sunlight, and held her breath to dive down for a closer look at a huge grouper that she’d nearly missed. Its mouth gaped open and its fins barely moved as it hovered in a dark crevice, waiting for prey. Trigger fish darted by as she returned to the surface to clear out her breathing tube.
Violet’s gasp of delight sounded hollow inside her snorkel as she caught sight of a sea turtle in the distance. She hurried toward it, trying to minimize her movements so as not to startle the creature. A large shadow moved past, and she blinked, jerking her face around to see what it was.
Something smacked hard against the side of her head and her vision went grey. She was stunned for a moment, and then pain crashed over her. She realized suddenly that she could no longer breathe. Her mask was filling with water, blinding her, and something was dragging her down, down, away from the air and the light. She panicked, struggling and flailing against its merciless pull.
Her lungs burned and tightened until they felt as if they would implode. No longer able to stop herself, Violet inhaled seawater.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Doyle paced from stern to bow in frustration. The group had dispersed out over the reef, and from this distance he couldn’t tell who was who. They were just a collection of bright orange blobs. They would be floating around out there for another half hour before he would get the chance to talk to the lovely Violet Hendrickson.
Who was she? And why would someone like her be vacationing alone? With his luck, she had a fiancée waiting for her back at her hotel room.
He continued his pacing, staring moodily out over the water, and then he went stock still. That was odd. He could have sworn he’d just seen a merrow’s tail break the surface out beyond the reef, its large, silvery green scales sparkling in the sunlight.
The merrow were mer-folk, and notorious for keeping to themselves. There had been tales of sailors spotting them throughout history, but he’d never seen a hint of their existence in all his years in the Keys. It was strange that one would be anywhere near a place that was so populated by humans. His eyes scanned the water, searching for another glimpse.
Instead, he saw something that made his blood run cold despite the blazing afternoon heat. There was a single orange jersey floating about a hundred yards off the starboard bow, like so much abandoned flotsam.
Without a second thought he dove over the side of the boat and began a furious swim toward the empty snorkeling vest. He realized too late that he should have donned a mask, as he squinted through blurry, salt-stung eyes to gauge his surroundings. As soon as he reached the solitary jersey, he plunged deeper.
This was where the reef started to become the territory of divers. The seafloor dropped and the coral became a rocky landscape of peaks and valleys, jutting out to create hundreds of miniature caves. Many were large enough to conceal a human body. Had some fool decided to go exploring on their own and gotten stuck? Inadvisable though it was, he began feeling around inside the dark dens with his ungloved hands.
A perturbed moray eel shot out at him, its jagged teeth nearly clamping onto his fingers. He jerked his hand back and moved onto the next opening, growing frantic. The human brain could only go without oxygen for about five minutes. It must have been at least two since he’d jumped in the water. And though Doyle wasn’t human, whoever had been wearing that orange snorkeling vest was. And they were running out of time.
A large, sleek shape rushed past him, creating its own wake beneath the surface. Doyle squinted at it, thinking it was a shark. But then he glimpsed something that seemed out of place on the seafloor below and he dismissed the creature as he lunged toward it.
A clump of dark wisps floated at the edge of a recess of rock, disappearing into a hidden cavity beneath. His fingers tangled in the mass, identifying the clinging strands as human hair. He reached deeper, past the curve of an unmoving head, to grasp a lifeless body beneath the shoulders. He tugged, and found himself holding an unconscious Violet in his arms.
He felt as if he was looking at her in slow motion. Her beautiful face was pale and eerily still, her long hair hovering in a weightless raven cloud. Then time caught up with him and he pushed off the rock, his leg muscles stroking for the surface.
“There they are!” someone shouted.
Doyle barely registered the sound as he rolled onto his back, pulling Violet’s limp form with him, desperate to get her to the boat where he could perform CPR. His arms tightened beneath her ribcage as he struggled to position her, and suddenly she was choking and sputtering as she coughed up water and gasped for breath.
Doyle didn’t think he’d ever felt such stark relief in his almost two hundred years of existence.
His first mate reached his side and began trying to pull Violet from him. Doyle’s grip on her tightened reflexively, some primal instinct roaring to life, unwilling to relinquish her to another.
“Easy now,” Manny soothed.
Doyle wasn’t sure whether the calming words were meant for him or for Violet, but he relaxed his hold and allowed Manny to slide her down so that she was supported between them.
“We’ll have you out of the water soon,” Doyle assured her gently as they began working their way back to the boat. She murmured a sound of gratitude between coughing sputters.
The rest of the group bobbed in loose knots around them, treading water and staring. Doyle knew they were only concerned, but it was all he could do not to shout at them to get out of the way. He heard a faint, agitated buzz and looked up to find a distraught faerie hovering overhead, her wings sifting sparkling purple dust that scattered behind her on the wind.
She was a sprite, approximately three inches tall with dark shining hair that fell past her knees. Her skin glowed with silvery light and her pastel dress shimmered in shades of pink, blue and yellow. From the anxious stare she was directing at Violet, Doyle guessed that she must be the young woman’s faerie guardian.
Faerie guardians bonded with certain mortals at birth, following them throughout their lives to bring them aid and protection. Most mortals had no idea of the existence of the faerie realm or any of its denizens. If they had a faerie guardian helping them they simply attributed it to luck, when they noticed it at all.
Doyle had a bone to pick with this particular faerie. Where the hell had she been when her charge was drowning, and why hadn’t she steered Violet away from the danger?
“How the devil could you let this happen, little sister?” he muttered up at her, his jaw set in a grim line.
Her tilted eyes widened a fraction. “You’re sidhe,” she gasped in surprise.
He was just about to let loose a scathing reply, when he realized that Violet was trying to speak, her voice coming out stilted and hoarse from a throat raw with saltwater.
“Excuse me?” she managed finally. “I didn’t let anything happen,” she croaked. “Something knocked into me and dragged me under!”
She sent him a how-dare-you scowl and looked to the other group members for support.
“Of course it’s not your fault, sweetie,” a plump, motherly woman cooed. Her flowered rubber bathing cap was askew, leaving her kindly expression lopsided, but Violet smiled back at her in gratitude.
Some of the others nodded their agreement, staunchly remaining nearby, but several
