Page 4 of Summer L.A.W.

“Fine,” she said, and her mouth found an edge of a smile. “After tea and bullets and science, I’ll go down to the water and ask it what it wants.”

“And if it says revenge?” Rayna asked, too casually.

“Then,” Crystal said, raising the mug in a toast to her own terrible taste in men and better instincts, “we negotiate.”

The Atlantic wasn’t far. From the mansion’s kitchen door, the air thickened with salt, and the lawn gave way to a cliff. Crystal walked it like it was a firing range—steady, measured, her bird familiar gliding silently and white with flashes of silver above her.

The tide was up, gnawing at the rocks below, low and rhythmic. It was the kind of sound that made you think of old seaside myths, the kind with rows of teeth and moral lessons no one wanted to learn twice.

You’re late, said a voice in her head, as casually as if they’d arranged to meet for coffee.

Crystal stopped dead at the edge of the bluff. “All right,” she muttered aloud, because ignoring telepathic atmospheres was the first step toward padded rooms. “You don’t get to act like I stood you up. I’ve been busy.”

Busy throwing knives at a German car, the Atlantic replied. Its tone was not oceanic majesty. It was wry, low, the sound of a tide curling into a smirk. Not your worst work, but a questionable use of conjuring.

Crystal squinted at the waves. “It was not conjuring. It was a controlled accident. Also, he called me ‘too much.’”

He was wrong. A pause. You’re exactly the right amount of much.

“That’s what I said!” That echo knocked her a little sideways. Not that she’d admit it to several thousand square miles of water. “Flattery from a body that’s swallowed half the known world means nothing. Besides, you’re all in my head.”

Then try prophecy. The sea’s voice shifted, darker. Something’s coming. You’ve felt it already, haven’t you? That pressure behind your eyes, that drag in your chest? The last time you felt it, you were⁠—

“Twenty-three, on the Welsh coast,” she finished, surprising herself. “It pulled the fog inland for three days.”

And something slipped through with it.

Her stomach went cold. “You mean⁠—”

Yes. The water had surged hard against the rocks, sending spray high enough to spatter her boots. It’s moving again. Toward you.

Crystal curled her fingers into fists, nails biting her palms. “If this is about my love life, I swear⁠—”

Her bird launched from the bluff, circling over the foamy churn as if scanning for a target. Crystal tracked it with her eyes, jaw tight. “Give me specifics.”

Soon. The voice softened again, sly as an incoming tide. But you’ll need the shards. The ones you cried this morning.

She hated that the ocean knew about that. “Those are mine.”

They’re ours, it corrected. You made them with me in your blood and me in your soul. Keep them close. They’ll answer before you do.

The wind lifted her hair, tangling the salt into it until she could taste the tang on her tongue. She breathed in, steadily. “Fine. I’ll keep them close. And if whatever’s coming tries me⁠—”

We drown it together.

Crystal’s mouth curved. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

The Atlantic rolled a single wave higher than the rest, letting it break at her feet with a hiss that sounded almost like approval. She turned back toward the mansion, the bird following above her, the murmur of the tide still in her head.

From her early adulthood in the Royal Navy, the ocean spoke to her but didn’t say goodbye. It never did. But this time, she had a sense of foreboding.

Crystal stepped back into the mansion’s kitchen and immediately found herself ankle-deep in water. Not the good kind, either. The Atlantic’s water had moods, and plumbing was its bratty kid sister, saying, “I’m getting into everything you own”.

Joell was in the middle of the kitchen with a mop, glaring at a puddle as if it had insulted her. Brianna wrung out a dishtowel into a bucket that was already full, while Lioness stood in the doorway holding a mop upside down, looking betrayed.

“Explain,” Crystal said, leaving on her damp boots.

“We sprang a leak,” Joell said. “Actually, several leaks. Possibly a vendetta.”