Peter stomped down the stairs, meeting her in the foyer that opened up into the showy living room and open-plan granite-countered kitchen. “You can’t leave town,” he said, indignation spilling out like smoke. “I promised you’d stay here and testify against the sheriff.”
Maya laughed at him, rolling her eyes at this display of naiveté from someone who prided himself on being such a canny businessman. “Don’t be absurd,” she said calmly. “You know perfectly well I was behind the whole thing. Why else do you think the children who went missing just happened to belong to families who were on your special list?” Her fingers made air quotes around the word special. “Don’t tell me you thought that was a coincidence. Even you couldn’t be that stupid.”
Indignation and fear warred on Callahan’s visage. “I did start to wonder, after a bit,” he said. “That’s why I was so relieved when it turned out to be Sheriff McClellan after all. And I am anything but stupid. How dare you speak to me that way? I can fire you, young lady.” The longer he talked, the more his usual confidence came flooding back, as if the familiar pattern of his words could build a palisade to protect him from the unpleasant realities the peasants had to deal with.
Maya was going to enjoy ripping it away once and for all.
“You can’t fire me, you moron,” she said, tapping one Louboutin-clad shoe. “I’m already leaving. And don’t try blaming me for everything that’s happened; you caused it all, creating a magical doorway to my world with your destruction of the earth and the water.” She gave a bloodcurdling smile that turned his face ashen. “But before I leave, I’ve come for one last payment for the desecration of the element I hold sacred—I’ll be taking your son.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
PETER CALLAHAN’S JAW dropped open. “What? Have you lost your mind?” He shook one finger at her, apparently not noticing that it was trembling slightly.
“If you’ve done this horrible thing, that’s not my fault!” he protested. “And I am certainly not going to allow you to take my son. I’ve been building all this for him!” Callahan waved his hand through the air, as if his empire would somehow appear into view as concrete evidence of how hard he’d worked.
Maya sneered, crimson lips curling in disdain. “Oh, please. You’ve been building it for yourself. I’ll bet you haven’t spent more than twenty minutes with the boy on any day since I’ve been here.” She put her hands on her hips, facing down her erstwhile boss.
“You’ll give me the boy,” she said succinctly, each word dropping into the air like a biting fragment of hail, “or I will bring your world crashing down around your ears. I’ll tell your wife we’ve been screwing since my first interview. I’ll tell everyone in town that you helped me to choose which children to steal and that you’re behind all the mischief that’s happened to the people who haven’t wanted to let you drill on their land.”
“That was you too?” Callahan looked so stunned, Maya wanted to laugh. “But—but if you were helping me before, why do this now?”
“I helped you get what you wanted because it suited me to do so at the time,” she said with a shrug. “And now it suits me to take it away. Just as you Humans took away my power and drained my spirit by destroying the pure waters that link my kind to this benighted world. Be practical, my darling Peter. You can make another son, but can you build another powerful career if I destroy your reputation and implicate you in my crimes?” She rolled her eyes at his deer-in-the-headlights look. “Consider your son the price for all my help. At that, you’re getting quite the bargain.”
Callahan glanced around desperately, as if some miraculous answer would materialize from behind the overstuffed white couch with its hand-embroidered golden pillows or slide out from behind the bland, expensive artwork hung on the walls.
“He’s out with my wife,” he said. “You’ll have to leave town without him.” Callahan pulled his wallet out of a back pocket, the tooled leather gleaming under the lights of the tasteful crystal chandelier that hung from the high ceiling overhead. “Look, I can give you money. My charge cards. I’ll write you a blank check.”
“I don’t need your money,” Maya said. She tilted her head as if listening. “Ah, how convenient. I believe I hear your wife pulling in now. I’ll just take what I came for and go; you can get on with your empire building in peace.”
“But—what will I tell my wife?” Callahan bleated, all his usual polish wiped away. “I can’t tell her I simply handed over our son!”