The Savage Blue

by Zoraida Cordova

  We take the glasses to everyone and drink.

  •••

  We load my dad’s car with weapons. Swords and bats and more arrows than I can count.

  “I can’t believe your dad lent you his car,” Layla says. “He loves his car.”

  I pat the trunk of the trusty Mustang. Kurt and Thalia are scoping out the length of the boardwalk. There’s only one way Nieve and her merrows will come onto the shore, and that’s through the sea.

  “Has anyone ever seen Nieve on feet?” Layla asks.

  “I don’t think she likes being on legs,” I say. I think of how she forced me to shift into my tail. “She’ll be out in the water.”

  “Is it too simple to say, ‘Don’t go in the water’?”

  “I don’t want them to break the boardwalk. If they go into the city—”

  A sharp whistle blows behind me. A police officer comes our way. “This is a no-parking zone.”

  Layla points angrily at the sign above us. “No it’s not. Read right there!”

  The cop holds on to his belt. There’s something funny about him. I can’t pick it out. “I can’t read. Why don’t you read it for me?”

  His mouth twitches. I take a step closer to him and breathe deeply. “Cut it out, Marty.”

  The shape-shifter doubles over laughing. He looks both ways before shifting back into his familiar cheesy smile. “You should’ve seen your faces.”

  “Hey, when I’m on Toliss, I’ll hire you as my court jester.”

  “No thanks, bro,” Marty says. “I’d rather be queen, but I hear that job’s already taken.” He winks at Layla and she returns it with an eye roll.

  “Tell Frederik I finally went to see the landlocked like he suggested and it didn’t go well.”

  “Tell him yourself,” Marty says. “He’s waiting for you.”

  I look up at the white disk behind the gray sky. “I’m guessing he can’t come out right now.”

  “I’ll stay with Layla,” Marty says. “He wants to speak to you alone.”

  •••

  Frederik lives on the boardwalk.

  I feel let down in his vampire skills. This whole time, I thought of him as living in some cool hotel with all of his crime-fighting friends or even a mansion, but we’re short of mansions in Brooklyn.

  The face of the building has three arcs, all boarded up. There’s an old mosaic of waves that’s chipped away to reveal the plaster beneath. The metal gate has been pulled halfway up. A slow rain starts falling. I breathe in the dampness of the air. I’m waiting for the stink of merrow, but it doesn’t come, and I remind myself that they’ll come in the shadows.

  I push the gate the rest of the way up, and once I’m in, I close it again.

  I trust Frederik, I do. At least, I think I do.

  But the way I feel, like I have to inch my way through the dimly lit hall in case he comes zooming down at vampire speed to take a chunk out of my neck? That’s just instinct, and no matter how cool I think he is, I know I’ll never get rid of that.

  The inside of the building has been hollowed out. It used to be a restaurant and then a roller rink and now it’s empty. The ceilings remind me of scenes from the ’20s. My dad says that’s the last time we built beautiful things. After that, it was all straight lines and plaster. I pick up a funny-looking gold vase that doesn’t look like it can hold much of anything. I feel the chill break through the cracks of the building. “Frederik?”

  He’s standing beside me. I jolt and drop the vase. It shatters. “That was an antique, Sea Prince.”

  “Yeah? Well, put it on my tab.”

  He starts walking farther down the hall and I follow. He opens another door and I hesitate. “You’re not still mad that I beat you at poker?”

  When he smiles, a yellow fang peeks from a corner of his mouth. “I had the beginnings of a very promising flush.”

  “So you folded on purpose?” I step inside the room. “Why?”

  That terrible tingling feeling comes over me, like a thousand spiders are walking over my spine.

  “Because I want the sea folk off this land.” He flicks the lights on. “And helping you is the only way I can accomplish this without breaking any rules of the Thorne Hill Alliance.”

  The large room is split in half. To the right is a floor-to-ceiling library. I lose count of the numbers of shelves and the age of the spines. There’s a rickety ladder that moves from one end of the wall to the other.

  “Read any good books lately?” I ask.

  Frederik glances over his shoulder. I realize that, for the first time since I’ve met him, he’s wearing all black. It brings out the death in his complexion. His eyes are blacker, and for a vamp, the dark circles under his eyes look more like bruises.

  To the left is a different kind of library full of plants. There are test tubes, microscopes, and a large machine giving off steam. That side of the room is carefully arranged in shadow, and when I step farther into the room, I can see why. The colors of one plant radiate in the dark, while others are regular green.

  “You’re a gardener?”

  Frederik grumbles.

  “You’re being extra cryptic. And coming from you—”

  “I don’t like the rain,” he says. He picks up a book, the old kind that’s bound and has letters pressed in gold on the cover. I can smell the moldy paper swelling under the humidity. “When I was human, the streets of Copenhagen were filthy in the rain. I would stay in the castle libraries.”

  “I see you’ve always been a people person.”

  To my surprise, he laughs. “Years later, I still hate it. Even worse is the rain in the night. Like never-ending darkness. As people of the sea, you will never know what it is like to never see the sun. Though as I learn more of your histories, I might prove myself wrong.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I heard you finally went to see the landlocked.” He thumbs through the book, then clamps it shut.

  “Then you heard it didn’t go well.”

  “Maybe your approach was wrong.” He leans against the table, shoulders slightly hunched and tense in a way that looks more pained than predatory. I slip out of my backpack straps and set the pack on the ground.

  “I knew the sea witch would come for me. And for the other champion that’s here, Adaro.” I lean against the wall of books. “I went to the landlocked. I asked them to fight for this shore.”

  He’s nodding methodically to my words. “What did you offer them?”

  I’m quiet.

  “Nothing?” He stands and walks to the dark part of the room where his greenhouse is. I remember the vial full of a little flower that he played during poker. He takes a jar filled a third of the way with water. At the center is a slender purple flower. The delicate stem moves around in a dance, and every time it does so, a faint light pulses from within. “You always have to offer something, Tristan. Otherwise, why will they fight for you?”

  “Isn’t that worse? To lie to them and have them die anyway, thinking they’re getting rewarded when they aren’t?”

  “That’s how battles are fought, Sea Prince.” He sets the flower jar on the table between us. “Without a reason to live, you’ll have a field of dead soldiers. I will help you see that.”

  It takes me a moment to realize what he’s said. “You’re going to help me?”

  He nods once, holding his hands behind his back, calm as a shark out for a stroll.

  “In exchange for—?” Killing you the next time I see you? Restoring traitors to the court?

  “Lover’s Breath.”

  “In exchange for backing me up you want my…breath?”

  The familiar exasperated glare is back. “It’s a pearl that grows inside two clams at once. The Venus pearl. I was hoping you hadn’t already given it to one of your paramours.”

  “Paramour, singular. And no, I wasn’t planning on it since I already gave it to one girl. It just feels wrong. Especially since they know each other. What do y
ou need it for?”

  “My plants. I’m developing a new species, like the saltwater orchid I gave to your grandfather.” He taps his finger on the sides of the jar. “Like this.”

  “And you’ll bring an army of vampires?”

  “Not just vampires. The demigods here. Werewolves, though they don’t like to get wet. The solitary fey are always up for a rumble. The battle may not just be on the sea but on this shore. What happens on this shore concerns the Thorne Hill Alliance, and what concerns the alliance concerns me. You’re from here, and you know how devastating something like this could be.”

  “It’s just for your plants?” It’s the smallest thing he could ask for. He could ask for a nip of my blood. He could ask for a year’s worth of laundry service.

  “Don’t worry, Sea Prince. I’m not an enemy of the world.”

  “That’s what an enemy of the world would say.”

  “It only took a couple of hundred years to realize I like being here.” He returns the jar to its shelf. “Don’t let it be the same for you.”

  When he returns, I hold my hand out and wonder if this time he’ll shake it.

  He takes it.

  His hand is cold, like gripping metal left out in snow, and suddenly I’m glad he doesn’t shake my hand more often. He lets go first and I breathe a little easier. Frederik and the Thorne Hill Alliance will help me protect the shore. Outside, the rain seems to have stopped, and the familiar blast of Adaro’s horn whispers its way through the walls.

  Frederik clears his throat.

  “Oh yeah.” I unzip the pocket of my cargo shorts where I keep the pearl.

  The pocket is empty.

  I unzip the front pocket of my backpack, and after removing empty candy wrappers, it’s still not there.

  Frederik starts pacing with his arms crossed, stopping periodically to flick his unnerving black eyes.

  I dig into my cargo pockets again, and in one of them is a tiny piece of paper folded a dozen times. When I open it, I see it’s a drawing. Frederik comes and looks over my shoulder. At the slim shoulders and the slender neck and the face that’s tilted slightly down, like she’s thinking, sighing, lamenting. She’s incredibly familiar, like a dream that I’ve had.

  Only it wasn’t a dream; it was a memory. This is the woman I saw when I was going down the well.

  “Call Marty,” I say. “Tell him to bring Kurt over here now.”

  •••

  Kurt, Thalia, and Layla follow a happy-stepping Marty McKay. They proceed carefully into the vampire’s lair. Frederik grumbles. Marty whispers that they’re not used to company and the only things to eat are stallion blood and jalapeño chips.

  When Kurt sees the drawing on the table, he snatches it back.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “My pocket!” I point to him. “You’re wearing my shorts.” Kurt folds the paper until it fits in the closed palm of his fist.

  “What have you done, Tristan?”

  “I’m getting what Adaro and Jesse won’t give us. Numbers. Now empty your—my—pockets.”

  Kurt does as I ask. A few crumpled bills, a stick of gum in its wrapper, a handful of coins, and finally, the Venus pearl. I can hear the sigh of relief in Frederik’s unbreathing body. I wonder what kind of species of flower the pearl will bring. I hold it by the chain over his cold, open palm. It spins in a circle, once, twice, and then it’s in the hands of a new owner.

  “Brother?” Thalia places her hand on Kurt’s arm. “What is it?” Kurt has a coin in his hand. He’s turning it over, examining all of the ridges. He looks up at me. “Where did you get this?” “The bank? Actually my dad. Money for food, that sort of thing.” “I guess merpeople don’t really have allowances,” Marty says when he looks at the coin in Kurt’s hand. It’s dull gold with the Roman numeral II stamped on it. Marty seems confused. “You’ve met Comit?” “He said he had a collection of bizarre creatures.” I explain about the sea dragon and Comit’s rescue. “Why?”

  Kurt can’t seem to put words together, saying only, “You should’ve mentioned this.”

  Marty shakes his head. “That place is bad news. I’ve seen people go down there and never come back out.”

  Layla takes the coin from Kurt, who snatches it back. “Madame Mercury isn’t that bad,” Frederik says. “Why would they invite you?”

  I cross my hands in a T formation. “Time-out. Who the hell is Madame Mercury? Why are you getting so pissed at me, Kurt? And what’s wrong with me that they wouldn’t invite me somewhere?” Kurt holds out the coin to me. “I’ve found her.”

  He says it with so much reverence that I don’t understand what he means until he flips the coin, revealing the engraving of a split-tailed mermaid. The engraving is so precise that she even has minuscule scales along her hips. I think of Kurt making the drawing of the same mermaid that’s taped to our Command Central wall. “That’s the oracle,” I say. “Adaro was right. There is another oracle here.” Idiot, I tell myself. An oracle, right under my nose. “I just threw the coins in my pocket and wrote Comit off as another Coney Island crazy.”

  “You guys.” Layla holds her hands out. “It could be coincidence.

  Maybe this place just has a mermaid as its mascot.”

  Frederik speeds out of the room and then returns with the same coin. It has the number II stamp, but when he flips it over, the picture is not of a mermaid but a sliver of the moon. “This is what the coin normally looks like. Those are a message for you.” I snatch the other coin from the table and say, “We have to go to her before Adaro figures it out.”

  I suit up in my sternum harness.

  “What about tonight?” Thalia says. “What about when the merrows come?”

  “Sunset isn’t for a few hours,” Frederik reminds her. “This gives us time to prepare the shore while Tristan finds his oracle. We should reconvene at the aquarium. It is our emergency stronghold.” And then Kurt and I are back out in the gray summer storm. The wind is forceful, like hands pushing us, until we break into a run.

  The door Comit showed me is simple and black with a II above it. The psychic stand is lit neon pink and purple beside it, red velvet curtains drawn to reveal the session going on. The psychic is my English teacher, Ms. Pippen, and she’s holding an eager young woman’s hand. When she sees me, she gives me the dirtiest stare, meant to make me feel guilty for nearly kidnapping her last week. The door isn’t locked and Kurt is the first one to push it open.

  The entrance is pitch-black. I’ve closed my eyes to adjust to this new lighting when a hand emerges from the dark and braces against my chest. Two torches light either side of the entrance. The man steps forward, dressed in a black suit and black tie. His hair is buzzed close to his scalp with a design etched on either side of his head.

  “Comit sent us,” I say.

  He holds his hand out. “Entrance.”

  We each give him a coin. He motions to the wall in front of us.

  It opens in half to reveal a winding stairwell.

  Beside me, Kurt has a possessed glimmer in his eyes. He takes the steps two at a time, which is something he just wouldn’t do. He’s usually all calm and collected in the face of danger. Who knows what this oracle will ask for? Another promise? Maybe this one will ask for a body part or a year’s subscription to Vogue.

  “Slow down, Kurt. We don’t know what this actually leads to.” I know something is wrong when I’m the voice of reason.

  The stairwell coils around a dozen more times. When we hit the last step, Comit is waiting for us. “Hope you aren’t too dizzy. It’s a long way down.”

  “No worse than tumbling away from a sea dragon,” I say.

  Comit introduces himself to Kurt. They lock eyes, and instead of shaking hands, they dip in tiny bows. Comit’s getup makes me feel underdressed. His suit is pin-striped black and blue with a neat golden handkerchief in his pocket. His bow tie is also gold, which matches the chain trailing into his pocket where he pulls out a watch. His fingernail
s are incredibly neat and painted black, gripping the head of his walking stick.

  “I thought you’d have found your way sooner.” He sharpens his mustache into a finer point.

  I stuff my hands in my pockets. “Took me a little while to figure it out. It was Kurt who noticed the mermaid on the other side of the coin.”

  “Must always look both ways.” Comit seems pleased with himself, tapping his cane on the floor with a happy click. “Ah, Madame Mercury, these are the gentlemen we were expecting.”

  At the top of the double grand stairs is a lady dressed from another decade. She’s saying good-bye to a man and a girl in a long white gown. When the girl in white walks away, I notice the wings at rest. As that couple walks slowly up the steps, another man comes down. He’s also wearing a suit. His hair is disheveled and there are fresh bites on either side of his neck. He nods only at Madame Mercury and disappears the way we came in.

  Madame Mercury turns to us. I think of Frederik saying, “Madame Mercury’s not so bad,” and I can see what he means. Her corset is crimson satin, pulled so tight at the center I could circle her waist with my hands. Her skin is pale, except for the scarlet blush of her cheeks. Her skirt is a long black trail that looks like rippling water. Her movement is delicate, from the way she traces the air around my face to the way she turns her black eyes and bats extremely long eyelashes at Kurt.

  “What is this place?” I ask.

  “This is the Second Circle.” Madame Mercury looks at me from head to toe. “A place where the heart’s deepest desires can come true.”

  “Uh-huh. So who are you?”

  She circles me, the diamond baubles on her ears dangling in her scarlet hair. “Surely you’ve already guessed what I am. As to who I am, Comit has already introduced us. Then there’s what I do, which is collect, as Comit collects his creatures.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Follow me. I will show you.”

  She turns gracefully on the polished dark wood floors and walks down the hall to massive double doors carved intricately, patiently until every detail was perfect. Even the brass handles are twisted and etched just so. I wonder how much people pay to be down here. It’s not just dripping with golden frames, lavish drapes, and tapestries that would put the Metropolitan Museum of Art to shame. It’s the secrecy that comes with being somewhere like this.