Page 61 of Wicching Hour

The show cut out and I opened my eyes. I didn’t remember closing them, but I suppose I’d been trying to hide from what they were saying.

“Why are are you crying, daughter, and why are you listening to that?” My dad was back, dressed in a toga again.

I wiped my cheeks and smiled. Seeing him lifted some of the pressure off my chest. “Hi, Dad.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Under the Sea

He waited.

“Um, there’s this podcast. Do you know what that is?”

He thought a moment and then nodded.

Huh. I wouldn’t have guessed that. I explained who the man was, his stalking, and what he was saying on his podcast.

My dad sat with that a moment and then said, “A human?”

I nodded.

“I can take care of this for you, daughter, though I don’t understand why a weak, cowardly human’s opinion should matter to you.”

I blew out a breath and tried to decide how to explain it. “The Goddess gifted me with precognition and psychometry. Your genes super-powered my wicche abilities. On one hand, that’s wonderful and I’m grateful for all my gifts. On the other, though, I’ve been considered a freak all my life.”

His eyebrows slammed down, his expression filled with rage. “Who would dare insult my daughter?” His massive hands fisted on his knees.

I shrugged. “It wasn’t one person. I’m different. I’ve always been different. I’ve thought about this a lot over the years. You know how sometimes animals will banish one of their kind when they look too different?”

He reluctantly nodded.

“I think it might be like that. Other wicches see me as a threat. It wasn’t that long ago that being accused of wicchery meant torture and death. Humans see me as a strange unknown and that makes them nervous. And then you have those attracted to the fae blood, so attracted but afraid. That combination often merges into violence.”

He stood abruptly and went to the railing. “I was assured by your mother that she would take good care of you. That I was to leave you to her so you would be safer in this human world, that my presence would be a danger to you, and now I find out that they’ve been mistreating you?” His roar was deafening.

My insides shook. He’d wanted to know me, to be a father to me.

He turned and held out a hand, saying, “Come with me. I will show you how you should have been treated your whole life.”

I stood and took his hand, unsure of what was happening, but after listening to the podcast, I was happy for the distraction. He glanced at my jacket and then it was gone, my phone along with it.

“They’re inside,” he said. “You won’t need them.” He studied me and then laid his hand on my head for a moment. “No more headaches.”

And then we were flying over the railing and diving deep into the ocean. My father cut through the water like a dolphin, swimming faster and deeper than I ever could. Before I knew it, we were diving to the bottom of the Monterey Canyon, two and a half miles deep. We were in black water, but my eyes had adjusted and I marveled at the anemones and jellies. We passed a catshark and a flapjack octopus, basket stars and brittle stars, sea cucumbers and sea angels. I was almost positive I caught a glimpse of a vampire squid.

This was one of the greatest gifts I’d ever been given. As we moved farther out into the Pacific, a pod of orcas and a fever of bat rays swam with us, flanking my father. At one point, it looked as though the ocean floor was moving with us. It wasn’t until the floor rose above us and breached the surface that I realized we’d acquired a blue whale in our phalanx. I sensed there were even more out there with us, but I couldn’t see them.

At intervals, orcas and rays would swim close, brushing against me and then moving back into formation. At first, I’d thought it an accident, but it became clear that there was a coordinated effort amongst them. My father looked back when one ray stayed a little longer than the others, pressing himself against my stomach. Dad raised an eyebrow at the ray, who flapped his wing-like fins in a way that felt like a hug and then moved back with the others.

The orcas leading our party swam straight down. Oh, the blue whale had a calf swimming beside her. Dad and our security detail all angled down into a darkness that proved to be too all-encompassing for me.

If I hadn’t felt the strength of his hand, clutching mine, I’d have questioned if I was trapped in a dream of endless black. I’d lost track of time in the vast inky deep. I had no idea how long we’d been diving, but it was somewhere between forever and the blink of an eye.

My mind may have been playing tricks on me, but it looked as though there was light far below us. As that made no sense, I tried to decide if an optical nerve was reacting to the pressure or if something was firing in my brain. We were far, far deeper than humans or even submarines could go. Whatever my father had done before we’d left, he’d taken care of the headache and the pressure that would normally have crushed my body.

I got so turned around in the unending black, though, I wondered if we were actually swimming up toward light. It was the only thing that made sense.

As we got closer to the strange green glowing light, I noticed people swimming close. Merfolk had joined us. Turning my head this way and that, I tried to catch glimpses of whoever was with us.

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