Seawitch

Quinton cleared his throat. “Far be it from me to get in the middle of this . . . interesting argument, but I really am the better boat hand and if this is going to turn into another sea battle, we frankly need the best hands aboard. Not that I’m dissing you, Rey, but—”

“The right man in the right position is more important than hurt pride,” Solis said.

“Yeah. But while we’re on the subject of who won’t forgive whom . . . I’ve already lost Harper once.” Quinton gave Solis a meaningful look.

Solis returned a somber nod. “I understand.”

Zantree cackled. “I feel like I should break out the rum and cutlasses!”

“You might need to yet. Those merfolk aren’t numerous, but they seem to leave quite a mess. If they come after the boat again instead of focusing on me and”—I hesitated for a moment while I adjusted my mind to the change in my plan— “me and Solis, you may need a few sharp blades around.”

Zantree looked excited. “Really? ’Cause I have an old navy cutlass I’ve been dying to swing.”

Dying . . . I hoped not. “Much as I hate to say it, now would be the time. They may be magical and they have an illusory cohort, but these merfolk are corporeal enough to stab,” I replied.

Zantree looked ready to dance a jig and I wasn’t sure I’d just said the wisest thing. “Arrr! They’ll never take us alive. Eh, Mr. Quinton?”

Quinton laughed and saluted. “Aye, aye, Cap’n Zantree! All hands to stations and prepare to repel boarders!”

I felt a strange tickle of adrenaline from Quinton and I stared at them, incredulous. “Hey, this isn’t a game, you two. These creatures kill people.”

Quinton sighed. “Then all the better reason to get our humor on now. A little levity helps ease the sheer terror I’d otherwise be feeling at the thought of being gaffed by fish men.” I wanted to laugh, also, but I was too aware of how much responsibility I had for these three men and how terrible I’d feel if any of them were injured or worse. This responsible-friend thing? It bites.

We had a few more words about the details and I felt more and more desperate and afraid for them, but I didn’t speak up—what would have been the point?—even when Solis and I were ready to head out for the dock that stuck out from the shore, while Quinton and Zantree prepared to move Mambo Moon out as close to the cove mouth as possible to offer the surest escape. If Solis and I couldn’t rejoin them, we’d decided to ditch the dinghy, walk across the thin neck of forest to the other cove on the south side of the island, and wait there for the boat or a message. It was only a little more than a mile to hike, but we were sure the merfolk would not follow us across the ridge of dry land.

And although I had denied it to Fielding, I was prepared to destroy the sea witch if it was the only way to keep the men with me safe. I wondered if my mixed feelings of fear, frustration, and resolve were as strange to Quinton as the flood of excitement and trepidation he was sending to me.

Before we left, Quinton and Zantree did some flitting about with the dinghy to free the anchors. Once they were done, Solis and I, carrying one handheld radio between us, bundled up in waterproof jackets against the rage of the sea witch and her clan. Then we took the little boat and, with the bell from the Valencia tucked into a compartment in the bow, headed for the dock. As soon as we were clear, Zantree eased the big boat’s engines up enough to make way and turned her gently toward the exit. Solis and I continued on alone, running across the gold and orange reflections of sunset on the water. I hoped Fielding and the dobhar-chú were doing their part. . . .

This time there was no storm to weather and summer clouds picked up the reflected colors of the sunset and striped the sky in red and pink as Solis and I sped across the water to the dock. We had to cut into the edge of the paranormal bubble as we neared our goal, disturbing the calm like a pounding on the door, and the world turned dark and silver with washes of thin color, as if we’d plunged into an impressionist film version of the cove.

The water around us began to roil as if heated, though only a preternatural chill rose from it. By the time we’d tied off the dinghy at the short pier whose seaward half stuck into the overlay of Grey and normal, the water seemed to be alive.

I snatched the bell from the boat as it heaved on the unnatural swell. The green energy ribbons imprisoning the ghosts of Valencia within its bell burned vivid emerald spiked with ruby red and the spirits billowed around us in a howling chorus. I checked my watch; then I swung the bell hard and felt the clapper strike, the peal rolling outward like a shock wave of white light on a note that shook the sturdy little dock under our feet. If Solis was right in his observation, we’d have fifteen minutes until this bubble collapsed—and most likely took the gateway with it.

An answering shock of sound and light rolled back to us in a moment, and the water at the end of the dock belled upward like soft plastic deformed from below and lit by moving fireflies leaving sickly yellow-green trails below the bulging surface. The water rose higher until it was head height and then the surface peeled away, letting something come through.

Water shed off the writhing shape as it came up, as if it made the liquid and spat it forth until the air had dried it out too much to bear and the surface had to crack and peel away. The bulge differentiated slowly into three shapes riding a hillock of water: two slender women of nearly equal height and one wriggling, miserable man. The three were borne down to the dock as if by a giant watery hand.

The first woman stepped forward. Her long red hair fanned and billowed around her as if she were still immersed in the water and she gave a cruel little smile that showed serrated teeth. She seemed to be dressed in the shimmer of moonlight on the sea that obscured the details of her body without hiding the sensual shape of it. The face that was still that of Jacque Knight but, stripped of the illusion of boring humanity, she was more beautiful and terrifying. Behind her came her paler version: Shelly, whose white skin and silver hair both held a pearly greenish tinge that gave her the look of something fragile and ephemeral. In this overlapped world I could see the faint impression of scales under Shelly’s skin and a long scar ruining the symmetry of her coltish legs and awkward feet.

From a swift, hard glance deeper into the Grey I could see that Jacque’s form was more true, if somewhat glamorized, while Shelly looked more truly a woman who was half-fish, walking uncomfortably on her split tail.

Shelly held on to Gary Fielding’s right arm but it was Jacque who reached back to yank him forward. She held him out toward us and shook him. Shelly stumbled a little as she was dragged along.

“Did you send this creature into our realm to steal from us? Or is he as presumptuous as ever all on his own?” the sea witch’s voice ripped the air.

Fielding crumpled to his knees as Jacque let him go. I wanted to yell at him and demand to know what fool thing he’d been doing to get himself captured but I restrained myself.

“Where ever did you find him? I thought he’d taken off when Father Otter was busy with your fishy friends.”

“Does that fur-bearing fool think he can spy on me with the likes of this shabby thing? Or wreck my plans a second time by stealing my heir away?”

I held on tighter to the bell. “Has Mr. Fielding ever been one to do as he was told?” I asked, carefully skirting the question.

“And do you come to me now to ransom him back?”

“It’s not quite what we had in mind,” I replied.

As Jacque kept her attention on me, Fielding huddled into a ball. Shelly crept forward and dragged him backward a little, out from between the two of us. She kept her eyes turned away from mine, and her mother never turned her own gaze from me.

Jacque gave me an imperious raise of her eyebrows. “Then what brings you?”

“There is a small matter of the boat you took twenty-seven years ago—the Seawitch. . . .”

“What of it? I have it no longer, thanks to this one,” Jacque added, aiming a kick where Fielding’s head had recently been.

“It’s not the boat I want so much as the souls you took from it.”

Jacque crowed with laughter. “Paltry things!”

“Then you won’t mind trading them to me for these,” I said, holding up Valencia’s bell but making sure to keep it close to my own body so she couldn’t snatch it from me.

Jacque tried to dart forward, but she wasn’t built to do so out of the water and I fell back, luring her closer to