Collecting samples wasn’t getting her anywhere. It was time to try something a little less passive and a little more Baba Yaga. Magic. The very thought made her stomach churn and shoulders tighten under their slick neoprene covering; her breath reverberated harshly through the regulator between her lips.
Calm down, Beka, she ordered herself sternly. You’ve spent years training to do this. Even Brenna admitted that you have power. The other day you calmed a crazy-ass storm. You can do this. She tried not to think about how difficult it was to work magic under this much water or to hear Brenna’s voice echoing in the back of her mind, tone pitying. “Don’t worry, dear, you’ll get the hang of it eventually. I’m sure you will.”
The Selkies and the Merpeople couldn’t wait for eventually. They needed her to fix this now. So water or no water, she was going to try.
There was no way to use any of her magical tools down here, and she didn’t have the luxury of time to spend getting into the right mind-set, as she normally would for anything this tricky. But she didn’t intend to try to fix the entire crisis right now—just see if she could mend one small part of it. If that worked, she’d come up with a way to address a larger area.
The biggest problem was that she still didn’t know what she was dealing with. Knowing the cause to any issue always made it easier to come up with a solution. But since she was still no closer to finding the answers, she was desperate enough to try anything. Despite the tingles of fear and trepidation that made her fingers shake as she wrapped them gently around a limp and pallid pink starfish.
Even in the dilute light trickling down through the layers of water, she could see that its color was off, and it drooped in her hands instead of being taut and muscular. Poor thing. Its life energy had dwindled so low she could barely sense it, although she could feel the mysterious illness it carried like a low-voltage buzz humming through her fingertips.
Carefully, slowly, she pulled a strand of elemental power through her core and out into the palms of her hands. The water around the starfish took on a golden glow as her magic flowed into its body. For a moment, a breath, a heartbeat, Beka thought she could sense it working, and her pulse raced. Then the small creature shuddered and died, the last of her magic sliding uselessly into the darkness of the murky water.
Beka opened her hands and let the sad little body drift away, down to the bottom far beneath them. It had probably been on the verge of dying before she got there. There was too much water for undirected magical work. She knew these things were true. But she couldn’t help feeling the weight of its passing as more evidence that Brenna had been right, and she just wasn’t ready to be a Baba Yaga.
And maybe she never would be.
* * *
“THAT’S IT, I quit,” Beka said as Fergus used one strong arm to help her over the side of the Wily Serpent. Her bare feet hit the deck with an emphatic thud, wet suit dripping saltwater rain onto the worn wooden planks.
Marcus straightened up from tidying nets around the corner from where they stood, telling himself it didn’t count as eavesdropping if you simply happened to be there.
“Still nothing?” Fergus inquired, his tone sympathetic but not surprised.
Marcus snorted to himself, stifling the sound. He’d told her there was no damned treasure down there.
“Nothing that I can find, anyway. Although clearly there’s something, or I wouldn’t keep coming across fish and plants that were dead, or soon to be.” She tossed her collection bags onto the deck with a frustrated thump. “I’m tired of gathering up masses of blighted kelp and three-legged starfish. Even without them for evidence, I can sense the damage to the ecosystem—I just can’t pin down what the hell is causing it. I am checking different sections to see if I can find anything out of the ordinary and finding nothing. Nothing except bits and pieces of sea life that are dying or warped for no obvious reason. I keep collecting samples for the lab to look at, but if they can’t give me answers, I’m at a dead end. And my powers are no help at all. It’s driving me crazy!”
Wait. What the hell was she talking about? Kelp and starfish? Damage to the ecosystem? Marcus felt like he’d opened a straightforward ship’s log and fallen headfirst into a mystery novel instead. What the hell did dead fish have to do with sunken treasure?
Beka’s voice was muffled, as if she’d dropped her head into her hands. “I’m failing your people, Fergus, and the others too. I’m so sorry.”
“Maybe this laboratory will find the answers we seek,” Fergus said. “If not, you will think of something else. You are the Baba Yaga.”