Page 59 of Kringle and the Kraken

“Then let’s go dig up my yard.”

With the dirt collected and all the other supplies ready to go, Levi and I headed back into the house. We set all the jars on my kitchen table, and I set up the former sugar plum fairy dust jars at one end.

“Now what?”

Levi had put on a pair of gray sweats and a T-shirt and stood surveying the table. “Now we fill the little jars with a little bit of dirt, some water, and some of my magic.”

“No magic words?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“Okay. I have some tools that might make this easier. I’ll be right back.”

Hustling out to my workshop, I made a mental list of the things I had that would help us and snatched them all up quickly. Back in the kitchen, Levi had found my measuring spoons and had set them out on the table. I dropped off the tools I’d gathered, and we sat down to work, setting up a little bit of an assembly line. I added the dirt, Levi put in the water and one of the floating orbs of his magic, and he passed it back to me so I could seal the lid with a dab of the glue I used on my ships in bottles. The finished product looked like a tiny sunset if the sun were a bright glowing teal.

Holding one of the talismans made me feel safe. The bottles were oddly warm to the touch, and with one in my hand and a lot near me, I felt better, calmer, a sense of protection washing over me and driving away the last of the coldness that felt like it had settled in my bones during the wraith attack until I could barely remember what being dragged away by the angry spirit had felt like.

When I told Levi as much, his face went dark and he started to mumble out another apology.

“Don’t, Levi. You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m just saying that this is going to work. These will keep the town safe. And I would happily face another wraith if it led to this same conclusion.”

Levi’s face lost a shade of color. “Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”

I tried to hide the shudder that snaked down my spine. “It’s not like I’m going to put myself in harm’s way. I promise it’s not something I’m in a rush to repeat, but I’m happy to be your motivation anytime you need it.”

He shrugged, still lost in thought, as he started working on another talisman. “But how do we fix the rest?”

I set down the bottle in my hands and stared at him across the table until he met my eyes. “You already know what we have to do.”

“I do. But it’s going to be a lot harder than you think.”

Reaching across the table, I grabbed his hand, and he turned his over, our palms pressing together and fingers tangling. “You don’t know that.”

“People always fear what they don’t know. Delmar could end up getting exactly what he wants.”

“I know the people in this town, Levi. It’s not going to be like that.”

He gave me an unsteady smile. “I hope you’re right.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

LEVI

The first morningof Poseidonia dawned bright. Kris and I had stayed up long into the wee hours of the night finishing all the talismans. We’d made enough for every single person in the town, and I said a silent thanks to Poseidon and all the gods that Kris’s mother was a little bit of a craft supply hoarder. The boxes of talismans were safely stacked in Kris’s truck, and we were on our way to start distributing them.

Before we’d left, I’d made Kris tuck one into his pocket, and as we drove, he absently rubbed his thumb over where the tiny bottle rested against his thigh.

When Kris had asked me about kraken mating and reproduction, I’d conveniently left out one crucial detail. When we found our mates and wanted to claim them, krakens passed some of their magic into their mates and received some of their mate’s magic in return. It was what tied our life forces together. Kraken mates left this plane of existence together, forever bonded, even as their souls were returned to the sea. Kris thought it had been his idea to have me channel my magic through one tentacle and into the jar he held last night on the beach that had finally allowed me to push my magic out.

But that wasn’t what I’d been focused on at all.

I’d been thinking about pushing a piece of my magic into Kris, of claiming him as mine, of keeping him safe and with me forever. He thought it was the wraith attacking him that had motivated me, and in part, he was right. He had been my motivation, but not because of the wraith. Because he was who I wanted by my side until we took our last breaths.

We were going to need to have a conversation about that as soon as we put the other problems plaguing Lifeboat to bed.

Kris turned the truck onto Main Street. It was still early, so most of the shops were closed. “Where do you want to start?”

Most of the sea monster families would be home getting ready to celebrate Poseidonia. I wanted to make sure they all had talismans before they went near the ocean to collect water for their tridents.

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