His mouth twitched a saucy little smile, like he’d been able to see her thoughts, and Becca straightened, letting her brow drop. He tried anything like that with her, he’d find that her mother had armed her better than he’d guessed.
He grinned a bit wider and let his attention drop down to Argo.
“Are we done?” Argo asked, putting the bowl to one side. “I’m tired of your games.”
“It isn’t a game,” Jackson said, adjusting his ever-present cowboy hat. “This is a tradition our people have held to for longer than our memory.”
Becca could just see the way Bella’s fingers tightened on his shoulder, warning him. Not many people would have understood that his playful grin was because he was annoying his wife more than because he was annoying Argo.
“Are we done?” Argo asked again, stern face raking the circle around the fire. “I called you to do work, not to play like teenagers in the woods, telling stories.”
He was intimidating. Becca had to give him that. The way his voice came from deep down in his chest, and the way his angry eyes stood stark against his deep, dark skin in the firelight. There was true, unhinged violence in that man, and he clearly wanted them all to know it.
To fear it.
Intimidating was one thing. Fear was another.
Makkai weren’t afraid of people, not even the Gray. They had too much experience with things that were truly scary.
“State your business and be on your way,” Bella said. “We take our payment up front.”
Argo turned his head and the dark-haired man next to him stood and handed Bella a folded stack of bills. She flipped through them, counting them with her thumb, then nodded, dismissing the man back to his seat.
“What do you want?”
“There’s a community of finfolk down at the border who are taking fishing boats. Drowning the people and sending the boats back empty to crash on the coast.”
“How do you know they’re finfolk?” Bella asked. Argo wrinkled one nostril at her and shifted.
“Because I know,” he said. “I’ll give you the location, you clear them out. That’s the deal.”
Jackson looked up at Bella, who nodded.
“We will look into it,” she said. “If it’s any more involved than that, we will come back for more money.”
Argo shrugged.
“One of you. I don’t want to see all of you again.”
Bella inclined her head in agreement and he stood, brushing off his arms and walking away. Bella stood, going to help Dawn clean up the tea bowls.
“What’s your name?” someone asked. She looked over her shoulder at the dark-haired man, appreciating the detail of his face from up close. He had a long nose, sharp, but it suited his face. It made him seem intense and centered, and his eyes… his eyes were almost black.
“I’m Becca,” Becca said, handing Dawn a bowl.
“You’re new,” he said. “How do you get hooked up with a crew like this?”
“How do you end up with a man like that?” Becca answered. She heard Dawn snort.
“I’m Lange,” the man said. “If you need someone to work with on this or on anything else, you can call me. I can get you more money or supplies or whatever else.”
“I don’t think…” Becca started, and he flashed her a grin.
“Look, they don’t like me because I’m here with him. I’m just looking for some neutral territory, right? You give me your phone, I put my number in it, and if Bella decides that she wants more money for the job, you call me. It just solves a lot of everyone’s problems.”
Becca glanced at Dawn, who gave her an exaggerated shrug.
“Fine,” Becca said, digging her phone out of her pocket. “But I’m not just going to call you for nothing.”
He tipped his head to the side like a bird.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Eighteen,” she lied. She would be seventeen come fall. He shook his head.
“Nope,” he said. “I’m not hitting on you.”
“Looks like it to me,” Dawn said from the far side of the circle. He laughed.
“I get that a lot,” he said. He handed Becca’s phone back and shrugged.
“If we can avoid going through Argo, everyone’s happier, believe me.”
She shrugged and he winked at her, then turned and jogged after Argo and the other two. Dawn came over and shouldered Becca.
“Shut up,” Becca said, and Dawn laughed.
“Colin is waiting on you to bring those so he can wash them,” Bella called. “If you keep him waiting, you can wash them yourselves.”
Becca took her share of the bowls from Dawn and helped her carry them across the circle of trailers to where the makeshift kitchen was set up and sorted them out so Colin could wash them, then they went to lean against one of the RVs to watch as one of the men pulled out a violin and started plucking at it.
“He was hot, though,” Dawn said. Becca grinned.
“He was. What kind of a name is Lange?”
“What kind of name is Argo?” Dawn countered.
“True,” Becca said.
“Are you going to call him?” Dawn asked. Becca shook her head.
“Can you imagine what Bella would say?”
They both looked over at where the woman was standing in her great skirts near the fire, watching as the final preparations went into setting up camp. She was a legend, that woman. Becca had trained with some of the retired queens, women who had done this for a decade or more and then gone back to the traditional pastoral lives that Makkai had these days, tending farms out in the country on plots of land that they’d bought or that no one tended to check very often, clustered together in happy little communities, bringing up children and tending to their magic. The women were tough, because the world was tough, but not like Bella. She was the first daughter of the first daughter of the first daughter, stretching back as far as they bothered keeping records, all named Bella, a fearsome magician and warrior and an even more fearsome queen. She maintained a humming level of discipline, and being selected to her tribe was an honor.
It also meant that Becca was not going to be seeing random outsiders. Outsiders brought danger, because they didn’t know the Makkai ways and couldn’t defend themselves.
“He looked very capable,” Dawn said with a teasing smile. That was true. He hadn’t looked at all like a werewolf or an evil eye was going to put him down.
“He’s old,” Becca said.
“Makkai are old for their years,” Dawn said. Becca laughed.
“What, do you want to see him again, and you’re just trying to get me to bring him back?”
Dawn laughed, her hands over her face.
“No,” she said. “You just seemed a fine match. I don’t know why.”
“I’m not here to make a match,” Becca said, though the flash of heat at the idea of kissing him hit her again. Inconvenient. She was here to fight, and to learn from the best, the magic, the weapons, the thoughts a woman like Bella would have.
“Dawn,” Bella called. Dawn waved and trotted off to talk to Bella, and Becca waited by herself for a minute, then went to sit by the fire again as the men and women who brought instruments with them everywhere started warming up. Fiddle, drums, a flute. They played merrily as everyone finished the camp work, and then men and women began to dance. It was play, as yet, but when Jackson finally came and joined them, the energy picked up, and people started whooping and singing. Jackson pulled Becca to her feet and she let him spin her twice, her skirt floating around around her, the heavy, split canvas cutting through the air with a noise like a flag. Then she was skipping through one of the complex, weaving dances they did on nights like tonight, when the weather was fine and the fire was high and they had new money in their pockets.
It was all so new. She wanted to remember every moment of it.
She rode with Dawn and Billy in Billy’s giant red truck down along the Texas coast in a convoy of trucks. Colin had
stayed behind to watch over the camp, and all of the rest of the tribe were going down to scout the area where Argo had said they could find the finfolk.
“I didn’t know they were dangerous,” Becca was saying.
“Usually aren’t,” Billy said over his shoulder. Dawn was counting crystals and sorting them into canvas bags, not really listening. “They’re just people who know their magic and love the water, generally. When they didn’t know their magic, they can get dangerous, because they start drowning people on accident, but we haven’t dealt with that type in a long time.”
“So what’s different about these ones?” Becca asked. Billy shook his head.
“Don’t know. Bella will figure it out, though, and then we’ll make a plan.”
“Is Argo lying?” Becca asked. Billy laughed.
“It’s a good question,” he said. “Good instincts, at least, but Argo is too lazy to bring us all the way down here to lie to us. If he wanted to get rid of them because he just didn’t like them, he’d do it himself. No, they’re a problem, right enough, and he doesn’t want to deal with it.”
“What if it’s just storms, or if it’s something else, like pirates, that’s attacking boats?” Becca asked. Billy twisted in his seat.
“Pirates?” he asked. “In Texas?”
“Watch the road,” she said, turning sideways across the back bench and working her skirts up high enough to lace her boots. She’d been running behind this morning, and the whole getting dressed thing had fallen by the wayside when she’d taken too long trying to decide which knives, which potions, which crystals to bring. She’d been sitting on the floor of the trailer by her bed, surrounded with the full array of them when Dawn had found her and shooed her into motion again.
“We are hunting mermaids,” Dawn murmured, and Billy laughed.
“And as soon as pirates start using incantations and shifter magic, they’ll hit my radar,” he said.
“Shifter pirates,” Becca mused. “That would be exciting.”
“You watch too many movies,” Billy answered without malice.
“So if they aren’t normally evil, why are these ones doing something like that?”
Billy shook his head.
“They really don’t teach you the important stuff,” he said. “You can hit a fly on a wall with a throwing knife from across the room, but it doesn’t all come together until your first hunt.”
“That’s not an answer,” Becca said.
“No, it isn’t,” Billy said, scratching his chin. “Look, you ever ask yourself why the Gray don’t deal with their own silly magician problems? Why they pay us good money to go hunt down ghosts and push them across?”
“Because they’re lazy and rich?” Becca said. He laughed.
“They are that,” Billy said, “but it’s because they’re demon specialists. And demons are predictable. Evil sonsabitches, but predictable. People, Becca. People do stuff you’d never dream.”
She checked the dagger at her waist and looked out the windshield again.
“So what do we do?” Becca asked.
“What you’re trained to do,” Billy said. “Find the evil and snuff it.”
She nodded.
Dawn sat up, tying the last bag to her belt.
“What are we talking about?”
“Rainbows,” Billy said and Becca grinned at the road.
The Texas coast smelled of industry, and oil derricks dotted the horizon. Becca grimaced at it.
“Why would finfolk come here?” she asked. “They could go anywhere.”
Dawn shrugged.
“Some people think this is home,” she said. “You’ll see all kinds, with us. Some people would turn their noses up at sleeping three to a trailer with the likes of us.”
Becca laughed and nodded. She’d been looking forward to it since she’d known it was out there. Gypsies have roots like their feet, her grandmother had told her once. They exist, and they serve a purpose, but they don’t ever get attached to anything.
Becca didn’t know where, exactly, her grandmother was, just now. She’d been headed to New York when Becca had joined up with the tribe, but she wouldn’t have stayed there very long.
The tribe unloaded and organized along a stretch of road that was just out of sight of the water, milling as Bella and Jackson sat in their truck and argued over the final details of what was going to happen next. Finally Bella got out and stood on the bumper of the truck.
“All right, we trust nothing. Argo could be setting us up for any number of reasons, and we don’t assume anything. They may or may not be here, they may or may not be finfolk, they may or may not be dangerous. Keep your heads up, stay in your groups, watch out for each other. Billy, you keep Becca in arm’s length all day, all right? Until we know how sticky this is going to get.”
Beside her, Billy nodded. Dawn had drifted off a few minutes ago, looking like she was scenting the air.
“I’ll be fine,” Becca murmured.
“You will with me looking out for you,” Billy answered, not unkindly. She stood straighter and Billy laughed silently.
“Don’t have anything to prove,” he said. “This is learning. Don’t make any mistakes to get you killed, and you’ve done your job.”
Sure, and the knife in her boot was just for show.
Several of the men and women around her checked guns and returned them to their hidden holsters. Becca wasn’t allowed to have a gun yet because it was much harder to hurt someone from the tribe by accident with a knife, and a lot harder to kill one of them. Only the most level-headed members carried them, but Bella tried to make sure at least one from each group had one. Becca knew that Billy had two, at least, and he kept a shotgun across the back of the truck. That had been first day - the drills with it to make sure she could get it out and use it in an emergency.
“All right,” Bella said. “We’re headed down to the water, this way. You won’t find a path, and I’m expecting they’ve found themselves a cove where they aren’t going to get a lot of foot traffic.” She went through the details of the formation, then waved a hand at Dawn.
“Need you cutting off their water exit,” she said. “Not until I say, and we stay secret until the last second, in case this is a trick, but if we have to close in and take them out, I don’t want them going fishy and taking off where we can’t follow.”
Dawn nodded. Bella nodded.
“All right, let’s go.”
Makkai women were special. As far as Becca knew, in all the world, there was no group of women anywhere that every one of them along the bloodline was magical. There was some kind of big secret to it, the kind that everyone patted her on the shoulder and told her she’d find out in good time.
Among Makkai women, Dawn was special. She was a whisperer, a woman whose natural ability with crystal magic was prized by the entire community, and who had been raised since she was small to serve a queen as the little sister. She traveled with Billy and Becca, but she stayed with Bella for hunting like this. Becca would have preferred that Dawn stay with her because having a younger woman around made her feel less like she stuck out for being a novice, but she understood why.
Dawn was capable of amazing things, and Bella needed her close, so that she could give her orders as fast as necessary, while the rest of the tribe improvised.
“That way,” Billy pointed, indicating a section of roadside wall. Becca hopped over it and they walked across broken ground, rocks green with dead sea slime, the air smelling of humidity and rot.
“Does the tide come up this high?” Becca asked.
“Probably not,” Billy said. “You’d be able to smell the ocean better if it did. I’d guess that’s just from storms.”
She nodded. It was slippery, and she had to watch her feet as she walked, which made her feel exposed. She was supposed to have her head up to listen and to watch.
A little further along, plants started to come up through the rock, scraggly bushes without leaves that clung to he
r with long thorns. She was grateful for how heavy her skirts were, but she had to work to keep her shirt from tangling, and at one point she found a broken stick in her hair. She wasn’t sure how long it had been there.
“How far until this ends?” she asked.
“You know as much as I do,” Billy told her. “Keep the noise down. When you hear waves, they can hear us, and they may be able to feel us through the ground even before that.”
Becca nodded and stooped, trying to get under the next tangle of branches. The air was turning cold and she was starting to be able to smell the ocean over the smell of oil and cars, and the bushes were now taller than she was. Here and there, she could see a tree or vine trying to make its way up through the overgrowth, bright green leaves amidst the dull gray wood.
Billy held up a hand and Becca stopped. He put a finger to his ear and she closed her eyes, listening. Heard nothing. Putting her hand into her pocket, she found a focus stone, hers was an uncut emerald lined with yellow quartz. All of the odds-and-ends sensations dropped away, the way her feet felt on the rocks, the way yet another bush was pulling her hair this way and her shirt another, the way her skirts slid along her legs and folded through the plants, the feel of her palms and her chest and the anxiety to prove that she was as good as they said she was, for her to end up traveling with Bella.
She was quiet inside for a moment, trapping everything else in the emerald, and then she listened.
Out ahead of her, she could hear the pulsing of the ocean. Like two separate lines of sound, there was a low, constant one, in and out, in and out, and then on top of it, the sound of waves breaking, high, unpredictable, with a sort of anticipation to it. She nodded to it, feeling the speed of the ocean, then opened her eyes and let go of the focus stone, kneeling and burying a grain of white quartz between the stones. She looked over and saw Billy doing the same. All the way up and down this section of beach, Makkai would be burying their quartz markers, creating a fine net that Dawn would be able to use to determine who was in and who was out. She had a palm-sized rose quartz that she used to hear what the other, smaller quartz knew.
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