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"Thanks for the advice."
"You're going to get wet," Aikensen said. He stood just above me, leaning against a tree. His Smokey Bear hat was pulled low over his head, thick woolly collar pulled up near his chin. His ears and most of his face were still bare to the cold. I hoped he got frostbite.
He put his flashlight under his chin like a Halloween gag. He was smiling. "Didn't move a thing, Miss Blake. Left it just where we found it."
I didn't correct him on the "miss." He'd done it just to irritate me. Ignoring it irritated him. Great.
The Halloween smile faded, leaving him frowning in the light.
"What's the matter, Aikensen? Didn't want to get your delicate toes wet?"
He pushed away from the tree. The movement was too abrupt. He slid down the bank, arms windmilling, trying to slow his fall. He fell to his butt and kept scooting. He was coming straight for me.
I took a step to one side and the bank crumbled underfoot. I gave a hop and ended up on the nearest stone in the river. I huddled on it, nearly on all fours to keep from falling into the water. The stone was wet, slick, and bone-deep cold.
Aikensen landed in the river with a yell. He sat on his butt, freezing water swirling to nearly the middle of his chest. He beat at the water with his gloved hands, as if punishing it. All he was doing was getting wetter.
The skin didn't slide off the rock and cover him. Nothing grabbed him. I couldn't feel any magic on the air. Nothing but the cold and the sound of water.
"Guess nothing's going to eat him," MacAdam said.
"Guess not," I said. I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice.
"God's sake, Aikensen, get out of the water," Titus's voice boomed from the top of the hill. The sheriff, along with most of the other policemen, were at the top of the bank, along the gravel road that led back to the place. Two ambulances were sitting up there, too. Since Gaia's law went into effect three years ago, an ambulance had to be on the scene if there was any chance the remains were humanoid. There were ambulances being called to take away coyote carcasses, as if they were dead werewolves. The law had gone into effect, but no extra money had been put into the emergency systems across the country. Washington did like to complicate things.
We were in the backyard of someone's summer house. Some of the houses had landings or even small boathouses, if they had deep enough water at the base of their land. The only boat you were taking off through this rocky channel was a canoe, so no landing, no boathouse, just the cold black water and a very wet deputy.
"Aikensen, get your butt up on one of those rocks. Help Ms. Blake out, since you're already wet."
"I don't need his help," I called back to Titus.
"Well, now, Ms. Blake, this is our county. Wouldn't want you getting eaten by some beastie while we stayed nice and safe on shore."
Aikensen stood, nearly falling again when his boots slid on the sandy bottom. He turned to glare at me as if it were all my fault, but he scrambled up on the rock on the side opposite the skin. He'd lost his flashlight. He was dripping wet in the dark, except for his Smokey Bear hat which he'd managed to keep above water. He looked as sullen as a wet hen.
"Notice you're not offering to climb out on this particular limb," I said.
Titus started down the bank. He seemed to be a lot better at it than I had been. I'd staggered like a drunk from tree to tree. Titus kept his hands out ready to catch himself, but he pretty much walked down. He stopped beside Dolph.
"Delegation, Ms. Blake. What made the country great."
"What do you think of that, Aikensen?" I said more softly.
He glared at me. "He's the boss." He didn't sound like he was happy with it, but he believed it.
"Get on with it, Anita," Dolph said.
Translation, stop yanking everybody's chain. Everybody wanted out of the cold. Couldn't blame them. Me, too.
I stood ever so carefully on the slick rock. My flashlight reflected off the choppy water like a black mirror, opaque and solid.
I shone the flashlight on the first stone. It was pale and shining with water, and probably ice. I stepped onto it carefully. The next stone, still okay. Who knew Nike Airs were good for icy rocks?
MacAdam's warning about hypothermia ran through my head. Just what I'd need, to be hospitalized from exposure. Didn't I have enough problems without having to fight the elements?
There was a gap between the next two stones. It was a tempting distance. Almost stepping distance but just an inch out of comfort range. The stone I was on was flat, low to the water, but solid underfoot. The next one was sort of curved on one side with a point.
"Afraid you're going to get your feet wet?" Aikensen flashed a smile that was more a baring of white teeth in the dark.
"Jealous that you're wet and I'm not?"
"I could get you wet," he said.
"Only in my nightmares," I said. I had to leap for it and hope some miracle of balance kept me safe. I glanced back at the bank. I thought about asking the divers if they had an extra dry suit for me, but it seemed cowardly with Aikensen shivering on the rocks. Besides, I could probably make the jump. Probably.
I backed to the edge of the rock I was standing on, and jumped. There was a second of being airborne, then my foot hit the rock. My foot slid off to one side. I collapsed onto the rock hugging it with both hands and one leg. The other leg ended up thigh deep in ice cold water. The shock of it left me cursing.
I struggled back up on the rock, water streaming from the jean's pants leg. My foot hadn't touched bottom. The water on either side of the rocks would come up to my waist, if Aikensen's little wading show was a good indication. I'd found a sinkhole deep enough to have doused every inch of me. Lucky it was just my leg.
Aikensen was laughing at me. If it had been anyone else, we might have laughed together at how ridiculous all this was, but it was him, and he laughed at me.
"At least I didn't drop my flashlight," I said. It sounded childish even to me, but he stopped laughing. Sometimes childish will get you what you want.
I was beside the skin now. Up close, it was even more impressive. I'd known it was reptilian from the bank. Standing next to it, I could see it was definitely a snake. The largest scales were the size of my palm. The empty eye sockets were the size of golf balls. I reached out to touch it. Something swirled against my arm as I reached for it. I screamed before I realized it was the undulating snakeskin spreading out in the water. When I could breathe again, I touched the skin. I expected it to be light, a sloughed skin. It was heavy, meaty.
I turned the edge of it to the light. It wasn't a sloughed skin. The snake had been skinned. Whether it had been alive when the skinning started was a moot point. It was dead now. Very few creatures can survive being skinned alive.
There was something about the scales and shape of the head that reminded me of a cobra, but the scales, even in the light of a flashlight, gleamed with opalescence. The snake wasn't any one color. It was like a rainbow or an oil slick. The color changed depending on the angle of the light.
"You going to play with it, or can the divers come and get it?" Aikensen asked.
I ignored him for the moment. There was something on the snake's forehead, almost between the eyes. Something smooth and round and white. I ran my fingers over it. It was a pearl. A pearl the size of a golf ball. What the hell was a giant pearl doing embedded in the head of a snake? And why hadn't whoever skinned the creature taken the pearl with him?
Aikensen leaned forward running a hand over the skin. "Yuck. What the hell is it?"
"Giant snake," I said.
He jerked back with a yell. He started scraping at his arms as if he could wipe off the feel of it.
"Afraid of snakes, Aikensen?"
He glared at me. "No."
It was a lie, and we both knew it.
"The two of you enjoy being out on those rocks?" Titus asked. "Get a move on."
"You see anything significant about the placement of the skin, Anita?" Dolph asked.
"Not really. The thing might have just gotten hooked on the rocks. I don't think it was purposefully placed here."
"We can move it then?"
I nodded. "Yeah, the divers can come in. Aikensen's already tested the water for predators."
Aikensen looked at me. "What the hell does that mean?"
"It means there might have been creepy-crawlies in the water, but nothing tried to eat you, so it's safe."
