Death’s Excellent Vacation (Sookie Stackhouse #9.5)(9)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"GIRLS?" "Young women, " she says. There are eight of them. Foreigners. Japanese. And five of them are teenaged girls. There are two older men, one tall with a mustache and long hair, one round and dense and lazy. One of the kids is a boy, he guesses, though the kid has a long pigtail down his back. The rest are wearing pink ribbons and plaid skirts, and they’re giggling and nudging each other and pointing at him. They all look alike. Spiked hair. Pointed faces like foxes. They’re tiny. It’d take two of them to haul in a minnow. "Talents?" he hisses. "You’ll see. " One of the older men comes forward and bows and says a name Mr. Green doesn’t catch and says he’s honored and all that, or something. Languages aren’t one of Mr. Green’s skills. "I am head of dojo ‘Do Anything Martial Arts. ‘ These my students. Also are my daughters. " The five girls giggle. High school at best. One of the girls curtsies and begins flailing around with a set of pink ribbons. "Flying Beauty Martial Arts!" she chirps. One of them has a pink backpack with a picture of a white cat and the words Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty Martial Arts? The girl blinks at him with big eyes and twitches her nose speechlessly. The other three try to hide behind each other. The boy preens like the only rooster in the henyard. "We are very honor for you take us fishing, " says the lazy man. He’s wearing a too-loose Red Sox cap turned backward and a Red Sox jacket much too big for him. The effect is oddly dangerous, as if he’s about to spring back to a much bigger size. They gaze at him as if he’s supposed to say something. Pointers, he thinks. I’m supposed to give them pointers. Advice. They all have big eyes. It’s like being surrounded by black-velvet pictures of kittens. They look at him. He looks back. The only advice he can think of is Don’t eat yellow snow. He clears his throat. "Come on. You’re going fishing. Don’t fall in. " They all giggle. Aargh. "Come get baggage, " the tall man tells the kids, and he and the compressed man trundle off toward the baggage carousel. The kids follow him in a whispering herd, looking back at Mr. Green. The girl with the pink ribbons whispers to the boy-rooster. "Secret-u identity, " the boy whispers back. Good, they’re disappointed. Mr. Green scowls at the red- haired travel agent, prickly-proud of himself. "Guess they expected–" "Green mask and cloak, glowing force field–" "I can finish my own sentences. " They expected the Green Force, Atom, Astounding, the Bat, Iguana, all grinning with perfect teeth and washboard abs. They expected to go fishing for the Fish, the Monster. Not a weather-beaten old fisherman in a plaid shirt and jeans with a bucket full of farm-raised trout. "What do they do? Giggle the villains to death?" "Please, " she says. He clears his throat, looking at the strutting boy trying to take all the heaviest luggage himself. "That boy and all the girls? I’m not having hijinks. " She looks at him like she’s about to burst into laughter. There’s something sad behind it.

"Throw cold water over him, " she says. The kids and the men come back, lugging the gross national product of Japan on wheels. In the plane, on the way up to the lake, the red- haired Chinese girl gets them all singing old songs. He watches her. Red- haired like a flame, short-lived as a match. To care about humans is to care about leaves, about the frost on the glass in the morning. Breathe and it’s gone. Still, he surreptitiously cradles the overloaded plane.

Chapter Six

THERE is ice on the lake, thick, hard ice, no fog. The kids wrap themselves up like packages in parkas, hats, mittens. Mr. Green takes the girls out back and gets them to make a shelter. He does something he hasn’t done in years, gestures a hemisphere of glowing green. "Pile snow over that. " "Oooh, " the kids go. "Ano ne!" When they cover it with snow, there’s nothing but an igloo glowing faintly like a neon light in a snowstorm. Advice: "Anyone know why we cover it up? You protect your secret identity. You don’t want to advertise. " They bob their heads in agreement. "People laugh, " says the kid with the long braid bitterly, slouching out from the cabin. He has a butterfly on his jeans. Probably g*y. "No. Not just people laugh. Your enemies find you. People who are going to hurt you find you. " The kid considers. "Same thing. Laugh. Hurt. " The kid knows nothing. The boy and the men get settled down in the clients’ loft, and the girls giggle in the new igloo. The red- haired travel agent gets the spare room in the cabin. She uses the shower until the mirror is steamy. He showers after she’s finished and smells lavender soap, woman smells. It’s been twenty years since Lana died. It’s been forever since he was a human man with Lana. He feels bothered and self-conscious with so many people in his privacy. He pads out in socks to find the red- haired girl in front of the fire, toweling her wet hair from mahogany back to flame. She’s wearing a green sweater that goes too well with her hair and jeans that fit her like a thin coat of paint. He realizes, embarrassingly, there’s a question he hasn’t asked. "My name is Lan, " she says. He winces. "I know, " she says. "Your wife’s name. I am sorry. My name is just Lan. " He pulls herself together. "That’s your Talent name?" She shakes her head, smiling. "Just my name. " "Funny name. " "Not as funny as the Green Force. " "Green, " he says. "Bill. Bill was the name my foster parents gave me. The last name changes, but I’m always Bill. " He looks into the fire, remembering streams of fire, falling, falling, gravity screaming around him, catching and shaping it in his pudgy hands, turning it into a cradle– "Bill, " she says. "Nice. Why do you want to die, Bill?" She’s probably twenty, twenty-five. Before he gets to know her, she’ll be dead. He’s told his own story a hundred times, seen it in the comics, until he almost believes that Mom baked pies for church socials and Dad drove a tractor round the farm. But he remembers the First World War and the Civil War and the Revolution, and before his name was Bill it was Will and Gwillhem and Willa-helm, and his parents were Mutti and Dadu. Demon, the villagers called him. The villagers tried to burn him, drown him, stone him. Fire flowed around him. When they threw him into the pond, he shaped air in a bubble around him. He is your angel, the priest said. Call him Willa-helm, Protector. Do not be afraid of him. For a long time he protected them from a distance, like a guard dog, half-angel, half-wolf. Then he got involved. He had friends. He fell in love. Now he fishes. "Death is what people do. " Not so long ago, a moment ago in his long life, the other Talents showed up. Each of them unique, wild, strange. Together, a gang. Friends. And Lana. He thought he was people. They proved he was wrong. "What do those kids have for talents?" he asks. "Oh, one thing, another. They look after each other, " she says. "That’s talent enough. " Yeah. "They got long life?" he asks. "Is that one of their Talents?" She sits with the towel on her knees, looking into the fire. "No. I’ve known lots like them. The others are dead. " "What’s their story? Born with Talent? Made?" "Made. " "How?" Atom, an atomic explosion. Poor Elastic, a vat of chemicals. Himself falling like a star. And he has touched something. The Chinese girl stares into the fire, her eyes dead black and her mouth widening into a grimace. Her hands tighten around the towel. "I made them, " she says. "I cursed them. Me. " And she gets up abruptly and leaves.