Beka thought about it. “Tell him to meet us with his family tomorrow. Um, at sunset, I guess.” She tried to pick a time the dolphin would understand, since they didn’t exactly wear watches. “If you can’t get off Calum duty by then, I can come out on my own and bring a few barrels of fish.”
“Great,” Alexei said. “I’m sure one of the guys I’ve met at the bar will be able to sell us some, or we can get them at the fish market.” He swiveled around suddenly. “Did you hear something?”
Beka had been focused on the dolphin. “No, I don’t think so. Look, I’d better get back up to the cabin and start steering us in the right direction. Tell our friend that the Baba Yaga says thank you, okay?”
“Will do. I’ll be back up to join you in a minute.”
*
Bethany found the sight of multiple sharks circling the boat highly disconcerting. In theory, they were perfectly safe, but that didn’t stop the hair from standing up on the back of her neck at the sight of the triangular gray fins cutting through the water.
Only slightly less disturbing was watching Alexei and his friend Beka trying to act as though they weren’t trying to get Bethany and her father out of the way. She might have been amused by their antics if she hadn’t already been so freaked out.
“Why would I want to go take a nap?” Calum was saying. “It’s a boat, not a hotel. And I’m not tired.” He glared at Alexei. “Not to mention that there are sharks swimming around The Flora MacDonald. That hardly makes me want to go take a nice little snooze. In all my years at sea, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Maybe they’re attracted to the fish guts,” Beka suggested.
Calum snorted. “I caught one fish worth keeping, and its guts are still inside its belly. I’m telling you, there’s nothing to make the sharks that interested in us. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Bethany cleared her throat, so the other three turned their heads to look at her.
“Maybe they’re waiting for Alexei to talk to them, like he did to the dolphins earlier,” she said in an even tone.
Beka and Alexei exchanged worried glances.
“What’s that now, girlie?” Calum said. “You think Alexei talks to dolphins? Maybe you should put on a hat. The sun seems to be getting to you.”
Bethany just stared at Alexei. “Dolphins, and maybe dogs. Seems to me that you and Lulu have a lot of pretty intense conversations. I heard you talking to the dolphins before. What are you, so kind of animal whisperer? Is this a new scientific breakthrough you don’t want to make public yet?”
Beka choked back a laugh, covering her mouth with her hand. “Does Alexei look like a scientist to you?” She snorted, then shrugged apologetically in Alexei’s direction. He shrugged back.
“Well, then what is it? I know what I heard. Alexei was talking to that dolphin. I mean, he was speaking English, but he clearly understood what the dolphin said, and the dolphin understood him. You even had him ask the dolphin questions, so you know he can do it. If it isn’t a technical gizmo, then what is it?”
Alexei and Beka looked at each other, then at her and Calum. They had a moment of silent communication, the kind that only happens when people have known each other a very long time. Then Beka raised one shoulder in a “what the hell” motion.
“It’s not science,” she said. “It’s magic.”
*
“Right,” Bethany said. “Magic. Ha.” Then she looked at the expressionless faces around her. “Oh, come on. You don’t seriously expect me to believe you can do magic, do you?”
Alexei cleared his throat. “If you want to get technical, only Beka does magic. What I do is more of an innate gift of paranormal origins. You know, technically.”
“Right. Technically,” Bethany repeated. “You do realize you’re not making any sense. Technically.”
Beka smothered a laugh with one slim hand. “Sorry,” she choked out. “But you have to admit this is a pretty funny conversation.”
When Bethany continued to glare at them, the blonde woman shook her head. “Okay, it probably isn’t all that amusing from your end. This isn’t something we tell people about often, so we aren’t either of us very good at explaining it.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning and speak in small words so I can understand it,” Bethany said through gritted teeth. She didn’t enjoy feeling like the only one in the room who didn’t get a joke, and for some reason, her father didn’t look nearly as confused as she felt.
She swung around to focus her glare on him instead, which had about as much effect as it usually did. Which is to say, none whatsoever.
“Why aren’t you jumping in here?” she asked him. “You don’t like unanswered questions any more than I do.”
Calum flashed her one of his rare smiles, one of the kind that made his eyes twinkle. As a little girl, she’d lived for those smiles. After her mother had died, she couldn’t remember ever seeing one again. “Probably because I believe in magic.”
“You what?” she said, wondering if her head was going to actually swing around on her neck like that girl in The Exorcist. “Has everyone on this boat lost their minds except me?”
Her father chuckled. “Not at all. But you grew up here in the New World, where everyone is obsessed with facts and science. I grew up in Scotland, where my grandmother took me out into her garden on my fifth birthday and introduced me to the little sprites that lived in the old apple tree. I never saw them, mind you, but she believed they were there, and so did I.”
He turned to Beka. “So what kind of magic are you? A mermaid?”
Beka laughed. “Well, I am a very good swimmer, but not a mermaid. More of a surfer, really.”
“A witch, then?”
Bethany would have thought he was kidding around, except he was more animated than she’d seen him in months. What the hell was going on here?
“More like the witch,” Alexei said with a grin. “Well, one of the witches. She’s a Baba Yaga.”
“Pull the other one,” Calum said, his eyes wide. “She never is.”
“What’s a Baba Yaga?” Bethany asked. Besides blonde, pretty, and a pain in her ass.
“Don’t you remember the books your mother used to read you?” Calum asked. “Her mother loved the fairy tales, she did,” he explained to Beka and Alexei. “She had that whole series of books by Lang: The Red Fairy Tale Book, The Blue Fairy Tale Book, The Yellow Fairy Tale Book. I’m pretty sure there was a tale or two about the Baba Yaga in one of those.”
He turned back to Bethany. “Remember? The Russian witch who lived in a wooden hut that traveled around on chicken legs through the forest?”
This time it was Bethany’s time to laugh. “You mean the ugly old crone with the iron teeth that rode around in a mortar steered by a pestle? That Baba Yaga?” She pointed at Beka. “She doesn’t look much like the witch in those stories. Really, Dad. You’re going to have to do better than that. Did the three of you all get together and decide to play a joke on me? That’s what this is, isn’t it? Alexei can no more talk to animals than I can.”
“This is always so much easier when Chewie is around,” Beka said to Alexei rather mournfully. “A dragon is instantly convincing.”