Sabrina Spellman was used to random Hellbound animals showing up and having an instantaneous bond with them or bits of Hell appearing and bringing a dark cloud down on the world until she managed to get the proper wards up. But waking up to a small blue card on her bedside table with coordinates had been disconcerting in a way that she hadn’t known how to process.
Heading to the coordinates (because of course she did) and finding new land formations in the water alongside the northern part of Vallo’s big island had only added to her confusion until she’d glided through the openings as the sun began to rise, careful not to soak her wings, and discovered the various interconnected caves. She hadn’t a clue what any of it was at first, not until she remembered a conversation she’d had months back with Callum on her yacht.
It was possible that they weren’t the caves he’d talked about, but Sabrina had stopped believing in coincidences a long time ago. Why else was Vallo going to send her to a place that hadn’t been there before and she’d been thinking about since he’d mentioned them? Vallo knew what it was doing even if she didn’t always understand the place’s motives.
Sabrina cupped her hands tightly around her mug, letting the hot coffee inside of it warm her up. The sun had been up for hours, not a cloud in the sky, but the breeze off the water brought about a chill that she was going to need to get rid of soon enough. The yacht wasn’t quite at the location she needed it to be yet, but she estimated they should reach the new land formations in about fifteen minutes.
Hopefully, Callum wouldn’t fall back to sleep in that amount of time.
She tossed a croissant his way, not particularly caring if he caught it or it bonked him on his head. “It’s not even that early.”
He’d been yawning when a croissant suddenly moved into his view; he didn’t quite catch it, but instead batted at it uselessly as it fell to the table between them. Callum wasn’t much of a morning person. Arguably, he wasn’t much of an anything person.
“I,” he grumped half-heartedly, “am not a seagull to toss crumbs to.” He somewhat contradicted the notion by grabbing at the pastry and tearing off a bite of it anyway. In his defense, they were very good croissants.
He didn’t really have any idea where Sabrina was taking him - she’d said something about a new plot of land cropping up, and while that sometimes meant monsters and mayhem, Callum was fine with an adventure. Adventures were novel. He doubted there was much that would successfully decapitate him with Sabrina being near and reasonably fond of him. He took a big sip of coffee and propped up his chin in his hand, gazing at her behind a pair of large sunglasses: “Are we there, yet?” He asked ironically.
“We're about 15 minutes away,” she told him, spearing a piece of pineapple with her fork. She leveled it at him, eyes narrowed. “And no, you can't take a cat nap because you drag me into those and then we don't wake up for hours.” Admittedly she didn't really mind when he did that but this wasn't her ignoring her phone or not heading back into the office after they got lunch together.
“We want the light for this place.”
Sabrina didn't mind manipulating the weather (which was why it was a nice sunny seventy-five on the yacht) but she wasn't as fond of trying to manipulate the sun's position in the sky. That fucked with way too many things.
He shot her what he assumed was a pathetic “but I stayed up too late last night drinking wine and scrolling mindlessly through my social media feed” expression, but didn’t argue. Callum was, truly, curious. It was (in his mind) his worst quality, his curiosity. This wasn’t remotely true - he had many, many worse qualities than his curiosity, but it was his curiosity that continuously spurred him to trouble, and so he rated it below all others.
“I’m mildly surprised you didn’t receive yet another animal for your menagerie,” he mused. “It’s nearly that time of month.” Sabrina’s dedication to animal rescuing was something he largely stayed out of, not being much of an animal person. His cactus Sabrina had provided him with was alive by the grace of God at this point.
“I was hoping for a helicopter.” Not that she knew what to do with one of those, but it would fit in nicely with the yacht and car. She half expected some ridiculous fancy private jet to show up after the car but that seemed useless when there really wasn’t anywhere to go in one.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love my little menagerie, but if Vallo wanted to drop me the latest Maison Valentino line I wouldn’t complain.” A little less responsibility and something purely to enjoy. It wasn’t what she would have worn back in her own world but she’d been slowly stripping those parts from her since the beginning of the year. Clothes were a simple way to separate herself from the life she’d known and what she had in Vallo.
“You still haven’t received anything?”
Callum shrugged. He didn’t really know why he hadn’t received anything - God knew he had access to any of the Nova families vacation homes, cars, and other properties - but he wasn’t too worried about it. “I think Vallo is trying to teach me humility,” he answered, irony in his voice, because boy would that never work. “I suppose I’m fortunate to arrive with my abilities intact. It seems some people get nerfed.”
The waters were growing choppier, as if they were in a shallower area of the… the sea? Ocean? Giant fuck-off lake? Callum didn’t trouble himself with Vallo geography, particularly because it was always changing. “Besides,” he said, and looked down with interest over the side of the yacht, “I make an excellent kept man. Where are we headed?”
Her lips twitched with amusement at the ‘kept man’ comment before she gestured out at the water. “Look about fifty feet to your right.” Heaven if she knew which was starboard or port.
The cave formations that had popped up seemingly out of nowhere transformed the coastline. Small marble islands with intricate caves at the bottom and shrubs along the top dotted the area, surrounded by crystal clear blue waters. If they got closer to land she’d be able to look down and see the bottom of the ocean, but Sabrina’s attention was on Callum, wanting to see his reaction to the sight.
“They reminded me of the ones you talked about a couple of months back.”
He followed her instructions, pivoting his head slowly toward the direction Sabrina had indicated, his expression cool. At a glance, he could see how the ocean floor had changed in the filtered sunlight - how the rocky outgrowths collided with the water in surprising ways. Callum recognized them, but took a moment to place where he had seen them - they weren’t of Vallo at all. No, the last time he’d been to the Marble Caves, he’d stayed up too late and drunk far too much the night before in a tiny, dusty little town in Argentina, and he was desperately regretting the outing as his kayak heaved over ocean waves. But as soon as he’d seen that strange, graceful world half of water, half of carved rock, Callum had forgotten both his headache and his disdain for his traveling partners and had promptly and purposefully gotten as lost as he could, using only the distant sensation of his traveling companions’ emotions to guide him back hours later.
He took his sunglasses off then, his iceberg-tinted eyes moving across the shoreline to confirm what he suspected: “The ones on the Chilean coast, yes. They’re certainly a reasonable facsimile, of what I remember. I was blisteringly hung over, but--”
He looked back at Sabrina, expression as taut as it was gracelessly contained. Callum seemed aware that he had very nearly rambled just then. “Do you-- are these… do you think they’re for me? How silly is that,” he added, before he could sound too wondering.
Sabrina was torn between finding it adorable and yet also a bit depressing how he kept stopping himself mid sentence, as if he was containing himself. It wasn’t too surprising. She’d learned he held back a lot, rarely showcasing pieces of himself at times, but they weren’t in a sea of people. “It’s just you and me here,” she murmured as she leaned against the railing, trying to get a better look at the formations springing out of the ocean.
Well. That wasn’t entirely accurate. There was a whole crew on board but they were fairly good at being neither seen or heard unless needed. “I don’t think it's silly to wonder if this was placed here for you. It’s kind of what Vallo does. I mean…we talked about a cactus cafe and then suddenly there was one opening a few weeks later.” She glanced over at him. “I also don’t think it’s silly to talk about when you last remembered seeing it. But anyway, I figured you might not want to share this with anyone else so I didn’t invite any of the others…plus I’m pretty sure you think half of my friends are annoying.”
“You’ve got two options. Either you can go solo on the little boat thing the crew is putting into the water to explore the caves and I’ll stay here and read the horror book I brought along or we can go together.” Sabrina shrugged. She did want to read the book at some point, though she hoped he’d rather they explored together. Either option worked for her.
Sabrina wasn’t wrong; Callum found most (all) people annoying, including himself. He didn’t waste energy denying it, instead letting his gaze slide back toward the waves, his hands on the railing as if resisting the urge to fling himself over it.
“There’s no need to present me with options as if they’re gifts,” he said, but if the words were prickly his tone had no barbs; he was too distracted. “I can feel your desire to come with me.” Such a tiny, strange, defenseless thing: hope. It was one of his least favorite emotions, particularly because it was so often misplaced, and he disliked how once someone felt it, how it infected himself. Its lines, for whatever reason, were porous, and he moved forward from the topic:
“So do it,” he said, with a shrug of his shoulder in invitation, and he drifted toward the kayaks on the side of the yacht. “You needn’t worry if we’re separated,” he added, tossing his kayak into the water. “I can sense you from a fair distance.”
“I thought kept men liked gifts,” she said, following him to the kayaks. She pushed her kayak off the side of the yacht, taking a quick glance through one of the crew members’ memories to see exactly how she was supposed to get in and use the thing. It was on the tip of her tongue to remind Callum that just because she wanted to do something didn’t mean she had to do it.
Restraint was something she was well versed in, needing to do so daily in a variety of ways. Mostly with her powers, or the animals, or Hell. One of the things she enjoyed about hanging out with Callum was that she didn’t need to. If she wanted something, she took it. If she didn’t want to head back into work, she didn’t. Sabrina found herself worrying less about, well, everything.
“If you ditch me I will sink your boat,” she told him, her smile sickly sweet as she caught his hand and tugged him toward her. And then Sabrina kissed him because she could and she wanted to.
He’d been distracted when she’d kissed him, but sensed her intention a few moments before her lips touched his and focused. “If you drown me, I’ll haunt your ass,” he answered in turn, and setting his kayak in the water, he climbed down the ladder to where it floated. Callum was no athlete (being one required dedication that he lacked, as a person), but he’d done enough kayaking to enter his with confidence, and he settled in and tried not to gripe about the chill of the water.
He could see the variations in rock formations just below the waterline. Vallo didn’t experience time the way any other place did, and that would never not be strange. He was familiar with rocks earning their shapes, but Vallo’s magics just unmade the world and rearranged it however it pleased. He wondered if that was how Nico and Libby had felt: as if laws didn’t apply to them.
They’d likely have thought the same of him. Once they were done swearing about him.
He stuck his paddle into the water and glided forward toward the overhang of a cave. “Goes without saying that if you fall in, I’m not saving you,” he called over his shoulder.
“We both know if you did that I’d think you’d been swapped out for a pod person,” Sabrina called after him. Or possessed. Also a possibility in Vallo.
Sabrina wasn’t too worried about falling into the water. Between the crew member’s memories and her ability to fly, she was able to get into the kayak with minimal water splashing on her. She used the paddle to push her away from the yacht and then narrowed her eyes, charming her kayak to follow Callum’s. She’d been up before dawn running with the hounds so a little cheating with magic seemed perfectly reasonable to her.
She smirked as she eased her kayak parallel to his before turning her attention to the rock formation she was about to float under. The beauty of them was readily apparent as she passed into the cave an array of seafoam greens, sapphire blues, and frosty grays reflected onto the wall in various swirls all around her. She didn’t bother speaking, aware Callum could pick up her emotional response to the place, content to sit back and let his kayak pull hers along as she took it all in.
He could feel her approval, loud and clear as if she’d voiced it, but he didn’t verbally respond, instead looking with keen eyes at the rock formations. Glacier melt-off had tunneled deep into the heart of the rock, creating miles of catacomb-like mazes punctuated by that ridiculous Hollywood blue water so rich it almost begged to be called cerulean. Callum had liked it for all these things, but he’d liked it more for the quiet: no one was here, at present, save himself and Sabrina, and Sabrina was thankfully relaxed, her feelings unobtrusive.
Callum paddled off down a passageway, the strokes in the water loud enough to guide Sabrina if she wished to follow, before pausing at a sparkling wall of crystals, ocean sloshing over the top of his kayak. “Oh look,” he drawled, and looked over his shoulder at Sabrina. “Good vibes.”
She glanced over at the glittering wall, mildly impressed by what nature had managed to create. Crystal magic had never been a favorite of hers, the idea of needing to memorize what each one was used for seemed tedious at best. A little better than potions, but what was the point in learning how to make a healing salve when she could touch someone and cure what was wrong? At least the crystals were pretty. She knew it made her sound conceited but whatever. Everyone had their preferences.
“Why was this place one of your favorites?” she asked, trailing her fingers through the water, breaking up the light that poured in from various holes in the rock. Sabrina could guess, she had her suspicions, but she was angling for an honest answer. Whether or not that would be provided was always a toss up.
Callum liked crystals because they were pretty. End of story. He knew plenty of magic-users who utilized crystals for their manipulations, and he knew plenty more charlatans who utilized them because they looked nice, but there was nothing quite so lovely as the glow of a rose quartz in the golden hour. Callum, at the end of the day, was fine with being shallow.
He glanced back at Sabrina over his shoulder. “Because no one’s here,” he said as if the answer was obvious, “and even when people are here, the formations interfere with their projection.” It felt quiet, even when it wasn’t quiet. “Of course,” he added, “get a bunch of drunk tourists in here and the affect is spoiled, but the same could be said of anywhere that happens. You like it,” he added, because he could tell that she did. “It’s unique, isn’t it?”
“I’ve definitely never seen anything like it,” she agreed, glancing up at the rocky ceiling. Maybe there were similar places in the world, carved out by the water run off, but none of them would be cut exactly like this one, with these waters surrounding them and the light reflecting off them the way it did. Even in Vallo they were so different from anything else she’d come across.
She’d been thinking of telling others about the place after showing Callum, but now Sabrina wasn’t sure she wanted to do so. It was always possible that others might come across it but maybe it could be just theirs for a few days. “I think I’m going to not blab about this place to anyone else.”
He dipped a paddle into the water, as much as to do something as to mull her offer, however implied it was. Of course he wanted to keep people away from it - he felt much of Vallo could be improved by less people being in it - but her statement had the aftertaste of some sort of olive branch. It didn’t go unnoticed.
“With all these future kids running about, someone’s bound to slip and crack their skull against something geologically interesting,” he agreed after a moment, his voice in full “snobby brat” mode, but a smile played at the corner of his mouth.
She shook her head, lips pressing together as she tried to hold back her laughter. She really shouldn’t have found that funny. It probably said something about her that she found anything that Callum said to be amusing. Though her ever increasing fondness toward him was probably worse.
Oh well. Sabrina wasn’t about to analyze herself. That was what her therapy appointments were for. If only she hadn’t been skipping those for the past month.
“Want to keep exploring for a bit and then head back to the boat for brunch?” she asked, her kayak coming to float next to him as the cave opened a bit.
Callum nodded, and stuck a paddle in the water. “If these mirror the real thing,” he called over his shoulder, “there’s an underwater cavern system through a series of passages. I don’t recommend actually exploring them, unless you’ve a death wish, but the colors are lovely from the surface.” Callum, explicitly, did not have a death wish and left dangerous expeditions to those who enjoyed them. But from the relative serenity of a kayak… well. They were away from Vallo’s madness and the Halloween festivities briefly. He’d take what time of quiet he could get.
Sabrina was in no hurry to venture back to the insanity of the future children that had been cropping up nearly every day for the past week. She might have been happy for her friends but there were a lot of other mixed feelings that lingered with them around. Ones that she didn’t want to delve into. “Let’s go look at some pretty colors,” Sabrina agreed, ready to enjoy this bit of tranquility for as long as she could. “Lead the way.”