Spring Tide by K. Dicke Page A

slowly stepped into the living room, his hand on the jamb. “I feel like crap.”
“We found you on the driveway. You’ve been down for two days. Donovan said you took a fair amount of dark energy.” She got up, filled a glass one-third full with water, and gave it to him. “Kris stopped by. I told her you were in Maine.”
“Maine?”
“I panicked. What happened?”
“I got signaled, arrived, saw the rats, got ambushed by a dark, and fought like hell. I’m okay now, just dizzy.” He eased himself onto the sofa and barely tipped the glass to his lips. “You understand what this means?”
“They’re using rats as bait to get us … my gods.” She sat on the coffee table. “I hate to ask this now, but was one of the rats a prostitute?”
He held his stomach. “How’d you know?”
“I met with Phoebe the other day, remember her?”
“Yeah, she uh, heads up the women’s shelter or …” He took two long swallows.
“Don’t drink so fast. She told me two working girls have gone missing in the last two months. She thinks it’s a serial killer.”
“The darks are serial killers.”
“When you feel better would you help me out and whisper to a few of them? I know it makes you uncomfortable, that it makes you feel—”
“Like a perv?”
“They’re just such easy pickings. I want to get as many off the street and back on their feet as fast as I can. Are you—” She ran across the room, grabbed a trash can, and put it between his legs just as the water came back up.
    _______
    I t was a pretty morning. Not too hot and the sandpipers were animated, hopping and fluttering across the shore on long, skinny legs. Sylvia was asleep a few chairs away. Her build had been slender to begin with but she had become too thin, her skin ashen from too much nightlife. Before she’d passed out she’d told me that Joel was taking her to paradise, that she needed a tan to be more attractive.
    Derek strode up by the shallows, sat to my right, and looked at my book. “Holy crap, you’re reading about small business.” The smile on his face was classic. “I knew you’d come around.”
    “How in the world do you enjoy this? It’s dry, like Sahara-death dry.”
    “What are you doin’ with it then?”
    “Trying to find a solution to Deborah’s predicament. The Bakery’s been in the red for a while and she’s got way bigger problems than getting new display cases. It seems it all comes down to collateral—”
    He took my book and threw it down the beach. “If you’re talking about your insurance money—”
    I gasped. “That’s a library book! Go get it!”
    “You can’t put up that money!”
    “I wasn’t even thinking that!”
    He took my hand. “Look, I know something’s been wrong, more than wrong.”
    “Everything’s fine.”
    “I’m fine, everything’s fine, I’m okay. That’s what you say when—”
    “They’re just words. How are you? I’m fine. How’s it goin’? Everything’s good. Words.”
    “Did you think Sarah wouldn’t mention that you’ve cleaned every square inch of the condo the last few weeks, did Nick’s laundry and washed your car and hers almost daily? You’re acting exactly the same as when your dad … you’re acting like every day is business as usual but working your ass off day and night to cope—”
    “Don’t.” My face turned to stone.
    “Edwards—”
    “I don’t wanna talk about him.”
    “And you don’t wanna talk about this either. Why do you want to help Deborah? She’s a big girl.”
    “I need her to reopen.”
    “Why? It’s a peon job for Christ’s sake.”
    “You would say that.” I yanked my hand from his. “No big checks or influence involved in being a stupid bakery clerk. This is how we’re different. You see food as something to eat. I see food as something to be invented, reinvented. The Bakery has been a whole new culinary experien—”
    “Spare me.”
    “Screw you.”
    He rubbed his eye and spoke softly. “Why in God’s name