by Brooke Moss
“You told her to leave?” I rubbed my hands up and down my own arms, trying to ward off the goose bumps. “And where did she go?”
He faced me, his jaw twitching. “Underwater.”
Narrowing my eyes at him, I fought the urge to scoot away. He was becoming weirder by the millisecond, and I knew weird. “I think I may have misheard you. You said underwater?”
“Underwater.” He nodded. Just once.
The realization that this Isolde might not have been a corpse and that she might have actually swam away sank in—pun intended—and I sucked in a sharp breath.
“Was she dead?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“Then how—”
“I’m forbidden from telling you this.” He chewed the inside of his lip for a moment before dropping his voice low. “From telling anyone. Those of us who have told have always met an early death.”
“Tell me what?” I pulled the ends of my sleeves over my frozen fingers. “Just spit it out, because this slow reveal thing is freaking me out.”
His clear eyes filled with pain. “There are creatures you’ve only heard about. My people live at the bottom of the lake.”
“Like, as in a mermaid?” I looked away. “Sure. You’re a mermaid. Or, merman. Is that more PC? You must think I’m some sort of idiot.”
“Then tell me,” he demanded, his voice still low, “how did you hear me talking to Isolde? And how did you hear Isolde’s response?”
My breath caught in my throat. “It was you? I’m not hearing voices?”
“Actually, you are.” He sniffed. “But it’s not because you’re crazy. It’s because I was communicating with Isolde in front of you. I can’t keep you from hearing it when you’re just feet away from me.”
“You were speaking telepathically?” I yanked my beanie off of my head and raked my hands through my damp hair. “That’s why I heard you? Both of you?” He nodded. “Can you do it again? Prove it to me. Do it right now.”
He grimaced. “This isn’t a game. If someone finds out I did this, I’ll—”
I grabbed his arm and gave it a yank, forcing him to look at me. “Are you kidding me? You want me to believe that you live at the bottom of Pend Oreille Lake, but you won’t prove this to me? And you say I’m the one playing games?”
“Fine.” He grit his straight white teeth together and bore his gaze down on my face with such intensity that I could feel it clear to the back of my head. His voice was as clear and understandable as if he were speaking out loud right next to me.
My family has lived at the bottom of these waters for six generations. We work incredibly hard at keeping our existence a secret, but I knew when I met you that I would tell you. I knew that there would be no secrets between us, not if I wanted to earn your trust.
“Why me?” I felt foolish speaking out loud when all he had to do was think.
Because Mer know when they’ve met their mate. It’s instinctual. There is no dating where I come from. There is no courtship. There is a moment when we can sense that connection. It feels like a key sliding into a lock, and in that instant, it’s confirmed. We see our mate, and we take them.
I shuddered. “That’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
He pulled his eyebrows downward. I would never take you anywhere you didn’t want to go.
“I’m not interested in being anyone’s mate.” My stomach roiled. This was heavy information. “I was just enjoying the fact someone was actually interested in me again.”
I can’t imagine anyone not being interested in you. I know that things work differently with humans. I understand my time with you will be limited and that someday you’ll move on. But it doesn’t matter to me. I just want to spend time with you while I can.
“You mean while you’re still human?” I laughed at the absurdity of what I was saying. “Or is the evil sea witch going to take away your voice?”
He smiled. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
“Of course not.” Looking down at the water, my stomach clenched. “Is that why you have those tattoos on your neck? Are they, um, gills?”
His hand went to the marks on one side of his neck. Yes. That’s how I breathe after I shift.
“Shift?” I raised an eyebrow.
Mer are like any other shape-shifter. Werewolves, kitsunes…all of those kinds of creatures have to change their forms before they can walk amongst humans.
“Wait, wait, wait.” I grabbed my head and closed my eyes. “Can we just talk about one monster at a time? Please? I’m on overload.”
His face pinked. Right. So when I want to go home, I shift. Then I’m able to swim and breathe under the water.
“Do you have fins? Do you look like a fish?”
He gulped and looked down at his legs. Half of my body becomes a fish, yes.
I stared down at his legs too. “Does it hurt?”
Yes. Very much.
My heart squeezed. He looked so sad, sitting there in the same clothes he always wore, with his eyes fixed on legs apparently always on loan. I reached for his arm again. “Will you talk to me now? Like a human?”
He frowned. “Yes.”
“Is that why you were sick that day Evey and I saw you? Because you were…shifting?”
“Being a human isn’t easy for us.” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “It requires a tremendous amount of strength to shift at will, and then even more strength to keep yourself in human form for as long as I do. It takes a young Mer years of practice to be able to control his or her shifts. The drier the weather is outside, the harder it can be to control yourself.”
“Is that why you were walking in the rain last night?” I looked up at the umbrella of green branches above our heads. “And today?”
He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “Yes. Being too dry or being out of the water for too long makes me sick.”
I guess that explained why he’d hunched over while yelling—or mind-yelling, whatever you wanted to call it—at Isolde. Wincing, I massaged my temples and tried to clear my head. Still reeling from discovering that a mythological species existed in my backyard was a lot to take in.
“Does it hurt?” He rubbed my back. Through the cotton of my hoodie, I felt the circles he traced leaving trails of heat behind them.
“It kills.” I let my hands drop. “I’ve never fainted before. Did I hit my head?”
“Actually, you didn’t pass out.” He looked at me sideways, and that heat in my belly sparked to life. “I did that.”
I shifted away from his touch. “What does that mean?”
“You were panicking, so I put you to sleep. I’m sorry. Your head may ache for a few hours.” I widened my eyes and opened my mouth opened to cuss him out, but he took my hands in his. “Wait. Before you freak out, you need to understand something. I didn’t do it to put you in danger. I did it so that I could move you back from the water’s edge and get you out of Isolde’s line of sight. I was afraid she would shift, and then we’d have even bigger problems on our hands.”
I tried to pull my hands away. “You had no right—”
“You’re right.” He squeezed my fingers, and my hands warmed underneath the ends of my damp sleeves. “And I promise you, I’ll never do it again.”
“How do you do that?” I looked down at my hands. “Put people to sleep? Warm them up? How do you do that to people?”
His face dropped. “Oh, you’ve noticed?”
I gaped at him. “Noticed that whenever you’re around my stomach turns into a deep fryer? Yes, I’ve noticed.”
“How many legends have you heard about Merfolk?”
I tried to think of the stories I’d read about mermaids when I was in the fourth grade and went through a mythical creature phase. I’d covered my walls in pictures of unicorns, faeries, and mermaids and tried to convince my parents to take me to Ireland for summer break so I could hunt leprechauns. Most of the stories I’d read abou
t mermaids painted the picture of murderous wicked creatures who thrived on tricking humans.
“They drowned sailors. They would charm them into jumping out of their boats and then drown them in the ocean. Is it true?”
He looked down. “Not…exactly. That warmth you feel when I am around. That reaction you have to me. It’s because Mer are designed to lure a mate.”
“There you go with the mate thing again.”
He chuckled. “Mer mate with humans. And the way we find humans to mate with is by luring them into the water with us. We create a physiological response in humans, and it makes them…susceptible.”
“Then what?”
He looked down. “They have to…um, drown.”
My heart ground to a halt, and I yanked my hands free. “You mean to tell me you’ve been tricking me into liking you, so you could drown me?” My hand went into my pocket, and I began fingering the keys on my cell phone. Would I be able to find the numbers 9-1-1 without looking?
“No! I would never hurt you.” He put his hands out defensively. “I was telling the truth when I said I will take whatever time I have with you. But I don’t intend to drown you. Not now, not ever.”
“But eventually, you have to find a mate.” My voice grew shriller by the second. “And then you’ll drown her. R-right?”
He sighed and sagged his shoulders. “That’s what is expected of me.”
“That’s sick.” I tried to shift away from him. “How the hell can you mate with someone you’ve drowned?”
“I…” He scruffed a hand across his jaw. “Once they’ve drowned, they’re changed.”
The quaking returned, and I used my spare hand to push myself away from him. I was sitting there with a guy…no, wait…a creature…that would eventually murder someone. How in the world did I manage to get myself into these situations? My chair was at least three hundred feet up a hill on a skinny, overgrown trail, and I was sitting in the woods having some sort of heart-to-heart with a mythological being who could render me unconscious with his mind.
I’d officially outdone myself.
“Take me home. Right now.”
Chapter Seven
After Saxon silently carried me back to my chair, I settled myself in my seat without saying a word to him. When he moved to take hold of the handles, I grabbed the wheels and jerked away from his touch.
“Just stay here,” I hissed, avoiding his gaze. One look at those icy blue eyes, and my resolve would crumble like a stale piece of biscotti for sale at the Deep Lake Coffee Company. The last thing I needed was to feel weak around someone who had plans to drown a human eventually.
He raked both hands through his hair. “Just let me walk you home. Just so I know you’re safe.”
“No!” My voice echoed between the trees. “You need to stay away from me. I mean it.” My heart pulsated so hard inside of my chest, I feared my ribs would crack as I rolled down the trail, away from him.
When I glanced back, my chest tightened, causing a dull ache that soaked through my muscles and into the bones. There he stood, in the center of the trail with his hands in his pockets, and his wavy brown hair hanging over his eyes as he stared down at the ground.
* * *
I surprised myself by keeping my mouth shut when I got home. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I expected it to be. The fact that I just rolled past Evey and Declan in the kitchen to vomit into the garbage can acted as whatever permission I needed to ignore everyone and lock myself in my bedroom for the night.
Even though the headache was gone by the next morning, I claimed to feel like crap, earning a much-needed day at home alone. Gee, and it only took my mother forty minutes of waffling back and forth finally to agree to leave me unattended.
Once my family fumbled their way out the door—notebooks, math assignments, soccer balls, aprons, and coffee cups in tow—I greeted the silence like an old friend. Our household had very little quiet to offer, and every now and again a girl needed some peace to ponder life’s wonders. For instance, why the women in the tampon commercials always danced around wearing white. Or, why boys claimed to want to date a girl who was natural and didn’t wear a lot of makeup, but if you put them in front of a Victoria’s Secret commercial, they’d drool down the front of their shirts.
And, of course, what to do about the mythological creature in your backyard you were kinda sorta falling for.
After getting dressed and making myself some toast, I rolled into our living room, where a row of old paned windows faced the water. As I nibbled on the buttered bread, I watched the waves of Moon’s Bay rise and fall, and the food stuck in my throat. I couldn’t have counted how many times in my life I’d swam in that lake if I tried. Hundreds?
Have Mer been watching me from below? Have they reached out their hands to grab my ankles while I paddled? Have they glowered at me with the same expression Isolde gave me the day before? Was yesterday not my first experience with Saxon’s kind?
Shivering, I let my toast drop to the coffee table and rested my elbows on my knees. During the course of the night, I’d woken up no fewer than a dozen times, replaying my afternoon with Saxon. Pulling my blankets around my body as tightly as I could manage, I tried desperately to ward off the chill all of my newfound knowledge brought on. Knowing that a clan of Mer lived underneath the surface of the lake erased everything I’d known to be true for the past eighteen years. And that knowledge made sleeping peacefully in my bed freaking impossible.
My heart knocked against the inside wall of my chest, and I rubbed at it absently. I missed Saxon. Admitting it made me want to whack my head on the wall. I had hurt him when I left him standing on the trail alone, and knowing that sucked royally. I’d never liked a guy enough to regret my actions before. Figures that I’d finally fall hard for a guy, and he’d turn out to be part fish.
“Screw it.” I flipped the brakes on my chair and rolled toward the back door. I had too many questions that needed answers and too many feelings for Saxon that tugged me back toward the water. Maybe I didn’t have much of a future with him—after all, the guy could only stay human for so long at a time, not to mention the tricky drowning humans thing—but that didn’t mean I had to deny what my heart told me to do today.
And my heart wanted to find Saxon.
The rain stopped, and a hint of sunshine filtered through the thin veil of clouds overhead. I paused to lift my face to the sky and relish the vitamin D. Though we had beautiful summertime’s around here, the long, gray winters tended to overlap into our springs. Sometimes I craved sunshine. My mother called it seasonal depression; I called it “our winter’s too friggin’ long” syndrome.
After crossing the driveway, I headed down the trail, watching the waterline as I rolled. I had no idea where to find him except at the bottom of the lake. And I didn’t have any scuba gear readily available. The only thing I could think to do was check the few spots I’d ever seen him, and the spot where he’d stripped naked and jumped into the water was at the top of my list. Can’t imagine why.
“Saxon?” Pushing my wheels as fast as I could, I went from one end of the trail to the other, with no luck. “Sax? You out here?”
I glanced at the digital time on my phone. It was ten, and my parents were stuck at the coffee shop until at least one. That meant I had three more hours to find him without worrying about my mother careening around a corning in the red van.
I groaned to myself, pushed up my sleeves and started up the incline toward the main road. My grandma used to say something to me about Mohamed bringing a mountain when the mountain wouldn’t come to him or some such nonsense. I always used to get annoyed when she said things like that and when she made me sit through Jeopardy when I wanted to watch MTV. But today Saxon was the mountain, and I was Mohamed.
My biceps burned as I crested the sloped driveway and turned onto the road. When I stopped to catch my breath, my heart pounded in my ears like the bass on one of the low-rider trucks my father drooled over that they alway
s had at the Sandpoint Auto Show. Peeling my black hoodie off, I shivered when the still-cool air hit my damp skin. Too bad I’d gone for the dark purple PJ tank top underneath my jacket instead of a practical shirt.
Huffing loudly, my lungs squeezed as I passed each of my neighbors’ driveways. The house at the end of the road was up ahead, and the chain around the gate shone in the sunlight as I approached. It was a long shot, but I was running out of options. The next place I would look for Saxon was the end of our dock with a pair of goggles, and I was saving that idea for last.
I released my wheels and let gravity take me clear up to the iron bars while I caught my breath. The trees and overgrown brush lining the driveway on the other side of the gate remained unmoving while I fingered the cold metal and pressed my face to it. The only thing I could see was the roof of the house and a few boarded-up windows. No sign of Saxon or anyone else, for that matter.
I rattled the gate. “Dammit.”
This whole super-sleuth thing would be a whole lot easier if I had working legs and a car to take me places beyond my own cul-de-sac. The dull throb returned, and I pressed my hand to my chest. I wanted to see him so badly, I was ready to scream. What did I have to do? Offer myself up as bait for Isolde on the beach?
I heard the heavy footsteps of Saxon’s boots coming from the brush before he spoke. “Luna?”
There he was, hiking up the cracked driveway in his T-shirt and jeans. His hair was dripping wet, and like me, he’d ditched the coat to soak up some sun. When our eyes met, his face lit up. His mouth stretched the width of his face into a grin that made the throb in my chest dissolve, and I couldn’t avoid smiling back at him.
I raised my hand to wave, but felt stupid, and settled for half a shrug instead. “Hi.”
He climbed to the top of the gate, threw a leg over, and jumped to the ground next to me. He reached out a hand, letting it hover above my arm before shoving it into his pocket instead. “Why aren’t you in school?”
I caught a lock of my black hair that danced on the wind and tucked it behind my ear. “I’m playing hooky.”