Cassie’s fingers were limp in Lyssa’s.
“It’s your power mixed with Emily’s that makes visible visions. Your power mixed with mine would have given me superhuman strength. Your power alone is formidable. Imagine it in tandem with the rest of us,” Athena said. “That’s what the selkies fear. They know you, probably through Daray, who loved you. They are now rebelling against everything we’ve done for them, and they know you’re the only one who can stop them.”
Cassie looked at her mother, her lashes wet. Cassie looked like a little girl, like Emily had the day that Lyssa had told her she still loved her, no matter what had happened to Reginald.
Lyssa reached behind her and took Emily’s hand. “They want to separate you and Emily, Mom, because you two are strong together.”
Emily clutched Lyssa’s hand tight. “I didn’t do nothing, Mom. I didn’t like Great-Aunt Roseluna. I don’t know her family. I wouldn’t help them hurt you.”
“I know that, baby,” Lyssa said. Then she raised her head toward Cassie. “And you know that too, Mom. You’re just looking for someone to blame. You’ve been angry all these years at my father, and he didn’t deserve it, and you’re feeling guilty. But Grandma’s right. What happened then is past. You can’t change it. You can only make a difference for the future.”
“And, if I understood you, Cassie,” Athena said, “we don’t have much of a future. Not if we don’t take some actions now.”
Cassie blinked hard. She looked down at Emily, then at Lyssa, and finally at her mother. “I don’t know what kind of action to take,” Cassie said.
“That’s because we don’t know exactly what they’re planning,” Lyssa said. “But you said Roseluna went inside your mind. I know you, Mom. You can do that too. Go inside hers. Find out.”
“She’d be blocked,” Cassie said.
“Would she?” Athena asked. “She thinks she destroyed you. Why use all that extra energy to block you out when she doesn’t have to.”
Cassie’s gaze darted between Lyssa and Athena. The movement made her look nervous. It made her seem afraid.
“I can go with you, Grandma.” Emily’s voice was small, and it got even smaller with the next sentence. “If you want me to.”
Cassie looked down at her, and this time, a single tear fell. She crouched, put her arms around Emily, and rocked them both back and forth.
“I’m sorry, child. I’m sorry I said all those things.”
Emily put her arms around Cassie. “It’s okay, Grandma. I say dumb things too when I’m mad.”
Athena snorted and turned away. Lyssa smiled.
Cassie kissed the top of Emily’s head, then stood. “All right. Let’s find out. But I don’t want to do it here. Let’s go home.”
Lyssa looked at her mother. Cassie was still afraid, but willing to step by it. Her request to go to Cliffside House made sense. The house had its own magic. It would give that extra measure of protection.
“All right,” Athena said. “But let’s go quickly. I don’t think we have a lot of time.”
Forty-Six
Cliffside House
They went home in Great-Grandma Athena’s old car. Mommy’s car looked hurt, like Emily had felt inside when Grandma Cassie was so mean. But Emily didn’t say anything. She’d felt what Grandma Cassie felt the whole time they were in Great-Grandma Athena’s memory, and Emily’d never felt anything that bad, not even when Daddy died (even though it was close).
Great-Aunt Roseluna wasn’t far off thinking that she’d destroyed Grandma Cassie; Roseluna’d come awfully close. If Grandma Cassie had that much pain inside her all the time, she had to be awfully strong. Emily had no idea how she went from day to day.
Great-Grandma’s car might’ve been old, but she didn’t drive it like little old ladies should’ve. In fact, there was nothing about Great-Grandma that made Emily think about little old ladies. The way she’d pushed Grandpa Walters off that cliff—that made Emily actually feel better.
Sometimes there was stuff you had to do, just to survive, and no matter how many times you told people that, they didn’t always understand.
But now, after seeing what Great-Grandma had done to try to save Anchor Bay, to try to get revenge for Grandpa Daray and for Grandma Cassie, Emily knew there was at least one other person who understood.
Maybe that was why Great-Grandma always looked at her funny. Not just because she was a Walters (and now Emily understood why that bothered Great-Grandma—it bothered Emily, and she didn’t want to think about it), but because they were kinda the same. Tough people who took action they didn’t always think about.
Mommy wasn’t like that. Mommy thought about everything, and Grandma Cassie thought about stuff so much she could barely get out of bed without thinking about it first.
So when they got to Cliffside House, and Great-Grandma Athena said they had to go into the closet that scared Grandma Cassie, Emily went right in. Because she knew that sometimes you just had to take action. You couldn’t think about it.
Grandma Cassie was already thinking too much. Emily could tell. Grandma Cassie didn’t want to do any of this. She was even rethinking what she’d done to Grandpa Walters, even though, from Emily’s point of view, Grandma Cassie hadn’t done much.
Great-Grandma Athena might’ve done something worse. Great-Grandma Athena might’ve killed him, if she had the chance. Mommy might’ve got the law to help her, because that’s what she always did.
And Emily didn’t know what she would’ve done. Something. Something to show Grandpa Walters you can’t treat people like that. Even if they’re not human people, but selkie people instead.
Cliffside House was cold. Nobody had turned up the heat in the morning. But sunlight poured in all the windows, making it seem like a much more friendly place than it’d been the night before. Then it’d seemed kinda spooky—in a good way—and now it seemed almost pretty.
Except in the closet, which, Emily had to admit, was a little too dark and damp and cavelike for her tastes.
The front part of the closet smelled like Great-Grandma Athena’s perfume—all heavy, syrupy, the only old-lady part about her. The front part even had a light that made the furs and the coats kinda shine. The light wasn’t as strong as it could’ve been, and it was really yellow. Emily had never seen a light that yellow before. Maybe the yellow was why the light got sucked into the black floors and black walls, leaving no shadow.
She thought the no-shadow part was the creepiest part of all. Not even the back of the closet compared for creepiness, and the back of the closet didn’t even seem to be there. It just kinda disappeared into darkness, but Emily could see farther than, say, Mommy could. Before the darkness got really black, the floor turned into laid rock, like the fake cobblestone stuff they had at one of the old houses in the Frank neighborhood in Madison. Emily could feel the floor slanting downward, and she thought at the base of it she could hear the boom of the sea.
Great-Grandma Athena made them all sit down on the floor. Mommy sat next to Emily, who sat by Grandma Cassie, who sat as close to the door as she could get. Great-Grandma Athena sat between Grandma Cassie and Mommy, so that she was protecting everybody from anything that came up that slanted floor.
Emily felt better now, knowing that Great-Grandma Athena was there.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Great-Grandma Athena said to Grandma Cassie. It was a sort of sideways way to push her to find out what was going on.
“It’s okay, Grandma,” Emily said. “I said I’d go with you.”
“It’ll be too dangerous,” Grandma Cassie said. “If she knows we know—”
“Mother.” Mommy was using her I-have-no-more-patience voice. “If we don’t find out, we’ll die. You might want to, but I sure as hell don’t.”
Great-Grandma Athena rolled her eyes at Mommy, but Grandma Cassie just sighed.
Grandma Cassie held out her hand. She wasn’t afraid of asking Emily for help, which actually made Emily feel good. Not
even Mommy, who said she really trusted Emily, would ask Emily for help.
Emily took Grandma Cassie’s hand. It was dry and cold, the skin even rougher than it had seemed before. Or maybe that was because Emily’s hands had got all scraped up when she fell in the parking lot.
Still, it didn’t hurt to touch Grandma Cassie. The owies on her hand weren’t so bad as they looked.
Grandma Cassie took another deep breath. “Ready?” she asked Emily.
Emily nodded. Her heart was pounding really hard. She wasn’t sure exactly what Grandma Cassie was going to do, but she figured it was something like looking for that ship, that Walter Aggie ship they’d looked for before.
So Emily closed her eyes at the same time Grandma Cassie did, and then she pictured herself holding hands with Grandma Cassie as they walked through this tunnel. It was weird because the tunnel looked something like the closet, only lighter and cooler and it smelled more like the sea.
The walking changed to flying-floating when Grandma Cassie got the sense of Great-Aunt Roseluna. Roseluna was far away, and Emily wasn’t sure how she got there. Did the selkies have boats? That seemed weird, since they could live and swim underwater and everything.
But Emily didn’t have much of a chance to think about it since Grandma Cassie shushed her and told her to be really really really quiet.
So Emily was, not even pretending to breathe or nothing, just hanging on and letting Grandma Cassie handle everything.
They kinda floated over the water. After a while, the sea looked all the same. Waves and stuff, but not big ones, and no ships. Just lots and lots of gray water in all directions.
Except over the place where the Walter Aggie was—and Emily wasn’t sure how she and Grandma Cassie knew that was the Walter Aggie’s spot. They just did.
Over that spot, ten selkies, their pelts on, stood on a barrier in the water, a barrier that Great-Grandma Athena had made to protect the sea and the refuge. The selkies were holding knives in their hands, and they were looking in the water.
As Grandma Cassie got closer, she gasped—a sound so loud it echoed over the water. Emily peered over her shoulder, saw even more selkies floating in a big, big circle, treading water, and holding knives too.
“Oh, my God,” Grandma Cassie said, only it wasn’t really saying, it was more like thinking. “Emily, you have to go back. Can you find your way back?”
“No,” Emily said. “I gotta stay with you. I promised.”
Grandma Cassie shook her head—or shook her imaginary head—anyway, Emily felt the disagreement. And Grandma Cassie said, “You’ve got to tell my mother what we’ve seen here. Tell her I’m going to try to stop it.”
“Stop what?” Emily asked.
“Em, honey,” Grandma Cassie said. “You saw the storm that happened because Grandpa Daray died, right?”
“Yeah,” Emily said, even though she didn’t really get how it all worked. But she knew that now was not the time to ask.
“That’s what happens when one selkie bleeds to death in the ocean. Imagine how bad the storm’ll be if forty selkies bleed to death, all at the same time.”
Emily couldn’t imagine it, except maybe that the storm would be so big it would go over the mountains to Portland. Or maybe it would go along the coast, north to Seattle and south to San Francisco, killing everything in its path.
Emily shivered, or maybe that was Grandma Cassie, shivering with fear.
“You need me,” Emily said.
“We need my mother,” Grandma Cassie said. “She’s the fighter. I’ll see if I can hold this off until she gets here. Tell her. Please.”
And then Emily got the sense that Grandma Cassie had some kind of plan, something to hold off the selkies at least till Emily talked to Great-Grandma Athena.
“How do we find you again?” Emily asked, realizing that she might know how to get back but not how to return to the middle of the sea.
“Take my hand again,” Grandma Cassie said. “I’ll leave a pathway open for you. But hurry. I’m already tired.”
Emily leaned over and kissed Grandma Cassie, and Grandma Cassie smiled at her, which warmed Emily right up and made her forget all the bad stuff that she’d felt earlier.
Then Emily slid along the path they’d already made and headed back to Cliffside House, hoping she would get there in time.
Forty-Seven
Cliffside House
Emily’s eyes opened, startling Lyssa. Emily let go of Cassie’s hand. It fell to the floor, palm up, fingers bent, as if losing Emily’s grip meant that the hand had been abandoned.
Athena looked panicked, but not as panicked as Lyssa felt. Her mother was still gone. Her head had fallen forward on her chest, and her breathing was shallow.
Cassie’s body was here, but her mind was clearly elsewhere.
“Mommy!” Emily said. “Mommy, Grandma sent me back.”
“What’s she doing?” Athena said, and Lyssa caught the fear. Was Cassie fighting with Roseluna? Or just giving up? Either seemed likely.
“She wanted me to tell you that there’s forty of them. They’re going to do what Grandpa did.”
“Forty of what, child?” Athena said. “And which grandfather?”
But Lyssa already knew. “Forty selkies. They’re going to let themselves bleed to death. Into the ocean.”
“Holy Jesus,” Athena said. “They could destroy half the continent. Why in God’s name would they do that?”
“I have no idea,” Lyssa said, “and I don’t think it’s very important right now. Mom wants us to stop them, right?”
Emily nodded. “She says you got to come back with me. She says she’ll hold them off until you do.”
Athena’s look of panic grew worse. “She’s the one with all the mental powers. We have no way of getting wherever she is. I have no idea how to find her.”
“And, Em, honey, I don’t have powers,” Lyssa said, feeling inadequate for the first time. “Not real ones, anyway.”
“I know how to get us there, Mommy. Please.” Emily was talking faster than she ever had. Her body seemed to be moving at twice its usual speed.
Athena looked at Lyssa, who shrugged. If Emily knew, then they had to trust her.
“All right,” Lyssa said. “What do we do?”
“Hold hands,” Emily said.
Lyssa took Athena’s hand, and then she took Emily’s. Her daughter was twice as warm as she should have been, as if she were burning up inside.
“This isn’t going to hurt you, is it?” Lyssa asked.
“Don’t worry about it, Mom,” Emily said, which wasn’t an answer. She looked away from Lyssa, at Cassie’s hand.
Then, slowly, Emily reached for it. And the moment that Emily’s hand touched Cassie’s, Lyssa felt herself whoosh out of her body.
She felt dizzy and giddy for a moment. Then Emily appeared in front of her, hair and clothing streaming backward as if she were in a strong wind. Her hand remained firmly clasped around Lyssa’s. Her other hand was pointed forward, as if it were pulling them along.
Lyssa’s other hand was being squeezed. She looked backward and saw her grandmother, clinging as hard as she could.
They were traveling over the sea, going a great distance, the sun beating down on them. The horizon seemed farther away than ever.
They were leaving the protection of Cliffside House behind. They were on their own now, the Buckingham women, against a force that Lyssa couldn’t even pretend to understand.
Forty-Eight
Pacific Ocean
Two Hundred Miles off the Oregon Coast
The selkies didn’t seem to notice her. Cassie hovered several feet away from their circle, uncertain what to do.
Roseluna wasn’t too far from her, standing on the barrier, seemingly leading this group. Cassie could go deep into Roseluna’s mind, as deep as Roseluna had gone into hers, and maybe Cassie could disable her the way she had done Spark Walters, but Cassie wouldn’t be able to do that to all forty of them.<
br />
The selkies had a lot of magic. Daray had taught her that. The magic had diminished with time, he said, but he had told her that almost two generations ago. Emily, his granddaughter, was very powerful. Perhaps other selkies had had other half-human children, replenishing the magic.
Cassie was outclassed, and she knew it. She did have the element of surprise, and she wasn’t sure how to use it best.
But she did know that she couldn’t wait very long. She had to act, and act soon, with or without her family.
The selkies all raised their knives above their heads. The blades glistened in the sunlight. Roseluna was speaking, but Cassie couldn’t hear what she was saying. The ocean absorbed the sound, or maybe the barrier did.
Then the selkies looked down simultaneously. The water boiled beneath them.
Cassie moved a little closer, breathing shallowly, hoping no one would notice her. The boiling had gotten worse. Gossamer strings caught the light, filtering their way into the deep. Cassie followed one of them and saw something that surprised her.
The selkies were raising the remains of the Walter Aggie off the bottom of the ocean.
Cassie rose up ahead of the ship and floated on the surface again. What were they doing? Surely the storm was enough.
But even as she had that thought, she had the answer. When the storm was over, and the West Coast destroyed, the Walter Aggie would be found on the beach—a message to anyone who wanted to see it.
Roseluna had been clear: the selkies hated the way the humans treated the oceans. And the Walter Aggie was symbolic of that, at least to the selkies.
Of course, all the humans who understood the symbolism would have died in the storm.
But that probably didn’t matter to Roseluna. All that mattered was the fact that she had delivered the message and somehow changed the destiny of her people.
Cassie glanced over her shoulder, through the pathway that she had left open. She needed help here. Her mother’s strength, her granddaughter’s courage—she needed it all.
Because she didn’t know how to stop the selkies. Even if she managed it, she would still have to deal with the Walter Aggie. Freed from the bottom, it would drift to shore. Right now, its oil was warming, and as long as it would take the ship to sink back to the bottom, that would be a lot of time for the oil to liquefy and spread.
Fantasy Life Page 39
