Wickedly Wonderful (Baba Yaga, #2)
Deborah Blake
To the daughter of my heart, Jennifer Holling-Blake. I couldn’t be prouder or happier if I’d birthed you myself. Thank you for allowing me the privilege of being your mom. (And thank you to Jo Holling for sharing.) And to Nancy Holzner. For all the advice, cheerleading, and chats about writing. Not to mention the opera. It’s great having a fellow author in the neighborhood. More or less.
To Robin, for being there at the beginning, and to Chris, for being there now.
And to Ellen. Just because.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No man is an island. And while authors may occasionally wish that they could have a nice quiet vacation on a deserted island, most of us are pretty happy to have one or two special people around the rest of the time.
I am particularly blessed by the people who share my life. Elaine Spencer is a gem among agents, and The Knight Agency is a gem among agencies. I couldn’t be happier than to be in such company. (Welcome to the world, Cora! Your mom rocks!) And when I was imagining the perfect editor for my books, I’m pretty sure there was a picture of Leis Pederson in my head. In fact, everyone at Penguin/Berkley has been fabulous and I plan to take them all to the island with me (my copyeditors get an extra mai tai).
Writers need a lot of things to be successful, but very high on that list are the folks who read, and reread, and re-reread the many drafts of any book, offering helpful suggestions, endless encouragement, and sometimes just listening to you whine about how it is never going to be right. Huge thanks to my fabulous critique partner, Lisa DiDio (who is way more brilliant than I am) and also to Judy Levine (ditto), Alex Bledsoe (also ditto, dammit), and anyone else who was forced to sit through the various versions of this book and any other. Thanks for not putting me out of my misery when I asked you to, and just handing me chocolate instead.
Many thanks to my friends and family for all the encouragement, and especially to my sisters, Sarah and Becky, who were part of the inspiration for giving the Baba Yagas sisters to share their paths. Sisters are the best, even if sometimes they live far away, and you only get to see them if you can travel through a magical doorway. (Or, you know, get on a plane.) Love you both more than I can say.
And last but not least, a huge thank-you to all the wonderful readers of my Llewellyn nonfiction books on witchcraft, who kept saying, “When do we get to read a novel?!”
Now. You’re welcome. And thanks so much for making this trip with me.
ONE
MARCUS DERMOTT WATCHED the sunrise from the windswept deck of his father’s fishing boat and wondered if the sea had changed, or if it was him. When he was a boy, growing up on this very boat, the sight of the water being painted with light could make his heart sing, no matter how troubled the rest of his life was. But all he felt now was numb. Numb, and a little bit cranky. The ocean might be beautiful, but it was the last place he wanted to be.
He’d planned to spend his life in the Marines, far away from the restless sea and the memories that came with it. He’d sure as hell never planned to come back to this damned boat. Or to his father. Especially to his father. But as the master sergeant who’d trained him liked to say, “Life is what happens while you are making other plans.”
Turns out that twelve years in the Corps was all he had in him. Three tours in Afghanistan had sucked him as dry as the desert sands, and as much as he missed the action, and the close bond with the other men in his unit, his head just wasn’t in the game anymore. He’d been around long enough to know that if you didn’t get out when that happened, you were dangerous to yourself and to everyone around you.
So he’d finished out his time, packed his kit bag, and headed home. One of the guys who’d gotten out a year before him had invited Marcus to work with the extreme adventure vacation company he’d started, and that seemed like as good an idea as any in the post-exit blur Marcus had been in. But life had had other plans there, too, apparently.
“Are you going to stand there daydreaming all day, boy?” a low-pitched voice snarled in his ear. Even the musical Irish lilt couldn’t make his father sound like anything other than a bear with a sore paw. “We finally start catchin’ some fish after pullin’ up empty nets day after day, and you can’t bestir yourself to lend a hand? I thought you came back here to help me, not to stare at the sea like you’ve never seen it before. It’s the same ocean it always was—waves and salt and finally, dammit, some fish. So move your ass and check the lines, will ya?”
Marcus sighed. He and his father had never gotten along, and twelve years apart hadn’t helped that in the least. When he got the call telling him his father had cancer, Marcus had hoped that maybe if he went home to help out, they could move past their differences. But the past had its barbs in them too deep, and the present was as cold and gray as the ocean. He didn’t see either one of those things changing anytime soon.
*
THE RED-GOLD GLOW of the rising sun turned the sea into a fire of molten lava that belied the cold Pacific waters of Monterey Bay. Beka Yancy didn’t mind, though; her wet suit kept her reasonably warm, and it was worth braving the morning chill to have the waves mostly to herself.
Soon enough there would be plenty of people around, but for now, she reveled in her solitary enjoyment of the frothy white lace overlaying blue-green depths, accompanied only by the sound of the wind and the hooting laughter of a nearby pod of dolphins. She gave a chortling greeting in dolphin-speak as she went by.