Why did that sound familiar?
Old memories stirred. I’d been just a pup—seven, maybe eight, still small enough that my tiger shark form was barely longer than a surfboard. My family had been leading me northalong the migration path, the one our family had traced for generations, and we’d passed a stretch of coastline where the water tasted different. Like the ocean itself had been steeping in power for centuries, and the flavor had seeped into every droplet.
I’d wanted to stop. We hadn’t. Of course we hadn’t; that would have deviated from tradition.
Not for us, they’d said in the method sharks communicated underwater, through pressure changes and electromagnetic pulses.That place belongs to the land-touched. We pass through. We don’t stay.
I’d heard of places like that. Safe havens for witches and shifters, normally near some sort of magical hotspot. Some buddies had once attempted to take me to one up north for a Halloween festival, but it was too landlocked for my taste. Crescent Cove, however…
I’d never forgotten the taste of that water.
“That one.” I pointed at Crescent Cove before my brain had caught up.
Jeremiah looked surprised, then pleased, which was a combination I didn’t trust. People in his position were only pleased when things went according to a plan you didn’t know about.
“Crescent Cove! Great choice, actually.” He clicked, and a new window opened—more spreadsheets. “We were hoping you’d pick that one. Turns out we have a connection there—someone local, well-respected in the community. A bit of an…insider, you could say.”
“An insider,” I repeated flatly.
“Someone who can help us with conditions. Making sure we get the best possible waves for the cameras.” He said it casually, like he was talking about a weather app instead of whatever the hell he actually meant. “She’s got a reputation for—how did they put it—reading the ocean. Locals swear by her. They say she can practically call the swells in.”
I stared at him. “You’re telling me RipTide has a wave psychic.”
“I’m telling you RipTide has a consultant.” He smiled like he was being clever. “The point is, Crescent Cove gives us the best chance of picture-perfect conditions, and picture-perfect conditions give us the best footage, and the best footage gives us?—”
“The best comeback narrative. Yeah, I got it.”
I leaned back in my chair and looked at the map again. The little pin over Crescent Cove. Such a small dot for a place that had left such a big taste.
A “consultant” who could read the ocean. In a town whose waters tasted like power.
So, a witch.
Even if Jason had no idea that’s what she was.
Something tightened in my chest—not the human part, the shark part. The part that had evolved over four hundred million years to sense when the current was about to change. The part I had been ignoring.
“Perfect,” Jimmy said, already clicking to his next slide, already moving on. “I’ll have the contracts drawn up by Friday. Now, let’s talk about your social media content calendar?—”
I stopped listening to him again.
But this time, it wasn’t from boredom.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the RipTide offices, I could see the Atlantic, bright blue and filled with people under the midday sun. But in my mind, I was already somewhere else. Already tasting water that hummed with magic.
I’d tried to cut the shark out of me these past few years, and it had accepted that fate quietly. But now the ocean was calling me somewhere specific. Of that much, I was sure.
And I’d learned a long time ago—the hard way, like I learned everything—that when the ocean calls, you don’t ask why.
You just swim.
CHAPTER THREE
Selena
I started the voicemail.“Mija, it’s your mother.”
My face must have reflected my emotions, because on the other side of the counter, Elliot had the decency to pretend the smoothie menu fascinated him, even though he’d been ordering the same thing for years.
