“There was kind of an uncomfortable feeling among the passengers right from the first, like there was something going on they were all trying not to talk about. And then Les got into a fight with Shelly. He kept saying she was just teasing him and I thought it was a sex thing, but it wasn’t that and everyone was kind of out of sorts anyhow because the girls wanted to get up to Vancouver and go shopping, but Cas made us change course to go to Port Townsend for a halibut.”
“A halibut?”
“Yeah. Pacific halibut season is really short. That year it ran long—they extended it by two days—and Cas wanted his damned fish. You’re only allowed one and he hadn’t got his. He took his fishing more seriously than most people realized. I mean he really wanted that fish—standing-in-the-water-in-the-dark-with-a-spear kind of want. ’Cause that’s what the crazy SOB did. I changed course from the inside of the Sound and brought us out to Port Townsend—and I gotta tell you, it was a hard swim catching up to you guys up here. A lot harder than boating it was.”
I stifled a snide comment and just told him to go on with his tale.
“Anyhow, anyhow, so we tie up at Townsend and I take him out in the skiff to the shallows so he can try to swim around with a snorkel and spear one—you’re only allowed to use a spear or a longline to get them—”
“A spear?” Solis asked, frowning.
“Halibut are stone stupid, so you have to even the odds in their favor. That’s why it’s called sportfishing. Anyhow. Nobody else wanted to swim around looking for halibut, so they stayed on board with Shelly and played cards or something. Whatever they did, Les was mad at Shelly when we got back and the girls were kind of . . . freaked-out about something and no one was talking to anyone, so dinner was a real cozy disaster. Afterward Les comes up to me, looking all weirded- out, and asks me to make that note in the log about his being on board the whole trip—which he was. I had no idea why he wanted me to put that in, but he did and I did. And then Cas and I went out to look for more halibut—night fishing with a spear. Totally wacko.
“We finally got that damned fish about four in the morning. And we should have cleaned it, but I was sick and tired of it, so I just dumped it in the icebox and we went to bed. So in the morning Cas is still obsessing about his fish and he wants us under way on the morning tide so we don’t—as he put it—waste the whole day, so I get up and get the boat moving on five hours of sleep, and we’re in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca when we get a call at, like, ten, from the Seattle PD via the radio telephone service, saying that Odile Carson is dead. Les flips out. Not because she was dead but because of the way she died and the timing. He says Shelly told him she was dead the night before and he goes nuts. We all did. It was like there was something in the air. Or maybe it was the food . . .” he added, suddenly thoughtful—which looks very strange on a face that’s only half-human and covered in wet brown fur. “Shelly was the cook . . . maybe she fed us something that made us even crazier than we were. . . .”
“Don’t speculate on what you can’t know,” Solis warned.
“All right, all right!” Fielding snapped back, his interlocking fangs clashing together in a disturbingly violent bite.
The longer he spoke, the more of the mist of unpleasant green began to draw around him. I didn’t like it and I tried to call his attention to it again, but he shook me off and carried on with the story. I tried looking around but I couldn’t find a source for the color—it seemed to rest with Fielding himself and I thought its unpleasant shade might have been a manifestation of the dysfunction in his shape-shifting ability. Of course, some people’s auras turn sickly colors when they lie, too. . . .
“Les Carson lost his nut and we all went a little crazy with him. It was like Odile died and he had to find someone else to be with immediately or something was going to happen to him. Like he was going to explode or fall apart or something. So the guests were all . . . frisky with each other, but that left Cas out because he is still obsessing about his damned fish and I’m up in the bridge, trying to get us across the strait. And that is when Cas finishes up with the halibut and decides it’s a good idea to go down below and see if Shelly wants to ‘join the action’ and to find out if I want to . . . come along.”
He made that odd coughing sound and turned his gaze away from us again—his way of showing shame, I supposed, and I felt a bit better about him. But only a bit.
Fielding continued, raising his gaze only as the story swept him up again. “I put the boat on autopilot and followed him down to her cabin in the forepeak. He got a little . . . pushy. . . . She was furious. Her eyes actually sent out sparks! No, really! She grabbed Cas by the hand and she cut his arm open with this little bone knife she had on her bunk, and he started screaming while she shook him so his arm whipped around and the blood made a circle on the floor and the bunk. She was saying crazy things and then she grabbed me, too, and cut my hand and dragged me around the cabin. I couldn’t believe she was so strong! She pulled me around, saying things I didn’t understand, but they made me feel sick and hot, and she was acting crazy. It felt like . . . like I was burning up inside. Then she screamed something, shoved us both out of her cabin, and came after us with her knife. I pushed Cas up the stairs and I was right behind him. Cas got up to the saloon and out on deck, but then he fell down and he was bleeding and the others weren’t there to help us—they were down below, humping like rabbits.
“Shelly must have grabbed the speargun off the table in the saloon and come out after us when I went out after Cas. She followed us and she threw some things into the water. Then she turned on us. She shot Cas! I thought she was going to kill us both but she only spat in my face—it burned like acid—and then she said, and I remember this, ‘Half on the land and half in the sea, and never together your halves shall be. Dead by water if on land, burned alive by salt sea’s sand. Drown in air and burn by sea, reveal your nature, hound, and cursed be.’ More fucking Shakespeare.”
Quinton and I both shook our heads. “No,” I said, “I think that one was probably an original by Shelly. Did she do anything else?”
“She slapped me with her bloody hand and I fell down as if she’d gaffed me. Then she walked up to the bow and started shouting at the air. That’s when the storm came up. Just came. There one minute and not a sign the minute before. Not. A. Sign. I managed to go over, hoist Cas, and get him down to his bunk, but he was in a bad way. I tried to patch him up but he just kept bleeding. When I started back up to retake the helm, we’d just passed Discovery and Chatham islands, I think. We were running late and the sun was going to go down soon so I needed to be back in control of the boat before we left the open water. It should have been an hour or so to Roche from there, but we didn’t make it.”
“What in hell were you doing in the traffic lane?” Zantree’s voice came down through the intercom and, broken, on the wind from the flying bridge.
“We weren’t in the traffic lane! I took her around the west side of the banks. We came up from Port Townsend just like you are, remember? I was planning to go up through the inner channels from Anacortes originally, but we came out to Townsend for the damned fish. I wish we hadn’t. Maybe if we’d been in the channels around the islands instead of the straits there’d have been some other boat to see us and . . . save us. Or maybe . . . we would have run for Orcas or Lopez as soon as we heard from the cops and we wouldn’t have done what we did at all.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
The gray-green haze around him had thickened to a palpable smog and seemed to be contracting into tentacles. . . .
“Like I said, we were running late and short of sleep because of the fish, and Cas wouldn’t have me take the boat back to Townsend when the call came in for Les from the police. Les lost it and then the business with Shelly . . . I missed Mosquito Pass—” Fielding paused when he saw the confused looks on the faces of us three landlubbers. “It’s the southern route into Roche Harbor. We were below it when . . . Shelly happen
ed. I couldn’t turn the boat in time because I was down on deck and I was more worried about Cas anyway, since he was bleeding. But I needed to get back into the pilothouse before we got any closer to the northern route, because there’s a BC ferry that runs up Spieden Channel. You have to stay out of its way and you have to be careful how you maneuver in Haro Strait before you get to Spieden so you don’t get on the wrong side of the traffic lane and get the Canadian Coast Guard on your ass. Right at the channel mouth it’s wide, but you can’t just charge into it like a bull into the ring—you have to watch the markers and make way for the ferry.
“But by the time we were turning for Spieden Channel we were engulfed in a storm—our very own personal storm. It had taken almost three hours to make the distance up Haro Strait that should have taken just one. So now it’s unnaturally dark, we’re stormbound, and the boat’s starting to make noises I knew weren’t good. I couldn’t control her enough to shoot the northern passage to Roche Harbor between Henry and San Juan islands, because there’s another island between them—Pearl Island—right in the mouth of the pass that makes the channel half the width of the southern route. There was no way to get to Roche safely and the storm and currents would not let me turn her around, so I kept her straight on. Straight down Spieden Channel, thinking I might be able to flip her around at the east end of Davison Head into Neil Bay, or even drag for Lonesome Cove east of that. I was willing to run her aground if I had to. Then the merfolk came on board and that’s when people started dying.”
“What happened to them?” Solis and I demanded together.
“The merfolk took them overboard. They just flowed on board with the water that was coming over the rails and then they just . . . it’s like they swam through the boat and they grabbed Cas and Les and the girls. But they left me. And Shelly went with them. After that . . . it’s hard to remember.”
“Did you reach the cove?”
“Cove?”
“In your last log entry you said you were trying to reach Lonesome Cove.”
“No. Not Lonesome Cove. I passed that, too, and— Oh!” And then his exclamation of surprise turned into a shriek of pain and he threw himself out of the hold and onto the deck, writhing, changing, and making noises increasingly animal and horrifying. He rolled across the deck and flopped upward, barking and moving as if blind and burning, then he toppled over the rail and fell into the water. The splash he raised spattered onto the deck with the same power as if we’d passed too close to a broaching whale.
“It’s them! The bell—” he barked just before he sank. The sick-green creepers of energy followed him into the depths.
We all rushed to the rail, but the boat was already too far ahead of the splash and Fielding, writhing in the water, was already changing back to what he had been before. Then he dove and vanished.
“He’s gone,” Quinton muttered.
“He said, ‘It’s them.’ The merfolk?” Solis asked.
“If so, then I now know a lot more than I did a minute ago,” I said.
Both of the men looked at me. I stared for a moment longer at the receding spot where Fielding had sunk out of sight. I didn’t feel as bad as I thought I should have. I turned back to the men.
“Everywhere we’ve seen the paranormal traces of this case I’ve seen the same energetic residue, the same color. A sort of dirty grayish green. I saw it at Reeve’s place when he had his heart attack and I saw it again at the hospital where he died. I saw it yesterday at Seawitch and also at Pleiades. I saw it just now on Fielding, but I’m sorry to say I wrote it off as an aura shift that usually indicates a lie. But that’s what forced him off the boat—that energy. I think he could have stayed, but it might have killed him. It’s not from the dobhar-chú, because it attacked him before at the marina and he said the water hounds aren’t magicians—though he could very well be lying about that and he’s certainly lying about the events of Seawitch’s last night. But if that stuff was what was attacking Reeve the first time I saw it, then the creature I saw at Reeve’s must have been either Fielding or one of his dobhar-chú cousins trying to protect Reeve. Either way, the party responsible for Reeve’s death is one of the merfolk.”
“Or a sea witch,” Quinton suggested in a soft, unhappy voice.
“Yes. Or a sea witch.”
I heard a clatter from above and Zantree came down the ladder from the flying bridge, landing on the deck with a thump. “What happened? I felt the boat lurch like we lost a marlin off a close-hauled line.”
“We lost Fielding.”
Zantree looked startled. “How?”
“I’m not sure.”
“And what were you going on about freaky spook stuff? Isn’t a water hound enough weirdness for one cruise?”
“I think I’d better explain a few things. . . .”
NINETEEN
We moved up to the flying bridge for safety’s sake and I tried to bring Zantree up to speed, but it was difficult and there were some things I couldn’t discuss or explain that only made the situation feel more outrageous. He watched me with slowly rising anger. I didn’t know if it was fury at me or the situation but I felt horrible for it, and I told him we’d be getting off at Roche Harbor to find another boat. I hadn’t expected to fall into the path of Reeve’s killer on the open water, but now that we were approaching the islands, we were too close and I wanted to shut that connection down before Zantree could become a target for the merfolk or the dobhar-chú. Fielding hadn’t painted them as the most reasonable of creatures, and while I wasn’t going to take his word for it, no other source made them sound any better. Once again I’d endangered someone without thinking and I’d be damned if I was going to let it go any further. This time I’d end the risk before it got too great. Quinton was frowning at me the whole time, but not an angry frown, just a thoughtful one, and I wondered what he was thinking. I couldn’t tell from his aura this time—it was a fuzzy gold-and-green mess of indecipherable lines and moving steam.
“No,” Zantree said. “I’m not getting left out of this.”
“This could get you killed,” I replied, “and you wouldn’t even know what was killing you! I won’t let you do that.”
“That is not your choice, Ms. Blaine. I had a friend on that boat and I want to know what the hell happened to her—and I’m not going to swallow all that mouth gas Furry Face was spitting. I’m not a foolish old man. I have managed myself for more than sixty years and I have a sound idea of what I can and cannot do. And this I will do.”
“You don’t understand, and I didn’t realize how much danger we were putting you in or I would never have taken you up on the invitation to use the Mambo Moon for this trip.”
Solis tapped me on the shoulder. “This was not entirely your decision, Blaine. I also chose this. And Zantree was not properly informed, it’s true, but you do not bear all the responsibility here.”
“Are you two trying to make me feel better about endangering you all? Well, you aren’t. We will have to put in at Roche Harbor—or any other decent place we can find—and I’ll go on by myself.”
“You will not,” Solis said. “This is also my investigation. According to Fielding, crimes were committed and it’s my job to determine if that’s true, clear them, and close the file on Seawitch. You will not stop me from that duty. That is my decision. It is not yours.”
“But—” I started.
Quinton nodded at me. “I think you’re outnumbered, Harper. Because I’m not letting you go without me—you don’t know how to pilot a boat or where you’re going. I at least know half of that.”
“I can hire someone. I can go on by myself tomorrow. I don’t want to endanger all of you over this . . . insanity.”
“And it’s all right to endanger yourself?”
“No! I’m just saying I have a chance because I can deal on their level and the rest of you can’t. This is my job and the rest of you shouldn’t be in the line of fire.”
“That decision’s not up to you.”
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I growled at him, “You’re the one who keeps lecturing me about taking my friends for granted, using them as resources, not treating them like . . . like friends! Now you change your tune? How is this different?”
“We are not your friends,” Solis said. “Not this moment. We’re your colleagues and partners. You have no more say in this venture than any other one of us has. We work together. You haven’t coerced me, I know. This is my decision and my case. I’ll go with you. Like it or not.”
Quinton smiled at Solis and turned his head to nod at me. “What he said goes twice for me. Now, Mr. Zantree, I think, should probably throw us all off at Roche and get the hell out of here before the fecal matter strikes the rotating ventilation device, but . . . I can’t speak for him.”
Zantree glowered at him and then at me and Solis and then back at me. . . . “Damn and blast you all! I am captain of this vessel and if I choose to go off on a mad reach straight to hell with a crew of lunatics, I’ll do it if I so please! And devil take you if you try to stop me!”
I blinked at him. “Umm . . . I guess I’m outvoted. . . .”
“Yes, you are,” Quinton replied. “Now be gracious and let’s get on with this before the clock runs out.”
I shrugged, although I admit the gesture was more uncomfortable than gracious. “In that case, I’m going below for a few minutes. I’m freezing.”
“Come back up in an hour and we’ll change watch on the wheel,” Zantree said.
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