human self that was dark-skinned, slim, and fit, sporting a thick, curly mane of dark hair that fell over large brown eyes. I suppose some people have a better imagination than I do, since if I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have conjured such a lady-killer image on my own.
Solis bent forward into my line of sight. I’d almost forgotten the men were there. He scowled at Fielding. “So, you played the lothario.” I wondered whether his contempt came from the thought of his own daughters in a few years of if there was some other source of his anger.
Fielding scrunched up his furry brow, puzzled for a moment. “That’s from Shakespeare, right? Was he, like . . . Romeo’s friend?”
“No,” Quinton said. “It’s from an eighteenth-century play about a woman who is seduced by a selfish jerk who takes off after he ruins her marriage. Lothario was the jerk.”
We all stared at him.
“Hey. I had to read it for a college lit class.”
Fielding glanced away. “Oh. Yeah. Well, I wasn’t
Solis continued to glower at him. “In your final log entry, you wrote that you did not stop a rape, that you were equally guilty. . . .” Ah, so maybe it was being a cop as much as a father of daughters stirring up his anger.
Fielding swallowed hard. “Oh . . . yeah. Umm . . . I have had
I turned and glared at Solis. “Can we get back to the original question and catch up to pointing fingers in a few minutes, Rey?”
“‘Rey’?” Quinton muttered under his breath.
It seemed better to use his first name and remind the lot of them that once the freaky stuff was in our faces, we were no longer operating on normal protocols and it was now my show. I turned the quelling glance on Quinton next, raising an eyebrow, challenging him to make something of it. He settled down with a sheepish grin. Solis was still fuming but he nodded curtly and sat back.
“So . . . you became a dobhar-chú because you were kissed by a mermaid?” I asked.
“Ah. No. This is the really weird bit.”
Quinton smothered a snort.
“Just go on,” I prompted.
“See, my mother— No. Let me say this first: the dobhar-chú aren’t usually shape-shifters, any more than they’re magic users. It takes a special circumstance to be born with two forms. My mom was one of those rare few. Usually the dobhar-chú are not a friendly or social bunch—kind of vicious and unpleasant, actually—but when they moved to North America from Ireland, some things changed and they had to get smarter to avoid being killed for fur. So this aberration started—this is what my mom told me before she took off.”
“She left you?”
Fielding nodded. “She left me and my dad a couple of years after the swimming incident and disappeared. Eventually I assumed she went back to her clan, but when I asked the Father Otter here he had never heard of her.”
I stopped him with a waving hand. “Who or what is the Father Otter?”
He hmmed a bit before answering. “Sort of the local clan chief of the dobhar-chú. I’ll get to that in a second. Oh, and incidentally, that’s how I heard about you; the water hounds are good at gathering information, even though they rarely use it for themselves. They’re sort of the information brokers of the local marine paranormal economy, so to speak. ’Cause who can resist a cute otter that’s hanging out near their boat or begging for attention at the marina? That’s mostly how they stay out of other monsters’ sights—by being useful and cute. But they didn’t have any information about my mom, so I don’t know what happened to her. And I probably never will.” He shook his head as if rejecting that thought. “
Seventh pup of a seventh pup rang true—I’d seen that on one of the Web sites I’d found about dobhar- chú, along with references to their viciousness—but I’d never seen any mention of shape-shifting or magic or their presence in North America. Still, I wasn’t going to stop the flow of his story now, even if I had doubts about its purity, so I just looked encouraging and leaned on the Grey a touch to give it a little unnatural weight.
Gary went along like a pebble rolling downhill. “But anyhow, I guess that kiss did something—marked me or something. When I met Shelly—um, Shelly Knight—I noticed she always stared at me real intensely and it made me feel strange. I thought it was because she wanted me. That tells you what a conceited ass I was back then, but Shelly was so . . . sexy and so . . . I don’t know. She was special. If we asked her to work on the boat she always said yes, and she’d watch me but she always kept her distance. I thought she was playing hard to get. But that wasn’t it.”
He was about to continue when Zantree slid down the ladder from the flying bridge and joined us around the fish hold. At first he just glanced around, as if trying to see which one of us had been speaking, but when his eyes passed over Fielding he did a double take and stared. “What in the name of hell are you?”
Fielding seemed to shrink and tried to slide lower in the water, but as soon as he did the water boiled and his skin turned paler and furless. He began to gasp and choke on the water that was suddenly splashing and washing over his face as blood seeped from his mutating nose and mouth.
Solis and I were the first to grab him and haul his upper body above the waterline. He coughed and spat up water for a minute or so, writhing around as his face and body reverted to a half-human, brown-furred state.
Zantree bumped backward into the cabin doors as he twitched back from the sight of Fielding in transition. “Dear God,” he muttered. “I never . . . never thought I’d see such a thing.” He glanced around with jerky movements. “Do you—you all know about this?”
Quinton caught his gaze calmly. “No. It was a surprise to us as well.”
“Well . . . what is that . . . thing?”
“That’s . . . Gary Fielding. Did you know him about . . . I guess it’s twenty-five or thirty years ago?”
Zantree’s eyes were as wide open as Sunday church doors. “Gary . . . ? What happened to him . . . ? And where’s he been all this time?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. He was what was hanging on to the swim step when we cast off at Port Townsend.”
“Jesus! I thought it was a sea lion, even when you told me it wasn’t. Sure wasn’t expecting that,” he added, giving Fielding a hard glare.
By this time Fielding had stabilized and was breathing easier. The blood had stopped flowing from his mouth and nose and now left a red swirl in the water. Salt-crusted tears dribbled from his eyes, leaving a track on the fur of his face. The white scars on his face and body sparkled for a moment with tiny violet stars as the haze around him flashed a bright emerald green that vanished as quickly as it had come. The sight startled me a little and I glanced up from Fielding in a momentary panic. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Fielding responded, glancing around.
“You . . . sparkled.”
He coughed up a laugh. “Like an ice skater in sequins?”
I scowled at him. “No, like a spell.”
“Maybe because I’m under one?” he replied in a snotty tone.
“Don’t start with me, Otter Boy,” I snapped back. “You wanted my help and I’m giving it, but I don’t have to. We can toss you overboard and go home anytime.” Not that I really could with the Guardian Beast lurking around, but that was no one’s business but mine.
He cowered a little but not enough to have another fit of uncontrolled shape-shifting.
Solis, looking uncomfortable, broke the tension by asking, “Who is piloting the boat?”
Zantree shook himself and looked away from Fielding. “She’s on autopilot. This stretch is clear and empty for a few miles, so I thought I’d grab some gloves. The breeze is chilly up there and it’s kicking on my arthritis.
