Witches' Waves by Teresa Noelle Roberts Page B

definitely harder since he wasn’t right on the beach. He could see the water, feel the water, but they were high enough up that even the big surf only spritzed the area.
    Most of the time. He’d never seen it himself, but his parents’ generation remembered a storm that brought waves crashing onto the garden they were in now, despite the water witches’ and weather workers’ efforts.
    The wave that was coming was one of those.
    With half his brain, Deck worked desperately to pull the water back from Meaghan’s lungs, to give her room to breathe. With the other half he reached out to the ocean, reminding it of all the good times they’d shared, imploring it to calm the fuck down.
    The ocean acknowledged him, but the wave was still building. Meaghan was calling it without knowing she was doing so, and her wild call appealed to the untamed ocean more than Deck’s more contained power could.
    People were springing into action all around him, mostly working on Meaghan. Jan and his grandmother had taken over for Kyle, who’d kept her breathing long enough for the healers to get a handle on the magical aspect of the problem.
    Great. With them taking care of Meaghan, he could focus completely on what he had to do.
    Which was to stop playing nice. The Donovan way was to work gently with the powers of nature, but even the more rule-bound older generation admitted it didn’t always work. In tight situations, you had to punt—and this was a tight situation.
    Deck chanted, not one of the traditional Gaelic spells, but a steady English chant of “Calm down. She just meant to say hello, not call the great waves.” Donovan ancestors had learned Gaelic water spells from the aquatic fae called selkies when Ireland was still tiny kingdoms ruled by feuding kings, but sometimes Deck needed simpler words, words from the heart. “Please. Calm down. Don’t hurt anyone.”
    Deck sensed the ocean recognized his words and was trying to obey, but Meaghan was still sending out her wild call. Less than a minute had passed since he sensed the wave building, but there was no time to waste. What had started far out to sea was now dangerously close to shore.
    Deck did something he almost never did. He called deliberately upon his other power, the one that played neither by Donovan rules nor those of his mother’s family, from whom he’d inherited it.
    Lightning flashed out of a clear sky, followed by a great clap of thunder as the lightning struck the water. At the same time, he made his water power into a metaphysical fist and smashed down on the growing wave.
    The lightning was just enough energy to heat the surface of the water a degree or two. Even magical lightning couldn’t violate physics completely, which was a damn shame under the circumstances. And the impact of the “fist” would do nothing against the vast force of a riled-up Pacific. But magical lightning meeting a magically conjured wave had an effect that physics hadn’t figured out how to explain yet, especially when backed up by a dope slap from his other powers.
    The ocean had a consciousness of sorts, and the desperation behind the lightning strike and blow got the wave’s attention.
    Gave him room to slip soothing water magic in while the wave was, for want of a more precise word, distracted.
    The wave began to dissipate. It would take time for the ocean to calm itself completely, but Deck’s sense of the water’s movement told him the immediate danger had been prevented.
    Surrounded by healers, Kyle supporting her, Meaghan was breathing normally. Thank the Powers. But water magic was never that fucking simple. Deck still had to disperse all the wave energy properly, making sure it didn’t store up and end up doing something freakish later. He dispersed it into a series of waves, all up and down the coast, large enough to make for a great day of surfing or boarding or wave watching, but