warm water. Algae turned the bottom slick. I grabbed the edge to keep my footing. Carl took my other arm and helped me climb onto the raft.

“You just lay back and relax,” he said. “Euphemia’s going to sing you a little lullaby, that’s all. You should be thankful. Few people get to hear her sing in person these days.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“My voice isn’t what it once was.” The water barely rippled
as Euphemia ducked and swam beneath the raft, emerging to my left. “But the unfiltered song of a siren, even a crippled one, can be disturbing.”

“What do you mean, ‘disturbing’?” Lena asked sharply.

“She’s talking about the yearning,” Carl said. “Her song cuts deep into your heart and dreams, digging up the things you most desire. It’s how her kind lured men and women back in the old days. Euphemia sings promises. The first time I heard her, I wept for a week.”

“Is it dangerous?” I asked.

“Eighteen years, and we’ve never lost a patient.”

Nidhi frowned. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the best I can give you,” Carl replied, uncharacteristically serious. “I’m not gonna lie. There will be aftereffects, and they won’t be pleasant. But if you really want to find those answers buried in his thoughts, Euphemia can guide him there.”

“Do it.” I rested my head on the gently bobbing raft and closed my eyes.

“Nidhi told me about the rumble in Copper River. What’s the last thing you remember about your fight with that other dryad?” Carl’s words were calm but strong. It was much easier to take him as a professional with my eyes shut.

“Lena tried to . . . to connect with her.”
Seduce
would have been a more accurate word, but I didn’t want to get into that. “Deifilia resisted.”

“This isn’t going to be fun, but I need you to relive that day,” said Carl. “Play it back in your thoughts and tell me what happens next.”

Metal creatures swarm down the trunk of the oak—magically created rats and insects with clicking legs and gleaming teeth. Some jump onto Lena, biting her skin. Wooden weapons slam together as Lena and Deifilia duel. The impacts crack like gunshots.

The students of Bi Sheng look on helplessly, bound in the tangled roots of the new-grown grove. All save two who have
been corrupted by Deifilia’s ghosts, the spirits Jeneta had named devourers. Their magic stretches toward Lena, ripping her apart from within.

Lena collapses, dying as I watch. The possessed students remind me of vampires, draining Lena of the magic that defines her. Soon there will be nothing left but a desiccated corpse.

“I took control of the oak. Lena’s oak, I mean.” Deifilia had seized it for her own, but she was distracted by the battle, allowing me to act.

“No shit? How’d you manage—” I heard a splash and a sputter from Carl, and a murmured chastisement from Euphemia. His voice turned smooth once more. “Right. Nidhi said you were injured.”

“My knee. I dislocated it.”

My leg throbs, pumping agony through my body with every heartbeat. I shift my body, trying to ease the pressure. Roots pin my leg in place, holding me trapped.

“Focus on the sensations of that battle. The pain. The noise. The sweat dripping down your face and back. The way your perception of time stretches out when you’re frightened.”

As I recalled the details, Euphemia began to sing.

I recognized the language as Greek, though I couldn’t understand the words.
Haunting
was the first word that came to mind. It was what whale song might have sounded like, if the whale was suicidal and her song was being performed by Stevie Nicks.

Tension drained from my muscles. My body grew warm, as if the shade had been burned aside and the sunlight was baking my muscles from within. The raft cradled my body. Small movements in the water made me feel like I was flying.

“You grabbed hold of Lena’s oak,” Carl prompted.

Lena is dying. So is Bi Wei, the first of the students of Bi Sheng to be restored to the world. The Ghost Army is fighting to claim her. They’re too strong. I don’t know how to fight them.