LOGAN DIDN’T KNOW WHAT ANGEL PLANNED, BUT HE’D MAKE
sure Michael was well out of harm’s way.
“Cool!” reverberated again in the light current.
Logan leaned off the bottom step to follow the sound and saw Michael clapping and smiling as col-orful fish darted in front of him. He looked anything but scared and injured. Angel was right. Ceto hadn’t frightened him.
Thank God for small favors. He glanced at Ceto. He wouldn’t be thanking her, however.
The sea monster met his gaze, and an eerie smile slid across her face. She nodded to the four makos at the edge of the stage. Two flicks of their tails put them on either side of Michael.
The witch glanced at him, her message loud and clear.
Don’t say a word, or she’d hurt his son.
Logan ground his teeth and reached for Angel’s arm. They had to figure out how to get Michael free before they went any closer.
“Michael, why don’t you go with my friends back to your room?” asked Ceto. “The oysters are there, ready for us. I’ll be along shortly to play pearls with you.”
“Can I be a cowboy?”
Surprisingly, the monster smiled a genuine smile and her voice even softened. “Of course. Brutus, let him on.” On a shark. Logan would have taken off after them to
intervene if the sea witch hadn’t looked up at him again. And licked her lips.
He knew that look.
Thank God for the knife in his pocket. It was some-thing, at least. But if she ordered the makos to harm Michael, he didn’t know that he’d be able to get to him in time. He and Angel had to play this carefully.
Except that Angel decided to pull her arm free and kick her tail hard enough for her wake to send him stag-gering back onto the stairs as she zoomed over to face the monster.
“Hold on, Ceto,” she growled. Great. What was she up to?
Q
Ha, good. Angel hid her smile at surprising the old witch but let that small victory buoy her. Gods knew, it might be the only win she got as this played out.
Even then, success wasn’t a sure thing, but she had to try something. She’d seen the expression that had crossed Ceto’s face when Logan appeared. The sea monster was nothing if not predictable. Not that it was all that hard to recognize Ceto’s hungry look—especially because Angel felt the same way toward him.
So now she had two Hardington men to rescue.
“Hi, Angel!” Michael waved as she swam closer, and Angel couldn’t help but return his smile. “Look what I have! Isn’t it cool?” He held something up: a four-foot-long moray eel whose bite could be deadly if Ceto released it from the stupor she’d lulled it into.
A quick glance at the smile playing on Ceto’s lips and the fingers tapping on her now black-scaled
hips confirmed that she would, if pushed, let the eel do it.
Or… would she?
Ceto had lost her last child in the battle with Reel. The Council had given Joey to her to keep her amused and kept tabs on her destructive activities where Humans were concerned. Angel herself had seen the reports. There’d been no “rescued” children from shipwrecks the sea monster had caused, so Ceto was still childless.
While that made her that much more desperate, it also meant she wouldn’t hurt Michael.
Logan, however, was a whole different story.
Oh, Ceto would let him live, but in a capacity he defi-nitely wouldn’t appreciate. And one Angel didn’t want to imagine. She’d heard stories of Ceto’s Humans and they weren’t pretty—and neither were the men when the monster was finished with them.
And she’d just left him alone…
Son-of-a-Mer! She wasn’t in the same league as the ex-goddess when it came to being calculatingly evil.
Angel swallowed very carefully. Ceto’s eyes were on her, and Angel didn’t want the sea monster to see her sweat.
She straightened her spine. Time to do this.
“Hi, Michael.” She swam up to him slowly, not wanting to let Ceto know exactly how much this child meant to her. “What took you so long?” Michael set the moray in the seat next to his and got to his feet. “Wanna ride a
shark with me?”
Brutus bared his teeth in a gruesome, Mer-killer smile.
Angel wanted to drown him. And Ceto. Too bad the last wasn’t possible.
“Maybe later. Are you okay?” She couldn’t help
asking, though she did refrain from dragging him to her to make sure he was. He was breathing, talking, and not scared; she didn’t want to jeopardize any of that.
“I’m kinda bored. Ceto doesn’t like to play hide-and-seek.”
Angel did smile at that. She bet Ceto didn’t like hav-ing a child run and hide from her.
“Or we could play baseball.” He looked around, the quick motion sending him spinning. Which got another “Cool!” out of him. But then he stopped spinning, and his face fell. “I forgot my baseball glove.”
“You can play with it when you get home.”
“Okay, but you know what? I lost my hat. How am I gonna play baseball without it? Rainbow gave it to me for frembrance so I won’t forget her. She said I’m the only one who’s gonna frember her when she’s gone.”
The woman should have thought about that before she left him. If she had, none of this would be happen-ing. But Angel couldn’t blame this on Rainbow. It was her fault for over-swimming her bounds and, therefore, up to her to fix it.
“Michael, why don’t you show your father around outside? Ceto and I have something to discuss.”
The sea monster left her cushy holothurian throne at that and headed toward them. “I don’t think so, Angel, but nice try—”
“Logan’s here?” Michael whirled around, spinning once more. “Where?”
“Right here.” Logan appeared at the opposite end of the row, and Angel heard Ceto gasp.
Whether it was because the monster had been too fo-cused on Michael to see Logan swim across the theater
or because she recognized the murderous rage on his face, Angel didn’t know. Nor did she care. She’d use either to their advantage.
But first she had to get Logan and Michael away from Ceto.
“Michael, your father has something for you.” She glared pointedly at Logan. Get him out of here.
“What is it?” The hopeful expression on Michael’s face gave her some hope of her own. Surely the gods wouldn’t let Ceto win? Ruin this child’s life just because she’d made a bad judgment call?
“We found your hat.” Logan held it up and, like a magnet, Michael was by his father’s side, shoving the cap on his head.
Ceto was not happy. She motioned for the makos to surround Logan and Michael. “Instead of going outside, Michael, why don’t you take your father to play pearls? I’m sure he’d love to see your room, and I’d like a little time to speak with Angel.” Ceto sang the suggestion, her eyes on Logan, as her hair undulated like over-sexed eels around her shoulders and her tails rippled red and orange like flowing magma from the tips of her flukes to her hips. Subtlety was not Ceto’s strong suit as she tried to ensnare Logan with her Siren Song.
Good luck with that.
Logan took a step toward her and took a breath. “Ange—”
“Logan, take care of Michael.” Angel couldn’t let Logan speak or Ceto would know her enchantment didn’t work because Angel had gotten to him first. Who knew that the birthday-song debacle would end up saving him? Humans could be enchanted by only one Mer.