Wickedly Wonderful (Baba Yaga, #2)(65)

Gregori, I need you. Come to me.

She hung the necklace back around her neck and opened her eyes with a sigh. Hopefully it wouldn’t take the Riders long to get here. The last she knew, they’d finished helping her sister Barbara with something across the country in New York State. But their magical motorcycles, transformed from the enchanted steeds they’d once ridden, could get them from one place to the next much faster than should have been possible. With any luck, they would be here in the next day or two.

Which was good. Because she needed all the help she could get.


*

MARCUS LOOKED AT the dripping nets they’d just hauled back aboard and ran through every curse word he’d learned in the military. Then he made up a few more on the spot. Chico and Kenny gaped with disbelief, their mouths hanging open like the fish they’d expected to be unloading, and his father was so pale that Marcus was afraid he was going to pass out on the deck.

He moved unobtrusively to stand next to the old man, who was so upset, he didn’t even bother to say something sarcastic about not needing to be babied like a sick child.

“It’s shredded,” Marcus Senior said in a lifeless voice. “There isn’t even enough of it left to mend.”

“What could do that?” Kenny asked, glancing fearfully over the side of the Wily Serpent. “Some kind of giant squid?”

Chico rolled his eyes and spat. “You watch too many late night movies, mi hermano. There are no monsters under the sea waiting to eat you.”

“Well, something sure as hell tore the crap out of that net,” Kenny retorted. “Unless you think maybe the tuna have learned to fight back.”

Marcus ignored their familiar squabbling and squatted down to take a closer look. His father knelt down next to him, fingering the tangled and tattered remains of what had been perfectly woven fibers not three hours before.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before, Da?” Marcus asked.

“Never,” his father said. He’d been as stubborn and strong as ever through his diagnosis and cancer treatment, but now there were undercurrents of defeat in his cracking voice. He picked up one segment to look at it and it fell apart in his hand. “Look at that. It’s garbage. It’s as though something gnawed through parts of it and cut other sections with a knife. Garbage,” he repeated, letting it fall back to the wooden planks with a slithering thump.

“Could a shark have gotten tangled up in it somehow?” Marcus asked, thinking of the one he and Beka had come up against just a couple of days before. The thought of her made his chest hurt and his head ache. It hadn’t been that long since he’d seen her, but it seemed like without her presence his spirit was as shredded as this net. Ridiculous. Intolerable. But there it was.

“I don’t see how a shark could do this,” his father said, standing up slowly. “But I can’t think of any other explanation either.” He gazed down at the mess, the lines in his face carved by years in the sun and the wind seeming to grow deeper as Marcus watched.

“I can’t afford a new net,” his da admitted reluctantly. “The fishing has been that bad this year. There’s no money for a replacement.” His eyes skittered over the ship, taking in all the places where he’d skimped on repairs or touch-ups. Marcus had been working on a few of the smaller ones when no one was around, but the ship still looked a lot less polished and trim than it had when he was growing up. As far as he could tell, his father hadn’t noticed any of the improvements; all the old man saw was the imperfections. He’d always been that way.

“Maybe I’m too old for this,” Marcus Senior said, his gnarled hands twisting around each other. “Maybe I should just give it up.”

“Is that what you want?” Marcus asked quietly. His father had always loved the sea more than anything. More than his mother, which is probably why she left. More than his children, although ironically, Marcus’s brother had loved the ocean almost as much as their father had, a connection that had bonded them together until the day that ocean killed him. Marcus had always imagined that the old man would die at the wheel of his boat one day, happy in the arms of his watery mistress.

His father shrugged, what was left of his former vibrancy draining away as Marcus watched. “I don’t see that I have any choice.”

“I can help,” Marcus said. “I want to help.” He was stunned to discover it was even true. “I’ve got plenty of money saved up from when I was in the Marines. Nothing to spend it on in the desert, after all. Let me buy you a new net.”

His father shook his head. “My boat. My problem. I don’t need your help.”

Marcus could feel the rage rising up like bile in his throat, choking and fiery, as if he’d swallowed some circus performer’s flaming baton.

“You never change, do you?” he said, the words forcing themselves out through his clenched teeth. “You would never listen to anyone else. You’d sure as hell never listen to me. I told you that Kyle was too young to be working the boat. I told you that the new guy you’d signed on was a stoned-out flake who was going to get someone hurt. But you couldn’t find anyone else willing to work for you, because you’d alienated every damned sailor in the port with your lousy temper and bad attitude, and so you let him stay anyway, and Kyle died. Because heaven forbid you actually ever listen to a word I said.”