Like a Rock: Disordery Elements

By Olivette Devaux

WHEN EARTH AND WATER MOVES – Fresh out of school, architect Cooper Anneveinen tends bar by night and chases small clients by day. He sees what lies hidden underground. The unexplained, wild images complicate his life and drive him to seek medical help – but not even antipsychotic drugs make him "normal."

Ash Ravenna talks to water, and water sometimes obeys his wishes. Using his gift in a pollution clean-up effort, he hires Cooper to help with an old industrial property by the river. The handsome young architect draws his attention like nobody else – and his hidden talent is an unexpected asset.

Ash hopes to teach Cooper control over his newfound earth-sense. Cooper puts everything on the line to learn. All goes well, until their their sizzling powers throw them a curve neither expects. If Cooper fails, more than just their life is on the line.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mugen Press
• Release date: Jan 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386161387

Olivette Devaux

A winner of numerous "Writers of the Future" Honorable Mentions and various genre awards, Olivette Devaux writes stories of all lengths and on a variety of topics. If you like urban fantasy, science fiction, crime fiction, and romance, you will find many a good read in her repertoire! Please pay careful attention to keywords, cover branding, and story summaries. All these will hint as to the genre, mood, and your emotional take-away.  Olivette gave up her vagabond ways to settle in Pittsburgh, where she shares a home with her family and her numerous imaginary friends.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

COOPER ANNEVEINEN TOSSED in his bed again. He cracked his eyes open and embraced the darkness. What woke him? It wasn’t the baby crying upstairs, nor was it a flush of a toilet. Sound carried in this modest Victorian duplex, even though his two-room apartment wasn’t connected to the lush five-bedroom palace upstairs. Then again, he didn’t need more than his two rooms.

And he was up and alert at four in the morning.

Alert, and worried, because he had received the diploma in the mail. The one that stated he was a licensed architect, with all the tedious work it had required, although he was still tending bar at Roland’s.

He muttered a curse under his breath, knowing he wouldn’t fall asleep again. Not with all that adrenaline coursing through his veins. The top architecture firms in Pittsburgh had taken a careful look at his resume, and posed uncomfortable questions about his transcript. One where the grades didn’t do much to represent his true ability.

Because not many professors took his "... but this part of the Earth just feels wrong for this type of a project" seriously.

The less exalted outfits weren’t hiring. Times were still hard.

Cooper rolled off his second-hand bed, clicked the light on, and padded through the living room and into the kitchen, where he hung a left to use the toilet.

That was the thing with old, turn-of-last-century remodels in Pittsburgh: the plumbing was weird. A house like this had been designed for a big family, and chopping it up into two apartments meant improvising and adding toilets and showers in the oddest places.

He clicked on the kitchen light, then opened the door to the basement. He turned on the basement light, too, knowing that the high-tech, super-efficient LED light bulbs let him bask in a sunny glow with very little guilt attached.

The basement stairs were made of wood, and Cooper hunched his six-foot frame so as not to hit his head on the wooden beam overhead. He caressed the stone wall on the way down, relishing in its familiar coolness. The landlords always made a fuss over patching up the plaster that covered the fieldstone foundation, and they kept the basement painted in a light shade of gray. Just so it doesn’t look too scary, Mrs. Klein had said with an apologetic smile. I do wish the ceiling was taller to make it more comfortable for fellows like you!

He didn’t tell Mrs. Klein he liked basements. He loved the old, solid, field-stone walls and he relished the feel of concrete under his bare feet. Cool and comforting, and leading to the earth. Just like now.

Cooper pulled a clean towel out of a reed basket and tossed it on top of the dryer, which sat next to the two water heaters, which in turn sat next to the washing machine. Yet again, an oddity of an old house remodel where he got to hold the hot water hostage in his part of the basement, whereas his upstairs neighbors held his furnace and electrical breaker panel under their benevolent control on their entirely separate side.

Well, there was a door, but still. Cooper was glad he got along with Mark and Amy upstairs. Then again, he got along with just about anyone.

He then entered this little house-within-a-house, a bathroom enclosure with its own heat vent and light and steam exhaust.

The water ran cool while he brushed his teeth, and when it warmed up, he rinsed the sink and stepped into the fiberglass bathtub. He hunched a bit, a habit borne of the last year’s numerous whacks of his head against the low ceiling. The shower was a hand-held that hung on its hook so low, the water hit just his chest. By now, Cooper knew that kneeling to wash his hair and shave was the way to go.

Despite his morning contortions, he smiled as he felt the earth underneath the bathtub, underneath the concrete floor. He felt it spread, stretching into the hill up Mary Street, all the way past the six neighboring houses before the turn-around, past which the ruins of old houses still marred the hillside, and where the woods moved in to reclaim their territory. Down the hillside, toward the church and North Street, he could clearly visualize the strata of topsoil riddled with sewers and house foundations and roads, and the layers of shale bedrock underneath. And deeper yet, what remained of the coal seams, and a vague impression of emptiness where the coal used to be.

It seemed so real. Cooper had flunked a class based on impressions like these. Information the professor insisted he couldn’t possess, not unless he had used sources unavailable to his classmates.

Which was cheating.

And cheating had gotten him kicked out of the best, most prestigious architecture program in the country.

Except he had always felt these things and didn’t know why, and down here, in this

well-maintained little basement, Cooper felt them a lot better than when he was upstairs, in the bedroom.

His landlady had thought that the cramped, basement bathtub was a strike against the place. She even dropped the rent a bit to make up for the inconvenience.

What she couldn’t have known was that one man’s inconvenience was another man’s selling point.

BARELY April, and the windows were still dark at the early, nervous hour when Cooper’s fretful mind roused him out of bed. Two months had passed since he got his diploma. Two months of tending bar at night, sleeping for three hours, then waking in a nervous sweat of pressing need.

A need to do something, to push on. To build.

Because slinging whiskey sours didn’t keep him in touch with the rocks underfoot.

He even considered joining a road construction crew. The starting wage would’ve earned him what he was making at Roland’s, true, plus benefits, but their full-time schedule and long commutes meant he’d do nothing else. He’d be pouring asphalt or driving a steam roller, and there would be no time for making his dream come true.

Half an hour later, he was dressed in the usual jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt. The coffee was made, and Cooper was settled in what used to be the dining room for the whole family, back when the house was new.

It used to serve as a living room to the previous tenant, with a sofa and a television, but Cooper had little use for all that.

An L-shaped computer desk stood in the corner by the window. He got it cheap, in a used office supply warehouse in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, much like the old, leather-padded office chair he was now sitting in.

And unlike the three-screen computer system that took up most of the desk space. That had been expensive. Processing units like that cost money, money he didn’t have. He had sold his car to get it, and he bought a bicycle to get to Roland’s and around town. His skills with stone translated into a smooth touch for landscaping, and Joe and Maureen Hatalsky across the street had been only too happy to let him – occasionally – use their old Dodge Charger in exchange for a yard clean-up job that turned into him building a retaining wall and putting in a new, flag-stone patio.

Which meant he could avoid using the bus when he went shopping. It also meant he could go visit a work site for a new client.

When he got one, that is.

For now, getting his hoped-for architectural client occupied the time he didn’t spend tending bar, or landscaping, or going for the occasional run by the river. For now, it was all constructing websites and creating a presence on the right job search sites, and offering almost-free consulting services on Outsource and Helpdesk and other online services that connected customers and freelance workers.

He had two hours. Two hours of single-minded focus, undisturbed by e-mail or his dinky old flip-phone, during which hoped uploading all his old school projects onto his very own website would show what his work was all about.

Cooper Anneveinen, Architect.

It sounded great and it sounded like not much, both at the same time. Everything was up to him now. He was the maker of his own luck, of his own opportunities. If he started remodeling garages, designing garden gazebos, and adding windows to outdated additions, so be it. Architectural work built his portfolio, and he wasn’t going to turn  anything away.

No matter how humble.

No matter how strange.

CHAPTER 2

IT HAD TO BE ON THE river.

Ash Ravenna dug the toe of his running shoe into the soft duff of last year’s leaves, and looked down the steep bank with a wistful gaze. The sycamores overhead were just beginning to sprout, leaves letting the bright April sun through to just about blind him with its optimistic brilliance. It reflected off the river, dancing upon the waves that traveled from the wake of a far-away police boat.

Not much traffic on the river on a Tuesday morning, not when most people were at work and the coal-laden barges had already gone by. More would come in the afternoon. Ash felt the disturbance of their passage as clearly as if the river had been sending him regular Tweets.

He scowled at the image. With the amount of information that already inundated his mind, he needed a Twitter account like he needed a hole in the head.

What he needed was a house on the river.

Not here on the North Shore, though, because as much as he loved to run or bike here, anything on the water was priced for the football-player elite.

And inaccessible.

The landlords and community managers made sure the docks were locked, and civilized, which would make his nighttime swims somewhat difficult to execute.

A house boat, maybe? But then he’d have to use a marina way upstream, and he’d be out of touch with the part of the river that cried out for his help the loudest.

The old flats where the steel mills used to live on the North Shore were decently reclaimed already, and housed tidy office parks. On the other side, however...

Could be, Ash had been going about this the wrong way. Maybe he shouldn’t be looking to buy a place from which he could supervise the whole flow. If possible... if it was for sale... yes, instead of buying a house, he could buy one of those old industrial properties, analyze the contamination levels, and start working.

He might be able to fix a lot that ailed the river by cleaning up the heavy metal influx that leached from the banks where old metal plants and munitions arsenals used to be.

And if he owned it, and fixed it, maybe he could build on it.

Ash Ravenna looked up and down the