“I know,” Beka said. She hugged him quickly before walking him to the driver’s side.
He slid into the seat and turned the key. “So I guess you have to spend the morning figuring out how to get the radiation out of the trench. Can you really do that?”
“I think so,” Beka said. “I guess we’ll find out. Can you really talk to your father about Selkies and Merpeople and witches?”
“I think so,” Marcus said glumly. “I guess we’re going to find out.”
*
BEKA STOOD FOR a moment in the darkness, watching the lights of the Jeep recede into the distance. It felt symbolic somehow of what was yet to come. One way or the other, Marcus’s father would soon no longer need him. And then Marcus would leave, and she would never see him again. The very thought made the night seem colder, and the stars less bright.
“It ain’t over until it’s over,” Chewie said, materializing out of nowhere. Beka jumped, having almost forgotten he was there. Toe-tingling kisses could do that to a girl.
“What?” she said. “You mean solving the water people’s problem? I know there’s still a lot of work to do.”
“That too,” Chewie said, “but that’s not what I was talking about.” He shook his head, rolling big brown eyes in her direction. “You need to have a little more faith.”
“I need to focus on doing my job,” she said, trying to do just that. “Speaking of which, I need you to do one last thing for me.”
He gave a dragonish snort, crisping the edges of a few nearby weeds. “If it involves chasing down a certain fisherman and sitting on him until he comes to his senses, I’m all in.”
Beka ruffled his fur, not sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. “No, you ninny. Not that. I’ve been thinking about those canisters Kesh put into the trench. It would be a lot easier to clean up the area if they were gone. But I can’t risk moving them by boat because we’d contaminate everything they touched. Could you bring them all up to the surface for me, if I can figure out some place to stash them until I can make an anonymous call to the authorities?”
Chewie looked longingly across the road and up the bluff to where the bus sat waiting. “I’ll do it,” he said, “but then I swear, I’m never letting the Water of Life and Death out of my sight again. This has all been way too traumatic.”
Tell me about it, Beka thought. “Fine by me,” she said. “But where the heck are we going to put that radioactive mess where it won’t hurt anyone?”
Chewie gnawed on his tail thoughtfully. “None of the canisters are leaking very badly, as far as I can tell. It was only the cumulative effect over time that caused such drastic problems for the underwater trench. Isn’t there someplace out of the way where you could put them? Preferably right on the ocean, so I can stay in dragon form the entire time?”
Beka pondered. “Well, we could probably use the little cove where Marcus and I fought with Kesh. If he thought it was isolated enough to risk meeting his followers there, it would probably be a safe place to leave the canisters for a few hours until they could be picked up by a cleanup crew.” She would be very happy when the containers were back in the hands of people who knew how to deal with them. Without using magic, that is.
She gave Chewie the directions so he would know how to get there, and reminded him to try and keep a low profile when he made his multiple trips back and forth between the trench and the cove. It wouldn’t do to suddenly have a whole bunch of people report seeing a flying sea dragon, all on the same night.
Her companion batted long lashes at her, his brown eyes open wide. “I’m always careful,” he said indignantly. “Besides, if someone sees me, I can always just eat them.”
Beka was almost completely sure he was joking.
*
IT WAS NEARLY dawn when the door of the bus opened and a tired-looking dog padded in. Even for a supernatural creature, it had been a long night. Beka, who had been sitting in the dimly lit kitchen nursing a long-cold cup of tea, got up to give him a big hug around shaggy black shoulders. His dragon hide should have repelled any residual radiation, but she would have hugged him even if he glowed in the dark.
“Thanks, Chewie,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You would have figured something out,” he said, yawning wide enough to show off all his sharp white teeth. “What are you still doing up?”
He sat down at her feet, so large that his eyes were almost on a level with hers, even in that position. “Are you worrying about cleansing the trench? That should be a piece of cake now.”