by Chris Howard
The pale woman wore black, tight longsleeves and leggings, her hands and bare feet glowing, dark veins standing out, a web of tree roots running through the world of her cold white skin. Her eyes were nearly colorless, the softest gray irises, her gaze roaming the grotto for something, and widened with pleasure when they found it: a small brown card taped to a sea-swirl of gold framed oval mirror.
It was an invitation to the party with her name in a stylized girl's handwriting, blood red ink, the "i" dotted with a dripping gothy "X" and a very polite—bordering on formal—request to bring any guest she desired.
She stared into the mirror, swung her braids over her shoulders so that the seawater ran down her back. Then pulled out a lip pencil, smooth metallic white, and drew a row of jagged teeth along her lower lip, puckered to see how they looked.
"I am twenty-four years old, and I am dead."
The boy looked up at her, one side of his mouth lifting, his tone making it clear that he was amused. "You look positively frightening, Aunt Corina."
She smiled, her mouth a scary stretch of penciled triangular shark teeth. "All set then. This way, Thennas. The Sea has invited us to the party."
The world of cool clean fresh water was without light.
"When's dinner time?" said a scratchy woman's voice with a laugh that thinned and staccatoed into a cackle. She knew it would annoy her sisters, even enjoyed knowing it.
"Shut up, Olivia."
"She can ask, Lim," said a third voice with infinite patience—a woman's voice that came from the water spilling from the shower pipe in the upstairs bathroom, a thumb-thick pipe sticking out of the tiles, threads of flaking chrome and the white remains of plumber's tape at the end. The shower head had been unscrewed and sat on the ledge next to the bathtub.
"Once, twice, but eleven times?"
"Well, you're counting, so that shows—"
"I'm counting so I know how many bones to break."
"Doesn't mean you need to answer."
"Doesn't mean I need to be civil. Let's get out of here."
The three naiads landed on their feet in the bathtub with a splash and a roll of heel stomping thuds.
Limnoria stepped out first, almost slipped off her feet on the tiles, but caught herself with the towel rack, snapping it off the wall when she put too much weight on it. A row of turquoise hand towels slid to the floor in a stiff folded heap.
"Carp shit."
Helodes stepped out next to her sister, sighed, and smoothed the water out of her long black gown, shimmery obsidian folds that swirled around her, hiding her feet. She was tall, pale arms bare to her shoulders, her black hair like marsh reeds planted and growing in ink, fell in knotty bundles past her shoulders.
Olivia leaned against the back wall of tiles, folded her arms, taking in the soft blues and greens of the bathroom. She opened her mouth, smiled with rows of pointed white teeth. "Hey, there's something taped to the mirror. Is it the menu?"
Limnoria raised the towel rack like a club.
Helodes caught Limnoria's wrist, and leaned over the sink to peel the card off the mirror, their names written in long flowing rivers of letters that bled green off the bottom edge. "It's our invitation. Let's go downstairs. Haven't seen the girls in ages."
Limnoria picked up the hand towels. "They're not girls. Haven't been for a while."
Helodes nodded sadly.
Olivia ran her tongue over her teeth. "What about that delightful man, tall, tasty, with glasses, Henderson? He's still here?"
Helodes turned with a stern look. "He's marrying Zypheria—and you don't want to cross an Alkimides—not without a deathwish." She reached out, slid her fingers under Olivia's chin, and closed her mouth for her. "They grant them."
Alex Shoaler squeezed Kaffia's hand, her slender brown fingers looped through his, playing the Marche au supplice bass lines, fingertips rolling through a comfortable rhythmic pressure in his palm. That she'd dug up Berlioz to play in her head meant she was nervous. He looked through the trees at the second floor windows of Kassandra's house. She had plenty to be nervous about. He'll, he was nervous, too. "This place has always creeped my out. Love it. It's beautiful and scary at the same time. Like something out of a Beksinski painting."
Kaffia laughed, but it was serious. "You were afraid of me before we met."
"Yeah." He turned to look into her eyes. "But you're from this world—and I have met them."
Kaffia thought about that, reached out and ran her hand through his hair, gliding over the stubble at the back, and then down his neck, her skin a soft electric warmth against his. He was always cold. "Why does that matter?"
"They're from the sea."
She shook her head. "Nebraska."
They reached the front door, and she grabbed his hand before he rang the bell, leaned in, kissed him, and with her nose touching his, fingers still dancing in the palm of his hand, she whispered, "I checked them out. They're fine. Snagged Kassandra's medical records from a hospital in Nebraska. She's a total freak—I always thought so in school. Her mother's dead, father vanished before she was a year old, and then reappeared—out of nowhere—over a decade later. Jillian Crosse, born in Lincoln, Nebraska, her family died in a house fire. She was at a friend's, a sleepover, orphaned at seven years old. Nicole Garcia, originally from California, parents were journalists, both dead—possibly murdered, but unsolved. Grew up...guess where?"
"Nebraska?"
She leaned away. "We have a winner."
Her breath caught in her throat and her fingers went still. A rectangular mirror in a swirling-of-storm-waves iron frame floated in the air over Alex's shoulder. He tensed and spun to see what had distracted Kaffia, reached out, slipped his hands around the mirror, gently at first as if he wasn't certain it was real, as if expecting his fingers to ghost right through it. Then a tight grip as it came loose from whatever had been holding it in mid-air.
He tilted it back. "It's heavy. I don't think it's glass. Maybe polished metal."
Kaffia peeled off a small brown card taped to the center of the mirror, frowning at a line of handwritten letters and numbers,
V2VsY29tZSBLYWZmaWEgYW5kIEFsZXgh
Alex leaned in. "What's it say?"
"Encoded." Kaffia laughed again, lighter this time, pleasantly surprised. "It's base 64. Not very long. Give me a sec." She stared at it, moving left to right, making little nodding motions every few seconds. "It reads, 'Welcome Kaffia and Alex' with an exclamation point at the end."
Alex tucked the mirror under his arm. "Interesting."
Kaffia rang the doorbell. "Okay, I'm starting to warm to the sea witches from Nebraska."
The kitchen was busy, mounds of flour and butter, armies of lobsters, walls of boxed foods, a castle of party preparations. Along the far counter, an armory of flatware, neat turrets of stacked china, wine glasses, and in the center of it all, steam from an open oven and two women in ball gowns fighting over a large baking pan with forty dinner rolls.
One pulled out the pan, shoved in the rack. "I already have the hot pads."
"Agatha, I'm wearing oven mitts." Parresia held up her hands, kitchen surgeon fashion, mitted in a pattern of orange sea stars. She wiggled her thumbs, and then curled her right into a fist, pulled it back to throw it.
"No matter," said the first, sliding the pan onto the stove top. "It's easier done without you, dear sister. You're a menace in the kitchen."
"You're a menace in the world."
"Lamprey."
"Toad."
A white-haired man in a button down shirt and a bright gold bowtie stood off to one side, completely absorbed in the job of getting every smear of cream cheese off its foil wrapper, whispering to himself, "infuriating. What possessed them to package it like this?" He had an array of tools on the counter in front of him, a butter knife, toothpicks, neat squares of wax paper. He held up the foil casing in the light, and even looked as if he was considering licking it clean.
The pale woman and the young man i
n his dripping armor reached the top of the stairs that led under the house to the grotto, paused and looked around as if expecting someone to greet them. Corina cleared her throat, waited for a reaction, and turned to pass a questioning look to Thennas. He shrugged, a crinkle of scales, and they returned to watching the three in the kitchen, especially the two naiads pummeling each other with kitchenwear in front of a hot stove. One reached for a ladle. The other rolled up a wet dish towel.
Kassandra jumped the last six stairs from the second floor, landing in a crouch and straightening like a gymnast at the edge of the kitchen. "Corina Lairsey and Thennas Lord Ostologos, welcome to New Hampshire." She grinned at Corina's lip teeth treatment, and for some reason it made her think of the state's motto. "Live free or die."
"Both," said Corina and hugged Kassandra.
Thennas bowed low. "A pleasure and an honor, milady."
Kassandra nodded in return. Then she glanced around to see if the three of them could slip away for a moment, but stopped and pointed at Parresia and Agatha in the kitchen where the mitts had come off and they had found the drawer with the extra-long barbecue tools, skewers and spatulas with heavy wooden grips.
"Don't make me come over there!"
Startled, Agatha and Parresia spun toward Kassandra, and the fracas died with a clatter of metal on the tiles.
"Theupheides! Enough with the cream cheese. Move on to shelling the lobsters, and can you keep some order in there?"
Kassandra motioned Corina and Thennas through the dining room, through a pantry with glass fronted cabinets to the ceiling, and into a mudroom that looked out to the driveway. She pointed at a chair for Thennas, and grabbed Corina by the shoulders, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Okay, how did it work? Can you do it for me now?"
The two women stared at each other, lines of struggle in Corina's face, a tight pull around her mouth. Kassandra blinked and they sprang apart, both of them nodding to the other.
Corina pulled around a shoulder bag, unlacing the top, opening a lightless hole in the world. Vapor and cold seawater spilled out of it, splattering across the floor.
"I don't want to...but for you and no other."
Corina reached in, closed her eyes, and pulled out a long knife of bone, its handle wrapped in bright blue silk cord. She flexed her fingers around it, holding it with her thumb against the palm of her hand, then spun it, made a fist starting with her pinky, knuckles going white, and without one word or ceremony, she stabbed the knife right to the grip...into air.
The blade vanished, and fire bubbled around the grip, dripped from the wound. A metal sour smell like ozone filled the room. Thennas sprang to his feet in time to catch Kassandra, her arms folded tight around her middle. Her full weight leaned into him, but no matter how much he pulled, how deep his fingers clawed into her arms, he stumbled to his knees, and couldn't hold her up, lowering her to the floor as gently as he could.
He looked up, panic in his voice. "Corina?"
Kassandra's eyes flew open, genocide in them. She sprang from the floor to her feet, her arms snapping wide, throwing Thennas over his chair, skidding on his back across the mudroom floor. She made fists with her shaking hands, her teeth tight against anger that wanted to uproot continents, sink them under the waves. Her voice came out raw and hoarse. "That hurts me Corina. I feel that blade inside."
Her braids uncoiled, gold and seashells clattering on the hardwood around her feet, rolling away. Her long brown hair gathered into a wave that sloshed along her back, over her shoulders, the color draining out of it in streaks of foamy white. She made a grunting noise, and then a deep growl in the back of her throat like the surf caught in hollow tidal-zone rocks. Without looking at Corina, Kassandra slid her fingers into the fire around the bone knife, and pulled open the wound in reality, opening a hole into another world, a dark underwater world, a dance of light across a sandy floor and a throne made of shells, the bones of whales, the horns of narwhals.
Kassandra turned to Corina, nodding. "That is the throne room of the Sea—the ruler of all the seas. That is my throne. You have made a hole through the wall into another world. Many of the immortals have their own—their very own worlds. She let go of the fire and her trident appeared, sliding through her fingers. It hit the floor with a thud that shook the house.
Jill cleared her throat at the door from the pantry, standing there with Alex Shoaler and Kaffia Lang, both with their mouths open.
There was a second of stunned silence, and Corina jerked the knife from the wound. The fire zipped up and vanished. Kassandra squeezed her eyes closed, and when she opened them the ocean let her go—or she let it go. She opened her hand and the trident faded away, leaving a sledge hammer dent in the wood floor. She stepped right and held out a hand for Thennas. "I'm sorry."
Jill didn't seem the least surprised by anything going on in the mudroom, only a little worried about the changes she saw in her sister. Kassandra wasn't Kassandra without her braids. "What happened to your hair?"
The Sea gave her the briefest chilly look, and then turned her gaze hard on Alex and Kaffia. "How much of that did you see or hear?"
Kaffia opened her mouth wider to say something. Nothing came out. Alex shrugged, nodding, grinning nervously. He found his voice. "Enough to know where the party is." He held out the iron-framed mirror. "Here you go. Found this hanging around out front."
Kassandra didn't move, her expression blank, a lot going on internally. She blinked, focusing on the mirror. "That is a gift for Kaffia." She bowed to the woman with her arm around Alex's waist, her fingers gripping him tight. "A gift from the Sea." Then she cleared her throat and stepped toward them. "I'm so glad you could make it, Kaffia Lang." To Alex she said, "Alexander Shoaler. Your mother called. She will be here in half an hour."
She extended an arm behind her. "May I introduce you to Corina Lairsey, a friend of mine from California. And Thennas Lord Ostologos."
Thennas bowed to Kaffia. "I am honored, Kaffia Lang." And then found himself staring at her. He had never seen anyone with skin so brown. He met her eyes, made his brows jump, when hers dropped to take in what he was wearing, blue scaled armor. He bowed again, then turned to Alex, staring once more because he had never seen anyone with orange hair. "Alexander Shoaler. A pleasure to meet both of you."
Corina stepped forward and shook their hands with a bow of her head. "Nice to meet someone so...alive, so normal," she said to Kaffia, and after taking Alex's hand, "And someone who has had the chance to live normally for his years, but will soon find all that slipping away." She smiled and showed Alex more of the drawn shark teeth on her lower lip. "I was once from the surface, so I know your world. I was once a student at a university, I can hear the lessons in your soul. I was once alive, I can feel the desire in your heart. I was once anchored to this living world, and now that I am not, I find it...helpful to occasionally glimpse what is over the horizon. Your path leads deep, Alex Shoaler, but I can see that you have taken many steps, even in the dark, even beneath the waves, your direction true without ever being told that there was a path. As someone who has gone before you, you have my sympathy."
Corina Lairsey bowed to Alex, her solemnity killing several moments, threatening more. The air itself died around her, and everyone in the room found it difficult to breathe.
Helodes, Limnoria, and Olivia appeared like fresh air in the doorway behind Jill, smiling practical witches of rivers.
Limnoria jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "A lot more chairs in the living room. There's even a couch."
Olivia showed her real pointed teeth. "And there was a god at the front door, ringing the bell. I told him we weren't interested in whatever he was selling. But he had a little brown card with his name on it—and he brought food, so I let him in."
All the way in the back, Bachoris smiled hesitantly, waved, holding up a glass casserole dish. "Hello, Kassandra. I brought couscous, a family recipe."
Then he noticed her hair moving like waves over her shoulders, r
olling waves of silky brown with thin white streaks like sea foam, reminding him too much of the way Akastê's hair moved. And the way she looked at him, the hunger of an ocean in her eyes, cold and unfeeling and relentless as any tide.
Bachoris dropped the dish.
Chapter 19 - Dining with the Sea
The doorbell rang. Gregor was in the middle of a conversation with Olivia—she'd been banned from dinner preparations by Agatha. He excused himself, set his glass down and made his way to the foyer. Kassandra came bounding over a chair and couch, gazelle-like, crossing the living room in a blur, shoving her father out of the way, and slamming her hand against the front door.
"I'll get it, dad. Please don't answer the door. Please? For me?"
He backed away, gave her a disappointed look.
Kassandra closed her eyes, then opened them, a blink that lasted a moment too long, testing something in the air. She swung the front door in, bowing her head to a woman with shoulder-length red hair going a little gray. She wore glasses with thin purple frames, and a long gown that started out pale blue at the shoulders, darkening to indigo at her waist, sliding into pure black at the knees.
"Welcome to our home, Elizabeth Shoaler. An honor to have you here. Your son and Kaffia Lang have already arrived." Kassandra backed away from the doorway after a quick glance up the path to Atlantic Avenue to see if it felt and tasted clear. "Please come in. You know my father, of course."
Gregor held out a box that had appeared in his open hand a second before, bowed his head. "Good to see you again, Elizabeth. Open it."
Elizabeth hesitated, looking up at him for a moment, trying to read his expression, nodded, smiled, and took the box—and inside, a flash of heavy gold, three heart-shaped blocks with wire hooks to bind them together. "A trilithon? But I can't...Is this...gold?"