As soon as everyone else was gone, Sam turned to me, her expression unreadable. “Two things. Did Olen seem worried or agitated to you?”
Blinking in surprise—that hadn’t been anything remotely close to what I thought she wanted to discuss—I asked cautiously, “What do you mean?”
She stood up and began pacing. “You heard what he said about everything his people are going through . . . the pollution, the refugees, the reproductive issues. They need help. I think we should do something about it.”
I stared at her. Where was this coming from? This sounded more like something I would expect to hear from Tess, not Sam. “We should take on the world, you mean? Aren’t there already a slew of organizations trying to tackle all of that? Maybe not specifically with the fae in mind, but for sea life in general?” I knew there were people fighting to recycle and reduce waste to try to clean up the oceans, to save the coral reefs of the world, to preserve the habitats and nesting grounds for seabirds, turtles, and other threatened and endangered species. All of that benefited the water fae, at least indirectly, didn’t it?
She stopped. “Yes, but they don’t have the resources you do.”
My eyebrows went up. Maybe the heat had gotten to her. “They don’t? Some of those organizations have lobbied for millions, if not billions, of dollars. I saw all the zeroes attached to my bank account, but I’m pretty sure that’s small potatoes compared to what they’ve got.”
Now it was her turn to raise her brows at me. “You have a lot of holdings that don’t show up on your bank account, Roxanne.”
When she used my full name, I knew she meant business. I settled deeper into my chair and waited to see where she was going with this. And if I was going to have to talk her down.
“Think about it. You have more than just money. You’ve got magick at your disposal, too. Not to mention the whole magickal community. They’ve already shown they want to fight. There should be some way to use that to help this situation.”
I hadn’t seen her this zealous about a project since she’d taken on a big water bottling company when they tried to set up shop in Flint, Michigan years before the city’s water crisis made headlines around the country. She’d been fresh out of law school and joined forces with a larger group of lawyers involved. All of her work was pro bono and she was elated when they’d won. It was shortly after that when she’d really started making a name for herself in the law community. I thought about what she was saying, trying to figure out how I should proceed. Finally, I asked, “Sam, do you have any lawyers that don’t have enough on their plate at the firm, right now?”
She frowned and came back to the table, hesitating before sitting down. “Not really. We still need to hire at least three more to try to whittle down our current caseload.”
I couldn’t believe I was the one on this side of the conversation. She was usually the voice of reason. “Do you have the time to take this on?”
She ran a hand down her face. “No. I don’t. I just hate knowing what they’re going through.”
“Tell you what. How about you pencil it in somewhere on your ‘saving the world’ day planner and we’ll revisit it sometime after we deal with Turned witches trying to kill us, the group of blood magick witches or whatever they are, who may or may not be affiliated with the Turned witches, and are also trying to kill us, a prophecy that may or may not involve me, training the first five witches after they bond with Zara’s kits, saving the rest of the wraiths-slash-lost-familiars trapped in the gray space, training the witches you’ve hired—though they do seem to be working together exceptionally well from what I’ve seen—and,” I frowned, pausing more for dramatic effect than anything else. “What am I forgetting? Oh, yes, figuring out how to set up a new Council, learning my magick, dealing with this,” I raised the wrist wearing the bracelet, “waiting for the Powers to show up again—which, by the way, will probably happen in the middle of the night in the form of an embarrassing dream where I’m naked—and then there’s figuring out what’s going on with Rand.” I couldn’t help it; my voice hitched a little at that last part. More gently, I continued, “We can’t save them all, Sam. Not all at once, anyway. We’re going to have to take on what we can, when we can.”
She deflated. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. “I know.”
More gently, I asked, “Is there something else going on? You’re usually the one giving either Tess or me this talk.”
She sat back in the chair, keeping her eyes closed as she tilted her face up to the sun. She took a few more deep breaths and opened her eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about Leo. I feel like I can’t save him, like I’m letting him down.” When she looked at me again, her eyes looked as though they held the weight of the world in them. Maybe they did. I wasn’t the only one dealing with crazy life changes.
Drumming my nails
