Fathom

by L. L. Standage

  “Oh, come on, Uther,” said Samantha. “No one has been back to that house in so long. Linnaeus won’t be watching it. And Olivia needs her shampoo.” She and Seidon exchanged another discreet glance. Was she trying to get back at me for our argument yesterday?

  “Then tell Calder where it is,” said Uther, as though this were obvious. “He can get it.”

  Sam clicked her tongue. “Nope. She needs to go get it.”

  “Why?”

  “Okay, fine, it’s tampons,” said Samantha. “She needs tampons.”

  My mouth dropped open in mortification. My entire head burned. “Samantha! I do not need—”

  “Enough,” Uther interrupted, hands over ears. “You need to get out of this house that badly, go ahead.”

  I covered my hot face. Samantha sniggered nonstop, with Seidon asking “What? What’s so funny?” over and over. I went outside and slammed the door behind me, then folded my arms across my chest and walked toward the car where Calder waited.

  Thank the heavens he didn’t hear what Samantha said.

  I got into the car’s front passenger seat without a word. The silence continued as Calder reversed out of the driveway, but it was a different silence than the last time we were in the car together. Instead of being cold and indifferent, Calder seemed calmer—more pensive than hostile. I looked down at his hand on the gearshift. My eyes traced the veins and muscles in his lean forearm.

  “Is it hard for you to drive American cars?” I asked. Calder shook his head.

  “It’s easy to get used to. The gear patterns are the same.”

  He didn’t say anything else. I looked out the window.

  “Hey, uh. I just wanted to…” I hesitated and the seconds kept passing.

  “What?”

  “Just wanted to say I’m sorry about the other night.”

  He smiled grimly and laughed through his nose. “No, you’re not.”

  “No, really, I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

  “Why are you apologizing?”

  “I just…”

  “Stop.”

  I looked at him.

  “Stop?”

  “Stop apologizing. It’s getting on my nerves.”

  My anger rose again. “Well, you know what? I take it back, then.”

  “Fine.”

  “Now you’re getting on my nerves.”

  “You didn’t have to come with me.”

  “I know.” I said it, then wished I could have thought of something more intelligent. He was going to think I wanted to come with him. Like I tried to come. “Samantha was just being annoying.”

  He went quiet for a while.

  “I’m glad I got the truth.”

  “That I’m not a mermaid?” I asked incredulously. “It’s not like I lied on purpose. I just didn’t know that you…didn’t know. I thought everyone knew.”

  He glanced at me for a second and I looked away. Did we just have a civil conversation? Amazing.

  “You’re talking as if this is your fault,” he said.

  “Isn’t it? I was the one in the stupid costume.”

  “Yeah but...” He trailed off as he looked at me. Wow, his eyes.

  “If it makes you feel any better, Natasha didn’t know either,” I said. He shrugged one shoulder.

  “Maybe a little.”

  I looked out the window and watched the passing hills for a moment. “How far is it to La Jolla?”

  “About fifteen or twenty more minutes.”

  “You seem to know your way around pretty well.”

  “I’ve been here a couple times. And we study maps a lot when we go on a task.”

  “A task? Is that what you call it?” I smiled. “Sounds a little underrated.”

  “We like to keep a low profile.”

  “Understandable.”

  The conversation continued in an easy rhythm that grew easier with every passing minute. Soon, we arrived at my aunt’s house. He pulled up slowly, looking in all directions before stopping in front of the house next door.

  “Wait here until I tell you it’s clear,” he said. He got out, scanned the area again, searched the bushes in front of the house, then walked through the gate in the backyard. A minute or so later, he came back and waved me out. I got out of the car. Calder checked the mail while I ran in to grab the shampoo Samantha claimed I needed—there was no way I was going to admit she’d been lying. Eternally grateful again that Calder hadn’t heard the part about the tampons, I grabbed whatever bottle sat in the shower and cringed. Store-brand dandruff shampoo. Not happening. Instead, I went to the kitchen and grabbed a plastic grocery bag to hold the mail.

  “Where’s the shampoo?” he asked after I came out and locked the door.

  “I, uh, couldn’t find it. Got the mail?” Thank goodness we had a real reason to come.

  “Yep.” He handed me a stack. “We should’ve had Uther stop the mail. We forget stuff like that sometimes.”

  I put the mail in the grocery bag, got in the car, and looked through the envelopes and ads as we drove to the store. A postcard from my aunt came up.

  “My aunt is in France.” I smiled as I read through the postcard. “Glad she’s having fun.”

  “So that house belongs to your aunt?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought Samantha lived there.”

  I laughed. “No. We’ve been housesitting. Not very good at it, are we?”

  He laughed. A small, but real laugh. I never thought something so simple could be so attractive. I wanted to make him do it again.

  “Can I ask you something else?” I said. He glanced between me and the road.

  “What?”

  “Could you tell me more about the testing you did? On the mermaid blood? I’ve been dying to know.”

  He smiled. “You know anything about biochemistry?”

  “Not much, but it looked fascinating.”

  He began explaining, first about how he could figure out blood type, then how he tried to isolate different proteins and DNA.

  “I don’t have enough equipment to do everything I’d like, but I have enough to help Eamon,” he said.

  “That’s so cool! Is mermaid blood anything like human blood?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know more about.” He turned the car off. We had arrived at the grocery store and I didn’t notice.

  “Maybe someday you will.”

  He lifted one shoulder. “Maybe.” He half-smiled and got out of the car. As I got out and followed him, I let my gaze trail over the chiseled lines in his back and over the well-formed back pockets of his blue jeans. Just a little bit.

  We walked to the back of the store, toward the dairy aisle, when a sudden crash rattled the shelves nearby. I stopped walking and looked toward the sound. At the other end of the aisle, soup cans rolled in all directions. Stumbling over them was Brock Mallory.

  My chin dropped in surprise. He looked at the display of soup cans he had destroyed, then gazed at me, his eyes wide with horror. Calder grabbed some creamer and walked back toward me, his eyes lingering at the mess Brock had made as he passed.

  “Need anything else?” he said. I shook my head, trying not to laugh. Calder noticed me watching Brock and looked over his shoulder. Brock hurried away.

  “A friend of yours?”

  “No. His name is Brock Mallory. He’s the guy who sent my picture to the tabloid.”

  “Really?” Calder said keenly and strode to the aisle where Brock disappeared. He glanced around the corner, then came back. “Not too bright. Let’s hope for his sake Cordelia never gets her hands on him.”

  I laughed, but my laugh was cut short by a gasp. Brock came back into view, but this time he wasn’t alone. He was with Polo Shirt guy. My mouth fell open and my skin went cold.

  “What is it?” Calder asked, seeing my face. He looked back. I grabbed Calder’s hand and ran. He didn’t question me. He didn’t stop. He only ran, tossing the coffee creamer into a clearance bin
before we hurried through the automatic sliding doors of the supermarket.

  We scrambled into the car just as Polo Shirt came out of the store. He climbed into a large, navy blue Ford truck and screeched out of the parking lot behind us.

  Calder glared into the rearview mirror. “Who is that guy and why did we run from him?”

  “He’s with Linnaeus. He was one of the ones who kidnapped me. Oh!” I cried, remembering something else, “And one of the guys who found Delfina’s body! He might’ve even been there when she died!”

  “Does he know you’re a human?”

  “Yes, they all know.”

  “Why’s he chasing us then?”

  “Maybe because I stole the vessel from Linnaeus? I think he’s a cop. Or he pretends to be. I don’t know. The guy must be in Linnaeus’s pocket.”

  We sped down the road, taking several turns, until I looked behind us and realized the navy blue truck wasn’t following us anymore.

  “I think we lost him,” I said. Calder checked the rearview mirror.

  “You can never be sure. We’ll drive around for a while in case we’re being followed. If he’s a cop, he’s got connections.”

  We continued driving, my heart returning to its normal pace. I had no idea where we were.

  “Is it always like this? A car chase every other day?”

  “When dealing with men like Linnaeus, yes.”

  “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have come with you. Cordelia’s right, I’m too easy to recognize.”

  “Yes, you are,” Calder agreed, sounding amused as he raced to beat a yellow light.

  I turned to look out the window, trying to hide my smile. Calder was still being nice to me. I was about to let my heart revel in the sweetness of the change but caught sight of a patrol car. Whoops.

  “Calder! Slow down!”

  “What, I had to beat the light,” he said, then saw the cop. “Oh.”

  The patrol car sitting at a side street pulled onto the road behind us. Dread stole over me.

  “Don’t try to run,” I said. “Maybe he hasn’t heard about us yet.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes! Running from the police is the stupidest thing you can do. We’re not exactly in a Ferrari. There’s no way we could outrun him.” I looked behind us. The police officer turned his red and blue lights on.

  “I made it before the light turned red,” said Calder. “We weren’t doing anything illegal.”

  I gave a bitter huff, remembering the night I was kidnapped. We weren’t doing anything illegal then either, yet Polo Shirt told me I was under arrest.

  “Just pull over. Maybe he’ll just give you a warning. Can you fake an American accent?”

  “Not very well.” He pulled the car over. “I can speak a little Gaelic though. Maybe he’ll let us go if he thinks I can’t understand him.”

  I gave a nervous laugh.

  The burly cop tapped on Calder’s window. I jumped, but he calmly rolled the window down.

  “Problem, Officer?” he asked, not speaking Gaelic.

  “Do you know why I’ve pulled you over?” He had a ruddy face, a shaved, receding hairline, and wore a pair of rimless sunglasses.

  “No.”

  “Hmm.” He looked down his nose at us, sucking at something in his teeth. His radio buzzed, and a garbled voice spoke. He held up the radio. “Ten-four, Mallory, I got ’em.” He went to say more, but Calder threw the car into gear and sped back into traffic. The red-faced officer recoiled away from the car. Horns wailed, tires screeched, and the cop ran back to his patrol vehicle.

  “Not again,” I moaned.

  “Just hold on. I’ve got an idea.”

  “There’s no way we’re going to get out of this.” I had visions in my head of helicopters, barricades, and stop sticks popping our tires.

  “Yes, there is. Just do what I tell you. We’ll be fine.”

  “How can you be so calm?”

  “Experience.”

  “Right. You’ve done this before.”

  “This particular trick? Only once. In Scotland.”

  Oh, real experience. A loud siren howled behind us. I looked through the back window. The cop was on our tail. By the time we had gone another mile, a second one trailed us. The people in the cars beside us stared through their windows at the police chase occurring right in front of them.

  “What’s the wind like?” Calder asked me.

  “The—what?”

  “The wind! Look out the bloody window. Is it windy?”

  “You look out the bloody window!” I cried. “You’ve got one too, don’t you?”

  Though the situation was anything but funny, he laughed.

  “What does the wind have to do with this?” I asked.

  “Just a little bit farther…” he muttered before screeching onto a side street. The cops followed.

  “We’re going to jail, we’re going to jail,” I said, my anxiety turning into hysteria. Calder turned again, tires whining amid a chorus of more bellowing horns. I screamed. “We’re going to die!”

  “Shut up. We’re going to be fine.” He turned a corner again, then another, where we came upon a used car dealership. He careened into the used car dealership lot, plastering me to the side of the window, and hurtled into an empty space. We were sandwiched between two other cars in the lot, one of them the same color as ours.

  I sat frozen in my seat until Calder ducked, reached over, and pulled my head down. We waited behind the dashboard as the sirens blared along the road. They passed us by.

  “Okay, get out now. No, on this side.” He grabbed the bag of mail, opened his door, and climbed out, keeping low to the ground. When I got out of the car, he shut the door, then flattened himself on the pavement and dragged himself underneath the car beside us. I cringed but followed. The gravel scratched and ground into my skin as I pulled myself further into the tight space underneath the black, greasy engine.

  The sirens returned. I gasped and recoiled, as if pressing myself harder into the ground would keep us from getting caught.

  “Stay calm,” said Calder. He put his hand on my arm. “It won’t be long before they figure out where the car is.”

  The sirens passed. I exhaled and relaxed, my energy waning.

  “Why’d you ask about the wind earlier?”

  “Needed to make sure it would blow away the smoke from our tires. This trick doesn’t work if you’re sitting in the lot with a smoky car.”

  “Oh.”

  “Come on.” Calder wormed beneath the car. Weak, shaking, and sore, I dragged myself after him, but he didn’t stop after coming out from under the car. He continued his army crawl under the next car, and then the next. By the time we reached the end of the row, the sirens had come and gone only once more, and we were so scratched, smeared, and filthy, it was unlikely anyone would be able to recognize us, let alone the police.

  “We need to get to a phone,” said Calder. “I left the mobile at the house.”

  I got up and pulled my askew tee shirt back into place. I tried to brush myself off but gave up. It was pointless.

  “Let’s go,” he said. We took off at a jog.

  “Where are we?” I asked as we crossed a residential street full of dilapidated houses.

  “I don’t know. Somewhere south of Oceanside, I think. I’ll be keen to get away from here as soon as we can.”

  He had a point. The neighborhood looked rough. There were broken windows in the houses, crooked and rusting weathervanes, and garbage cans sitting along the side of the street, bursting with garbage. Graffiti covered the fences and the rancid odor of a blocked sewer floated in the air. What if we got stuck here after the sun went down?

  I grimaced as I passed a car pockmarked with what looked like bullet holes and slowed down.

  “We can’t stop now,” Calder called over his shoulder.

  “… I’m so tired.”

  “You’re not much of a runner, are you?” he asked as he slowed to a walk. />
  “Not really. I guess I should probably get in shape.”

  “It’s not your shape you need to worry about. It’s your endurance.”

  I smiled. He almost paid me a compliment.

  “Why don’t we just take the car home?”

  “We can’t. The patrol cars will be watching for it.”

  “Don’t you guys have another car hidden around here somewhere?”

  “We did, but not around here,” Calder replied. “One of them was a rental. We already returned it. Another is in storage near the house and the van is at home, along with Samantha’s car. Or is it your car?”

  “It’s mine.” I sighed and tried to slow my breathing. “Some trip to the supermarket, huh?”

  Calder shrugged. “Predictable these days.”

  “How do you shake it all off so easily? I feel like my heart is still going a hundred miles an hour.”

  “Again, you need to work on your endurance. We didn’t even run half a mile.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”

  He gave me a teasing smile.

  “I’ve been around this kind of thing for most of my life. I learned about the existence of merpeople when I was quite young.”

  “Do they have merpeople in Scotland?” I asked.

  He nodded. “In one of the lochs near where I grew up.”

  “Right, of course—” I stopped, horrified at myself. He didn’t know Cordelia told me about his ex-girlfriend. I didn’t mean to say anything about it. In my surprise, it just slipped out. Hoping he missed my meaning, I switched gears.

  “D’you…d’you have family still in Scotland?” I asked.

  “Yeah. My mum. My da died a few years ago.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

  He shook his head. “I’m over it.”

  I doubted that. My dad was still alive, and I didn’t think I’d ever get over not seeing him at home with my mom every day.

  “There’s a petrol station,” he said, nodding ahead. “We can call Eamon.”

  We stood at a gas station pay phone—a thing I thought would no longer exist because of cell phones. These particular pay phones had seen better days, but they worked well enough to save our butts. Calder held the phone to his ear, his eyes filling with worry as he listened to Eamon talk.