Barbara smothered a laugh under one hand. “Babs is still getting used to being in the mundane world. A lot of our rules don’t make a lot of sense to her.”
Beka squatted down so she was on Babs’s level and said in a whisper, “Don’t tell anyone, but I think some of those rules are silly too.”
A tiny smile tugged at the edge of the little girl’s rosebud lips. “Okay,” she whispered back. “I won’t tell.” And then added in a louder voice, “I like her. Can we go swimming now?”
* * *
BEKA AND BARBARA sat on a blanket on the beach and watched Barbara’s new husband patiently showing little Babs how to float. They’d left their respective Chudo-Yudos up at the bus getting reacquainted and catching up on whatever dragons gossiped about. It was distinctly possible that their two erstwhile huts were gossiping, too, but it was always hard to say with semi-aware buildings. Especially once they acquired wheels.
“So,” Barbara said after a while. “What’s going on?”
Beka tried to remember what she’d put in the letter she’d sent, apologizing for not being able to make it to Barbara and Liam’s wedding. “Well, there’s a problem with the trench the Selkies and Merpeople live in; something is poisoning the water, and I’ve been tasked to find out what and fix it. And apparently there is a renegade riling up the local paranormal community and risking exposure of all our secrets.” She looked down, playing with a tiny shell. “I’m, um, not making a lot of headway.”
Barbara sighed. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you. I got a message from Chewie saying that you were having a crisis and needed someone to talk to—it’s pretty unusual for one Baba’s Chudo-Yudo to contact another Baba, so I thought I’d better come by in person instead of just calling.”
Oh, great. She couldn’t believe her dragon had interrupted Barbara’s honeymoon because he thought she couldn’t handle the situation. There might have been another moment in her life that had been more humiliating than this one, but she couldn’t think of it offhand.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, dropping her head into her hands. “I can’t believe he dragged you all the way out here for this. I’m fine, really.” Other than being completely mortified, that is.
“We really were in the area,” Barbara said, patting Beka clumsily on the shoulder. She wasn’t all that comfortable with Human gestures, having been raised by a Baba who’d been at the end of her career and not very good at being Human anymore. But she was trying. “We’ve been traveling across the country so we could show Babs some of her new world. And of course, with the Airstream being magical, it doesn’t take as long to get from place to place as it should. I’d already promised to show her the ocean, so coming here was no big deal, although we need to get back on the road later today.”
Barbara looked at Beka, studying her demeanor and posture. “And I’m not buying that ‘I’m fine’ shit, just in case you were wondering. You look terrible.” She bit her lip. “I mean, you look tired and depressed. Liam says I need to be less blunt with other people, but you’re a Baba—I’m not sure that counts.”
Beka choked on a laugh. She didn’t get to spend much time with either of her fellow Babas, but she liked them both. Barbara’s sharp tongue was part of her charm. And at least it meant you didn’t have to play any games with her.
“I’ll admit, things have been a little tough,” Beka said. “This is my first big solo job since Brenna left, and I’m kind of feeling like I’m in over my head. Brenna actually came to visit me recently and suggested that I resign and let her take over.” It was the first time she’d said the words out loud, and they sounded weighty and final, like a heavy door closing with a thud.
“Did she?” Barbara said. “That explains a lot.” She chewed on fingernail thoughtfully. “And are you considering it? Resigning, I mean.”
Beka shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I’d already been thinking that maybe this wasn’t the life for me.” She pointed down at the water, where Babs was splashing around in the shallow waves on the shore, a faint smile adorning her normally solemn face. “I keep thinking that I’d like to have a kid of my own.” Her heart contracted at the sight, feeling as though there were slivers of jagged rock piercing her to her core. “It will be years before I’m advanced enough to be training someone like you are.”
“That’s true,” Barbara said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to have children in your life. Every Baba’s path is different. To be honest, I put it off as long as I could, thinking I would be as bad with kids as my mentor was. But as it turns out, I really like having Babs around.” She gave a rueful grin. “Of course, it helps that I have Liam. He’s really great with her. With both of us.”
Beka stifled any thoughts of Marcus, trying not to picture him in Liam’s place, laughing and playing in the sunlit waters. “I’m really glad you found him,” she said.
“Me too,” Barbara said. “Is there anyone special in your life?”
Yes. No. Maybe. “It’s complicated,” Beka said.
Barbara snorted. “You’re a Baba Yaga. It always is.”
They sat in companionable silence for a moment, and then Beka asked, “Did you ever consider walking away before it was final? Being a Baba, I mean.”
Barbara gave her a startled look. “And give up magic? Never.” She narrowed her amber eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re really thinking about quitting—that’s crazy.”
“Brenna said—”
“Screw Brenna,” Barbara said, scowling at her friend. “She was way out of line saying you should resign, and you know it.”
“But—”
“There are no buts here, Beka,” Barbara said, “other than the big, fat, hippie butt I’d like to kick into next week. For one thing, retired Baba Yagas don’t ever get to come back. There’s a reason they retire, and it usually has to do with them being too old or too crazy to do the job anymore. Or too dead, I suppose, but that’s another issue. For another thing, all Babas struggle with their first assignments on their own. I did, and Bella did; that’s the nature of the job. You’ll do fine in the end, I promise.”
A tiny blip of hope felt like a hiccup in Beka’s chest. “Really? You felt overwhelmed by your first task too?”
Barbara threw back her head and laughed so loud, Liam glanced up the beach at her and smiled quizzically. She waved at him before turning her attention back to Beka. “Honey, during my first solo task, I blew up a volcano. The very volcano I was supposed to stop from erupting, in fact.”
“Holy crap,” Beka said, feeling perversely better. “What happened?”
“After it blew up, it stopped erupting,” Barbara said. “Problem solved. There was just a bigger mess to clean up than I’d planned on.” She put one arm around Beka’s shoulders, awkwardly but kindly. “You’re going to be fine. I don’t care what Brenna said. She wouldn’t have chosen you to train as her replacement if you didn’t have what it took to be a Baba Yaga. You just need to have a little faith in yourself.”
Beka sighed. “That’s not always easy.”
Barbara shook her head. “If it were easy, everybody would do it. And you’re not everybody; you’re a Baba Yaga. That’s way better.”
* * *
MARCUS SAT IN the hospital waiting for his father to finish up his chemo. Since the incident with the shredded nets, his da seemed to fade away day by day, as if the fight had drained out of him like air from a leaky balloon. Marcus had held true to his promise to replace the nets, but he might as well not have bothered. All they brought up was seaborne debris—a dismal harvest of empty plastic bottles, bubble-edged once-white plastic cooler lids, and bedraggled bits and pieces of sunken ships that had suddenly been imbued with a mysterious desire to return to the surface. Every once in a while there was a fish or two, but they were all dead or diseased, with blank staring eyes and ragged fins.
Marcus was a little depressed, too, although only part of that could be blamed on the lack of fish or his da
’s ill health. Truth be told, he missed Beka. He missed having her around the boat, always there to lend a hand with cheerful enthusiasm. He missed seeing her bright smile and gleaming hair, missed the way he felt when he was around her. The Wily Serpent seemed to have lost some of its little remaining shine without her aboard. Hell, the whole world was darker without her daily presence in his life. He was an idiot.
An idiot for having fallen for her so hard. But an even bigger idiot for having let her go.
He still found it hard to believe what she’d told him—that she was some kind of magical being, like out of the stories his da used to tell. But her demonstration had been unmistakably real, and it certainly explained a few things that had baffled him, including how she ended up in the middle of the ocean to be caught in his nets in the first place. And a man didn’t survive a dozen years in a war zone without seeing a thing or two that couldn’t be explained away by the rational mind.
She was a witch. An honest to god, magical witch. Hell. He couldn’t decide if that was worse or better than thinking she was just some flaky surfer chick. Either way, she was completely unsuitable for him. Completely, totally, and irrevocably not his type. So why did he miss her like a phantom limb?
He’d turn a corner and see some woman with a fall of long yellow-gold hair, and for a moment, his heart would seize up in his chest, thinking it was Beka. Or he’d catch a whiff of strawberries, impossible on the ocean breeze. At night, she haunted his dreams; swimming, laughing, scowling at him with those big sapphire eyes, or naked, writhing in pleasure beneath him, all tanned flesh and glowing joyfulness.
Waking alone and realizing he’d lost her—that was the worst.
Well, that and wondering if she was seeking comfort in the arms of that damned too-good-looking Kesh, who no doubt had been just waiting for Marcus to do something stupid, like walking away from the best woman on the entire planet.
He was an idiot squared. An idiot times infinity. He’d kick his own ass if the universe wasn’t already doing such a good job of it. Damn, he missed that woman.
* * *
DAMN, SHE MISSED that man. Beka tried to focus on Alexei’s report, but she was feeling even sicker and shakier than ever, and having a hard time focusing. That was the only reason she couldn’t seem to keep her mind on topic. It had nothing to do with Marcus.
“Beka, are you listening to me?” Alexei rumbled, his deep basso voice bouncing off the paneled walls of the bus. “I haven’t spent the last three nights crawling through every dive bar in town where paranormal creatures are known to hang out just for my health, you know.” He gave her a broad grin that was almost lost within his beard. “Of course, I did have a bit of fun breaking heads and twisting arms so people would tell me the truth.”
Gregori rolled his eyes at his larger comrade. “A bit of fun? We’re banned from half the bars down by the wharf now. And the other half are just too scared of you to try it. Why can’t you learn to ask politely?”
“Like you do?” Alexei said with a snort. “I seem to recall one poor Selkie lad you held up over your head for an hour while you drank beer with the other hand.”
“Well, I didn’t need both hands to hold him up there; why not drink beer? And he did eventually tell us what we needed to know.”
“Boys,” Beka interjected, not up to listening to any more gleeful recaps of the Riders’ unique methods of information gathering. “I assume that you actually did learn something from all this carousing and harassing of the locals, beside which tavern serves the best ale.”
“The Cranky Seagull,” they both said in unison.
Swell. The one place she could never go again, for fear of running into Marcus or his father. It figured.
“Lovely,” she said in an uncharacteristically snappy voice. “I’ll be sure to pass along your recommendation to the Queen. Now, if we had something a little more helpful to tell her at the same time, that might be good too.”
Gregori raised one feathery eyebrow, the color of ink. “Are you all right, little one? You don’t quite seem yourself.”
“Yes,” Alexei agreed, grabbing another handful of chips from the bowl on the table between them. “You are acting almost as crabby as Barbara. But on you, it is not so natural. What is the matter?”
A black mountain shifted underneath them, nudging the table an inch or two to the left. “She’s pining for her fisherman,” Chewie said morosely. “And so am I. I liked him, even if he was Human. Also, I think she’s sick. Pass me the chips, will you?”
Alexei put the bowl on the floor. “Sick? Baba Yagas don’t get sick.”
“I’m fine,” Beka said, propping her aching head on one hand and trying to look perkier than she felt. “I’m just tired.”
“This is more than just tired,” Gregori said, peering at her more closely. “I have been watching you, and you move like your whole body hurts. There are dark circles under your eyes, and you hardly eat anything at all. Surely this is not all because of some man.”
Beka nudged Chewie with one bare foot and muttered, “Thanks so much for sharing, buddy.”
“You’re welcome,” he muttered around a mouthful of chips. “But she doesn’t smell right either. She’s sick.”
Gregori and Alexei both sniffed at her. Beka couldn’t figure out whether to laugh or cry, burying her face in her palms for a moment before pushing her chair back from the table.
“Guys, I’m fine. Can we just focus on the matter at hand?”
Alexei settled back with a grunt, grabbing another bag of tortillas off the counter behind him without bothering to turn around. It helped to have the longest arms in the room. But Gregori still gazed at her, his dark eyes calm but concerned.
“When is the last time you had some of the Water of Life and Death?” he asked. “That should cure whatever is wrong with you.”
Beka couldn’t remember off the top of her head. Things had been a little crazy, and her brain felt like mush. Babas usually drank a small amount of the magical elixir once or twice a month, so it couldn’t have been that long ago.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Last week? The week before? I’ll have some later, okay? Right now, I’d really like to know what you’ve come up with, so we can deal with this problem once and for all. Do you have any idea yet who this mysterious renegade is?”
Surreptitiously, she crossed her fingers.
“We do have an idea, yes,” Alexei said with a smirk, his enthusiasm making his accent even thicker than usual. Bits of tortilla scattered as he spoke, and Gregori sighed, cleaning a speck of food off his immaculate red pants.
“You do?” Beka said.
“We do.” Gregori almost looked pleased; on him, it was the equivalent of an ear-to-ear grin. “At least, we have a description, and a likely place to look. One of the Merpeople we talked to last night—well, early this morning, really, since it was about three a.m. by the time we’d finished our little chat—was eventually convinced to share the information that our unknown pal has an appointment at an abandoned dock tonight. The only reason our informant knew anything about it was because he apparently uses that place to make his transformation when he comes onto land, and this mystery man warned him to stay away this evening. Or else.”
“He seemed quite frightened by our mysterious friend,” Alexei added with a certain relish. “But for some reason he found us even more intimidating. Go figure.”
“You did have your big, meaty paw wrapped around his family jewels at that point in the conversation,” Gregori pointed out. “This might have had something to do with it.”
“Nah,” Alexei said. “It vas my delightful personality.”
Beka laughed. She loved working with the Riders. They always cheered her up.
“So, you have a place to look for him, and you said you know what he looks like too? That’s great.” She could almost feel hope creeping up on her like a sunrise over the ocean. “Is he an ogre? Some kind of Nixie?”
Chewie gave a great barking laugh
. “You know ogres aren’t smart enough to plan anything. And no one would follow a Nixie; they’re just too unpleasant. All those sharp teeth, ugh.”
“Look who’s talking about sharp teeth,” Beka muttered. But she patted him on his massive head anyway, and gave him most of her sandwich. They were having their meeting over an early dinner for her, more like a late breakfast for the Riders, since they’d been up most of the night and hadn’t woken up until after two that afternoon.
“We’re not completely sure what kind of creature our renegade is,” Gregori said, looking thoughtful. “He has only appeared to people in his Human-seeming form. But everyone we’ve talked to paints the same picture: tall, dark hair, gray eyes, very handsome, very charming and charismatic, speaks with an Irish accent, acts like he owns the world. And by all accounts, he is very bitter about what Humans have done to the sea, so we’re assuming he is some kind of ocean being.”
Beka closed her eyes, shaken to her core. She knew someone who matched that portrayal exactly, right down to the attitude. But it couldn’t be—could it? She couldn’t have been that wrong about him. Besides, that description could apply to plenty of people—almost all the Selkies had black hair, gray eyes, and a dislike for the Humans who had despoiled their oceans.
Chewie gave a great roar and sprang to his feet, causing the table to rock back and forth until Gregori caught it in a steadying hand. “Aha!” the dragon said, looking around as if for someone to bite. A very particular someone. He gave Beka an accusing glare. “I told you I didn’t like him. Didn’t I? I told you there was something off about that damned Selkie.”
Alexei and Gregori exchanged puzzled glances, turning to Beka with identical expressions of confusion written on their very different faces.
“Wait,” Alexei said, scratching his beard and producing a rain of crumbs. “You know this person?”
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