Seawitch

it. Of looking down into the ruin of what was a man, of how my mother fought them and then cried over them, of the blood—how we scrubbed it and hid it and lied about the stains that wouldn’t go. We told my father I’d killed a chicken—it’s true, that saying about headless chickens—to explain the splashes on the walls that we couldn’t remove in time. That was what decided me to come here and join the police—somewhere I thought the law and justice did not give each other a cold shoulder. I have learned that it is not always the way here either, and I despise that, but it’s better than my home country was when I was a child and criminals thought they could harm my father by ruining my mother. There was no safe path once they came into the house. We let them dictate our shame, even if we did not let them win. My mother and I hid what had happened because dead criminals in her kitchen would have been almost as bad for my father as if she’d let them rape her. She killed them but they still owned a piece of her soul until the day she died, and they still own a piece of mine as well.”

TWENTY-TWO

Solis’s words echoed in my head. I swallowed a lump in my throat and couldn’t think of what to say. “I . . .” I started in a weak voice.

Solis shook his head and looked aside. “An unpleasant tale. I offer it so you will know where I am broken and cannot be trusted. But if you do not want it . . .”

“Don’t you dare.”

Solis raised his eyebrows at me.

“Thank you.”

“Why?”

“You can’t take something like that back. It can’t be unheard. And you are not broken or untrustworthy and I don’t want to forget how much you’ve entrusted to me. No matter how ugly it is, it’s still precious.”

“But it is ugly,” he agreed.

“So are my feet and I don’t apologize for them. Of course, I also don’t wear sandals. . . .”

He looked puzzled.

“You know I used to be a dancer.”

He nodded. “It’s in your record.”

“Never seen a dancer’s feet? I spent so much time in dance shoes as a kid, en pointe, or hoofing in road shows more weeks on than I was off that my feet look like they were run over by a truck. Dreadful, crippled-looking, knobby things. I earned them through pain and vanity. They remind me of what I left and why I left it. I don’t show them to most people because they’re . . . well, they’re awful, but they are part of why I am what I am. And I don’t regret that.” I studied his face to see if he understood and it seemed he did. He nodded, scowling a little. I nodded back and gave a tiny laugh. “But they’re still disgusting.”

“More disgusting than those creatures in the waves?” he asked with a grimace.

“There’s a lot that’s more disgusting than those,” I said. “Most of the things coming over the rail were illusions filled with water to give them weight. They wasted our energy and distracted us from the real ones coming up behind them. I tried to let you know, but I didn’t have the breath to shout—I’m sorry about that.”

He shrugged and I had an odd spark of hope for his nightmare’s resolution. “I have survived. What manner of attack comes next?”

“I’m not sure. They may just try to batter us to death in this storm, since we’ve figured out their weakness.”

“I haven’t. What is this weakness?”

“The sea witch’s power is limited and she has to choose where she’ll spend it. The merfolk—or, more likely, the sea witch we keep talking about—casts illusions to create the impression of an army of her minions. But only a few are really flesh and blood. They aren’t pushovers—though I’ll admit the illusions are powerful, too—but once you know most of what you’re seeing isn’t real, it’s easier to dodge the real ones and break the false. The merfolk aren’t quite impervious to the motions of the water in the storm, so while the storm may continue to wear us down, I think they’ll have to make their next sally against us in a less-unsettled circumstance. Anything else that comes at us will be magic, not meat.”

“That may reassure you, but I do not feel better hearing it. What if she’s holding the majority of her men and power in reserve against the eventuality of our arrival in her domain?”

I mulled it over. “That could be. But if you were her, wouldn’t you want to get rid of us as early as possible? Unless there’s some reason she needs us in her lair before she tries to suck up our souls to power her spells, why let us get any closer than she has to? Consider that the Valencia was wrecked way out at the southwest point of Vancouver Island, west of here, but Fielding implied that her base is east of here, so her reach is—or can be—fairly wide. But the farther she wants to reach, the lower her power. So she has to play it close to her vest unless she’s willing to come out of her place of safety.”

“If, in fact, it has always been the same sea witch. But if Shelly usurped her mother and Jacque is doing the same now, each wreck would have a slightly different profile, since the perpetrators, though related, are not the same.”

I hmphed and gave it a few moments’ thought. “Possible. I guess we won’t know until we are face-to-face with her.”

“Is that wise?”

“I don’t see any other way to fix the problems we have. We both need an explanation for the disappearance of Seawitch. You can understand better than anyone that I need to set some things right with those ghosts and Gary Fielding.” I saw a question forming on his lips and cut it off. “I can’t go into the reasons but I also have a duty to the world I live in—I didn’t choose it but it’s still mine. And that includes, at the moment, doing something to free the ghosts of Valencia and Seawitch and get Gary Fielding straightened out in some way.”

Solis narrowed his eyes. “If he caused the deaths of the people on board Seawitch, it will require more than straightening out.”

“That’s another thing we’ll have to deal with when it comes. We may not have any way to bring him to human justice. If that’s even applicable. You may have to swallow dealing with this my way.”

His face settled back into his customary stillness and he didn’t say another word.

I wanted to tell him he couldn’t do anything to change it, but I just shook my head and got up from the galley table, wincing as new bruises expanded the zone of discomfort in my back, side, and chest. “I need to dry off and warm up before my muscles freeze up completely.”

“Your rib. My apologies; I’d forgotten.”

“I wish I could. This is slowing me down more than I’d hoped. And it hurts!” I added with an attempt at humor that fell a little flat on our ears. “I’ll tell you this, though: If we have any chance to catch one of those merfolk, we’d better take it. We could use some more leverage than just the bell.”

I left him to put on an extra layer of clothes. While I was in the cabin Quinton and I had been sharing, I took another look at the bell. Fielding had mentioned it as he disappeared. Examining it now, at my leisure and without someone looking over my shoulder, I let my vision shift as I sank closer to the Grey.

The bell was no longer bronze but black, wrapped in green tangles that sent out long, thin streamers that vanished into the eastern distance of the Grey. The boiling agitation of the ghosts within pushed outward into a thick smoke of faces and forms twisted into one another. I put out one hand, wondering if I could just pluck the mess apart and let the ghosts go their own way, but a warning roar came from the ghosts and they flared red as if their agonized faces were washed in the light of a conflagration. I guessed that was a pretty strong hint that if I did anything to the spell that held them in the bell now—or here—the situation would only get worse. Though worse for them or worse for me, I didn’t know.

I eased back a little, still immersed in the Grey, still concentrating on the bell. “Well,” I whispered. “You wanted them and I’ve got them, but damned if I know what I’m supposed to do with them now.”

I raised my voice a little and tried to call the Guardian Beast, concentrating on its form as if my thoughts could pull it to me. “I could use a little help here. . . .”

Nothing replied except the ghosts of Valencia, moaning like the wind. I tried