Page 113 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
“There’s been a crisis. I’m sorry, sweet, Ihaveto get this sorted first. Can you see if they’ll wait?”
“They said they won’t.”
“Drat it all to hell. It’s okay. Listen, I can meet you after it sails.”
“Meet me?”
“Yes.”
“On the ocean?”
“Absolutely. All you’ll need to do is get the coordinates from the captain and I can teleport there.”
“Oh, Alistair. This issilly.”
“You say silly, I say a fun challenge. I’ve always wanted to test my range.”
“And if you don’t have the range?”
“Then I guess I take a dunking in the sea, and you get to laugh at me. I think I’ve got this though. You go ahead, sweet. Enjoy the start of the cruise. Make sure you hunt down Rueben—he’s thebestbartender. And you can tell him I said that. Before you finish your first drink, I’ll be there, yapping your ear off.”
“I’m going to hold you to that. You know I love your yapping.”
“I’ll never understand why, but I love that you love it. And I love you. And I’ll be there soon. I promise.”
Twenty minutes.
I’d been twenty minutes late.
The call had come just as I’d left the office and prepared to teleport aboard the fast-moving ship.
Saturnwas gone.
Destroyed.
Ripped to pieces that the ocean all too gratefully devoured.
There was nothing left.
No bodies to find. Only fragments of bone.
No pieces of the ship to excavate. Only scraps of metal.
“She should never have gotten on that ship,” Onyx says.
“No,” I agree. “She shouldn’t have.Noneof them should have. She wasn’t the only one who died, Onyx. But the others keep slipping…”
I know them now. Ruben, the broad-chested bartender with his easy smile and big laugh. The ship’s crew—some of them were so young, like Silvia, fresh out of college and weighing whether she wanted to become a nurse or carry on her schooling to become a doctor. The passengers—a mere spattering of fifteen, including Indigo. Friends and family of the crew, sinceSaturnhadn’t officially opened to the general public.
Sixty people had been on that ship.
Sixty people had lost their lives.
And then there were the others that were impacted. The families of the dead. My employees, innocent, but all punished alongside me.
On most days, the only one I remember is Indigo.
I hate it.
