Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)

A frown flashes on his face but it quickly fades.

“Sorry. What I’m saying is I met you and you were amazing, but every time I saw you after, it was like a different person was walking around in your body. It was obvious something was different.”

“And how many times did you see me?”

He turns pink and looks into the water. “You’re hard to miss.”

“Anyway, that hurricane, as you say, was still inside me and it got so that I resented having to hide it. I suppose that’s the most powerful emotion of my life, this need to let it go, to be the person I was always meant to be. When I use the glove, I think about letting loose.”

“How did you deal with that feeling before you got your Oracle?”

“Yoga,” I say, suddenly realizing that it’s true. I don’t think I gave it much thought until just this moment, but yoga was the calming effect on my life. It helped quell the headaches and center me. I used it to channel all the bad mojo into something I could manage. Suddenly I know how to help Riley and all the others.

For the next thirty minutes, I teach Riley a few poses. We work on downward dog and sun solstice and mountain, and even resting warrior. He finds it embarrassing at first. A lot of guys do, but then he starts to understand that it’s hard and he’s not as strong as he struts around thinking he is. When it’s over, I can see he’s found some respect for it and a little Om.

“Now let’s try again. You’ve gotten all the clutter out of your head, so focus on that moment you used yesterday.”

“My happy thought,” he says.

“Good, so focus on the happy, Riley.”

He closes his eyes, and there’s that grin. I have to admit he’s cute—naive, sheltered, dumb—but very cute. Bex would dig him. He’s a fixer-upper, and maybe someday when Shadow’s death is not looming over her, she might want to give him a chance.

The pool starts to churn into a bubbling soup. It’s unruly at first, much like the things I made when Arcade started coaching me, but then it takes form. I’m expecting some kind of weapon. That’s what I usually create, but this is something entirely different, and it takes me a while to realize it’s a soda bottle. It spins and spins in place, finally slowing so that the end is aimed right at me; then the water falls back into the pool with a splash.

“Big moment,” he says, getting to his feet.

I look up into his face and he’s giving me that grin, and it’s charming, cocky, and confident. Now I remember him. I kissed him during a game of spin the bottle three years ago.

“I better get going,” he says. He strolls off through the double doors without another word.

Fathom enters and approaches, and suddenly my nice little surprise melts into anger.

“I have been sent to train you to fight, Lyric Walker,” he says.

“No!” I cry.

“The one called Doyle insisted,” he says.

Fathom takes off his jumpsuit, revealing a pair of tight swimming trunks.

“We will train in the pool,” he says, leaping into the water with a splash. I look down at the clothes he left behind and scream. I’m not doing this. I refuse. I turn and walk, only to hear a whoosh! He soars over my head and lands in my path.

“I cannot let you die,” he says.

“You pretty much killed me already, and the kids, too. If you hadn’t given Spangler those gloves, he would never have been able to send us to face the Rusalka.”

“You don’t understand,” he says.

“Then explain it to me! Tell me why you’re helping him.”

A couple of soldiers enter the park, walk toward us, and then stop to watch what we do.

“I do not wish to speak of it with others around. I will meet you here every day and I will teach you to survive.”

“I don’t want anything to do with you, Fathom. I don’t believe anything you do or say anymore. For all I know, you’re here to kill me or teach me something that will get me killed. Do you understand me? That’s how little I think of you now. We are not friends. Whatever we were or could be is dead. I don’t want to be your selfsame or your girlfriend. I don’t even want to be your friend. I want to be a stranger. I want to forget what we did so I can share that with someone who deserves it!”

He takes a deep breath and drops his eyes.

“I will respect any request you have, but I will not let you die. When I am confident you can fight, I will take myself out of your life,” he says, then leaps back into the pool. I watch him swimming below, seeing how the water bends and twists his image into something I don’t recognize.

“Ms. Walker, this is part of the deal!” Spangler shouts from across the room. His tablet glows at his hand. He’s got a weapon too, and I know he’s not afraid to use it to kill everyone I love if I don’t give him what he wants.

For the next two hours, Fathom silently teaches me to fight, and for two hours, I punch and kick him with every brokenhearted fiber of my being.





Chapter Eighteen