Devil and the Deep (The Ceruleans: Book 4)

The Ceruleans: Book IV

Devil and the Deep

By Megan Tayte

Copyright 2015 Megan Tayte

All rights reserved. No part
of this book may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted or stored in an
information retrieval system in any form or by any means (other than for
purposes of review), without the express permission of the author given in
writing. The right of Megan Tayte to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.

To contact the author, visit
www.megantayte.com.

For those who cry in the
dark.

DEVIL AND THE DEEP

‘The blood-dimmed
tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of
innocence is drowned’

– William Butler
Yeats

It began with screaming. Shrill, ear-piercing, horrified
screaming.

A girl shrieked, ‘Blood! Look, look – it’s everywhere!’ and
pressed her hand to her mouth.

A man shouted, ‘Good grief!’ and another, ‘Great Scott!’

An old lady swooned gracefully and would have tipped over
the balustrade of the riverboat had a lanky lad not caught her.

The cause of the excitement – a woman lying slumped on the
long table on deck, cheek on her bread plate, headdress in the butter dish –
twitched a little.

‘She’s alive!’ cried a lad beside her delightedly. ‘She
moved!’

‘Did not,’ argued another.

‘Did too!’

‘Gentlemen,’ interjected a short, portly man with a twirly
black moustache, ‘if you will forgive my intrusion, it must be noted that this
woman has a bullet hole in her head and is logically, therefore, quite
definitely deceased.’

Another old dear folded to the deck with a prolonged ‘Ohhhhhh’
and her husband grabbed a feathered fan and began wafting cool evening air in
her face while calling, ‘Smelling salts – does anyone have any?’

I tried to keep a straight face. Really I did. I bit my
bottom lip until I tasted my cherry-red lipstick. I pinched my leg through the
cream satin of my gown. I dug my long cigarette holder into the sensitive flesh
of my arm.

But it was no good.

The ‘What ho, chaps’ posh accents.

The buxom woman sagging in the arms of an elephant hunter
wearing Converse All Stars.

The production of smelling salts in a bottle whose label
read
Pepto-Bismol
.

The corners of the little round man’s moustache coming looser
with his every word.

The fast-pooling puddle of pinkish blood on the bread plate,
buffeted by the steady in-and-out breaths of the corpse.

Take it from a girl who’s really died – death on the River
Dart, Devon, is hilarious.

‘Dear me, Ms Robson here appears to be quite overcome with
shock,’ said the guy at my side suddenly, and he slipped an arm around me and
turned me away. ‘Come, madam. Let us get some air.’

I smiled at him. Then grinned. Then choked back a guffaw.
Thankfully, by the time full-scale hilarity hit me I’d been led to the rear of
the boat, away from the rest of our party, and could bury my face in the
bloke’s chest and shake mutely with laughter.

The gallant gentleman rubbed my back soothingly as I let it
all out and said loudly, for the benefit of any onlookers, ‘There there, pigsney,
there there.’

‘Pigsney?’ It was the final straw. My high-heeled sandals
gave way and I melted into a puddle of mirth on the deck.

‘I’ll have you know, Scarlett Blake,’ hissed Luke, my
boyfriend a.k.a. gallant gent, hoiking up his too-tight corduroy trousers so he
could squat down beside me, ‘I Googled “old-fashioned terms of endearment” and
pigsney’s a classic.’

I wiped tears from my eyes, dislodging a false eyelash in the
process, and tried to catch my hiccupping breath as Luke went on.

‘Means pig’s eye. No idea why that’s appealing, but
apparently in the seventeenth century, calling a lady pigsney was the very
height of courting.’

Through his fake specs Luke’s blue eyes fixed me with a
stare so earnest I almost managed to stop laughing.

‘But this is a
Death on the Nile-Stroke-Dart
murder
mystery night, Luke,’ I managed to get out. ‘Set in the nineteen thirties, not
the seventeen thirties.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but my character tonight, Mr Fijawaddle, is
a historical fiction writer, isn’t he? So as well as dressing like a brainy
recluse – and I’m warning you now, I won’t hear another slur against this tweed
jacket – he’d know all kinds of obscure terms. Like ginglyform and jargogle and
nudiustertian and bromopnea and farctate and quagswag and philosophunculist.’

His showing off sobered me just enough to control the
giggles. ‘You made those words up,’ I accused, poking a crimson talon into his
mustard-yellow shirtfront.

He blinked at me innocently. ‘Did not. I told you before we
left the house, I did my homework.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘All right then, Mr Fijawaddle, what
does that last word you said mean?’

‘Philosophunculist?’

‘Yes, that.’

‘Er…’ Luke gave me a sheepish grin.

‘Spill it,’ I said menacingly. As menacingly as a girl
dressed up as a vintage Hollywood starlet with cute little pin curls and rouge
aplenty can be, that is.

‘Philosophunculist,’ recited Luke. ‘Noun. A person who
pretends to know more than they do in order to impress others.’

I threw my head back and laughed. ‘Busted!’

Luke slipped an arm around me and pulled me close. Really
close.

‘Bet you like it when I use long words,’ he said huskily,
eyes fixed on my too-red lips.

‘Bet you like it when I wear a clingy nightgown as a dress,’
I replied, eyes fixed on his too-kissable lips.

‘Brazen hussy,’ he growled at me.

‘Randy boffin,’ I murmured back.

Then neither of us said another word for quite some time.

*

The moon, when it came into view over the hilltops, found me
sitting alone on the low bench running across the back of the boat. To get some
air. To catch my breath. To rest.

I’d like to say my exhaustion was due to nothing more than
the highness of my heels and the couple of 1930s Corpse Reviver cocktails I’d
sunk. Or even old Mrs Conway’s insistence on staying in character long after
our Hercule Poirot wannabe solved the murder, and lecturing me extensively on
the proper way for a Hollywood starlet to conduct herself in company
(apparently, smeared lipstick on both my lips and Luke’s was a no-no).

But the truth was, it was the people who’d drained me. All
of them. It came with the territory, unfortunately, of being a Cerulean,
someone who sensed pain and suffering in others and had the power to relieve
it. A little of the healing energy leaked out when around people. An hour or
two in company was manageable, I’d found – longer if I was with just one person
or two. But a four-hour cruise with a hundred other partygoers was proving to
be a challenge.

Still, I thought, looking down the boat at a group dancing
to Glen Miller’s ‘In the Mood’, I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now.
Certainly not on the little island of Cerulea with a woman who was quite
possibly my great-grandmother and who wanted me to pop out babies for the
greater good with a boy I loved but didn’t
love
. And most definitely not
with the other faction of Ceruleans, the Fallen, whose murderous ethos would
give Hercule Poirot moustache-ache and whose newest recruit was none other than
my sister, Sienna.

A dingy alley in Newquay.

An old man pinned against a wall.

My sister’s hands flooding blue light into his chest.

The man slumping to the floor, dead, dead...

I shook my head to scatter the memories. No, sister be
damned – I belonged here, on this boat. With my boyfriend, Luke, watching me
from across the deck as he chatted to party organiser/elephant hunter Si. With
my best friend Cara, teaching a gaggle of sniggering surfers how to jitterbug.
And yes, even with the twinkly-eyed gentlemen and chatty old ladies we were
mingling with, kindly benefactors of the Lux Beneficent Society we were here to
support – to the uninitiated, a charity supporting local good causes; to those
in the know, a major donor to the Ceruleans’ work.

So really, even though I was out partying with my
non-Cerulean friends, rather than furthering the Cerulean line or using my
power to heal, I was being a good Cerulean. I was supporting the cause.

That’s what I told myself.         

Sighing, I turned away from the party and stared downriver,
past the castles of Kingswear and Dartmouth, to the open water beyond, streaked
with silver moonlight. Once, the sea had terrified me – the result of an overprotective
mother who’d almost drowned, a sister who had drowned and a brush with death
beneath the blue myself. Now, I longed for the rush of flying along tunnelling
waves. Alive. Free. The mistress of my fate.

Only I wasn’t. Not really. Once, Luke and I had surfed side
by side. Now, I had to surf alone.

‘Why so blue?’

The deep voice behind startled me. I turned sharply, but the
breeze conspired with my curls to blind me and it took several moments of
untangling to get a clear view. A man, a stranger. Big and burly and too rugged
to pull off a tuxedo.

 ‘I wondered whether you were all right,’ he said, ‘sitting
here alone, away from the others?’

‘I’m fine, thanks. Just a little tired.’

‘Right. Partying’ll do that to you.’

He stood smiling at me, apparently waiting for a response,
but my mind was blank. You’d think, given my la-de-da upbringing, I’d have been
better at making small talk. But I was fairly stumped as to why this bloke had
wandered away from the party simply to exchange social niceties with me. He wasn’t
even my age – he looked forty at least.

I shot a look down the boat to Luke. He raised a
Do you
need rescuing?
eyebrow and I nodded imperceptibly.

‘So,’ said the man, ‘are you a supporter of the Lux
Beneficent Society?’

‘Er, yes,’ I said. ‘Aren’t we all?’

The stranger frowned and opened his mouth to reply, but was
distracted by Luke clattering up to us in his ‘historical fiction writer shoes’
(horrendous tan brogues he’d borrowed from old Harold at his grandmother’s care
home).

‘Ms Eliza Robson,’ Luke said smoothly, offering his hand, ‘I
do believe you owe me a dance.’

I stifled a laugh; his plummy accent really was dire.

‘Well, Mr Alistair Fijawaddle,’ I drawled in what was
no-doubt an equally shocking American accent, ‘I do declare y’all are right.’

I took Luke’s hand and stood. The stranger was standing
silently, watching us, and it felt rude just to walk off, so I said politely in
my own voice ‘It was nice to meet you’ as Luke led me away.

I heard him return a warm ‘And you, Scarlett’ but I was already
busy scanning the crowd for our friends. I spotted most of them clustered
around a table at the front of the boat, talking and laughing – the mood had
chilled, the tempo had dropped, and only Si and Cara were braving it among the
older folk waltzing around the dance floor.

‘Weirdometer in the red?’ asked Luke as we headed over to
the others.

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘That guy was harmless enough. I’m just not
in the mood for schmoozing.’

‘You’re tired?’

I looked up to meet his gaze, and the concern I saw there –
that I too often saw there – made my heart twinge painfully.

‘Not too tired,’ I reassured him.

‘Good.’ He gave a crooked grin. ‘Because I was serious about
that dance.’

I let him tug me to the middle of the dance floor. He pulled
me close and rested his chin on my head and swayed us gently from side to side.
Pressing my cheek to his chest, I relaxed into the rhythmic beat of his heart.

Ella Fitzgerald was singing of a blue moon turned to gold,
and my eyes drifted to the rear of the boat, where I’d sat in the moonlight.
The stranger had gone. I wondered absently who he was. Come to think of it, I
didn’t even know which character he was playing tonight; he wasn’t wearing a
name tag like the rest of us.

Hang on. Name tag. Mine read
Ms Eliza Robson, Hollywood
strumpet
. Only that. Yet as I walked away, he called me not Eliza, but
Scarlett. So he must have asked someone who I really was. Why would he –

A shiver went down my spine: Luke, brushing fingers lightly over
the bare skin of my back.

‘Limerence,’ he said huskily. ‘Noun. The state of being deeply,
helplessly, crazily in love.’

I tilted my head so I could look at him. He gazed down at
me. And I pushed up onto tiptoes and kissed his smiling lips.

For what else on earth could possibly matter right there,
right then, but Luke and me together – together at last?