by Katee Robert
The murder.
The transformation.
All of it.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to use that information yet, so I focus on his clothing. I shift to one side and then the other, but there’s no telltale shimmer to indicate that it’s glamor or some type of illusion. When I used to be able to change forms, I could manipulate matter to a large enough degree to form clothes if I had to, or at least cover the necessary bits with scales. That’s not what he’s done. Despite myself, I inch closer and poke his shoulder, jumping back as soon as I make contact. “You’re not an illusion.”
“Do you usually have conversations with illusions?” One well-groomed black eyebrow inches up. “Interesting.”
“There are rules. Laws of physics or magic or whatever you want to call it.” I circle him again, well aware that he’s indulging me, but now that I have him this close, I have more questions than answers. “You shouldn’t be able to shift all of that into this little bit of flesh.” I motion to where he’d just been below me to where he stood now. “It’s not possible.”
He shrugs a single shoulder. “A lot of things become possible when you’re as old as I am.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I snort, as if I’m not scared out of my ever-loving mind. “Less than seven thousand years. There are celestial beings walking around who’ve been around double that.”
His other brow rises, a flash of surprise across his face. “What do you know about that?”
“Enough.” Negotiations always went better when one didn’t lay all their cards on the table at the beginning. I cross my arms and raise my chin. “Did you drag me down here for a reason or are you just playing with your food?”
“You don’t seem particularly bothered by the fact I might eat you.”
And he’s not rushing to reassure me that I’m perfectly safe in his clutches. I wouldn’t believe him if he tried to say as much, but it still would have been nice for him to at least pretend he thought I might be a threat. Then again, I’m not a threat. Not to something like him.
I give him a shrug of my own. “I don’t make a habit out of stressing over things beyond my control.”
“Liar.” His full lips quirk, and I curse myself for noticing that they’re rather nice lips. The better to eat you with, my dear.
I shudder. “Get out of my head.” Telepathic, ancient, unknowable shapeshifting powers, and he was a magic eater in the mix. It just wasn’t right. When he doesn’t immediately respond, I sigh. “As fun as this back and forth has been, let’s just get down to you threatening me and me telling you to fuck off.”
“What makes you think I’m planning on threatening you?”
He really is too much. “You have my necklace and my powers. You don’t need me, too.”
“Ah. That.” He slips his hand out of his pocket and my heart seizes in my chest at the sight of my necklace dangling from his fingertips. It sways gently back and forth, a smoky blue and white crystal capped with a piece of silver that holds it to the chain. The kyanite glows faintly in a way it never did around my neck, a testament to the power it now holds. It was only meant to help me channel and boost my abilities and now it is my abilities. My finding power pulses in my stomach, demanding I rush forward and snatch it out of his dirty kraken hands.
I must make some move because he lifts it up until it’s level with his face. Helpless, I follow the necklace. I’m caught in his trap, for better or worse. I can’t even be bothered to try to escape because he has the one thing I want most in the world and it’s right there. “What do you want?” My voice comes out thin and reedy. Weak. Unforgivably weak.
“I’m willing to entertain the idea of returning this to you—in exchange for your assistance.”
“My assistance.” What benefit could I possibly offer him? Even the power boost from ritual sacrifice would barely be a blip on his radar. The merfolk and other supernatural creatures might have magic, but Abel is magic. Even from a few feet away, I can feel it biting at my skin.
Once, a long time ago, when I was barely old enough to know better, I swam into the deep channels that ran the length of our home world. My people aren’t deep sea creatures, not like Deep Dwellers or the kraken. We prefer to stick closer to where the light flickers through the surface. Those depths hold nothing good for us. I was just young and stupid enough to ignore that rule and go exploring. I ventured down and down into the shadows, confident in my ability to protect myself.
The weight of the water and darkness pressed against me the same way the kraken’s magic does now—both able to crush me at a moment’s notice.
He doesn’t respond, seeming to be fascinated by my necklace swinging gently from his hand. I clear my throat. “What do you need my help with?”
“A portal.”
“Really? Now I know you’re just screwing with me. Any of the royal line can make you a portal. Even the damn Deep Dwellers can, because I know their methods aren’t enough to turn something like you off the idea.”
His lips quirk, though no warmth filters through his gaze. “You’ll find you don’t know much about me at all.”
We can go round and round like this for hours, but it’s going to get us nowhere. “I’m going to need more information.”
“I seek your assistance in making a portal. There’s no other relevant information.”
Call me crazy, but there are a thousand better ways for him to go about negotiating portal travel than to use my own portal powers to blackmail me into helping him. Because that’s exactly what he’s doing. He didn’t steal my necklace out of the goodness of his soul. I’m not sure the Deep Dwellers didn’t hand it over in some plot against my people. When we left Earth, we left a power void they were only too happy to fill. It’s not in their best interest to want us back, especially when they’re planning… whatever it is that they’re planning. Finding answers was part of my task when I traveled back here, but the attack and subsequent loss of my abilities nixed that.
I could tell the kraken to take a hike. It was the smart thing to do. Nothing good came from he and the Deep Dwellers working together, and it’s almost certain that I’m diving into a trap if I agree. Walking away means I live—probably.
But what kind of life?
I’m barely living as it is. I drift through my days and nights, tormented and comforted in turn by the call of the sea. I’m not whole. I might die terribly if I agree to help Abel, but I will definitely waste away within a few years if I don’t.
Really, it’s no contest.
“I have conditions.”
One of his brows inches up. “You’re attempting to… negotiate.”
“Mmhmm.” I lunge, and my fingers brush my necklace before he plants a hand in the middle of my back and shoves me through the side of the bubble and into the ocean.
The pressure hits me first. My body groans under it, as if someone has stacked a ten-ton weight on me, pressing… pressing… pressing me down into nothing. I barely got in an inhale before I lost my proximity to air, and I won’t last long even if being crushed to death wasn’t a very real option. I manage to get my arms to work enough to spin to face the bubble, only to find it gone. Oh shit.
The black suddenly gets so much darker. Movement draws my attention, and I have to force myself still, to smother the scream fighting to escape my throat. He’s not in the bubble because he’s out here with me. Easy enough to underestimate him when he’s standing in front of me in human form.
Out here, with him moving around me, blotting out the existence of everything else…
I can’t pretend I’m anything other than a bite-sized snack.
Stubborn little mermaid. I am trying to HELP you.
I clutch my head, his voice a thunder that booms through my entire body. If I live through this, I’m going to have one hell of a headache. Maybe it’s staring death in the face or maybe it’s that I really do have nothing left to lose, but I silently laugh. I’ve been too close to oblivion too many times in the last couple
days alone. What is one more drowning to add to the total?
Never bargain when you have something to lose, squid.
His rage hits me like a physical thing, sending me spinning through the darkness. I pop back into a bubble that didn’t exist a moment ago and land flat on my back. In seconds, he’s there, pinning me in place with his hand on my throat. His hair moves with a wind that doesn’t exist and his eyes swallow what little light the bubble emits. “Do. Not. Toy. With. Me.”
I’m drunk on air and I laugh despite the pressure of his palm to my very breakable neck. “If you haven’t killed me up to this point, you’re not going to—not as long as you think I might come around to your way of thinking.” I cough, spewing water on his face, and it pleases a perverse part of me to see him so disgusted. “You’ve got a little something right there.” I touch my mouth.
He snarls in a long-dead language and shoves away from me. “I am offering you the very thing you want and you’re treating it like it’s poison.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“Then stop acting like it,” he snaps. Abel rakes his hand through his hair and glares at me, that icy composure cracked as if it never existed in the first place. “Your necklace, your powers, and your life. To ask for anything more is pure greed.”
He would see it that way. But then, he wants me to dance to his tune and not ask any questions. I sit up and loop my arms around my knees loosely. Abel looks larger than life from this angle, but I’m not entirely sure I can stand on my own without collapsing, and that would ruin any advantage I have at this point. “That’s the bare minimum you should be offering me.” My voice rasps from my sore throat. He didn’t do permanent damage, but I’ll be surprised if I don’t have bruises in the morning.
Assuming I live that long.
6
Abel spins on me and, for a moment, I’m sure he’ll resume the attack. Or just toss me back out into the depths and let the ocean do his dirty work. But he just glares and crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m listening.”
“What?”
“You have conditions. Name them. I’ll consider it.”
“How magnanimous of you.”
“You’re testing my patience.”
I laugh again. He could crush me with one of his giant tentacles and I’m drunk on the realization that he won’t. More, he can’t. He needs me to portal him to wherever he’s trying to go and it’s not like merfolk of the royal line drop into the ocean every day. There are maybe a dozen of us on the planet right now, though the number fluctuates a tiny amount as our father sends more of my sisters. Or at least that was the plan last anyone updated me. This monster needs me too much to kill me and the knowledge leaves me reckless. “You’re testing my ability to give a damn.”
“Lorelei.”
I think it’s the first time he’s ever said my name. No, I’m sure of it. I would have noticed if my entire body went tight at the sound the way it was doing now. I shake my head slowly, trying to clear it. “Don’t do that.”
His frustration disappears in an instant, his features smoothing out in a ripple I can almost see. Gone is anything lingeringly human about this creature, replaced by the cold mask that gave away nothing. “Your terms.”
It’s so close to what I demanded of him not too long ago that I nearly laugh aloud for a third time. I manage to swallow the sound. Something tells me that his patience truly is at an end and as suddenly confident as I am in my current position, there’s no reason to push my luck. I don’t have much of it left, after all. “Word has it that you’re a magic eater.”
“And?”
Neither confirmation nor denial, but he might as well have acknowledged it was the truth. You always did get it right, Amae. I push slowly to my feet, bracing myself when I sway a little despite my best intentions. “There’s a group of Deep Dwellers that have more than earned their deaths. You’ll help me deliver it.”
Abel let his arms drop and exhaled. “Revenge.”
“If you want to call it that.” I never thought I’d get the opportunity to become whole again, let alone punish the ones who’d done this to me in the first place. Now the chance to do both has landed in my lap and the only thing I have to do to earn it is portal one of the scariest monsters I’ve ever come across to somewhere else using a power I’ve had since I was born. Some of my sisters might caution to let it go and move on to the mission we were sent here for—to find a safe way for our people to travel back—but I’m no saint. I want to hurt those that took a piece of me, who sentenced me to living a half-life, so close to what I want and yet impossibly far away.
I want to do it now.
He stares at me for a long moment, the silence stretching into one beat, two, three. I tense in response. It’s possible I overplayed my hand. If the kraken can find me, he can find one of my sisters. They might not be in the unique position of being as damn near helpless as I am, but he’s as ancient as some celestial beings. If they don’t cooperate, he could just eat them.
I shudder, and it breaks the spell building between us. He nods slowly. “I’ll see it done.”
“No.” When Abel just stares, I square my shoulders. “I want to be there. I need to witness it. To participate.”
“It’s a bargain.”
I’m still half sure that this is a trap, but if it sees my will done then I’m willing to risk it. I’d managed some semblance of whatever normal was for the last two years, but with my necklace so close, I would have agreed to nearly anything he asked. A portal? Child’s play. I hold my hand out. “My necklace.”
“Not yet.” He slips it into his pocket and turns away. “Once you’re whole, you have no reason to see this bargain through. You’ll portal to your enemies and deal with them yourself, and my effort will have been for nothing. No, pretty, you’re stuck with me for the time being.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re excused.” He steps out of the bubble like it’s no barrier at all. As I watch, his form disappears in a cloud of what looks like ink. Ink that grows and grows, encompassing a space that’s too large to truly fathom. I stare, mouth wide open, as he reaches down with a single tentacle bigger around than my entire body.
The bastard pops my bubble.
I barely have time to inhale before the water rushes in. He wraps that same damn tentacle around my waist and then we’re moving. I can’t tell if it’s magic or if he’s really that fast. All I know is that before my air runs out, we’re back at the beach and he’s tossing me onto the sand as if I’m nothing more than yesterday’s trash. I hack up half a gallon of salt water and shove to my feet.
I’m alone.
“You are such a bastard!”
The darkness doesn’t answer, but I swear I feel the slightest hint of amusement from somewhere just beyond my reach. With how he’s acting, he’ll be damn lucky if I don’t portal him directly into a volcano. I’m powerless enough without him reminding me every chance he gets.
I trudge back to my house, my mind as sluggish as my steps. Too many developments in too short of time. I don’t know how to process it all. The possibility that I might be whole again haunts me in a way it hasn’t in years. I was so close. If I’d moved a little faster, been a little smarter, I might be whole right now.
Once I’ve secured the locks on the door, I strip down to my skin, leaving a trail of wet clothes behind me. I’ll pick them up tomorrow. Exhaustion turns my muscles to lead and my bones to stone. What little energy I gained from my saltwater bath is long gone, and I was too busy panicking about drowning in the deep to allow myself to soak in more from the ocean. I’ll have to take a dip tomorrow and hope Abel isn’t in the mood to screw with me further.
I don’t like my odds.
I collapse face down onto my mattress and barely manage to pull the comforter around me. In the morning… Everything will make more sense in the morning…
A clatter wakes me. I’m up and moving before my brain has processed that someone is in my house. An in
truder. I stumble to my dresser, my thoughts still sleep-clogged, and grab my gun. I hate the way the cool metal presses against my palm as I check to ensure there’s a bullet in the chamber. Guns are nasty business, and I wouldn’t touch one unless absolutely necessary. But avoiding being murdered by mundane means is more important than my pride—always has been. I give myself a shake to dispel the last of my fuzziness and stalk down the hallway toward the kitchen. It’s child’s play to avoid the squeaky boards and walk on the balls of my feet so I’m just shy of soundless.
I swing around the corner, gun raised, and freeze. I must be dreaming. I don’t feel like I’m dreaming with the hardwood freezing beneath my feet and the sunlight too bright against my eyes, but it’s the only explanation for what I’m seeing.
Abel.
In my kitchen.
Cooking.
I ease my finger off the trigger but don’t lower the gun. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“I never joke about food, pretty. Even mainlander food.” He glances over his shoulder and goes still. Those dark eyes take me in with a single sweep and then do it a second time. Slower. “You sleep in the nude. Interesting. You always wear those terrible printed pants when I’ve called you to the beach in the past.”
It’s right around then that I remember I’m naked. “I hate you,” I hiss and scramble back down the hallway to slam my door. The thin wood isn’t enough to drown out his low chuckle. I pull on the first thing I lay hands on—an oversized T-shirt that Pen gifted me last year from her trip down to San Francisco and a pair of cut-off shorts. It’s not nearly covering enough, but at this point I could clothe myself in a suit of armor and it wouldn’t clothe me enough.
There’s no damn reason it should matter that Abel has seen me naked. Except that he’s a powerful predator and I can’t even defend myself when I’m fully clothed and expecting a confrontation with him. Naked, I don’t stand a chance. I have to fight the impulse to go back to my room and throw on another layer before I return to the kitchen. The only reason I don’t is because it will broadcast how bothered I am by the fact he’s in my house.
