The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(18)
“You’re going to do great things someday, you little beast,” the captain tells him, She leans back and grins. “You and me, we’re going to take the seas for our own.” Her gaze flicks to me. “You named him after steamed buns.”
“If you’d like, you can call him Bao Bao instead,” I tell her, shifting the vowels slightly as I speak.
“Is that any different?”
“It means ‘precious baby.’”
Santa Elena nods, her teeth bared in a smile that edges on consternation. She knows I’m playing games—she’s watching all the little tricks I pull. They’re nothing compared to the grand game she’s set up that ties me with this Reckoner and with Swift, but they’re enough to get under her skin, and that’s all I need from them.
“Enjoy motherhood,” Santa Elena tells me as she turns and shuffles back for the hatch, her bathrobe swishing around her.
“I’m not a mother,” I repeat.
“You’re living to keep something else alive, Cassandra. What else could that make you?”
10
My next set of visitors comes crashing onto the trainer deck a few days later, lead by Swift’s vicious smile. I’m in the middle of measuring Bao, which is a monumental task on its own. He squirms away from me every time I try to yank him close enough to the tank’s edge to loop the measuring tape over the back of his shell, and I’ve just about lost my patience when all five of Santa Elena’s lackeys tumble through the door.
“What—” I start, but then falter. They’re a pack of wolves, all tooth and bond, and even though they’ve just intruded on my world, any word toward them feels like I’m intruding into theirs.
Chuck holds something huge and flat and plastic over her head, and it takes me a second to recognize it as a cobbled-together wakeboard. “First ride’s mine!” she declares as she throws it down on the deck.
The clatter makes Bao snort, and I jerk my hand away from him as his beak snaps shut. Varma slides up to my side, a curious twinkle in his eye. “What’re you up to?”
“Nothing, now,” I huff as Bao shies underwater. Reckoners get testy when they feel crowded, and five new people on the deck is more than enough to make him retreat.
Swift leans hard on the control panel, and the back door rattles up. She flips her hair out of her face and stretches her arms out over her head, a smirk teasing over her lips, and for one shining moment, she’s the leader that the captain sees her becoming. Then the moment passes; she slouches her shoulders and pads over to where Code and Lemon are tying down lines to the deck’s handholds.
I retreat to my counter while Varma helps Chuck into the straps that bind the wakeboard to her feet. Lemon tosses a buoyancy vest over her shoulders, then clips a bungee line to it. Clutching Varma for support, Chuck waddles over to the edge of the deck, where Code waits with a set of handlebars attached to a rope. The whole operation is smooth—they’ve obviously done this hundreds of times before.
“All set?” Chuck asks as she takes the handle from Code.
He replies with a tug on the lines and a curt nod.
Chuck screams and launches herself off the back of the boat. She turns over once in the air, her mane of wild black hair whipping behind her, and plunges into the waves three feet below the deck’s lip. The lines on the deck snap tight, and a moment later, her head bobs out of the froth. She cuts through the water as she heaves against the handlebars. A breathless second passes, and then the board is under her.
Varma’s fists are the first in the air. He whoops and howls like a wild dog, and the rest of the lackeys join in. The sun cuts through the spray the board kicks up, silhouetting the four of them against the bright afternoon. They’re wild, they’re dangerous, they’re reckless.
But they’re free, and that’s what matters. That’s what sends a little twinge of jealousy vibrating through my muscles as I press harder against the wall behind the counter, fingers crimped on the edge.
“Hey, pet project. You want a ride?” Code shouts back over his shoulder. He comes up and leans against the counter, peering out between his dark bangs. “It’ll be fun, I swear. On my honor as a pirate.”
I glance at Swift before answering, unsure if it’s even my place to be talking to him. She doesn’t seem to object—her attention is fixed on Chuck. “Ribs are still healing,” I tell Code, which is only half true. It’s been long enough that I only get the occasional twinge when I stretch myself a little bit too far. I’m less worried about what the strain of wakeboarding would do to the healing process and more worried about who’s offering. It would be so easy for something to conveniently break in the harness, for something to go horribly wrong in a way so innocent that anyone on this deck could be implicated.
“Code, quit bothering the shoregirl,” Varma says as he approaches us. “Doubt you’re even her type.”
He’s not wrong.
“Just seeing if she wanted to have a bit of fun, yeah?” the other lackey replies.
I glance down at the measuring tape, at the other training accessories scattered across the counter. They’ve all been chosen so carefully, but it’s more than that. They’ve been chosen with specific knowledge of what it takes to raise a Reckoner pup, knowledge beyond what they’d pick up from rumors, research, or observation. Santa Elena has a source in the industry—that much I know for sure.