Chapter One
Chapter One October 2048 - Demon’s Tooth, Farallon Islands, The Elvish Protectorate Clementine Ortega was being hunted. At least, she was pretty sure she was. It was hard to say for certain, but the likelihood that a predator stalked her in the violent, wind-tossed surf was high. In all honesty, she was surprised it had taken as long as it had for one of her new neighbors to notice her. It was a rare, bright sort of day. The sky was clear of even the wispiest of clouds and the sun warmed the barren slope of the triangular island, giving the thin grass that clung to its face an almost uncanny glow. Everything, from the green of the scrubby vegetation to the blue of the sky, seemed too sharp, too saturated. It was as if she’d stepped into a dream. Most days on Demon’s Tooth, the unofficial name for the largest island in the Farallon chain, were not very pretty. It was a lucky day when she could see the outline of San Francisco from her beach. Mostly she saw nothing but an empty stretch of dark water and fog. Dipping her paint roller into the tray perilously balanced on top of an overturned bucket, Clementine made sure it was good and coated in the thick, weather-resistant paint before turning back to the thick metal wall of her new home. The salty breeze picked up her wavy hair. It would have tossed strands into her mouth and eyes if she hadn’t pulled it back with a pale green scarf knotted into a bow behind her left ear. Moving with calm efficiency, she rolled the baby-blue paint onto the wall and pretended like she didn’t feel a predator’s gaze on the back of her neck. After several strokes, Clementine twisted to peer in the direction of the city, ostensibly to admire the view, but really to scan the waves, looking for the heart-stopping sight of a dark fin cutting through the waves. She stood on the tiny island chain’s only semi-accessible beach. All around her, walls of sheer, weatherbeaten rock made the island a fortress. Once upon a time, the Protectorate’s government tried to maintain a lighthouse on the top of the highest slope, but after three disastrous decades and a string of lost lives, they’d abandoned it to the elements. She had no trouble understanding why they’d tried for so long, though. Peering into the distance, she could just make out the wavering outline of San Francisco. Between her beach and the shoreline lay a thirty-mile stretch of water known as Grim’s Bay. There was no telling how many people had died in that stretch of treacherous water, but most estimates were in the low thousands. If even the elves, all-powerful and almost indestructible predators that they were, agreed to cede their rights to what could be an extremely lucrative shipping channel, the threat had to be extraordinary. That threat was not simply the weather, which she’d learned was some of the deadliest and most unpredictable on the west coast. Nor was it the jagged rocks that ringed the Farallon Island chain and gave it the nickname Demon’s Tooth. It was the people who called Grim’s Bay home. After over a dozen disappearances and murders, the islands had been abandoned by the Protectorate. Nearly two centuries had passed since then. No one in their right mind would choose to set foot on the islands, let alone live there. Except Clementine, of course. Despite all the warnings, despite her boss’s blatant attempts to dissuade her, despite her family’s vocal concerns, she was determined to make Demon’s Tooth hers. She thought she’d been making good work of it, too. Her sturdy hiking boots, well-worn and tied with fraying glow-in-the-dark laces, crunched in the pebbled, seashell-littered beach as she rolled paint onto the final section of the rectangular building that was her new home. It had been air dropped onto the island the week prior to her arrival. The back half, where the entrance and a small garage were located, sat on the beach. The rest stretched out over a heap of huge, sea-life speckled boulders, supported by stilts, to hover over the water, where a moon pool would allow her to easily come and go in the miniature submersible they’d provided. The house itself was rather sterile-looking. The walls were a uniform pale gray only broken up by at least a dozen large windows. This was not done for aesthetic purposes, but for safety. If danger approached, her bosses wanted her to be able to see it coming. In that event, the home could be almost instantly converted into a bunker, which explained why it looked a little bit more like a shipping container than a cozy, seaside home. After complaining about the dour design to her sister, Nelly had suggested a coat of bright paint — her solution to most issues. Nelly always knew what colors to use to make a space seem bright and cheerful, even when that was a tiny bedroom in a rundown cabin or a tent or a hole in the wall apartment. When it came to home renovation, Clementine was her little sister’s assistant. She never complained. What was there to complain about, anyway, when you lived with your best friend in the whole world? There was nothing in the world her little sister enjoyed more than a buttercup yellow or eye-watering magenta. When she was eleven, she’d declared that electric green was her new color and wore it exclusively for six straight months. Nelly was always doing things like that — trying on new metaphorical hats, searching for something to define her identity outside of… well, her relationship with Clementine. She’d hoped that three months would be enough to finally acclimate to living without her sister by her side, but every time she thought about her new life, Clementine was overwhelmed by a monumental sense of loss. Nelly was only a telepathic touch away, but after a lifetime of being attached at the hip, it was unnatural to not simply turn around to find her vibrant sister trailing behind her, ready to give her opinion at any moment. Their sisterly bond was as rock-solid as it had ever been. They just happened to be thirteen-hundred miles away from each other. At Nelly’s request. Because she wanted to live her own life. It used to hurt to think that her sister was so desperate to find herself outside of their bond, but— Don’t lie to yourself, she thought, scowling at her paint roller as she pushed it through the paint again. It still hurts. You can know something is healthy and still not like it. Allowing herself and her sister to find their own divergent paths in life was a bit like being forced to eat brussel sprouts. It was good for her, but it still tasted like ass. In fact, she’d spent most of her first week on the island holed up in her new bedroom, disoriented by the silence and heartsick for her old life. It wasn’t just separation anxiety that gripped her, but grief. Real, cry-your-eyes-out-until-you-can’t-do-it-anymore grief. She was right, Clementine reminded herself for the thousandth time as she aggressively coated the last somber gray inches of wall in cheerful blue paint. This is good for us. We need to have our own lives. Nelly didn’t seem to be having any trouble doing it, which definitely didn’t bother Clementine at all. Certainly not. Nelly had fearlessly accepted a position in a remote Montana town and lived on her own just fine. It was well past time that her big sister found her own path, too. After that first awful week, it wasn’t so bad. The silence had taken some getting used to, though. Clementine was accustomed to a constant, low-level discomfort and strain that came with even the smallest population centers. Staying in San Francisco for three months of interviews and training had been psychic torture. She wasn’t certain even her diamond-hard psychic barriers would have been able to withstand one more day of bombardment. The silence, though. She’d been desperate for the quiet, but upon arrival, she found it disorienting, even a little spooky, to only hear the low, background hum of animal consciousness. The silence was so profound on Demon’s Tooth because there wasn’t a single soul within thirty miles of its dangerously rocky shoreline. Except that wasn’t quite true. Clementine calmly rested her roller in the pan and took a step back to admire her work. Only one panel of the wall had been painted, since the rest of the rectangular home stretched perilously over slick boulders and was therefore almost impossible for her to reach, but the blue really did add something special to the place. She would have liked to admire it more, but that was impossible with an audience. Her heart beat a quick rhythm against her ribs as she turned to walk a ways up the beach, toward the ghost of a winding trail that led up the tallest slope and the remains of the lighthouse. Sea birds whirled overhead, crying out for their mates and chicks. Normally, she liked to get her exercise by walking that steep, zig-zagging trail, but not today. Today, she turned back around to face the beach. Her gaze swept over the water again. It tumbled over the rocks, hissing and foaming with impact, before retreating once more. Everything looked normal. It wasn’t, though. She knew someone was out there. Even on a deserted island, Clementine was never foolhardy enough to relax her barriers. Getting lazy had dire consequences. But no barriers were perfect. Brains were elastic and so too were psychic barriers. They flexed to accommodate needs, and in that necessary movement, minuscule gaps were formed. Those gaps allowed her to sense a baseline of consciousness around her at all times, as well as pick up the presence — if not the clear thoughts — of a person lingering in the surf just out of sight. Mr. Hauf, the elvish bureaucrat who was her boss, had been adamant that if she ever encountered one of the merfolk, she was to move to higher ground immediately. When she asked how exactly she was supposed to forge an understanding with her neighbors, which was a primary goal of her employment, from twenty feet away and up a hill, he’d simply given her the steely-eyed look that told her he was once again considering firing her. He’d never wanted to hire her in her first place, on the grounds that he was absolutely certain she’d die. A valid concern, given the island’s history. It was just too damn bad for him that the elvish sovereign, Theodore Solbourne, had commanded the position of Farallon Ambassador be filled by any means necessary by the end of the year. She was the only applicant. Clementine wasn’t exactly scared as she eyed the distance between the rocky beach and where she stood on the narrow border between the grassy slope and the sun-baked pebbles. Very little scared her. She could defend herself better than even her elvish boss could, with his diamond claws and bone-shattering bite force. One thought and the person in the waves would have their gray matter leaking out of their nose. No, the reason her heartbeat thudded in her pulse points with increasing speed was because she was… nervous. She wanted to make friends. It didn’t matter that she knew that was a ridiculous hope. What was the harm in trying? They could kill you. That’s the harm. Clementine licked her lips. Her boots moved in the gritty, rocky earth as she shifted her weight. She wasn’t going to be murdered today or any other day. Merfolk were notoriously vicious, but they were slow out of water. Her predator would have to drag themselves up the beach with their hands in order to harm her, which would give her ample time to disable them. The distance was safe, but it also made communication almost impossible. What was she supposed to do? Yell a hello from the end of the beach? A weenie move if I ever saw one. Clementine was no weenie. She might not have had any experience socializing, but she knew enough to understand that acting like a coward wasn’t a good way to start. Saying a quick mental apology to Mr. Hauf, she squared her shoulders and walked back the way she came. The wind was picking up, bringing with it the cold stinging spray of salt water. It made her wavy hair curlier than normal as it was tossed around her face. Her scarf was coming loose, but she barely noticed it as she came to a slow stop by a cluster of boulders only visible during low tide. Propping her hands on her hips, she squinted at the water. In all honesty, there wasn’t much of a beach to speak of. Her home took up most of what could only be generously considered one. The rest was barnacle and sea star covered boulders fallen from the sheer cliffs on either side of her. There wasn’t even a gradual, sandy slope into the water. Her beach was all sharp pebbles, boulders, and then a sheer drop into shark and merfolk infested blue. The Farallones were one tip of what marine biologists called the bloody triangle — one of the three places in the world where great white sharks and merfolk mingled in huge numbers. She’d read that at one point, the shark population had been so dense that a person could “walk clear across Grim’s Bay on their backs.” It was unnerving to know that and yet not be able to see them until they breached the waves. The steep drop off from the beach meant that the nutrient-dense water became impossible to see through within two feet even on a clear, low-surf day. If there was someone just beyond the boulders where she stood, Clementine wouldn’t know it until the very last moment, when a head or webbed hand or dorsal fin breached the surface. No wonder there were so many disappearances. All it would take was a careless trip over the rocks, a stroll too close to the shoreline, a slip into the surf, and a patient hunter. One moment, a person could be safely on the shore and the next— No, stop it. You’re fine. She breathed deeply, mustering her courage. Then in a voice that wobbled, she called out, “Hello? Is anyone there?” Her heart jammed into her throat. Was that a shadow in the water? The wind snatched at her t-shirt and the loose ends of her scarf as it swept down from the slope. Between the waves and the ripples made by the wind, it was impossible to tell if she was seeing things or not. Without unleashing her telepathic senses, which came with a whole host of risks, she couldn’t determine how near the person was. For all she knew, the shadow was little more than churning sand or a curious sea lion. Clementine waited, wide eyes scanning the water in rapid sweeping movements. There was nothing. No fin. No reply to her greeting. There was only the sense of being watched, the pressure of another mind near her own, and the calls of sea birds circling overhead. She wasn’t entirely sure how long she stood there, stock still, waiting for a reply, but by the time she gave up, her knees were stiff. Sighing, she gathered up her paint supplies. Just in case, she moved extra slowly, routinely glancing over her shoulder at the waves, but her hunter still didn’t show themselves. With the bucket in one hand and the tray in another, she began to walk back to the heavy metal steps and door that was the entrance to her home. The wind whistled down the slope with more force. Grit sprayed into her eyes. Making a distressed sound, she turned her head to rub her eyes against her shoulder. The movement dislodged her scarf. She felt the silky material slide backward a moment before a gust of wind ripped it free. “Shit!” She whirled around, arms lifting like she might be able to catch it with her hands full as they were. Clementine watched helplessly as the scarf, still loosely tied in a bow, drifted over the beach to land with a tiny splash in the waves. It was almost immediately sucked out into the deeper water, where it bobbed and twirled at the surface between boulders. Normally she wouldn’t have thought twice about wading in or scaling the boulders to get it, but on Demon’s Tooth… No, that wasn’t an option. It didn’t matter that the law said it was safe for land dwellers to enter the water during the day. Even she wasn’t foolish enough to try it knowing full-well that there was a predator laying in wait. The scarf was gone. Damn. I loved that one. Clementine’s shoulders rounded. She’d have to ask her mother to send a replacement. Perhaps something from her parents’ travels, now that they were once more free to roam the world without fear for their childrens’ safety. Her good mood effectively soured by both her failure to introduce herself to the predator and the loss of her scarf, Clementine kept her eyes on her boots as she trudged back up the beach with her load. What she needed was a good cup of tea and a conversation with her sister. Maybe something minty and sweet to wash the taste of salt and disappointment out of her mouth. She was so busy considering what was in the contents of her tea cabinet that she didn’t notice the dark, sleek head that rose above the water behind her — nor the clawed hand that snatched the ribbon from the frothing surf. By the time she got to the door of her home and bothered to glance back at the water, both it and the predator were gone.
