Seawitch

eyes against the pain and tried to rise past my knees—I did not want to die again. Not now and especially not crushed down like a broken toy.

I could hear her moving closer, speaking, her voice rising with a wind that came to her call. Electricity hummed and crackled in the air, raising the hair on my neck and arms and prickling across my skin. I didn’t know any counters to this but to shut her mouth, and though I struggled to point the gun at her again, I couldn’t see her well enough between my pain and tears to be sure I would hit her.

There was a scrabbling sound behind her and the sea witch gasped, lunged down against me, then squealed and went limp, her weight shoving me all the way to the deck. I pushed her weakly aside and crawled away, turning my head to see why she had collapsed.

Panting and wiping red fluid from his face, Solis backed away from the crumpled, still body of the sea witch. The karambit, clutched in his fist, dripped blood from its claw-shaped blade.

Fielding yelped behind him and rolled onto his side, his shape shifting toward otter. Solis spun, the knife low and ready to take on whatever came next. Then he dropped it to the decking and dove after the mutating dobhar- chú. It eeled out of his grasp and bounded for the seaward end of the dock. Solis scrambled to catch the creature but the odds seemed to be in Fielding’s favor.

I managed to pull my pistol out of my inner jacket pocket and from my prone position it wasn’t so hard to fire into the wooden planking just ahead of the fleeing otter. Pure dumb luck, I assure you, because I was shaking too hard for it to be anything else. Fielding skidded to a stop and looked around for another escape.

I gulped in a breath. “Don’t try,” I warned him. “I will shoot you. Next time. And damn to Father Otter.” I felt like I’d been steamrollered, but I must have been terrifying: still dangerous even flattened to the deck.

Fielding stayed, cringing, where he was and slowly shifted back to his human form. “I’m sorry. Please don’t shoot me. I won’t run.”

I glanced up at Solis and watched him turn to collect Fielding and bundle him into the boat.

I put my head down for a moment and lay on the wet dock until Solis returned to help me up. “That wasn’t fifteen minutes,” I whispered. “We failed.”

He shook his head and kept me moving forward. “Not yet.”

I staggered with him to the boat as he dragged the bell along. I tried not to look weak as a newborn until it was too late for Fielding to change his mind, but maybe no one cared, since I was sure I looked as helpless as I felt. I needed to stop making a habit of this sort of bravado, especially when my head was reeling and I was barely keeping my feet under me. I figured my luck was nearly over.

I oozed into the dinghy and literally sat on Fielding to keep him from shifting form all the way back to Mambo Moon.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The waters of the cove fell still and silent as Solis guided the little boat back to the larger one. The surface no longer churned and there was no sign of the battling creatures of fur and fin, though I was sure they were somewhere. As we maneuvered to come next to Mambo Moon’s steps, I thought I heard a woman’s voice from the deck just out of view. Quinton, seeming prescient but probably just hearing the engine, leaned over the side and caught the line Solis tossed to him to help us tie up and come aboard. I needed a lot more help than I had when we left, and keeping Fielding in line had to be put in the hands of another.

The other being Father Otter, who jumped down into the dinghy as we left it and hauled Fielding out, fairly chasing him up on deck with sharp pinches and snaps of his teeth, reminiscent of the way he’d bitten and shaken the other dobhar-chú earlier when they were both in otter form. I was so startled to see Father Otter that I stared in bold silence as Quinton and Solis helped me on board and along the deck. But there was more yet to shock me: As we rounded the side and came onto the aft deck and into the glow of electric light shining from the cabin, I saw Shelly Knight standing beside the fish hold and talking to Paul Zantree—who was holding a slender, curved sword that was certainly not a pirate-show prop.

Shelly’s pale green hair swirled around her as if she were floating in water rather than standing on the deck in plain air. She was the same woman I’d seen in the photos and a few minutes before on the dock and yet she had changed dramatically—she glowed now and had a regal air, seeming taller and moving with ineffable grace. It appeared Zantree had lent her a bathrobe and that seemed a faintly ridiculous cover for such arresting beauty. Her skin reflected the light from the cabin like the surface of a pearl—a sheen of rose, green, and blue hovering over her exposed limbs and face. Her voice was very low but it cut through the creaking of the boat and the lapping of waves with the clear, quiet sound of water trickling over rocks, softly, gently wearing them away.

Zantree turned toward the commotion raised by Father Otter chivvying Fielding along and Fielding himself drew up short, taking a nasty smack across the head from Father Otter for doing so.

“Shelly,” Fielding breathed.

She gave him a cool glance, then looked past him to me as Quinton eased me into a chair. She pointed at a pile of barnacle-crusted objects at her feet with a finger tipped by a hooked white nail. “I believe these are what Gary was after. I’m sorry to have left you to confront my mother on your own but I knew the gateway would collapse soon and I had to take the chance that presented itself.”

Father Otter started forward, scowling, as if he meant to confront Shelly in some fashion.

Quinton put out his hand to restrain him. “Let’s not do that again,” he suggested.

Apparently things had been much livelier than I’d imagined here on Mambo Moon while Solis and I were in transit. I glanced at Quinton, who gave a tiny shake of his head. I wasn’t going to argue with his brush-off; all I really wanted was to fall into bed and sleep until I stopped aching.

Father Otter issued a guttural hiss, but took a half step back and made another ill-tempered snap at Fielding’s ear. Fielding flinched.

Shelly looked disgusted. “I won’t say I’m happy about the death of my mother,” she started, sending a quick glare at Solis, “but it is better for all of us that she’s gone. And I don’t need these, nor do I want them. Since I found Gary snooping around them and you had the Valencia’s bell on the dock, I assume it’s you who wants them. Though I suppose it could have been the dobhar-chú who sent him, trying to steal them and break my mother’s power.”

She gave Father Otter a dirty look. He curled his lip and gave a low growl in return.

I leaned back in my chair like a boneless thing, not caring how weak or impolite it might look—I hurt too much to play that game. “Why?” I asked, panting a little against the painful constriction of breath in my chest. “Don’t you need them?”

“No. When I realized how my mother’s power worked I went looking for something else. I knew how to make sure we weren’t closed in the cove again but I wasn’t going to do it for her sake—not after what she’d done to me. And now that she’s dead I can claim my own power; I don’t need this filthy stuff.”

“So the whole virgin thing . . .” I started, making a rolling gesture with my hand to encourage her explanation.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh . . . Mother . . .” She shook her head. “She couldn’t very well tell me I didn’t need her, could she? As long as I was a sheltered little fry, hidden away in her cove, she could control me and my magic. When I went outside, bad things happened and she used that to convince me to stay under her thumb. But I’m not stupid. I realized she had lied to me about power and about . . . your kind. I couldn’t and won’t do what she could do, but I can do my own tricks. I don’t need these,” she added, pointing again to the relics on the deck. She looked at Fielding. “And I don’t need you or anyone else to show me what I really am and what I can do for myself and my folk.”

Fielding looked stricken and moaned her name.

She sighed. “Oh, Gary. You’re such a selfish jerk. A pretty one, but still a jerk. My people have been devastated but we can survive—as long as we don’t have to fight our neighbors all the time. I could take you as a hostage, I guess, like some kind of royal insurance policy, but, frankly, I just don’t want you. If that makes Father Otter angry, we’ll have to find some other way to bring peace here. But you . . . ? I think we’d all be better off if you left.”

I cut in, trying to keep the conversation on track. “So, you can’t even use these?”