Marvin was in a state of lassitude brought on by a distinct feeling of queasy unwellness. He’d seen something that had left him pale when he staggered onto the boat and settled into one of the thick cushions along the back end of the smaller boat. He spent what time he wasn’t hanging over the side and trying to control his gut, watching Ri and Sara and wondering why in hell it took so long for them to have left in the first place. Someone had screwed up somewhere, but he wasn’t sure just how it had all happened.

Still, it had smoothed out rather easily in the end. Noelle and Seth had made their way back from the yacht where they had met some need to brief Kundiman (whom they’d said had been impossible to find - but he’d figured it might have been because the big boss had fallen on some guy out on the jetty and had spent a good five minutes flirting and joking with him to cover the fact before she’d gotten back onto the boat) and now they were prepared and moving off, Ri and Sara working like clockwork to get things moving.

But then, he’d never really been on an operation before. He was an Office Manager, thankyouverymuch and while he had skills that the big cheese had thought would be necessary (opening a hospital door, for instance, or playing look-out), it wasn’t that he’d ever had to put them to use doing anything related to monsters and dead bodies.

Some of the girls (he hadn’t bothered to look too closely, as he was intimate with the waves at the moment) had gone about untying the boat from the aluminum tee-ties and the smaller boat began to float slightly out from the dock. Then Sara’d crowed something about listening to the engine purring (he wasn’t sure about the engine purring, but the smell of exhaust that rose to him had a strangely comforting effect - as if he’d never left land, really), and they’d slid easily into the harbor where they began to follow the larger yacht.

Marv gazed out back toward the jetty and the township they were leaving behind, Spanish influences even more obvious from the growing distance. An upswelling of sickness took him over again and he lost sight of everything as he leant over the side and gulped great mouthfuls of air.

When he opened his eyes once more, he found himself staring at an odd turned about reflection of his own face on the sliding, rippling water below him. Only, his face wasn’t that off greenish silver hue, nor were his eyes without pupil, nose slitted, mouth… full of razor sharp teeth.

Marvin blinked.

The mermaid did not. She smiled and it was a distinctly unhealthy smile for someone like Marvin. She was beautiful in an ethereal manner. She looked off to the larger yacht and then gave him a friendly wave and started to slip back into the water as the concept of mermaid and sharp teeth settled as only a half bottle of Pepto bismol could.

Without thinking, Marvin gave a half sound, a breath perhaps, of alarm, and drew the autorevolver from the side of his long pants (he’d been too sick to do more than change into a black tank top in the time it had taken the others to change completely). The heavy blue black gun settled into the palm of his hand as he crouched over the rail and sighted at the odd ripples of the water. He was certain it was a she as he could have sworn he’d seen a pale shadow of breasts under the shadowed water at the side of the boat. The mermaid’s blur of pale slid under the boat.

He stood back then flicked his glasses down and looked around him at the water. Mermaid. Well. It had definitely looked like it could have taken great chunks out of a dead body, that was for sure.

Marvin glanced back to the fore of the ship. Ri was bent over her computer, on the phone. The boat was large enough for the rest of them to have settled comfortably back for the trip. Marvin frowned and keeping an eye on the water, began to travel up the side of the boat, gun still out.

"-the hell?" Seth muttered as Marv all but climbed over the man. Alicia had said something about crazy secretaries, and someone had asked him what he was looking at.

He stared at the water, then pulled off his glasses as he realized they darkened the water. Not that he expected to see better under the blur of blue. "Something… " he muttered and then stopped to look over at where Sara was driving, standing up, the wind pushing her hair around. Everything on board was fine. The mermaids were supposed to have been dangerous creatures but the one he’d seen had reminded him of a friendly killer whale begging for fishy treats.

Sickness or something, Marv gave a small grin at the rest of them then shook himself. The mermaid had surprised him but beyond the sharpness of those teeth, she hadn’t looked all that dangerous.

A sudden splash and he wasn’t the only one alert as he felt, more than saw, Seth beside him jerk at the sudden flash of pale across their bow.

"Dolphin?" Seth muttered dangerously and Marv gave a shrug as the flash came again, closer to the boat this time.

"If dolphins have blue eyes and breasts, then probably," he stated in a laconic drawl as before them, the larger yacht left the harbor and sped up upon hitting open water. "There!" he hissed and the mermaid arched backwards, just under the surface of the water, her face eerily lit under the surface in a grotesque version of A Portrait of a Lady under a gauzy veil, her slender body almost completely on display - the more human portions anyway.

Marv shifted the Mateba, sighted, and hoped that his aim wasn’t off.

__________________

‘What will my death be like?’ he thought- and knew at once
with abrupt certainty, that it would be just like his life:
... the same balance of bearables.
~Amis