by Karen L Mead
“You’re sure this is the right place? Because half an hour ago, you were saying Cape Cod.”
Khalil was talking to Sam on speaker phone in the front seat. In the pre-dawn darkness, David couldn’t help but wonder if this was how the entourage typically operated.
“I’m sure now. The closer she gets, the clearer the I can track her in my head. It’s Boston Harbor.”
“What kind of boat are we looking for?” Liam asked as he drove. The vampire had been doing 90 miles per hour on the interstate; David was amazed they hadn’t gotten a ticket yet.
“No idea. I don’t know how she got there, just that she’s there. Find her.”
“Will do,” said Khalil, ending the call. “He’s gotta be pissed as hell that he can’t teleport anymore. Figures he’d be stuck 200 miles away tracking down those cards when Cassie turns up.”
“Teleport?” said David, intrigued. “He can do that?”
He was unconsciously stroking his new protection amulet, then realized he was doing it and let his hand fall back to the seat. He was still getting used to the kind of magic he was now surrounded by.
“Kind-of-sort-of,” Khalil said, as the vampire turned into a large parking lot. “He can travel by taking a shortcut through Hell, but he picked a fight with one of the higher-ups, and now he can’t do it anymore. We went to Vegas that way once—beats flying coach, let me tell you.”
Liam found a spot at the far end of the lot and parked the car.
“I can try to smell her, but the smell of all the fish makes it difficult. I may not be much help,” the vampire noted.
“We’ll find her the old-fashioned way,” Khalil said, getting out of the car. “Kid, do you know what she looks like?”
“I’ve seen pictures,” said David, straightening his shirt. He was wearing some of Khalil’s clothes, and they were baggy on him.
“If you find her first, show her your amulet,” said Liam, striding confidently toward the docks. “Even though she doesn’t know you, she’ll know she can trust you when she sees it.”
“Good thinking,” said Khalil. As he walked, he twirled the Rod of Moses in his right hand, and David winced slightly. Ever since learning that he could use the Rod, Khalil had the artifact with him constantly.
I wish he’d be more careful with that thing.
David was worried that people would stop them from exploring the docks, but the men swarming all around them were too caught up in their own business to care what they were doing. Wordlessly, they split off into three directions, looking for a teenaged girl who had no business here.
For about twenty minutes, David scoured his section of the docks, watching the fishermen move giant tubs of cod and shellfish around. The smell was overpowering, but for someone who had spent the last week in the hold of a fishing trough, it barely registered.
Why do I keep being surrounded by fish?
Eventually, he began to lose hope of finding her, and walked to the end of an empty dock. He looked around; he didn’t know if the boat that was supposed to dock here had already left, but there was no one around, and no one was even looking in his direction. Feeling tired, he sat down on the wooden planks and looked out at the ocean.
So. America. My new home. I still can’t believe I really did this…I still keep expecting to wake up and be at home, with Mum nagging me….
The sun had just broken above the horizon, and the gunmetal gray of the water began to show hints of blue and green. A seagull’s cry pierced the air, then another. Hoping the other two wouldn’t find him and scold him for wasting time, David looked at the play of the sunlight on the water, entranced by its beauty. He was so lost in thought, it took him a moment to notice the froth of bubbles collecting right in front of the dock where he was sitting.
He jumped as something cleared the surface of the water. For a fraction of a second he thought it was a shark, but it soon became clear that the intruder was something else entirely. A dark-haired girl looked up at him, her eyes reflecting the sun-dappled glory of the water.
“Hello!” she said cheerfully, treading water gently, as though it were effortless. As she bobbed in the water, David could see that she wasn’t wearing a shirt of any kind. The sunlight reflected off of her skin, making the droplets of water all over her naked body glitter like gems.
Oh my God. Oh my God. OH MY GOD.
The girl looked around, frowning.
“Excuse me, have you seen my future husband, or my future son? I thought at least one of them would be here to meet me.”
“C-Cassandra Tremblay?” said David, mystified. “What are you doing in the water?”
“What does it look like? Haven’t you seen anyone swim before?”
Her eyes focused on him for the first time.
“Who are you, anyway?”
David knelt awkwardly in front of where she was swimming.
“I, I’m David Alderton. I…defected…from the…uh…perhaps I should go find Mr. Latif….”
She grinned, and he felt pinned to the spot.
“You have the cutest accent. I like you, you can stay.”
Then she somehow moved upwards from the water and kissed him on the lips. Shocked, he fell backwards onto his behind. She sank back down into the water so only her shoulders were showing, and giggled.
“Yeah, I like you. I won’t let them drown you, when the waters come.”
“Cassie!” called Khalil, running to the edge of the dock next to David. “What are you doing in there?”
Cassie clicked her tongue, annoyed. “Can you believe Sammael just dumped me in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? I know he had to jump us to the human realm with no warning, but that was hella careless, even for him. I sort of drowned a little, but then I realized I could breathe underwater, so I was okay.”
Khalil just looked at her for a moment, confused.
“You swam all the way here?”
“It’s a good thing he didn’t drop me in the Pacific, then I would have had to swim all the way around the bottom of South America to get here. Would have taken forever!”
“Actually, you could have cut through the Panama Canal,” David said, somehow finding his bearings.
“Oh rigggghtttt,” Cassie said, thinking. “Right, the Panama Canal. Forgot that was a thing. It doesn’t come up much. Like, how often in your daily life are you like, ‘hey, remember that the Panama Canal is a great shortcut between the oceans?’ Maybe fish talk about it.”
Khalil looked over his shoulder. “Find something to cover her with,” he yelled to Liam, then offered Cassie his arm.
“C’mon. Let’s get you home.”
“Hang on a sec, I can’t just leave him here,” Cassie said. Then she dove underwater, and an iridescent blue fin flicked the surface of the water before it disappeared.
“Is that…her tail? She’s a mermaid?” David asked.
“Not usually. This is a new one on me,” Khalil said.
While Cassie was diving, Liam returned with a tarp. How he had found a clean tarp that didn’t reek of fish, David had no idea, but he wasn’t about to ask the vampire. Right when they started to get concerned that she had swam off somewhere, Cassie reappeared, holding a shiny rock against her breasts.
“Will you take this from me? I need someone to hold it,” Cassie said, holding out the rock to David. Automatically, he reached out his hands to take it from her.
“What’s this?” he asked. It was a black rock, the size of a baseball, with a crystalline sheen on top. The moment he touched it, David regretted taking it from her, though he couldn’t say why.
“That’s Sammael,” said Cassie, and David nearly dropped it. “I think traveling to the mortal realm with no warning must have stripped him down to his essence, or something. He can’t hold a human form right now.”
David struggled to form words, panicking. He didn’t want to hold this thing, but dropping it was out of the question, and Khalil and Liam were both too busy pulling Cassie out of the water to ta
ke it from him. Before they could cover her naked body with the tarp, he got a glimpse of her tail, and it was enough to make him forget the terrifying object he was stuck holding.
It looks like the tail of a dolphin, or a manatee, like a real sea creature. Except…the very tip of the fin is different, that bright blue, sparkling color. This is what a real mermaid looks like.
When she was safely wrapped in the tarp, Liam picked her up and began walking back to the car in quick strides. David stood frozen to the spot, still processing what he had seen. Khalil hit him gently on the back of the head.
“Fall in love with her later, English! We’ve got to get going.”
Chapter 48
At Cassie’s house, Liam rifled through her clothes and found a loose dress that they could put over her head, but she resisted wearing it.
“I don’t need that! I don’t want it!”
“Cass, you can’t just sit around naked, okay?” said Khalil, looking worried.
Sitting on the couch, she pulled her legs into her chest. Her tail had dissipated in the car, and while she understood why, she already missed it.
“Clothes are itchy,” she said.
David was sitting across the room, struggling not to look at her. The sight of his flushed cheeks made her laugh.
What a silly little boy. They’re all so silly.
“She’s not usually like this,” she heard Khalil whisper to David.
“Quite,” David said, still blushing for all he was worth.
There was a triumphant sound, and Teddy came into the living room from the kitchen. David did a double-take as the baby elephant galloped across the room to his mistress.
“Oh, hi Teddy! Missed you. Shame you’re not a water creature, you’re totally going to drown in a few days.” She laughed again. Khalil and Liam exchanged disturbed looks.
“Sam and Miri will be here soon, so just uh, so just sit tight, okay?” Khalil said, looking at her.
Cassie ignored him.
“Maybe I’ll give you flippers?” she mused as she petted Teddy. “Nah, you’re just not a sea creature. Everybody who doesn’t belong in the ocean is going to drown soon.”
She fluttered her wings, creating a soft breeze. David, who couldn’t see her wings, had no idea where the breeze was coming from, and looked confused. She fluttered them again and he stood up, frightened. She laughed again.
I don’t remember everything being so funny! Was it always this funny?
A few minutes later, Sam and Miri came in. The sight of Sam stirred something in her, but it passed quickly.
“What’s going on?” Sam asked.
Khalil shook his head. “No idea, but she’s not herself. She won’t put clothes on and she keeps laughing like crazy.”
“I am so myself!” she cried out, scowling at Khalil. “I’m more myself than I’ve ever been. That’s why I know you’re so funny.”
“Cassie, what happened to you in Realm? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, then she yawned and stretched. All of the men in the room struggled to avert their eyes, which very nearly made her laugh again. “It’s just, you’re all going to die soon, when the flood comes, and it’s a shame, because you’re all so cute.”
“What flood?” Sam asked. His face looked stiff, like he was struggling to stay calm.
“The flood that’s going to come out of my back, silly! See, that’s where the portal is. They needed my wings to come in, that’s how they’re going to come through. Then they’ll summon the waters and all the humans will die, and it will be so quiet and nice. Wait, maybe it won’t be nice,” she said, suddenly concerned. “I mean, it’ll be boring if everybody dies. Don’t worry, I’ll save you guys,” she said.
She looked at Liam, perplexed. “Well, maybe not you. No offense, I barely know you.”
“What’s happened to her?” Miri whispered, her delicate face looking pinched.
“There isn’t going to be any flood,” Sam began, softly. “No one is going to drown, no one is going to die. If there is a portal, we’ll close it.”
“No, I doubt it. You’re bad at closing portals. You have no relevant portal-closing experience,” said Cassie. Then a new thought occurred to her, and she looked at Sam with new appreciation. “Hey, what are we going to do with all the bodies? That’s a lot of corpses, we can’t just let them all rot. That’ll smell really bad, and the fish will get sick. Maybe you can burn them for me? You’re good at burning!”
Sam stomped over to her and put a hand under her chin.
“Snap out of it!”
“Ooooh, I know. You don’t want to burn the dead, you want to raise them. Can’t let you do that. I forgot, you’re a Necromancer so we’re going to have to kill you. I keep forgetting stuff…”
“Stop this now! Return to your normal form!” Sam yelled, and everyone in the room tensed.
It was a command, from master to familiar. Cassie could tell what it was supposed to be, but it applied to someone else, some lesser creature, not to her. She looked at the demon in front of her, and suddenly, the idea that he could command her to do anything was just too funny for words. She pulled away from him and held her belly, her sides aching from laughter.
“You think…you’re the boss of me…hee…so silly…we’ll rip your corpse apart so you can’t raise yourself…then all the little fishies will be free to swim, and it will all be so clean….”
Sam took his hand away like he had burned himself touching her, and stepped back. His expression of shock and dismay made her feel sorry for him for just a moment, but then she remembered that he was a Necromancer and was too evil to live. Really, he was so evil and disgusting that it darkened her mood, just thinking about it.
“Why are you here?” she asked, looking at him as though seeing him for the first time. “It’s not safe for you to be here. It’s not safe for you to be alive. I don’t understand, why….”
“I wonder the same thing,” said Dorothy.
Sam spun around, annoyed. To everyone’s surprise, Vladmira was on the forest fairy’s shoulder. Dorothy petted the little bat gently with the index finger of her opposite hand while she talked.
“Where have you been? Do you actually need protection, or do you just like dropping in and being smug?” Sam said.
“I don’t see why I can’t do both. I was tending to the new tree.”
Cassie wrinkled her nose; that forest smell was suddenly intolerable.
“Get that fairy filth out of my house! Get ‘er, Ted!”
Cassie pointed in Dot’s direction, but Teddy just looked at her quizzically. He trumpeted with his trunk, apparently confused.
“I thought you had a water witch, but instead you have a water angel. Yet she has a land mammal for a pet. You have some strange allies, Necromancer.”
“Either help, or go away,” Sam said. “Or I’ll….”
The sound of the front door opening and shutting rapidly cut off whatever he was going to say.
“Stay back, she’s not herself,” Miri called.
Ignoring the vampire, Jay ran up to Cassie and knelt on the floor in front of her.
Cassie blinked, confused.
“You…I know you. You’re the boy…from the sandbox….”
The sight of him triggered an avalanche of memories, but she couldn’t quite see them; it was as though there was a waterfall between her and the visions of him that played in her mind. She could see bold outlines, but little more.
He must not drown. I will hold his head above the waters, for as long as it takes. He must stay alive. Just like I pushed away the bullies in the sandbox who wanted to take his toy truck, I must protect him now…he must be protected….
Jay met her eyes, resolute.
“Okay, Cassie. Reach school, middle-ground school, safety school. Go.”
She opened her mouth to ridicule him, but something else came out instead.
“Reach school is Harvard, duh. That’s everyone’s reach school. Middle-gro
und: Columbia, Yale, Dartmouth. Safeties: Boston University, NYU.”
“She would have two safety schools,” she heard Khalil mutter.
“How are you going to compensate for your lack of extra-curriculars?”
She bristled at that.
“I was in speech and debate club for two years! It’s not my fault that I’ve been too busy fighting demons this year to keep it up!”
Wait…why am I thinking of these things….
“I-it doesn’t matter, everyone is going to die in the flood anyway, there won’t be any college….”
“Where are you applying Early Decision?” Jay asked, cutting her off.
They went back and forth like that for a while; her, trying to maintain her focus, while he constantly peppered her with questions about college admissions. Somehow, as much as she wanted to shut him down, to leave the room even, she couldn’t resist answering him.
At some point, she realized she was naked, and it became an issue.
“Ack!” she said, trying to cover her entire body with her arms. “You people just let me sit here totally naked for how long? Oh my God!”
While Miri rushed to throw a dress over her head, Cassie suddenly realized she had only limited memory of the past several hours. There had been swimming, endless swimming, and then…what?
“Did I kiss somebody?” she wondered out loud.
“I’m going to need some details here,” said Sam, eyeing the rest of the men in the room.
***
Cassie was still shivering for a while after Khalil told her what had happened. Drinking the hot coffee Miri had given her helped a little bit, but she still felt cold.
“I really said those things? I said you were all going to drown?”
“You really don’t remember?” Sam said. He was sitting down next to her on the couch, still keeping a healthy distance between them; she couldn’t really blame him.
“I remember some of it,” she said, wrinkling her brow. “But I think I must be missing a lot…it’s like a weird dream I can barely remember.”
Suddenly something occurred to her, and she stood up quickly.
“Sammael! What happened to him?”