“Is Natasha okay?” Calder asked one of them. It was he who had sat beside me, but I refused to feel comforted.
“I think so, for now,” Eamon answered. “I got the bullet out, but she lost a lot of blood. We might have to get her to a hospital if she doesn’t start improving.”
“How could she have led them to us?”
“She didn’t mean to. She tried to hire a boat, but one of Linnaeus’s men tricked her into thinking he was the guy she’d hired. She didn’t realize the truth until it was too late.”
Someone moved around the galley. I heard the footsteps, a hollow sound on the floor of the boat.
“Olivia?” Calder said. He put his hand on my shoulder. I didn’t want to talk.
“Leave her be for a moment,” said Eamon. “Let her rest.”
Calder walked away. I shivered again.
Sometime later, I fell asleep, though I couldn’t remember when. The brightness of daylight coming in through the portholes awakened me. I opened my eyes, feeling stiff and wanting a shower. My mouth tasted like something had died inside me. As I sat up, looked around the galley, and saw where Samantha’s bed had been put away, I realized something had died inside me. My best friend, the one steady thing in my life, was gone.
I rubbed my forehead and sighed as fresh tears spilled over.
I heard Eamon’s voice on the deck. For a fleeting moment, a surge of harsh resentment shot through me. Because of these people, Samantha was dead. They brought this on us and then couldn’t save her. I hiccupped and sobbed harder.
No, it wasn’t their fault. They did everything in their power to protect us. Samantha wouldn’t have wanted me to become angry. She would have wanted me to be happy, to laugh. I smiled a little to myself at the thought of what she might say to me right now…
“I don’t want you to cry, Liv. I want you to go have fun, be awesome, go be a marine biologist and marry a Scottish Hottie and have pretty babies and name one of them Sam.”
I shook my head. The hurt in my chest was still there, the loneliness unwavering, but I dried my eyes and got out of bed.
I wasn’t ready to face the others, so I went into the bathroom, gave myself a sponge bath, and washed my hair. I looked in the mirror. A bruise marked my forehead where I’d hit my head. The rest of me looked gaunt and gray.
When I finished washing the salty grime off my body, I changed into a swimsuit, shorts, and a tee shirt just in case we were forced to get wet again, then came out to the main deck.
Eamon, Uther, and Calder sat together. Uther’s head bowed, Eamon’s face lined with worry, and Calder frowning in sympathy. I sighed and looked away, instead gazing at the thin line of gray-green land in the eastern distance.
“Are you hungry?” Eamon asked. “I’ve got some sandwiches in the ice box.”
I nodded to be polite and found a place to sit in one of the chairs. I wasn’t really hungry, but I needed something to do with my hands. Eamon rose and disappeared into the cabin. I could hear the squawk of seagulls and the lap of the waves against the boat.
“What time is it?” I asked, my voice rough and tired.
“Just after noon,” said Calder. “We’re going to head back to land tomorrow.”
“Here you go, lass,” said Eamon, handing me a plate with a sandwich and a bag of potato chips. I opened the bag and picked at the chips. Eamon sat down across from me. “Olivia.” He hesitated. “You don’t have to do it right now, but…we’re going to need you to call Samantha’s family.”
My hands shook. I tried not to cry, but I was losing the battle.
“I can’t.”
“I’m sorry. But they need to know.”
I dropped the chips and hid my face, wishing Calder and Uther would quit staring at me. The wind caught the bag of chips and flung it overboard, but I didn’t care.
“Please don’t make me do it.”
“The longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be.” I heard the compassion in his voice, but I felt none of it. I wanted to yell, to thrash, to choke, to cry, to refuse to do what I knew I had to.
“Eamon, give her some time,” said Calder.
“Too many questions will be asked. The sooner we inform her family of what has happened, the better. You can say you were sailing with some friends and there was an accident.”
I continued to sob, shook my head, and went back down the stairs, through the galley, and into the cabin where Natasha slept. I climbed into the lower bunk on the other side and cried into the pillow.
Natasha woke later that evening, but she didn’t talk to me. I made sure my back faced outward and pretended to be asleep. I held on tight to the pillow, which smelled like Calder. Once, Eamon came in to ask if Natasha and I wanted dinner. I ignored him. All I could see in front of my eyes was Samantha’s laughing face—and the devastation her family would suffer when they learned what had happened to her.
Later, I awoke from a fitful slumber to find the cabin dark and the portholes showing a night sky and a black ocean. I could hear Walter and Uther snoring above me. Disoriented and heartsick, I got up.
I crept out of the cabin and through the galley, where Eamon and Calder slept on the makeshift bench-beds. I didn’t want to disturb either of them, so I went outside. The ocean was calm. The sky was crystal clear and alight with billions of stars. The thin, yellow crescent moon hung in the west. I sat on the back edge of the boat, let my bare feet dangle, and leaned against a chrome bar supporting the railing.
My skin prickled as the cold, misty moisture of the ocean tickled my feet. I looked over the expanse of the water with a deadened kind of longing. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. All the hopes I had built up, all the things I had aspired to had changed. I couldn’t be what I had wished to be. How could I dedicate a career to the place that had buried my best friend?
I bowed my head and heaved a sigh. It was so peaceful out here right now. Vast, uncomplicated, and innocent. But I couldn’t enjoy it. I couldn’t bring myself to love it anymore and it hurt almost as bad as Samantha’s absence.
I heard footsteps. A moment later, Calder sat beside me. He said nothing and I didn’t acknowledge his presence. We only sat, staring at the ocean.
After a long silence, though I knew it sounded stupid, I said, “Thanks for not hating me anymore.”
He shook his head. “I never hated you,” he replied, his voice low and even.
I looked at his profile for the first time, confusion drowning out the shards of anguish. “You sure acted like you did.”
He frowned. “I wanted to. I tried to.”
Since I expected him to deny it, this surprised me even more.
“Why?” I whispered. He took a slow breath.
“I thought maybe it would get you off my mind.” His gaze remained on the ocean, his expression pained. I closed my eyes, wet my lips, and swallowed. He continued. “When I…first saw you on the beach” —he paused— “for a second I wished I wasn’t here on business. Business that had to be kept a secret.”
I stared at him, rapt, barely breathing with the hope that he’d continue.
“Then Delfina told me what you said to that glaikit idiot,” he said. I wondered who he was talking about but I didn’t dare interrupt. “The one who thought you were a mermaid.”
Oh. Brock Mallory. At the beach. When I was pretending to be a mermaid to freak him out.
Calder continued. “Even then, I wanted to talk to you. But at the same time, I hoped to never see you again. Because, well, the last time it happened...” He trailed off.
I waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, I spoke.
“You got your heart broken. I know. Cordelia told me.”
He looked at me. “What?”
“She told me I looked like some other mermaid you once knew. And that she broke your heart.”
Calder huffed and shook his head. “And all this time, you thought I acted out from a bruised ego?”
I shrugged. He sighed.
“Aeronw
y was…a friend, yes. More than a friend, I admit it. But she’s the reason my father was killed.”
My mouth dropped open. I felt a new pain in my chest alongside my grief over Samantha. Why did this stuff have to hurt so much?
“She wanted to experience human life,” he said. “Her family didn’t agree. She rebelled. Got herself into a dangerous situation with some gang members. My father had to rescue her. She got out. He didn’t.”
“I’m so sorry,” I breathed, putting my hand on his forearm.
“Me too,” he replied. “I miss him a lot. So when I first met you—I wanted you out of my head. I didn’t hate you, I hated myself for—you know. Feeling the way I did. It felt like betrayal.”
He looked at me. His brow creased in sorrow. I sniffed, looked back at the dark water and wiped away a new tear. Calder’s warmer hand found mine. I leaned my head on his shoulder, wetting his shirt with my tears. He moved his arm to encircle my waist. For a while, we sat there, saying nothing, while I cried into his neck.
Soon, I sniffed and dried my eyes, and we were left again in the peace of a calm ocean.
“I’m so sorry about Samantha,” he said. I stayed silent for a moment. I didn’t know how to answer. I couldn’t say, “it’s okay.” It wasn’t okay and it wasn’t going to be okay for a long time.
Instead, I heaved a breath and said, “Me too.”
His arm squeezed around me. Rocked by the gentle waves and warmed by his arms, I soon dozed in the comfortable crook between his neck and shoulder. His fingers ran softly through a few strands of my hair. I couldn’t deny it anymore, even though I knew he was just a traveler passing through. Was I falling for Calder? I suddenly understood why Samantha had wanted to hang out with Seidon so much, even though she knew he’d move on. He’d already moved on. Soon, Calder would too. And I would have to go on without the both of them. My tears returned.
Until Calder lifted his head and looked around.
“Did you hear that?” he said.
“What?”
“Listen.”
I listened, my heart plunging again into the agonizing panic I never wanted to feel again. I clung to Calder like a life preserver. Then the sound came again.
“Wait, I heard it too,” I said, looking around for the source. It sounded like a voice. I turned toward the door to the cabin to see if it was one of the others, but no one was there.
“Olivia.”
I jumped and looked down.
“Seidon?”
He appeared in the water just beyond the boat, only visible from his head to his bare shoulders. He looked up at Calder and me, his arms floating upon the water at his sides.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner. I came as quickly as I could.”
“I’m so glad you’re okay!” I said. “But Sam—”
“Samantha’s alive. She’s all right.”
At first, the wall of denial enclosed me. I shut my eyes, my hands shaking. Seidon had to be joking. Sam had been shot. She fell into the ocean. She didn’t come up. How could she be alive? My hands clutched at my face as a cascade of emotion tumbled out of me. My wracking sobs threatened to crack my ribcage.
Calder put his arm back around my shoulders. “Olivia, breathe. What happened, Seidon?”
“She saved us. Well, me actually. Cordelia got away but she remained just beneath the boat, calling reinforcements to help. The Zydrunas guard captured Marinus. We allowed Linnaeus to drown, but we took Samantha with us.”
“You…you took her with you?” I asked. “Where? How? How did she survive?”
“She saved the life of a member of the royal family at great cost to her own. Her wounds were too severe for us to allow humans to look after her. She was granted the chance to be taken to Zydrunas to be healed by one of our physicians. She’s going to be fine.”
“How?”
“It’s simple, really. The kiss of a merperson.” He grinned.
“The kiss of—Seidon, just come out with it!”
He sighed in frustration. “I’m not supposed to tell humans about it. I’m already in enough trouble because of things I’ve said while we were on land.”
“Just tell me!”
But Calder spoke instead. “I’ve heard of this before. The kiss of a merperson keeps a human alive. It has to be done under the water, where the merperson is from. It keeps the human in a sort of limbo. They don’t age, they don’t die, they don’t need to eat or even breathe. It’s how mermaids claim humans.”
Seidon gave Calder a long, suspicious gaze. “How do you know about that?”
“Have you ever—” I asked him, but he interrupted me.
“No. I’ve only been told about it.”
“I didn’t tell Samantha about it before because I was forbidden—and because it’s an insidious thing to do. It’s basically keeping a human as a toy. It’s an old practice and hasn’t been done in centuries. In this situation, though, I had to, or she would have died. I wasn’t even sure it would work because I wasn’t in my true form at the time.”
“Then she’s alive? It worked?”
“Yes,” he replied, his smile spreading. Finally, relief—wonderful, glorious relief—grew inside me. Half laughing, half crying, I wrapped my arms around Calder’s waist. His arm squeeze my shoulder.
“When will she be back?” I asked.
“Well, she would have come up to see you now, but she’s still changing.”
“Changing?”
“It was the only way. If she didn’t come with us, she would have died. And if she didn’t become one of us, she would have had no life at all. She made the decision herself and was granted the honor only because—”
“Samantha is a mermaid?” I shouted. All reason fled my brain, leaving behind a buzz of incoherent thoughts I couldn’t grab a hold of. It had been so much worse to think she was dead. But now she was a…
“Please, understand,” Seidon said. “We had to.”
Without thinking, I broke away from Calder and launched myself from the boat and plunged into the water next to Seidon. As I swam toward the surface, he grabbed a hold of me.
“Take me to see her!” I said. “Please! I saved your people too! I kept your secrets! Please!”
“Olivia, calm down,” said Seidon. “I can’t take you.”
“Why not? Do I have to step in front of a bullet too? Oh wait, I already did that!”
“Please. Your life is here. You have a future. She didn’t.” He held me in the water while I sobbed. Then he continued. “She will be able to come back.”
My crying lessened, but my breath came in jerky gasps as I shivered from the cold of the water.
“Sh-she w-will?”
“Yes. She’ll be able to come and see you and her family and everything. I just wanted to come and tell you so you would know she’s okay.” He gazed at me with a small twinkle in his eye. “She’s perfect.”
“So her choice was death or become a mermaid?”
“Would you rather she chose the first?”
Humbled, I shook my head.
“I know we’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you’ve done. You both have helped stop an evil man from destroying our lives—our world, even. But you’re needed on land. And believe me, Samantha will have a life with us. She’s already charmed the salt out of my parents.” He smiled.
At last, I nodded and smiled and wrapped my arms around his neck as warm tears fell from my eyes. He hugged me back. My bare legs brushed against his scales and I looked down.
“Can I see your tail?” It was too dark. The water might as well have been ink.
“It hasn’t finished forming yet,” he said, looking embarrassed about it.
“I don’t care.”
He lifted one of his feet out of the water. It looked like he wore a long flipper. The tail elongated outward from his foot, which wasn’t really a foot at all anymore, just half a fin. I ran my fingers over the smooth, silvery scales.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Here, you’re freezing. Calder, help her.” With astonishing speed, he brought me back to the boat’s stern. He pushed me up until I could grab a hold of Calder’s hand. Once I was back on the deck, I looked down at Seidon.
“When can she come?” I asked.
“She needs to adjust first. Become accustomed to life down here. Then I’ll make sure she comes up to see you.”
“What do I tell her mom? She’s going to wonder what’s going on if she doesn’t hear from Samantha for too long.”
“We’ll handle it. Everything’s going to be fine.”
I nodded. “Please,” I said, “promise me you’ll take care of her.”
“I will,” said Seidon with a smile. “On my honor.”
“And tell her I’m always here for her no matter what.”
“Of course.”
“And tell your people…tell them thank you for saving her life.”
Seidon nodded graciously. “I have something else for you, but you need to keep it in water or it’ll disintegrate.”
“What is it?”
“I’ll need something to put it in.”
“Wait a moment,” Calder said, then hurried to the cabin and returned with a gallon size bucket. He tossed it down to Seidon, who caught it, filled it with sea water, and placed something in it.
“It’s from Samantha. As soon as you’ve finished reading it, destroy it.”
“Okay.”
He propelled himself out of the water and handed Calder the bucket, then landed with a splash. I took the bucket and looked inside. A scroll tied with a weedy-looking string floated at the bottom.
“Goodbye Olivia, Calder,” said Seidon. “We’ll see each other again. Thank you for all you have done. My mother and father thank you, too.”
I waved as Seidon flipped over and disappeared with a flick of his two fins. In the east, the sky began to lighten, casting a gray, misty light over the mainland. I looked into the bucket again. Calder handed me a flashlight with a small smile.
“Thanks,” I said, so happy I could have kissed him.
“I’ll be inside.”
I reached into the bucket and untied the string. It was slimy and prickly at the same time. I unrolled the scroll, which didn’t really feel like paper, more like cloth. The words on it looked like they had been burned onto it instead of written:
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