“Aunt Rachel,” I say, ignoring his plea, “get Quince a glass of water.”
“Of course,” she says, and from the take-charge tone, I can tell she knows this is serious.
I sigh. “And make it salty.”
“Right,” she says. Then I hear her walking down the stairs.
“Salty?” Quince asks. “Why the hell would I drink salt water?”
“It’s a long story.”
Prithi meows sympathetically.
A heavy pause hangs between us. “Why do I think,” he says, “when you say that, it’s a gross understatement?”
“Listen,” I say, leaning my forehead against the door. “Drink the water. Go home and take a bath. A salt bath. You’ll feel better—”
“No,” he argues. “I’m not leaving until you let me expl—”
He breaks into a huge coughing fit before he can finish.
“I’m not up for this right now,” I say, and I can hear the weariness in my voice. This has been an emotional day, and he’s lucky I’m not prepared to fillet him alive at the moment.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “As long as you promise we’ll talk tomorrow.”
Oh, we’ll talk tomorrow. When he pressed his lips to mine, he got way more than he bargained for. It may not be anything he wants to hear, but we’ll talk. Because in order to undo what he started, I have to present him before the royal court of Thalassinia. Aka my dad.
“I promise.” When he starts coughing again, I add, “Just go home and take a bath.”
How did I ever get myself into this mess?
And how am I ever going to get myself out?
Looks like I’m going home for the weekend after all.
8
Meet me at Seaview Beach Park at three.
I slipped the note under Quince’s front door first thing in the morning and then disappeared. A night’s lack of sleep hadn’t cleared things up for me, and I needed a full day to figure out how to explain…well, everything…to him.
As the sun heads west behind me, I sit staring out at the ocean horizon. Still not sure how I’m going to proceed.
How do you tell a guy you’re a mermaid? And that’s he’s turning mer, too? I’ve spent three years fantasizing about telling Brody, but this is different. Quince is different.
He doesn’t say anything when he walks up behind me, but I feel him. In the sand, in the air. Everywhere. For a minute, I let the tension—or maybe it’s the bond, I still can’t believe I’m bonded to Quince Fletcher—crackle between us. I’d always heard the bond was an addictive high. I never expected the kind of physical connection I’m feeling.
I wonder if he feels it, too.
“Do you believe in other worlds?” I finally ask.
“What?” He laughs softly. “You mean like alien planets?”
“No, worlds right here on Earth,” I explain. “Worlds you can’t see. Worlds you never knew existed but that were there all the time.”
He drops down onto the sand next to me, arms hanging over his bent knees. “What’s this all about, princess?”
A wave crashes in front of us. Princess. That almost makes me smile. And cry.
“Look at the sand.” I point to the area at our feet. “See all those shells?”
“Yeah….”
“Those are coquinas.”
“Right, they come in on the waves—”
“That’s what everyone thinks.” I shake my head. “Look closer.”
A wave crashes, leaving behind a rainbow array of coquinas. As we watch, they quickly wiggle back under the sand.
“Whoa!” Quince leans forward and scoops up a handful of sand. He inspects his scoop like a little boy digging for sea slugs beneath the ocean floor.
“They don’t come in on the waves,” I explain. “They live under the sand.”
A softer wave rolls in, this one too gentle to displace the sand above the buried coquinas.
“Look at the water.” The sea flows back out. “See all the ripples?”
Quince looks up from his handful of sand and stares at the ebbing tide.
“The coquinas cause the ripples.” Another wave crashes, uncovering the rainbow of shells. “Even though they are hidden, they still affect the visible world.”
“Wow,” Quince says, his voice full of awe. “That’s amazing.”
“An entire world, hidden, but causing ripples in the world you know. The world you see.”
Without turning to look, I can tell Quince is staring at the sand as if it’s just come to life. Which it pretty much has. This is a good sign, I think. At least he wasn’t, like, “whatever” or “so what.” That has to bode well for my revelation. Right? I hope.
“That,” I say, swallowing over my hesitation, “is kind of what Thalassinia is like.”
He twists around to look at me. “Thala-what?”
“Thalassinia.” I turn away from the sea to meet his gaze. “My kingdom.”
To his credit, he blinks only three times before recovering his ability to speak.
“Your kingdom?” he echoes. “What exactly do you—”
“I’m not your average high school girl.” I meet his confused look without flinching. “I’m a…” Now that the moment has finally come for me to tell someone the truth about who and what I am, it’s a lot tougher than I thought.
Secrecy is paramount in the mer world. Besides the whole flee-at-the-first-sign-of-humans instinct, we also keep our world carefully camouflaged. With a few exceptions—like the Bimini Road and those underwater temples off the coast of Japan—our buildings look like naturally forming phenomena. We even have the ability, in extreme cases, to alter the memory of an untrustworthy human who has seen our world. It’s not a fun experience, but it’s a price worth paying to keep Thalassinia and the other mer kingdoms safely secret. If humans knew we really existed, if they believed we were something more than mystical creatures of ancient myth, we’d be in for a world of trouble. Scientists. Journalists. Government agencies with the ability to make entire kingdoms disappear. They’d all be knocking at our door—or, rather, swimming in our pool—in a flash. Our quiet world would become a maelstrom, and the peace we’ve spent centuries cultivating would vanish. Not exactly every mermaid’s dream.
Every instinct and mer law I’ve been taught since birth commands me to keep our secret from humans at any expense, but I don’t really have a choice. That kiss made this moment inevitable.
If this were Brody, it would be so much easier. I’ve been waiting for three long years to tell him the truth. But Quince? I’m not exactly prepared.
His eyebrows pinch together. He looks like he’s thinking really, really hard. And things are starting to connect in his brain.
“You know,” he says, sounding skeptical, “that salty bath made me feel a world of better last night.”
“It did?”
“And drinking the saltwater didn’t dry me out. In fact”—his eyes narrow—“it made me feel superhydrated.”
Ah-hem. “Good.”
Why do I have the feeling I’m not going to have to figure out how to tell him anything? Maybe the bond is already giving us both some insights.
“Come to think of it,” he adds, “you seem to take long baths pretty regularly.”
“Hey,” I shout, momentarily offended out of my anxiety by embarrassment. “You are such a peeping perv—”
“Lily”—his voice drops to an unusually serious level—“was there something more you wanted to tell me?”
“Well, actually,” I reply, unable to look him in the eye any longer, “there was one thing….”
When I don’t finish, he says, “And that would be…?”
I drop my head and mumble into my chest. For the love of Poseidon, this is harder than I ever imagined.
“What was that?” he asks, cupping my chin and forcing me to meet his questioning gaze. “I didn’t quite catch it, since you were speaking at the sand.”
“I said”—I twist out of his grasp and face him with
as much fake boldness as I can muster—“I’m a mermaid.”
His mouth drops open a little. I find myself staring at his lips, the same ones that were kissing me just last night. They are quite nicely formed. I never bothered to look before—since they were usually engaged in finding ways to mortify me—but they are nice and full, without being too soft. Kind of, as Shannen said, Brad Pitt–like. No wonder they felt so good—
Holy crab cakes, what’s wrong with me? Why am I suddenly fanta—No. No, no, no. I am not fantasizing about my archenemy’s lips! I must be totally losing it. I have way more pressing matters to deal with at the moment.
“Huh,” Quince says, like he just saw a monkey riding a dolphin or something. Then he laughs. “That explains your bizarre obsession with fish terminology.”
More laughter. I scowl. There’s nothing amusing about this situation.
“Well, that’s not half of it, buster.” I slam my palms against his chest, sending him toppling back onto the sand. “You’re turning into one, too.”
He starts laughing even harder.
“What’s so funny?”
“Aw, hell, Lil,” he says. “Irony’s a bitch.”
I scowl harder. He is such a lunatic. Maybe I should just leave him here to dehydrate—
“I can’t even swim.”
Great. I jab both hands into my hair and hang my head. Why am I surprised? Nothing about Quince has ever made my life easy. Thalassinia is forty-five nautical miles due east, and the blowfish can’t swim. The sun is already closing in on the western horizon. There’s no time to waste.
“Well, you’re going to have to learn,” I say, leaping to my feet. “And fast.”
“Hold on there, princess.” He stops laughing long enough to stand up. “Water and I are not exactly friends. I prefer transportation with wheels.”
“That doesn’t matter right now,” I say, walking down to the ocean’s edge and kicking off my shoes.
“The hell it doesn’t,” he growls.
“Listen.” I turn to face him, hands on my hips. “We’re working on a tight time schedule here. We don’t want to be caught in open sea after dark.”
When the sun goes down, the ocean turns into a war zone. All the biggest and baddest come out, and some of them have a taste for mermaid. Swimming the night sea without a guarded escort is shark-bait suicide.
He crosses his arms across his chest. “What exactly is going on?”
I can see I’m getting nowhere with him until I explain a few things. “When you kissed me last night, a bond formed and you began to turn mer. Your body started preparing itself for saltwater immersion, raising the saline levels in your skin to compensate—that’s why the salty bath felt so good. Salivary glands near the top of your throat grew into gills so you’ll be able to breathe underwater.”
“Wait a second—”
“The chemistry of your lymphatic system is changing so it can regulate your buoyancy.” I try not to laugh at the thought of Quince floating along on the surface as I drag his sorry self all the way to Thalassinia.
“My buoyancy was just fine—”
“Oh, and the bond?” I add before things go from bad to beyond repair. “Is this kind of chemical-hormonal-emotional connection thing that can kind of muddy your feelings. So don’t go getting all mushy on me. We’re not really falling for each other, even if we start to think we are.”
Good advice for me, too.
I can’t even imagine anything worse than thinking I’m in love with Quince. I’d be too embarrassed to ever leave the sea again.
“Okay…,” he says. “But what about—”
“No time,” I interrupt once more—it feels good to finally be the one getting the last word. “I can dish more details later. First, I have to get you to the Thalassinian royal court so the king can perform the separation ritual, like, last week. Now get moving.”
He looks stunned. Completely stunned. I never thought I’d see the day I shocked Quince Fletcher. And now that it’s here, I don’t have time to enjoy it. I’ve got to get this bond undone before the emotional stuff starts clouding my judgment, before his mer mark begins to form at the start of the next lunar cycle and the process becomes irreversible. Ticktock, ticktock.
“Let me get this straight,” he says, recovering himself. “I’m turning into a mermaid because I kissed you?”
“I don’t remember asking you to kiss me,” I retort.
He scowls and I regret my snide remark. He didn’t ask for any of this to happen, either. There was no way he could have known what he was getting himself into.
“Technically,” I explain, “you’re turning into a merman.”
He gives me a look that makes it clear that he’s not interested in technicalities at the moment.
“Look,” I say. “Can we just forget the last few days and focus on what we need to do right now?”
He shrugs, still sulking, from the look of his scowl. But we don’t have time to indulge his pout. Unencumbered, I can make the swim from Seaview to Thalassinia in under two hours. With biker boy slowing me down, we’ll be lucky to coast in before the suns sets in a few short hours.
“We don’t want to be traveling when the sun goes down. I thought we would have more than enough time to spare, but I didn’t know you couldn’t swim.” I turn and head again for the sea, unbuttoning my shorts as I go. “Follow me.”
When I reach waist-deep water, I slip off my shorts and fling them back onto the beach next to my shoes. Next to a gaping Quince, who hasn’t moved from the spot.
“Get your butt moving,” I shout.
Jerking to a start, Quince finally starts walking. And reaching for the waistband of his cargo pants.
“Uh-uh,” I call out. “You can keep your drawers on.”
“But you—”
“I will be transfiguring,” I explain. “Changing into my fins. You’re not fully mer yet. You will be able to breathe and communicate underwater, but you won’t transfigure into a merman.”
And once the separation ritual is complete, he never will.
“Oh,” he says, eyes slightly glazed and not sounding as if he understands at all.
There will be plenty of time later for Q and A.
“Lose the shirt, though,” I order. “It’ll only add drag and slow us down.”
Without argument, Quince reaches for the hem of his Miami Ink tee and lifts it over his head. His skin gleams in the warm sunlight as he throws the shirt aside, landing right on top of my shorts. Lord love a lobster, he has a beautiful chest. He’s not bodybuilder muscular, but clearly he’s built enough to lift whatever comes along. I can just imagine him earning those muscles in the lumberyard, hefting plywood and two-by-fours to sculpt perfect pecs and a washboard—
“See something you like?”
My eyes jerk up. Caught staring at the off-limits eye candy. From the smoldering look in his eyes, he’s not about to punish me. I shake my head slowly, unconvincingly. It’s the bond. It has to be the bond. What else would—
He takes a step closer.
“No!” I squeak. “We have to, um, get going.”
He stops and has the nerve to laugh.
The bond is already tweaking my thoughts. If I don’t get us out of here and on the way to a full separation soon, I’m going to be in big—okay, bigger—trouble.
Quickly slipping my undies off, I throw them up to join my shorts and shoes on the beach. All I’m wearing is my tank top, which is all I’ll need once I transfigure.
Quince stares at the water right in front of me, as if hoping to be able to see beneath the surface despite the distortion.
“Eyes up, buster.”
In a slow, languid movement his eyes travel up over my wet top—hovering just a little on my cha-chas—and finally up to meet my angry gaze.
I feel my cheeks burn red.
“If we had time,” I warn, “I would so punish you for that.”
“You don’t scare me, Princess,” he replies with a grin.<
br />
Deciding that ignoring his comment is the best course of action, I ask, “Would you go lock our stuff in your bike?” The last thing I want is to come back later to find my clothes gone and have to ride all the way home in a finkini. (Manifesting a partial-transfiguration bikini bottom may be great for day-to-day modesty purposes, but straddling a motorcycle would be hard enough for me in regular shorts—I’m not about to attempt it with my backside covered in slippery scales.) Usually I bury my things in the sand beneath the pier, but I’d rather not traipse across the beach in the near-buff in front of Quince.
He lifts a brow.
“You do have a way to lock up stuff in your bike, don’t you?” I taunt.
He looks like he wants to make another smart comment, but then he just shrugs and takes our pile up to the parking lot. He returns a few seconds later, slipping his keys into a Velcro pocket in his pants. That should hold them securely.
Time to get back to work. “The first step is aquarespire,” I say as he approaches me in the surf.
“And that is…?”
“Breathing water.”
His dark blond brows furrow over stormy blue eyes. He’s skeptical. Who wouldn’t be? It’s not like breathing liquid is a normal, everyday thing for humans. In fact, it’s so abnormal that their brains usually make them do just about anything to keep from inhaling water, even fighting to the death. Literally.
“Follow me.” I sink under the waves, letting my fins appear, lime green and gold scales covering my body from the waist down. My gills fill my throat, and I take a deep breath.
Quince doesn’t follow.
I pop back above water. “What’s wrong?”
“Kiss me.”
“What?!?”
That’s what got us into this mess in the first place.
“Kiss me,” he repeats, stepping closer. “I trust you, but what do I know? If this is going to be my last breath, I want it to be a good one.”
Then, before I can react or argue or escape, he slips an arm around my waist, yanks me closer, and presses his mouth to mine. Instinctively, my arms wrap around his neck, holding on for everything I’m worth. It’s just like last night’s kiss, only this time I know who I’m kissing. And this time the bond magnifies my every emotion. I can’t think of anything but his lips moving over mine, of staying in his arms forever.
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