Chapter 15
Fifteen
It’s still pouring, and despite the fact that yellow is not my color — never has been, never will be — and in fact is something I’ve worn only to garner sympathy when I feel unwell, I am dressed head to toe in shining, bright, rubbery yellow glory.
Gross.
“At least if I get swept out to sea, I’m visible,” I mutter under my breath.
Caleb, holding a massively oversized flashlight, glances towards me. “What was that?”
“Ohh, nothing,” I say, “just thinking about becoming a buoy. A slight life change, you know. Perhaps my next career just bobbing in the sea.”
I’m pretty sure I hear him laugh, but it’s hard to tell with the noise of the rain still coming down and the waves crashing against the jetties.
It’s no longer a torrential downpour, but it’s still raining hard enough to be concerning.
The minute we walk around the circumference of the lighthouse, I second-guess myself. Well, we’re like sixth guessing myself, but who’s counting? Not me.
The tentacles are as wide around as Caleb’s shoulders, which reminds me of just how yummy he is.
Dragging my gaze away from Caleb, I force myself to focus on the problem, which is massive tentacles attached to a huge creepy eye and thus a giant and hopefully less creepy brain.
What seemed manageable inside the lighthouse has the lizard part of my brain absolutely screaming to turn around, take my chances with the floodwaters, and get my ass back in my pink house that’s enchanted to keep things out of it.
Especially tentacled things.
And yet, I put one poorly sized rainboot–clad foot in front of the other and make my way closer to the glowing eye watching me from the sea.
A tentacle slithers along in front of us, retracting back into the water.
I swallow hard and gamely pretend not to notice it.
“Did you see that?” Caleb says.
I suppose he didn’t get the ‘rude to stare at the tentacles’ internal memo.
“It would be hard to miss.” My tone sounds forced and cheerful, even to my own ears.
“I don’t think I can eat calamari after this,” Gunner says.
“Mood,” I agree. “You’re supposed to be inside.”
“Nah, this is definitely my job.”
“You’re going to make the whole lighthouse smell like wet dog,” I tell him.
“I think we have bigger problems than the way I smell,” Gunner tells me.
“Besides, you don’t smell so great either.
Did you ever think of that? Did you consider that when you ate what smells like 100 garlic knots at Nonna’s Italian Kitchen and didn’t bring me any?
Hmm? Because that smells pretty strongly.
And I don’t know if you knew this, but dogs’ noses are a lot more sensitive than your nose.
So you can complain all you want about wet dog smell, but you got to deal with the fact that I smell everything on you all the time.
Wet, dry, post garlic knot, post 100 cannoli. ”
“I get it,” I interrupt him. Gunner would have kept that rant up for another ten minutes, easy.
Caleb’s shoulders shake, but it’s still so rainy that I can’t quite tell if he’s laughing or not. He probably is. I can lie to myself about a lot of things, but I have a feeling Caleb is infinitely amused by Gunner’s roast of me and my garlic knots.
“Are you just mad that I didn’t give you a garlic knot?” I ask Gunner.
“Well, yeah,” Gunner says. “Of course. But you also stink.”
This time, there’s no denying it. Caleb lets out a guffaw that’s so loud that I’m surprised that it doesn’t create a clap of thunder along with it.
Well, one thing that I’ll give Gunner in this moment, as I step across slippery rocks on the way to where the kraken’s eye looms ominously ahead of us: he’s distracted me from all the tentacles slithering around. Slightly.
“Why don’t you stay here?” I tell Caleb.
He gives me a look as if to say you wish, and then continues to follow me closer to the shoreline.
I don’t want to get too close because I don’t want to go underwater. I have a feeling this rain slicker only goes so far, and I’m not insane.
“Can I have the flashlight?” I ask Caleb.
“We’re going to do a spell with it?” he asks, and there’s no denying the excitement lacing through the question.
“No, ah, there’s not candy involved, so, um… you know, I’m not really cooking anything right now. That’s kind of how my magic works,” I tell him.
“Oh. I forgot.” He shrugs.
The flashlight he offers me is heavy in my hands, and I direct the beam close to the kraken without getting it anywhere near its eye. I don’t want to be rude. Still, it’s easy to see the pupil contract.
Not because it’s clear out — no, it’s still raining.
That’s just how big its eye is.
I don’t dare get closer to the water where it’s crashing against the jetty.
I know too well how dangerous the water can be and how fast it can knock you off your feet and pull you under with something like whatever that beast is that owns that eye staring up from the choppy waters. I certainly don’t want to join it.
Besides, it’s no longer summer, and even from here I can feel the icy spray of the salt water soak through the bare sliver of my calves that are exposed.
“Don’t go any closer,” Caleb warns. His hand, slick with rain, grabs onto mine.“I don’t want to have to swim after you.”
“But you would,” I say teasingly.
It doesn’t sound quite as casual as I meant it to. In fact, I might choke on the words just a little bit.
Gunner barks once, and I realize the pressure I’m feeling around my foot has nothing to do with the two large galoshes Caleb let me borrow.
No.
There’s a tentacle wrapped around my ankle now.
I glance at Caleb, my eyes wide in horror. Maybe coming outside to talk to this thing wasn’t a good idea whatsoever.
Before I have time to say that out loud, a slimy sucker-lined tentacle winds up my leg, stopping just short of the raincoat hovering above my knee.
“Ah, hello there,” I say, trying for cordial and missing by about ten miles.
My voice shakes. “We couldn’t help but notice you trying to get our attention inside.
So we thought we would come out and say hello and see if there was something you needed.
We have some bread baking if you are into that. ”
“My name is Annabelle.” I don’t hear the words so much as I feel them deep inside my skull, so loud that it feels like something shouting straight inside my brain.
I wince, holding on to Caleb’s hand for dear life, terror coursing through me.
“Can you speak a little bit quieter?” I ask, my voice unnaturally high-pitched.
I don’t know how the hell the thing is hearing me through the noise of the storm and the fact that if it has ears they’re underwater, but considering it’s seeming to speak telepathically into my brain, one can only imagine it has other ways of receiving information.
“Also, uh, it’s nice to meet you, Annabelle. ”
“You are not the witch I spoke to last time the ward failed,” the creature says.
I didn’t know that accents were possible in mind-to-mind speaking, but this thing definitely has an accent.
I lick my lips.
“Don’t be nervous,” the kraken says. It sounds amused and scoffing all at the same time, and the great glowing eye beaming up at us from the water blinks slowly. I had no idea that squid even had eyelids. Maybe they don’t. Maybe this is a whole kraken thing.
“Of course we have eyelids. And I’m not a squid. What is your name this time?”
I don’t know what this time means, so it takes me a moment to recover. “Er, Ivy Romantic. It is so nice to meet you, Annabelle.”
“You don’t think it’s nice to meet me at all,” the kraken announces in my head. “You can’t lie to me. I can feel your emotions. The magic’s pouring off you and it’s stinging me, so please stop that.”
Gunner whines softly, pawing at the back of my ankle, careful to avoid the tentacle. I don’t want to know what would happen if this thing decided to get angry at the dog.
“Back up, Gunner,” I tell him.
“Here, boy,” Caleb yells, slapping his thigh.
Gunner doesn’t listen to either one of us, because of course he doesn’t. He’s a magical familiar dog. He’s never listened once in his life unless it’s suited him.
Potty training — don’t even get me started.
“Romantic. Your name does sound familiar,” the kraken says. “You, however, are not.”
Its tentacle tightens slightly on me, and I wobble, unsteady on my feet.
Gunner whines again, pressing his back up against my legs, and Caleb steps closer, anchoring an arm around me.
“I’ve got you,” he says.
I believe him.
“And who is it you’ve brought with you? The last witch wasn’t alone, either.”
I fish around in my head for any ideas whatsoever of what this thing is talking about. A memory tugs at me, but I frown, because the minute I try to hold onto it, it slips away.
“I am not a thing. I am the queen of the kraken, and I noticed your ward was failing last night, and now it is completely gone. You need to get it up and running again. I can only hold off the things that live in the ocean for so long before they decide to sate their hunger on this town. And despite striking a pact with another Romantic many years ago, I cannot keep up my side of the bargain if you do not strengthen your ward.”
All right, then.
That is brand new information for me.
“I appreciate you sharing that, Annabelle. Queen Annabelle?” I correct, a questioning note to my voice.
“You don’t have to call me queen,” the kraken says regally. “Annabelle is fine. We don’t stand on the same type of ceremony you hairless things do on the land.”
There’s no mistaking the derision in her voice, and I try not to take umbrage.
“I have hair,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “But not like that thing barking next to you. It has a lot of hair.”
She sounds impressed by Gunner.
I look down at the dog, whose pink tongue is lolling out. He’s surprisingly calm for the fact that we are talking to a giant royal kraken.
This is fine and normal. Just another day.