Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,2
across the water. Extending his claws, he caught it deftly in one hand and dumped it down his throat as he settled back in the water. “Missing a slice.”
“Had to make sure it was tastier than that low-tide sludge we had on the front lines.” Maelstrom grinned down as he offered a hand to help Marisol back onto the upper deck of the Cretarni craft.
When she’d cleared the space, Sting launched himself out of the water. “You ate a slice of my pie,” he said mildly.
Marisol waved at another flat disk. “This one is krill quiche,” she said in a lilting, luring voice. “No pieces missing. All for you. Just a small snack, and more where this comes from.”
He eyed the offering. He might be just an animal, but even the simplest animal knew when it was being baited. “What do you want?”
The Tritonyri and the two Earthers exchanged glances. Sting didn’t bother trying to ping them. Finding a floating body was easy; figuring out what words meant… Much harder. Words floated and sank and sneaked around to bite from behind. Words were trickier than licking just one plankton. Better to let them talk talk talk, then read their sound waves for lies and respond accordingly.
“Our friend is missing,” Marisol said finally.
The other female, Ridley, had finished securing the ship—an attention to detail that Sting appreciated. As she joined them, she shook her head. “Not exactly missing. Lana took a spaceship and ran away.”
Sting took the second pie. It too he ate in a bite as he contemplated. “Lana,” he rumbled. “The little one that smelled of spices.”
Ridley chuckled. “I’m not sure that’s how Lana would self-identify, but yeah.”
“I didn’t eat her.” He licked his fingers. The krill was salty and the crust was flaky. “That was good.”
Maelstrom lifted his eyebrows. “Yes, good that you did not eat Lana.”
Sting didn’t bother correcting the Tritonyri. “I don’t know where she is.”
Marisol studied him with those black eyes. The blackness of eyes he remembered too well from his years confined in the deeps, before the Tritonesse released him to battle. “Could you find her?”
He licked his other fingers, more slowly, thinking of the drifting aroma of spices. “Yes.”
“Even if she’s not on Tritona anymore?”
He gazed back at the other Tritonyri. “I hunt anywhere.”
Marisol shook her head. “It’s not a hunt… Well, it sort of is, but we don’t want her hurt or eaten or…anything.”
“Then why send me?” The question seemed reasonable to him, considering what he was.
Maelstrom let out a hard huff. “It should be me,” he acknowledged. “I’m the one who broke the closed-world protocols on Earth from the beginning.”
Ridley put her hand on his shoulder and stepped closer, fitting herself to the side of his body. Like two halves of the same bivalve. “If you hadn’t, I’d be dead by now, and probably Marisol too.”
The pale-haired Earther nodded. “Which is why we need to bring Lana back.” Her voice dropped into a lower register, thrumming with the sonics of an angry Tritonesse. “Those aqua bitches terrified her with all their talk of fire-witches.”
Sting rumbled. “Fire-witch?”
All three swung to look at him. “What do you know about them?” Marisol asked. “The other Tritonesse would only say that it was forbidden.”
He shrugged. “When they made me, I heard them speak of others, like fire-witches. But I never met any.”
“What others?” Marisol prodded. “The Titanyri?”
“Ask the Tritonesse.”
Marisol’s gaze was almost sharper than the needles had been, but then she nodded. “I will find out.”
He could like this seafoam creature that radiated disapproval of the Tritonesse and arrived bearing pies. He eyed her back with dispassionate assessment. “Coriolis should not let you wander around Tritona unaccompanied. For you are small and snackable, and things in the deeps are hungry.”
Maelstrom stiffened. “Sting, don’t you dare—”
“No,” Marisol said softly. A swirl of water whipped up on the breeze, though the wind was not strong enough. The spray eddied around her feet. “That wasn’t a threat, was it? Just a truth.”
Sting nodded, pleased that she understood.
“I appreciate the warning. Tritona is still new to us, both its dangers”—the wind gusted higher around her hips, sparkling with airborne mist—“and its gifts.”
He gave her just the barest smile, but he included plenty of teeth. “You bring more than pie,” he said approvingly.
She inclined her head. “And as much as Coriolis appreciates my efforts on the domestic front, he also knows that I can protect my pie.” She gave him that unblinking black stare. “And the new Tritona that we