Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)

“Could you show me again?” he begs.

“Follow me,” I say, and I lead him to the edge of the pool. He stares down at the water with his glove alight and his face set and determined.

“What I’m trying to teach you is almost innate,” I say. “It’s like trying to tell someone how to paint or how to write a story. It’s something that you automatically know how to do or, in your case, something we might have to trick you into understanding.”

“How did you figure it out?”

I sit down on the edge of the pool and let my legs slide into the water. This is a question I haven’t really asked myself, and it takes me a while to sort through all the possibilities until I find what feels right.

“I didn’t know what my mother was, what I am, until I was fourteen. Until that time, I felt like the queen of Coney Island. I was young, alive, and filled with attitude. Once I found out the truth about her, I had to go into hiding. Not literally, but mentally. All those things I loved about myself—my clothes, my big mouth—everything had to be stuffed down inside me and hidden from everyone. The only way my family could be safe was for me to be small.”

“That explains a lot.”

“Meaning?”

He laughs.

“How do I put this and still make it sound like a compliment?” he asks as he sits down next to me. “The Lyric Walker I met was a hurricane who blew people away, and then one day she was a wet fart.”

“That’s lovely, kid. So we’ve met before?”

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.”