Calder reached out for me and took my hand. He pulled me close and had me stand in front of him, my hands on the wheel, his hands over mine. I wanted to turn around and face him, but he had me virtually pinned in position. It didn’t help that his breath was gently grazing across the back of my neck and down my bare shoulder. It had to be intentional; it was almost cruel. I could imagine the smug expression on his face.
Seagulls sprang off the rocks, and although I was sure they were making an awful racket, it was impossible to hear them over the engines. It felt weird to be up so high. My view of the islands had always been at the water level—or below. With so much distance between our bodies and the water, the islands felt distant and impersonal. I barely recognized them.
The boat was fast. In no time, we rounded the northern tip of Madeline, and Calder pointed to a small strip of land to the Northeast. “Michigan Island,” Calder said, yelling over the motor. Zach was the only one who really cared about the name. He was bent over a chart of the islands, and he put his thumb on the finger-shaped image.
Scott opened the cooler and threw a Coke to Phillip. Rob held up a finger and Scott handed him one, too. Calder cranked the wheel, sending Rob off balance and his hand plunging into the cooler ice. I would have lost my balance, too, but Calder held me in place. Rob pulled out his hand and shook off the cold.
He shot Calder an accusatory look, but Calder laughed it off. “You’ll need to get used to the cold if you plan on swimming,” he yelled over his shoulder. “It’s probably only about sixty degrees.”
“Sixty?” Phillip yelled.
Calder laughed again.
Zach shook his head. “Say goodbye to your balls, boys.”
Phillip tried to smile but looked out over the water with newfound concern.
“I thought we were supposed to keep them happy,” I said so that only Calder could hear.
“Oh, they will be. That’s Stockton Island,” Calder said, back to playing tour guide. “Lots of bears. Good hiking.”
“Where’s a good place to picnic?” Jules yelled.
“We just ate,” Colleen said. “God, girl, it’s always food with you.”
“I like to know where we’re headed,” Jules said.
Calder pointed to the channel between Stockton on our right and Hermit Island on our left. “Head for that split,” he said to me, and he left me alone at the wheel. I glanced over my shoulder as Jules and Colleen separated so Calder could sit between them.
Make them happy. That shouldn’t be too hard. Calder took the chart from Zach and showed the girls our route. He dragged his finger across the chart, indicating our intended anchorage—the eastern shore off Oak Island. I’d never been to Oak before. Did he think his sisters were this far north? I guess with all the scouting he and Dad had done, he’d ruled out everything to the south.
Jules and Colleen hunched over the chart with Calder, their three heads close together. I sighed. I knew it was all part of his plan, but it was hard to watch him working his charm on them. Even if he wasn’t getting anything out of it (there was no tingle of electricity in the air), I knew what Jules and Colleen were feeling. Their boyfriends were only inches away, but Calder could be a powerful force of amnesia when he wanted to be. I wondered what images he was pushing on them. The need to take a refreshingly cold swim, no doubt. The sun was hot. That idea shouldn’t take too much persuasion. Maybe images of happiness: puppies, chocolate, kisses. Army surplus stores?
Oh. That last one was for me. “Very funny,” I said, and I wagged my finger at him.
He raised his eyebrows at me and mouthed the words: Watch. Where. You’re. Going.
I looked back at the water in front of us. We were headed straight for a sailboat. I cranked the wheel and missed its stern by mere feet. The captain yelled and waved his fist at me. I yelled my apology, but I’m sure he didn’t hear. The sailboat rocked violently in our wake.
Calder reached over Jules and slapped Rob on the shoulder. “You want to drive?” he asked.
The perma-scowl left Rob’s face. He got up eagerly and took over the wheel from me. Calder left the girls and stood slightly behind Rob’s shoulder, pointing ahead. If Rob had been irritated by Calder before, those feelings were long gone. Whatever Calder was saying, Rob was laughing like it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard. For the first time, I was getting a sense of how truly destructive Calder could be. What could he make me think, be, do, if he really wanted to? Could he have made me go to the Bahamas with him, even though he knew how important it was for me to come back with my dad? Could he have made me forget my family even existed, if it meant keeping me for himself? Hadn’t he once told me merpeople were essentially selfish?
I watched him closely. Did it matter? If he wanted me for himself, wasn’t that the same thing I wanted of him? As far as I knew, my free will was intact. My decisions were still mine, and yet … here I was, using my best friends as bait. Had I sunk so low? Was the situation really so desperate? Maybe we should turn back.
Calder reached in front of Rob and pulled the throttle back to neutral. He climbed over to the bow and dropped anchor, coming back to turn off the key. For a few seconds, we bobbed on the waves in silence.
“This is the spot,” Calder said. We were ten yards from the Oak Island shore.
Jules said, “Are you going to bring us in a little closer? How do I get the picnic basket onshore?”
“You can swim off the swim deck on the back of the boat,” Calder said. “There’s a natural warm spot in the lake here because of the way the currents pass through these three islands. It’s a comfortable temperature.”
This was clearly a lie. The shallower water would help. No doubt it would be warmer than open water, but simply avoiding hypothermia wasn’t exactly what my city friends would call “comfort.” Could Calder actually trick their minds into thinking it was warm? I wouldn’t put it past him, because we weren’t here for the warm water. From here I could see the southern tip of Stockton, not to mention Manitou, Otter, Raspberry, and Bear islands. We were here because it maximized the number of potential mermaid campsites.
I bent my head over the chart and measured the distance to the outermost islands. The closest of them, York, Rocky, and Ironwood, were at least five miles away. Too far.
My studies were interrupted by an enormous splash. Oh my God. It was starting already! I threw the chart on the floor of the boat as everyone else lined the port side to watch. Concentric circles faded out from a central spot that held everyone’s attention. What had they seen? A tail, a beautiful face? Phillip emerged from the spot with a whoop!
“Come on in, it’s fantastic!” That was all the convincing they needed. Everyone stripped down to bathing suits and jumped off the port-side rail and the swim deck. Calder and I remained in the boat. One of us was considering throwing up. What kind of person had I become? I would never forgive myself if anything went wrong.
Calder grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Trust,” he said. “Are you ready to send your first message?”
“Not even remotely,” I said. He waited until I finally looked up and sighed in acquiescence. “Fine. What is it?”
“Anticipation.”
“How’s that a message?”
“It’s a projection. You need to project the feeling of happy anticipation.”
“I don’t get this.” I glanced at my friends splashing in the water, shrieking and diving. “Won’t they put off enough emotion on their own? Shouldn’t I send something more specific, like ‘We Come in Peace’ or ‘Take Me to Your Leader’?”
“God, no, don’t think anything like that. The message has to be precise, and the timing has to be perfect. No errant thoughts. Remember your eavesdropping on me and your dad? We don’t want anything that will connect the message to you personally. We don’t want to spook Maris.”
Scott swam in closer to shore and did a handstand. Colleen knocked him over.
“If Maris and Pavati are in close range, no doubt
your friends would do an excellent job all by themselves, but since I don’t know where they are, we’re using you as an amplifier.”
“Fine. I’m a megaphone, but I don’t know how to amplify anticipation.”
“Think Christmas. Remember when you were a kid?”
“Vaguely.”
He kissed the worry off my mouth. “Close your eyes, Lily.”
I complied.
“You’re five years old. It’s Christmas Eve. There’s a big tree, with a star and silver tinsel hanging from all the branches. There is a pile of presents. Someone’s playing carols on the piano.”
“How do you know so much about Christmas?” I asked.
“The movies. It’s a Wonderful Life. Now be quiet and concentrate. There’s a ton of presents. You’ve checked them all. You’ve shaken some. They rattle. They have tags with your name on them. All you have to do is go to sleep. When morning comes, you get to open them. Do you feel that anticipation? Do you remember?”
“Yes. I can feel it.”
“Then jump in the water. Go under and swim out a hundred feet. Think only of that. Happy anticipation. Got it? I’ll be close.”
I dove, streaming through the water for what felt like a hundred feet, but I wasn’t great at judging distance. I didn’t think I was too far because I could still feel the vibrations in the water from my friends’ splashing and kicking. There were other sounds, too. Squeaks and metallic sounds. Low groans. But no mermaid voices.
Happy anticipation, I thought, trying to push away the fearful image of a mermaid attacking Jules. Happy anticipation. Christmas presents. Red and green ribbons. I searched forward out into the watery expanse, but heard nothing.
Boxes rattling, I thought. Tags with my name. No! Not my name. Calder said not to project my name. Christmas Eve. Waiting. Happy anticipation.
When I couldn’t sustain it anymore, I swam back to the starboard side and Calder pulled me back into the boat.
“Good?” he asked, wrapping me in a pink-and-white-striped towel.
“I don’t think I’m doing it right. Any sign of them?”
“Not yet,” he said, pulling a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
I waved at Rob as he beckoned me to join them. I held up one finger to buy some time. Damn him for looking so happy. I cringed at the thought of him in Pavati’s embrace. I should be burned at the stake for what I was doing to them. “Should I try again?” I asked Calder.
“Yes. The next message is peace.”
“I thought you said no ‘We come in peace’ messages.”
“That’s not the kind of peace I mean.”
“You mean like world peace?”
He lowered the binoculars and let them hang around his neck. “Remember what you’re doing. You’re trying to entice them with the most positive human emotions. Like that movie Jaws. I’m picking the emotional equivalent of blood in the water. Emotional peace is what we’re going for. Serenity. That’s what Maris wants.”
“Geez, Calder. Can’t we go with plain old happy?”
“Too generic. We need something more satisfying.”
“Okay, so maybe something peaceful like lying in a hammock?”
“That’s good, but you need to add heat to it.”
“Lying in a hammock on a beach in the Bahamas?”
“Come in, Lily!” Jules yelled. “What are you two waiting for?” She waved at me and I waved back.
“The Bahamas are good, but I was thinking of you in that bubble bath.” He smirked.
“Whose happiness are we thinking of?”
“Yours. Think about a bathtub. You’ve got the water as hot as you can stand it. There’s a mountain of white froth. Step in. Slide under. Let the water heat you to the core. Let all the tension of the day slide away.”
“That last part will be tougher.”
He pulled me closer as if he was going to kiss me, but his lips stopped a fraction of an inch from mine. We were nose to nose, his eyes burning into mine, until I could feel nothing but a slow, yearning heat in my stomach. He pushed the image of my bubble bath so smoothly into my mind that I silently stepped off the swim deck and let the water slide over my skin like silk. I sank below the boat, feeling the warmth in my cells slowly building into a sleepy heat. Peace. Lying in a hammock. Lying in a bathtub. Under the bubbles. With Calder’s hands slipping up … Ach! Damn it. What was it again? Oh, right, weightlessness. Heaviness. Relax, relax, relax. I was doing a pretty good job. A few minutes more, and I might actually fall asleep. I had just enough energy for one last projection: Serenity.
I don’t know how long I was down there, but it must have been too long because there was a jolt from above. Calder’s arm plunged into the water and yanked me into the boat.
“Very good,” he said, laughing, “but your friends are going to freak out if you stay under too long. God, that’s impressive. Weird. But impressive.”
I gasped at the air. “They’re all okay? Everyone’s still with us?”
“Of course they are. I told you to trust me.”
I nodded. “So are we done?”
“One more. This should do it. But it’s the hardest one.”
“Great.”
“Laughter.”
“I have to laugh underwater?”
“No. It’s not the sound you’re going for. It’s the feel. That’s why it’s hard. The thought of laughter is associated with the sound of it. You need to dig deeper. It’s the pain in the belly I want you to go for.”
“Pain? That doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s a good kind of pain. You need to conjure that laugh-till-you-cry feeling.”
“I know what you mean, but there’s nothing funny about this situation.”
Calder looked up to the sky. “I’m not going to be any help with this one, Lily. I haven’t done much roll-on-the-floor laughing in my life, so you’ll—Oh, man, here they come.” He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me down low in the boat. We peered over the starboard rail toward Bear Island. Two heads emerged from the water. Two pairs of eyes were focused on my friends.
“What are they waiting for?” I asked. Jules and Colleen squealed and splashed water at Scott and Rob.
“I don’t know, but they won’t be waiting for long. You did an amazing job, Lily. They’ve got to be salivating.”
“Then we should get out to them now.”
“We need them to get a little bit closer still.”
“No! That’s far enough!”
“We need to maximize our time away from the boat without being gone so long your friends get worried. We can’t waste time traveling. We need it for talking.”
I counted in my head: One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. The heads disappeared and then came up again, four seconds later. “How close are they?” I asked.
“About a hundred and fifty yards,” Calder said. “Let’s go, but don’t dive. I don’t want your friends to notice us leaving.”
“Is it time for a more specific message?”
“Nope. We’re back to the clean slate. Blank canvas, Lily. Got it? You need to hear them, without letting them know how close we’re getting.”
I inhaled as deeply as I could, filling my lungs to capacity, and we slid noiselessly into the water. Calder swam with me, like a human, for twenty yards before he pushed me away and wriggled out of his bathing suit and kept it clutched in his hand. I swam next to him as he arched and bowed his body, swimming like a dolphin, until he exploded into merman form, the silver tail bright and flashing and reflecting filtered sunlight across my face.
He wrapped his arm around me and we swam at a speed I could not manage on my own. He circled around, coming at Maris and Pavati from behind. They had stopped to consult. I could hear them, or rather, feel their thoughts, which came in flashes like a slide show.
Hunger
Fear
Hunger
Death
The last one was so intense it almost made me gasp with pain. Blank canvas, blank canvas
. I squeezed Calder’s hand, and he brought me up for air.
“What is it?”
“We need to stop them,” I said. “Now!”
We dove and raced toward the two figures who were facing each other, their fingers laced together. Calder hadn’t told me to send any other messages, but I couldn’t manage the blank slate anymore. My first thought sprang through the water like a shout.
Stop!
Maris and Pavati pulled away from each other and whirled around to confront us, their faces sunken and gaunt, their mouths gaping, like ghoulish eels. The change in their appearance was horrifying to behold.
Calder held his hands palms up. He kept his eyes locked on his sisters and tilted his head in their direction, as if he wanted me to speak to them. Problem was, he hadn’t told me what to say.
“Um, we’d like to talk,” I said.
“What is this?” Maris asked, her voice echoing in my head as if shouted through a tunnel. “What kind of creature are you?”
Calder pulled me behind him, but I slipped around his other side. “We need to talk. It’s important,” I said.
Maris and Pavati looked back over their shoulders at the churning water and pale, bare legs of my friends.
“Later,” Maris said.
“Talk about what?” Pavati asked.
“It’s important,” I said. “It’s about your safety. All of ours. Are you camping on Oak?”
“Yes,” said Pavati, and Maris shot her a dangerous look. Calder was ignorant to the conversation. He could only read their expressions, and Maris was making him nervous.
“Can we go there? Calder needs to talk to you.”
“Oh, that’s rich.” Maris laughed. “He made his choice. So now he wants us when it’s convenient for him?”
Calder tugged gently at my hand and looked up at the surface, but I was still good for air.
“Please, it’s important. We’re only trying to help.”
“We don’t need your help,” Maris said, and Pavati took two strokes in the direction of my friends.
“The island,” I said. “Now. This is about the survival of your family. Both of ours.”
Deep Betrayal (Lies Beneath #2) Page 18