“How did you get here?” Noa demanded.
“Blood spell. The same one I used before to locate you in Death. You were on the ship, so I could track the ship. I used the storm to carry me.” He motioned at the roiling clouds.
Noa grimaced. “So, basically, you flew.”
Julian noticed her expression. “We can take it slow on the way back. I won’t mind if you’re sick.”
“Oh, good,” Noa said. She was always sick when Julian used storms to transport them anywhere. You always got horribly damp and cold riding on a storm cloud, which made it worse. Last time, she’d thrown up on Julian’s arm.
Julian raised a hand to the storm and called out a spell in Squall. The clouds reached out toward them, and a wet breeze almost swept Noa off her feet.
That was when a wave crashed over the deck.
Noa was washed over the railing. She made a desperate grab for it, but it went by so fast that she missed it by a mile. The water was cold enough to make her gasp, and she found herself surging toward another wave that rose before her like a wall. She screamed.
The wave that carried her changed direction as some magical force yanked it back. Noa was swept over the railing and deposited, dripping, on the deck.
Julian hauled her to her feet. He was soaked, too, but had managed to maintain his footing. They both stared at the wave rising before them—and rising, and rising—and it was several seconds before Noa realized it wasn’t a wave at all.
It was a figure made of water.
The figure was roughly woman-shaped, with a lot of wavy hair that seemed unpleasantly familiar. Gabriela sat on its shoulder with her knees folded beneath her, looking like a surfer riding the crest of a wave. Even though her hair was wet and plastered to her head and she had seaweed stuck to her cloak, she looked terrifyingly cool and comfortable up there.
Julian’s expression darkened. His eyes met Gabriela’s like lightning hitting a powder keg, and the air between them seemed to crackle. He began chanting, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Maybe talk faster?” Noa suggested.
“This magic is incredibly intricate,” he said, sounding almost impressed. “It’s at least a dozen spells, woven together. I can’t—ah!”
The towering water woman raised a fist and drove it toward the end of the ship, clearly set on sinking it. Julian yelled something, and a fierce wind pushed the ship out of the way just in time.
But Gabriela wasn’t done. She stood, her lips moving in a spell Noa couldn’t hear over the wind and waves and thunder.
Julian stepped forward until he was directly in the shadow of her gaze. “Gabriela!” he shouted. “Come down here and fight me! Leave my sister out of this.”
Gabriela didn’t seem to hear him. Noa wasn’t sure she was capable of hearing anything. Her eyes were wild and her face was white. The water woman raised its arms and lunged at the ship.
Noa screamed. Julian was shouting spells so quickly that Noa couldn’t even distinguish the languages he was speaking. To her horror, the wind he summoned was pushing them toward the watery figure as fast as it was coming at them. They were going to plow right into its stomach. At the same time, the ship’s figurehead was beginning to move and stretch. It grew until it was twice its original size, and lifted its crude wooden sword.
Then they struck the water woman.
In the same moment, Julian wrapped Noa in his arms. The water closed over their heads, but it didn’t touch them. They were in some sort of bubble of air, a bubble that spun round and round in the turbulent surf, so quickly that Noa would have preferred to have been in a thundercloud. After what seemed like hours, but was probably only seconds, the bubble burst, and she found herself bobbing amid the waves.
Julian was only a few yards away. The ship was no longer a ship—it was a field of debris scattered across the water. The figurehead floated on its back nearby, no longer huge and threatening, though there was something self-satisfied about its posture, as if it had just lived out a lifelong fantasy.
Noa turned. The water woman stood behind them, its head leaned forward slightly, as if it had fallen asleep. Gabriela was still on its shoulder, darting furious glances at Julian as she shouted spell after spell. The water woman lurched forward, and then it split in two, its top half melting as it fell, no longer anything other than but a wave. Gabriela screamed as she fell with it, and then Noa lost sight of her.
“Are you okay?” Julian swam to her side. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Noa threw up.
“Here.” Julian grabbed a piece of ship and helped her clamber onto it. “We’ll just rest a moment until your stomach settles. Then we really have to go.”
Noa thought it would take longer than a moment for her stomach to settle, and hoped Julian wasn’t wearing his favorite cloak. Then again, given that he hadn’t warned her about any of that, she thought he deserved whatever he got. “Where’s Gabriela?”
“With any luck, at the bottom of the sea.” He didn’t sound at all certain about that, though, and neither was Noa. She thought that Gabriela was probably fine, and would be on them with another terrifying spell if they gave her more than a minute to think of one. Still, that didn’t prepare Noa when a head broke through the surf only a few yards away, gasping and coughing.
“Gabriela!” Noa yelped. “Julian, forget my stomach, let’s go!”
Julian beckoned at the clouds, which had drifted back to their normal height, and they began to sink toward them.
Too slowly. Gabriela opened her eyes.
Julian froze for a moment, then went back to chanting. He
