Bombshell (Monstrous Ink #2)

Chapter 9

“ T he ocean has been strange! The currents have been off just in the bay, but when you go out into the open ocean everything seems fine again,” a siren lamented from her place in a tidal pool, her expressive face crestfallen as she stared at the water she was sitting in.

“Yeah, and my crab traps have been completely empty for nearly two weeks now. I’ve lived here for a century and that’s never happened before!” an umibozu man complained, and even though his body consisted of inky shadows and no face, I could still tell he was irritated by the stiff set of his shoulders and the tone of his voice.

As the rest of the water-based supernaturals that lived in Port Haven began to chime in with their own complaints about the change in the waters over the past couple of weeks, I was starting to get a migraine.

I should have known that when Charles the Kraken stepped down as the head a decade ago and tapped me that it was going to be a pain in the ass.

The old squid hated listening to the creatures of the sea and ruled our ranks with an iron fist—what he said went—so when I took over I tried to take a more democratic approach where everyone’s voice was heard.

And damn was I regretting it now. In fact I was seriously considering changing our faction into a dictatorship if they went on for much longer.

Santi was standing at my elbow in his monster form, his slitted bright green eyes going back and forth as people continued to shout out of turn.

“Enough!” my voice boomed over them, echoing off of the walls of the tidal cave where we held all of our meetings. I was one of many that dotted the coastline, but it was the only one that could hold nearly four hundred supernatural creatures while still providing enough shelter and privacy from prying eyes.

“None of you are wrong to complain,” I began, standing a little taller when all eyes finally moved to me. “But we must do it in an orderly fashion so that I can address everything properly.”

Silence filled the room, and for a brief moment, I was sure that they understood and would comply.

Then the same siren as before huffed and crossed her arms over her bare breasts. “I don’t know why we have to listen to you. You barely spend any time in the ocean at all. Why would you care about ocean currents being off?”

That set every other supernatural creature off and the cacophony of voices started up again but much louder this time.

With a shake of my head I turned to Mrs. Sandling, an old wizened kappa woman who looked about two seconds away from shrinking her wrinkled head back into her shell to get away from all of the noise. She was also the secretary of the coalition and took meeting notes as studiously as anyone I’d ever seen… even if her notes looked like a jumbled mess right now from everyone shouting over one another.

“Once they calm down can you please get their names and their complaints for me? I’ll go to them one-by-one over the next few weeks to address their concerns.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Sandling said in a rickety voice. “Should I call them over to me?”

I glanced out at the still noisy crowd before shaking my head. “No, let them figure it out themselves.”

With that I turned to Santi. “Santiago, you’re with me.”

Together we swept out of the cave, diving in tandem into the ocean to begin our swim back to Port Haven.

The journey was silent and gave me time to really think about what I’d heard tonight.

The siren’s earlier words were ringing in my head. She was right about two things. The ocean’s current was off, making it more difficult to swim toward the town, like something was trying to drag us back out into sea.

And secondly, she was right about the fact that I barely spent any time in the ocean at all anymore.

As the years went on I spent more and more time on land working on Monstrous Ink and focusing more on what was going on with my family up there rather than the supernatural creatures who rarely came to me for help anymore .

Guilt sat heavy in my gut as we made it back to the Wharf, swimming underneath the dock until we reached the almost comically small yellow submarine that functioned as the entrance of my grotto.

I’d been going through my Beatles phase back in the sixties when the enchantment on my last grotto entrance was starting to fade. When the witch had asked me what I wanted the facade to look like… I’d only had one answer.

Now, nearly sixty years later, the paint was starting to peel and the porthole windows had long since been covered with thick green algae.

But, like a certain Doctor’s blue police phone box on television, my little yellow submarine was definitely bigger on the inside.

Touching the spinning handle on the top was all one needed to do in order to be transported inside the swanky, almost cavernous space of my grotto.

It looked more like a fancy penthouse apartment than any submarine ever could. The front entryway led down a short hallway, past a kitchen I almost never used and into a massive living room that had floor to ceiling windows showing the ocean outside.

“They aren’t wrong you know,” Santi said as soon as he stepped through the magical threshold behind me, the enchantment on the door making it so that he was completely dry as he followed me into the living room .

“About what?”

Santi shrugged, his blue-green skin shimmering and melting away until he looked human again, his dark hair flopping in his face as he dropped down onto the large sectional that took up most of the living room.

“About the ocean—there is something really wrong with it. The current has been getting rougher. Keke told me that she’s had to save twice as many people at the beach over the last week. Most stay out of the water until July but every one of them said that it was like the water was drawing them in.”

Keke was the local lifeguard, a blonde haired, blue eyed mermaid who spent most of her time lounging in the sand scrolling on her phone.

“Do you think it’s magic? A siren maybe?” I asked, frowning as I tried to think of all of the ways someone could change up the very current of the ocean.

The natural magic the ocean possessed was too much for most living creatures. Even I had very little sway over it when I used my own magic and I’d been born in its waters.

“It wouldn’t be a siren unless it was a very powerful one,” Santi murmured, stuck in thought with me. “And the only spell casters I know wouldn’t be able to pull something like this off on such a grand scale for such a long period of time. The volatile tides, the change in current, the luring of victims to their death… all of this feels almost…”

“Cataclysmic?” I provided with a shudder.

It felt almost biblical and that was the scariest part of all. Like when Noah had to build an ark to save humanity .

But at least Noah had someone whispering instructions in his mind.

All these people had was me and I was kind of dealing with a lot right now.

Case in point the house phone from the eighties ringing across the room.

There were only a handful of people in the world that had that number and I was betting that the person I’d been waiting to get back to me for weeks had finally popped his head out of whatever snake hole he’d squirreled himself away in.

Crossing the space in three long strides, I picked the phone up off the hook and held it up to my ear. “Art, have you got what I asked for?”

“Hello, Art, nice to hear from you. How are you?” Art’s snarky reply came through the phone to the tune of an incredibly bad Scottish accent. “I swear you and Cash treat me like your bitch sometimes.”

“Hi Art,” I greeted him, gritting my teeth. “How are you?”

“I’m wonderful. I was beachside in Tahiti until you decided to yank me from my vacation to find what you’re looking for.”

“And did you?” The two hearts in my chest started to pound with trepidation..

I’d called Art the night that Alexander came to the shop with a proposition for Effie in hopes of finding an alternative for her so that she wouldn’t have to go back to that mansion again, but it was clear that finding a magic user that could cast the kind of spells Daphne would need to have a safe pregnancy was no easy task.

Art Nagath, however, was no easy snake. He was the naga who’d been my friend almost as long as Cash. He specialized in finding information—whether that meant via technological means or by magical means there wasn’t a monster alive who could sniff it out better than the naga.

“I have. She’s even willing to travel to California for a pretty penny, and I do mean pretty penny. If this wasn’t for Daphne, I’d accuse her of highway-fucking-robbery.”

I winced at that thinking about how much of my cash was liquid enough to throw at this witch.

Despite being alive for nearly half a millennium, most of my funds were tied up in the shop or in my investments. I could probably cash out some old bonds, but I had a feeling that the price the witch was asking for would be much higher than just money.

“What does she want?” I asked hesitantly, a sinking feeling in my chest.

Art was silent for a moment before he took a big breath and launched into it. “Well, you see, I accidentally let it slip that my client was a Cthulhu and she perked right up at that. Apparently she has quite a few spells she wants to try but she needs—”

“Ink. She needs ink,” I finished for him grimly.

“Yep and before you offer to do your usual pull and tug method with Effie, she— ah —wants to collect it herself. Apparently she’s also a kinky freak, which should have been obvious because I found her at a supernatural sex retreat…”

Just the thought of letting another woman touch me made me flinch so hard that I nearly dropped the phone.

“And there’s nothing else she wants?”

I wished I had any friends that were the same race as me left on the Earth but there were only a handful left including my Da and I was fairly sure my mother would skin the witch alive if she even so much as looked at my Da sideways.

“No, dude, she’s a weirdo but she’s the weirdo with the specific set of skills that you need.”

There was no way Effie would agree to it. Despite not wanting to put a label on what was going on between us, Effie was just as territorial over me as I was her. Effie would spend the rest of her life making the hike up to that damn mansion if it meant that Daphne was safe and I was worried that she’d become even more stubborn if she found out this new witch’s price.

“Try to negotiate with her for me. I’ve got enough money to pay for ten more sex retreats, but I’m off the table.”

“Even if that means that you lose out on her services?” Art asked, clearly playing devil’s advocate.

“Even then.”

There was only one woman I wanted to touch me for the rest of our lives and she had green hair and a mean as fuck temper.

“Fine, I’ll keep you posted.” Art hung up the phone before I could say anything else and I was left stewing as I returned to Santi .

“Who was that on the phone?” the Del Mar asked as he played a video loudly on his phone. I peered around to find that he was watching cooking videos.

A laugh bubbled out of me. “Since when were you interested in cooking?”

Santi Del Mar was even worse in the kitchen than I was. The man was a fast food loyalist through and through.

But Santi just glowered up at me as he shut the screen of his phone off. “Kit likes it,” he muttered.

Ah . In all of the craziness I’d forgotten about the torch Santi still carried for the human bartender at The Dive. “And you want to cook for her?”

Santi shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I want her to like me…”

I softened a bit before hiking one leg over the back of the couch so that I could slide down next to him. “Why wouldn’t she like you? You’re a very likable lad.”

“She likes the human me. Sure. But she still doesn’t know what I am.”

My heart twisted with sympathy for him. Like many two-skinned monsters, Santi struggled with his sense of self and it usually came at a cost. He hid his Del Mar nature from most of the land dwellers, pretending to be human for the sake of being accepted by them.

I’d always had to face my otherness head on as I hadn’t been blessed with a second skin and witch glamours only went so far and felt incredibly uncomfortable.

“You’re not still doing that thing we talked about… right?” I asked hesitantly, watching as Santi’s cheeks darkened with a blush. “Oh, Santi, we talked about this.”

“I tried to stop! But once the waves started to turn weird I worried about her being out there without protection…”

Several months ago when Kit Carson first swept into Port Haven to take part in a free diving clinic, Santi had been obsessed. It was in his and many other supernatural creatures’ habit to fixate on things.

Gold, gems, fame—you name it and there would be a supernatural creature consumed with it.

Well, Santi had taken one look at Kit and decided that was what he was stuck on: her.

Which culminated in him stalking her through the water while she practiced her free diving.

“And I told you that all of the free diver boats are equipped with very sharp harpoons. What if they mistook you for a shark? You know Randy shoots first and asks questions later.”

Even if the merman could probably sense Santi’s presence, he was usually too drunk to make the choice not to shoot at my friend.

“I know ,” Santi groaned, sounding more like a kid than usual. “But I don’t get within range of the harpoon. I’m not stupid.”

“If you aren’t stupid then why won’t you just come clean about what you are before she spots you in the water and becomes terrified of you? ”

Santi had no good answer for that so instead he just slumped back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “Can we stop talking about me and get back to the ocean apocalypse, please? At this point I’d prefer to talk about that rather than my atomically bad love life.”

Right. I’d forgotten about the change in the ocean.

Reaching up to rub at the tension in my temples, I tried to organize my jumbled thoughts.

Between Effie and our relationship, the shop, Daphne’s pregnancy, the horny witch that wanted to harvest my ink, Arsenio pushing even harder than normal to get shops on the Wharf to sell, and a potential ocean catastrophe in the making…? I was just about ready to pull all of my people into this damn submarine and sail off into the horizon.

I was normally a fantastic multitasker but right now it felt a bit like I was trying to hold up fifty spinning plates that were also on fire. I have to admit that I’m a pretty shit juggler.

I just hoped that Art could figure out something with that witch because her coming to help would take about half of the items off of my list and potentially make me feel sane again.

Or as sane as a tentacle-faced man that ran a tattoo shop for monsters could be.