Seawitch

TWENTY-FIVE

Battered, wet, cold, and laced by pain with every movement, I rolled to my uninjured side and squirmed sideways until I could touch the wall Fielding had been leaning against. Bracing my hands on the wall and floor, I pushed and pulled myself up to my knees. I paused to look around. Nearby lay a colossal mustelid even larger than Father Otter. Solis stood in front of it, glaring down while the otters and the rest of the dobhar-chú clan pushed their enemies back out of the cave by sheer weight of numbers. They’d worked the watery tide of merfolk and sea-witch illusions into a bottleneck in the cave complex and were moving them backward and out by short rushes.

Solis noticed me and, as he looked away, the huge otter got to its feet and tried to run past him to the back exit. Solis dove past me and tackled it. They rolled together on the wet floor, the otter snapping and growling as it writhed and changed shape. The otter form collapsed suddenly into a slender, dark-skinned man with long, curling black hair hanging to his back and his naked skin slick with blood and brine. Fielding eeled out of Solis’s grip and started for the back door again.

I threw the knife.

I’m not a great knife thrower and the curved form didn’t fly well, anyhow. It flipped into a flat arc, the base of the grip smacking into the back of Fielding’s right knee. He stumbled but he would have kept going if Solis hadn’t launched himself from the ground like a sprinter coming out of the blocks and snatched Fielding around the waist and neck, half shoving, half dragging the dobhar-chú down to his knees. Solis released his grip on Fielding’s waist and switched to his nearest wrist, twisting it up between the other’s shoulder blades.

I heard Solis warn him, “Change now and your arm will leave the socket. You will not enjoy it.”

Panting, Fielding hung his head. “All right. I give up. Just don’t . . . don’t tear off my arm.”

Solis stood up, pulling Fielding up with him. “I won’t. Unless you force me.” Then he marched Fielding back to me.

Fielding kept his head down and I doubted it was strictly over his nudity. I was beginning to think I’d now seen enough naked men to fill my quota for the rest of my life. I started to sigh and caught myself cringing as my rib twinged. I kept my gaze up as the two men stopped in front of me.

The noise of the battle moved farther away but it was still there in the background as I started to speak.

“So . . . I take it you’re not as innocent as you protested,” I started.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Solis glared at him and must have twisted Fielding’s arm a little, making the former sea captain wince.

“Hey!”

“What did you do?” Solis demanded. “What did you really do to bring down this sea witch’s wrath?”

“Nothing!” Fielding shouted back.

Solis’s mouth was a hard, straight line and I could see tension gathering in the muscles of his shoulders and arms. I shook my head at him and staggered over to pick up the knife from the slick stone floor.

I walked back, turning the knife in my hand as I came. “This is a long way from anywhere. And there’s a lot of water around, though I understand it only takes a few inches to drown.”

“Are you threatening me?” Fielding demanded, incredulous.

“I’m reminding you of the situation,” I said. “My friend’s not in a good mood where you’re concerned. See, he has a couple of daughters himself.”

“I don’t see how that’s important.”

I shook my head at him in disappointment. “Oh, Gary, is this the way you repay favors? You came to me to solve a problem. And I have. But now we have a new one and there’s still a question my friend needs answered and so do I. Not to mention, what should we tell the insurance company? Should we take you back to Seattle and let Solis lock you up as a rapist and a murderer?”

“I didn’t hurt anyone!”

Solis shook him. “You are alive and all the rest are dead. You say this came about because Castor Starrett attempted to sexually assault Shelly Knight and you didn’t stop him. Or did you do it?”

“No!” Fielding shouted, looking indignant.

Solis bumped him again. “Did you rape Shelly Knight?”

“No,” Fielding repeated but his tone was less adamant.

Solis continued to bully him, no longer twisting his arm but badgering Fielding with unremitting questions. “You worked together before. Why this time did she accuse you?”

“She was angry! She knew what I was!”

“She knew that before. Why now was she angry enough to curse you and call on her mother’s help when she’d hidden you all from her?”

“I don’t know!”

“Yes, you do.”

“I made a mistake.”

“What mistake did you make? Do not repeat that ridiculous story about going down below with Castor Starrett. What did you really do? Did you rape her?”

“No!”

“Did you find her with Starrett? Is that what happened? Castor Starrett had your woman before you could? You got angry, you hurt him, and then you had to get rid of witnesses—”

“No!” The single word came out in a long, agonized howl. “No! I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t hurt anyone. I just—” He cut himself off and curled on himself as if Solis had punched him in the gut. Then he sank to his knees on the slick rock floor of the cavern. “Les started freaking out. I still don’t know what she said to him exactly, but Shelly must have told him his wife was dead while Cas and I were out after that damned halibut. She could do that sometimes—she knew things. She didn’t like to say them, but Les probably badgered her into it. That’s the sort of guy he was.”

“Who broke the circle?” I asked.

“What?” Fielding barked, staring at me.

“Who broke the spell circle in Shelly’s cabin? That was the real problem, wasn’t it? Was it Leslie Carson or Starrett or was it you?”

Fielding stared at me. “What are you saying . . . ?”

“You lied to us about what happened on Seawitch’s last night. There was no spear mark and no blood on the deck or in Starrett’s cabin, although there was plenty in Shelly’s cabin. So Shelly Knight didn’t shoot Starrett with the speargun as you said. There’re a hell of a lot of marks on you, though. They’re scars that shine even through your fur. In fact, they show more, which means it’s your otter form that’s got them. But you said you’d never known you were a dobhar-chú until that night—and I believe that—so you’d never changed form before and you’ve never changed properly since, so all those scars happened that night. How’d you get them, Fielding?”

He gaped at me, his mouth working like a fish’s, but no sound came out. I just stared back as if I were only curious.

Solis poked him in the shoulder and peered at his face. “There is a scar here on his face. Like fingernails make, like a woman makes when she’s angry or afraid and she claws at your eyes,” he said, making a sharp gesture toward Fielding’s face with his own crooked and raking hand.

Fielding flinched.

“Come on, Fielding. We don’t have a lot of time. Maybe I can guess what happened and you can just tell me if I’m right.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“I think you said that before. So what is it?”

“I was out with Cas after the halibut and . . . he found out. He found out about Shelly—about us—and he . . . he wanted to fuck the mermaid,” he added in a mumble.

Solis fell silent and the sound of conflict still raged, but distantly and diminishing. Fielding’s whimpering sobs of shame trickled into the noise like tears into a pool.

I leaned forward and returned the knife to Solis, pretty sure he wasn’t going to use it on Fielding at this point but thinking I might. “So,” I started, “you and Shelly were together.”

Fielding nodded, still looking at the ground.

“Reeve disapproved, didn’t he?”

“Yeah . . .”

“And that’s why he didn’t get to come along on this trip. You or Shelly made sure he was too sick to sail. Didn’t you?”

Fielding nodded. “I put laxative in his beer at Charlie’s the night before we went out. He was talking about seeing the water hound on the boat and he was half-drunk and already half-spooked, so it was pretty easy.”

“You’re a real sweetheart, aren’t you, Fielding? How much did you know about Shelly then?”

“I knew she was special. She told me I was . . . something special, too. She couldn’t quite convince me it was true, but I was starting to believe it. She said no one could know about us—and especially not about how we were different.”

“But Reeve knew, or suspected, didn’t he?”

“Suspected. But Shelly wasn’t like that! She was . . . she was sweet.”

“So she didn’t come to the marina looking for victims for her mother. She came looking for something else.”

“She wanted to see the human world. She said she didn’t know any living humans. And when she found me she thought it was funny that I wasn’t really human at all. I didn’t understand. But I liked it. I liked her. I liked . . . being with someone forever, not just for the night.”

“I can understand Reeve figuring it out—he was a salty old guy and pretty observant—but how did Starrett find out about Shelly?” I asked. Solis seemed to have decided this was my part of the interrogation—I was good cop to his bad cop, I supposed.

“He saw her at Port Townsend. I guess she was upset after what had happened with Les so she went swimming to relax.”

“What did she tell Leslie Carson about his wife?”

“She knew Odile was dead—she just knew. He said she was teasing him since he complained constantly about how Odile threatened suicide all the time to keep him in line. Odile was messed up and unhappy and everyone but Les understood that. He thought Odile was just screwing with his head, because she’d told him she would do it this time and he’d come with us, anyway. So I guess when Shelly told him she was really dead this time and how and when . . . he was freaked, and more freaked when the cops called with the same details. Wouldn’t you be?”

“Yes. And his accusations upset Shelly because he didn’t take it seriously?

“Yeah. Well, knowing about it upset her, too. So she went swimming because that’s what she did when she was stressed out. It’s not very safe to swim in the Sound in the dark without dive lights—it’s easy to get lost and then you tire out and drown. But Shelly was half-fish and it was only in the dark that it was safe for her to swim near people. But Cas wanted his damned stupid halibut and he stayed up all night to get it. We didn’t have tank gear so he was using a mask and snorkel in the shallows where the halibut come up to spawn and he’d swum out pretty far from the dinghy. Shelly didn’t realize he was nearby—she thought we were going the other way. He saw her under the water. When I got the fish out of the fridge in the morning for him to clean, he told me he had seen her. He told me what he meant to do—he thought it was . . . funny, like it was a joke and I wouldn’t mind, ’cause we were buddies or something. He was that kind of jerk—he figured every woman was his to take. I was panicking—he was my boss’s boss and I’d made Reeve sick to get the cruise so the old man wasn’t there to back me up and he wasn’t going to take my side on anything when we got home, either. Hell, he was probably going to fire me once he figured it out. I didn’t know what to do. I already had the engines fired up and was ready to take the boat out. Cas didn’t seem in any hurry—it was like he was savoring the idea—and I didn’t know how to stop him, except to act like it didn’t bother me and try to get below ahead of him.

“It was my fault we were at sea when the call came in about Les’s wife and I wouldn’t go in to port because I was scared shitless about what was going to happen to me and what Cas would do to Shelly. I wanted to stay at sea so she could jump overboard and swim away, but . . . she didn’t. She wouldn’t. I got us out of Townsend and in the clear in the strait. I turned on the autopilot and I went down below, but she argued with me about leaving and we were still arguing when Cas came down. He laughed at us. And she . . . she told me I was an idiot. She told me to go away and take care of the boat and it wasn’t anything girls like her hadn’t been doing for centuries with guys like Cas. I didn’t understand what she meant—I still don’t. But I got angry and I shoved her and her foot slipped on the rug on the cabin sole. And then she was furious—it was like she’d flipped a switch and went from sweet girl to unholy bitch in a millisecond. I didn’t know what the rug was covering up until she started screaming at us. She threw it away and pointed at this crazy charm she’d drawn and now it was all messed up and she was shouting at us, telling us we were doomed, that we’d done it to ourselves and she . . . she was just crazy. She shoved Cas backward and he hit his head on the hatchway. She started pawing at the blood on his head and saying it wasn’t right, it wasn’t working, and I was trying to drag him away from her because . . . I thought she was nuts. I didn’t know she was trying to save us! I didn’t understand. She grabbed my arm and she cut me—”

“She cut you, not Starrett?” I asked for clarification.

“Yeah. It’s my blood in the cabin, but I figured no one has a DNA sample from either of us, so who’d know?”

“We didn’t need a DNA sample. The lab said it was only partially human blood; the rest was otter.”

“Crap!”

“Doesn’t matter. What happened next?”

“Shelly was trying to redraw her spell or whatever and I was just getting in the way. I was freaking out. I was trying to pull Cas out of the cabin and he wasn’t responding—he was barely conscious and he was bleeding and mumbling. . . . Shelly was angry at me and she was saying crazy things and crawling around on the floor. . . . And when I tried to grab her and make her help me with Cas, she screamed at me and started hitting me, hitting and hitting and calling me names. She clawed at my face and pushed me away and she cursed me and ran up on deck and threw something in the water. She was screaming the whole time. Then the rest of them came to carry her away. That’s when they started killing people.”

“You didn’t write any of this in the log.”

“I wasn’t sure I’d make it, but if I did, I didn’t want that kind of thing on the record. And if I didn’t . . . who was going to believe me if they ever found the log, anyway? I was going to steal the stupid thing when I brought the boat back but Father Otter convinced me to leave it—to bring you to us.”

“You brought the boat back.” As I’d suspected. “Good trick in the state you were in.”

“The ghosts and Father Otter helped,” Fielding admitted. “Then he went to look after Reeve, while I came back here for a while. I knew the merfolk would try to find me—even though they missed me right under their noses for twenty-seven years, the morons—and Reeve would be the obvious place to start looking. Even if he was still mad at me, I owed the old man some protection. None of this was his fault.”

“Wait: the merfolk didn’t keep you and torment you for that whole time, as you implied before?”

He looked a little uncomfortable at being caught out. “Not the whole time, but I couldn’t get any farther away than here until the gate in the worlds opened again. I found the bell by accident the first year and the ghosts said they’d help me hide if I helped them escape when the gate opened again. The sea witch was trapped in the cove until that time, too, so she wasn’t using the ghosts and wasn’t paying attention to any of the objects they were stuffed in. I had to keep on dodging her for the next . . . twenty years or so. When the gate started to form the dobhar staged a raid and she was too busy to notice when I moved Valencia’s bell into Seawitch’s bilge. I’d been making my plans to get to you for a year or more after the raid, and when I left, Father Otter warned me the sea witch would know I was out in the world again. He was pissed off about the business with Reeve so I didn’t tell him I was planning to go find him at the hospital and tell him what had happened to me and the boat—I figured that was another thing I owed the old man. I thought the merfolk would leave him alone once Father Otter foiled them once. But I guess not.” He didn’t seem as broken up about it as I’d have expected. He was unhappy about what had happened to Reeve, but it was almost a self-pitying kind of misery.

I shook my head in disgust. “Your Romeo and Juliet romance turned into a grudge and you didn’t try to clear up the misunderstanding; you just made it worse and spread the tale around. Why didn’t you just tell us the truth?”

“Because the truth is that it’s all my fault. I would have let him hurt her. When the ghosts saved me and the boat, I was still so angry and confused . . . I didn’t understand what had happened for years. I didn’t see what I’d done until it was way too late to fix it and Shelly and her mother . . . they’ve been looking for me ever since. Mermaids don’t forgive much. Sea witches forgive nothing.”

“This love story was never going to end well. Her mother wasn’t going to want a dobhar-chú for a son-in-law.”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“Sounds like a regular problem of yours. So now it’s not just Shelly who wants your hide, it’s her mom, too?”

He nodded. “She’s one hard bitch.”

“She wouldn’t happen to be a redhead?” I asked.

“Yeah . . . why?”

“I think we’ve met.”

Fielding finally looked up at me. “Oh . . . God, no.”

I shook off his fear. “I’m not working for her. In fact I’m not working for you, either. All I want is the ghosts.”

“But . . . you have them.”

“No, Fielding. I want all of them. You found one. I’ll bet you know where the rest are, too.”

The cave had fallen nearly silent and then a new sound started at a distance but came closer: a shuffling, snuffling, and squealing. The otters were returning.

“I can’t—” Fielding objected.

“I think you can. I think with you as go-between to your ex-girlfriend, we can offer the sea witch her bell back.”

“But . . . I thought you wanted to keep the ghosts.”

“I intend to. This is just the bait to move her where I can see her. Then you’re going to grab the rest of the receptacles. You know what they look like and where they are, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but . . . it’s suicide. She’ll kill us. Well, she’ll kill you and then she’ll kill me. And then everyone else.”

“I don’t think so. There are more of your cousins than there are of the merfolk, and once we have the ghosts, the sea witch has no power but what she gets from the merfolk. She’s a blood mage and she hasn’t got little merfolk batteries, so if she intends to use them, she’ll have to cast her magic the instant one of them dies. She’s not going to squander any more of her people for that. That’s counterproductive. She won’t diminish her population further. She may be a pissed-off hard-ass and half-insane as you and I see it, but she’s not stupid.”

“You are totally wild-ass crazy,” Fielding said. “I won’t do it.”

“Yeah, you will. Or you’ll go back to Seattle and stand trial for piracy and the murder of everyone on board Seawitch—since it is, as you said, your fault. You broke the protection circle, you would have let Starrett do what he wanted to Shelly, you made the bad decisions that put the boat in harm’s way. As the captain that makes it your responsibility legally and morally.”

He scoffed, though there was a certain amount of false bravado to the sound. “How are you going to make it stick? They’re not going to try an otter for murder. Your policeman friend isn’t going to keep my arm in a lock forever and you can’t stop me from changing form.”

“Don’t count on that, Gary. I cut you loose. I can tie you back up, too.” Blatant lie, but I wanted to see if Fielding was willing to risk it. I had other ways to get to the ghosts if I had to do without Fielding’s help, but I didn’t want to use them. Father Otter might not like it, but we had an agreement and he owed me. Magic creatures take that kind of thing seriously. Which reminded me . . . “You owe me for that, not to mention the lying and the underhanded way you got me into this pile of otter poop.” I wasn’t going to mention the Guardian Beast, since that wouldn’t get me anywhere and I’d already tried asking it for help and gotten nothing.

The noise of returning otters and dobhar-chú had drawn close so I wasn’t surprised to hear a short scrabbling sound followed by the rough clearing of a throat. I could feel Father Otter’s presence at my shoulder even without seeing Fielding cringe. Solis flicked his gaze a degree or two aside but his attention didn’t move away from Fielding.

“Does our cousin offend?”

“He’s not being cooperative,” I replied, keeping my eyes on Fielding. “I’ve rendered all the services I was asked to perform and I still have nothing to show for it. While it’s of no interest to you, there is a small matter of human law and the death of the people on board Seawitch to be resolved. And beyond that is the sneaky way your cousin used me and you and still let people die because he didn’t have the spine to do what he ought. He didn’t help his girlfriend and he endangered the crew and got Reeve killed by leading the merfolk to him at the hospital. While I’m willing to let the human matters go if I must, I’m not ready to leave the situation here as it is and simply excuse a debt of honor because Gary doesn’t want to get his paws dirty.”

I could tell by the way Fielding pulled back that Father Otter’s attention had turned on him and it wasn’t pleasant. “Have you not had enough of exile from your proper form? Will you prefer to be outcast and outlaw, too, now that you have regained it? We shall make it so—”

A light came on in my mind at his use of “we” and “our”—they were not the common plural, but the royal usage—as Fielding lurched forward and down, putting his face to the rock floor of the cavern.

“No! No, Uncle,” he gurgled even as his form flowed and shifted from human to otter in front of us. Even though he was the largest of them, he wiggled forward like a pup, keeping his head on the ground and rolling onto his side in front of Father Otter, exposing his throat and belly.

Father Otter shrank down to his own otter form beside me and lunged forward, biting down on a mouthful of Fielding’s nearest ear and scruff. Then he shook the larger dobhar-chú hard until Fielding squalled and flailed with all of his paws as he was flung about. A stench thickened the air and Father Otter held his miscreant relative down until Fielding made a docile yipping that sounded like “Pax, pax, pax . . .”

Father Otter spat out the fold of Fielding’s hide and glared at him with disdain. He made a barking noise at Fielding and turned his back on the younger creature before stalking away to join the rest of the returning otters and dobhar-chú redistributing themselves around the cave. The others watched but none interfered or gave any sign that they were upset at what had just happened. A few furry faces even looked a bit pleased.

Solis and I stood still and watched Fielding resume his human form, shivering and sweating as if the scene between him and Father Otter had been a sickening ordeal. Perhaps it had been in a way we mere humans couldn’t understand. Fielding didn’t get to his feet this time but curled up to sit on the floor with his knees drawn up against his chest. “I’m to do as you tell me.” He sounded like a chastened child.

“Or?” I asked.

“Or I’ll have no home among otters or men. They’ll hound me to death. Father Otter is really pissed at me.” He was in his fifties no matter how he looked, yet he sounded like a teenager.

I kept my growing dislike in check. “I see. What about the merfolk?” I asked.

“They’ve withdrawn for now. Father Otter and the others will attack when you say so. But I think it’ll have to be soon—before the fish faces can regroup and come after us or Paul’s boat.”

I was ashamed to admit that I’d almost forgotten about Mambo Moon. It lay outside the overlap but that didn’t make it safe and I had no idea what may have happened to it while Solis and I were in the dobhar-chú’s cave. I looked at my watch and picked a course of action, no matter how wild and stupid it was—even the faultiest plan put in action swiftly is better than working out a perfect plan and squandering the time to execute it.

“I assume they’ll move at or just before sunset when we’ll have the sun in our eyes. There’s not much time. So we’ll have to be ready to go before they move. How long until sundown?” I asked Fielding.

“It’s pretty dusky now so . . . maybe two hours to darkness, ninety minutes to red sun—that’s what the dobhar call sunset.”

“All right. In one hour the dobhar-chú and the otters need to be in place as far into the overlap perimeter as they can get without being spotted. Father Otter will know the strategic points for placement. You need to scout and find where the other ghosts are and get into a hiding place where you can get to them quickly once the sun is nearly down. I’ll deal with the sea witch and her daughter.”

“I thought you wanted me to be the go-between.”

“I need those ghosts more than I need you dangling like bait. Besides, I don’t think Jacque will let you get close enough to issue the invitation I need.”

“Jacque . . . ?”

“You said the sea witch is a redhead. The woman who was on Pleiades until Father Otter came to talk to me at the marina is a redhead. The name she gave was Jacque Knight, and if she’s not the sea witch, I’ll be the proverbial monkey’s uncle.”

Solis interrupted. “Could it not be Shelly who is the sea witch, as we discussed?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “The revised story doesn’t fit that scenario, and if you were a powerful magic user looking to unseat your parent, would you keep her around afterward?”

Solis shook his head. “No. Then this business about virginity and power was the truth? But how does one have a child if that is true?”

“I don’t know that it’s true or not—I can’t even guess at this point. Shelly was a mermaid. She’s still a mermaid. She just never became the sea witch, but there’s no way to know why and my speculation may not be correct in any case. The sea witch used to roam the Sound and destroy ships but she couldn’t keep the door open this time and then she lost a significant percentage of her ghosts. She’s got to be pretty angry at Fielding here.”

“Didn’t I say she carried a grudge?” Fielding asked. “She never lets go of anything.”

“You did. And I intend to use that to my advantage. But we have to get back to Mambo Moon first. Fielding, you find the other ghost receptacles and get ready to grab them when the sun goes down and bring them to me. Recruit other dobhar-chú or the otters if you need to; we have to get those things away from here or there will never be any peace.”

“What about Jacque and Shelly?”

“What about them?”

“Aren’t you going to . . . destroy them?”

“I said I would deal with them; I didn’t say I’d kill them. That’s not what I came here for. I won’t stop your clan from doing what it needs to and if my goals force me to do it, I will kill them both, but I won’t put my job aside to do yours.”

“But—”

“I already helped you and your clan. Now you return the favor. That’s the deal. That’s as far as it goes.”

Fielding looked flabbergasted, but it was the truth: I hadn’t come here to play avenging angel for the wrongs done to the dobhar-chú or the merfolk. “Someone once called me the Paladin of the Dead and that’s what I am. My job is to get justice for the dead, not to settle scores for the living, no matter how magical.”

“But I hired you—”

“When? I was already on this case when you showed up. And you never offered me anything but false answers. You’ve never offered me any payment. I am not working for you. I’m working for something bigger and meaner than Father Otter or any clan of sea witches or even the insurance company. You’ll get what you want if it works with the rest of my own plans, not because I owe you anything or feel you’re the injured party. If you don’t like that, maybe next time you should offer something better than lies.”

I turned my back on him and started for the dark passage that led back to the bay. Solis fell in behind me in a few steps, saying nothing as we were joined by an escort of otters and a single dobhar-chú the size of a rottweiler.

Nothing stopped us all the way to Mambo Moon.