Free A Thing As Good As Sunshine by Juliet Nordeen

to say: pragmatic, level-headed
and direct. Maria? Is that really you?
    " It's me, kitty-cat . "
    You okay? Where are you? Are you all together? She said she’s taken
y’all somewhere safe. I wanted to believe that it really was Maria in my
head and that she wasn't talking to me with a gun to her head, real or supernatural.
    " This Faery Bitch might be lighting up the tilt sign with most of
what she's dishing out, but for the moment we've got it made in the shade . Do
what you gotta do, kitty-cat. Don't you worry about us. "
    That had to be Maria, and most of what she said made sense in a 'billy
way. All except the part where she called Laume a Faery...that wasn’t 'billy shorthand
we tossed around in our circles.
    What did you call her? I asked Maria in my thoughts.
    "She's Faery, magic, not human...you know, Tinkerbell gone wild."
    But she's so big.
    " That's enough ," Laume butted in to my mental
conversation with Maria like she'd just taken her cell phone away. " Your
dog-paddling saviors have arrived. You have a job to do. "
    My heart ached at being allowed to talk to Maria and then having her
yanked away like that. I believed in my gut that my phamily was alive, and not
in danger, for the moment. I had to believe Maria would have found some way to signal
me if that had been the case.
    You'll keep them safe? I asked silently.
    I heard, "G et it done ," and then Laume’s presence in my
mind evaporated, too. Whatever magical connection we'd used to have that odd
conversation had been severed. Violation ended.
    I blinked my eyes and shook my head. Had I really just had a telepathic
conversation with my Faery-napped best friend while floating in a lifeboat,
awaiting rescue by a couple of Mexican fisherman? Was any of it real?
    Assessing my new reality brought on a bloom of cold behind my breastbone,
loneliness. For the last twelve years I'd always had at least one of Billy's
Asylum Rats no further than a phone call away. Now it was just me and the crazy
voices in my head.
    I looked in the direction of the shrimp boat and was surprised to see a muscular
young man with black hair and chocolate skin heave himself into the lifeboat,
rocking it violently. He lay panting in the bottom of the boat as the
searchlight did its best to stay on us. I hadn't heard his approach as he swam,
nor his kick against the water to propel his body into the boat, not even his
deep breaths as he lay a foot away from me in the bottom of the boat. The young
man yelled — or at least his lips moved — as he gestured for the other man to
swim over with the free end of the rope. But I couldn't hear his voice. Or the slosh
of the water. Or the voices of the other men.
    I couldn't hear anything.
    After a day of Impossibility stacked upon Impossibility, it seemed a
small thing to suddenly not be able to hear — but it was a huge thing. I'd
never had trouble with my hearing in my entire life; for the drummer in a rock
band, that said something.
    As I opened my mouth to ask the universe why the hell this was
happening , nothing came out. Not a peep, not a syllable. When I touched my
throat with my hand I didn't feel any vibration, but I got a tickle on the
inside like I'd swallowed a handful of junebugs. I started to cough and
apparently that made a sound because the young fisherman looked at me with
concern before turning his attention back to his buddy arriving with the rope.
    I panicked.
    After what I'd been through over the previous three days there shouldn't
have been any adrenaline left to race through my body, but my heart pounded
fiercely all the same. I couldn't hear and I couldn't speak. Why couldn't I
hear? And what did that have to do with not being able to speak? Was this a
spell Laume concocted to keep me from messing up her well-laid plan to get me
to Portland? Was it punishment for my less-than-stellar manners? What kind of
monster takes away a person's ability to communicate? And at a time like this?
    Pulsating motion of the lifeboat