"Look!" Lucy crowed. She whirled around, showing off a blue windbreaker. "I'm all set for going out on the water now. It's one of Wyona's old ones that she said I could have."
Eren broke into a grin. "You're making friends all over here, aren't you?"
"It's a nice town." Lucy looked down as she helped him stow the cooler on the boat. "Sometimes I think they might not like me, though."
Eren's bear flared up inside him with a protective growl. "Why not?" he asked, fighting to keep the growl out of his voice. "Did someone do something? Say something?"
"Oh, no, it's not like that. It's just that sometimes I feel like there's a big secret everyone's hiding that I'm not in on." She gave him a brave little smile. "It's not like I can complain. I have secrets too."
Eren felt guilty. Yeah, therewasa big secret, and Lucy was intuitive enough to pick up on it—the town was full of shifters. And no one dared talk about it with her, so she felt left out.
"You know," he said as the boat began to motor away from the shore. "One thing about being out on the water is that we can talk about anything out here."
Lucy tensed up a little. "Oh?" she said.
Okay, this wasn't going in a direction that seemed likely to result in a casual conversation about either his secretsorhers. "Or we could just ride for a while, if you want."
"I'd like that," she said.
It was a gorgeous day to be out on the sea. The breeze off the ocean added a refreshing chill to keep the day from being too hot, and it looked as if Lucy was glad of her windbreaker.
"There's a hot thermos of coffee in the supplies I brought on board, if you want to get it," Eren said. "And some bottles of water. You can get chilled and dehydrated out here a lot faster than you think, so I always make sure there's plenty of both."
"Sure!" Lucy said. She jumped to her feet, then stood a moment as she got the hang of moving with the waves. Eren glanced over his shoulder to make sure she wasn't going to fall, but she seemed to get the rhythm of it quickly.
"Make sure to hang on to the railing in case of a big wave or sudden gust of wind moving the boat around," he called as she started down into the cabin.
"Will do!" she called back up.
Then she gave a little yelp as if she'd found something unexpected.
Then there was silence.
"Lucy?" Eren called.
There was a clatter from below, a yelp, and what sounded very much like a feminine voice cursing.
Eren throttled down the engine. From below, Lucy gave a small shriek.
"I'm coming!" Eren called.
He looked around for anything that could be used for a weapon, and grabbed a fishing gaff—an iron pole with a hook on the end, used to haul fish onto the boat. He charged down the steps in such a hurry that he nearly smacked his forehead as he entered the low-ceilinged cabin.
It was dim belowdecks, with only the light coming in from the high porthole windows to illuminate the small space. The fishing boat's cabin was meant for temporary occupation on fishing trips, so it was functional rather than luxurious. There was little more to it than a narrow walking space between the galley—kitchen—and the built-in bunk, with a swing-out seat at a small table that doubled as a workbench, a bunch of built-in cabinetry, and not much else.
Lucy was, it looked like, having some kind of seizure on the bed, thrashing around and muttering to herself. Eren was stopped in his tracks not only by this, but also by what he in his first baffled glance took to be snow everywhere, drifting down lightly on every surface.
Then he realized it was fluff from a ruined pillow, just as he caught a flash of rapid movement along the ceiling.
Eren dropped the gaff with a resounding clang and grabbed what turned out to be a trash griffin in panicked flight. It flapped wildly at his hands and tried to peck him.
"How'd these things get in?" Eren snapped. He chucked it up the stairs into the pilothouse.
"I don't know!" Lucy yelled. "Ow! It's tangled in my hair! It's pecking me!"
Eren hurried to help her get the trash griffin out of her hair. Meanwhile, there were thumps from above and a skittering sound across the floor.
He looked around and saw another one, this one with the lower half of a possum and the wings and head of some kind of dark gull. It was getting worse. Eren tried to poke it away from the cooler with his foot.