by Tobie Easton
Suddenly, the tentacles speed up their oscillation. It’s sensed her! Lapis freezes, not quite in the center of the room but far enough from us that when she flashes me a look of wide-eyed terror over her shoulder, it’s as if she’s stranded in an impenetrable forest, calling out through scarlet tree trunks.
I shake my head—I don’t know how to help her. None of us do.
Lapis squares her shoulders. Then she drops her right one down, letting her body follow into the same complex sideways dive she and Lazuli used in their allyjull while dancing at the coronation ball. She expertly avoids a swinging tentacle. When another drags sideways near her stomach as the jellyfish changes direction, she pirouettes 180 degrees and arches her back, throwing her upper body into a dip over it and letting her tail follow, then continuing that pattern over and under several more. She’s reached the center of the room.
But just as a hopeful smile dares to tug at my lips, the glowing medusa above us shifts direction yet again. Lapis stays still as a stonefish, water pushing and pulling against her when the tentacles run vertically again.
As they undulate side to side, so does Lapis, countering their movements in perfect parallel as if these dangerous, slinking appendages were charming dance partners engaging her until the next song.
She zigzags, swivels, and spirals in a blur of blond and blue. Then, with a final burst of speed, she somersaults between two remaining tentacles, out of their range of motion and pressed safely against the opposite wall.
Amy squeezes my hand again, this time with relief, and Em deflates on my other side, her head falling back before she gathers herself and straightens again, eyes locked on Lapis, who tosses us a hotshot smile and drops into a curtsey.
But she’s not done yet. Staying flat against the wall, she flutters up into the right-hand corner, then unties the knot at her waist. She’s lined her black sarong with a piece cut from her fave black leather top.
She places the leather flat against the surface of the light sensor and holds it tight. “Go!” she mouths.
Em, Amy, and I duck and twist our way forward, all of us imitating Lapis’s grace as best we can, but within only a few seconds, one of my fins doesn’t flick away quickly enough. A tentacle smashes it at the same moment an “oomph” slips from Em’s lips when another one bangs into her back.
I grab Amy and cover her eyes with my hand, squeezing my own shut as blinding cobalt bursts around us.
Em grabs my arm, pulling me forward. I squint my eyes open and keep a tight hold on Amy as we all swim ahead. The jellyfish has flown into a panic, moving about the room faster than ever, its tentacles whapping against us over and over.
As long as Lapis covers that sensor, it doesn’t matter. I repeat the mantra in my head as tentacles wallop my shoulders, back, and tail. Gasping, we reach the other end of the room.
“As soon as it settles down,” I whisper-shout up into the corner to Lapis between my sputtering breaths, “you take your sarong and leave through the side exit.” I point to the narrow door that I recognize from the blueprints. We’ll be exiting that way too, soon enough, after the vaults. Lapis nods.
Then her eyes widen. Because as the jellyfish’s lashing tentacles whip up the current around us, the fabric billows in her grasp. And slips through her fingers.
In five short seconds, the sensor will alert the guards, and we’ll be finished.
A sob rises up in me—for Clay, for everything I’m about to lose. But I squash it, and I snap into action.
With my hands still on Amy’s shoulders, I push her toward the side door. I can’t let her or anyone else get caught because of me. We all have to get out of here. Now.
“Em, Lapis, come on! Hurry—”
I turn to them just in time to see Em surge upward. With a loud thwack, her tail slams against the sensor, the jellyfish’s flashing lights reflecting against her emerald scales instead.
We all stop breathing, ears cocked for the alarm.
All that meets us is silence. Blissful, concealing silence. Without moving her tail, Em gestures to Lapis, who once again has a grip on her leather-lined sarong. She holds it at the ready and slides it carefully back into place as Em slides away.
My heart pounds at the thought of everything that could still go wrong. Before doubt can hook me, Em pulls me and Amy through the double doors, and we leave the flashing light beams behind us.
With spots still popping in my vision, it takes me several seconds to see the room that now surrounds me.
We’re in the first vault. The dagger’s in the second vault for higher security items and objects that benefit from the added preservation of a dry space. But getting this far means we have a few seconds free of guards or tentacles to steady our jangled nerves.
“Are you okay?” Em and I ask Amy at the same time.
“Uh-huh.” She nods and gazes around us at the palace relics, restricted-access konklilis, and lower level security items that can stay wet.
I’m finally so close to the dagger—to turning Clay Mer against all odds—that the thought propels me across the room to the alcove on the other end. The one behind a wall of metal bars.
The first flash of gray and white sends fear burning through me. One of my fins trembles so hard, it doesn’t stop even after I roll it up and release it.
I hate sharks.
The creature in front of me coasts back and forth, back and forth, blocking the final set of doors.
“It’s here to ensure even those with clearance for the inner vault don’t come here without a trained member of the security team,” Em whispers.
I don’t respond. The flicking gray tail and menacing, predatory eyes have stolen the words from my throat.
I’d feel gallons better if we had a trained member of the security team with us right now. All we have is …
“Hey there, pretty girl,” Amy says as we approach the bars. The shark snaps a jaw full of at least three rows of serrated teeth, sharp enough to saw through the shell of a sea turtle.
“I still don’t like this,” Em says to Amy. I don’t either, but I’ve yet to regain the power of speech.
“You’ll stay with me the whole time,” Amy says to Em. “That was the deal.” Amy reaches under her longish, loose-fitting siluess and unties the metal glove fastened around her abdomen with strong strands of seaweed. “I grabbed this from the stables. They have so many, they’ll never miss it.” Her hand is small for the glove and slips right in; she looks like she’s wearing medieval chainmail up to her elbow. “Not even those chompers are getting all the way through this,” Amy reassures Em. “Well, sometimes the tips can get through …”
“Where’s the other one?” Em asks. “Don’t gloves generally come in pairs?”
“I could only stuff one into my bag before my mom came back in to check on me. She still gets nervous when I hang around the sharks.”
“I wonder why,” I manage to force out, my gaze still glued to the carnivorous beast glaring at us through those bars.
“It’ll be fine,” Amy says, and before Em can object again, she clicks open the door and swims inside the giant cage, giving us no option but to follow. The bars click shut behind Em and me.
The shark zooms right for us.
Amy’s ungloved hand emerges from the pocket of her sarong, holding up a food pellet the size of her palm. She throws it off to the left, and the shark catches it in its mouth, then looks to her for another. She swims closer to it.
Next to me, Em sucks in a breath.
“Are you going to flip it onto its back?” I whisper to Amy. As guppies, all Mer learn that if we encounter a small shark on our swims, flipping it over will put it in an immobile, trance-like state. But until now, I’ve never let myself get close enough to try it. Immobilizing the deadly, clearly hungry creature in front of us sounds like an A-OK plan to me.
“No,” Amy says. “She’s way too big for me to pull that off.”
“Yay,” I mutt
er.
“I just need her to trust me enough to get closer.”
“Closer?” Why does closer have to be the goal? I don’t like closer.
Amy swims more to the left and throws another pellet. The shark follows the pellet, moving away from the door. Once it has masticated the second pellet between fierce jaws, the shark goes right for Amy, keen on another.
Instead of pulling a third from her pocket, Amy waits until the shark gets close and does the last thing I would ever want to do: she reaches toward its face with her gloved hand.
“Hi. Hello,” she says in the happy, baby voice she uses at home with Barnacle. She strokes the underside of its snout with her fingers the same way I’ve seen her stroke Barney under his chin. Her touch grows rhythmic. Before our eyes, the shark calms down, its gray body growing still. “They’re super sensitive to touch,” Amy tells us, still stroking. “They have special receptors on their snouts and face, like pores, that help them sense prey. And if you rub them,” she talks to the shark again, “that feels good, doesn’t it? Yes, it does.” Then to us, “It’s like a sensory overload.” My mouth gapes as the shark nuzzles Amy’s gloved fingers.
She pets its back with her other hand, then gets a firm grip on its dorsal fin. But her protected hand keeps stroking the snout, and the shark, lulled by her ministrations, goes completely slack. “Go now,” Amy says, keeping her voice calm. “I’m not sure how long before she gets bored and snaps out of it.”
Em and I swim over to the now-guardless doors that lead to the inner vault.
The inner vault that protects the obsidian dagger.
They look just like the last set except for one key difference: where the knobs should be rests a long, spiral auger shell, a bar across the doors.
Em looks from me to Amy with a finger held to her lips. Quiet.
She leans over the shell, opens her mouth, and sings a simple scale. Still the head of the Foundation since my parents stepped down, Em has security clearance at the highest level.
The shell lifts, and the doors swing open.
Since the only way my sisters and I would agree to let Amy anywhere near that shark was if Em stayed with her the entire time, this is where we part. That means this time, I’m going in alone.
The cascading dry spell fills the doorway, making it look like a rushing waterfall in a golden frame. I close my eyes, letting that rushing fill my ears until the sensation of imaginary tides pushes and pulls at my tail, bringing my legs forward. I step through the cascade to the inner vault.
And barely have time to jut out my hands and catch myself as I fall face-first onto the hard, limestone floor. My leg control might have gotten a bunch better, but all this switching back and forth is really pushing it. I shift to a sitting position; my legs are still shaking, so I don’t trust myself to stand. Not now. I picture Amy outside, trying to keep that shark calm until my return. Not when I have to hurry. Without wasting another second, I visualize Clay’s … well, let’s just say I think about Clay, and my leg control firms right up. I hop to my feet.
Row after row of shelves stretch out in front of me, reaching from floor to ceiling. Each shelf holds a neat line of woven crates with latched lids. These crates contain all the most well-guarded, precious artifacts in the palace, from technology prototypes to classified historical documents to evidence from the most high-profile trial in modern Mer history.
I swim to the far right, where the blueprints indicated the evidence would be. But that still leaves at least five rows, each with ten shelves, and dozens of crates. I have no clue what the sorting system is, or which crate the dagger is in, and it would take hours to go through by hand. I glance back at the dry spell cascade. On the other side, Amy, Em, and that shark wait for my swift return. I don’t have hours. I don’t have minutes.
You’re ready for this, I tell myself. I sit cross-legged on the floor and roll my shoulders, exhaling. My eyes drift shut.
As I connect to my center, and the magical energy that ebbs and flows within me like ocean waves, my senses awaken to the other sources of magical energy within the room. With the potions, spell recordings, amulets, and who knows what else stored within these walls, it’s hard to distinguish one magical source from the next. Most of them pulse, low and weak, in yellows and purples and pale blues that blend together in my consciousness. A few more powerful items emanate in rich cardinals and golds from within their crates. But I can’t let them distract me. I must find the dagger somewhere in the haze by focusing my awareness, just the way Ondine taught me in our very first magic lesson.
That day, I’d sensed the magical energy of potted seagrass, its signature a pretty boring, steady green pulse. Now, the signature that greets my senses, that stands out as far more powerful than all the rest, is anything but boring. The obsidian dagger’s energy is dark and metallic. It slithers out of a crate three shelves up in inky tendrils. They reach out to me through the dry air, beckoning me nearer.
When I open my eyes, the image disappears, but I can still feel the tempting lure, calling out to me from within that crate. I walk toward it.
Before I even reach up to take the crate from the shelf, I know with a certainty deep in my bones what I’ll find inside it. Sure enough, resting on soft packing material lies a slender silver box I recognize too well.
Hurry! I tell myself, thinking of Amy and Em.
Without letting myself hesitate, I remove the silver box from the crate and replace it with the small, pointed mitra shell I pull from my hair bun. If anyone opens this crate before I’ve had a chance to safely return the dagger, they’ll find this recording of Em’s voice giving me official permission to check it out from the evidence. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
I close the crate and return it to its shelf.
Now all that lies before me is a silver box the length of my forearm—and the thing inside it, its powerful magic still calling to me. With trembling hands, I unlatch the lid. There, on a bed of the finest seasilk, slumbers the spiny black blade of the obsidian dagger.
We’ve got it! I shout through the bond to Clay the instant I’m inside the safety of Amy’s room.
Clay starts, jumping out of his skin. In my excitement, I forgot to gently nudge first to let him know I was there. Oops! Sorry!
Lia?
No, it’s your other girlfriend who can communicate with you telepathically through a mystical bond.
His chuckle reverberates through my skull, breaking the contemplative, kinda sad vibe I picked up from him a second ago. Sorry, I was distracted. I was just in the middle of reading … something. He shuffles some papers around on his messy desk. Is that red construction paper? Maybe a flyer. It doesn’t matter—I know just what will break his funk.
We’ve got it! I repeat. We’ve got the dagger!
His surprise and what I can only describe as giddy joy flood me. No! Seriously?
I told Clay all about the plan I worked out with my sisters, but I hadn’t told him we’d be attempting it today, partly because I didn’t want him to spend all day worrying about me and partly because I wanted this. This exact moment of surprise.
Maybe I should hold the dagger in my hand so he can see it? A shiver skitters down my spine at the thought. He probably doesn’t want to see the blade Melusine drove deep into his stomach, the blade that nearly killed him, even if it is the thing that might give him everything he wants. No, better not show him.
Are you okay? he asks. Your sisters, are they okay?
Yes, yes, we’re all fine.
“Tell him he’s going to make one sexy Merman,” Lapis shouts from where she, Stas, and the rest of my sisters chat animatedly on the bed about this morning’s ordeal.
“If you don’t let me concentrate, I can’t tell him anything,” I shout back.
What’s going on? Clay asks.
My sisters are excited for you.
Thank them again for me, okay? And then, like, twenty more times.
> I will. They were all pretty incredible.
You’re incredible.
Clay’s thought makes my cheeks warm. But it also makes tears prick the backs of my eyes. I miss him so much. Miss hearing his voice for real, miss feeling him under my fingertips.
He must pick up on my emotion through the bond because he thinks, I miss you, too. Still thrumming with the excitement that rushes between the two of us, he asks, Have you tried the spell to reveal how to use it yet? Did it work?
Not yet. That’s up next. I just couldn’t wait to tell you we got it. I wish I could see your face.
Actually, I had an idea about that.
About what?
Seeing each other. Are you near a mirror? he asks. I say yes, and he tells me to go to it.
Releasing the bond for a moment so I don’t bang into anything while looking through Clay’s eyes, I swim in front of Amy’s full-length mirror, which is bordered by beautiful tourmaline stones that shift subtly from green around the edges to a deep pink in their centers. Once I’m floating in front of my reflection, I reconnect to the bond at my core.
All right, wait for it. You’re going to think I’m a genius.
I already do, I tease him. Then Clay opens his eyes where he now stands in front of his own mirror, and my jaw drops. You’re an even bigger genius, I say as I stare at myself in the mirror and see Clay’s reflection staring back at me. How did I not think of this?
You’ve had a lot on your mind.
I drink in the details of his face. Of the thick dark hair, lightly stubbled jaw, and hazel eyes I picture as I drift to sleep each night. Tides. It’s so good to see you, I tell him.
It’s good to see you, too, Nautilus.
I want to melt. His eyes shine with a hint of wetness, and I’m sure mine do, too.
I bring my hand up to the glass, and Clay does the same. It’s as if our fingertips are touching … almost.
Seeing Clay today as if he were just on the other side of that glass made me more determined than ever to figure out how I can make this dagger work for us.