Fair Peril (15 page)

Soul cake?

Fountain. The immediate problem was a fountain for LeeVon.

Buffy found a spiral vine to take her down to the understory, then a leaning trunk the rest of the way to the ground. To find a pool she followed the sound of splashing water. A hootoo bird flew right by her head, flashing its crazy grin. A ferret or something slipped into the underbrush. Must be passing the pet store. On the floor, growing right out of the tiles, bloomed flowers so yellow they seemed alight. Coltsfoot? Primrose? Cowslip? Coltslip, that was the word, coltslip.

Bright round stones wavered in the bottom of the pool. No, coins. Pennies and things. Fountain. Buffy sat on the stone rim and watched LeeVon leap in with that distinctive froggy
ker-plop.
Watched him scud away. Watched the ripples and the pennies reflecting the fading light. Looked up. This was the fountain with the statue of a girl on the high pedestal. A very beautiful girl with her golden hair pulled straight back Alice-in-Wonderland-fashion above her serious golden eyes. She had a garland of golden roses and she had a golden ball in her dainty white hands, but no one to play with. Lovely girl. She had to be lonely up there, thirty feet above the water on her narrow tower. Now Buffy noticed the golden star shining on her forehead, very bright against the night gathering in the glass dome.

“That's a princess,” she said aloud.

LeeVon popped his head out of the pool. “C'mon in,” he called to her. “The water's fine.”

“No, thank you.” Swim? She felt more likely to fall asleep in there and drown. Trying to keep herself going, forgetting that the pool was not chilly but as warm as a womb, she leaned over and splashed that limpid water on her face and eyes.

When she looked up again, the princess on the pedestal was Emily, scowling down at her.

Buffy lunged to her feet, clambered up, and teetered on the rim of the fountain, hands stretched toward this princess presence that was ineluctably her daughter. Her mouth moved, but only croaking noises came out.

“What are
you
doing here?” Emily asked icily.

“Graaah—graah—graa—”

“Found yourself another talking frog to lord it over, I see.”

“Looking for you!” One exchange too late, Buffy finally got it together in regard to vocalization. “Honey, are you all right? Have you been keeping warm? Are your allergies bothering you? Do you need your inhaler?”

Where did you sleep? How much of yourself did you give to him?

Emily rolled her eyes and did not answer either the spoken questions or the unspoken ones.

Is there any of you left for me?

“Are you all right?” Buffy demanded, neck cranked all the way back to look at her daughter.

“Sure. Why wouldn't I be?” But Emily's tone had thawed marginally. She flounced her creamy lace-festooned skirts out of the way, sat on the edge of her plinth, swung her slippered feet, and peered down. “
Mom,
” she decreed from on high, “that shirt doesn't match your jeans at all. Not even close.”

For God's sake. It was Buffy's turn to scowl. “Get down from there,” she commanded.

“Like how?”

Buffy opened her mouth and shut it again, feeling her eyes getting froggishly large.

Emily spoke quickly to revise her spontaneous response. “It's nice up here,” she declared. “I like it.”

“Yes, heaven forbid your mother should think you need help.”

“You shouldn't be here, Mom. It's dangerous here.” Emily said this with smooth-faced bemusement. Fair Peril meant nothing to her personally; she was young and therefore certain that nothing irreversible could happen to her. But it surprised her to see her mother venturing there.

“You should talk. I'm not the one imprisoned on top of a—”

“It's not a prison!” Emily flounced to her feet, glaring.

“No?”

“No. It's a, um, a great honor. Because I belong to Adamus, you see.” When Emily mentioned the name, her hard young face softened into a starry-eyed smile, her chest swelled, her voice lilted. “He's so sweet. He adores me.”

“So he put you on a pedestal.”

“
No,
Mom.” But Emily lost her smile, looking unsure. “Anyway,” she added loyally, “it's an awesome view.”

“Does he come around to
feed
you?”

“Of course that would be what you'd think of.” The golden star on Emily's forehead blazed with the force of her youthful scorn. “Like I need to eat?”

“Of course you need to eat.” Buffy felt panic begin to pound in her temples. She had to get Emily down, had to get her down, there had to be a way—why hadn't she paid more attention in physics class, damn it? Think. Think. Okay, maybe she could run cables down from the trees—no, across from the galleries—no; if she broke the statue, then Emily would be in pieces—

A distant but insistent noise kept trying to demand her attention. It was like somebody was talking at her from a building next door through a garbage chute or something. With her focus thoroughly on Emily, Buffy barely noticed the interruption—but then a large, forceful hand grabbed her upper arm.

Buffy spun around, nearly toppling into the pool. Ogres, two of them! Blue ogres a head taller than she was and about twice as wide. She gasped and fought to break free, threw herself from side to side, tried to flee, but one had a dragon grip on her and the other one snagged her other arm. She struggled wildly.

“Come with us, ma'am. You're only making it worse.”

Cops?

Damn.

The sudden change in her perception staggered her, and the cops took advantage of her discombobulation to get her moving. They whisked her toward a mall entrance, and Buffy had never considered herself a very whiskable person. Son of a bitch, this new fact of life, that things were themselves plus something else, could be a pain in the butt. “I was just trying to talk with my daughter,” Buffy protested. “Emily!” She lagged, sagged, dragged her feet, making herself as heavy as possible, trying to look back over her shoulder, but all she saw was mall—Walden-books, people,
SALE
signs, and railings—as they hustled her along. “What did I do?” she appealed. “Is there a rule against standing on the edge of the fountain?”

“You're wanted for questioning.” The cop sounded so utterly bored that Buffy knew he had told her this before. It was humiliating how bored the cops were after the fight she had put up. It was embarrassing how people were staring.

The other cop said, “You are Madeleine Murphy, correct?”

“Buffy.”

“Yes, ma'am. You're wanted for questioning concerning the whereabouts of Prentis Sewell.”

Tempestt sat in the middle of the thick parlor carpet, sorting through decorator magazines and waiting for the phone to ring. The cops were in the other room, by the downstairs extension, waiting right along with her. The cops seemed to think that the phone should ring, somebody should call to state a political manifesto or demand ransom or something. Tempestt didn't think so. No reason; she just didn't think so. She had no theories, didn't like to overwork her brain, but she expected that, wherever Prentis was, he would find a way to get home soon enough. Meanwhile, she was worried about him, of course, but she could not honestly say she missed him. It was nice to be able to sit and look at her magazines without Prentis wanting her for something. Prentis could be a real ass-hassle when he was around the house.

As Prentis's second wife, Tempestt had recently achieved that uncomfortable point in the marriage where she was beginning to understand why the first marriage had failed. The simple truth was, while Prentis put up a huge ego front, he had to be the most insecure man on the unhappy face of the planet.

Always stewing about something. Always anxious about something else. Always wanting to know where she'd been, what she'd been doing, who she'd talked with. Jealous. Always jerking his chin up in the air and looking at her narrow-eyed, like he'd never believe her no matter what she did or said.

Well, so much for the honeymoon. No wonder he thought everybody cheated; he had cheated on Buffy, hadn't he? With her, Tempestt. And now that he was married to her, he would probably cheat on her too. Fine. Whatever. The minute she found out he was fooling around, she would stop going to bed with him, but she was going to stay married to him, and she wasn't going to let him drive her over the edge like Buffy. Poor Buffy. If the woman wasn't so nutso, Tempestt would have liked to have lunch with her. They could have a lot of fun comparing notes about Prentis.

It was so great having the place to herself, with Emily gone too. That girl was a major pain in the ass. Miss No-Meat Superiority with her special menus.

Tempestt found a vanilla-raspberry-pistachio color scheme she really liked, dog-eared the page, then looked up with an unfocused gaze. A thought had just occurred to her out of nowhere: suppose Emily's absence and Prentis's were connected somehow? Like, bad people had both of them?

Nah.

She turned back to her color scheme and found another one on the next page that she liked even better, lemonade-apricot-whortleberry, but looked up again, frowning; there was that damn smell. Some sort of heavy swampy odor had gotten into the house somehow—probably Prentis would know what it was. That was the main thing men were good for, knowing about houses and cars and stuff. Tempestt would ask him about the smell when he got back. It was kind of annoying that she couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Like, it seemed to move around. She would go into a room, and it wouldn't be there, and then it would. Sometimes she could swear it was following her.

Well, hell, let it smell. In thirty seconds her nose wouldn't notice it anyway. That was the way noses were built. Which was a good thing when families had to share bathrooms. Tempestt flipped back and forth between the pages, comparing the vanilla-raspberry-pistachio room to the lemonade-apricot-whortleberry one.

The phone rang.

Tempestt jumped up to get it, pausing until the cop in the doorway gave her the nod so both she and the cop on the extension picked up at the same time.

“Hello? Oh, hi, Amber.”

It was not a kidnapper, just a friend with whom she chatted happily. “Nuh-uh, nothing yet. I figure he's just trying to make me worried. Huh? Sure. Like, testing me. He doesn't trust me. Well, what do I expect, I was the other woman … huh? No, he's not all that great in bed. I'd have an affair in a minute, but why risk it? I'd rather have money than sex anyway. Yeah, it's more fun and less trouble. Huh? Yeah, I'm okay, except I've got this headache from this stupid smell.” Which seemed to be getting ranker and pissier by the minute. “Yeah, there's this awful kind of locker-room odor in the house.”

And sometimes, swear to God, she felt like something was watching her. Like Prentis was right there watching her with his reassure-me eyes. But whoa, Tempestt did not mention that part. She did not want to go over the edge like Buffy.

“He went back into the house and I left,” Buffy said for the sixth time.

“You went there to ask him to ‘do something' about finding your missing daughter.”

“Yes.” Buffy had gotten tired of talking to these cops. They didn't really listen. Gave the impression that they didn't believe her.

“At three o'clock in the morning.”

“I couldn't sleep, so why should he?”

“In your nightgown.”

“I was upset.”

“And he said he was going to get a restraining order, told you your daughter was probably already pregnant, went back inside, and closed the door.”

“Yes.”

“And you simply left.”

“Yes. I went home and reported Emily missing, and then I tried to get some sleep.” This was most certainly the truth. Buffy had told them basically the truth, omitting only the part about having turned Prentis into a fog. Though she was too tired to feel any guilt—moreover, Prentis was such a slime-enhanced primitive life form that he deserved whatever happened to him—still, she saw no sense in trying to explain Prentis's transfogrified condition to these cops when they were not even capable of understanding that Emily was imprisoned in statue form on top of a pillar at the mall, as she had repeatedly told them.

“Do you have any idea where your ex-husband is now?”

“If he's not in the house, then I don't know.” Enough of this crap. “He hasn't been missing for twenty-four hours yet, has he?” Buffy's tone conveyed some feeling. “How come you're looking for him, hauling people in to question them, the whole Dragnet routine, but when I call to say my sixteen-year-old daughter has run off with a naked frog, they tell me I have to wait for twenty-four hours before I report her missing?” It stunk that a politician was perceived as worth more than a young girl was.

The cops were watching her steadily. There were three of them in the little room, two standing and one seated, just like on every cop show she had ever seen. “You're upset now,” said the seated one, who was doing the honors. “The way you were upset when you last spoke to your ex, right?”

“Damn straight I'm upset!”

“And did I understand you to say ‘frog'?”

“Yes. Well, I meant—oh, my God.” Buffy sat straight up in her chair, having just remembered something. “LeeVon.”

“What's that?”

“I left LeeVon in the fountain at the mall.”

“LeeVon?”

“LeeVon Trubble. He's a librarian. Well, actually, right now he's a frog, but you can tell him from the other frogs because he has rings all over his head and a tattoo of Mowgli on his butt. That and, of course, the fact that he talks.” Buffy started to rise from her chair. “I've got to—”

A large though not ungentle hand on her shoulder constrained her to keep her seat. “Ma'am,” the seated cop said, “there's a nice, clean, comfortable facility on the other side of town, and we are going to take you there.”