Wickedly Wonderful(24)

Fergus slung one arm companionably around her shoulders, lending her some much-needed warmth. “You have to remember, Ba—Beka, not everyone knows how tough you are.” He smiled to take the sting out of his words.

“You frightened him,” Chico said in his soft, quiet voice. “That is why he shouted at you.”

He looked around to make sure Marcus was out of earshot. “When he was seventeen, his younger brother died in a storm much like this one, swept over the side of this very boat. It was the three of them and me, and some new idiota his father had hired because no one else wanted to work for such a difficult man. The boy, Kyle, was just fifteen. He loved the sea, and working on the Wily Serpent, and most of all, he worshiped his hermano. Followed Marcus around like a puppy, that one.”

Beka tried to envision Marcus as a boy and failed. “What happened?”

Chico gave a classic Latino shrug. “The new one, el estupido, he pull on the net at the wrong time. The boy, he fell in the water and got tangled up with the net. By the time we pulled him out, there was nothing anyone could do. The boy was muerto, yes? So you see, I think, why it was not so good for you to take such a chance as you did, seniorita.” He patted her on the shoulder again and walked away.

“Well, crap,” Beka said. “I screwed up again.” She hadn’t thought about how it might look to Marcus; just jumped right in because she’d thought she’d figured out how to solve their problem. And ended up creating an even bigger one. Brenna was right; she was always leaping first and then thinking things through afterward.

Fergus hugged her, tapping his pointy chin on the top of her head before letting her go. “You didn’t know about his brother, Baba. It was not as though you tried to upset him on purpose.”

“Yeah. Try telling him that.” Beka blinked back tears that vanished into the company of their raindrop brethren. She sighed. “Well, I suppose it would be foolish to waste the information, especially since Marcus will probably never let me on the boat again.”

She ducked around the cabin and stuck her head inside. Marcus Senior was slumped down in his seat, but he straightened up when she knocked on the open door and came in.

“What do you want?” he asked. “You can’t come hang out in here just because it’s getting a little wet out there.”

Beka ignored that, since he clearly knew that she’d been out in the rain working with the men all this time. She cut to the chase. “I can tell you where the fish are,” she said. “If you’re tired of staring at that empty screen.”

A little color came into the old fisherman’s face, but he looked unconvinced. “How could you possibly know where the fish are, when even I can’t find them?” He scowled at her.

“A dolphin told me.”

Marcus Senior’s mouth dropped open, revealing an uneven set of tobacco-stained teeth. “This is no time for jokes, missy.”

Beka stared at him, refusing to look away. “No joke. I promise you, I really do know where the fish are. Look at it this way—what do you have to lose by going where I tell you to? It’s not like there are any fish here.” She pointed at the blank radar screen.

“This is crazy,” the old man said, but he tapped the edge of the wheel with his fingers anyway. “So, where did the dolphin tell you to go?”


* * *

WITH MARCUS AND the other two men wrestling the haul of fish into the Serpent’s hold and his father gleefully piloting the ship back toward shore, Beka and Fergus met at the starboard side, away from all the action. The storm had, if anything, picked up in intensity, and the small vessel wallowed in the choppy seas, seeming to make barely any headway as it headed for home.

“That was risky,” Fergus observed in a mild tone. “You usually work so hard to maintain the illusion of normality; I cannot believe you would take the chance of speaking to dolphins when anyone could see.”

Beka shrugged, so wet she thought she might turn into a Merperson herself if they didn’t get back to land soon. “You know Humans; they’ll find a rational explanation for anything they can’t readily understand. And there are plenty of stories of sailors who are helped by dolphins.” She sighed. “I know I probably shouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t like the way Mr. Dermott was looking, and he wasn’t going to take us in until he’d caught some fish or the sun fell into the ocean.”

Fergus was silent for a moment, looking out at the water through knowing eyes. “Baba, I do not like this storm. There is something . . . uncanny . . . about it.”