Home Improvement: Undead Edition

She opened the door to reveal a modern glass-and-chrome stairway that clashed with the rest of the house and the half-finished mural of ancient ruins and olive trees that decorated the stairwell wall. As we descended, the sound of crashing waves assaulted my ears and the salty scent of open water cut with the rank smell of death slapped me in the face. Either Dora had a hell of a wave pool down here, or she was right, and there was definitely a problem.

We reached the bottom of the stairs, walked along a long opaque-glass corridor, and at the end she opened another door.

The sound of the sea intensified.

I walked through the door with a feeling of trepidation. I just knew this wasn’t going to be good.

The room and the swimming pool were both bigger than I’d expected. The pool was fifty feet long, thirty feet wide, and eighteen feet at the deep end, going by the markings stenciled onto the very obvious white squares on the walls, which ruined the whole illusion of the painted panoramic vistas. And judging by the way the pool’s edges wavered with magic, instead of the pixie portal being the usual, easily closed hole about the size of a dinner plate, this portal was the size of the pool. Which explained why the waves were rolling toward us like we were on a beach in the Mediterranean, why the expanse of sandy-colored terra-cotta tiles (which was almost as large at the pool) was littered with dead fish and seaweed, and why there were three shark fins cutting an ominous figure eight in the pool’s sea-dark water.

I stared, stunned, then walked to the water’s edge. “How long’s it been like this?” I asked, pleased my voice came out calm.

“Maybe a week?” Dora pulled a face. “Bruno, the mural painter, has been off sick, so no one’s been down here. I didn’t realize it was like this myself until not long ago, otherwise I’d have said when I phoned. You can sort it, can’t you?”

No way in hell. This was way out of my league, but—I forced my mouth back into my professional smile. “I’m going to need some help with this.” I dug out my phone. This needed a coven, but they were all at the Spring Rites, or scrying for the missing boys . . .

But there was someone who could help. Someone who was in his element in water, and who’d told me to call him. Tavish. Okay, so this probably wasn’t the sort of call he was expecting . . .

He answered on the first ring. Keen. “Hello, doll,” he said in his soft burr.

“Hey,” I said, brightly, “I’ve got a bit of a fishy problem here. A big one. Sharks.”

“Dinna let them bite you, doll.”

“Ha, ha,” I said. “But seriously, Tavish, there are sharks here, and I’m not about to start reenacting Jaws.”

“ ’Tis nae the sharks I’m fussed about. Tell the lamia: ten minutes. And see if you can find out where the children are.” The phone went dead.

I stared at it, my mind whirling. Why did Tavish sound like he knew what was going on? What children? And who was the lamia? I transferred my stare to Dora, who, though she had her eyes squeezed shut, had her camera up and was snapping pictures like her life depended on it, and the paranoia in my backpack jumped out and sucker-punched me. “What’s going on, Dora?” I demanded.

“What did he say, girl?” the heavy accented voice came from behind me.

I jerked around to see Dora’s Aunt Malia. The old woman was blocking the doorway in the opaque glass wall. Now that she was under the brighter lights of the pool room, I could see that it wasn’t wrinkles and eczema causing her face to look disfigured and scaly, but actual scales. She had to be the lamia. Of course, the big tipoff came when I looked down. Flowing out from under her heavy black dress was the tree-trunkthick, red-and-black body of a gigantic snake. I froze, and while the scared part of my mind was screaming Run! the rest was rifling through my mental “lamia” file for any useful information.

“Are you both lamias?” I asked, surprised my voice still came out calm.

“Yes,” said Dora, hugging her camera like a security blanket. “Well, Auntie is, and I almost am.” Her hand went to the tattoo at her throat.

My mental “lamia” file search hit pay dirt. The original lamia had a fling with Zeus, and Hera, Zeus’s wife, was understandably none too happy. In revenge, Hera forced the lamia to devour their offspring. But, insane with grief, the lamia didn’t stop at killing her own children, and went on a feeding frenzy. Zeus finally pacified her with the gift of prophecy whenever she removed her eyes. Which wasn’t any sort of compensation to my mind, but hey, what do I know. But although Zeus had soothed the lamia’s madness, he was too late to stop her from turning into a daemon: one whose existence was sustained by eating children. And Tavish had told me to find the children. I put that together with the recent media splash and looked horrified from Dora to her snaky aunt. “Fuck, are you the ones who snatched the two missing boys?”

Aunt Snaky’s lips lifted in a long hiss. “How long will it be until the kelpie is arriving?” She had fangs. And going by her expression, she obviously expected me to dissolve into hysterics and tell her everything I knew. Which wasn’t much. Yet. My horror turned to icy determination. I wished, and not for the first frustrated time, that I could cast my own spells and solve the situation with some sort of magic, but I couldn’t. So instead I needed to find out where the kids were and, more important, work out how to save them.

“How long?” Aunt Snaky said impatiently.

“Ten minutes,” I said, and then not really expecting an answer, I asked, “Where are the boys?”

“They’re still alive. Just,” Dora said, surprising me, her eyes darting momentarily toward the shark-infested pool.

They were in the pool? How was that possible? And was my impression that Dora wasn’t happy about things right, or was that just my own wishful thinking? I narrowed my eyes at her. “What does ‘just alive’ mean?” When she shrugged, I hit her with the next question: “What do you want Tavish for?”

“The kelpie is to retrieve something,” Aunt Snaky said. “If he will agree, you will not be harmed.”

Yeah, and I’m the queen of the goblins. “Retrieve what?”

“Theodora, bring the girl.” A dry rustle whispered under the sound of the pool’s waves as she turned and slithered along the corridor toward the stairs.

So, I was Tavish’s incentive. Not that it mattered, since no way was I going to let him swap me for two little kids. And what did they want him to retrieve? Although another look at the swimming pool gave me a clue: Tavish was in his element in the water; if the boys were—what? imprisoned, trapped, or maybe hiding?—in the pool, then more than likely it was them.

Dora gave me a rictuslike smile—with no fangs; maybe her almost lamia comment meant she still had to eat her first kid before she fully metamorphosed?—and indicated I should follow. As the only other way out was the portal in the pool, and the sharks didn’t look any friendlier than Aunt Snaky, I followed.

“So, was the magazine story, the pixies and all this, just a scam to get me here?” I asked, belatedly wishing I’d listened to my paranoia.

“No, it’s all true,” Dora said, a flicker of misery crossing her face. “I really am an heiress, and I did just get married.”

Was the misery real? “You know,” I said in a low voice, “if your aunt’s coercing you in some way, I can help you, and we can save the boys.”

“You can’t. I thought you could . . .” She looked down at her camera screen, her fingers convulsed, then she said accusingly, “But you can’t even cast the simplest spell, can you?” She was right, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t try something. “No, I might not want this, but I’ve got no choice. I’m my aunt’s heiress, and I’m not talking about money. I’ve got plenty of that.”

“There are always choices,” I said quietly.

“Yeah, like what?” she muttered derisively. “Oh, and don’t be fooled by Auntie”—she gave the lamia’s swaying back a defeated look—“she might move slow, but her skin’s as tough as old boots and I’ve seen her kill a swamp dragon with one flick of her tail.”

Swamp dragons are huge, the size of a double-decker bus.

“At least tell me where the boys are?” I asked urgently, hoping she couldn’t see how rattled I was.

“I told you,” she almost growled, “they’re in the pool.” She shoved past me, ignoring my question as to how they were in the pool, and stomped after her aunt.

By the time we reached the entrance hallway—lamias are apparently akin to snails when it comes to stairs —Tavish was shouting and banging his fists on the front door.