by Jenn Bennett
The bomb in question was busy trying to impress Kar Yee with his talent for identifying every building in the receding skyline. And after the town disappeared from our line of sight completely, we sat on the deck at the back of the boat, watching the storm darkening the sky behind us, and broke into the cooler.
“Hey Dad,” Jupe said. “If we buy a boat, will it be this big?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Well, maybe you should compromise and get a smaller one with a hot tub, because then, when it’s cool like this, we can get in the hot tub and relax.”
“No hot tubs.”
“Just think about it,” Jupe said smoothly, as if he was conducting a business deal.
Lon ignored him and turned to Kar Yee. “You don’t get seasick, do you?”
She shook her head. “I rode a ferry in Victoria Harbor every day until I was a teenager and left Hong Kong. My parents own a boat.”
“A junk?” Jupe asked.
“A speedboat. You sound like that racist captain, describing me like I was a rug or takeout food.”
Jupe’s face tightened with indignity. “I’m not racist. I’m biracial.”
“Maybe you are just ignorant about Asians.”
“No way! My best friend, Jack, is Japanese—”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, cocking a brow as a breeze ruffled the collar of her designer jacket. “The old ‘I have Asian friends’ excuse.”
“What? No! I—”
She winked at him. “Only teasing, ‘little man.’ My dad’s a lawyer, not a fisherman. Lawyers in Hong Kong don’t own junks.”
“How am I supposed to know? I’ve never been outside the States. All I know about Hong Kong is from travel shows on TV.”
“Since he met you, he’s got his bedroom DVR set to record anything to do with Hong Kong or China,” I said.
“Hey!” Jupe complained.
Kar Yee grinned. “Don’t listen to her, Jupiter. She’s just jealous of our love.”
Jupe laughed, unsure if she was teasing him again, but too far gone to care. He pulled out his cell phone in a clumsy attempt to change the subject. “Picture time.”
“Snap away,” she said. “Left side is my best side.”
“Please don’t encourage him.” Shivering in the cool ocean breeze winding over the stern, I scooted closer to Lon and tucked my feet under my legs on the ivory cushion.
Jupe began snapping photos of Kar Yee, with the occasional pity shot of Lon and me thrown in to make it look aboveboard, I supposed. And never mind that his dad was a semi-famous photographer with a camera worth more than my car. He was going to fill up his phone with Kar Yee from every angle. God only knew where those pictures would end up. Probably on every online movie forum the kid patrolled, tagged with exaggerations about their nonexistent relationship.
“Who’s running the bar if you’re both here?” he asked after what must have been a few thousand photos.
“Amanda,” I said, referring to our lead waitress. “We’re breaking her in.”
Kar Yee polished a small apple on the hem of her shirt. “Hopefully she won’t run off with all the money in the safe.”
“Hopefully she remembers the safe combination.”
“You guys can call to check on her,” Jupe said, glancing up at the captain’s distant figure, which stood under a navy canopy on the topmost deck. He pulled his phone back out. “Or maybe not. No signal. But you can send her a message—I remember Crazy Bandana Man’s Wi-Fi password.”
I groaned. “Don’t we all. Seriously, Lon. Where did you find this guy?”
“Someone I knew used to work for the charter company.”
Jupe stopped taking photos. “Oh, wait. Her?”
I felt Lon’s arm tense around my shoulder.
“Oh-ho-ho, it was her,” Jupe said.
I waved to get Jupe’s attention. “Who’s ‘her’?”
“Amanda.”
“Huh?” I was momentarily confused, picturing Amanda back at Tambuku.
“Amanda Morris,” he clarified in a fake posh voice. “So, remember when I told you about the only woman he’d snuck into the house before you?”
“Sneaked, and yes.” It was one of the first Butler family secrets he spilled to me. The first of many. Jupe would not only let the cat out of the bag, he’d set the bag on fire so that cat would be sure to roam free for the rest of its nine lives.
“Snuck, and that was Amanda Morris. She spent the night.”
“You weren’t supposed to know that,” Lon complained.
Jupe flashed Lon a sheepish smile. “Not my fault you couldn’t be quiet. I heard talking that morning, then I saw you hustling her down the stairs. I’m not dumb, hel-lo.”
“Yeah, hel-lo,” I repeated in the same sarcastic tone, grabbing Lon’s chin to turn his face toward mine. “Who was this woman?”
“No one.”
“He went out on a bunch of dates with her,” Jupe offered. “Then he brought her home that night, then she stopped calling.”
Kar Yee made a dramatic pity-filled sound. “It was probably your pirate mustache, Lon. Some women aren’t into that dirty rock star chic. You’re lucky Cady has low standards.”
“Hey,” Jupe complained with a cross face. “My dad makes the Lust List in the Village Weekly every year.”
“Bros before hos. Nice,” I praised. “Now, who is this Amanda chick?”
Lon sighed. “She met some guy vacationing in Big Sur. Ran off to Tennessee with him.”
“He was human,” Jupe said, as if it were soap opera–worthy.
“Crime against God, an Earthbound dating a dirty human,” I said dryly.
Jupe made a dismissive cluck sound with his tongue. “You’re more on our side than theirs. Did you guys just feel that? It’s starting to rain. That Captain Christie is a liar with that cloudbusting garbage. He said only sunny skies.”
A gust of wind blew strands of dark hair into my face. “Was he lying?” I asked Lon.
He shook his head. “He was confident about his ability.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Kar Yee said, looking up at the sky. “See, you can tell where the sky changes.”
She was right. It almost looked like we were sailing beneath an invisible barrier that kept the clouds at bay. Kind of cool. I’d heard of people with this ability, but I’d never seen it in action.
“Clear skies or not, it’s windy and cold out here,” I said, squeezing Lon’s knee. “Come on. Let’s move inside the salon. Jupe, you can test out your knack on Kar Yee, if she’s still willing.”
Jupe waggled his brows at her. “What do you say, Kar Yee? Are you?”
“If you promise to play nice,” she answered, leveling him with a semi-threatening look.
“I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“You can. My dad says real men don’t make promises they can’t keep.”
“Oh, really? Thank God that doesn’t apply to real women.”
While she herded him toward the cabin, I lagged behind to have one last look at the ward on the swim platform.
“What is it?” Lon asked.
“You aren’t at all interested in why he has this?”
“He was a little nervous when you brought it up, but mostly embarrassed. Maybe the boat got robbed while he was sleeping on board. Captain’s pride, or something.”
“Maybe.” And perhaps I was being overcurious about something that wasn’t a big deal, but upon closer inspection, I noticed the ward didn’t just circle the hull of the boat. It ran up the ladder to our level.
I pointed this out to Lon, and we traced its path to where we stood. “It’s hidden on the underside of the railing.
He bent low and tilted his head to inspect. “Clever.”
From the railing, it ran across the deck through a line of recessed lights in the flooring. “Hard to see in the sunlight, and the lights probably disguise it at night.” My gaze followed the line of Heka up the outer wall of the cabi
n. It was brighter in one spot. I moved a blue-and-white-striped life preserver ring to reveal a series of arcane symbols painted on the wall there.
“Reinforcement?” Lon asked.
“Like a cornerstone,” I agreed. “Don’t recognize all these symbols, though.”
Lon and I held each other’s gaze for a moment; he didn’t recognize them, either. “Interesting.”
More like suspicious. Maybe the good captain would be willing to tell me the name of the magician who had erected his ward once we got to the reef. It could be nothing. Could be artistic flourishes that didn’t add anything to actual ward; my bar had a bit of this in the binding symbols painted on the floor, helping them to better blend with the Tiki-themed decor.
But as I took one last look at the unfamiliar symbols under the life preserver, I felt an uneasiness tighten my chest. And I wondered if I maybe should be less interested in who set the ward and more concerned about what exactly it was protecting us from.
“Sixty-five degrees,” Jupe read from a GPS screen on a wall inside the salon. “Winds gusting at sixteen knots. What does that mean?”
Lon leaned down to peer out the windows circling the cabin. “It means I’m not going to get any decent photos until we get farther down the coast away from that storm.”
“This blows. I wanted to see some blue wales.”
“Patience.” Lon sat on a curving sofa, beckoning me to join him. He pulled me sideways into his lap and wrapped his arms around mine. “All right, Jupe. No dangerous dares. No intimate questions.”
Jupe’s face pinched. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means don’t ask anything creepy,” I translated.
“Like . . .” Jupe trailed off, a devilish look in his eye.
Oh, God. Here we go.
“Like, don’t ask about her safe word?”
“Safe word?” Kar Yee repeated. “What the hell is that?”
Lon cursed under his breath.
“You know,” Jupe said, smiling one of his lazy smiles that brimmed with a delirious suggestiveness he only partly understood.
“Is that one of those whips and chains things?” Kar Yee said.
Jupe nodded, eyes widening with sordid interest. “In case things get out of control.”
“No whips and chains,” Lon said, his patience wearing thin. “No safe words. Where the hell do you get these things?”
“Jack told me at school.” Jack. Jupe’s BFF. That shy little Godzilla-loving Earthbound was always taking about crazy stuff with him. “He said everyone has them these days. Don’t you and Cady have one?”
Lon snorted. “Yeah, it’s a little word called ‘no.’ ”
“That’s it?”
“No need to complicate things.”
Well, when it came to Lon and me, there was really no need to say it all, frankly. Maybe an occasional “too deep!” or “my leg’s cramping!” or perhaps a frantic hand signal to indicate that the sexy choking was about to turn into an SVU case.
“ ‘No’ is the only safe word you’ll need,” Lon said in his tough-dad voice. “And if you ever hear it out of a girl’s mouth, you’d better stop whatever horrible thing it is you’re trying to do to her.”
“I wouldn’t do anything horrible—I mean . . . jeez, Dad.” He glanced at Kar Yee, slightly mortified. “Don’t be weird.”
“Yeah, Lon,” I said, trying not to laugh. “Don’t be weird.”
Lon clamped a warm hand around my knee. “You’ll be saying no later if you don’t watch it,” he whispered close to my ear.
“Challenge accepted,” I whispered back.
“I just don’t get it,” Kar Yee said. “Why is it that the people who are into that lifestyle always seem to have terrible fashion taste?”
“Kar Yee hates leather,” I told Jupe.
“Are you vegan?” he asked her. “You sure ate a lot of that salmon dip on the deck.”
“Vegan? Please,” she scoffed. “The only people who don’t eat meat in Hong Kong are poor or following silly Western trends. I hate leather because it is unstylish. Black leather is the worst—very 1950s motorcycle gang,” she said, making a vomit face. “And who wants to parade around in sticky latex and studded dog collars?”
“Probably Captain Christie,” I said.
We all laughed.
“All right, enough of this,” Lon grumbled, probably uncomfortable that Kar Yee might get the idea we talked about bizarro shit in front of the kid all the time—which we did. Mostly because Jupe was the one always bringing it up, but all that was supposed to stay inside the Butler circle of trust. Kar Yee might be my best friend, but she hadn’t yet crossed over the proverbial family line.
“Let’s just get back to the experiment,” I suggested.
Lon relaxed his grip on my knee. “Jupe, start out with something easy. Get Kar Yee to tell you her favorite color.”
“No, it’s gotta be something she wouldn’t normally tell me.”
I waved him over and whispered in his ear. He grinned. “Okay.”
Kar Yee kicked off her shoes as he sat on the sofa across from us, facing her. “Let’s have it,” she said. “Do your worst.”
He snorted a merry laugh, then shook out his hands—what a drama queen—and closed his eyes to concentrate.
Many Earthbounds had a demonic ability, more commonly known as a “knack.” Lon’s knack was called empathy: he could hear your emotions. Lots of inconvenient baggage came with a knack like his. It was hard to get used to wearing your feelings on your sleeve, and nearly impossible to lie to him. But I didn’t mind . . . most of the time.
Jupe didn’t inherit his father’s knack, unfortunately. Nor his mother’s: allure. Yvonne was a supermodel and Lon’s ex-wife. Jupe did get a lighter version of her toffee-colored skin and her long, lanky shape, but he wasn’t able to charm you into thinking he was a god.
In a way, what he could do was worse. His knack was called persuasion, a rare ability that Jupe liked to refer to as his “Jedi mind trick.” From what we could tell so far, he could command you to do things with his voice alone. He’d started coming into his knack about a month ago. I’d seen it in action, and it was nothing to screw around with—poor Lon had nightmares about Jupe robbing banks and knocking up all the girls in his class. Jupe’s doctor had encouraged Lon to let the kid practice it in controlled situations, so he could learn to use it the right way.
“Kar Yee,” Jupe said, his voice overloud, pupils twitching back and forth like he was in waking REM sleep. “You want to tell me how much money you paid for that gold coat.”
She jerked back, as if he’d slapped her. “Twelve hundred, but it was on sale, I swear.”
My jaw dropped.
Jupe made a victory fist. “Yyyes!”
“I don’t like this game,” she complained, crossing her arms over her middle.
Lon’s silent chuckle vibrated through his chest. “All right. We know it works. What we really want to know is how long the effects last.”
I threaded my fingers through Lon’s. “You need to convince her that her favorite color is pink, say.”
“Pink,” she scoffed.
“Exactly. Then she can report back to you when she starts hating pink again.”
“If,” Jupe amended. “It might be permanent. What about that, Dad?”
“Mmm.” The distant storm clouds outside Captain Christie’s “range” distracted Lon. I glanced out the window as well. Was the yacht speeding up? Felt like we were going a lot faster.
“I don’t know about this. I don’t want to start buying pink clothes,” Kar Yee said.
“Fine. Black leather, then,” I told Jupe. “Make her go bananas for black leather.”
“Oh, no. Why don’t you force Captain Lon over there to tell you something?” Kar Yee suggested. “Like where he’s hoarding his pirate booty.”
Lon flicked a dark look toward her, then his son. “You do, and I’m putting you on one of those flimsy lifeboats attached to the
side and dumping your ass in the ocean.”
Kar Yee began whispering something to Jupe that made him grin like a crazy person.
Lightning streaked the sky through the portside windows. “That seemed close,” I murmured to Lon.
He glanced out the window again. “Maybe the captain’s weather knack isn’t as strong as he claimed. Does it look darker toward the bow to you?” Instead of waiting for an answer, he raised his voice without looking away from the window. “Don’t do it, Jupe. I mean it.”
I glanced up in time to see Jupe’s face straining. A flood of words spilled from his mouth. “Dad-you-want-to-tell-us-how-much-you-paid-for-those-jeans.”
“None of your damn business.”
We all looked at him in surprise.
“Didn’t work,” he said as his hand trailed down my back and curled around my waist.
“Maybe it doesn’t work on men,” Kar Yee suggested. “Some knacks only work on one sex or certain ages. Cady and I knew a Earthbound in college who could only read the minds of small children.”
“My knack worked on that guy at the amusement park,” Jupe argued. “He was about my dad’s age.”
“And Bob,” I added. “You helped save your dad’s life by encouraging Bob to heal him. Your knack is pretty strong—maybe you need a minute to recharge. That happens to me when I’m doing magick.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I should try it on you, Cady.”
“Nuh-uh. We have a pact.” No magick used on him, no knack used on me. “Only life-or-death type situations.”
“But—”
“Nope.”
“Wait, what about—”
Lon pushed my hair back over my shoulder. “She said no. Did you not hear a word I said earlier? No means no. Period. End of discussion.”
Jupe groaned in frustration as the boat slowed, rocked, and then abruptly changed direction. “Whoa. Where are we going now?”
Lon glanced out the window. “Probably to the reef he was talking about. We were headed south before, so looks like west now. What’s the GPS say?”
Jupe jumped up from the sofa and read the screen by the door. “It says ‘System offline. Reconnect to network.’ ”
