Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [18]
After a few seconds of fruitless searching, Jonah handed me what looked like a used-up sparkler stick.
“Tourists,” he blandly suggested when I glanced at it curiously.
“Probably,” I agreed. “But it’ll work.” I unbelted my katana and handed it to him, then climbed down the ladder. When I was close enough to the water, I dipped the sparkler into it.
The water was so opaque I’d half expected the stick to bounce off the top. Instead, it offered no resistance at all. When I lifted the sparkler from the water, there were no ripples—the few errant, inky drops simply dropped back into the water with no effect.
“Are you seeing this?” I asked, looking up at the pier.
“Yes, although I still have no idea what it is.” He reached out a hand. “Come on up. You’re making me nervous.”
With a nod, I sacrificed the sparkler to the lake and climbed back up again. Jonah handed back my katana and I rebelted it, and we stood there for a moment silently regarding the water.
“So, to review,” I said, “we have a lake and apparently a river that have turned black, absorb magic, and no longer obey the laws of physics. And that’s only what we can see. There could be more turmoil under the surface.”
“The questions now are ‘why’ and ‘how.’ ”
“Did you see the photo of the River nymph on the bridge? It looked like she was casting some kind of spell.”
“I did,” he said, “but this can’t be the work of nymphs. Even if they were fighting each other, they love the water. They wouldn’t do anything to destroy the lake or the river.”
“Not on purpose,” I suggested. “But as we know, there are ways for supernatural populations to be controlled.” After all, Tate had manufactured V, a drug that made vamps more aggressive and bloodthirsty than usual. He’d used it to control Celina. Maybe he hadn’t been the only one in the city with supernatural control in mind.
“That’s true,” Jonah said. “But if you wanted to control a population, why the nymphs? They manage lake and river resources. That’s not exactly big magic. And even if they were being targeted, why kill the lake? What’s the point?”
“Maybe the goal was knocking the city off-kilter,” I suggested. “Some of the city’s water comes from the lake, so maybe they wanted to futz about the water supply?”
“To dehydrate us to death?”
“Or incite riots.”
We were quiet for a moment.
“So we have two theories,” he said. “This has something to do with the nymphs, which would explain the picture, or this has something to do with the lake. Unfortunately, neither one of those theories really tells us anything.”
“Actually, it gives us at least a place to start.” I pulled out my cell phone. I’d met nymphs before, and I knew two people who had a way with them. My grandfather and Jeff Christopher, my grandfather’s employee. The boy had a touch.
Handily, Jeff answered the call. “Talk to me, Merit.”
“We’re at the lake. Have you seen it yet?”
“Yeah. We’re at DuSable Harbor. We wanted to see it for ourselves. And now that we’re here . . .” He paused. “Crazy, isn’t it?”
“Very much so. Any thoughts on how it happened?”
“We’ve been talking it through, but this is completely unprecedented. Even Catcher’s shocked, and Catcher’s not shocked by a lot.” I could hear the thread of concern in his voice, like a child who has, for the first time, seen his parents at a loss. I didn’t envy the feeling.
“Jeff, there’s an image floating around the Internet of a nymph standing over the river, and it looks like she’s casting a spell or something. Is it possible they’d be involved—or that someone would want us to think they’re involved?”
“Nymphs don’t cast spells, so whatever she was doing, that wasn’t it.”
“So maybe she was framed?”
“Or a tourist caught the wrong shot at the wrong time.”
“That’s a possibility,” I allowed. “But either way, it would probably pay to talk to the nymphs and get their perspective.