“Are those?” Bethany put one hand over her mouth.
“Yep. I grabbed them up off the deck when I went back to fetch the amulet. The damned ship was on fire; it seemed a pity to waste them.” Alexei grinned at her, looking more than a little piratical himself. “Besides, I thought they might come in handy. Now that your dad is doing so much better, I figured he might want to get one of those cool vans designed for folks in wheelchairs, and maybe one of those fancy electric wheelchairs to go with it.”
Bethany blinked back tears. “That’s a great idea. But don’t you want the coins for yourself?”
He laughed. “I don’t have much need for money. Besides, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There will be plenty more.”
“What the heck are you talking about?” Bethany gave up and went to pour herself a shot or two of her father’s whiskey. This conversation was making her head spin anyway.
“Two things, really,” Alexei said, casually reaching out and taking a sip from her glass. “First of all, the queen punished Hayreddin by taking away his hoard, and Beka convinced her majesty to allow us to bring a chunk of it back here to help out the fishermen who were hurt by his actions. So Beka is going to stick around for a while and set up a fund for that, which you’ll then administer, if that’s okay with you. There would be a small salary attached and Beka thought your legal background would help.”
“Wow,” Bethany said. “That’s great. The damaged boats and loss of fishing put a lot of families into serious trouble. This will completely save the day.” She thought for a minute of everything Hayreddin had put them - and her - through. “But just taking away his treasure doesn’t really sound like enough of a penalty, all things considered. He was going to kill us all!”
“Oh, that wasn’t the only punishment, although losing his hoard is actually pretty traumatic for a dragon,” Alexei said. “She turned him into a newt.”
“A newt!”
“He’ll get better,” Alexei said. “Eventually. The queen usually only stays mad for a century or two.”
“Oh,” Bethany said weakly. “I guess that’s okay, then.” She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the feeling that she had walked through a looking glass into a completely upside down world. “You said there were two things?”
“Right. Well, more than two, but two that had to do with money,” Alexei said. “You see, it occurred to me that when the kraken brought up those coins, they were probably from Hayreddin’s lost treasure, since he’d said they were close to getting it back when we stopped him. We have the coordinates of where Len’s boat was when Beka and I caught up with you, so we figured that between Beka’s diving skills and your father’s boat, we could probably find Hayreddin’s old ship and claim the rest of it.”
“Holy shit,” Bethany said. She was pretty sure her jaw had dropped open in an unbecoming way. “You’d be rich.”
“We’d be rich,” Alexei said in a firm tone. “Or at least, you and your father would be well enough off to make whatever improvements to the house you wanted, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the bar or renting the guesthouse. You could even go back to law school if you wanted. Since I’m going to be sticking around, I could keep an eye on your father.” He poured another slug of whiskey into her glass. For a guy who said he wasn’t interested in drinking much anymore, he could certainly put it away.
“What would you do with your share?” she asked.
“Would you go back, if you could?” Alexei asked, ignoring her question.
“I don’t know. Ever since I realized earlier tonight that my dad might not need me the way he had, I’ve been thinking about finishing up my law degree. All I have left to do is sit the bar. I’d actually completed the coursework before my dad’s accident derailed my plans, but I was having doubts about whether or not a legal career was really what I wanted.”
“So you said. And now?” he asked.
“Being back here made me realize that I’d been looking at a conventional path, and I’m not a conventional person. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t use my legal degree to do some good. I was thinking I might be able to help the locals when they had issues, and maybe get into environmental law so I could fight for your friends the dolphins and the sharks.” She gave him a crooked grin. “I might be the first lawyer in town to hang up a shingle in a bar. My dad wants to get back to running the place part time, but he’s not up to handling it on his own.”
“That sounds great,” Alexei said, a twinkle in his eyes. “I think it would be fabulous to work out of a bar. In fact, I was thinking of taking my part of the money from the treasure and buying into one. That way if I got carried away and broke things, it wouldn’t be so bad, since I’d be a part owner.”
Bethany stared at him. “Did you have any particular bar in mind, by chance?”
“I am kind of partial to The Hook and Anchor,” he said. “Having spent so much time rebuilding the damned place. Besides the barmaid is hotter than hell. I could think of a lot worse places to spend my days. You know, when I wasn’t out hunting treasure or chatting with dolphins.”
“Of course,” Bethany said, feeling slightly hysterical. This conversation was not going at all the way she expected it to. “And what would you chat with the dolphins about, just out of curiosity?”
The twinkle got even stronger. “I thought maybe I could work out a kind of treaty between the ocean dwellers and the fishermen. You know, like the dolphins could tell me where certain fish were running, and the fishermen would go out at prearranged times to get them. That way the locals would have better catches and they wouldn’t be accidentally netting turtles or sharks or dolphins. Mind you, we’d have to figure out a way to do it without the fishermen realizing I speak dolphin, but I’m sure we could come up with something.”
“That could be amazing,” Bethany said. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised that Alexei had put so much thought into doing something practical and useful. She’d seen his patience and consideration with her father, after all, and how hard he’d worked to make the bar look nice again - well, even nicer - after he’d wrecked it.
“You know, for a guy who puts so much effort into trying to act like he’s a jerk who doesn’t care about anything, you’re a pretty decent fellow.”
“Stop it,” Alexei said with a grimace. “If you’re going to be insulting, I’m not going to tell you the rest of the plan.”