Glimmers of Scales

by Emma Savant

  “Oh, thank you, faerie godmother!” she said.

  She didn’t make any promises.

  “Come on,” I said. My skin practically itched with a need to change the subject. “Let’s get dinner and see if you remember how Humdrum money works.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lily managed to eat and pay for an entire plate of spaghetti without letting anyone in the tiny Italian restaurant know she was a mermaid. I decided to take her for drinks after to celebrate.

  “Think about it, though,” I said.

  We sat at a table at the underage Glimmering nightclub, Gilt. Floating vanilla candles in holders made of shimmering autumn leaves floated above our heads, giving the air a soft warm scent at odds with the pulsing music and flashing lights on the dance floor. I’d thrown up a sound shield so we could talk without shouting.

  “Winter is almost here,” I said. “And you could either be here, in Portland, freezing your legs off, or you could be swimming to Hawaii.”

  “Been there, done that,” she said.

  I couldn’t imagine how someone could sound that bored when it came to Hawaii in October. She sipped her sparkling water laced with sea spray and pomegranate.

  “I want to move on with my life, faerie godmother. I want Evan.”

  “But maybe Evan doesn’t want you,” I said.

  I’d given up on using any conversation more delicate than a blunt instrument with her.

  “He’s engaged to another woman,” I said, slowly and clearly. “And he’s committed to her. He chats online with you and has little secret meetings with you here and there. You’re a secret. Meanwhile, he takes her out to lunch with his friends. He wants to spend his life with her.”

  “I want him to take me to lunch,” she said. “He’s perfect.”

  “I’m sure he’s a catch.” I rolled my eyes. “But maybe he’s not your catch, especially if he’s the kind of guy who cheats on people. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. Where you live.”

  “Where I lived,” she corrected. “I don’t know why you helped me get legs if you were only going to try to make me go back.”

  “Because I’m bad at my job,” I said.

  I stared down into my lavender lemonade. Two glasses scented with the calming herb hadn’t done anything to keep my temperature from spiking every time I thought about going through with setting my client up with her One True Love. Our arguments on both sides were getting a little thin around the edges, with no sign of either of us wearing the other down.

  I propped my head on my hand and looked out at the dance floor. It was a jumble of swirling bodies in weird clothes. Their magic rose in clouds outside the edges of my glasses, but even looking straight through them, the cobweb shawls and color-changing unicorn-hair dresses made it clear this wasn’t your average crowd. That might have had something to do with the tiny red dragon coiled around a sorcerer guy’s neck, though. It spat a stream of gold sparks into the hair of the elf dancing beside it.

  “I have a question for you, on a totally different subject,” Lily said. She was a little too enthusiastic, probably trying to make me feel better about this whole thing. “I’ve been hearing stuff about that Oracle you mentioned.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  Even though I’d told her more than once that the Oracle was on her side, this was the first time she’d seemed interested. It wasn’t surprising. Even the Faerie Queen didn’t have much to do with the magic in the ocean, so it was possible that Lily had barely even heard of other Glimmering leaders. The sea had rules and leaders of its own.

  “I heard a few people at Goose House mention her, so I thought I’d learn more,” she said. “It seems I can still communicate with other water creatures quite easily, even though I’m technically human now.”

  She put just enough emphasis on the “human” to remind me that she wasn’t planning on giving that up anytime soon.

  “So I contacted the water sprites that live in the Oracle’s Fountain.”

  I sat up. I’d heard of people talking to the sprites, of course. They handled most of the Oracle’s business and lived in her fountains all around the city. Imogen had asked them for enchanted water or advice dozens of times. But the way Lily said it, I got the impression she’d called them up just to chat.

  “Let me tell you, they had something to say,” Lily said. “They’re complete gossips. And I have no idea why you are all so obedient to the Oracle. She sounds kind of, well…” She leaned in and whispered, “Rude.”

  “Rude,” I repeated.

  The Oracle could be a little distant sometimes, sure, but that was because she was, well, the Oracle. Not all the leaders of our world could be as friendly as Queen Amani.

  Lily had so much to learn. The concept of teaching it all to her made the spot between my eyes hurt.

  “I thought you were focused on getting along with the Humdrums here,” Lily said. “My father said everyone on land is practically obsessed with fitting in with the Humdrums and not disrupting their world. But the Oracle isn’t like that. Why? And why do you all still respect her so much if she’s harassing the Humdrums and you’re all trying to keep them from knowing you exist?”

  My spine prickled.

  “What do you mean?”

  But I already knew. It hit me like the ceiling had come crashing in on my head.

  I fought to keep my face steady.

  Did Amani know?

  She sat up straighter and wrapped her hand tightly around her glass.

  “Is this not common knowledge?” she said. “I thought maybe it was a secret because of the way the sprites talked about it, but I figured you’d know. I mean, you work across the street from her Fountain.”

  “Is what not common knowledge?” I said. “What would I know?”

  She stared at me.

  “The Oracle,” she said. “She’s been pulling pranks and things on the Humdrums, or paying people who do it for her. Trying to scare them, I guess, make them think it’s ghosts. I was wondering why. I thought you knew.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said.

  I touched the silver ring through my shirt. It felt hot, or maybe that was just my nerves. Goosebumps rose up all along my arms.

  “Why would she make them think it’s ghosts?” I said. I kept my voice as calm and smooth as the surface of a still lake.

  “I don’t know,” Lily said. “That’s what I was curious about.”

  I rolled my lips together, forcing my breathing to stay steady, unwilling to get too far ahead of myself too soon.

  “What else did you hear?” I said. “I need to know everything, Lily. This could be, like, super important.”

  She swirled her faintly pink drink around in her glass. Tiny crystalline bubbles rose to the surface and popped.

  “She’s been giving rewards to people who do things to scare Humdrums,” she said. “She can tell who does it, because she can practically watch the whole city. She can see through any bit of clean water, obviously.”

  “Wait, what?” I said.

  She squinted at me, like she wasn’t sure she was seeing me clearly, like no one could possibly be this stupid.

  “It doesn’t have to be big,” Lily said. “There are mermaids who can do the same thing, sometimes. I can if I focus really, really hard. That’s how I contacted her sprites. I thought you knew that.”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Weird. Well, she’s good at it—like, she can see anything through raindrops or puddles or fountains or the river or, well, anything.”

  I shoved my lemonade away so hard it sloshed over the edge of the glass. My heart pounded. Lily’s eyebrows knit together in concern until she realized why, and then she shook her head and pushed the glass back toward me.

  “Clean water,” she repeated. “That’s got lemon and stuff in it. It would be like trying to look through a mirror covered in mud.”

  That didn’t mean no one around us was drinking water, or hadn’t tracked in a puddle from
their shoes and coat. I glanced around, suddenly grateful I’d put the sound shield up not only to protect us from the pulsing dance music but to protect our conversation from any prying ears, too.

  I put both hands around my glass anyway, trying to shield the liquid. I’d never felt so distrustful of lemonade.

  Outside our shield, the music throbbed and pulsed. My heartbeat raced to catch up with it.

  “What kinds of rewards?” I said. “Who’s been scaring Humdrums?”

  I didn’t even know if these were the right questions. I rubbed the ring through my shirt fabric. Should I take Lily to Amani now or wait until I’d squeezed every bit of information from her?

  I couldn’t imagine what the consequences would be if I accused the Oracle of something like this.

  “She pays them in gold, mostly,” she said. “That’s what the Oracle traffics in, isn’t it? And wishes.” She paused and tilted her head. “Does the Oracle really grant wishes? Like the Sea Witch?”

  “Kind of like that,” I said.

  “I heard she started doing it for Glimmering teenagers who liked to pull pranks on the Humdrums for a laugh. And then word caught on, and she’s got a lot of people coming to her now, telling her what they did and making sure she or her sprites saw it. People get the biggest rewards if they can get Humdrums to move out of their buildings. I don’t think that’s very nice, but the sprites say that’s the game.”

  “Do they know why?” I said.

  She shrugged. Her pearly shoulder peeked out from her slouchy pink sweater.

  “It doesn’t sound like the Oracle lets them in on much,” she said. “They just do whatever she says because, well, she’s the boss.”

  My hands felt cold. I pressed them between my knees to keep them from trembling.

  “What else do people do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She looked faintly surprised, like she hadn’t expected so much attention. “I could find out, if you want. I think they just try to scare Humdrums or get reactions out of them. But I don’t know why. That’s why I was asking.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I said.

  I propped my elbows on the table and let my head fall into my hands. My skull felt impossibly heavy. Or maybe that was my brain, loaded down with all this new information. It held more than I wanted to know.

  The world felt too big sometimes, and I didn’t know where I fit in it. What had started as a not-awesome summer job had turned into a job I kind of liked, but even that seemed to be rapidly turning into something that was way over my head.

  Why couldn’t anything be simple?

  I let out a long, slow breath and tried to think.

  Immediately, the emotions and thoughts of a dozen people all flooded into my brain, pushing against each other like the crowd on the too-small dance floor. The girl from the next table over was depressed because her best friend had just moved across the country. I didn’t know how I knew that—I just knew, the same way I knew the guy across the table from her was stressing over how to tell her he liked her sister, and the same way I knew the crazily-dancing sprite at the closest edge of the dance floor was only shaking her body all over the place because she didn’t want to think about how badly she was doing in math class.

  I sat straight up, slamming doors in my mind and shoving all the people out with a wall of silver.

  I hadn’t invited them. I hadn’t done anything to let them in except have the audacity to try to clear my head for one second so I could figure out what to do next.

  I’d been getting better at using Queen Amani’s shield, but I wasn’t good enough. A couple of days ago, I’d been sitting in class, minding my own business and taking notes for a literature test, when the emotions of every person in the room had come streaming into my head. I’d had to excuse myself to the nurse’s office, claiming a migraine.

  Every time, it was exactly like it had been at the wedding: One moment, everything was normal. The next, I was fighting for space inside my own mind.

  Lily leaned in toward me, her eyes open and too close to mine.

  “Are you okay?” she said. Her voice was way too loud.

  I shut my eyes and held out a hand, trying to make myself as steady as a boulder and let the last lingering impressions slip out of my headspace.

  When I opened my eyes, she was still gaping at me.

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Faerie problems.”

  I pushed my glasses up on my nose and rubbed the spot between my eyes. The music pulsed at the edges of our bubble.

  “I need to go make a call,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I pushed up from the table. The ring burned my skin.

  I pulled a couple of coins from my pocket and put them on the table.

  “Go ahead and get another drink if you want. I’ll be back in ten minutes, okay?”

  The music thundered behind me as I flew down the stairs and out into the street. The perpetual autumn rain had let up, leaving the pavement shining with puddles dyed red and yellow with reflections of the streetlight down the block.

  I walked quickly toward the corner, pulling my phone out as I walked. I pulled up my mom’s last message.

  Olivia: I’ll be home late. Project for work.

  Silently, I made a wish that she wouldn’t care. I couldn’t deal with more parent drama on top of all this.

  I sent a pulse of magic down the first dark alleyway I came to. It ricocheted off the Dumpster at the far end and bounced back, its echo letting me know there was no one there but me and a couple of Humdrum rats.

  I pulled Amani’s silver ring from under my shirt. It seemed to throb in my hands. I scanned the ground. Puddles glinted darkly from every direction.

  If the Oracle was spying through the water, she’d picked the right city.

  I crouched and pulled my wand from my hair. A second later, a jet of fire poured out the tip of my wand. I pointed the enchanted flames at the ground around me, then at the walls on either side.

  That would have to be good enough. I shoved the wand back in my hair, threw up a sound bubble, and slipped the ring onto my pinkie finger with the tiny mirror in the band facing toward me.

  The ring glowed gold for a moment, then Queen Amani’s minuscule face appeared in its surface. The image was clear and bright, the only spot of light in the alley.

  “Olivia,” she said, and she sounded both pleased and alarmed. “I haven’t heard from you in a while. Are you okay?”

  “I need to talk to you,” I said. “As soon as possible. I was just talking to my client and—”

  I fell silent. Even alone, even with my protection spell, I could swear the brick walls on either side of me were listening in.

  “It’s sensitive,” I said. “We need to talk somewhere safe.”

  “Of course,” she said instantly, cutting me off. “Where are you?”

  “Close to Burnside Bridge,” I said.

  “Meet me at the bus station by the bridge,” she said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen,” I said. “I have to send my client home.”

  She nodded and our connection winked out. The darkness closed in on me, leaving a glowing afterimage of her face floating in my vision.

  I shoved the ring back under my shirt and walked back to Gilt as fast as I could without running.

  Lily wasn’t at the table. I couldn’t see anything through the colored lights and pulse of the dancers on the floor, so I nudged my glasses down my nose and sent out a green tendril of magic. These little spells were coming to me easier than they had; whatever empathetic problems Maia’s wedding had knocked loose had also greased faerie abilities I used to have to strain for.

  But the tendril just lay there, limp, at my feet. It didn’t snake out toward anything like it should have—not out toward the dance floor, and not out toward the bar.

  Lily was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I threw the spell out again as soon as I was back
on the street. This time, the glowing green vine uncurled and stretched out down the street, sprouting leaves as it grew. I followed it, reeling the magic back into my aura as I went.

  She was headed south, no doubt off to catch a bus that would take her to Oregon City and Evan. But the magic slithered past the first bus stop I passed and headed in a straight line down the road.

  I was halfway through a crosswalk before I saw the car coming at me. I dodged forward, out of the way, just as it slammed on its brakes and jolted to a stop. The window rolled down.

  “Are you okay?” the driver called.

  Only in Portland, pedestrian capital of the universe, would he be looking at me with that kind of concern.

  “I am so sorry,” I said.

  I glanced up. His light had been green, and my crosswalk had been labeled with a giant red hand saying DON’T WALK.

  “That was totally my fault.”

  “But are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you so much. I’m sorry.”

  He waved, and I turned and crashed into someone.

  One crisis after another. It was a metaphor for my day.

  She held me out at arm’s length.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was trying to catch you.”

  I backed up and saw Amani looking down at me, her wildly curling hair adorned with glimmering raindrops. I glanced over my shoulder, somehow feeling like the Oracle was watching us. She probably was. There was water everywhere.

  “I realized it would be faster to find you than to wait at the bus stop,” Amani said.

  “I have to catch my client,” I said.

  “Let’s walk and talk,” she said.

  She held up a hand and rubbed her fingers rapidly together like she was trying to snap and was terrible at it. Her magic settled over my skin like cobwebs. I pulled my glasses down and saw a thick white haze surrounding us, thousands of tiny strands of magic woven together into that same thick fabric she’d used at the magic shop. This was a spell that didn’t let anything in or out.