Beka smacked his arm playfully, causing an electric buzz to zing through Marcus’s chest for a moment. “Not exactly,” she said.
“There doesn’t seem to be much point to the question, then, does there?” He glowered at Beka, tired of the rain, the boat, and the memories that always seemed to haunt him on days like this. If he had a magic wand, he’d wave it and fill the hold with fish so he could go sit on the shore with a cold beer and try to forget.
Surprisingly, Fergus’s normally merry face suddenly took on a look of alarm. “What are you thinking of, Baba?”
“Baba?” Marcus said, looking from one to the other. “I thought your name was Beka.”
“It’s kind of a nickname,” she said, kicking Fergus lightly with one bare foot. “We don’t usually use it in public.”
Well, that answered that question, didn’t it? Not that he cared.
Fergus cleared his throat. “So, Beka, how exactly did you plan to find these elusive fish?” He looked pointedly at Marcus, who got the curious feeling that there was some subtle communication going on that he was missing.
Beka’s expression became serious, too, and she turned toward the open ocean as she spoke, so the wind nearly snatched her words away.
“I’m going to ask someone who knows, of course,” she said, and leaned dangerously far over the bow.
SEVEN
BEKA GAVE A piercing whistle that she knew would travel a long way over the open water. At the same time, she added a silent magical call and sent it out in all directions. A few minutes later, she got an answer, as a pair of gray dorsal fins cutting their way through the equally gray waves headed rapidly in their direction.
She heard a low chuckle from her left and a gasp of surprise from her right but ignored them both to pay attention to the two dolphins now keeping pace with the slowly moving ship. But she’d have to get closer if she was going to get any useful information. Marcus was going to have a fit.
“I know what I’m doing,” she said, and before he could stop her, she grabbed one of the ropes they used to tie on to the dock and flung it over the side. She clambered down it, ignoring the splintery fibers that gnawed at her fingers, and the cold spray from the turbulent sea. Above her head, she caught a brief glimpse of Fergus, holding Marcus back when he would have climbed down after her. Good. She was already pushing the limits anyway. No point in having him discover she spoke fluent Dolphin.
“Baba! Baba!” the dolphins chortled joyously, squirting water through their blowholes to add to the already raucous ocean spray that dampened Beka’s face and clothes.
“Hello, my friends,” Beka responded, approximating the mammals’ whistles and clicks the best she could. “I am looking for some fish. Do you know where I can find some fish?”
A few minutes later, she climbed back over the bow of the boat, her arms aching from hanging on to the rope. Rough hands hauled her the rest of the way onto the deck and set her down with a thud that rattled her teeth.
“Are you out of your damned mind?” Marcus’s face was white and his body was as rigid as stone. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? What the hell were you thinking, climbing over the side of a moving boat in the middle of a storm?”
Before she could answer, he swung around and stalked away from her, barely suppressed fury vibrating from his aura like a Human manifestation of the squall that raged around them.
“I was fine,” she muttered to the air. “Jeez.”
Chico detached himself from the shadow of the cabin, where he’d apparently been watching the entire time. Fergus nodded at him in greeting. Beka gave him a small, tight smile, still feeling the smart from Marcus’s scolding.
“He was just worried about you, senorita,” Chico said, patting her on the arm. “You should not take his yelling so personal, eh? He has his reasons.”
“What kind of reasons could justify him screaming at me like that?” Beka fumed. “I was perfectly safe.”
Chico shrugged. “Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t. What you did, perhaps it was a little foolhardy. Boats can be dangerous places.”
Fergus slung one arm companionably around her shoulders, lending her some much-needed warmth. “You have to remember, Ba—Beka, not everyone knows how tough you are.” He smiled to take the sting out of his words.
“You frightened him,” Chico said in his soft, quiet voice. “That is why he shouted at you.”
He looked around to make sure Marcus was out of earshot. “When he was seventeen, his younger brother died in a storm much like this one, swept over the side of this very boat. It was the three of them and me, and some new idiota his father had hired because no one else wanted to work for such a difficult man. The boy, Kyle, was just fifteen. He loved the sea, and working on the Wily Serpent, and most of all, he worshiped his hermano. Followed Marcus around like a puppy, that one.”