Leashing the Tempest (Arcadia Bell #2.5)(14)

“What do you mean, it’s not Earthbound?” Kar Yee said. “Are you saying that it’s something escaped from the Æthyr? That’s impossible. . . . Right, Cady?”

A few months ago, I would’ve agreed, but I’d seen a lot of weird shit lately. Lon and Jupe had, too. And though I wasn’t exactly forthcoming about everything when it came to Kar Yee, right now, I didn’t have much of a choice.

“Look,” I told her, “there’s a big ol’ demonic seal on the bridge, and I don’t recognize it. But the captain was trying to protect the boat against something, and it’s no coincidence that that thing appeared after lightning disabled the ward.”

“Oh, shit,” Jupe moaned.

“Yeah. That’s about right,” I agreed.

“What could it be?” Kar Yee said.

Lon crossed his arms over his chest. “Had to come from the water. Cady saw it come in on a wave.”

“Mermaid,” Jupe said in a voice filled with equal parts terror and certainty. “I told you. Foxglove, she barks at something in the ocean.”

“We might be sixty miles or more away from our house, Jupe,” Lon said, but I could hear doubt in his voice. After all, La Sirena translated to exactly that: mermaid. Maybe there was some truth behind the town’s name. Thing was, even though I’d seen a couple of Æthyrics running around loose, they couldn’t stay here for any substantial length of time. They needed an eard, eeded athly host to survive. That’s how Earthbounds came into existence: demons stuffed into human bodies through a now-lost arcane spell.

But that thing outside was definitely not sporting a human body, and the ward on this boat wasn’t freshly painted. The Heka that had charged it before the strike was dull. Barely visible. The captain must’ve had all this magical work erected a while back—maybe years—I explained to the group.

Lon raked his fingers through damp hair, pulling it back from his forehead. “What kind of Æthyric being could stay alive outside a human body for years?”

A raspy voice answered at the back of the cabin, “A Rusalka. Is she here?”

We all pivoted toward the bunk. Captain Christie was feeling the wound on his head as he looked up at us with bloodshot eyes.

“You’re awake! Oh my God!” Jupe said, then lowered his voice. “Wait—are you okay? Do you know where you are?”

“My head is killing me, I know that. I’m a little fuzzy on the rest.”

“I’m so, so sorry,” Jupe said, almost close to tears.

But if Christie knew what the kid was blubbering about, he didn’t show it. He only pushed himself up to his elbows and said, “What’s going on?”

“Take it easy,” Lon cautioned. “You probably have a concussion.”

Well, at least he wasn’t doomed to a life as a mute dullard. Jupe’s knack wasn’t permanent. Lesson learned the hard way.

I gave the old coot the lowdown. “Lightning struck the boat. Bridge is fried. Likewise the controls down the hall.”

“Oh, God! My poor girl,” he moaned.

“Yeah, well, there’s more. The lightning took down your ward. We’re in the middle of a nasty storm—same one that threw you around and knocked you out. Lon shot a few flares, but who knows if anyone saw them. And now there’s a creature onboard, so I recharged the cloaking spell on this room. Your turn.”

“You’re a magician?”

“It’s your lucky day.”

“I knew that halo of yours was strange,” he muttered.

“Not as strange as what’s in your kitchen.”

He groaned and sat up in the bed. “I first encountered her about ten years ago. She lives in Diablo Reef—where I was taking you. She used to live off the coast of an island between Russia and Japan called Shumshu. The guy who sold me this boat lured her over here in the nineties. She’s . . . uh, intense.”

We all stared at him as he pointed toward the bite mark on his leg.

“She’s Æthyric,” I said.

He nodded.

“Rusalka is a mythological Russian water spirit,” Lon argued. “A nymph.”

She damn sure didn’t look like e. t look a nymph to me. Nymph sounded cute, sexy even. Not something you’d call a three-headed monster.

“That’s just what the people who found her called her,” the captain said. “She’s more like a water demon. A kind of mermaid.”

“I knew it!” Jupe whispered hotly, his body vibrating with excitement.

“How is she living on earth?” I asked.

“She’s not exactly alive, per se.” The captain winced. “She’s sort of dead.”

“Mermaid ghost?” Jupe said, seeming to increase in height a couple of inches as he prepared himself to be proven right and thus the winner of every argument he’d had with his father.

“More like a zombie. She used to be an Æthyric demon. According to her, some magician summoned her at the moment she was dying, and because of that she somehow got reanimated here. She says it happened three hundred years ago.”

“Zombie mermaid,” Jupe mouthed to me.

“Hold on,” Kar Yee said, eyes narrowed on Christie. “If I choose to believe all this crap, and the only reason I might is because I saw something climb up the window—”