Leashing the Tempest (Arcadia Bell #2.5)(17)

“What? God, no.”

“She’s just a passenger,” the captain said.

Onna’s left head rotated toward me. “But she’s a mage.”

“And something else,” the middle one added, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

The third head joined the other two, and they spoke in unison again. “If I am bound by rules, then so are you, mage. This Earthbound man has entered into a pact with me that he dishonored. I demand you release me from this prison and allow me vengeance.”

I glanced at Christie. “What is she talking about? You didn’t say anything about a pact.”

“Yes, well, I’m not sure it was exactly a pact, per se. It was more like a gentleman’s agreement—”

“Lies!” Onna’s three heads shouted. “I gave you my body to consummate our agreement.”

Several of us groaned at the same time.

“Captain Christie!” I prompted.

He looked at me, wiped his sweaty forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, then looked to Lon. “Come on. Think about it—three mouths. How could I resist?”

“Gross,” Jupe murmured from the bunk.

Great. Now he’d be asking about that later.

“Did you make an agreement with her in exchange for sex?” I asked the captain.

“My body was not the bargain,” the demon said. “It was the seal. The bargain was that I would teach him ancient secrets about dark magicks.”

Some Æthyric demons had magical knowledge: it was the main reason magicians summoned them, to learn new tricks. “What kind of magick?”

One head swiveled in my direction. “Magick to control the weather.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kar Yee mumbled.

“You aren’t realidtren’tly a cloudbuster?” I asked. “That’s not your natural knack?”

The captain offered me a sheepish smile. “I don’t have a knack. She taught me a simple trick, that’s all. And it doesn’t work like I thought it would—it only keeps clouds away. I can’t change the temperature or make it rain.”

“It keeps storm clouds away,” Lon corrected, looking out the small, round window over the bunk, where a sliver of blue sky was beginning to clear around the yacht. “That’s a pretty f*cking handy knack for a sailor to have.”

“I did not trick him,” the demon said. “I taught him everything I knew.”

“In exchange for what?” I asked.

Onna tucked all three chins close to her necks and stared down at the captain with a look of defiance. “That he would be my husband.”

O-o-ohh. Now the whole pact-sealed-with-consummation made more sense.

Kar Yee, the pragmatist, asked the most pertinent, nonsexual question we all were thinking: “He can’t live underwater—how was he supposed to be your husband?”

“Our agreement was that he would visit me once a fortnight,” the first head explained.

“He only upheld the bargain for one year,” the second added.

“He promised me a lifetime,” said the third.

“I was young and reckless,” the captain argued.

“You were thirty and eight years,” Onna said in unison.

He tried again. “I was doing a lot of coke. I wasn’t in my right mind. I didn’t think she really meant forever, you know? Then I got set up by that damned hedonist erotic cruise company and went to jail for six months . . .” He turned to Lon with a thoroughly misguided help-a-brother-out look. “Nothing lasts forever. Everyone deserves a second chance. I mean, obviously that kid isn’t hers,” he said, nodding back at me. “Everyone makes mistakes, right?”

Lon gave the captain a look black enough to wilt flowers. “My kid is not a mistake.”

“There is no mistake,” the three demon heads said. “You understood the bargain, Richard. I did not force you to make this agreement. You entered into it willingly.” The heads swiveled toward me. “And you cannot keep me here forever. This trap will eventually break, and when it does, I will take my revenge on everyone here unless you free me willingly and give me my Richard.”

“Whoa,” I said. “Don’t threaten me. I didn’t wiggle out of a bargain with you. And if we wait for a few hours, when night falls I can solve everyone’s problems and send you back to the Æthyr.”

The captain stood taller. “You can do that? Send her back?”

“She did not summele"on me,” the demon said. “Therefore she cannot send me back.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t know me: I rack up a few extra skills when the moon’s out, so that little rule doesn’t apply. I’ve sent others back. I reckon I can send you, too.”

At that Onna turned from haughty to pleading, sounding almost like a teenage girl. “No! I do not want to go back! This is my home now, and I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“You killed those two women!” the captain said.

“They were whores, not women. And I was protecting what was rightfully mine.”

“Diz-amn,” Jupe whispered.

The captain scooted down the wall, sidestepping the binding. “You have to send her back or she’ll kill me. Probably kill you all, too. That’s why I had the ward built. Once she’s got your scent, she’ll never let you go. First it was just my room, for some privacy. Then I had to do the whole ship.”