“Helps a lot, huh?” I say.
“It does. Imagine that. If you can.” He winks at me, and I cannot believe he’s baiting me about therapy and it’s working.
Another tentacle slaps the wall, and this time the very skinny end of it taps on the windowpane like someone’s knocking.
“Do you think it wants to talk?” I ask, tilting my head at it.
“How am I supposed to know?” Caleb spreads his hands wide in confusion.
“You do coastal conservation,” I say. “You said you could solve problems. It’s knocking on the window. What if it doesn’t want to pull us into the ocean? What if it just wants, like, to hang out?”
“You think a giant kraken wants to hang out?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve never hung out with a kraken, giant or otherwise.”
“Are you trying to say you want to go outside in the storm and talk to a giant kraken whose tentacles are wrapped around the lighthouse?”
“I mean, I don’twantto do that,” I tell him. “That’s not something that I’m eagerly signing up to do. It’s not like something that I’ve dreamed about doing. ‘Oh yes please, I’d liketo discuss my car’s extended warranty with a kraken during a freak thunderstorm.’”
He laughs, and I scowl at him before continuing.
“But I’m trying to figure out what the heck is going on here. And we’ve got an animal that seems to be trying to get our attention outside with a giant eyeball. And I don’t know about you, but if I think there’s a giant brain in there to match that giant eyeball, doesn’t that just make sense?”
Caleb looks at me for a long beat. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yeah, it might make a strange, weird kind of sense. But you have to consider that I just found out that dogs can talk and magic is real, so my barometer for what makes sense might not be completely on track tonight.”
“Fair enough,” I say. “All right. Where’s that heinous fashion crime of a yellow raincoat?”
Fifteen
It’s still pouring, and despite the fact that yellow is not my color — never has been, never will be — and in fact is something I’ve worn only to garner sympathy when I feel unwell, I am dressed head to toe in shining, bright, rubbery yellow glory.
Gross.
“At least if I get swept out to sea, I’m visible,” I mutter under my breath.
Caleb, holding a massively oversized flashlight, glances towards me. “What was that?”
“Ohh, nothing,” I say, “just thinking about becoming a buoy. A slight life change, you know. Perhaps my next career just bobbing in the sea.”
I’m pretty sure I hear him laugh, but it’s hard to tell with the noise of the rain still coming down and the waves crashing against the jetties.
It’s no longer a torrential downpour, but it’s still raining hard enough to be concerning.
The minute we walk around the circumference of the lighthouse, I second-guess myself. Well, we’re like sixth guessing myself, but who’s counting? Not me.
The tentacles are as wide around as Caleb’s shoulders, which reminds me of just how yummy he is.
Dragging my gaze away from Caleb, I force myself to focus on the problem, which is massive tentacles attached to a huge creepy eye and thus a giant and hopefully less creepy brain.
What seemed manageable inside the lighthouse has the lizard part of my brain absolutely screaming to turn around, take my chances with the floodwaters, and get my ass back in my pink house that’s enchanted to keep things out of it.
Especially tentacled things.
And yet, I put one poorly sized rainboot–clad foot in front of the other and make my way closer to the glowing eye watching me from the sea.
A tentacle slithers along in front of us, retracting back into the water.
I swallow hard and gamely pretend not to notice it.
