Beka put down the piece of lobster she’d been about to eat. “I’ve brought samples from a variety of spots to a friend of mine at the University of California at Santa Cruz. They have some amazing, state-of-the-art labs there, and I’m expecting him to call me with the results within a couple of days.” She gave him a strained smile. “You can tell your father I’m working on finding the answer as fast as I can.”
Kesh saw no point in mentioning that he and his father hadn’t spoken in six months, and popped a delicate oyster into his mouth instead. It tasted of the sea, salty and smooth with the essence of the ocean. He gazed longingly for a moment at the waves whooshing quietly against the shore before yanking his attention back to his companion. This was his place now, and he was not going to lose it. In the end, he would rule it, taking it one piece at a time until he owned it all. Destroying the sea he’d come from and could no longer have would simply be an amusing sideline.
“Once you find out what is contaminating the home waters in the trench, what do you intend to do about it?” he asked, as if only out of idle curiosity. “Do you have some kind of plan?”
Even in the darkness of the summer night, he could see the blush that stained her high cheekbones a becoming pink, like the inside of a shell.
“Well, it depends on what is causing the issue, of course,” she answered.
Kesh shrugged. “Surely it is some Human taint, brought about by their encroachment on our world.” A hint of bitterness crept out to color his voice. “We should never have allowed them to drive us so far into the depths, hiding like frightened fish from the relentless teeth of the shark. We are the predators here, not they.”
“I wouldn’t call Selkies predators,” Beka said. “They’re tough and strong, and beneath the sea they are a match for almost anything, but fortunately, they are a peaceful race.”
“And see where that has gotten them,” Kesh sneered. “Chased from their own homes by the poisons of others.”
Beka put a comforting hand over one of his, scooting closer to him on the blanket. “We don’t know that’s true,” she said. “I know you’re worried about your kingdom, but I promise you, I’ll do everything I can to help.”
Kesh draped his arm loosely around her shoulder and gave her his most charming smile. “Perhaps we can work together on the problem, my dear Baba. I have a feeling that we would make a wonderful team.” His chuckle echoed across the sand and into the warm night, and below the moon-kissed waters, small creatures scurried to hide in the safety of the reef’s jagged landscape.
* * *
FRONDS OF KELP danced coyly around her ankles the next day as Beka floated far enough below the surface that only a faint light filtered down to illuminate her task. Not that she needed much light for what she was about to attempt. Only her own powers and some luck. A lot of luck, probably.
Collecting samples wasn’t getting her anywhere. It was time to try something a little less passive and a little more Baba Yaga. Magic. The very thought made her stomach churn and shoulders tighten under their slick neoprene covering; her breath reverberated harshly through the regulator between her lips.
Calm down, Beka, she ordered herself sternly. You’ve spent years training to do this. Even Brenna admitted that you have power. The other day you calmed a crazy-ass storm. You can do this. She tried not to think about how difficult it was to work magic under this much water or to hear Brenna’s voice echoing in the back of her mind, tone pitying. “Don’t worry, dear, you’ll get the hang of it eventually. I’m sure you will.”
The Selkies and the Merpeople couldn’t wait for eventually. They needed her to fix this now. So water or no water, she was going to try.
There was no way to use any of her magical tools down here, and she didn’t have the luxury of time to spend getting into the right mind-set, as she normally would for anything this tricky. But she didn’t intend to try to fix the entire crisis right now—just see if she could mend one small part of it. If that worked, she’d come up with a way to address a larger area.
The biggest problem was that she still didn’t know what she was dealing with. Knowing the cause to any issue always made it easier to come up with a solution. But since she was still no closer to finding the answers, she was desperate enough to try anything. Despite the tingles of fear and trepidation that made her fingers shake as she wrapped them gently around a limp and pallid pink starfish.
Even in the dilute light trickling down through the layers of water, she could see that its color was off, and it drooped in her hands instead of being taut and muscular. Poor thing. Its life energy had dwindled so low she could barely sense it, although she could feel the mysterious illness it carried like a low-voltage buzz humming through her fingertips.
Carefully, slowly, she pulled a strand of elemental power through her core and out into the palms of her hands. The water around the starfish took on a golden glow as her magic flowed into its body. For a moment, a breath, a heartbeat, Beka thought she could sense it working, and her pulse raced. Then the small creature shuddered and died, the last of her magic sliding uselessly into the darkness of the murky water.
Beka opened her hands and let the sad little body drift away, down to the bottom far beneath them. It had probably been on the verge of dying before she got there. There was too much water for undirected magical work. She knew these things were true. But she couldn’t help feeling the weight of its passing as more evidence that Brenna had been right, and she just wasn’t ready to be a Baba Yaga.
And maybe she never would be.
* * *
“THAT’S IT, I quit,” Beka said as Fergus used one strong arm to help her over the side of the Wily Serpent. Her bare feet hit the deck with an emphatic thud, wet suit dripping saltwater rain onto the worn wooden planks.
Marcus straightened up from tidying nets around the corner from where they stood, telling himself it didn’t count as eavesdropping if you simply happened to be there.
“Still nothing?” Fergus inquired, his tone sympathetic but not surprised.
Marcus snorted to himself, stifling the sound. He’d told her there was no damned treasure down there.
“Nothing that I can find, anyway. Although clearly there’s something, or I wouldn’t keep coming across fish and plants that were dead, or soon to be.” She tossed her collection bags onto the deck with a frustrated thump. “I’m tired of gathering up masses of blighted kelp and three-legged starfish. Even without them for evidence, I can sense the damage to the ecosystem—I just can’t pin down what the hell is causing it. I am checking different sections to see if I can find anything out of the ordinary and finding nothing. Nothing except bits and pieces of sea life that are dying or warped for no obvious reason. I keep collecting samples for the lab to look at, but if they can’t give me answers, I’m at a dead end. And my powers are no help at all. It’s driving me crazy!”
Wait. What the hell was she talking about? Kelp and starfish? Damage to the ecosystem? Marcus felt like he’d opened a straightforward ship’s log and fallen headfirst into a mystery novel instead. What the hell did dead fish have to do with sunken treasure?
Beka’s voice was muffled, as if she’d dropped her head into her hands. “I’m failing your people, Fergus, and the others too. I’m so sorry.”
“Maybe this laboratory will find the answers we seek,” Fergus said. “If not, you will think of something else. You are the Baba Yaga.”
“Hmph,” Beka said. “That’s the current theory, anyway.” Marcus could hear her gusty sigh from where he stood. “Regardless, there’s no point in my diving anymore until we get the results back from the lab. You might as well head home for now.”
“Are you certain?” Fergus asked, but even Marcus could tell the other man was relieved. “I would like to see my wife and children again, and check on my little son. He was one of the babes affected by the illness, and part of my reason for volunteering to help. If you are assured that you will not need me further for the moment, I wi
ll gladly return to my family.”
“Go with my blessing,” Beka said. “I’m sorry we don’t have a cure for your son yet. What are you going to tell their majesties?”
“I will tell them the truth: that you are working diligently on the problem and will soon have a solution,” Fergus said gravely.
Marcus almost fell over. Fergus was married with children, there was some kind of illness, and now they were talking about royalty? Were they using some kind of code? Clearly, there was something going on here that had nothing to do with salvage. And he was going to find out what, dammit.
* * *
ONCE THE BOAT pulled into port, Marcus walked Beka and Fergus to the end of the pier. Fergus nodded at him and gave Beka a friendly peck on the cheek before walking off with a lanky, confident stride, leaving his diving gear sitting in a heap at Beka’s feet.
Marcus indicated the equipment. “He’s not going to need that anymore?” Marcus had decided, probably against his better judgment, to give Beka a chance to explain herself. She might be flaky, but in the week they’d spent together, he’d never gotten the impression that she was a liar. If anything, she’d gone to great lengths to dance around the truth. Maybe there was some kind of reasonable explanation—although for the life of him, he couldn’t think of what that might be.
“You’ll be relieved to know that you’re rid of me at last,” Beka said, giving him a smile that didn’t quite have its usual radiance, although it tried gamely. “I’m giving up on the diving for now, although there’s always the chance I might need to go out again at some point. Tell your father I’ll drop off the final payment tomorrow.”
“Didn’t find what you were looking for?” Marcus asked, the very personification of innocence.
She rolled her eyes at him. “I think you know I didn’t. Are you going to say ‘I told you so’ now?”
“I’d rather take you for a beer,” he said, enjoying the look of shock on her sun-burnished face. “And have you tell me exactly what’s going on here.”
Beka opened her mouth, then closed it again without saying anything after taking a careful look at his expression. He stood there patiently, arms crossed, in what his men used to call the “Hell can freeze over before I move” pose. There’d never been a marine who didn’t eventually cave when faced with that pose, and Beka was no different.
Finally, she heaved a sigh, glanced at her waterproof diving watch, and shrugged in defeat. “I’m meeting someone later, but I guess I have enough time for a beer.”
Marcus tried not to grind his teeth at the thought of the someone she was meeting; no doubt her mysterious surfer pal again. None of his business, after all. Even though his heart sometimes whispered that it would like it to be. He stowed the diving gear back on the boat and escorted her to his favorite bar, the Cranky Seagull.
Inside, it looked like what it was: a working sailor’s tavern. No frills for tourists, no cute pink umbrellas in the starkly utilitarian glasses. But the beer was cold, the bartender minded his own business, and nobody cared if you smelled like fish at the end of a long day at sea. The dusty floor, the long wooden bar, and the massive beams in the ceiling had all come from the bodies of long-dead ships, sailing now only in the dreams of hard-drinking men. Since he’d come back to Santa Carmelita, the Cranky Seagull was the only place that had felt remotely like home.
“Nice,” Beka said as they grabbed a beer each and a table toward the back, away from the rowdy bunch playing five-card-draw with a tattered deck. Marcus gave her a sharp look, thinking she was insulting his favorite watering hole, but she was gazing around with a slight grin, admiring the aging sepia prints of ancient seafaring men and their long-ago catches.
“It is,” he agreed, impressed by the way she seemed to fit in wherever she went, even here, where she should have stuck out like a sore thumb. Beauty among the beasts. But she just waved at the drunken card players, gave the bartender a thumbs-up as she took her first swallow of the house brew, and settled in across from Marcus as if they’d been coming there together forever. He had to remind himself that he was there to get the truth, not to watch the way the dim lights made her blue eyes glisten like the summer sky outside. The subtle aroma of fresh strawberries teased at his nostrils, even in the midst of the yeasty, beery smell of the bar.
Might as well get to the point, he thought. “So, are you going to tell me what the hell you’re really up to?”
She choked a little on a swallow of beer, those miraculous eyes widening with alarm. “What?”
Marcus looked at her steadily across the splintery table, which bore witness to the history of those who’d sat there before them in deep-carved initials and the names of ships and women, indistinguishable from one another with the passage of time.
“I overheard you and Fergus talking on the boat,” he said bluntly. “I didn’t understand most of it—something about dying kelp and some mysterious illness, and people depending on you to find some kind of answers—but it was enough to make it pretty damn clear that you were never diving for buried treasure. So I want to know what you were looking for; the truth, this time, if you please.”
Beka’s face went blank for a moment, then she sighed, took one last gulp of beer, and set her mug resolutely down on the table. “Fine,” she said. “But I have to warn you, there are secrets involved here that aren’t mine to tell. I’ll explain what I can, and I won’t lie, but there are things I’m not free to speak about. If you can accept that, I’ll share what I can.”
Marcus set his jaw, but nodded. It was a place to start, anyway. “So, not buried treasure,” he repeated.
“That wasn’t exactly a lie,” Beka said, a tiny smile playing at the corner of her lips. “If I can find the answers I’m looking for, they will be worth more than gold to the people involved. And the answers are most certainly buried—at least, I haven’t been able to find them.”
The moment of frivolity slid away, leaving her expression solemn and her eyes shadowed. “There is something wrong with the water down there,” she said. “Plants and fish are being affected, and some people have gotten ill too. We don’t know why, or how to fix it, and that’s what I was trying to find out.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Marcus asked. “Are you working for the government? Is that why I haven’t heard anything about this? Are they covering this up?” He thought about the load of fish he’d delivered to market a couple of days ago. “Hey! Am I poisoning people with the few fish I’m bringing in?” He started to rise from the table, suddenly furious, but she waved a placating hand in his direction and he subsided. For now.
“Sort of, no, no, and definitely not,” she said, the laughter in her voice calming him more than her words. “The fish closer to the surface, the ones you’re catching, seem to be fine. It’s the plant and animal life deeper down in the sea trenches that seem to be affected.”
He opened his mouth, and she added, “And don’t ask me how that is affecting people, because that’s one of the things I can’t tell you. They’re . . . a special group.”
So she sort of worked for the government, and there was some kind of secret underwater experiment that had run into trouble? He’d heard rumors about that kind of thing when he was in the Marines, but hell, you heard all kinds of bizarre rumors about new weapons and super-soldiers and government experiments when you were in the military. Mostly they didn’t amount to much. But maybe he’d stumbled onto something real. Or maybe it was all as foolish and delusional as the fairy stories his father used to charm his younger brother with, getting him so wrapped up in the so-called magic of the sea that he forgot to watch out for its grim reality.
“Okay, so let’s say that for the moment, I’m taking your word about all this. Why is it your job to fix it? You’re a hippie chick jewelry-making surfer girl. Why aren’t there a bunch of government geeks looking into it with submersibles and an army of scientists?”
Beka sighed, suddenly looking ten years older. “Believe it or not, it really is my job
to fix it. I’ve got some, um, special skills. And the responsibilities to go with them.” She gazed steadily at him. “I’m thinking you know a little something about how that feels.”
That he did. And the project must be so hush-hush that they’d brought in one troubleshooter instead of a larger group that would have been harder to keep on the down low. Hell, she’d fooled him into thinking she was just another flaky California blonde, so there was something to that plan. Although to his credit, he’d had a feeling something wasn’t quite right about her all along. He just hadn’t known what it was.
“So you haven’t made any progress at all?” he said, feeling more than a hint of sympathy. He’d hated failing at a mission. That’s one of the reasons he’d rarely let it happen. The few truly spectacular failures still kept him up at night, replaying endlessly in his head as though he could somehow change the outcome even now.
One shoulder, clad in the simple white sundress she’d pulled over her bathing suit before leaving the boat, moved up and down. “I’ve got a bunch of samples from different places, taken over a variety of days. Hopefully they’ll tell me something I can use to help—”
As if on cue, her cell phone vibrated. She pulled it out of the pocket of the dress, looked at the caller ID, and said apologetically, “That’s my friend from the lab, actually. I have to take this. Sorry.”
She bent her head over the phone, hiding it under a fall of sunbeam hair. Marcus watched her face, more out of habit than any expectation of learning anything, so he saw the moment when the blood drained away, leaving her almost as pale as her sundress.
“What?” she said. And then, “You’re kidding me.” A pause for the person on the other end of the phone to speak some more. “All of them? You’re sure? Was anyone hurt?” Pause. “How long before you are up and running again? Shit.” That last word was uttered in a heartfelt gust of breath. “Okay, Bran. Thanks for letting me know. And I’m sorry.”
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