Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [49]
Marjorie was an efficient woman, and she answered the door the same way she answered the phone—handing me off to someone else as quickly as possible.
“Good evening,” I told her after she uncoded the door and held it open for me, but by the time I got out the words, she’d relocked the door and was headed back to her office. Maybe supernatural diplomacy buried her in paperwork.
The building sported some serious 1970s décor, and Catcher and Jeff shared an equally ugly office down the hall. Metal desks probably grabbed from a city surplus auction filled their small room, and posters of River nymphs lined the walls.
I found Jeff and Catcher at their desks, but they were so heavily immersed in conversation they hadn’t even heard me enter.
“Her hair’s a lot darker,” Jeff was saying, while simultaneously typing on one of the rainbow of keyboards that covered his desk. “So I’m pretty sure our kids would have darker hair, too.”
“That’s not necessarily the case,” Catcher disagreed. He was folding a sticky note into a tiny, origami something-or-other. “I mean, they could get your genes. And your hair is lighter. You’re taller than Fallon, too.”
“True. True,” Jeff said.
Was this for real? Were these two magically oriented, problem-fixing, ass-kicking guys talking about what their kids would look like?
Jeff leaned over and offered a bag of pistachios to Catcher. Catcher smiled genially—and without even a bit of snark—dropped the origami and plucked a few from the bag. Jeff split the hull on one and chewed it.
“You ever think about coaching baseball, that kinda thing, when you and Mallory have kids? You know, doing the whole soccer dad routine?”
Catcher threw a pistachio in the air and caught it in his mouth. “While hoping they don’t fry the universe from day one? Yeah, that thought has occurred to me.” He sat up straight and looked at Jeff. “Can you imagine some little girl with Mallory’s hair? The blond, I mean.”
“Heart. Breaker,” Jeff said. “You’ll have to keep a shotgun by the front door just to ward off the players. Or, I guess, you could have Mallory do it for you.”
“I could,” Catcher allowed, then—realizing I was in the room— looked up and glared right at me. “I’ll do that right after I have her kick Merit’s ass for spying.”
I grinned and stepped inside, offering each a wave. “Hello, proud papas of children not yet conceived.”
Jeff’s cheeks blossomed crimson. “You could have given us a heads-up.”
“And miss the parental discussion? No thank you. It was adorable. You two kids, being all chummy and paternal.”
“I guess the siren didn’t drown you?” Catcher dryly asked, getting me back to the point.
“Not even close. She was pretty nice, actually.”
“She must have been,” Jeff said with a grin. “I mean, you convinced her to do the right thing. The lake is back to normal.”
“Thank Christ,” Catcher said. “Did she make the trip worthwhile and confess to fucking up our lake?”
“As a matter of fact, she didn’t,” I said, pulling out a chair of my own. “Let’s call in my grandfather. He’ll want to hear this, too.”
I didn’t mean to set a dramatic scene, but I wanted them all in the room at the same time when I laid down the facts about our lake siren.
After a few minutes, my grandfather walked in, offered me a hug and a smile. But then his eyes changed, the joy flattening as he prepared to get down to business.
“Lorelei has been the lake siren since she took possession of the Piedra de Agua, the water stone, which somehow imparts its power to the holder. She’s weak—looked pretty awful, actually—and seems to be in pain. She’d actually hoped the nymphs had been responsible. We flew back to Chicago, totally uneventful, and I’m told when we arrive the lake is suddenly back to normal. Magically back to normal.”
There was silence in the room.
“It wasn’t her,” my grandfather concluded.
“Not unless she was lying and worked some really fast magic.”
Catcher frowned and began to rock in his ancient metal office chair, which squeaked in time to his movements. “So we’re dealing with something unknown.”
“She did have a theory,” I