Beka gestured at the bowls that contained the selections of damaged and mutated sea life. “Can you tell me what caused this?” she asked.
Each elemental took a turn hovering above the collection of glass bowls, sending that same subliminal humming sensation through Beka’s bones. Finally, the salamander said in a fierce sizzling voice, almost too high-pitched to hear, “It comes from the sun, the great cauldron.”
The faun said hesitantly, in tones that rang clear like bells in a forest clearing, “It comes from deep under the earth, Baba Yaga, from the great untapped veins below.”
The Water and Air elementals just shook their heads.
Beka forced herself to smile and thank the elementals for their aid, giving them the tiny gifts she had gathered for them—bits of shiny crystal for the faun, a perfect miniature shell for the sea horse, a small candle for the salamander, and for the Bird of Paradise, a vial of air from the moment when the first rays of light hit the ocean, one of its favorite meals.
She had no idea what their words meant, but at least they’d tried.
As the elementals examined their gifts, Beka placed some of her samples into the black marble mortar and pestle she had inherited from Brenna. It was a bit of an “in joke” for the Baba Yagas, of course, since the earlier Babas in Russia and the surrounding Slavic countries actually rode around in enchanted mortars that were steered by huge pestles, but it was also a handy tool for magical work.
The marble was beautiful—dark porous stone with white swirls like clouds in a midnight sky—but it was also charmed so that whatever was ground within it would meld together in new and powerful ways. Beka was hoping that if she combined some of the pieces she had brought up on her dives, they would tell her something together that she hadn’t been able to discern from the individual bits on their own.
She crumbled some grayish kelp, a sad cousin of its healthier vibrant green relatives, and added the briny remains of tiny krill. But as she reached for a faded off-orange branch of coral, Chewie suddenly sat up and looked at the door.
“You have company,” he said in a low rumble.
Oh, bother. Beka suppressed a groan. If Kesh had ignored her request for time by herself and shown up with another damned picnic, she was going to turn him into a toad, son of the King of the Selkies or no.
A brisk knock on the door was accompanied by a slightly more hesitant, “Beka?” But the voice belonged to Marcus, not Kesh.
Surprise made her drop the pestle with a clatter, and that was obviously too much for the elementals, all shy creatures to begin with. They each disappeared from sight with a slight popping noise and a buzzing sensation that made Beka’s ears ring. Chewie rolled his big brown eyes at Beka, although whether at their behavior or hers, she couldn’t tell.
“Beka? Are you home?” The knock on the door was repeated, a little louder this time.
She sighed, rubbing her palm through the line of salt nearest to her so that the power of the circle faded away with a slightly disappointed whoosh, like the curtain falling after a less-than-successful play.
“Coming,” she yelled, looking helplessly at the collected jumble of esoteric tools in front of her. It looked like exactly what it was: a witch’s ritual circle. How she would explain that, she had no idea. She’d just have to keep him outside.
She walked over to the door of the bus, Chewie padding along on his gigantic furry black paws behind her as if he were a shadow of impending doom. Her stomach knotted for a moment before she opened the door, but she couldn’t tell if it was due to nerves or anticipation. Or maybe just frustration; she’d almost been getting somewhere. Or nowhere at all.
“Hey,” Marcus said as she peered out at him. As usual, he looked tall and strong and calm, and made her heart beat ridiculously fast for a moment. “Are we interrupting anything?”
“We?” she said, and then smiled as she saw Tito standing next to him, the skinny boy practically lost next to the large ex-Marine. “Tito, dude! This is a surprise!” She put up her hand and he high-fived her with glee.
“Hi, Beka,” he said, his voice cracking on the last part of her name. “I hope it’s okay we came to your house.” He glanced around him at the outside of the bus. “Which is way cool, by the way. I can’t believe you actually live in a bus, man.”
“We were down on the beach below with Tito’s mom,” Marcus said in his much deeper tones. “And I was telling Tito about how we went out surfing the other day, and he told me he’d never been and really wanted to try it. So I thought maybe we could borrow a board, if that would be okay.”