by Alyssa Day
"I could use a little help here, since you're hanging around," Jake muttered, glancing up at the sea god, who seemed to be amused.
"IN THE SERVICE OF MY LORD POSEIDON" YOU SAID, JAKE, SON OF ADEODATUS, AND SO IT SHALL BE.
With that, Poseidon gestured with one finger and a tornado of wind surrounded Jake and lifted him off the deck of the ship. The last thing he saw before he disappeared into the chaos of swirling sound was the Kraken rising up out of the sea, mouth open wide enough to swallow the ship.
But the humans on deck had vanished.
MY WARRIORS PROTECT HUMANITY; DID YOU THINK I WOULD DO LESS? I HAVE REMOVED THEM TO THEIR PORT.
Before Jake could even sigh with relief, a voice like shattered glass screamed inside his head. "Jake of Atlantis! You dare to deprive me of my prey? Perhaps we shall meet again one day when your sea god is not so near to offer his aid."
Ha! Not if I can help it.
Jake closed his eyes in relief as he felt the warm glow of belonging that told him he was being conveyed to Atlantis. Home again, after so long. No matter what Poseidon had in mind for him, it couldn't be as bad as remaining on that ship with the Fae.
He was right. It wasn't as bad.
It was worse.
2
February
Jacksonville, Florida. Humanity Prime HQ
"I understand, Mr. Greer, but I quit," Savannah Hastings said through gritted teeth. She'd tried resign, give notice, have to leave, and seventeen other euphemisms for "take this job and shove it," but he just wasn't getting it. That, or he was being deliberately obtuse.
"You have to give notice," he whined, and she threw her hands in the air in exasperation and leaned back in her creaky, ancient office chair at her creaky, ancient desk in the creaky, not-so-ancient warehouse that housed the Founding Chapter—the capital letters were insisted upon in all official correspondence—of the organization her temp service had sent her to: Humanity Prime.
Which, Savannah had learned slowly over the past few weeks of working in this depressing, windowless, office, was not a group working to make sure the rights of humans didn't get trampled. As far as she was concerned, this was valid ever since the shapeshifters, the Fae, and the vampires had turned out to be real and come out of hiding, now more than a decade ago.
Greer, who had an ugly combover, was built like a bowling pin, and had an unfortunate tendency to wear loudly colored plaid shirts with his mom jeans, leaned over her desk and planted his fists on the stack of flyers that had been the final straw in her decision to quit temping for H Prime. The cover of the flyers featured a full-color photo of a curly-haired little boy playing with a truck while a snarling werewolf leered out at the child from the closet behind him. The heading screamed its bigoted hatred in lurid black and red block print:
STOP THE MONSTERS NOW BEFORE THEY DESTROY OUR FUTURE!!!
The inside was even worse: Text guaranteed to rile up the kind of hate-filled, flag-flying human nationalists who'd happily transferred their ground wars from all their old targets to bigger and nastier ones when the supernatural community announced its existence.
"Your agency promised us you'd be here three weeks, and you, yourself, told us that you'd be on hand to help staff the retreat this weekend," her manager said, his face scrunched up like a fist.
Fitting, probably, since a fist was the image on another set of flyers she'd found in a filing cabinet when she'd been looking for staples.
"I understand that," she said, trying to remain calm. She flipped her waist-length braid out of her way as she searched the drawers to make sure she hadn't left any personal items in them. She hadn't—she knew she hadn’t, she never did—but she was always compelled to check. She was only a heartbeat or two away from full-blown obsessive-compulsive disorder, she sometimes worried, usually when she was angling her pencils just so inside her battered leather travel journal.
Greer pounded one fist on the desk to catch Savannah's admittedly wandering attention, and she jumped out of her chair so fast she knocked it back and over on its side, and then she dropped into a fighting crouch.
"I don't think you want to close your hands into fists around me," she told him, her voice low and deadly soft. "Not ever."
Callie, the full-time administrative assistant who looked like Mrs. Claus and was actually an employee of Humanity Prime, not a temp, gasped and jumped up out of her seat, too. "Now, you two cut it out!"
Savannah, seeing that shock was the only emotion on Greer's face now, judging by the widened eyes and open mouth, took a deep breath and forced her body to relax. Muscle by muscle, she slowly straightened out of the crouch and lowered her hands. One bad boyfriend and three years of self-defense classes had stayed with her.
"What in the world?" Now Greer sounded like nothing more than the former DMV employee he was—officious and slightly snotty. She could just imagine him making people wait an extra hour or two for their driver's licenses. He pulled a crumpled handkerchief—people still carried handkerchiefs?—out of his pocket and wiped his sweaty forehead. "I don't even understand what is happening."
The man's whine, combined with the rush of adrenaline that had crashed through her body, gave Savannah an instant headache. Abruptly, she'd had enough of trying to be polite.
"I quit because I'm not going to work for a bunch of bigots," she told him flatly. "Not all shapeshifters are evil. Not all vampires are murderers. And I'm sure Atlantis is not—"
She shuffled through papers on her desk until she found the one she wanted, a letter from Greer to the head of an Alabama chapter of Humanity Prime.
"—a continent filled with savage pagans," she continued. "'Only fit to be destroyed, preferably with a large bomb.'"
Something sly looked out at her from behind Greer's eyes before he ducked his head and took a deep breath, and suddenly Savannah was no longer sure that he was only the middle-management paper pusher that he appeared to be. When he glanced up at her again, though, anything she thought she might have seen was gone. She'd probably imagined it. Hard not to see evil everywhere you looked after you realized you were working for a modern-day version of the KKK.
One of the first thing the shifters had done when they came out was end the KKK by killing (and some said eating) any of its leadership who disagreed with disbanding. Talk about great press! The rumor was that shapeshifters controlled the media, so maybe they didn't need to worry about great press. Anyway, out with the KKK and in with H Prime. As long as there were humans, there would always be hate groups—in order for there to be community, there had to be outsiders. Only those powerful enough to decide which individuals filled what role could choose—the sharp edge of the dividing line sliced flesh and bone from the ostracized.
Somebody should put that on an inspirational poster, instead of the insipid sayings on posters of kittens hanging from trees, like the ones taped to the ugly gray walls of the run-down office.
Nobody who wandered in from the street would guess that they'd walked into the founding chapter of the worst hate-mongering group in the country. And she'd be ashamed to have to tell them, which was why she was leaving.
"I'm done. I won't work here for one more minute. I sure as heck won't send out these flyers," she said, shoving the whole stack off her desk onto the floor.
"You signed a contract," Greer said, scowling. "We need for you to help Callie check people in at the retreat tomorrow morning, because we have more than a hundred showing up. If you quit, I will call your agency and make sure you never work for them again."
With that, he stormed off into his office and banged the door shut.
Oh, no.
This was a problem, because the sad part was that he could probably do it.
Person Friday Worldwide, Inc., was Savannah's go-to agency for all things employment. When she'd run out of cash in Australia, they'd wrangled her a job as an assistant kangaroo feeder at the Sydney zoo. When she'd been short on funds in France, she'd temped at the Louvre, typing up reports f
or one of the most highly-regarded art restoration experts in the world.
The work was almost always interesting, the pay was better than average, and the resources were all over the world, so nothing like pesky work visas and other red tape would stop her from earning enough to pay for her first love, travel.
And the problem was, she was already on notice with the agency, because she'd punched her boss in the face at the London assignment for thinking "temporary production assistant" meant "happy to have his hand on her ass."
Not that, officially, fighting back against sexual harassment was a problem for the agency, especially in the #MeToo era, but there was, she'd been unofficially told, the feeling among the Powers That Be in PFWW that she could have made her views known without breaking the man's nose.
One more strike, so to speak, and she'd probably be out.
But how could she live with working for these scumbags for one moment longer?
"Look, Savvy," Callie began, making Savannah wince. After the first twenty times of "Please call me Savannah," though, a woman had to admit defeat. "If you have different . . . political views . . .you don't have to do anything else but help me take names and check them in. We have people to help with the complimentary tote bags."
Savannah groaned. Of course the crazed human nationalists had tote bags, probably filled with all the bath soaps, chocolates, and silver bullets a budding domestic terrorist could ever need or want.
But it was signing people in. Tote bags. Her long-planned trip to Madagascar and, maybe, if the special tourist lottery ever picked her name, even a trip to Atlantis.
Atlantis. She could visit the savage pagans and see the small continent that had been hidden beneath the sea for more than eleven thousand years. The new queen was even an American!
Damn. She hadn't expected to find herself up against a serious moral dilemma at nine in the morning.
Callie stood in front of the desk, clutching her hands together and giving Savannah her best big-eyed, pleading expression. "Don’t make me do this all by myself. I'll never be able to replace you between now and tomorrow morning."
Savannah sighed. She thought about Madagascar. Lemurs. Atlantis.
"Just signing people in?"
"That's all," Callie said, all but bouncing in her orthopedic shoes. "Only till noon."
Savannah closed her eyes and admitted to herself that the road to hell was paved with tiny steps like this. But it was only three hours of signing people in, and then she'd be on her way.
Three hours—and Callie would be right there, all bright and shiny.
Savannah sighed. She was going to hell for this.
"Okay," she finally said, and Callie let out a whoop and did a little dance, right there in front of the desk, making Savannah wince.
But it was three hours. What could go wrong?
The Sea Wolf bar and grill, Jacksonville Beach, Florida
Savannah took a long swig of her margarita, her third – or was it fourth? – of the evening and glumly watched her friend Meg charm a table of frat boys who were down in Jacksonville Beach for some early spring break action. Savannah wouldn't mind having a little action, herself, but she wasn't about to look for it in a bar filled with frat boys. But Meg had wanted to come and, after a long, self-pitying wallow of a nap, Savannah had agreed to join her.
The scene at the office kept playing and replaying in her mind like a bad movie. She wanted nothing to do with going to this retreat for the bigots of H Prime, but she also didn't want to get fired from the only job she'd ever found that was perfect for her traveling lifestyle. Apparently, she hadn't had enough tequila yet to drown out her self-awareness, because she still realized quite well that agreeing to stay for the retreat check-in meant that she was turning into one of those people who'd sell her constitutional rights for a dollar and a cup of coffee.
She'd never been someone who stood up for what she believed in, because the situation had never arisen. She traveled—that's what she did. She wasn't into politics, and she never stayed in one place long enough to get involved in any community activism. The only time her resolve had ever really been tested had been when her family had sat her down for that intervention, proving once again that they thought she wasn't worthy of them.
Only her family – keeper of middle-class values that they were – would call for an all-out intervention on a daughter and sister whose only fault was that she didn't want to be stuck in a 9-to-5 job.
Little Savannah, baby of the family, must be "fixed" because she didn't want a cubicle, and she didn't want a pension plan. She didn't want dental insurance, two pathetic weeks of paid vacation per year, or office politics.
She didn't want to "live to work" or be someone who bragged about never seeing daylight other than through her office windows, like her older brothers.
Sure, she might want a family, maybe even kids, somewhere down the line. But she was twenty-eight years old and all she wanted – all she needed – right now was to see the world. Discover new places, have adventures, meet people outside the parameters of the Columbus, Ohio, suburbs where she'd grown up. There was a reason that Columbus was the primary test market for most fast food companies. If you looked up the definition of boring suburbia, you'd find a map of Columbus right in the middle.
Sure, they had The Ohio State University, with The Best Damn Band in the Land, and Savannah had even managed to attend school there for almost an entire year before she made her break.
"Just like my mother," her dad always said, and not with admiration. His mom had been a stage actress who had traveled all over the country and to Europe and even to Asia to perform in plays and musicals. Growing up on airplanes had made Savannah's dad crave nothing more than stability. Savannah's mom, born and raised in Columbus, couldn't imagine why anyone would ever want to go anywhere else.
"But we have a world-class zoo!" she'd kept saying, as if that were enough to base an entire life around.
Her parents were not what you would call deep thinkers, and Savannah had never considered herself to be one, either. Until that first trip, backpacking in Nepal. She'd met people and seen things and places that had flipped her entire worldview on its head. That first trip—and all the others since—had made her rethink her entire existence, made her question everything.
Made her realize that she would never, ever be content to sit still in one place again.
So now she called her family at least once a month, and she tried to go home at least once a year for a Thanksgiving-type holiday, but she didn't let their opinions on her lifestyle affect her even the slightest bit. They'd mostly made peace with that over the past eight years, but now that she was twenty-eight—or, as her mother liked to say, "pushing thirty"—she figured the pressure would start up again soon. But for now, they'd achieved a level of détente. Anyway, she could always use the fake static and "Oh, I'm losing the connection" excuse when parental pressure started up again.
True forgiveness meant she'd have to look beyond the hard, shiny surfaces of their disapproval of her lifestyle to the more painful truth of their failure to accept her as she was. Better to pretend it was all forgotten than to dwell on the empty place inside where her family's unconditional support should reside.
She closed her eyes and let the cool breeze from the ocean and the scent of salt air and suntan oil work its magic and calm her restless thoughts. She had the trip to Madagascar almost planned. There wasn't much more to do except pack up the tiny studio apartment she'd taken a three-month lease on, get the tickets, and hit the road—all of which she would do as soon as she got through the stupid morning at the Bigots R Us retreat.
The thought of H Prime pushed her to signal the bartender for another margarita. Five would totally be her limit. Also, she should probably eat something, because the lights in the outdoor bar were starting to look overly sparkly to her tipsy mind.
Meg picked that moment to bop back to the bar, holding hands with one of the frat boys.
"This i
s Chad." Meg burbled, grinning up at him with her sweetest grin. Worked every time.
"Of course it is," Savannah murmured.
"Excuse me?" said the square-chinned, tanned, polo-shirt-wearing example of Mommy and Daddy's trust fund hard at work.
"I said I was pleased to meet you," Savannah improvised, smiling up at him.
His face relaxed into a confident—these boys were always confident—grin. "Same."
Meg grabbed his arm. "Chad and I are going to go for a long walk on the beach. You can find a way home, right?"
"Yep. This is why God created Uber."
Chad squinted a little, possibly even catching the sarcasm, but Meg just grinned, clutched Chad's arm tighter, and dragged him off toward the beach.
Savannah noticed that the other frat boys at the table, who'd been watching this interplay, were showing signs of heading over toward her. Time to make a temporary escape.
She swung around to the bartender. "Hey, Mickey, I'll be right back for my drink."
He nodded and gave her a thumbs-up, and she headed for the bathroom. The frat boys looked like short-attention-span specials; they'd probably forget about her by the time she got back. She lingered a little while in front of the mirror, refreshing her lip gloss and washing her hands, then pulling her hair out of its thick braid and shaking it out over her shoulders, before heading back out to the bar.
Someone had stolen her barstool.
A big someone. He had amazing shoulders that tapered down to a narrow waist, and she could tell that he must be at least as tall or taller than her five foot eleven. Maybe he'd even be cute-ish—and unmarried—and straight—and she could have a little fling before she left Jacksonville Beach for good.
If not (because when was her luck ever that good?) she'd just ask him to get the heck off her barstool. Almost as if he'd heard her thoughts, the man swung around on the barstool and looked straight at her.
