Wickedly Wonderful

by Deborah Blake

  Beka smacked his hand away gently. “I don’t think you want to be nibbling on those fins,” she said as she tucked the samples safely away with the rest of her gear. “They seem to have died from whatever is causing the flora and fauna down in your home to sicken. I’m going to take them, and everything else I gathered, to a lab for examination. I’m hoping they’ll be able to tell me what is causing the problem.”

  Fergus tilted his head and looked at her quizzically out of almond-shaped green eyes. “Cannot you simply do magic to reveal nature’s secrets?”

  “Could any of your magicians get answers to this malady that way?” She knew the answer to that, of course. It was a resounding NO. “When I am in the water, I can sense the wrongness of the area. I can feel the plants and animals crying out in pain. But I can’t tell what’s causing it.” She shook her head. “I’ve never come across anything like this before.”

  “I am certain you will figure it out,” Fergus said, his lanky body relaxed against the side of the boat. “You are the Baba Yaga.”

  Beka bit her lip, wishing she had his confidence in her abilities. “I don’t know, Fergus. Maybe we should contact the old Baba and ask her to come back and take a look. I know that the Queen of the Otherworld insisted that it was time for Brenna to retire, but with all her experience, she could probably find the answer in half the time.”

  He surprised her by shaking his head vigorously. “No. Don’t do that. You will solve this. You don’t need to call that one back.” A shadow crossed his eyes, turning their brilliant green to muddy olive.

  “You’d rather have me than her?” Beka asked. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would prefer an inexperienced, barely competent Baba to one who had been doing the job for hundreds of years. “Why?”

  Fergus gazed at the water, a somber expression on his normally cheerful face. “I do not wish to speak badly of the woman who raised you, or insult the Baba; she did her job well, of that there is no question.” He hesitated, two careful breaths that spoke more than words. “But I much prefer you, all the same. There was something . . . not quite right about the old Baba, toward the end. Many of us felt it.”

  Beka could feel her eyebrows climbing in the direction of the blue skies above. “Well, Babas have never been known for their ability to fit in with the other races, Human or mystical, but my foster mother always seemed to me to do it better than most. She was not warm and cozy, exactly, but she took good care of me, long after any other Baba would have simply left me to manage on my own.”

  Fergus shook his head, shaggy hair flopping into his face. “On the surface, yes, she always appeared benign. Especially for a Baba Yaga. But there was something dark underneath all those layers of long batik skirts and jangling beaded necklaces. Something wrong hiding just out of sight, like the fleeting glimpse of a predator you see out of the corner of your eye, right before it pounces and gnaws on your bones.” He gave her a rueful smile. “I know you think I am talking foolishness, but I still ask of you, as one who calls you friend, do not bring back the old Baba.”

  Beka blinked, pleased that the Merman considered her a friend. She still thought she was out of her depth, and as likely to fail as not, but his faith in her gave off warmth like the sun overhead. As for the other . . . clearly, he was talking nonsense.

  “I’ll do my best,” Beka said. She saw the Wily Serpent approaching from the open ocean, a ramrod-straight figure standing in the bow. She could almost see his scowl from here.

  “But I’m not sure what I’ll do if the lab at the university can’t find whatever is poisoning the water. I will keep diving, searching for clues, but honestly, I’m baffled. Everything looks fine, and yet, there is something very, very wrong down there. And the closer I get to your home, the worse the wrongness gets.”

  “I am sure that you will find your way to the answer before long,” Fergus said firmly. “You are the Baba Yaga.”

  Yes, she was. And that was part of the problem. She really wasn’t sure she wanted to be.

  SIX

  “YOU’RE BROODING,” CHEWIE said as they sat outside the bus a couple of days later. A glowing quarter moon hung bright in the sky overhead, and cool, salty breezes blew in from the ocean across the highway. A small bonfire burned in the fire pit before them, its sparks spitting defiance at the stars.

  Despite the beauty and peace of the night, Beka was definitely in a funk.

  “I’m not brooding,” she said, poking listlessly at a log with a pointed stick.

  The giant Newfoundland huffed, his breath igniting the stick and sending the flames roaring upward for a moment. “You are brooding,” he said, plopping onto the ground by her camp chair with a thud that rattled the entire bluff. “And it is getting on my nerves. You should make s’mores. That would cheer you up.”

  Beka dropped the stick rapidly into the fire. “S’mores would cheer you up. And I’m not brooding. I’m just thinking, that’s all.”

  “About that hunky fisherman?” Chewie said, perking his ears up.

  She rolled her eyes. Yes. “No, not about the hunky fisherman. Well, at least not mostly.” Although it did seem ridiculously difficult to stop thinking about him. Three days on that damned boat together, and he not only tortured her during the day, but haunted her dreams as well. It hardly seemed fair.

  “To be honest, Chewie, I’m not sure I can do all this.”

  “Do what?” the dragon-in-disguise asked, baffled. “Sit under the stars and drink chardonnay?”

  Beka sighed. “No, I mean this.” She waved her hand around, indicating the bus and everything it represented. “Maybe I’m not cut out to be a Baba Yaga after all.”

  Chewie sat up so suddenly a roosting flock of birds was startled out of a nearby tree. Their indignant caws rained down like fall leaves as they flew away.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he said, staring at her. “You’re the Baba Yaga—there is no ‘cut out for’ or ‘not cut out for.’ Brenna chose you and trained you, and here you are.” Concern filled his soulful brown eyes. “Maybe you just need to have a little drink of the Water of Life and Death. It sounds like you need a boost.”

  Beka scuffed the dirt with one bare toe. “Hasn’t anyone ever chosen wrong?” she asked. “In all the history of the Baba Yagas, did none of them ever pick the wrong girl to train as her successor? Because I have to tell you, Chewie, I’m pretty sure that Brenna made a mistake when she chose me. I’m just not good enough.”

  “I don’t ever remember hearing of such a thing,” Chewie said, his tone thoughtful. “There have been some pretty strange Babas through the years, but hell, strange is practically a part of the job description. And Brenna clearly thought you were good enough, or she wouldn’t have left you in charge of a third of this benighted country.”

  “Ha,” Beka said, shaking her head. “Brenna stayed around to keep training me a lot longer than most Babas do. Barbara told me that her mentor sent her out on her own when she was nineteen. I was almost twenty-eight before Brenna left, and even then, the Queen of the Otherworld had to order her to retire, or she’d still be here.”

  Chewie cocked his head, looking at her thoughtfully. “Has it ever occurred to you that Brenna’s reluctance to leave had more to do with her than it did you and your skills or lack thereof? After all, even she admitted that you were an extremely powerful witch.”

  “Powerful, yes,” Beka said, ruefully. “Careful and wise, not so much.”

  The dog huffed again, this time without the pyrotechnics. “Man, you sink one submarine and you spend the next ten years second-guessing yourself. I think Brenna was too hard on you. And now that she’s not here, you’ve taken over the job. Cut yourself a little slack, will you?”

  Beka knotted her hands together in her lap, looking down at them instead of at her companion. “I’m thinking of cutting myself a lot of slack, actually, Chewie. Like, as in giving it up altogether.”

  Chewie’s jaw fell open. “What? You can’t just quit being a Bab
a Yaga!”

  “I can, actually,” Beka said quietly. “The change isn’t final until a Baba has been drinking the Water of Life and Death for twenty-five years. That won’t be until my thirtieth birthday, in a couple of months. If I stop using it now, my extra powers will eventually wane and I’ll go back to aging at a normal rate. I’d be a regular Human again.”

  “Why the hell would you want to be that?” Chewie bellowed. “You are so much more than that now. And people are depending on you. The world needs Babas, and there are too few of them as it is.”

  “Lots of reasons,” Beka said. She tried to concentrate on the sound of the waves, which always soothed her, but tonight, they seemed to have lost their magic. “I don’t feel like I’m doing a very good job at being a Baba. I haven’t been able to make any headway in solving the Selkies’ and Merpeople’s problem. And once you are permanently a Baba . . . well, you know, Babas can’t have children of their own. Sometimes I think I might want that.”

  Chewie rested his massive head on her thigh. “You’ve only been working on the water issue for a few days; it is too soon to say you have failed. Besides, do you really want to give up magic?”

  She didn’t say anything. If she knew the answer to that, she would have made this decision long ago.

  He gave a bone-scented sigh and rubbed his jowl affectionately against her leg. “I can’t tell you what to do, Beka. I can just tell you that I would be very sorry if you weren’t my Baba. I’ve kind of gotten used to having you around.”

  Beka blinked back unexpected emotion. “Thanks, Chewie. That’s really sweet.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and then said, “You know what’s really sweet? S’mores, that’s what.” He gazed up at her with an innocent expression. “Just sayin’.”

  * * *

  PEWTER-EDGED CLOUDS SCUDDED across a sky that bled crimson, making the rising sun look sickly and dull. Restless waves lashed the barnacled hull of the boat as Marcus stood guard over the port side where it was tied up to the dock, ignoring the spitting rain with the practice of someone who’d spent most of his youth on the sea.

  His breath caught in his throat when he saw Beka walking toward him. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a practical braid, and her gear was slung over one shoulder; she looked cool, and competent, and not at all like the flaky hippie chick he’d snared in his nets less than a week before. He had to remind himself that underneath the current illusion there still lurked the girl who lived in a painted bus and made a living selling jewelry to people dressed as knights and wenches. It wasn’t fair that even in the sullen light of an overcast morning, she still shone like the sun.

  At her heels, Marcus saw an even less welcome sight—the ever-cheerful Fergus, trotting along behind her with his own equipment, grinning through the drizzle at something she’d just said. Marcus wasn’t an idiot; he recognized the stupidity of resenting the very person he himself had insisted she have join her. But apparently having Beka around did something to sabotage the rational part of his brain, because there was no denying that every time he saw her with Fergus, his fingers twitched just the slightest bit with the urge to shove the weedy redhead into the water.

  Marcus wasn’t even sure they were a couple. He just knew that the two of them joked and laughed together in a way that was diametrically opposed to the constant arguments and head-butting standoffs that seemed to be the only way she and Marcus communicated. And he knew that it bothered him, although he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. It wasn’t as though he was at all interested in her. She lived to make his day a misery, and he couldn’t wait to be done with her.

  Then she was, standing in front of him, bare feet planted firmly on the rough wood dock, a quizzical look on her face.

  “I wasn’t expecting a welcoming committee,” she said. “Good morning.”

  Marcus shook his head. “It’s not, actually, in case you hadn’t noticed. The weather is miserable, and likely to get worse. Not a good day to be out on the water.”

  Beka just stared at him with blue eyes as bright as the sky should have been. “So you’re not going out today?”

  He snorted. “Oh, we’re going out, all right. It would take more than the possibility of a bad blow to get my father to give up a day of fishing.” He muttered under his breath, “Stubborn old jackass.” The man was going to get them all killed. You’d think he’d learn. Hell, you’d think Marcus would learn.

  “Just because my da is insane doesn’t mean we all have to be. It’s not going to be safe to dive; I suggest you skip it today.” He pointed down the dock the way she and Fergus had just come. “Why don’t you go home and string some beads or something. Your imaginary treasure will wait for you.”

  Beka narrowed her eyes, and Fergus stifled a laugh, turning it into an unconvincing cough.

  “I don’t think so,” she said in an unruffled tone. “If it is safe enough for you to go out, then it is safe enough for me. The water’s much calmer under the surface anyway.”

  Marcus gritted his teeth. Why did the woman always have to be so difficult when he was just trying to keep her safe? “Maybe it will be calmer for you, but what about poor Fergus here? He’ll be stuck in a tiny dinghy with no place to hide from the storm, if it comes. Surely you don’t want to put him in danger.”

  To his surprise, Fergus gave a loud, barking laugh, sounding for all the world like one of the seals who often greeted the boat on its way out of the harbor. “Oh, don’t worry about me, lad. I’m not afraid of getting a little wet.”

  Beka snickered, although Marcus didn’t see anything funny about the two of them risking their lives for some sunken treasure that almost certainly didn’t exist.

  Fine. He’d tried being reasonable. Now he was just going to be himself. He hadn’t led dozens of men across a war-torn country just to be thwarted by a skinny blond surfer girl in cutoffs and a curve-hugging red tee shirt.

  “Forget it,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and blocking their way onto the ship. “You’re not going out with us today and that’s final.”

  “What’s final?” his da asked, appearing over his shoulder like the ghost of fishing trips past. The older man’s face was paler than ever, with a pasty green undertone that owed more to chemotherapy than it did to the choppy water of the harbor. “What the hell is the holdup? We were due to cast off five minutes ago.” Bushy white brows waggled aggressively in Beka’s direction. “I told you, girl. You slow us down, you can’t come.”

  Beka beamed at the old curmudgeon, as unimpressed by his bluster as always. “Hey, don’t blame me, Mr. Dermott. I got here right on time.”

  She tilted her head in Marcus’s direction. “Your son seems to think he gets to say who does and doesn’t get to ride on your boat.” She gave Marcus a sly look out of the corner of her eye. “Is that true?”

  Oh, nicely played. Dirty pool, but nicely played. Marcus could feel the muscles in his neck tighten as the situation slid out of his control.

  “No, he damned well does not get to say who comes on my boat,” Marcus Senior growled. “Get the hell out of the way and let the girl come aboard, Mark-boy. We’re burning daylight.”

  Marcus glanced dubiously at the sky, where any kind of light was in short supply, but he knew when he was beaten. “Fine,” he muttered, putting out a hand for Beka’s gear. “But if we get to the spot where you want to dive and I don’t think it’s safe, you’re staying on the goddamn boat.”

  Beka shrugged tanned shoulders. “We’ll see.” She looked past him to where Chico and Kenny were standing, watching the show. “If it’s too rough to dive, Fergus and I will just help around the ship.” She cast Kenny a particularly sunny smile, and the poor kid almost fell overboard. “I’m a pretty quick study; you guys just point to where you need me, tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

  Marcus watched in amazement as Chico’s weathered face split into a grin. Kenny he understood; the kid was young, and Beka looked like a mythic goddess risen fr
om the sea. But Chico was a grandfather, slow moving and even tempered. He sent most of his wages to his family back in Mexico, and Marcus had never seen him even so much as glance at any of the half-naked women who decorated the beaches and piers of Santa Carmelita. But one smile from Beka and the ugly old bandito just twirled his long mustache and cleared off a place for her to put her gear as they motored slowly out of port.

  If he didn’t know better, he’d say she’d cast a spell on all of them—his crabby father, the taciturn old Hispanic, and the starry-eyed young twerp currently gaping at her with a face like a guppy. Thank god Marcus was immune, or they’d all be in a world of trouble.

  * * *

  TWO HOURS OUT of port, the seas were rougher, the skies were darker, and the rain had turned from drizzle to deluge. Marcus tried one more time to convince his father to turn around and take them back in, but the stubborn old man had only said, “You catch more fish in bad weather than good, boyo,” and went off to sit in front of the sonar screen, glaring at it grimly as it continued to reflect an empty ocean. At least that way he was in the cabin, out of the chilly rain, Marcus thought, and went to deal with his other problem.

  Surprisingly, Beka hadn’t put up much of a fight when they’d reached her proposed dive site and Marcus had insisted that the water was too wild for her to go in. She’d just raised an eyebrow at Fergus, who had taken a long, hard look over the side and slowly shaken his head.

  “Well, crap,” she’d said with a shrug. “At least I tried.”

  Marcus tried not to be put out that she’d paid more attention to one headshake from her pal Fergus than to a whole slew of reasonable arguments from him. And then he’d tried not to be even more annoyed by the way she and Fergus had both pitched in as promised, helping to batten down everything on deck and prepare the nets in case a school of fish miraculously appeared out of the wind and mists. As with her diving, her movements were controlled and efficient, and she seemed to have no trouble keeping her footing on the slippery, wave-swept deck.