Arabesque: A Wings Companion

Chapter Twenty-Eight

They peered over the railing of the boat, into the blue-black depths of the ocean. "You ready?" Tamani asked.

"As ready as it's possible to be, I think," Shawn replied, voice echoing from behind his facemask.

Tamani looked to Lenore and, not one to waste words, she simply nodded.

"You'll remember everything," Tamani said, meeting Shawn's eyes. "The whole thing will actually be gentler on you for the willing surrender. But you'll remember."

Shawn gave a sharp nod, then jumped into the water.

Tamani watched Shawn sink until he was out of sight.

"You have this human magic all set up?" Lenore asked skeptically.

Tamani pushed a few keys on his computer and the feed from Shawn's camera filled the screen.

Lenore stepped backward with a gasp; Tamani managed to keep a straight face, barely.

"Sorry. I know you tried to warn me," she said shakily.

"Okay, he's just letting himself sink until you take over. We'll bring him up in fifty minutes for a fresh tank." Tamani glanced over at Lenore, trying to see if there was any visible sign when she took Shawn's will. He'd only really watched Shar work a couple of times, and nothing Tamani did was ever this precise.

Lenore stared at the computer and took a noisy breath before settling into preternatural stillness, her eyes fixed on the screen.

And then Shawn started swimming.

Shawn had been more right than he could have known when he said Tamani should use him. Not only was Shawn a good swimmer, he'd gotten scuba-certified the previous summer. Tamani and Lenore could easily have recruited any human with adequate skills, but they would have needed to make sure no one became alarmed at their absence, then erased memories of the experience. With Shawn, the only effort required was a few minutes of Tamani's time—and Enticement—to convince the high school advisor that Shawn had been accepted into an advanced oceanography research internship. This not only got Shawn excused from school for a week, it would look great on his college applications.

As a willing and able participant, Shawn had suggested that there was no need for Lenore to take control of him at all, but he hadn't considered the consequences of actually running into the sea faeries. Tamani actually suspected that Lenore might be powerful enough to wrest Shawn's mind away from any sea fae that might attempt to control him, but he knew from experience that it was far easier to maintain control of an existing thrall than to seize control from someone else.

Besides, Tamani had a few ideas for finding and catching the sea fae that might require some large-scale undersea Enticement—something he had reason to suspect would be difficult, if not impossible. Today wasn't just about reconnaissance; it was also a test run of Lenore's powers in an unfavorable environment.

So here they were in a rented boat, with top-of-the-line scuba equipment, all courtesy of Avalon's overflowing coffers. On deck, Lenore concentrated on the monitor as if playing a video game, with Shawn as her avatar—except, of course, there was no controller in her hands.

"What's that?" Tamani said, pointing to a line of darkness at the edge of the screen.

Lenore's head ticked to the side and, several fathoms below, Shawn turned his head, shining a powerful light into a shallow, shadowed valley.

"Nothing," Tamani said. "Onward."

As the minutes ticked by, with little to see but long stretches of mud and algae, Tamani tried very hard to keep his expectations low. Laurel's Mixing had enhanced his resistance to the salty sea air, but could give him no special insight into what went on beneath the waves. Tracking quarry through a forest was a matter of spotting signs of passage; under the sea, that kind of evidence wouldn't last ten minutes.