He pouted into the darkness, annoyed by the way her stubbornness had forced him to change his plans. It seemed that Brenna’s attempts to discourage Beka had failed. And now the Riders were here. That truly was unfortunate. He might be able to take advantage of Beka’s relative youth and inexperience, along with her idiotically trusting nature (so un-Baba-like), but the Riders would not be so easy to fool. Nor were they likely to be willing to join in his efforts to torment the Humans who despoiled his ocean.
No, it was time to move on to his end game. Ahead of schedule, but what was one to do? And there was one bit of good news amidst the bad: that the Queen was actually considering giving Brenna back her position as Baba Yaga if Beka could not prove herself capable of doing the job. Kesh thought it was easily possible that the Queen had never intended to follow through on the threat, but nonetheless, Brenna would be very pleased to hear of it.
Almost as pleased as she would be when her adopted daughter was dead and unable to thwart her plan to return to the power and influence of being a Baba Yaga. With an ally like Brenna, Kesh could not fail to win.
Such a pity about Beka, but all wars had their incidental casualties. And she would only be the first of many.
TWENTY-ONE
WHEN THE MUTED rumble of a vehicle came in through the open window the next morning, both Beka and Chewie’s heads swiveled in that direction.
“Now who’s here?” Beka exclaimed in disbelief. Normally she could go months without anyone coming near her bus. Lately it seemed like Grand Central Station. Of course, it didn’t help that she could tell from the sound that it wasn’t Marcus’s Jeep.
“Maybe I should put in a revolving door and start selling tickets,” Chewie muttered. “At least it would pay for more chocolate and marshmallows.”
Beka moved to open the door, and what she saw made her feel better than she had in days.
“I don’t believe it!” she said, running down the steps and over to the large silver Airstream. A tall woman with a cloud of long, dark hair climbed out of the passenger side of the silver Chevy truck pulling the trailer. She moved with the dangerous grace of a panther. Or a Baba Yaga.
“Barbara! What are you doing here?” Beka asked, screeching to a halt with Chewie on her heels. “You’re supposed to be on your honeymoon.”
“I am on my honeymoon,” her sister Baba said with a wide smile. “We just happened to be in the area and I thought we’d stop in and say hi, since you couldn’t make it to the wedding.”
A slim, attractive man with sandy brown hair came around from the other side of the truck, followed by a small, solemn-looking pixie of a child who peered at Beka from behind his long legs.
“This is Liam,” Barbara said, putting one proprietary hand on his arm. “And this is Babs, my adopted daughter.” Her pride in them both softened her usually severe countenance in a way that Beka had never seen before.
“Hey,” Liam said, a good-natured grin lighting up his face. “I’m glad we finally get to meet. Barbara has told me all about you.”
Beka grinned back. “Not as much as she’s told me about you, I’ll bet. Is it true that you are more powerful than a locomotive and can leap tall buildings in a single bound?”
“I think you’re confusing me with Superman,” Liam said. “I’m just a small-town sheriff. Barbara is the one with the superpowers in this family.”
“Are you kidding? You got Barbara to marry you. If that isn’t a superpower, I don’t know what is.”
Liam laughed. “You might have a point there. She wasn’t exactly easy to woo.”
Barbara scowled. “I was easy.” She thought about it. “I didn’t kill you and bury you in the backyard. It could have been worse.”
Little Babs stuck her head out from behind Liam’s knee to say, in a piping tenor voice, “You lived in the Airstream. You didn’t have a backyard.”
Barbara laughed. “Don’t mind Babs; she’s very literal. That’s what spending the first few years of your life in the Otherworld will get you.” She turned to the girl. “This is Beka, one of the other Baba Yagas I told you about. Can you say hi?”
“Hi,” the girl said, pushing a hank of short, dark hair behind one ear. “I’m going to be a Baba Yaga when I get bigger. But I’m only five, so today I get to see the Pacific Ocean. That’s good, right? I’ve never seen an ocean before.” She looked at Beka, tilting her head to one side like a crow eyeing something shiny. “Barbara says you get to see the ocean every day. Is it nice?”
Beka nodded, completely enchanted. “It is nice,” she said. “Are you going to go swimming?”
Babs looked up at Liam. “I am, right? You’re going to teach me to swim and I’m going to wear my special clothes for getting wet in.” She gazed at Beka with a slightly baffled expression. “Barbara says there are clothes for getting wet in, and clothes for staying dry in. That seems silly to me. Does it seem silly to you?”
Barbara smothered a laugh under one hand. “Babs is still getting used to being in the mundane world. A lot of our rules don’t make a lot of sense to her.”