Wickedly Wonderful

by Deborah Blake

  Marcus knew that it was hard for his father to appear weak in front of him, but that didn’t make any of this easier to take. The truth was, he didn’t know why he was here at all, putting up with his old man’s bad temper and lousy attitude again after all these years. It wasn’t as though they liked each other. Hell, they hadn’t exchanged one word since Marcus ran away to join the Marines the day he turned eighteen. Until the day he’d gotten that call from his father’s doctor, Marcus hadn’t even been sure that his da was still alive. Or if he cared, one way or the other.

  And yet, here he was, sticking to the old man like a burr under a horse’s saddle; trying to make sure he made it to his chemo appointments and followed the doctor’s instructions. Not that anyone short of God Almighty could have gotten Marcus Senior to rest and take it easy. It was like trying to make a shark sit up and beg for treats.

  Much to his dismay, it turned out that Marcus cared after all. Even though seeing the old man brought back all the anger and grief. Even though they didn’t get along, no matter how hard he tried to keep the peace. Somewhere in his heart of hearts, it seemed that he wanted a relationship with his father after all. Hell of a time to figure that out.

  Marcus scrubbed at gritty eyes with the heels of his hands. They’d been up and out at five in the morning, and he hadn’t slept well the night before. Or the night before that. It was ironic that he’d slept just fine in the middle of a war zone, but ever since he’d gotten home, it seemed like every little noise had him wide awake and twitching at nothing. And sometimes his nightmares made it seem like he was right back in the midst of it all. It didn’t help that he and his da got on each other’s nerves so much, he’d taken to spending half his nights bunking on the boat, which wasn’t exactly built for comfort.

  Still, it was only temporary. Either his father would get better and Marcus could leave and get on with his life, or the cancer would beat the old man when nothing else could, and Marcus would leave and get on with his life. Either way—another six months or a year, max, and he was out of here. And not a moment too soon.

  “Marcus!” a tenor voice said happily, jarring him out of his funk. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked up to see a too-thin boy with a baseball cap perched at a jaunty angle over his bald head and an ashy undertone to his dark skin. Despite his obvious ill health, the youth radiated enthusiasm and goodwill. Tito was a frequent visitor to the chemotherapy unit; at twelve, he was battling leukemia with a grace that made Marcus like him from the first moment they’d met. He always took the time to talk to the boy when they were in the waiting room at the same time.

  “Hey, Tito, good to see you,” Marcus said. “I hope you’re not here for the coffee. That stuff will stunt your growth, you know.”

  Tito chuckled, sliding into one of the empty chairs at the table and waving his bottle of water as evidence to the contrary. “No way, man. I had to come get my levels tested before my next session, and my mom wanted to grab something to eat while we were here.” The boy lowered his voice. “She pulled another double shift at the plant, and I don’t think she remembered to pack enough lunch for both shifts.”

  Marcus had met Tito’s mother, too, of course. Candace Philips was a single mom who tried hard to balance spending time with her sick son with working extra hours at the town’s last remaining fish processing plant to help pay for his treatments. She was also unrelentingly cordial to Marcus’s father, no matter how crabby and rude the old man was.

  “Look, Mom,” Tito said as his mother walked over to the table, a half-empty tray in her hands. A limp tuna sandwich and an apple barely made a dent in its faded blue plastic expanse. “Marcus is here!”

  “Mr. Dermott,” Candace corrected him, and mustered a tired smile. “Hi there.”

  “Hi yourself,” Marcus answered, getting up to pull out a chair for her. “And Marcus is fine; Mr. Dermott is my father.”

  Candace sat as though her legs might not hold her for another moment, eyeing her dinner with a notable lack of enthusiasm. Marcus didn’t blame her.

  She looked around the room. “Is your father here?”

  “Emergency room,” Marcus said shortly, then held up a hand when she looked alarmed. “He’s fine. We were out in a storm and he pushed a little too hard. They’re pumping him up with fluids and balancing his electrolytes, and then he gets to go home.”

  “You were out in the boat in that storm?” Tito’s eyes looked even bigger in his gaunt face. “Wow. That must have been something.” He turned to his mother. “You know, Marcus promised to take me out fishing sometime. On his dad’s boat. That would be so cool.”

  Marcus smothered a grin at the boy’s enthusiasm. It had been a long time since he was that excited about going out on the water, but he could remember what it felt like as a boy. There was something magical about being out on the ocean.

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean it as a promise, Tito,” Candace said, with the tone of someone who had been let down one too many times. Marcus didn’t know what the story with the boy’s father was; just that he had never heard one mentioned.

  Tito’s face fell. “Oh, sure. I didn’t mean to be pushy or anything.”

  Marcus couldn’t stand the look of disappointment. “Hey, I have an idea,” he said.

  The other two looked at him, one with blank exhaustion, the other with budding excitement.

  “What?” Tito asked.

  “Well, if your levels check out okay, and your mom says it is all right, what about coming out in the boat with me tomorrow?” Marcus had no idea what had possessed him to offer. Since he’d gotten back, he’d studiously avoided emotional attachments of any kind. There was too much collateral damage when you got close to people. But this wasn’t a war zone, and Tito was just a sick kid.

  “Really?” Tito said, a wide grin showing off a mouthful of white teeth. His mother looked torn between hope and fear.

  “Sure, why not?” Marcus said recklessly. “The doctors told my father he had to take a day to rest before he could go back to work, and I’ve got this woman who is paying us to bring her out to a dive site, so I have to take the boat out anyway. She can only dive for a couple of hours, so we wouldn’t be out that long. You wouldn’t get too overtired.” Marcus found himself looking at Tito’s mother as eagerly as the boy was.

  Candace tried to appear stern, but an indulgent smile played around the corners of her chapped lips. “If his levels are good, and if you don’t keep him out too long, I suppose it is okay,” she said. Gratitude shone out of shadow-haunted brown eyes. “You’re sure it is no trouble? I have to work most of the day, but I can drop him off at the dock on my way in and then he can go to my mom’s house afterward.”

  Marcus high-fived Tito over the top of the table, trying not to notice how thin the boy’s hands were. “No trouble at all, ma’am. I hope you like fish, because we’re going to do our best to catch you a few for dinner.”

  “That would be great,” she said. “We used to be able to bring home a fish here and there from work, but since the catches lately have been so small, there simply isn’t anything extra.”

  “My father has been saying this is the worst year he can ever remember, and the other guys all pretty much agree.”

  Candace shook her head, looking grim. “It’s bad, all right. There are so few fish being brought in, they’re talking about shutting down the plant. There’s some guy who has been bugging the owners to sell; he wants to turn the space into luxury waterfront condos or something.” Her full lips pressed together. “The owners are third generation. They don’t want to lose the place. They know the locals need the jobs. But they may not have any choice if the fish don’t start running again soon.”

  She gave a sideways glance toward her son, blinking away tears before the boy could see them. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose that job. We need the health insurance to pay for Tito’s treatments. As it is, I’m barely covering the copays.”

  Marcus wished there was s
omething he could do. He’d heard stories from the other fishermen about how tough things had been—for years, really, but even worse now. Men like his father were having to go farther and farther away to catch fish, sometimes being away from home for days as they competed with fishermen farther up the coast for a dwindling supply of fish. But if the plant closed, that would be a disaster for everyone.

  Still, if there was one thing he’d learned in the service, it was that there was no point in fretting about the things you had no control over. As his old sarge used to say, “Figure out what you can do, then f-ing do it!”

  So Marcus gave Tito his biggest grin and said, “I guess we’re going to have to find us some fish, isn’t that right?” And he was going to do it, too, even if he had to beg Beka to talk to her damned dolphins again. He’d never live it down, but it would be worth it to see a smile on Tito’s and his mom’s faces.

  * * *

  BEKA WAS GLAD to hear that Marcus’s father was okay, and just as happy to discover that the Wily Serpent wasn’t going to head out to sea until the very reasonable hour of ten o’clock. That meant she could actually get in a morning of surfing, which she’d been pining for. It wasn’t as though she wasn’t spending every day in the ocean; hell, during yesterday’s storm she thought she might have absorbed half of it through her skin. But that wasn’t the same thing as catching a wave and riding it halfway up to the sky.

  Something about challenging the wild, untamed foamy sea made her feel completely alive, and for just a while, let her stop worrying about who and what she was, and just be.

  She was so eager to breach the blue-green depths, she must not have been watching where she was going as she moved purposefully toward the surf. Another body slammed into hers, two boards tumbling down to batter them both. A gallant hand reached down to help her to her feet, and she found herself gazing into the face of a god.

  Or maybe a movie star. It was California, after all, and anyone that good-looking was likely to be famous, or on his way to being so. He reminded her a bit of that guy who’d played a private detective, and then James Bond. His dark hair was smooth and silky looking, and his gray eyes gazed at her with admiration and no little amusement. After days of Marcus’s clearly expressed disdain and annoyance, it was kind of nice to see a man look at her that way. Even if she had just run him down with her surfboard.

  “Oh, hell,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m not,” her victim said with the flash of a dimpled grin. An Irish accent made the simple words pleasantly exotic. “Otherwise, we might never have met.”

  Something about him tugged at her senses. “I’m Beka,” she said, tilting her head to get a better look as she sat up straight. “Have we met before?”

  The dark-haired man gave her a hand up, then leaned over to kiss her fingers with a gallant bow. “Not as such, Baba Yaga,” he said. “But you know my father, Gwrtheyrn, King of the Selkies. I am Kesh, and I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Ah, a Selkie. No wonder he gave her tingles. Of the supernatural kind, anyway. Not like the tingles she got around Marcus. Dammit. Why couldn’t she be attracted to the gorgeous guy who actually seemed to like her?

  “Um, me too,” she said. Suddenly she felt self-conscious, out cavorting on the beach when she was supposed to be working on solving the Selkie and Merpeople’s problem. “I hope you don’t think I’m goofing off; really, I’ve been out diving every day, trying to find out what is wrong with the water in the Selkie home, and I’m going out again later today. I just had a couple of hours first and thought I’d come catch a wave or two. It helps me think, you know what I mean?”

  Kesh didn’t seem at all disturbed by what might have been interpreted by some as a frivolous distraction. Of course, he was obviously a surfer, too, so maybe he understood how addictive it could be. A little farther down the beach, the froth danced up on the wet sand in beckoning invitation.

  “So, are you making any progress?” Kesh asked casually as they picked up their boards and strolled closer to the water. Seagulls practiced aeronautical displays overhead, alert for the tasty tidbits dropped by early morning donut eaters.

  Beka bit her lip. “Well, it’s too soon to say for sure. Like I said, I’ve been diving every day, and taking samples from a few different spots. I can’t get down as deep as your home crevasse, of course, but I’ve collected kelp and other sea life from nearby and sent it off to a lab to be tested. I’m just waiting for the results.”

  “Oh?” Kesh put one warm hand on her arm to steer her around a curly-haired toddler who was chasing a small dog, both sets of stubby legs churning up sand as they went. “Which lab?”

  “The one at the university,” Beka said. “I have a friend there.”

  She gazed at him, impressed all over again by how attractive he was. He didn’t make her skin hum and buzz the way Marcus did, but he was having an actual conversation with her, instead of yelling, which made for a nice change.

  “You can tell your father I’m doing everything I can,” she said, not quite beseeching. “I haven’t seen anything obvious to tell me what is going on, and my magical senses just tell me there is something, but I’m sure I’ll get to the bottom of this soon. Then your people will be able to return to their homes.”

  White teeth gleamed in a tanned face as he gave her a charming smile. “Not to worry, darlin’,” he said. “I’ve got complete faith in you. Now how about we see which one of us can catch the largest wave? The loser can treat the winner to dinner tonight, after you get in from your diving.” Brown eyes twinkled at her. “That way, even if I lose, I win.”

  * * *

  KESH WATCHED BEKA walk away carrying her board tucked under her arm. She turned around at the edge of the road and waved, and he gave her a big grin, not letting it slide into the sneer that lurked behind it until she was gone from view.

  A lovely girl, she was. Pretty to look at and all heart and earnest Human emotion. Not at all like the Baba Yaga who preceded her, thank the gods. Now that one, she would have been tough to fool. But this silly girl? He already had her wrapped around his finger.

  That Brenna, she was a piece of work, she was. She and Beka had used this as a home base the last few years before the Queen of the Otherworld had dragged Brenna kicking and screaming into retirement, and he’d seen her do a thing or two that the High Queen might not approve of, had she but known.

  Not that Brenna wasn’t still poking her nose in, behind the scenes. She and Kesh had found a few small mutual goals, and she’d even given him advice on how to deal with the current Baba.

  According to Brenna, her replacement was insecure and uncertain of her abilities. Which was a damned good thing, as far as Kesh was concerned. There was no way he was going to let one inexperienced Baba Yaga ruin his carefully laid plans.

  The discovery that she’d been poking around had initially alarmed him, and he’d engineered this meeting on the beach to find out how far she’d gotten. And while he wasn’t happy about the samples she’d taken, it was clear that she had no clue as to what he’d been dumping in the ocean for the last few months. He’d just have to make sure she never found out.

  One way or the other.

  For the moment, his plan was simple: he’d take advantage of her vulnerability, woo her and stay close so he could keep track of her progress, and sabotage it as necessary. Kesh thought that, lacking confidence as she was, it would be easy to distract and mislead her, while charming her into trusting him completely.

  In fact, he’d had a rather brilliant flash after meeting her in person. She was, after all, stunningly pretty, and sooner or later he would need to take a mate to give him heirs for this new kingdom he was building on land. There were a few women among the Selkies he’d persuaded to follow him when he left, but none of them particularly appealed to him for the long term. If he played the game just right, he could not only exact his revenge, but also end up with the massive powers of a Baba Yaga to add to his own.

&
nbsp; Of course, if that didn’t work, he could always kill her.

  NINE

  BEKA AND FERGUS got to the Wily Serpent just before ten. Marcus was already there, along with an unexpected guest.

  “Hey, Beka,” Marcus said, nodding his head neutrally at Fergus. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m bringing along a friend of mine today. This is Tito. He gets chemo with my da, and I’ve been promising him a day out on the water. Thought I’d take advantage of my father not being around, and take Tito out to watch you dive. The two of us can throw a line in while you’re doing your thing.”

  There was something eager and a little vulnerable about the way he asked; after all, he could have just told her the boy was coming. It was his father’s boat. But it was clear to Beka that he wanted the boy to have a good time. And if that meant a truce for the day, it was just fine with her.

  “Hi Tito,” she said, climbing on board and stowing her gear out of the way. “I’m Beka, and this is my dive buddy Fergus. Nice to meet you.”

  The boy stuck his hand out politely and shook hers, then extended it to Fergus, his eyes bright as stars in the night sky. “That’s cool,” he said, looking down at Fergus’s hand and turning it sideways so he could get a better look. “You have little webs between your fingers. Does that help you swim?”

  Marcus cleared his throat, looking embarrassed. “Tito, dude, it’s not polite to comment on people’s, um, oddities.” He shrugged an apology at Fergus, who just laughed.

  “I do not mind,” Fergus said, grinning at the dark-skinned boy. He leaned down and whispered, “Can you keep a secret? I am actually a Merman from an undersea kingdom; that is why I have webs between my fingers.” He held up one bare foot and said in a more normal tone, “Toes, too, see?”

  Tito’s face was a study in conflicting awe and disbelief. “I never heard of a Merman,” he said, dubiously. “I thought there were only Mermaids. And they’re made up.”