I set Heathcliff on the plush bed. He lay down gratefully, easing his bony bottom into the luxurious comforter. I reached for another Tiffany lamp on a bedside table. I listened to a low purr of sound outside. The tide. The ocean.
I hurried to a huge bay window. I loved being near the ocean, any ocean. My skin tingled. I’d grown up on Cape Cod, right on the beach. How many times my father had scooped me up in his arms and plunged into the tide with me, laughing as I laughed, burrowing into the ocean as if tunneling into a beloved nest.
I felt the magnetic pull. I believed I could see underwater; maybe I had a compass in my head, like the fish and the whales. As I grew older, alone, after my parents died in a land-bound car crash, I started to worry that I was deranged, that losing them, particularly losing my father, who lived in the water as if he preferred it to land, had damaged some rational part of me. So I submerged all those wild ideas about the water, and let them surface only in my books.
I remembered giant bluefin tuna, slipping up almost to the shallows like huge pets when my father whistled; seabirds gliding overhead not in raucous greed but to cluck lightly, sweetly at friends; the iridescent sheen where the surf licks the outreaches of wet sand. The world, my father said, is a beautiful woman. The ocean is her necklace. There, on that edge between water and earth, I could see it shine.
My father. My father was descended from Paul Revere and a mermaid. A mermaid. That meant I was descended from Paul Revere and a mermaid. Holy Nonsense, Batman. If I believed a word Juna Lee Poinfax said. I didn’t.
“Agggh,” I said aloud. But I looked out the window and gasped.
I saw the island. Out there in the moonlight, a golden island shielded the bay of this Georgia hideaway. Sainte’s Point. Juna Lee had prattled on about it endlessly during the drive from Memphis. Home of the Bonavendier Mer clan since the 1700s. A beacon for Mers in this part of the world ever since. Not that I took any of her delusions seriously.
Despite myself, I trembled. Sainte’s Point was majestic. Magical. Ethereal. Lights winked among the moon-tinged outline of the forest. The island was like some great ship anchored to the heart of the ocean floor, beckoning me with the glitter of its lanterns.
Your metaphors are as overwrought as your books, Juna Lee snarked.
I swung around, stared at the door, and raised my cane like a sword.
No, she hadn’t slipped into the room. I was still alone. She’d spoken to me inside my mind.
I reeled. Just my imagination. Just like that strange moment in Memphis, when the mysterious Lilith had “spoken” to me psychically. I was overwrought, yes. The dime-novel heroine needed a Zanax, that was all.
Juna Lee rapped on the door. “You’re a Mer. Tranquilizers don’t work for you. Drink a cola. Eat some fish and a bowl of high-fat chowder. Now, that’s comfort food.”
She was reading my mind. Just like in Memphis. “You should work as a lounge act in Las Vegas. Do card tricks and tell fortunes.”
“And you should drink a couple of stiff colas out of the miniature fridge in your room. It’s in the armoire in the corner. A couple of colas will loosen up those sissy nerves of yours.”
“I’m allergic to cola drinks. I get dizzy and disoriented.”
“No, you get drunk. Admit it: you like the way they make you feel. They make you tipsy. You know that sounds impossible — it’s another one of your secrets, like being a duck magnet. But you’re not nuts, you’re a Mer. You can swig booze all day without getting a buzz, but anything carbonated throws off your blood gases and makes you giddy.”
“That’s ridiculous pseudo-science. It’s not physiologi-cally—”
“Admit it. You love to climb into bed at night with Geezer Kitty, a stack of books, and a fizzy cola. You guzzle the stuff, get looped and fall asleep in a stupor, with romance novels and self-help books scattered all over you.”
“Stop doing this . . . this cable-TV mind-reading act!”
“Chill out. Look, I’m going to a wedding on the island tonight. Charley’s downstairs, so don’t get any loopy ideas about escaping. Gulp some cola, get drunk, and read the books I put on the nightstand for you. There’s a history of Mers that Lilith wrote, and a book about Sainte’s Point. You read those books. Read them! You like books! It should be easy! Read! There’ll be a quiz when I get back!”
“You’re going to the island and just leave me here?”
“To a wedding on the island. If you’d be a nice little Floater, you could go, too.”
“I rarely enjoy weddings I attend as a hostage.”
“All righty, then. Be stupid. Stay here. Practice your psychic e-mail. If you need something, just think about it. Charley will hear you.”
“Pardon me, but that’s insane.”
“Have it your way, idiot.”
I heard her footsteps on the landing, then receding down a heavily carved staircase. I moved closer to the bay window and craned my head, trying to see her leave. A few seconds later she strode out of the cottage along a sandy path lined with pink oleander shrubs and palmetto. A flirty little silk robe twitched around her in the warm night breeze. I watched as she passed an elaborate stone boat house, then out to the end of a long pier.
When she reached the end, she shucked the robe and stood naked in the moonlight.
My jaw dropped. She pulled a fastener off her hair, and the auburn mane fell down her back. She dived into the dark bay with a smooth arc. I gripped the windowsill and strained to see her swimming. Finally, a good hundred yards beyond the shore, she surfaced in a pool of moonlight. She turned my way and said inside my head, “Read those books!”
Stick ‘em up your tailfin, I blurted mentally.
The low hoot of her disdain popped my eardrums. I don’t have a tailfin. I clasped my head. She’d spoken. And I’d answered. And she’d heard me.
She dolphined beneath the water. I didn’t see her surface again. I stumbled back from the window. I was trapped in her fantasy. I needed a big swig of something fizzy.
But then . . .
If I was trapped in The Twilight Zone, shouldn’t I might as well play by the rules? If I really could talk to other . . . other mer-people, psychically, then maybe one of them might hear me calling for help. Maybe all Mers weren’t snarky loons like Juna Lee.
There’s no such thing as mer-people. No such thing. Don’t let her brainwash you. This is how well-meaning human beings are lured into cults and gangs and American Idol auditions. Brainwashed. It’s the Stockholm Syndrome, where kidnap victims start to trust their kidnappers. Find a phone. Call 911, not the psychic hotline.
But I couldn’t resist.
Help me, I whispered inside my mind. Could one whisper inside one’s mind? I thought louder. Help. I threw back my inner head and yelled. Help!
Nothing. No one answered. Heat zoomed up my cheeks.
I fed Heathcliff some tuna, drank some cola, turned off the lamps and sat by the bay window in the dark, drunk and upset. All right, instead I’d pretend to be a lighthouse sending an S.O.S. Only the light was a song, and I was singing it. Or something.
Help please help help I’m losing my mind help I’m a harmless, hypnotized lunatic, I thought. Sang. Hummed.
Not really believing that anyone would hear me.
The loneliest sound in the world is the silence when no one answers.
* * * *
Help me. Help. Please.
The voice was soft and female and desperate. In other words, I could no’ resist listening. Whoever she was, she hummed inside me as if I was exactly who she needed to find. Some women’s voices are an instant warning. Some are an instant hard-on.
Hers was both.
Uncle Rhymer, what’s wrong? Stella whispered. She stood beside me in the dark of the deck. We were moored in a hidden river inlet on the mainland near Sainte’s Point. With barely enough room to maneuver, I could spit and hit the pine forest just beyond the gray muck of the banks.
Ssssh. I’m listening to someone who doesn’t qu
ite know how to sing. I touched a fingertip to my lips. Stella stared up at me, her eyes so wide I could glimpse the white rims in the moonlight.
A terrible thought loomed inside me. Was the call for help a deception? The bastard, himself, Orion, mimicking a woman? Did he have that kind of power? Not that I knew of, but then, who knew exactly what a Swimmer could do?
“What’s the problem?” Jordan called in a low voice. He made his way along the sidedeck from the bow, one hand on the Uzi hanging from his shoulder. He was dressed all in good linen, as if for a round of golf at St. Andrews. The man took facials and got his nails buffed. Having him aboard as a bodyguard was a bit of a strange combination, like Cary Grant playing a commando. But Jordan and I’d always been like brothers and in fact were some degree of distant kin; Mers are a close-knit bunch, for obvious reasons, with a labyrinth of family ties not even the Queen can best. Jordan was one of the few men, Mer or Lander, I trusted completely. Even if he did buff his nails.
We traded a look, channeling a thought over Stella’s head. Mers can control who hears what they think; I didn’t want the lass worrying more than she already did.
Do you hear her? Hear the woman calling for help?
Jordan frowned in the moonlight. No. Nothing. Is it Orion? Is it a ruse?
I don’t know. I intend to find out. I nodded to the east. What’s over there, on the coast?
Randolph Cottage. Belongs to Griffin’s family. It was his parents’ lovenest. Haunted, in my opinion. But Griffin and Ali love it.
“Stay here with the girls. I’ll go and have a look.”
I was already dressed in a black wetsuit — not for warmth or protection, since Mers need little of either in the water—— but for fading into the night. I belted a pistol to my waist in a waterproof case; my short sword was already lashed to my thigh. “I’ll be back soon.”
And over the rail I went, into the black water.
* * * *
I was so proud of myself. Juna Lee Poinfax, Successful Kidnapper. Not a soul, not even Lilith, suspected that I had Molly Revere caged up at Randolph Cottage. The cottage belonged to Ali and Griffin, but they let me use it as a guest house.
Hah! Did I have a VIP guest or what? Lilith thought I’d had to give up on Molly in Memphis. She thought I was defeated, that next I would be forced to traipse all the way to Molly World in Massachusetts and beg Gimpy The Wonder Writer to listen again. Hah! As if Juna Lee Poinfax ever accepted secondhand couture, secondhand men, or secondhand kidnap victims.
So there I was at Ali and Griffin’s post-wedding gala, basking in my secret victory, dressed in a slinky Versace gown, wearing some of my best diamonds, partying beneath elaborate Japanese lanterns on the leeward beach at Sainte’s Point with several hundred other fabulous Mers. On a stage among the dunes, Gloria Estevan sang Latin pop with a full orchestra. She’s a Mer, you know, on her mother’s side. I was dancing a barefoot rumba with Billy Dee Williams, the actor, who is just a Floater (no webbed toes inside those imported loafers of his) but who perfectly represents the stylish, cavalier charm of mature Mer playboys everywhere. By the way, yes, Mers come in all colors, religions, and places of national origin.
“I hear you and Jordan are back together,” Billy said, as we rumba-ed back and forth. The man moved like chocolate ice cream, cool and sweet.
“Hah. In his dreams.”
“Where is he tonight?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Probably twiddling jellyfish somewhere out in the shallows.”
Billy laughed. I frowned.
Truth was, I’d expected to see Jordan by now, and I was worried. I planned to seduce him into telling me when Rhymer and the girls would arrive. I assumed they were still somewhere in the English Channel, trying to hitch a ride on the Gulf Stream. I figured I had at least a day to browbeat Molly into submission so I could turn my full seductive powers of concentration on the whole psycho-murder-mystery Swimmer thing.
“Maybe I should go find Jordan—”
“Yo, yo, yo, Juna girl!”
A sturdy little Lucy Liu look-alike in see-through silk and tattoos sauntered through the dance crowd. She had the Chinese symbol for luck tattooed on one perky little breast and the Chinese symbol for water tattooed on the webbing between the big toe and first toe of her bare feet. Ouch. She was Anna Chin, Miss Masochistic Mer from San Francisco. A bad-girl rapper with two platinum CDs to her name. A Bonavendier cousin. Jordan was a partner in the Mer-owned label that produced her music. I slapped her hand. “Homegirl!”
“Word. I heard you and Jordan are doing the nasty again. Where’s he at?”
“Why would I know? He’s not hangin’ at my crib. And, no, we’re not getting our freak on, or whatever. Hey, check out my bling bling.” I pointed to a new diamond choker. Yes, there’s nothing goofier than a white mermaid trying to talk like a Mer from the hood, but then, I was saying this to a rap geisha Mer who went by the silly stage name Lady Tyg R S. Which Entertainment Tonight pronounced Tigeress, though it always seemed to me that it should be pronounced Tiggeress, which would be, one assumed, a rapper from the Pooh hood.
“Nice ice,” Anna opined. “Check this.” She held up a diamonded hand. “Tula made it for me. I’m wearing it to the Grammys.”
“Six carats. Excellent. Subtle, but not.”
She hooted. I faked a laugh while wondering, again, just what my personal Loch Ness Monster was up to. Didn’t Jordan understand that I couldn’t let some creepy Mer mobster rip his heart out? That ripping his heart out was my hobby? For the first time in my life, I caught myself looking out at our beloved ocean with fear.
* * * *
The big, bodybuilding Mer recognized me as a Peacekeeper the second I slipped out of the tide and laid the tip of my blade at his throat. He was lounging on a teak deck chair in the dark with headphones on his tanned ears, connected to a portable CD player tucked into one beefy hand. Plus he was a little drunk on Alka Seltzer and Sprite. When I prodded him with the sword, he rolled off the lounge and nearly pissed on himself.
“I heard the lady in the cottage over there calling for help,” I said calmly, as he scrambled to his feet with his earphones dangling from one ear. “I’m a Peacekeeper.”
He groaned. “Oh, man, I should have known the Council would send a Peacekeeper over this. I’m Antoine de Breneaux. But you can call me Charley the Tuna. I shouldn’t have let Juna Lee talk me into kidnapping somebody. But we grew up next door to each other in Charleston. She’s my cousin.”
“Sorry, but I know Juna Lee’s rep, my friend. Do no’ try to defend her.”
Charley sighed. “Okay, so once, when I was about ten, she talked me into building a bamboo raft and playing explorer. ‘You be Thor Heyerdahl,’ she said. ‘I’ll be Jacques Cousteau.’ We ended up somewhere around Costa Rica. But she apologized. Sort of. Well, okay, she lied to everybody and said it was all my idea. My parents were so mad they sent me to boarding school in Iceland, and her parents sent her to school in Europe. I got glaciers. She got Paris.”
“Sorry about the glaciers, Charley. Into the boathouse with you. I’m sure the Council will take your cooperation as a plus. Not to mention that you’ve been under the influence of a notorious woman.”
“I should have known Juna Lee would get me in trouble again.”
He trudged toward the boathouse.
* * * *
Speak your name and convince me not to kill you.
Those were the first words my potential rescuer — or murderer— spoke inside me.
I jumped up from my spot by the cottage window, grabbed my cane, and limped to the far side of the bed in the moonlit darkness. I cradled Heathcliff in one arm. My old kitty and I, barricaded behind a four-poster with lacy linens, would hold this psychic fort. Shaking, I offered a feeble rebuke: I was only signaling for help. No need to be rude. Exactly who are you?
Speak your name, the voice ordered again. It soaked my brain with a masculine timbre. I felt like a rum cake, drenched in rich liquor. Though the
voice was a kind of vibration, not an actual sound, I deduced that it was . . . Irish, English, Scottish? Scottish, yes.
Speak your name.
This time the voice was louder, meaner, closer. It hummed inside my skull, vibrated off the bones of my face. I stared toward the window. Was he outside by the water? How close was he? Who was he? Did the prison doctor know he’d stopped taking his medication?
Speak your name, he ordered again. If you’re innocent, I mean you no harm.
Well, that’s good to hear. How do I know you’re innocent?
Speak your name.
I shivered. Did I have a choice? I was holding a psychic conversation with a Sean Connery sound alike. Did trauma produce hallucinations based on vintage James Bond films?
I’m Molly (No! Sound stronger, fiercer, unconquerable!) I’m Molly Martha Revere, of Boston, Massachusetts. I was kidnapped in Memphis, Tennessee, yesterday, by Juna Lee Poinfax. She says I’m descended from a mermaid and that I have to acknowledge my Mer heritage. All I know is I spent all day locked in my own bus and now I’m locked in a bedroom somewhere on the coast near Sainte’s Point Island, and nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Who are you, please, and do you hear other voices inside your head besides mine? Don’t listen to them! Merge your personalities! Merge!
Silence. My ridiculous tirade was being assessed. I could feel him probing for lies. My breasts and thighs tingled. Probing for more than lies. Yes, I sputtered mentally. I’m not just pretending to be a woman. I do have a vagina.
He was convinced. Come to the window, he said. Amused, surprised, and almost gentle. Usually, men were bored with me until they found out I had money. Show your face. Don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid? You threatened to kill me.
Sorry. But now that I’ve confirmed you have a vagina, you’re safe. Show yourself.
Diary of a Radical Mermaid Page 7