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Fun of a Lifetime 54
THE CORRIDOR OPENED INTO A CAVERNOUS ROOM, TIERS OF seating descending to a stage carved from stone and marble. Massive columns held up a scallop-edged roof, sea grass or kelp or something draped from it like cur-tains. One side was tied back—with an octopus? The other side flowed away from the stage in the current, and stone statues lined the concave back of the stage— But they weren’t just any statues. No, those looked like… Logan blinked. Easter Island faces? A cloud of jellyfish circled above the statues with synchronized pulsations, their tentacles swaying from side to side as a swarm of different-colored morays dodged in and out in an other-worldly allemande left. A large dais made of glass sat at the center of the stage, and on it… On it was the most amazingly horrific creature Logan had ever seen. The sea monster. Only… she didn’t look like a monster. She didn’t look like anything he would have thought a sea monster looked like. Like a giant squid or some-thing. Not th
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LOGAN DIDN’T KNOW WHAT ANGEL PLANNED, BUT HE’D MAKE sure Michael was well out of harm’s way. “Cool!” reverberated again in the light current. Logan leaned off the bottom step to follow the sound and saw Michael clapping and smiling as col-orful fish darted in front of him. He looked anything but scared and injured. Angel was right. Ceto hadn’t frightened him. Thank God for small favors. He glanced at Ceto. He wouldn’t be thanking her, however. The sea monster met his gaze, and an eerie smile slid across her face. She nodded to the four makos at the edge of the stage. Two flicks of their tails put them on either side of Michael. The witch glanced at him, her message loud and clear. Don’t say a word, or she’d hurt his son. Logan ground his teeth and reached for Angel’s arm. They had to figure out how to get Michael free before they went any closer. “Michael, why don’t you go with my friends back to your room?” asked Ceto. “The oysters are there, ready for us. I’ll be along shor
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“And, Ceto, I wouldn’t get rid of all your guards if I were you.” Ceto smirked. “But you aren’t me, are you, Angel?” “No, thank the gods. I’m Angel Tritone, daughter of the previous High Councilman and sister of the current one. I know exactly who I am. The question is, do you?” Not that Rod would want her using his position to fix her screw-up, especially since she’d disobeyed di¬rect orders, but one sure thing about her brother was his loyalty. As far as Ceto knew, a High Council contingent could arrive at any moment, which would put a kink in whatever she thought she was going to do. Thank the gods, The Council, and everyone else who’d so put the fear of the gods into Ceto, the sea monster called back three of the sharks, leaving Brutus, the biggest, to guard Logan and Michael. Still not ideal, but it did give Logan a fighting chance. And she meant that literally. “I know who you are, too, Angel! You’re my bestest friend and you’re a mermaid!” Michael laughed be¬fore turning
Fun of a Lifetime 57
LOGAN ROUNDED THE CORNER INTO A WINDOWLESS CORRIDOR lined with the broken remnants of a dead coral colony on one wall, and cooled, pitted lava on the other. He was almost out of earshot when he heard Angel’s offer. Hostage. Angel was offering herself as Ceto’s hostage in return for Michael. He didn’t know whether to rush in and save her or hightail it out of there—until Michael’s question gave him the answer. “Why isn’t Angel with us, Logan? She’s coming, right?” Logan’s heart squeezed, both at the hopeful expres-sion on his son’s face and the knowledge that Angel was not coming with them. Hadn’t been planning to, obviously. Logan couldn’t let her sacrifice be in vain. He had to get Michael out of here. “She’ll be along when”—if—“she can, Michael,” he whispered, urging his son toward a light at the far end of the corridor, trying to block out the generosity and unselfishness of Angel’s act and focus on thwarting their shark guard and the bitch who’d put them in this spot to b
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“HOSTAGE?” CETO TAPPED HER FINGERNAILS AGAINST HER lip, her tails now alternating between red and orange. Well, at least Angel had brought the threat level down. A red tail wasn’t much of an improvement, but it beat black. A black sea-monster tail was never good. “You know, that could work.” Ceto started circling her. “Although I did try that with your brother, but he and his Human managed to get away.” Angel had heard the story enough times that she knew it by heart. She also knew she was signing her own death warrant by saying what she was about to, but she had to do this to save the men she loved. “You put Erica in a regular room, Ceto, not a cell. She was able to get out and free Reel.” “Yeah, who knew a Human had that many smarts?” Ceto’s tails flared, then went back to being black. “I’ll never make that mistake again. I had a new bedchamber specially made when The Council and I hammered out the deal about Joey. He hasn’t gone anywhere.” According to Erica, Joey’s ex-girl
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A week later “WHEN IS SHE COMING BACK?” IT WAS THE SAME QUESTION Michael asked him every night. Logan set the beers down on the hall table out-side Michael’s bedroom door. His son shouldn’t see him drinking. He shouldn’t be drinking. But it made thoughts of her so much easier to take. No. Not easier. Less difficult. Bearable. Almost. “I don’t know when, Michael.” That was the same answer Logan gave him every night. “Do you want to talk about it?” Michael slouched further under his covers, the stuffed raccoon falling on his head from atop the pillow. “I dunno.” Which meant yes in kid-speak. Logan pushed the door open and walked over to Michael’s bed, nudging his son’s legs over so he could sit. “I’m sure she’s fine, Michael.” “Do you think Ceto put her in a cage like Joey?” “Joey was in a cage?” Michael had told him about the friend he’d met there, this Joey, but this was the first he’d heard about any cage. It made him shudder to think of what he and Michael had narrowly e
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Life was funny that way. You were born, you lived, and you died, with only the memories held by those you left behind living on. Water murmured against the pylons below as he raised his beer in the moonlight, toasting Christine and thanking her for finding him. For giving him his son. Promising her that Michael wouldn’t forget her. Michael needed those memories just as… Well… just as Logan needed his. He rested his arm on his knee again, the bottle brush-ing his calf. He hadn’t thought about his parents in a long time. Made a point of not thinking about them, ac-tually, but that wasn’t fair to anyone, himself included. Who was he but the sum of his experiences? No matter how much he’d like to claim otherwise, he wouldn’t be who he was today if not for where he’d been. Logan took a long swallow of the beer, remembering his family and how he’d wanted a normal life back then. How he still wanted one, but what, really, was normal? Take Angel, for instance. A part of him wanted to ta
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THE NEXT MORNING, LOGAN STOOD OUTSIDE A YELLOW AND red tent. They’d gotten a new one. A permanent one, according to the sign on the gate: The Flying H Family Circus. Family Circus. The irony wasn’t lost on Logan. “You really lived in a circus?” Michael held onto his hand, the baseball cap tilted back just far enough that he could look up without it falling off. “Yes, I really did.” In another lifetime. And one he was now going to subject Michael to. But he didn’t have a choice. He wasn’t about to take him along to find Angel, and Rainbow… well, Rainbow had enough on her plate at the moment if he could even find her—and he didn’t have time to look. His… parents were the best choice he had. He’d never starved, and Nadia had always been there with a big hug whenever he’d gotten hurt. She’d taken care of him when he’d been sick, asked how his day was. Right now, he’d have to be happy with that for Michael. God willing, this would only be temporary. “This looks cool. Let’s go in.”
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