by Lysa Daley
“The bar?”
Ding ding ding. And we have a winner.
“Oh gosh, I usually find hotel bars to be kind of a drag.”
“Not this one. The Seahorse Tavern is always rocking. Especially after nine, when the band starts.”
“I'll have to come by and check it out.”
She leaned in, spoke in a low voice and winked. “It's a great place to meet guys. A lot of really cute beach dudes hang out here, if you're into that.”
I thought back to Kelly Jackson and the motorcycle werewolves. Mr. Morty… not so much.
I squinted. “Yeah, I like my guys a little rougher and tougher than surfer dudes.”
“Believe me. We get all types.” She finished wrapping the present in a little box with the big gauzy bow. “I promise you won't be disappointed if you swing by. I’ll hook you and your girlfriends up with a free drink.”
“Hard to turn that down.” I handed her my credit card.
Back in the lobby, I met up with Stryker. “How’d you do?” I asked.
“Great.” He held up a little piece of paper with a phone number scrawled on it. “I got Lana the desk clerk’s number.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Morty never stayed here as a guest.”
“Well, some of us actually found out some information about this place.” I told him the story of the necklace as we walked back to the parking lot.
Stryker didn’t seem impressed. “All we know is that he was here. Nothing weird about buying a necklace.”
I was confused. “I think this all somehow ties together.”
Instead of heading back to our cars, Stryker turned toward the water. “Taverns and crystals and werewolves have one thing in common. The moon. And when two grown men have gone mysteriously missing near the ocean, I think it's pretty clear what may have happened.”
I wasn’t sure where he was going. “Please enlighten me. I can’t wait.”
“We’re going fishing.”
Chapter Twelve
“We’re going what?” I trailed behind Stryker, who was marching down the beach to the rolling surf.
He stomped through the sand in tall combat boots, but I was wearing my favorite suede ankle booties that were quickly filling up with sand and would get ruined if they got soaked with salt water.
He kept marching. “I’ve got a hunch, and we’re going to check it out.”
Giving up, I stopped and yanked off my booties. By the time I caught up to him, he was talking to two Latino fishermen as they got out of a small wooden boat under the shade of the tall pier.
“An hour?” The older fisherman furrowed his brow.
“Then how about fifty bucks?” Stryker negotiated.
They remained unconvinced.
“Okay. A hundred bucks for an hour,” Stryker said, holding up a crisp hundred dollar bill. “But that’s my final offer.”
The two men silently glanced at each other, clearly skeptical of this big white guy in a leather jacket and combat boots offering to rent their fishing boat for an hour.
With his other hand Stryker reached into his back pocket. “Here, take my cell phone too. As collateral. We won’t even be an hour. I swear.”
“Don’t go out too far,” the older man agreed. “The motor is getting low on gas. And the tide is going out.”
For an instant, Stryker seemed to reconsider the negotiation. He glanced up and down the beach, probably looking for an alternate boat to rent. There wasn’t another boat in sight.
“Fine,” he said, exchanging the money for the thick, fraying rope attached the stern of the boat. As the fisherman pulled out their catch, two lobsters and some long spotted gray fish, and trudged up the beach.
Stryker turned to me with a gallant gesture of the hand. “Ladies first.”
“Are we really going fishing?” I climbed into the small, wobbly boat, trying not to rock it too much.
“I guess you could say that.” He pushed off and started the small outboard motor.
I wanted to ask more, but the small motor’s roar was so loud that I couldn’t even shout to be heard over it. Instead, I sat back and tried to enjoy the unexpected boat ride.
At first, the sun on my face felt warm, but soon we were out past the breakline, well into the rolling waves of the blue Pacific water, and the temperature dropped quickly. Cold ocean spray stung my face. California’s Pacific waters were notoriously cold. A little swim this time of year wouldn’t have been pleasant.
Stryker slowed the motor to a stop. The small boat now felt even smaller bobbing on top of the big blue water. The roar of the motor had been replaced by the rhythmic sound of water lapping on the boat’s sides. There was a considerable swell as we rode up a rolling wave then down the other side. I was glad I’d eaten my cinnamon rolls several hours ago.
The fisherman had left a few small rods and reels on the floor of the boat, along with what I assumed was a lobster trap. “So what are we fishing for?”
“Mermaids,” Stryker replied.
“If you’re planning on catching a mermaid, I think you brought the wrong fishing poles.”
He winked. “More than one way to summon a mermaid.”
“I thought you and Karolina went to the South Bay to talk to the mer-regent yesterday?”
“We didn’t have any luck,” he said vaguely. “Something tells me I’ll do better here.”
Saltwater supernatural generally kept to themselves and away from those of us about land. It was said their world was both more sophisticated and more peaceful than us landlubbers. And they were far more beautiful than humans. Some of the higher ranking merfolks were able to transform into humans and move about the land, at least temporarily. For some reason, their magic became stronger on land than underwater. This was not true for those of us who lived on land. Our magic was diminished in the water. But they didn't appear to humans very often for one simple reason: capturing a living mermaid would give an ordinary earthly witch or wizard almost unstoppable power.
Stryker closed his eyes, his hands neatly placed on his knees palms up. The energy around him began to swirl as he performed a summonings spell. He was a wizard, and a strong one at that. I felt a small shock of surprise at the raw power that emanated from him.
He was also a werebear. At least I thought he was. He’d saved me from a nasty fall from a warehouse rooftop in his were form. But I was pretty weak and had passed out seconds after he’d caught me in a freefall. The truth was I wasn’t totally sure what exactly I’d seen.
I kept an eye on him while also scanning the top of the waves. It didn't take long before bubbles rose to the surface directly in front of the boat. Like a pot of water that went from gently bubbling to a rolling boil, the circle of turning water got bigger.
I peered over the edge of the little boat into the water at an ominous shadow the size of a shark.
“What’s under us?” I asked, instinctively jerking away from the edge.
“That’s who we came to talk to.”
As the form approached the surface, I leaned in to get a better look at the glistening golden fish tail.
“Don’t get too close,” Stryker warned me.
“Why? Will it pull me in?” I asked half kidding.
“Probably not,” he said. “But marms can be unpredictable.”
Fish, including mermaids, swim in schools so they’re lead by a school marm. He was summoning the ruler of the Pacific seas.
Then an explosion of color burst from beneath the waves, shooting high into the air. As it slowed near the apex, a lean and colorful woman with the lower body of the colorful fish appeared.
I gasped at the intense beauty of the woman as she gracefully dove head first back into the water.
Stryker stood up, hands on his hips and proud of his handiwork. “Right on time. Had a feeling she’d respond to my summons.”
“This seems a little disrespectful.” I said as the mermaid swam around us in a circle, causing the little boat
to rock wildly. “She’s pretty much a queen. I don’t think they appreciate being summoned.”
“Nah. I’ve known her for years.”
“Sort of like Santina?” I asked.
He shushed me. “Don’t say her name around the Nerida.”
Santina was an ancient vampiress who just happened to run one of the largest covens on the West Coast. She was nearly half a millenia old and stunningly beautiful. Unfortunately, Santina wasn’t too fond of Stryker. In fact, she despised him. Some sort of love-affair-gone-wrong/stolen airplane deal. Apparently, it was complicated.
I’d only known him a short time but it was clear that Stryker was a player. There were probably a lot of females out there with a love-gone-wrong story to tell about Stryker.
Hopefully, Nerida wasn’t one of them.
The face of a beautiful woman rose up on the far side of the boat. She draped herself, head and shoulders, over the edge. I’d never seen a mermaid close up, but she was as beautiful as Santina, the vampire. The term school marm conjured up the image of a prim matronly school teacher with a ruler in her hand. That was 100% the antithesis of the creature that blinked her bright sea green eyes in our direction.
“Well, by Poseidon’s trident, I didn’t expect to see you out here, Stryker Smith. Thought you were more of a night dwelling creature who roamed the back alleys and bars.”
Guess she knew Stryker pretty well.
“Nice to see you, too, Nerida.”
She turned her perfect eyes on me. For a moment, I thought she would do the same thing Santina, the vampire, had done, which was to assume that I was Stryker’s girlfriend. “A little animal shifter. How quaint. And a useful choice as an assistant.”
“This is Lacey,” he introduced me. “And she’s not my assistant. Not for lack of me trying to get her to work for me. But, she is the assistant of a man who’s gone missing.”
“And that has what to do with me?” She narrowed her eyes.
“Any of your maids have a new boyfriend? A half-wizard with elven blood, who’s a couple hundred years old and named Morty.”
“Ah Stryker. You joke with me, yes?” She laughed. “You know my maids only select humans in their prime. The biggest, strongest, and smartest. What use do we have for anything less? Even the most prime human specimen, supernatural or not, pales in comparison to the merfolk.”
“Our Mr. Morty was searching for his missing brother, who he suspected ran off with a sea creature.”
“Why do you jump to the conclusion that it’s my people?”
“Well, for one thing, we found his car in the parking lot by the pier,” Stryker began. “And we have reason to believe his missing brother had been hanging around near here.”
She flipped her hair over her shoulder in an annoyed way. “I can give you my assurances that neither your Morty man, nor his brother, have paired with any of my maids. Have you considered the possibility that perhaps these men flung themselves into the sea, sacrificing their lives to a watery grave?”
“Suicide?” Stryker said with skepticism in his tone.
“Happens all the time.” She casually flicked her wrist. “Many mortals, once they have experienced the ecstasy and the magnificence of a mermaid, would rather die than go on living without her if she will not accept him as a mate.”
“You got any dead old wizard-elves floating around down there?” Stryker asked. “Because our trail ends here. In your territory.”
“I have already told you I do not,” she huffed. “I think we are done talking.”
“Let me ask you about a couple other younger men who’ve gone missing down in the South —”
But before Stryker could finish asking his question, Nerida’s tail flashed, and she dove back down. She flapped her tail hard on the water, sending water spraying both of us.
“Okay,” Stryker said, wiping the cold, salty water from his face. “That didn’t help much.”
On the way back, the outboard motor ran out of gas.
“How good are you at swimming?” Stryker asked.
“I don’t know how,” I confessed.
“What do you mean— you don’t know?”
“I don’t swim. Never learned.”
“Can’t you just turn yourself into a little fishy and swim away?”
He wasn’t wrong, exactly. I could turn myself into any number of small aquatic creatures.
I just never had.
And sure, my natural instincts would — in theory — kick in. But because I was afraid of the water, I had never actually turned myself into anything that lived in the sea.
“Maybe you could start with something semi-aquatic like a duck.”
I knew he was making fun of me, but that wasn’t an altogether terrible idea.
“Work your way up to water nymph,” he continued.
“Speaking of water nymphs,” I began, happy to change the subject. “I still think that maybe whoever or whatever is responsible for Morty’s disappearance isn’t a mermaid. There are lots of other water creatures that more actively come after humans.”
He winced. “Like what?”
“Could be that South Bay kelpie or a siren. Maybe a hippocampus.”
“What’s a hippocampus again?” he asked. “I never really paid attention in my magical creatures classes in middle school.”
He knew what a hippocampus was, but I answered him anyway. “If a mermaid had a horse, it would be a hippocampus. Half horse, half fish. And we know that both Morty and his brother were at the Seahorse Inn.”
“Could be a coincidence.”
“Could be.” I nodded. “Or it could be a clue.”
“Like I said before, none of those creatures have the power to lure or attack a full grown witch or wizard. Let alone kill them.”
“We don’t know that anyone’s dead,” I quickly countered.
Stryker didn’t reply. Instead, he turned and looked out at the horizon. “Only a mermaid could overpower and seduce a supernatural.”
Did he know something that I didn’t? We floated in silence for a long moment.
“Do you think Nerida’s lying?”
He shook his head. “I’d like to say yes and think she’s hiding something from us. But I don’t. She’d be more pissed about one of her maids getting involved with a human than we would be.”
“Maybe, she wants to, you know, handle it internally,” I suggested.
He thought about this and shook his head. “I doubt it.”
The way he said this made me feel like he wasn’t telling me everything. “Why?”
“A few years back, maybe five, a group of high-paid poachers captured and killed Nerida’s sister.”
“Oh my God,” I reeled. “That’s terrible.”
“She came to Stroud for help. We found the guys. A group out of South America who wanted to sell off her mermaid body parts, scale by scale, to the highest bidders. Unfortunately, we got there a day late. They’d already harvested her eggs — a process that killed her.”
“How awful,” I said quietly.
Sadly, sometimes supernatural creatures were worth more dead than alive. And, unfortunately, some out there were willing to take advantage of that dark magic for their own selfish financial gain.
“I hope whoever did that is at Blackthorn,” I said, referring to the maximum security prison for supernaturals.
“Oh, they are. Serving their life sentences underwater,” he replied.
The magistrate had ways of punishing prisoners that fit the crimes they had committed. Killing a mermaid would’ve led to being kept alive but permanently underwater. Sort of the ultimate reverse karma.
“Anyway,” he went on. “I’m pretty sure Nerida would be honest with us knowing that one of our own was missing.”
That made sense. There was a strong code of honor in our world. Those firmly on the side of white magic took it seriously.
“So if she doesn’t think it’s one of her maids, and you don’t think it could have been another spec
ies, then where are we?” I asked.
“Could be a rogue. A mermaid without a clan. Or, it’s possible Nerida doesn’t even know.”
“I’ll go back to the library and dig through the files and the chat boards,” I began. “Maybe I can uncover something that will be useful.”
“Like what?” he said doubtfully as he eyed the waves.
“I’m not sure yet…” I said, losing a little confidence too.
He must have realized that he wasn’t exactly being encouraging, because he turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Hey listen, I know I come off as a tough guy, but you’re doing a great job. You are by far the best young investigator that I’ve worked with in years. I mean, to be honest, you may be the most talented and natural seeker I’ve ever seen. Don’t get down. Go check it out and then let me know where we stand.”
My heart fluttered. Those were some of the nicest words anyone had ever said to me. And it felt good that he saw something in me.
“Thanks for saying that.” I smiled. “I’ll let you know what I find if I dig anything up.”
“Better yet.” He grinned back. “Cast a little spell on the outboard motor so we can get back to shore.”
Chapter Thirteen
Because I didn’t have to be at work in the library until 5:00 and I didn’t have any classes today, I decided to swing by the hospital to check in on Sam.
I worried about him.
If the memory of his encounter with a vampire and his free ride in the talons of a ginormous gargoyle came flooding back, then the powers-that-be in the upper ranks of the Society would have no choice but to wipe his memory again.
And that would be potentially catastrophic for something minor like his brain.
The clock ticked past 3pm as I entered the special Airborne Contagion Unit. It was quiet as I moved down the sterile white-floored hallway. A few attendants sat behind the round nursing station desk, tapping away on the computers and writing information in charts.
Just outside Sam’s room, I could hear the quiet murmur of the television. The curtain in the entryway was pulled eighty percent closed.