Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Orvik
Old Man Thatcher's stern line is fraying.
I crouch at the cleat and work the rope through my fingers, feeling for the weak point. There! Six inches from the splice, where the salt and the sun have been chewing at the fibers for months.
Stubborn old man. I've told him twice to replace this line. But he just smiled at me both times and did nothing, which is Thatcher's way of saying he'll get to it when the ocean freezes over.
I pull out my knife and cut the damaged section clean, then retie the splice with a double bowline that will hold until he replaces it. Or until I replace it for him, whichever comes first.
Eh. Who am I kidding? He knows I’ll get tired of waiting before he does and I’ll end up replacing it myself. Not the first time, certainly not the last.
My hands know this work. They could do it blind, in a storm, in the dark. The harbor is my domain and I keep it in order because order is the only thing that has never let me down.
My hand goes to my chest. The spot below my collarbone where the pearl sat for fifteen years is bare and cold, the skin still holding the faint impression of the cord. My fingers press against nothing and I pull them away.
I've done this hundreds of times today. I'm aware of it, but I can't stop.
The bond hums at a low frequency, distant and muted, like hearing a voice through deep water. She's there. Jackie is there, somewhere on the other side of it, and I can feel her in faint impressions that I can't resolve into specifics. Stubbornness. A simmering hurt that hasn't cooled.
I don't argue with any of it. There's nothing to argue with.
My phone rings, pulling me from my gloomy thoughts. I pull it from my jacket and see Callum's name on the screen. I frown. The selkie is in Portland for the grant meeting.
"Callum," I greet him without ceremony.
"Good morning to you, too." His voice is easy, the way it always is. I can hear traffic in the background, the distant clatter of what might be a café. "How's my favorite harbormaster?"
"I’m fine. Thatcher's stern line is not."
"Again?" He laughs. "I swear that man ties his boat with dental floss and a prayer."
"Not anymore. I already fixed it."
"Of course you did." He pauses, and I hear the sound of a cup being set down. "Listen, before I get to the reason I'm calling, I've been hearing things."
I straighten up from the cleat, the knife still in my hand. "What things?"
"About you and a certain wildlife rehabilitator." Callum's tone shifts into the particular register he uses when he's enjoying himself at my expense. "Sylvie mentioned something about bioluminescent marks. On Jackie's arms. Marks that look really similar to kraken mating patterns."
I close the knife and slide it into my pocket, my tentacle hair tightening across my entire scalp. This is the curse of small towns. No one knows how to mind their own business.
Especially selkies.
"Those aren't rumors," I say, bracing for what’s coming.
Silence on the other end. Then Callum exhales, long and slow.
"Orvik. That’s great news, man. Congratulations."
"Yeah. Thanks."
The silence stretches longer this time. Callum is a selkie. He understands what those words mean. A mating bond is not a ring you can take off. It's not a promise you can break. It is permanent and total and it changes the shape of everything.
"How long?" he asks.
"A few weeks."
"And you didn't tell me."
"It's been… complicated." I look out across the water. The center is visible from here, sitting on its peninsula. "She’s pissed at me right now. I’m giving her some space."
"A few weeks into a mate bond and you're already dealing with a pissed mate." Callum's voice is mocking, but there’s also some concern there. "What did you do?"
"What makes you think I did something?"
"Because I've known you for years and you have the emotional range of a barnacle when you're scared."
“Fuck you.” I swallow, hard, and I wonder if he heard it.
"Talk to me," he says. “I have a mate and three pups. I know a thing or two about the challenges of a mating bond, especially at the beginning.”
I lean against the dock piling. The wood is rough and cold through my jacket. I don't know why I'm about to tell him any of this, except that Callum is the only person in Saltford Bay who has ever asked me a question and waited for the real answer.
"There have been kraken signs in the bay," I say. "For weeks. Someone from the Nautilus has been circling Saltford Bay and and I don't know why."
"That's serious."
"And then yesterday, a black coral marker was left on Jackie's doorstep." I stop, because I know that after I tell him what comes next, Callum is going to call me an idiot. And he won’t be wrong. "I told her to pack a bag and that I didn’t want her outside when I’m not here to protect her."
The silence that follows is the kind that tells you exactly what the other person thinks.
"You didn't," Callum says, his tone incredulous.
"I did, and I'm aware of how it sounds."
"It sounds like you set your own house on fire, Orvik. What did she say?"
"She told me to leave."
Callum is quiet for a moment. "You know," he says, "for an expert in navigation, you’re spectacularly incapable when it comes to navigating female emotions."
I massage my brows, shaking my head at the same time. He’s right. Jackie’s right. I’m an asshole.
"Thanks, Callum. It’s great to know I have your support."
"I'm serious. You need to talk to her and apologize."
"I know."
"Good." The background noise shifts. The café sounds fade to be replaced by the sound of moving cars and honking. He’s outside on the street now.
"Now, the reason I actually called. Jackie left me a voicemail about an hour ago.
She said someone reported an injured gannet tangled in fishing debris on the windward side.
She was asking me to call back about how to handle it. "
My hand tightens on the phone. I didn’t receive any calls from the center about an injured gannet.
"I've been trying to reach her since I got her message," Callum continues. "Her cell goes to voicemail. The center line rings out. Nobody's picking up."
A pause. "I hope she didn’t go out by herself."
That makes my gills shutter closed and my tentacle hair coils so hard against my scalp it hurts.
"I'll find her."
I hang up and dial Jackie's number, but it goes straight to voicemail.
Shit. This isn’t good.
I dial Flippers and Feathers. It rings four times, five, six. No answer.
I'm dialing it a second time when I hear footsteps on the dock.
Two sets, fast and uneven, one heavier than the other.
I turn to see Chase and Sylvie running toward me.
Chase is in a plain shirt with the sleeves shoved up, his jaw tight, every trace of charm gone.
Sylvie is worse. Her wings are pressed flat against her back, trembling at the tips, and her eyes are red-rimmed.
"Jackie went out to Gannet Rock," Sylvie says. The words come out fast and stripped bare. "Alone in the center’s skiff. There was a gannet tangled in fishing line on the windward side and she wouldn't wait for Callum to call back."
She swallows, bracing her hands on her knees.
"I know." I hold up the phone. "Callum just called me. He can't reach her either."
The color drains from Sylvie's face.
"When did she leave?" I ask.
"Over an hour ago." Chase's voice is flat. "She's not answering the radio."
My gills flare open under my collar. My tentacle hair lifts from my scalp, rigid, reading the air.
"Go to the center, both of you," I say, already moving toward the end of the dock. I'm pulling my jacket off as I walk. "Radio the Coast Guard and keep a channel open."
Sylvie stares at me. Her lower lip trembles. “Okay.”
Chase steers Sylvie back toward the parking lot, his hand on her shoulder. We hold gazes for a brief moment, then he gives me a single nod and takes my truck keys when I hold them out. We don’t talk. We don’t need to. Whatever is between us can wait.
I strip at the water's edge. Boots, socks, uniform shirt, trousers go down on the wet wood of the deck. The cold air hits my skin and every pattern on my body fires at once, bioluminescence running hot along my arms and chest and neck, casting blue-green light on the dock planks in broad daylight.
I dive.
The transformation is immediate. The moment salt water hits my gills, they tear open and my lungs surrender.
Webbing deploys along my forearms, between my fingers, down my calves.
My tentacle hair fans wide, each strand finding temperature gradients, salinity shifts, the signature of open ocean past the harbor mouth.
A pull in my chest tugs where the pearl used to sit. It draws me east and I follow it.
Hold on, Jackie. I'm coming.