chapter ELEVEN
Eventually the skulls stopped chewing on me, and Timon turned me loose to sleep normally. The dreams I had on my own probably weren’t any treat, either, not after what he’d put me through. But I didn’t remember any of them when I woke up.
The air smelled of piss, and my pajama pants—red silk this morning—and tangled sheets were cold and wet. Shame made me glad I was alone. That A’marie wasn’t there to see.
Then I realized that wasn’t exactly true. Yes, it would have been embarrassing. But I still missed waking up to her and wished she was there to tell me everything was all right.
Feeling shaky and dazed, like my head was full of static, I stripped the bedding off the mattress, the pajamas off me, and rinsed everything in the tub. The Tuxedo Team would still know I’d had some kind of accident, but maybe they wouldn’t be able to tell it had involved my bladder.
Then I showered, shaved, dressed, and found breakfast on a cart outside the door. I managed two bites of a Greek omelet, and then I had to run back into the john and puke.
But after that, I started feeling better. Or maybe I just got mad. Either way, it bucked me up enough to get me going.
I still had the phone one of Leticia or Gimble’s flunkies had left for me. Raul hadn’t bothered to take it. I flipped it open and dialed Vic’s number.
She answered on the second ring. “Hello.”
“It’s me,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”
“It is,” she said. “I’m back at work. I hoped that would help, and I think it is.”
“What did you tell everybody about the black eye and bruises?”
She lowered her voice. “The same story we told in the clinic. I was in an accident, and the air bag didn’t deploy. I’ve had at least dozen kids ask me if I’m going to sue somebody. How depressing is that?”
“They see lawyer commercials every time they turn on the TV.”
“How are you? Are you still, well, with them?”
“Yes. And I’m okay. But I could use a favor. Nothing that will pull you back into the middle of it. Just advice. Education majors have to take a bunch of Psych classes, right?”
“Yes.”
“What did they teach you about dreams?”
It only took her a couple minutes to tell me what she remembered, but it seemed like enough to point me in the right direction. Then she got off the phone to lecture some poor kid who’d been sent to the office—I winced because I knew what he was in for—and I headed out to find A’marie.
Once again, the other servants took a passive-aggressive stab at keeping me away from her. But I scowled and persisted until I tracked her down. She was dusting a room on the ninth floor.
“Is anybody even staying up here?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But anytime Timon uses the hotel, he likes for it to get a thorough cleaning.”
“He would,” I said. “Look, something happened. Timon pushed me too hard, and I guess it changed my outlook. Jammed my brain into gear, maybe. Anyway, I have an idea. Or two, depending on how you look at it.” I told her what they were.
She shook her head. It tossed her curls around, covering and then revealing the stubby horn on the left. “He’ll never go for the first one, and the second one’s stupid.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. The way things have been lately, it’s hard for me to tell.”
“If you really want to help, I gave you a plan. It’s simple, and it will work. You just have to throw the game.”
“I can’t.”
She looked like she wanted to stamp her hoof. “Why not?”
“For one thing, like I already told you, there’s no guarantee that it would really make things any better.”
“And I told you, we’re willing to take our chances.”
“Yeah, but… look, it’s just the way I am.”
“You have to do better than that. Or else how do I even know this isn’t some kind of trick? Maybe Timon’s way of flushing out the subjects who hate him the most.”
That stung. “Do you really think I’d do something like that?”
“No,” she said, “and if it was just you and me, I’d trust you. But it’s not. You want me to help convince my friends to trust you. So you’re going to have to make me understand.”
I sighed. “Okay. I get it. It’s just that I’m no good at talking about this kind of shit.” I flopped down on the bed, and she pulled up a chair and sat across from me. “You have to let me work my way into it. When I was a kid, it was almost like there were two of me. There was good me, who wanted to make good grades, stay out of trouble, and make my dad proud. And there was wild me, who just wanted to party, play poker, shoot pool, and street race.”
“I think lots of people feel something like that.”
“I guess. But wild me was pretty strong. Strong enough that for a long time, it was anybody’s guess which guy I’d grow up to be.”
I took a breath. “But Dad kept working on me. He kept telling me about responsibility, the self-respect he said you only get from making a contribution, and things like that. Then I got together with Vic, and even though the wild me kind of turned her on, she really wanted the good me, too.”
“So you decided that was who you were going to be.”
“Yeah. After years of blowing off school, my grades were nothing special. Definitely not good enough for a scholarship, and, even if I’d been willing to take it from him, Dad didn’t have any money. So the big plan was for me to go into the Army. It would make a man out of me, and get me money for college.”
“From the way you’re talking about it,” she said, “this was before 9/11.”
“Yes, and after it, I was suddenly a real soldier, fighting in a real war in Afghanistan. And at first, that was okay, too. Scary as hell, but okay. I’m an American. I was pissed off. Before we finally got him, I wanted to catch bin Laden as much as anybody.”
A’marie nodded. Like always, it bounced her curls around. “What changed it for you?”
“No one thing. A bunch of things piled one on top of the other. We let bin Laden slip away and hide. I shot some real terrorists, or close enough, but I’m pretty sure I also shot some guys who never even heard of the World Trade Center. They never even heard of skyscrapers. And I found out I don’t like shooting anybody.”
She surprised me by reaching over and squeezing my hand. “That’s a good thing.”
“Maybe not always. Not when they’re shooting at you. But anyway. I also saw our own side do some… Abu Ghraib stuff. Then the US invaded Iraq, and all of a sudden it felt like nobody back home even cared about what my buddies and I were doing anymore.”
“And it all disillusioned you.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. I wasn’t a general or a political expert. I tried to believe that if I could just see the big picture, everything would make sense. And, I just concentrated on staying alive until I could go home.”
“But more bad things happened when you did?”
“Yeah.” My mouth twisted. “I found out Dad had cancer. He’d worked the same place for fifteen years, but the insurance plan was screwing him over. He hadn’t gotten things he needed.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“If I’d known, I could have gotten out early and maybe done something. But he didn’t tell me. He never liked asking anybody for help, and he didn’t want to mess up the big plan. He made sure Vic didn’t know how bad things really were, and twisted her arm so she wouldn’t tell me he was sick, either.”
I realized my eyes were wet—it was a bad morning for leakage—and, angry with myself, knuckled the tears away. “Long story short, I only had a couple more months with him before he died. And after that, I just couldn’t get motivated to follow through on the big plan. It didn’t make sense to me anymore. Why do all that work when I could place a bet or play a game and come away thousands of dollars ahead?”
“The wild you was back in charge.”
“Yes. Or maybe by then it was I-don’t-give-a-shit me. Anyway, it wasn’t anybody Vic wanted to spend the rest of her life with.” I sighed. “Is this making any sense at all?”
A’marie frowned and thought about it. “It is, but I don’t know what it has to do with what’s happening here and now.”
I waved my hand like I thought I could pull the right words out of the air. “It’s like… look, it’s too late to be the person Dad and Vic wanted. It’s not in me, and they’re gone anyway. But the person I know how to be isn’t completely worthless. I never cheated or hustled anybody, and there are damn few pros who can say that. I pay my debts. Even if I hadn’t met Timon, I still would have paid Rhonda somehow. When I make a deal with a backer or whoever, I keep it. And I have to hold the line on all of that, or I’m really not anybody.”
A’marie sighed. “You’re saying you have principles. And this stupid plan you came up with already bends them as far as you’re willing to go.”
“Something like that.”
“Okay, then. We’ll try it your way. What all do you need?”
I told her. As I expected, some of it, like a laptop with Internet access and a replacement gun—just in case—was no big deal. The rest was trickier, but she came back a couple hours later and told me she had it taken care of.
That meant it was time for another sneak to the Miata. I hopped out of my physical body for a second to look around the alley. As far as I could tell, nobody was watching the door or the car. So we dashed out, jumped in, and drove away.
It was another nice day, and the top was down. The sunshine and the wind in my hair took away more of the frazzled, jumpy feeling left over from everything that had happened the day and night before. Or maybe I just felt better because doing feels better than waiting.
A’marie parked near one of the shrimp docks on McKay Bay. As I stowed my new Glock 27 under my seat, I said, “Too bad we don’t know the spell to call him like Timon did. Although I guess that wouldn’t be very smart in the daylight.”
“This may not be very smart anyway,” A’marie answered. “Murk isn’t known for being friendly.”
“Well,” I said, “at least he isn’t all that big.”
The way she looked at me told me I’d said something retarded.
“When he came up out of the water,” she said, “he was only small because otherwise, some human might have spotted him even in the dark. He’s a kraken.”
“What’s that?”
“Except for when he decides to shrink, something really, really big.”
“I’m kind of sorry to hear that. But this still doesn’t seem any dumber than a lot of the other things I’ve done.”
She laughed. “You’ve got me there.” She reached inside her tuxedo jacket and brought an orange plastic prescription bottle with a Walgreens label.
But I was pretty sure the pills inside weren’t from Walgreens. They looked like blobs of green Play-Doh a kid had rolled between his fingertips. I swallowed one, and she took the other.
For a second, the pill gave me heartburn. Then it suddenly felt hard to breathe, like I was standing on top of Mt. Everest. I turned to A’marie. She was panting, too.
“It’s all right,” she wheezed. “This is supposed to happen. Or at least that’s what Darnell said.”
“And if you can’t trust your drug dealer, who can you trust?”
Still gasping, we got out of the car, then took off our shoes. I stripped down to the swim trunks she’d found for me. She got rid of her jacket, vest, tie, and shoes, but kept her shirt, pants, and socks. She couldn’t wear a bathing suit and show the world her goat legs.
Then we grabbed our goggles. The magic in the pills was supposed to let us breathe and even talk underwater, but apparently we still needed air spaces in front of our eyes to see clearly.
I had a pair of fins, too. A’marie didn’t. She’d said they wouldn’t stay on.
We crossed a strip of sand, pebbles, and saw-grass and waded into the water. I was glad it was cool, but not cold. We spat inside our goggles and rinsed them out to keep them from fogging up. I pulled on the fins. Then it was time to go under. I got that far, then froze. Because my body was pretty sure it was a bad idea to breathe water.
But A’marie was already doing it, and I didn’t want her to think I was chicken. So I forced myself to inhale.
And was glad I had. That half-suffocating, up-in-the-mountains feeling went away. Except for an oily taste in my mouth—with all the big cargo ships and fishing boats going in and out, the water wasn’t all that clean—everything was fine.
Actually, it was better than fine. It was cool. It was one of those moments that showed magic could be fun when I wasn’t scared shitless and counting on it to save my ass.
I gave A’marie a grin, and we headed for deeper water. Her swimming was mostly arm. I guessed she’d learned from experience that kicking didn’t do her much good. My fins and I took it easy so we wouldn’t leave her behind.
We swam over other Old People going about their business. A submarine made of seashells sat on the bottom of the bay. Its engine, or what passed for an engine, was idling. I could feel the magic throbbing inside the hull. Guys with the smooth gray hide of porpoises were offloading net bags of what looked like kelp and handing them off to finheads, who stowed them aboard a triangular wooden sub of their own.
But we didn’t see too many things like that, because we’d gone into the water near the patch Murk considered to be his private turf. It wasn’t long before the bay looked as empty of fish-men and such as ordinary humans imagined it to be.
The bay got deeper, and A’marie and I followed the slope downward. I wasn’t crazy about that. The crud in the water already cut visibility, and now we were losing the light from overhead. But we didn’t have much choice. If the dolphin guys and finheads had to hug the bottom to keep humans from spotting them, then obviously, a dinosaur-sized octopus had to do it, too.
Then, even though we were swimming deeper, the water got warmer.
I just thought we’d caught some kind of current. I grinned and asked A’marie if she’d peed in the pool. Talking made bubbles come out of my mouth in a way that almost tickled.
She frowned and looked all around, like you have to do if you want to see something coming underwater. “Something’s wrong,” she said.
The way she said it slapped the smartass out of me. “What?” I asked.
She pointed. “That.”
A big hammerhead shark was swimming toward us from the south. It had the flat head with the eyes on the ends, the mouth with rows and rows of pointed teeth, the fin on the back, and all the rest of the standard shark equipment. But the crazy thing was that it was also fire burning underwater. It was yellow and blue, and its shape flickered and wavered, with tongues of flame jumping up from the rest of it.
“What is it?” A’marie asked. Like all of a sudden, I was the one who was supposed to know his way around.
I did have a hunch, though. “It’s Murk’s watchdog. Something he made.” And it made sense that, if he knew how, he’d make it partly out of fire. What would seem stranger and therefore scarier to the average fish-man?
The hammerhead swam back and forth for a second, like it was giving us a chance to turn around. Then it started toward us again.
“What should we do?” asked A’marie.
“For starters, don’t let it near us.” I pictured the Thunderbird, then made an invisible wall.
The hammerhead bumped it and sent a jab of headache between my eyes. It circled from my twelve to my three, then swam forward again. I threw up a second wall to bounce it back. I wondered if I could make a bubble instead of walls, one defense to enclose A’marie and me completely. But this seemed like a bad time to start experimenting.
“So far, so good,” I said.
“Not really,” said A’marie. “You held it back, but the water’s getting really hot.”
I realized she was right. I’d just been too busy with my wall building to notice. Those lobsters that just sit in the pot while the cook gradually turns up the heat had nothing on me.
“Shit,” I said. “Maybe you should go back.”
“I will if you will.”
I made a third wall—or maybe, since it was over our heads, it was more of a roof—and the hammerhead veered off just short of running into it. Somehow, it was learning to sense where they were.
“I’ll cover your retreat,” I said, “and then I’ll get by this thing somehow. Or if I don’t, I won’t show up for poker, and you’ll still get what you wanted.”
“Great plan,” she said, “but let’s try this first.” She unbuttoned two of the lower buttons of her white shirt, reached inside, and brought out her Zamfir pipes.
It turned out she could play underwater just like we could talk. Even though I wasn’t the one she was trying to hex, the music put a twitch in my legs. The hammerhead swam in a kind of shimmying figure eight. Dancing a shark dance.
“Nice,” I said. I took hold of the back of A’marie’s cummerbund, and, finning, hauled her along. She couldn’t use her arms to swim and work the stops of the pipes at the same time.
We made it several yards. Then the hammerhead shook off the spell and shot at us again. I just got a wall thrown up in time to keep it from tearing a chunk out of me. As it turned off, I saw A’marie and me reflected in one beady little eye.
She lowered the pipes. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It almost worked.” I struggled to come up with an idea of my own. By now, the water was hot enough that it was hard to think about anything but the burning sting.
Finally, though, I had something. “Your songs can’t control it,” I said. “It’s just too strong, or stubborn. But do you think you can sort of give it a nudge?”
She said maybe, I told her my plan, and we more or less agreed it was as half-assed as usual. Then we put it into action.
I spirit-traveled to just behind the shark. Then I willed solidness back into my hands. When I did, I winced at the heat coming off it. I reached and yanked on its tail for the second that was all that I could take.
At the same time, my physical body was floating unconscious, and instinct told me the last wall I’d made had disappeared when I moved. All the shark had to do was lunge forward to rip its two original targets to pieces.
But A’marie was piping for all she was worth. And maybe her music was what convinced Murk’s dog that the new annoyance behind it was more important than the trespassers in front. It wheeled and shot at me. I melted back into a ghost, and it plunged right through me.
It felt good to be one hundred percent ghost. The heat in the water couldn’t scald me anymore. But I couldn’t stay that way. I had to keep the hammerhead’s attention on spirit-traveler me. So I firmed up my hands and flew—if that’s the right word when you’re underwater—over the shark, thumping it down the length of its body as I went. I finished with a clapping motion that smacked both protruding eyes at once.
Then I streaked onward, and as I’d hoped, the hammerhead chased me. Every so often, I let it catch up and try to bite me, only to snap its jaws shut on nothing. I figured that would make it even madder.
And maybe it did, but it was a tricky move to pull off. An ordinary spirit traveler was invisible. Visible-but-still-not-completely-there took concentration, and the throbbing in my hands made it harder. Eventually I slipped, let myself become too real, and the shark’s teeth touched me. Somehow I threw the thickness out of me, hurled it out like vomit, and got away with only cuts and scrapes.
But it was still time to stop playing tag, before I screwed up worse. I turned and raced back the way I’d come, toward the two figures floating together in the cloudy green water. With its arms just hanging, my physical body looked drowned and dead. A’marie had her legs wrapped around it in an awkward piggyback way. It kept the two of them from drifting apart and still left her hands free to play. To make music to feed the shark’s anger. To urge it to chase me faster than it had ever swum before, and never stop until it ripped me apart.
I tried to lead it in close. When my spirit body vanished from in front of it, I wanted it to see the physical me just a few yards farther on, and, crazy with rage, not notice any difference between that and what it had just been chasing.
It worked. I jumped back into my flesh and bones, and damn, the shark was close, and it sure as hell kept coming. I pictured the Thunderbird and threw up a new wall, giving it everything I had.
When the fire shark crashed into it, it rocked my head back like a sock on the jaw. But it also knocked the creature out, and it drifted toward the bottom. Blood floated up from its jaws. We were deep enough that it looked brown.
A’marie and I hugged for about a second. Until we each felt how much it hurt.
Her skin was red and blistered, like from the world’s worst sunburn. Mine was the same, with what looked like third-degree burns on my hands. I also had my own blood floating up from the cuts that had opened in my physical body when the shark bit the ghostly one.
“Paging Dr. Red,” I said.
I had to give props to Timon’s teaching. Red filled me up instantly, although the pain of my injuries dulled the feeling of joyful vitality a little. Or maybe it was the fact that I’d already burned through a lot of magic.
Fortunately, I still had some left. I took A’marie’s hand in both of mine and sent power pulsing into her in time with my heartbeat. In some places, the angry redness simply faded. In others, blisters flaked away and uncovered healthy new skin beneath.
I gave myself the same treatment. It killed most of the pain and stopped the bleeding. I shrunk Red back down till he blended in with rest of me.
A’marie looked me over. “Are you all right now?” she asked.
“Yes, except that this water is still too hot. Let’s move.”
As we did, she asked, “Do you think we killed the shark?”
“I hope not. Murk might not like it if we did.”
She grunted, and then giggled.
“What?”
“We were in hot water.”
I snorted. “Is that the kind of joke that Old People think is funny?”
“You have no sense of humor. That was hilarious.” And I guessed she thought so, because she kept chortling off and on, right until the moment when the sight of Murk’s den knocked it out of her.
I was just as amazed as she was. Mel Fisher spent years and tons of investor money looking for wreck sites in the waters off Florida. Would-be Mel Fishers still do it today. Yet here, within spitting distance of the Tampa shore, were several old barnacle-covered ships heaped like firewood or a kid’s blocks. Two were Spanish galleons, and, for all I knew, full of gold doubloons. That would fit with a wannabe lord’s pride and sense of style.
“Hey, Murk!” I yelled. “Are you in there?”
He was. He flowed out from under the pile like an ordinary octopus coming out of a hole in the rocks. I caught myself holding my breath, because, even though he was fast, it took a while for all of him to slide into view. I’d imagined him as a dinosaur-sized animal, but I’m not sure even dinosaurs really grew that big. His tentacles were like rubber telephone poles. His black, glaring eyes were the size of truck tires.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m sorry, but we had to beat up on the hammerhead to get to you. I hope it’ll be okay. This is A’marie, and I’m Billy.”
“I know who you are,” the kraken said. Before, his laughter had reminded me of a muted trombone. Now his voice was like a foghorn. “Timon’s new champion.”
“Kinda sorta,” I said. “That’s what we’re here to talk to you about.”
“You shouldn’t have invaded my privacy.” The giant tentacles reached for A’marie and me. She let out a yelp.
I felt like yelping, too. But I was also irritated, and that helped me find the mojo to make a wall big and strong enough to bump the lead tentacles back.
“Screw you, too,” I said. “In the first place, you Old People are way too grabby. In the second, what’s the big deal about your privacy? It’s not like you’re a hermit. You talk to people. Hell, you mentioned talking to the Twin Helens, whoever they are, when I saw you before.”
“I communicate with whom I choose, in the manner I prefer.”
“Well, aren’t you special. So how about choosing us, in the manner of here and now? You might like what you hear.”
“But I know I can solve my problems by eating you.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Either way, I’ll still be just as tasty in ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Please,” said A’marie to Murk. “I brought him to you because everyone says you’re wise and honorable.”
“Talk,” growled Murk, “and, for your own sake, make it good.”
A’marie and I laid it out for him. And when we finished, I said, “So that’s the plan. We came to you first because we don’t have much time, and, like she said, everybody respects you. If you get onboard, others will, too.”
Tentacles waving—some still too close to A’marie and me for comfort—Murk floated and thought for a few seconds. Then he said, “You’re either very brave or a very great fool.”
I shrugged. “Can’t I be both?”
“Do you know why Timon inspires such fear?”
“I told you, he gave me a taste of what he can do.”
“That’s only part of it. Most beings die because of things that happen here in the waking world. We can suffer and find ourselves inconvenienced in a dream, but it can only kill us if magic is involved.”
“Okay, but so what?”
“By all accounts, Timon is the opposite. It would take sorcery to kill him in the waking world, and no one knows the spell. Whereas in the dream realm, he holds every advantage.”
“That’s interesting, but I don’t want to kill him anyway. I just want to… deal with him.”
“I’m trying to warn you just what a powerful, uncanny creature he really is. I’ve seldom met his like, and I’m old enough to remember when your kind first dared to sail beyond sight of land.”
“I get it. He’s a badass. But somebody isn’t afraid to mess with him. Whoever sicced the brownwings on him.”
“A fellow lord, who was able to act anonymously, and who will soon go home to some fortified place beyond Timon’s reach in both the waking and dreaming worlds.”
“I thought you Old People were supposed to be gamblers. How come you won’t take a chance when there’s something really worth winning?”
“For one thing, you haven’t convinced me you’re worth betting on.”
“Even working together,” said A’marie, “Leticia and Gimble couldn’t take him out of the game.”
“I also escaped from a trap the Pharaoh set for me,” I said. The damn bubbles were still tickling my mouth. “And, like I said, I slapped your watchdog around. Plus, I’m smart enough to know you vassals were tipped off that brownwings were going to attack Timon. It’s just that nobody warned him.”
Murk hesitated. “How could you know that?”
“If you didn’t know he was going to get hurt, why would you all make an agreement that nobody would stand in for him?”
“Perhaps we made it afterward.”
I shook my head. “I know you guys are all supernatural and everything, but even if somebody saw him get his eyes popped, there just wasn’t time for the word to go around and everybody to palaver before he called you up out of the water. But don’t worry. I didn’t tell him you all let him walk into an ambush, and as far as I know, he hasn’t figured it out. Not yet. Things could get ugly if he does.”
“Is that a threat?” asked Murk. The ends of his tentacles flexed.
“No,” I said. “I’m not like that. What it is, is another good reason to deal with him now.”
Murk made a short bass-fiddle noise that might have been a kraken grunt. “I admit, the horned girl has a point. You evidently have some power, and some intelligence to go with it. Unless you’re simply lucky. But sometimes luck trumps strength and cunning both.”
“Amen to that,” I said. “So does that mean you’re with us?”
“Not necessarily,” said Murk. “What’s in it for me personally?”
I glanced at A’marie. “‘Wise and honorable,’ huh?” I said.
“Neither wisdom nor honor preclude looking after your own best interests,” said Murk. “If you don’t understand that, you really are a fool, and perhaps I should eat you after all.”
“Whatever,” I said. “What’s your price?”
“The bay.”
“That’s what Timon already offered you.”
“Yes, Timon, whom I mistrust and despise.”
I turned back to A’marie. “What kind of a boss would he make?”
She hesitated. “Everyone respects him. That doesn’t mean they love him. Still, I think they could do worse.”
I looked at Murk. “No eating the rest of the fish people?”
He made another short, low-pitched sound. “Fish people… I wouldn’t eat anyone except to administer justice.”
That could mean anything. But something made me want to trust Murk. Maybe I had a soft spot for gigantic man-eating monsters with nothing even a little bit human about them. Or maybe it was just that I was short on options.
“To hell with it,” I said. “If the plan works, you get the bay.”
I was quiet on the swim back to shore, and not just because I was keeping an eye out for the hammerhead. Eventually A’marie asked, “What’s wrong?”
“When I made up my mind to do this, I wanted to help everybody.”
“You are. You will. Murk will be all right.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes. He wants the prestige of being a lord, but he’s too much of a loner to bother his subjects very much. You’re doing as well as anybody could.”
“Thanks.” I hesitated. “You know, I like it better working together.”
“So do I.” She smiled. “I definitely feel like I’m getting more accomplished. Because it’s hard to stop you from doing what you want to do.”
‘I’ve been lucky so far.” Saying it made me wonder when my luck was going to turn.
When the bay got shallow enough, I pulled my fins off, and we put our feet down. Then we had to cough and retch out the water in our lungs. The breeze that had felt pleasant before chilled my wet skin, and the on-top-of-Everest feeling came back. The magic from the pills hadn’t run out of juice, and so it was still harder to breathe the open air.
The tape on my ribs was peeling off, but that was okay. Now that I’d juiced with Red’s magic, it didn’t feel like I needed it anymore.
A’marie pulled off her goggles. I took off my goggles and fins, and we waded toward the little red convertible.
Something rose up behind it.