Page 23 of Summer L.A.W.

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Every step was inevitable, like walking through water toward a riptide she couldn’t fight. Her breath matched the rhythm of distant surf, and the pull sharpened until she nearly stumbled on the path.

“Talk to me,” Mason pressed, boots crunching close behind her. “You’re scaring me a little. Is this a spell? A vision? What’s happening?”

She ignored him, eyes locked forward. She wasn’t going to the sea itself, not yet, but to the weathered clapboard outbuilding tucked along the mansion’s grounds. The water sports shed. Her fingers tingled with the urge to open its door.

Mason swore under his breath, trying to match her pace. “You can’t just blank out on me like this. If you’re about to do something stupid, at least tell me first.”

She didn’t. She yanked open the shed door. The familiar smell of damp salt and neoprene washed over her, comforting in its own way. The racks gleamed with dive gear, tanks, regulators, and wetsuits. She crossed to her own equipment without hesitation. Hands moving with the efficiency of muscle memory, she checked the dive bag for her mask, headlamp, booties, buoyancy compensator, and dive knife. She would need it to battle the Sea Witch.

“Crystal—seriously!” Mason planted himself in the doorway now, a silhouette framed by the sunset. “You’re not about to dive in the middle of… whatever this is. Right? Tell me you’re not.”

Her fingers tightened on the straps of her dive bag. The trance still thrummed through her veins, drowning out everything else. She slung the gear over her shoulder, the weight grounding. She removed her boots, leaving them in the shed, pushed past Mason, and padded barefoot toward the beach.

He continued to follow her. Only then did she finally glance at him, her blue eyes sharp. “I have to.”

The sand was cool beneath her bare feet, gritty and damp from the tide. Crystal let the dive bag thump down beside her and shrugged out of her clothes without ceremony. Her shirt and jeans peeled away, leaving her bare skin exposed to the ocean breeze. The trance didn’t leave room for modesty. It barely left room for sanity.

Mason’s shadow lingered a few feet back, steady and watchful. To his credit, he didn’t crack a joke, didn’t leer, didn’t even clear his throat. His voice came out quiet, practical. “Don’t dive alone, Crystal. You’re looking for a Sea Witch. That’s suicide.”

She didn’t answer. Just unzipped the wetsuit, stepped into its embrace, and pulled it up over her body with quick, efficient movements. The trance softened at the edges once the neoprene hugged her like armor. She put on booties, secured her equipment, and checked the regulator on the tank. Then she turned on her air and geared up. Donned the mask, headlamp, knife, and gloves, and grabbed her fins. The ritual steadied her pulse, even as the pull from the sea sharpened.

She tugged the straps into place, adjusted her mask against her forehead, and began the awkward, heavy-footed march toward the surf. Tank heavy, it jostled with every shift of her shoulders. She placed the regulator in her mouth, took a deep breath, and eased into the sea with precision. After strapping on each fin, she turned and started swimming out to her eerie destination.

Behind her, Mason swore. Then came the rustle of fabric, the metallic scrape of a belt buckle. She glanced back, just in time to catch him stripping down to his shorts. He was broad, scarred, and cut by years of discipline. He moved toward the ocean with the kind of grace you didn’t lose after the Navy hammered it into your bones.

“You’re not going in there alone,” he said, and this time it wasn’t a suggestion. It was an oath.

The waves foamed up around her thighs. She didn’t fight his presence. Couldn’t, really. The trance pulled her forward, and Mason followed without hesitation, two shadows cutting into the ocean together.

That’s when he heard it. A male voice, singing. Mason looked for the source of the haunting melody. Shortly, he spotted a man floating on a piece of driftwood. No… more like a piece of a ship’s hull. Damn.

“Is that a male siren?” he called out. “I thought sirens were only female.”

Crystal uttered one word. “Chauvinist,” then she placed the breathing apparatus in her mouth again, turned on her headlamp, ducked below the waves, and disappeared from view.

“You didn’t…” Mason knew he could hold his breath for seven minutes when he was part of the SEAL team. He hadn’t been out of it that long. He could probably still do a good six or more minutes.

Mason spat a curse into the salty air, took some deep breaths, held the last one, and dove.

Cold slammed into him like a wall, stealing the first half-second of breath before his training kicked in. Equalize. Relax. Move. He tucked and cut through the waves.

The beam from Crystal’s headlamp shimmered ahead, a pale cone in the blue-black dark. She swam with the smooth, economical strokes of someone who belonged in the ocean. Mason followed, muscles remembering every drill, every midnight infiltration dive, even as his lungs reminded him that he was no longer twenty-two and bulletproof.

Something thrummed below them. Music! The same haunting voice that had lured his attention on the surface, only now it wrapped around him like kelp. Deep, resonant, pulling.

Son of a… Mason forced his jaw tight, refusing to let the sound slow his kicks. A siren was supposed to lure sailors to their doom, right? Fine. He’d spent a career resisting worse.

A flicker moved in the dark. At first, he thought it was Crystal’s lamp bouncing off a rock face. Then it grew. A glow, faint but steady, gliding against the current. A figure.

Long green hair streamed behind it like trailing seaweed. Skin glowed faintly, almost phosphorescent. The face was sharp, inhuman, the eyes wide and black as the abyss.

The Sea Witch

And she was swimming straight toward Crystal.

Mason kicked harder, angling himself closer, but Crystal was already locked in. The Sea Witch closed the last few feet in a blur of green hair and teeth, latching onto her like a barracuda. The ocean boiled with the sudden violence.

Crystal’s light swung wildly, strobing the water. One second, he saw her grappling with the creature. Her hands shoved away its arms, fighting to keep it away from her mask. The next, the beam vanished into darkness.