“What’s their disease?” Root’s voice sounded clipped and professional.
“It’s called Colony Collapse Disorder,” I said. “I checked it out on the Internet. Nobody knows the cause, but there are plenty of theories.”
“Most likely the cause is stress,” Root said, “brought on by something humans created. Pesticides, possibly.” For the first time, I had an inkling of what my father appreciated in her.
Mãe said, “I got a response from the Florida Department of Agriculture. They’ve had calls from all over the state. They haven’t come up with a definitive answer yet. But normally, if bees leave a hive, other insects and animals move in to eat the honey. Nobody’s touching this honey.”
“No bees, no cross-pollination.” Dashay’s hands flew outward. “Imagine what could happen to the food supply. What will people eat?”
“Just deserts.” Root’s eyes gleamed as she said it.
I turned to my mother, sent her the thought: Root has made a pun?
Mãe didn’t respond. Her eyes moved restlessly around the table.
Root began to pile my father’s mail into a canvas bag she’d brought with her. She said she was staying with a friend near Sarasota. “Do you know when he’s coming back?” she asked my mother.
“Not yet.” Mãe shook her head, as if to clear it. “He’s looking for a new home.”
“I knew that much.” Root pushed back her chair. “What I need is a time frame. Our research can’t go on hold indefinitely.”
My mother said, “Neither can our lives.” The passion in her voice surprised us, perhaps herself most of all.
Chapter Three
I’ve never much cared for Sundays—dull brown days, according to my personal synesthesia. Synesthesia is common among vampires. For my mother, Sundays were gray. Dashay said her days of the week stopped having colors when she was thirteen, soon after she began seeing sasa.
I was staring at the survey chart that hung on the kitchen wall when Mãe came in and threw her arms around me.
“What’s this about?” My voice was muffled by her shirt.
“You looked glum,” she said.
“I think I’m homesick.” The words came out in capital letters, deep and dusky blue. They brought with them memories of Saratoga Springs—of gray winter skies and green spring mornings—and of life with my father in an old Victorian house. He’d taught me in the library every day, the world outside shut out by thick velvet drapes. Now I felt those lessons had ended too soon.
Mãe released me. “I could teach you,” she said. “Not the same things he did. I can teach you about cooking and plants and horses. About myths and legends, and other things that he doesn’t know. And about kayaking.”
If there’s any antidote for Sunday, it’s kayaking. Even on that hot Florida day, there was a breeze on the river and a sense that time had stopped—that nothing had changed since the Seminoles paddled the same waters.
Mãe’s kayak was yellow and mine was red. She gave me a crash course in basic kayaking skills. Then our boats glided out into a green and golden world.
“I did something stupid this morning.” Mãe’s voice floated across the emerald-tinged water. “I phoned Bennett.”
It didn’t seem stupid to me. “What did he say?”
“No one answered.”
A kingfisher cackled loudly from a branch overhead, and we stopped talking to admire his fierce little face and punk haircut. Punk—that’s a word I learned from watching television at my friend Kathleen’s house. Our house in Homosassa had no TV.
“Anyway, I wanted to hear Bennett’s side of things,” Mãe said. “Dashay’s story doesn’t all make sense to me.”
“Then it isn’t wrong to meddle, so long as your intentions are good?”
She grinned. “I guess I had that coming. Yes, it’s still wrong. But it’s not as wrong as doing nothing when your best friend’s heart is broken.”
I was about to point out the fallacies in her reasoning when I heard Dashay’s voice in my head: Let it go, Ari.
So I let it go. Over our heads, the tips of the mangrove trees bent and nodded.
I’d barely begun to explore the area, so when Mãe was ready to turn back, I went on alone, toward Ozello, a village I’d never seen.
Alongside the kayak, a large gray mass suddenly surfaced in the clouded water—a manatee, his rough, wrinkled skin gray and green, crusted with plankton. He came so close I could have touched him, but I didn’t. Mãe had told me once that she didn’t think much of humans interfering with manatees. “They prefer to be left alone,” she said. “Just as we do.”
Two deep scars ran along the manatee’s back, probably made by boat propellers. The state park in Homosassa Springs ran a refuge for injured manatees, releasing them when they’d recovered. I wondered if he’d come from the refuge. He sank out of sight again, the muddy water closing over him. Separation was a means of self-preservation, I supposed. That’s why vampires didn’t intermingle more with mortals, why we had our own culture—our own values, our special tonics, even our own bars.
I moved on, not sure whether I was on the Salt River or St. Martin’s. Homosassa is riddled with inlets. Seven spring-fed rivers run toward the coast, shaping the land like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.