Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [57]
Either way, I found the reaction suspicious, so I filed it away, popped onto the porch and knocked on the door. Catcher opened it with brown slippers on his feet, glasses on his nose, and a TV Guide in his hand. Maybe he was taking his sudden retirement seriously.
“Big night?”
“I’ve spent the last forty-eight tripping through books trying to find an explanation for the water. I’ve searched every online forum I could think of for references to spells or creatures or prophecies that might explain what’s going on. And to show for it, I have nothing. I haven’t slept. I’ve hardly eaten. Mallory is in a tizzy, and Simon is calling my house every five goddamned minutes. I need a break or I am going to lose my shit.”
There was no mistaking the defensiveness in his voice or the dark circles under his eyes.
I tried to lighten the mood, and pointed at the house shoes—the last things I’d have expected to see Catcher Bell wearing. “And the shoes?” I asked with a grin.
“My house, my rules. These shoes happen to be comfortable,” he said. “If you two roamed around the house naked and carrying bows and arrows before I moved in, it’s none of my business.”
The snark notwithstanding, he moved aside to let me in.
“How’s life in the post-Ombudsman era?” I asked as he closed the door behind me.
He smiled thinly. “Like I said, exhausting, but surprisingly well organized. You know that room in the back of Chuck’s house he uses for storage?”
I did. That had been my grandmother’s treasure room. She loved garage sales, and she inevitably found something she thought one of us needed. A wooden pull toy for Charlotte’s daughter, Olivia. An antique desk blotter for Robert. A book of poetry for me. She kept them in boxes or paper bags in tidy stacks and passed them out during visits like Santa Claus. When my grandmother died, my grandfather left the room and its treasure trove intact. At least, he had before . . .
“Well,” Catcher continued, “it’s been reorganized. It’s now home of the Chuck Merit School of Supernatural Diplomacy.”
“Tell me you aren’t really calling it that.”
“It’s only a temporary name,” he assured. “The point is, we’re still on the map for folks who need help.”
“And the folks who need your help probably don’t care if you’re working out of a fancy office or a back bedroom.”
“Precisely.” Catcher assumed his position on the couch—ankles crossed on the coffee table, TV Guide in one hand, remote in the other, his gaze on the television over the top of his glasses. A lemon-lime soda and a bowl of gummy orange slices sat on the coffee table in front of him. This was a man ready for a break, uninterrupted by trips to the kitchen for nosh.
I assumed that was my cue. “I assume Mallory’s home?”
“She’s in the basement.”
That was a surprise. It was an Amityville spider trap down there. I couldn’t imagine she’d be down there on purpose, much less studying.
“Seriously?”
“It’s chemistry night. She needed quiet and room to make messes. I wasn’t willing to give up the kitchen.”
“Basement it is,” I said, and walked to the back of the house. The door to the grungy cellar was in the kitchen, which also housed the ice-cold diet sodas Mallory usually kept on hand. I grabbed two from the fridge and opened the basement door.
The smell of vinegar that poured up the stairs made my eyes water instantly.
“Mal?” I called out. The basement stairs were dark, but some light crept around the corner from the main part of the basement. “Is everything okay down there?”
I heard the clunking of what sounded like pots and pans—and then she began to belt out the lyrics of a hip-hop song with much gusto.
I considered that the all clear and began to pick my way down the basement stairs.
I’d never been a fan of basements. Before my parents moved into their modern, concrete box of a house in Oak Park, we lived in a Gothic house in Elgin, Illinois. The house had been a century old, and looked—and felt—like the setting for a horror movie. It was beautiful but haunting. Luxurious,