A.C. WAS IN SOME SERIOUS SHIT.
“Ah, A.C. We meet again.” Ceto swirled her finger in the water, and the whirlpool circled him closer to her, and, ironically, that stupid hat closer to him. “And who do we have here?”
“Do you know Angel?” the kid asked, leaning off to get his damn hat.
“Pipe down, kid.” A.C. tried swimming backwards, but the current was too strong. So, yes, he’d planned to eat the kid, but at least he’d make the death quick. Painless even. Well, after that first bite. But Ceto? She was known for stretching torture out over eons. No one deserved that.
“I do know her, child,” Ceto answered, her tails seeming not to move at all. Yet somehow she was closer despite A.C.’s attempts to get away. “Who are you?”
“I’m Michael.” The lucky S-O-B actually got the hat and managed to stay on A.C.’s back. “I want to see Angel. She promised she wouldn’t leave me, but she did.”
A smirk settled on Ceto’s lips as she met A.C.’s gaze. “Altruism, darling? How unlike you.”
A.C. thought about playing it tough but knew he didn’t have a prayer of getting away from her —not that he’d prayed in a long, long time, rest Mama’s dear, departed, speared-by-a-Human heart.
There was only one way to deal with Ceto. Pander. At this point, he just wanted to get out of here with his life. “Yeah, well, you know… It’s a kid. What are you gonna do?”
“Yes. That is the question, isn’t it?” Ceto slapped the surface of the water, and a bloom of jellyfish rose around her.
A.C. rolled his eyes. Ouch. That portside eye still stung. Just like the jellyfish.
He stopped the eye-rolling.
“I’ll just relieve you of your burden, A.C. I’m sure you’d be much happier back in the depths. The sun does awful things to a shark’s skin, I’m told.” She wiggled her fingers at the largest jellyfish closest to her. “Concord, my majordomo, will escort you.” She smiled at the kid. “Come here, child.”
A long jellyfish tentacle snaked through the water, up under A.C.’s belly, then once around his tail.
Then another, this one circling in the other direction. For the first time ever, A.C. wanted to stay on the surface. Knowing Ceto, if he went down, he’d never see
the light of day again.
He tried another tactic. “Look, Ceto, the kid’s mine. I’m sure we can come to some kind of reasonable ar-rangement if you get your henchfish to let go.” He swung from side to side, but the tentacles held firm.
“But that would call for me to be reasonable, and whoever said I was?” She twirled her finger in a circle, and the cnidaria started winching his tentacle in—along with A.C. “As a matter of fact, I distinctly recall a time you told me I was most unreasonable.”
Damn him and his stupid shoot-off-at-the-mouth
youth. He’d had to pick Ceto to challenge. It was amaz-ing he was alive to be terrified of her.
And with good fucking reason. His days were numbered.
Q
Ceto lifted Michael off the idiot’s back, encouraged to see there was no fear in the child’s brown eyes. Not black like hers, but close enough. She wanted to pull him into her arms and hug him. Brush her lips across his forehead, stroke his hair, and hold him to her. It’d been so long since she’d held a child.
The Council and their foul rules. None of them knew what it meant to be the bearer of life. Not a single one. Yet they took that from her…
She’d never forgive them. All she’d ever wanted was to have a child in her life.
Michael was going to be that child.
He hadn’t screamed when he saw her, proof that he was the one for her. Once she showed him where he’d live for the rest of his life, in a castle, surrounded by tropical fish and warm gentle waters, he’d be excited to stay with her.
“Hello, Michael.” “Hello. Where’s Angel?”
Angel. Fisher’s princess. The hope of Humankind, if the new Mer ruler’s latest venture was to be believed.
And this Human wanted her.
It made Ceto sick to her stomach. The Mer was fully capable of bearing her own young. Angel didn’t need this one. Ceto was going to make sure he wanted to stay here with her.
“Oh, I’m sure Angel will be along shortly. In the meantime, why don’t you wait with me in my castle?”
Like sundial-work, the boy’s eyes lit up. Didn’t mat-ter the race or the species, you offer someone life in a castle, and you got that same reaction.
“Oh, cool! Can I?” He kicked his legs in his excite-ment, one foot catching her in the rib.
Uncouth. You’d never see a Mer child doing that. Well, not that they had feet, but she’d never been kicked by a tail. He’d learn. They had lots of time.
“You certainly can.” She pulled him close, unable to help herself, and brought her lips to his temple and her fingertips to his mouth, transferring the ability to breathe water into him in a way that wouldn’t work with adults.
He smelled like a child. It’d been so long since she’d experienced such softness and scent…
“Where is it? The castle? All I see is water.” Michael squirmed in her arms, and Ceto smiled against his hair.
“Close your eyes, Michael, and I’ll take you to it.” “Don’t do it!” A.C. whipped back and forth at the end
of his tether, gnashing his teeth so hard some of them fell out. “You can’t touch him! The Human’s mine! Mine!”
Ceto flicked her fingers at Concord. He’d know what to do with the troublemaker.
She turned then so Michael wouldn’t see Concord subdue the shark for transport to her dungeon. She circled her finger in the water, creating the funnel that would send the shark and the jellyfishes back to her home. They all disappeared with a soft sucking sound.
“Where’s Mr. Shark going?” Michael asked, his eyes still closed as an obedient child’s should be.
“He’ll be joining us in the castle, but we’ll go there a different way.”
Conscious. Unlike the shark. He’d be lucky to make it to her home alive. Concord’s venom could be deadly if not administered properly.
Ceto calmed her whirlpool before lowering them both beneath the surface. Oh, dear. She did so hope A.C. didn’t receive an accidental overdose. She chuckled. No loss if he did.
“We’ll all visit the castle together. Doesn’t that sound lovely?” She patted the child’s head, loving the fact that he was comfortable with her, when so many others hadn’t been.
That proved it. He was hers.
Michael reached up to twist his hat across his fore-head, then back, his lips going in opposite directions, but he still didn’t open his eyes, the dear thing. Such a special child.
“I dunno. I’m not apposed to go with strangers.”
Oh yes he was supposed to. “But I’m not a stranger, remember? I know Angel. We’ll have fun. You’ll see.” Ceto picked up her speed and set off toward her second-favorite palace.
“But how will Angel know where I am? I don’t know where she went. I wanna find her.”
It’d be a cold day in the tropics before that happened.
This one was hers. Let Angel make her own.
But Ceto had to get him to her lair. Then he’d see. She’d give him everything. “I know where she lives. I’ll send a message to her. How’s that?”
He wrapped his little arms around her neck and squeezed. His hat bumped her chin and drifted off in her
wake. “It’s cooool! Hey! My hat—wow! We’re under the water! And I’m not drowning. Cool!”
It definitely was cool. And a gift—one most defi-nitely not from the gods, but, surprisingly, from Harry. She owed him.
“I can breathe?” Michael’s little face looked very perplexed.
Ceto soothed a hand over his hair because a mother should soothe her child. “Yes, you can. Because you’re a very special boy.”
“Rainbow used to say that. Angel, too.”
Ceto didn’t know who Rainbow was, but Angel wasn’t getting him back.
If he was so special to her, she shouldn’t have left him the first place.