by J. R. Rain
Maybe. I repack the phone and towel in the bag before packing dirt over it again.
“Hey, you all right?” says a man, behind me. “What happened?”
Shit. No, I’m fine. Can’t a girl frolic naked in the woods in peace? Why does everyone who catches me out in the wild like this assume something bad has happened?
When I turn my head to look over my shoulder, the guy steps closer. He’s wide-eyed, about twenty, in a nauseating pink-coral polo shirt and khaki shorts, which by the way are doing a poor job of concealing his obvious interest. I may well be the first woman he’s seen every inch of in his entire life. Perhaps not every inch. My back is still to him. The smell of unsmoked marijuana rolls off him with such strength, I bet he’s carrying a giant bag. That explains what he’s doing sneaking around the woods.
“I’m fine. Thanks for your concern.”
I pivot my upper half to give him a better view of my boobs, and radiate the sort of magic that made my kind both famous and feared among sailors. Only, I’m not trying to make him jump off a ship and swim to me for hours of lovemaking that ends poorly for him. I press my will into his thoughts, and blank the past two minutes or so of his memory. The ‘whammy’ leaves him dazed, and gives me a little while to get to the water before he snaps out of it. He won’t remember seeing me, though I think I’m correct in my assumption that I’m the first live female he’s ever seen undressed. Fair bet he’s going to be even more confused at the stiffness in his shorts.
A short sprint and leap later, I’m in the ocean again. I swim a few feet down before shifting as a precaution. Hippie girl going for a skinny dip is much easier to explain than ten feet of fish tail. Hopefully, Serrano doesn’t run into too many complications.
After a while of swimming in lazy circles near the surface above the wreck, the approach of an engine gets my attention. A white hull appears overhead, soon gliding silent as the engine cuts out. It’s a decent-sized boat, but not quite as big as the cabin cruiser beneath us. The engine purrs again and a blast of foam erupts from the screws in the back; a short reverse thrust more or less stops it in place.
My senses pick up four people on board.
I swim around to the stern and pop my head out of the water. ‘Police’ is written along the side in giant block letters with ‘Seattle’ above it atop a reflective blue stripe. The back end of the boat has a short, open platform. A gap in the hull leads to a two-step stairway up to the main deck level. So many various electronics adorn the top, I can practically feel the electromagnetism in my skull.
Detective Serrano steps down inside the space between the rear hull and the stairs, while a uniformed officer and a guy in a navy jumpsuit are on the main deck near the door to the bridge.
The officer pats the other man on the shoulder and points at me, eyebrows up in surprise. Probably wondering why Serrano’s ‘diver’ isn’t wearing a facemask or air tank. They summon the guy at the wheel to ‘come check me out.’ As soon as all three of them are staring at me, I flex my supernatural muscle.
My charm has little visible effect on them for the moment. I’ve placed a marker within their memory. When we’re done here, everything that happens from the marked point forward will disappear from their heads. As a precaution, I also give them the suggestion they’re looking at a woman in full scuba gear. They won’t be able to agree on the specifics of my appearance if they’re ever asked to describe me, but it’s not like I’m trying to get away with murder here―somewhat the opposite.
Detective Serrano squats on the rear platform, holding an underwater camera. It’s got a pair of handles sticking out from the sides of a clear box that make it look like he tore the control yoke off an airplane. Both handles have a ‘thumb trigger’ at the top, which I expect will take the pictures. The camera mechanism is encased within the plastic housing.
“Get a few shots of the boat from overhead to show how it’s sitting, and anything else you might think is helpful. The victims, of course, as well. You ever use―?”
I take the camera. “Sure. Be right back.” Before he can assume I don’t know how the camera works and wastes twenty minutes ‘man-splaining’ it to me, I dive.
Who knows how big the memory card is in this thing, but I doubt I’m going to run out of room too fast. I snap a few images of the boat from overhead on the way down, and nine more from various angles at ‘standing height’ around it. There’s not much of interest on the deck, but I still snap pictures of the lifeboat storage box, the bridge, and the hallway below decks. Each bedroom gets a few snaps before I move to the lounge and spend about ten minutes snapping shot after shot of the Stricklands’ bodies. They’ve already got a few little visitors nibbling on them, which I influence to go away. Apologies tumble out of me as I nudge Christina around to get close-ups of all her wounds.
Once I’m sure I couldn’t possibly photograph any aspect of their murder that I haven’t already, I glide back to the hallway.
Why did this boat sink?
Licinia’s got a good point. That might be important at trial. The only place I haven’t checked is the hatch by the bottom of the stairs. In the small engine compartment, I take a couple photos of the bilge pump valves set wide open… that configuration the owners’ manual says never to engage while on open water. Or… you wind up on the bottom. I’m not sure if the photos can prove Troy did this intentionally, but I sure as hell know Hannah didn’t do this, and the only other people on the boat are dead. Now, a jury shouldn’t believe a dead man opened the valves, though a shifty defense attorney could try to claim David did it before killing Christina and falling on the knife. Hopefully, a medical examiner can prove the type of stab wound David suffered couldn’t have been self-inflicted.
Since I can’t think of anything else to possibly take pictures of, I zoom back up to the police boat, leave the camera on the rear deck, and dive again. They always say women and children first, so I swim into the lounge and take hold of Christina. Touching her reawakens my memory of watching Barnaby eat that woman whose life I’d been jealous of, and reaffirms my revulsion to human flesh. Add to that, they’ve been dead long enough to lose what little appeal they may have had. My ‘mer-sire’ so to speak had a taste for putrid meat, which reminds me of my second ‘husband,’ Patrick Foster.
I knew right away something about him was different, and as it turned out, I’d met my first werewolf. He, too, had a Dark Master, only their relationship played out much differently. Once a month, his would completely take over. His creepy-ass butler would lock him in a vault before the full moon with some rotting deer carcasses, and keep him there until the change went away. It took at least three days and several bottles of Listerine before I’d be able to kiss him afterward.
Alas, we didn’t last too long, I want to say eight years, but he felt bad enough about being caught cheating on me that he gave me an obscene amount of money so I ‘didn’t have to worry’ about surviving. Patrick’s not a bad guy, but he’s too easily controlled by the little brain between his legs. Sometimes, I wonder if he’s still alive. Werewolves have a more difficult time hiding than my kind. I don’t have to worry about the full moon taking away my rational mind.
“All right, lady. I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m trying to help get the bastard who did this. And in order to do that, I need the two of you to not remain down here.”
A feeling changes in the water. I can’t tell if it’s due to a ghost or my imagination. Ignoring it, I guide the woman down the cramped hallway. She’s as stiff as a department store mannequin, which suggests they’ve been dead for at least six hours. Rigor lasts longer in cold environments, but even if Troy killed her late Sunday, that’s fifteen to seventeen hours ago. I can’t imagine he’d have spent much time on the boat with two dead people after Hannah absconded with the life raft. Maybe she snuck away before he noticed and the boat had taken on too much water by the time he realized his escape route was missing.
It takes a moment to maneuver the woman around to fit her out the
door, but the trip to the surface is easy. When I reach the boat, Serrano and the guy in the navy jumpsuit take hold of her and pull her aboard. Without a word, I dive once more to retrieve David. It’s a bit trickier to get him out of the room. He’s stuck in a ‘bent over a barrel’ posture with his arms dangling, and also as stiff as a statue.
Fortunately, living with Barnaby has utterly desensitized me to being around waterlogged corpses. I haul him like a hunk of furniture down the passage and wedge him in the doorway. Hmm. I’d prefer not to break his arms if I can help it.
Grasp the back of his neck.
What are you thinking? I shrug, and do as she asks.
Licinia mutters something in Latin, and David’s body twitches. His arms slacken at his sides before going stiff again. Being around dead people, not a big deal. Dead people moving? I scream in horror, cringing away. My tail coils up under me like a startled snake.
What?
Zombies?!
Licinia laughs. I suppose, but only for a few seconds. Trust me, his spirit doesn’t mind that as much as he’d object to you snapping his arms.
I shiver. Okay. It’s not so much the moving body that got under my skin, but seeing that kind of dark magic come out of my ‘sister.’ It’s freaky.
Sorry. I am still a Dark Master.
All right, but you’re pretty nice for an evil sorceress. You’re more like a ‘poorly lit’ master.
She laughs. Those savages who kidnapped my children would tend to disagree.
David’s new-and-improved streamlined posture makes hauling him up easier. My thoughts drift to all the defensive wounds on Christina’s arms. That’s different, I say to Licinia. You went mama bear on them. Not like you called upon the deepest, darkest mysteries of the universe to melt the faces off, say, random innocent people.
Face melting is fantasy, dear. There’s no bolts of fire. Blood and soul magic is much less flashy, and more painful.
Right. Thanks for keeping that in a box. Licinia can show me her thoughts as she can see mine, but I have no interest in learning any of her darker shit. Anyway, I guide David to the surface and hand him off to Serrano and the jumpsuit guy, who I imagine works for the coroner’s office.
Serrano reaches a hand out as if to help me on board, but catches himself, and grins. “Oops. Sorry. Guess you prefer to walk? Err, swim?”
“Correct. I’d like to get back to my phone before it’s stolen. I’ll call you in a bit. Your friends are going to lose a few minutes.”
He cringes, but nods. “How bad?”
“Not bad at all.” I lower my voice to whisper, “They won’t remember me, or how the bodies got on your boat.” I give off a burst of mental energy, and the other three men stop in place like broken androids in the midst of rebooting. “Thanks, Paolo.”
Detective Serrano nods, and I dip underwater before the others snap out of their fog. That trick is one of the first ones Barnaby showed me. Quite handy for making the rest of a crew forget the three or four guys who jumped overboard. Though, every now and then some sailors kept enough hazy memories to start rumors and legends. That’s also where the whole ‘rum’ thing came from. By and large, sailors of the day were stone cold sober for most of the voyage. They used the drinking as an excuse so they didn’t have to admit to being bewitched by ‘ungodly creatures’ or bested by a woman. Creating the expectation that all sailors drank heavily most of the time provided a convenient way to dismiss strange sights, fuzzy memory, or unexplainable gaps in time. It also helped that sailors drank a ton once they made it back to shore.
Licinia once told me mermaids exist because people started believing they existed. That sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem if I’ve ever heard one. If they didn’t exist, what started the rumors?
A creative mind. She chuckles. Vampires as well exist only because enough people believed. The universe responds to the will of all. Would you believe even the Devil came into being that way?
Not really, no. I didn’t really believe in him or the other guy.
God?
Yeah, that other guy.
There is a Creator, but it is to people what they expect it to be. And he is not the product of human desire. He is the source of all energy, all existence. Any other being with enough people believing in them comes to be by way of the Creator.
So, you’re saying Neptune was real? You saw him?
Not with my eyes. It does not matter though, I am forever separate from that… but you will become part of it when our time comes to an end.
I swim with my eyes closed for a few seconds, holding a pang of sorrow. It’s like hearing your twin sister talk about the day she will die. Licinia’s presence shifts inside my consciousness, a tingle at my shoulder like a comforting hand.
After what I have done to you, to regard me as a dear sister is… I am grateful.
Oh, come on, Licinia. I grin. This is amazing. If I was standing on the deck of that ship as a twenty-five-year-old mortal again and someone asked me if I wanted to drown myself and become a mermaid, I’d probably have declined. I wanted my life to go in a different direction, but now that it’s happened? I adore it. It’s groovy.
You’re too much.
What? Wrong word? Not groovy anymore? It’s ace.
No one’s called anything ‘ace’ since the forties, dear.
Gnarly?
Eighties.
Whatever. I stick my tongue out, and race back to the shoreline where I’d left my bag.
few minutes past 7 p.m., I flop in my chair and stare at my office. Does it make me an awful person to be more anxious about Hannah than upset at finding her parents dead? Mostly, I got into the whole private investigation thing as a boredom buster. It’s (usually) fun, and most of the time, I get to feel like I’m helping people. It comes with a fair bit of schadenfreude too, especially with the cheating-spouse situation when they’re both insufferable.
Invariably, some cases are going to close on bad notes. Yeah, I found David, but not in the condition his parents had been hoping for. I shoot a text to Serrano, asking ‘any news?’
Before I can even put my smartphone down, it rings.
I take a deep breath and say, “Paolo…”
“It’s easier to talk. I’m all thumbs when it comes to these things, not like you young kids.”
“Young kids? Who are you talking to?” I manage a weak smile. “You’re what, thirty-three?”
He laughs. “Well, you look young. Anyway, thanks for the assist. Webb’s got his hands full now. Any chance you can give a statement about what the daughter said?”
“Not without telling a story no one would believe. Between you and me, she kept saying ‘the bad man killed them.’ The girl was barely conscious when I found her. I got a good minute or two out of her, probably a spike of adrenalin when she saw me, hoping she’d been saved, but she collapsed again.”
“Yeah. That poor kid. We got a notification she’s in the hospital. As far as I know, she hasn’t regained consciousness yet. The photos you took plus having the bodies will go a long way, but her testimony would be the checkmate.”
My heart sinks. So help me, if she doesn’t make it, I’m going to drag Troy to the bottom of the ocean. “She’s only eight, and after what happened, she may be in no shape to take the stand.”
“Oh, I’m sure the prosecutor will interview her in a quiet place and video it. I can’t imagine anyone would be so heartless as to want to subject her to a hostile cross-examination.”
I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling. “One can hope. Do you know where they took her?”
“Seattle Children’s Hospital, I believe.”
A sudden foreboding falls on me again. Shit. It’s not as urgent as before, lacking the ‘get up and do something right now’ quality… but my worry flicks into high gear. I’m used to having an internal warning system that alerts me of danger, but it’s never given me premonitions about someone else. This is also different, not a hum in the back of my mind, more an ov
erall sense of urgency.
You can blame me for that, dear. I tried to find her and may have accidentally created a bridge.
As soon as you saw her picture?
My sixth child, Lucia, looked a lot like her at that age. I couldn’t help it.
You had a blonde? I thought you were… darker, and not in the soul sense.
I lived on the outskirts of a city named Ptolemais. They call that region Egypt now. My children are from five different fathers.
Oh.
Hannah is fairer than Lucia was, but they could be relatives. Perhaps she has reincarnated.
Such a resemblance could explain Licinia’s unusually strong protective urge.
Quite.
So, does that mean something bad is going to happen or are you―we―feeling this because she’s in bad shape?
I’m unable to tell. In this form, my powers are a pale shadow of what they were when I lived. I could once call forth an army of dead Centurions. Making a corpse’s arm twitch is about the limit now.
I’ve heard stories of mermaids commanding groups of dead sailors.
You could, if you were so inclined to study. However, those individuals had succumbed more fully to their Dark Masters. Little of the person they had been remained, a mere scrap of sentience cowering in the deepest oubliette of the mind.
Ick. One of my kind gone sociopath would be utterly terrifying.
“Okay. I think I may try to visit her. I’ve got a bad feeling. She might need moral support.”
“You have the contact info for her grandparents anywhere? The hospital’s got her listed as a Jane Doe,” asks Serrano.
“Yeah. Sec.” I pull up my file on the case and give him the elder Stricklands’ number and home address. “Hey, why don’t I go there? I’ll tell them in person. This isn’t the kind of news people should get over the phone.”
“All right. I’ll pass this info over to Webb.”
“‘Kay. Ugh, I hate delivering floorers.”
Detective Serrano chuckles. “What? You moonlighting as a carpet installer?”
