Page 56 of The Rising Tide
“Well, you and Scout will have the day off, and you need everybody to perform the spell Scout’s thinking about, and everybody won’t be available. I’m just saying, I know your young man is driven, but tomorrow you will have him all to yourself. And while you may spend part of your time talking about magic, and hopefully part of that time making love, perhaps you could spend part of that time….”
“What?” Lucky asked suspiciously. “What would we spend the rest of the time together doing?”
“Well that,” she said wisely, “is what you might want to find out. You’ve both had a lot of surprises that most young couples don’t in the span of a few days. I think maybe tomorrow… well, it should simply be a day off.”
Lucky thought briefly about things, such as Scout being carried away by a Wisp one night or randomly spotting gangsters in a crowd or even shaking hands with Lucky and being able to see the spirit trap.
“You know,” he said, measuring his words, “I’m not sure if Scout’s brain can ever really take a day off. I mean, Piers hits on him and bang. Piers has superpowers like me. Scout gets up to perform, and his father tries to take over his magic. I-I think maybe his magic always feels so out of control to him because he’s just… I dunno.Opento it. He’sopento the forces of the universe, to the things that nobody else knows but that he can see plain as the nose on someone else’s face. He’s never gonna be like anybody else. I mean, yeah, we may take tomorrow off and spend the day riding our bikes around the island or, you know, borrow Marcus’s skiff and row out to John’s Thumb and spend some cash on mai tais and a heated pool.” John’s Thumb was the unofficial island name for a swanky beach club owned by the Morgenstern Resort people. The resort provided transportation for its guests—for a price—but the island residents and employees were allowed access as long as they spent money at the bars and restaurants on the tiny spit of land. Locals eyed the Thumb with suspicion because, in spite of rising tide levels in the rest of the world, including the Spinner’s Drift island chain, John’s Thumb stayed exactly the same level, always.
“But it wouldn’t matter,” Lucky continued. “It wouldn’t matter if we spent the day by a heated pool getting buzzed and making small talk. You can believe Scout’s busy brain would get us into another adventure, or random attack droids from planet Sorcerous X would come for his scrawny ass, or killer bees would want to mate with his wild hair. A day with Scout is never gonna be normal.” He smiled at that, thinking about Scout’s wild hair that was much, much softer than it looked and about the way he never seemed flappable about outrageous things—like dropping two gangsters in upstate New York—but he got really passionate about making sure ghosts weren’t lonely anymore.
“Would that be a problem?” Helen asked gently. “That Scout wouldn’t have a normal sort of day?”
Lucky smiled a little. “No,” he said. “Not even a teeny bit.”
Helen put her hands on his shoulders, leaning over his back to kiss his cheek. “Then having a day off with him shouldn’t be a hardship,” she murmured. “And that’s your last load of glassware for the sanitizer, and I’ve swept and mopped. By all means call us if something happens, but in the meantime, remember the sunblock, and definitely hydrate, but you two have a good day off, okay?”
Lucky smiled at her, feeling a contentment he couldn’t remember since, well, since Auntie Cree had started getting sick, her heart, which had always been strong and steady, declining in a remarkably short number of days until it simply stopped working altogether.
“Helen?” he said, not wanting to get schlocky, but wanting to be grateful.
“Yes, dear boy?”
“I’m… I’m glad you gave me a job. And a place to stay. And, I mean, I know you’re doing this as some sort of penance”—she’d never given him details, only that she’d deserted her post in some way—“but, well, you’ve been really kind to me.”
“Oh, honey,” she said with a sad sigh, “you’re right that I’ve got penance to do. But you’re not part of that. I gave you a job because I needed someone smart and hardworking, and I’m a nosy old broad about your personal life because, quite simply, I like you. You’re not my penance. You’re a perk.”
He grinned at her, his eyes burning a little, but determined not to do sentiment, because they’d never been that way. “Well, you’re definitely my boss, but you’re a pretty good friend. Thanks for that.”
She grinned, looking half her age, and she was sixty if she was a day in spite of the snarky T-shirts and the giant motorcycle she kept at Marcus’s place, which she had reportedly driven into town last March dragging a small U-Haul with all her possessions behind it.
“Thankyoufor being a surly, irritable soft-touch who’s worth my time. Now go chase down your boyfriend before giant birds swoop down out of the sky and try to nest in his hair. It really is remarkable, isn’t it?”
Lucky nodded, flipping his own collar-length hair back with a simple twitch of his head. “He said something about a queue or a ponytail or whatever, but seriously, I’m like ‘Buzz cut, my man. It’s cute in your eyes and all, but we want you to live.’”
She cackled and sent him on his way.
WHEN HEgot downstairs, he found Piers slouching against the outside entrance, arms folded, dealing with one-third of the Drift’s small police/water force.
“I’m sorry, Officer…. What’s your name again?” Piers asked suspiciously.
“Aldrun,” he said. “Miller Aldrun.” He was a relatively young man, maybe thirty, with regulation-cut brown hair, a square-jawed face with a divot on the chin, and thick-lashed brown eyes, which were currently focused on Piers with a mixture of sublime patience and irritation.
“So, Officer Aldrun, you wanted to talk to the Great Gestalt because… why?”
Aldrun grimaced. He had his helmet under his arm—his bike helmet—and was wearing the island uniform of khaki shorts with a utility belt featuring pepper spray and a taser. The resort had its own security, but the islanders counted on Aldrun and his two other counterparts to either monitor crime in the Drift or to call in big guns if anything more ferocious than a picked pocket or a bar fight erupted on their beat. He didn’t exactly look tough or frightening, but he did look focused. Lucky emerged from the staircase, which came out right over the bathroom, and took in the scene—Piers in the outer doorway, keeping Aldrun at bay, and Scout, sleeping soundly in the bed, covers over his head, body curled into a protective little ball.
Abruptly he decided that Piers didn’t suck and he could definitely stay.
“Yeah,” Lucky said, putting on his best swagger to cross the apartment. “I’m sorry, what do you need to talk to Gestalt about?”
“Is his name really Gestalt?” Aldrun asked skeptically.
“Whatever his name is,” Piers stated, that snooty rich tone in his voice that Lucky used to hate, “he is indisposed at the moment. What did you want to ask him?”
Aldrun let out a sigh. “We have reason to believe that two individuals disembarked from the ferry today armed with semiautomatic weapons,” he said grimly. “Now, our last report was that these two individuals ‘disappeared’ during a stage performance with an individual we know only as the Great Gestalt and—” He gestured impatiently. “—he’s sleeping right there! I just want to know what happened today and where those gun-toting gangsters went.”
“Well, as far as Gestalt knows, they were hecklers from the audience that he used in the performance to give them a taste of their own medicine. He finished the trick, got them out of wherever they hid when they passed through the gate or whatever, and put them on the ferry out of town!”
