by Anna Banks
Rachel greets me at the sliding glass door. “Hiya, cutie. Your mom called. She’s home and would like to know why you’re not.”
I lift my chin, ready to fire off a few different reasons, beginning with the fact that I’m eighteen years old and ending with the fact that even if I weren’t of legal age, I’m still within my curfew. Then I realize Mom’s home early—which means she came home about the same time Toraf and Galen sensed the Syrena stalker. Whether it’s just a coincidence or a mother’s intuition working in overdrive is a toss-up. I didn’t believe in either until just now—but this is the third time it’s happened this week. Trying not to snatch her cell when Rachel hands it to me, I press the EMMA’S MOM icon on the touch screen.
“Hello?” she says, her voice tight.
“Mom, it’s me. You called?” Sounding casual is difficult when it feels like your heart’s river-dancing in your rib cage.
“Yes, I just wondered where you were. You didn’t answer your cell. Is everything okay?” She sighs, but I can’t tell if it’s in relief or parental aggravation.
“Everything’s fine. My battery is dead, but Galen bought me a charger to keep over here, so it’s charging.”
“How sweet of him,” she says, knowing good and well she instructed him to do so. “Well, just wanted to check in. Should I wait up for you? I don’t appreciate you missing curfew the last few nights. Technically, staying over there until four in the morning is a coed sleepover, which I don’t allow, or had you forgotten? Your trip to Florida with Galen’s family was a special circumstance.”
“I stayed the night at Chloe’s all the time with JJ there.” JJ is Chloe’s eight-year-old brother. Not a great comeback, but it will have to do.
“You know what I mean, Emma,” she snaps.
“Why are you so grouchy? And why are you home early again?”
“I don’t know. I’m tired, I guess. Listen, I noticed you haven’t brought your swimsuit home yet. I hope you’re not still getting in the water. It’s too cold for swimming, Emma.”
I do my own laundry. Digging around in my drawers is the only way she could have “noticed” anything missing. Does she also look for condoms or other incriminating evidence moms usually scavenge for? Does she come home to scavenge? The thought tickles my temper. Making a mental note to buy a new bathing suit strictly for Galen’s house, I say, “You’re telling me this? You know how cold-natured I am.” My laugh is loud enough to be suspicious, but Mom doesn’t seem to notice. Rachel smirks though.
“Don’t try to tell me you and Galen haven’t figured out how to stay warm in the water.”
“Mom!”
“Just promise you won’t get in the water,” she says, her voice tight again. “I don’t need you getting sick.”
“Fine. I promise.”
“And be home before dawn this time. I dare you to bring home anything less than an A on your report card after this. I double dog dare you.”
I mouth the words into the phone as she says them; you’d think she’d at least change the wording after all these years. It’s her go-to threat for just about everything. But somehow, it doesn’t work this time. There’s no bluster behind it. She’s getting soft lately, and I think it has to do with the night I accused her of adopting me. “Okay. Before dawn.”
“Good night, sweetie. I love you.”
“Loveyoutoo, good night.”
I hang up the phone and hand it back to Rachel, who exchanges it for a mug of hot chocolate with three gargantuan marshmallows floating on top. “Thanks,” I tell her, shuffling to the kitchen behind her.
Rayna is sitting at the table, pulling enough polish, clippers, and buffers out of her kit to open her own nail salon. “I know I said I wanted the French kind, but I really like this color,” she says, holding up a cantaloupe shade.
Rachel shakes her head. “That’ll look tourist tacky against your olive skin, honey bunches.”
Hoping to get a different opinion, Rayna jiggles the bottle at me. I shake my head. Pouting, she slams it on the table, then dumps the entire contents of the kit on top of it. “Well, is there any color that would look good?”
I take the seat next to her. “What’s Toraf’s favorite color?”
She shrugs. “Whatever I tell him it is.”
I raise a brow at her. “Don’t know, huh?”
She crosses her arms. “Who cares anyway? We’re not painting his toenails.”
“I think what’s she’s trying to say, honey bunches, is that maybe you should paint your nails his favorite color, to show him you’re thinking about him,” Rachel says, seasoning her words with tact.
Rayna sets her chin. “Emma doesn’t paint her nails Galen’s favorite color.”
Startled that Galen has a favorite color and I don’t know it, I say, “Uh, well, he doesn’t like nail polish.” That is to say, he’s never mentioned it before.
When a brilliant smile lights up her whole face, I know I’ve been busted. “You don’t know his favorite color!” she says, actually pointing at me.
“Yes, I do,” I say, searching Rachel’s face for the answer. She shrugs.
Rayna’s smirk is the epitome of I know something you don’t know. Smacking it off her face is my first reflex, but I hold back, as I always do, because of the kiss I shared with Toraf and the way it hurt her. Sometimes I catch her looking at me with that same expression she had on the beach, and I feel like fungus, even though she deserved it at the time.
Refusing to fold, I eye the buffet of nail polish scattered before me. Letting my fingers roam over the bottles, I shop the paints, hoping one of them stands out to me. To save my life, I can’t think of any one color he wears more often. He doesn’t have a favorite sport, so team colors are a no-go. Rachel picked his cars for him, so that’s no help either. Biting my lip, I decide on an ocean blue.
“Emma! Now I’m just ashamed of myself,” he says from the doorway. “How could you not know my favorite color?”
Startled, I drop the bottle back on the table. Since he’s back so soon, I have to assume he didn’t find what or who he wanted—and that he didn’t hunt them for very long. Toraf materializes behind him, but Galen’s shoulders are too broad to allow them both to stand in the doorway. Clearing my throat, I say, “I was just moving that bottle to get to the color I wanted.”
Rayna is all but doing a victory dance with her eyes. “Which is?” she asks, full of vicious glee. Toraf pushes past Galen and plops down next to his tiny mate. She leans into him, eager for his kiss. “I missed you,” she whispers.
“Not as much as I missed you,” he tells her.
Galen and I exchange eye rolls as he walks around to prop himself on the table beside me, his wet shorts making a butt-shaped puddle on the expensive wood. “Go ahead, angelfish,” he says, nodding toward the pile of polish.
If he’s trying to give me a clue, he sucks at it. “Go” could mean green, I guess. “Ahead” could mean … I have no idea what that could mean. And angelfish come in all sorts of colors. Deciding he didn’t encode any messages for me, I sigh and push away from the table to stand. “I don’t know. We’ve never talked about it before.”
Rayna slaps her knee in triumph. “Ha!”
Before I can pass by him, Galen grabs my wrist and pulls me to him, corralling me between his legs. Crushing his mouth to mine, he moves his hand to the small of my back and presses me into him. Since he’s still shirtless and I’m in my bikini, there’s a lot of bare flesh touching, which is a little more intimate than I’m used to with an audience. Still, the fire sears through me, scorching a path to the furthest, deepest parts of me. It takes every bit of grit I have not to wrap my arms around his neck.
Gently, I push my hands against his chest to end the kiss, which is something I never thought I’d do. Giving him a look that I hope conveys “inappropriate,” I step back. I’ve spent enough time in their company to know without looking that Rayna’s eyes are bugging out of their sockets and Toraf is grinning like a nutcra
cker doll. With any luck, Rachel didn’t even see the kiss. Stealing a peek at her, she meets my gaze with openmouthed shock.
Okay, it looked as bad as I thought it did. Like a child, I close my eyes as if they can’t see me either. The fire from the kiss broadcasts itself all over me in the form of a full-body blush.
Galen laughs. “There it is,” he says, running his thumb over my bottom lip. “That is my favorite color. Wow.”
I’m going to kill him. “Galen. Please. Come. With. Me,” I choke out. Gliding past him, my bare feet slap against the tile until I’m stomping on carpet in the hallway, then up the stairs.
I can tell by the prickles on my skin that he’s following like a good dead fish. As I reach the ladder to the uppermost level, I nod to him to keep following before I hoist myself up. Pacing the room until he gets through the trap door, I count more Mississippis than I’ve ever counted in my whole life.
He closes the door and locks it shut but makes no move to come closer. Still, for a person who’s about to die, he seems more amused than he should. I point my finger at him, but can’t decide what to accuse him of first, so I put it back down.
After several minutes of this, he breaks the silence. “Emma, calm down.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, Highness.” I dare him with my eyes to call me “boo.”
Instead of the apology I’m looking for, his eyes tell me he’s considering kissing me again, right now.
Which is meant to distract me. Tearing my gaze from his mouth, I stride to the window seat and move the mountains of pillows on it. Making myself comfortable, I lean my head against the window. He knows as well as I do that if we had a special spot, this would be it. For me to sit here without him is the worst kind of snub. In the reflection, I see him run his hand through his hair and cross his arms. After a few more minutes, he shifts his weight to the other leg.
He knows what I want. He knows what will earn him entrance to the window seat and my good graces. I don’t know if it’s Royal blood or manly pride that keeps him from apologizing, but his extended delay just makes me madder. Now I won’t accept an apology. No, now he must grovel.
I toss a satisfied smirk into the reflection only to find he’s not there anymore. His hand closes around my arm and he jerks me up against him. His eyes are stormy, intense. “You think I’m going to apologize for kissing you?” he murmurs.
“I. Yes. Uh-huh.” Don’t look at his mouth! Say something intelligent. “We don’t have any clothes on.” Fan-flipping-tastic. I meant to say he shouldn’t kiss me in front of everyone, especially half naked.
“Mmm,” he says, pulling me closer. Brushing his lips against my ear, he says, “I did happen to notice that. Which is why I shouldn’t have followed you up here.”
His cell phone vibrates on the nightstand, almost startling my hair off my head. He grins and walks over to pick it up, leaving me there to stare after him. “It’s Dr. Milligan,” he says. “Hello? Hold on, Dr. Milligan, let me put you on speaker. Emma’s here.” Galen presses the button on the screen. “Okay, Dr. Milligan,” he says. “Go ahead.”
“Well, my boy, I just wanted to let you know that I received the results back for the DNA tests. Emma is definitely half human.”
Galen winks at me. “You don’t say?”
I cover my mouth to stifle a giggle. Rudeness should never be contagious.
“Yes, I’m afraid so. That said, I’m not sure if she even has the capability of forming a fin.”
Galen laughs. “We sort of already went along with that assumption, Dr. Milligan. Then the Archives confirmed it. There’s a painting of people who look just like Emma in Tartessos.”
Dr. Milligan sighs. “You could have called me.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Milligan. I’ve been … busy.”
“Did Emma figure out her lineage, then?”
Galen shakes his head, though the reaction is lost on Dr. Milligan in Florida. “As far as we can tell, Emma’s father was a Half-Breed. He’s got the coloring, he wore contacts, he loved seafood and the ocean. He obviously knew about Emma’s physical issues.” He tells Dr. Milligan about his theory that some of the half-breeds survived the destruction of Tartessos.
Dr. Milligan is quiet for a few seconds. “What else?”
Galen gives me a quizzical look. I return a shrug. “What do you mean?” he says.
“I mean, my boy, what other evidence do you have to go on? The man you just described could be me. I used to have blond hair before the gray took over. I wear contacts. I happen to love seafood and the beach, if where I live is any indication. I also know about Emma’s physical issues. Emma could be my daughter then. Is that what you’re saying? If that’s all you’re basing it on, Emma could be almost any man’s daughter in the Panhandle here. Not very scientific.”
Galen frowns.
“You there, Galen?” Dr. Milligan says. I sit beside Galen on the bed, not liking the turn of the conversation.
“I’m still here.”
“Good. There’s something else to consider. If Emma’s father was a descendant of the Half-Breeds, like you say, then he wouldn’t really be a Half-Breed anymore, would he? He’d be more like a quarter-breed, or who-knows-how-many-fractions-of-a-breed? Which would dilute Emma’s blood even more. Really, how likely is it that Emma’s father was an actual Half-Breed? There’d have to be some naughty Syrena out there to produce a full-blooded Half-Breed, don’t you think? And if Emma is just a descendant from these long-ago half-humans, well, then she’d mostly be human. But that’s not what my test results show, my boy. She’s exactly half.”
“What are you saying Dr. Milligan?” Galen says, flustered.
“I’m saying, Galen, that I don’t think you’ve found the answer. I think you need to keep looking. I do wish you would have called me. I could have helped you reason it out and saved you some time. But there is one more thing I wanted to mention before we disconnect.”
“What’s that?” Galen says, almost in a daze.
“Didn’t you tell me once that Syrena young develop into full maturity at nine years old?”
“Yes. Nine or ten. Some even earlier than that.”
“And that includes the ability to sense?”
“Yes. And their bones are matured already. They don’t grow anymore.”
“But you see, my boy, since Emma is half human, she matured at a slower pace. Precisely half the pace, I’d say. Which, if I’m correct, means she wouldn’t hit maturity until age eighteen.”
My mouth drops open. Hitting my head had nothing to do with my Syrena abilities. I had just finished maturing. Right before Chloe died.
“I see,” Galen says, wrapping his arm around me and pulling me to him. “Well, thank you, Dr. Milligan. I’m sorry we didn’t call you before. You have no idea how sorry.”
“Yes, well, I’m just trying to help.” But he sounds upset. As if he was left out of the loop. Technically, he was.
But I’m betting my bikini bottoms he never will be again.
26
CAREFUL NOT to wake her, Galen brushes Emma’s hair from her face, her cheeks pink from the glow of sunrise. Her sundress is ruined, the Atlantic leaving stains on it resembling a mountain range. She managed to tear the hem of it while hunting for her other shoe in the moonlight. Then she spread her dress out like a fan for him to lay on instead of the sand. And that’s where he stayed all night. This is why I never sifted. No one else could fit as perfectly in my arms as she does. Leaning down, he grazes her lips with his. She sighs, as if she felt it.
Gulls squawk in the distance, eager for breakfast. Morning tide sloshes against the shore. The wind laces through the dune grass, like it’s whispering a secret he’s not meant to hear. And Emma sleeps. This is the definition of peace.
The definition is interrupted by Toraf’s ringtone. Why did Rachel get Toraf a phone? Does she hate me? Fumbling behind him in the sand, Galen puts a hand on it right before it stops ringing. He waits five seconds and … Yep, he’s calling aga
in.
“Hello?” he whispers.
“Galen, it’s Toraf.”
Galen snorts. “You think?”
“Rayna’s ready to leave. Where are you?”
Galen sighs. “We’re on the beach. Emma’s still sleeping. We’ll walk back in a few minutes.” Emma braved her mom’s wrath by skipping curfew again last night to be with him. Grom’s mating ceremony is tomorrow, and Galen and Rayna’s attendance is required. He’ll have to leave her in Toraf’s care until he gets back.
“Sorry, Highness. I told you, Rayna’s ready to go. You have about two minutes of privacy. She’s heading your way.” The phone disconnects.
Galen leans down and sweeps his lips over her sweet neck. “Emma,” he whispers.
She sighs. “I heard him,” she groans drowsily. “You should tell Toraf that he doesn’t have to yell into the phone. And if he keeps doing it, I’m going to accidentally break it.”
Galen grins. “He’ll get the hang of it soon. He’s not a complete idiot.”
At this, Emma opens one eye.
He shrugs. “Well, three quarters maybe. But not a complete one.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” she says, sitting up and stretching.
“You know I do. But I think this mating ceremony will be interesting enough without introducing my Half-Breed girlfriend, don’t you think?”
Emma laughs and pulls her hair to one side, draping it over her shoulder. “This is our first time away from each other. You know, as a couple. We’ve only been really dating for two weeks now. What will I do without you?”
He pulls her to him, leaning her back against his chest. “Well, I’m hoping that this time when I come back, it won’t be to the sight of you kissing Toraf.”
The snickers beside them let them know their two minutes of privacy are up. “Yeah. Or someone’s gonna die,” Rayna says cordially.