by Janni Nell
The notes of my “Copacabana” ring tone interrupted us.
“You’d better get that,” said Casper. “Hopefully it’s Wanda.”
It was. She asked breathlessly, “How’s paradise?”
“Great if you like mosquitoes.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.
“Kidding,” I said. “Paradise is wonderful. I have my own guest cottage.” Wanda wanted to know everything, so I described the décor of white walls, aqua furnishings and artfully placed seashells. When she asked for more details I told her about the swimming pools surrounded by tropical gardens, the delicious food and my private wide-screen TV that got every channel imaginable from Oak’s satellite dish. “Not that I need to watch TV when I can sit on my balcony and watch the ocean.”
“Mmm, sounds wonderful. So, this guy you’re working for, does he have a girlfriend? More to the point, does he want one called Wanda?”
“Down, girl. He’s not available.”
“Story of my life.” So not true. Wanda was cute and blond and bubbly. Guys loved her.
“So,” I went on. “How’re the classes in witchcraft going? How’s Buttercup?” Wanda had been looking forward to getting her very own familiar, but she’d been disappointed when it turned out to be a cow instead of the more fashionable black cat or raven. Still, she and the cow seemed to be bonding.
“Buttercup’s been a great help with my spells,” said Wanda. “And I’m learning so much from Mac.” It still amazed me that Wanda, the poster girl for spells gone wrong, had scored an apprenticeship with one of the best witches in America. The fact that Mackenzie Revvan thought Wanda had huge potential was as gratifying as it was astonishing. I was totally happy for my BFF.
“So,” I said, “have you discovered anything about my arrow?”
“You owe me big-time for this.”
“For looking up a book?” I teased.
“I’ve done a little more than that. Have you heard of the Kai?”
I searched my memory and came up with, “Kind of a South Pacific goblin?”
“You got it. Well, the arrow belongs to a small tribe called the Tikini-kai. There used to be a much larger population, but in the last hundred years—since the war began—their numbers have dwindled.”
“War? They wouldn’t be fighting the mers, would they?”
“How did you know?”
“The other half of the arrow was in a mer’s heart. Oak has the body in his deep freeze.”
Wanda sounded like she was choking. At first I thought she was grossed out by the image of the dead mer, but she was actually horrified by our lack of respect for the deceased. “You have to return his body to the ocean. It’s very important for mers to get a proper burial. Take the body out to sea, at least a mile from land, and push it overboard. The mers will take care of the rest.”
“Okay, will do. Now tell me about this war.”
“No one knows exactly how it started, but various sources quote the reasons as a broken betrothal, a shipwreck, or a problem with a dowry. I guess the mers and the Tikini-kai knew the truth once, but so much time has passed. Anyone who was actually there would no longer be alive.”
“Where do the Tikini-kai live?” I asked.
“My reference book calls it Tikini Island—duh—but it’s not marked on any maps. Either the name has changed or it’s too small to interest the average cartographer. But not to worry, my reference book mentions the latitude and longitude.” She told me what they were and I wrote them down. On Wanda’s end of the line, I heard a voice in the background. When the voice stopped talking, Wanda said, “I have to go. Got a lesson with Mac.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“No problem. Oh wait. Allegra? You still there?”
“Yep.”
“How much of the goblin language do you remember?”
“Enough to get by.”
“Good—you’ll need it. And remember those goblins are dangerous.”
“You know me, I’m a safety girl.”
She snorted. “As if. You’re always rushing into danger. Honestly, you must have a guardian angel the way you keep cheating death.” She didn’t know Casper’s true identity. I’d been careful to keep that a secret. “Talk to you later,” she said. “Remember what I said about being careful.”
“I will. Give Buttercup a pat for me. Say hi to Mac.”
“And to Orlando?” He was Mac’s familiar, a big brown spider who had a habit of crawling up women’s legs. I’d almost squashed him once. I still might if he crawled up my leg again.
“Yeah,” I said, “remember me to Orlando. Give him a kiss for me.”
Wanda laughed. I couldn’t tell whether she got my joke or she was happily intending to pass on my greeting. Best not to know, really.
Casper was leaning on the railing gazing over the moonlit ocean. I couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders seemed tense. Or maybe I was projecting my own feelings onto him.
Moving to his side, I said, “The mer’s body has to be given a proper burial at sea.”
“You’ll need some help with that.” Casper wasn’t allowed to help me solve cases, but disposing of the mer’s body fell into a difference category of assistance. With one command and a clap of his hands, he turned the yacht toward Lu’arna Island. Once on shore I obtained the key from Oak, and we liberated the body from the deep freeze. Soon the merman was lying on Heavenly’s deck and we were heading out to sea. The breeze had died and the air was thick with unshed rain. Casper had closed the eyes of the mer, who could have been sleeping, except for the stillness of his chest. Who did he belong to? Did he have a wife? Kids? Parents? Would anyone truly mourn his passing? Or would the burial ceremony be nothing more than a formality?
The yacht stopped, standing still as a hearse at a graveyard. My senses were heightened. The air seemed saltier, the moonlight brighter. I could hear waves lapping against the hull.
Casper carried the mer’s body to the side of the yacht and lifted it over the railing.
Before he let it fall, I asked, “Is there anything we should say?”
“The mers will take care of that.” He released the body, which twisted like an Olympic diver then belly flopped into the water and sank.
“Rest in peace,” I murmured, unable to resist saying something. But the peace was short-lived.
The water rippled and churned. I imagined sharks tearing the body apart. “Casper, can’t you do something?” The words were barely out of my mouth when four mermen broke the surface. They carried the body on their shoulders like pallbearers. The youngest of them bore a striking resemblance to the dead mer—a relative, probably his son.
Behind the pallbearers swam an older mermaid. Her long hair was interwoven with many shells. She began to sing a strange tune, unearthly and achingly sad. Casper moved beside me, his hand accidentally brushing mine. My stupid heart lurched.
To cover my reaction to his touch, I said, “The song is so sad.”
“Be at peace,” he said. “The merman is.”
“Gone to mer Heaven?”
“Yes.” This time Casper’s touch was intentional, but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe our interlaced fingers meant anything more than the comfort of mourners.
We stood unmoving as other mers surfaced, joining the song until a hundred voices mourned together. The song reached a crescendo. The pallbearers, with their grim cargo, dived beneath the surface. The other mers followed one by one until only the older mermaid remained. She held the last note of the song for long minutes. Then she too dived. The ripples of her departure lapped against Heavenly’s hull. Rain began to fall. Heavy tropical rain that had us running for shelter.
“This yacht could use an umbrella,” I said, trying to lighten our mood.
“I could clap one up
if you wanted.”
“Go on,” I dared.
“Any particular color?”
“Candy-stripe.”
Three claps of his hands later, a giant umbrella appeared over the yacht. I walked around the deck beneath the canopy of pink and white stripes.
“You are one crazy angel.” Then I realized how the umbrella might look from afar. A UFO hovering on the water. “Better take it down,” I said. “Don’t want to attract unnecessary attention.”
When he clapped his hands once more, the umbrella disappeared and I was caught in the deluge again.
“Thanks for giving me time to get under shelter,” I said, as water soaked my clothes.
“Not my fault if you aren’t quick enough.” He smiled from his position out of the rain.
I joined him in the dry space. Like a dog, I shook my hair, showering him with drops. He retaliated by pulling me playfully into the rain again and holding me there. Water cascaded over his cheekbones, plastered his golden hair to his scalp, his clothes to his body. If this had been a wet T-shirt contest, he’d have won.
I wasn’t aware my jaw had dropped until my mouth started to fill with rainwater. “Maybe we should move before I drown.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you shook water all over me.” His lips twitched.
“Don’t make me hurt you.” I fisted my hand in the neck of his T-shirt, but it’s hard to look threatening when you’re salivating over well-developed pecs.
He held up his own hands in surrender. “You win.” He scooped me up and carried me out of the rain. When he put me down, he clapped up dry clothes for himself and asked if I wanted any.
“They’ll disappear when I get off the yacht, right? In that case I’ll settle for a thick towel.” As I dried my hair, I said, “It’s time I met the Tikini-kai.”
Casper sighed as though he’d been expecting this and wasn’t exactly pleased. “When? I need to know so I can be ready to rescue you.”
I told him to be ready in the morning. “But don’t rescue me unless I’m in mortal danger. If you pull me out too soon, I won’t learn as much.”
Casper sighed again.
Chapter Four
The next morning we set out for Tikini Island. Casper must have ordered Heavenly to go extra slow because he had plenty of time to lecture me about the homicidal tendencies of the Tikini-kai. By the time the island punctured the horizon like a broken tooth, I seriously doubted the wisdom of visiting the place. My misgivings grew when Casper pointed out a reef littered with debris from a wrecked boat.
“The Tikini-kai salvage anything useful from boats that run aground on their reef. The humans who survive the wrecks end up in their cooking pots.”
“Nice.” I promised him I’d be careful, but he wasn’t satisfied. He accused me of not taking this seriously and continued to bitch and moan until I told him to shut up. For a nanosecond, his butch expression was replaced by hurt little boy. Aww. I was tempted to pat his head until the butch warrior returned with a scowl.
As Heavenly headed away from the reef to the other side of the island, I conceded, “Look, I know you’re just doing your job, but you’re beginning to sound like someone’s granny.”
He grunted as though I’d insulted him and suggested we get into the dinghy. He could’ve flown me to Tikini Island, but there was less chance of being seen if we approached by water. Especially on a dinghy that, just like Heavenly, became invisible when it went super-fast. When we reached the beach, it came right out of the water and parked on the dry sand.
“So you won’t get your stitches wet,” Casper said.
I patted the side of the dinghy. “I love magic.”
“Just remember you don’t have any magic of your own.”
“Yeah, but I have a guardian angel.”
“Hmm.”
I clapped him on the back. “She’ll be right, mate,” I told him, which was one of Dad’s favorite sayings.
I’d waited until the last moment to put on walking shoes, gritting my teeth against the pain in my toe, but really you can’t wear flip-flops to trek through the jungle. When my shoes were laced, I limped up the beach and set out to find the Tikini-kai camp.
I soon discovered it takes lots of practice to move quietly through thick undergrowth. I did my best, but I sounded like a stampede of bigfoots. Not that they stampede all that often, but at the post-Christmas sales—watch out. Don’t get between a female bigfoot and a large pair of stilettos.
Besides being quiet, I had to watch out for traps. Luckily I didn’t encounter any tripwires, concealed pits, or hidden ropes that would close around my ankle and jerk me upside down. But I did meet a swarm of starving mosquitoes and some razor-sharp plants that raised welts on my city-tender skin. Small consolation that I was protected from the tropical sun by the thick canopy of leaves overhead. I moved through a world of green shadows, wondering which of them would morph into a Tikini-kai pointing a blue-fletched arrow at my chest.
I saw no one. Not unless you counted the birds, spiders, snakes and various insects that made the jungle their home. The place appeared to be uninhabited by anything closer to a human. Okay, goblins don’t look quite human. They’re rarely more than five and a half feet tall, but they’re strong, with thickly muscled shoulders, biceps and thighs. Their faces are flatter and more square-shaped than the average human’s, and their hair color ranges between chestnut and black. The irises of their eyes are brown with a red rim. Their night vision is excellent, and they have thin, perfectly shaped eyebrows even though they don’t pluck. If there’s little more than one percent difference in the DNA of humans and chimpanzees, it’s even less with goblins.
I had a feeling they were close by, watching me, but without the itch in my toe I couldn’t be sure. Goblins are secretive at the best of times. At worst, they’re sneaky, power-hungry and manipulative. Name any human megalomaniac and I’ll guarantee they have goblin ancestors.
You could say I stumbled on their village by accident. At first glance, the settlement appeared to be just a small circle of huts surrounding a clearing. Knowing goblins, I took a second glance and a third, until I saw all the other huts camouflaged by the trees. Maybe fifty in all. They were constructed from an odd mix of wood, palm fronds, plastic, metal and anything that could be salvaged from the wrecks on the reef. The biggest house even boasted mismatched figureheads beside its front door. Woven baskets stood outside every hut. Some were empty, others filled with fruit or white root vegetables. A toy train and a ball lay beside Barbies and Lego pieces. All discarded as though the Tikini-kai had abandoned this place in a hurry.
Was this a dead end? Or the end of the case? If the Tikini-kai had abandoned this island for greener pastures, they wouldn’t be killing any more mers. It was probably too soon to congratulate myself on setting a new record for solving a case, but I felt confident enough to take a closer look inside one of the huts. I’d never seen inside a goblin’s home and this was too good an opportunity to miss.
After taking the usual precautions of surveying the jungle, just to make sure no goblins were lurking in the undergrowth, I moved into the clearing. No one challenged me. Okay, the birdsong was a bit muted, but that didn’t necessarily mean there were goblins hanging around.
The door of the nearest hut was ajar. I pushed it wider and peeped inside. An eclectic collection of goods from deck chairs to water-damaged cushions to cutlery in a plastic tray made the room seem like a yard sale rather than a home. Probably I should’ve left then, but curiosity dragged me forward and I stepped into the room.
Outside, all hell broke loose.
They came from the jungle, swinging on vines, dropping into the clearing on broad bare feet. I was tempted to pick up the nearest weapon, but a butter knife wouldn’t be much use. Besides, I didn’t want them to see me as hostile. Trying to l
ook totally calm and at ease, I moved outside to greet them.
Opening my hands to show they were empty, I said, “I come in peace.” Okay, it was B-movie dialogue, but my Goblin vocabulary was limited. Anyway the Tikini-kai weren’t interested in talking. When the first one grabbed me, I followed my natural instincts and fought back. Kicking and punching is not a good idea when you’ve come in peace. Misunderstandings occur.
It took six goblins to restrain me. As they bound my wrists, I tried to improve the situation by saying in a poor attempt at Goblin, “I not want fight. I want talk.” It was no surprise they didn’t take me seriously. I probably sounded stupid. When my wrists were securely tied, one goblin detached himself from the crowd. His head barely reached my shoulder, but he was the tallest in the tribe. Blue feathers, like the fletching on the arrows, hung from his earrings. The only clothing he wore was a pair of black and white board shorts, which matched his fanny pack. Hanging from a chain ’round his neck was an empty leather pouch.
He poked a finger at my chest. “You are our enemy.”
“No,” I protested.
“You returned the body of a mer to the ocean, which makes you their friend and our enemy.”
How did he know I’d returned the body to the ocean? I struggled to find the words to prove I wasn’t an enemy. “I take body to sea, yes, but I no friend to mers.”
The tall goblin snorted. His two buff bodyguards cast disbelieving glances at one another.
Undeterrred, I went on, “Why you fight mers?”
The goblin’s eyebrows shot up like dark wings taking flight. “You don’t know why your allies are fighting us?”