by J. R. Rain
“You’re barefoot, wearing track pants, and carrying a cheap samurai sword. You didn’t walk very far like that, and you would’ve needed to be close to have seen me looking around.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. Little jumpy.” He chuckles. “Name’s Carl Stone.”
“Hi Carl.” I shake his hand. Warm, sweaty. He’s been clutching the handle of his toy sword too tight. Nosy neighbor could be some help. I lean a bit to the side, hip out, and give him a little blast of ‘trust me’ charm, maybe three on a one-to-ten scale. Not looking to make this guy fling himself overboard for a snack. “Have you seen anything unusual happening around his house lately? When was the last time you saw him?”
Carl’s facial expression melts into a wide-eyed entranced stare. Probably the same face he had on the first time he discovered boobs on the internet at thirteen. “Uhh. Yeah, there’s been a bit of trouble lately. Some cars lurking by at night, making the slow pass, ya know? My mom thinks they’re drug dealers.”
“David and his wife?”
“No, the guys in the cars,” he says.
“Did anything happen?”
Urgency overwhelms his facial features. My supernatural nature has made him want to do anything to please me. Okay, maybe not anything. I only gave him a little blast. Not the ‘stab your shipmate in the throat to be the first one to jump over the side’ level.
“One of them even tossed a brick in Dave’s window last month. Worst was when some guy in a black car followed their kid to the house all the way from where the school bus left ’er off at the corner. Didn’t do anything, but that guy wanted to be noticed. Poor kid wouldn’t go outside for a week.”
Licinia’s mood makes me glad her full powers didn’t go with her beyond death. No ripped-off skin suits running around, please.
Relax, she says. I think whoever is doing this wanted to spook the kid to get to David.
I sigh. Or they meant it as a warning as in ‘next time we do more than follow her.’
Shit.
“How long ago was that?” I ask.
Carl sets the tip of his sword in the grass. “About a month or so. It’s been quiet for a while. David’s been acting normal too. I figured whatever happened was over.”
“When’s the last time you saw him or his family?”
“Uhh, Friday afternoon,” says Carl, to my breasts. “He mentioned a friend of his had invited him on a weekend boat trip.”
“Boat trip…” I quirk an eyebrow. “David doesn’t own a boat.”
“That’s right.” Carl nods. “It’s his friend’s boat. Said they were gonna go out on the Sound and head up ‘round Marrowstone.”
“You tell that to the police?”
“Yeah they swung by here earlier today. They didn’t seem too concerned.”
Of course, going on a weekend boat ride could end in all manner of disaster from death to winding up on a cheesy sitcom. I hope they didn’t take the three-hour tour. “Any idea where they set off from?”
“Nah. Maybe Edmonds Marina, but that’s only a guess.”
“Thanks, Carl.” I pull back on my supernatural allure. He blinks, catches himself staring at me, and looks off to the side, cheeks reddening. I pretend not to notice. “You’ve been a big help.”
“Hope they’re okay,” he mutters.
“Yeah. Me too.” But… I’m starting to have my doubts.
nother handy thing about being what I am, I don’t need to take lunch breaks. I can eat like a human, but ‘things not meat’ don’t do anything for me. What I need, rather what Licinia craves, is live food. And in this sense, ‘live’ means something that hasn’t been dead for more than a minute. Usually, I eat a whole fish or two every three days and that’s good enough to keep me comfortable and healthy. I suppose some women would kill for the ability to eat an entire chocolate cake and not gain an ounce.
Technically speaking, I have a metabolism to die for.
Though if I’m honest with myself, I did. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’m stuck halfway somehow. The vampires I’ve met are clearly dead but sustained by magical means. Unless something actively destroys them, they’ll live forever. Me, not so much. Couple hundred years. So maybe I am still alive in some form. Meh. I’ve been banging my head against that particular philosophical wall for a little over ninety years now and I’m still no closer to understanding. Plus, I shouldn’t be wasting time on metaphysics when that family is missing.
Edmonds Marina is north of Seattle, but there’s also Shilshole Bay at the south end, Elliot Bay, and a couple of smaller ones at points between, and the City of Des Moines Marina. I clench my fists around the steering wheel while still parked by David’s house. I’ve got an increasing feeling that wasting time driving to the wrong place will be a giant mistake.
A deadly mistake.
Come on, Licinia… I could so use one of her feelings.
She emits a meditative moan in the back of my head. Energy tingles within my arms and legs, like some phantom person is sitting inside me. Sometimes, she takes over and I get to sit back and watch. It’s a strange feeling being a spectator in one’s own body, but for as much as she’s done for me, she deserves to stretch her―well, my―legs once in a while.
I’m feeling Johnson…
“Like hell you are.”
I sense her frown. No. The word. The name… Johnson. Jones Town…
GPS to the rescue. A few key taps finds a Johnston Marina about a mile and change northeast of Edmonds Marina. “Johnston?”
Yes. That sounds right.
Off we go.
For the next thirty-two minutes, I barely contain my road rage and manage not to rip the steering wheel off my Rubi. City traffic sucks. The GPS says it’s only thirteen miles, but I’m half-tempted to jump in the Sound and swim it. How many damn Honda Civics can a girl get stuck behind in one day? What is it with those cars anyway? They always seem to race to get in front of me, and as soon as they are, they slam on their brakes. I don’t consider myself a prejudiced mermaid, but as soon as I see a Honda Civic, I assume the owner drives like a half-blind opossum on a lethal dose of valium.
Oh, wonderful. Here’s a bottle-blonde and her three friends in a tiny Kia SUV. All of them on their cell phones slurping Starbucks. Don’t get me wrong. I adore Starbucks. Hell, they’ve got my picture on everything. Almost. That two-tail thing is super creepy. I don’t want to know what kind of drugs the author of that legend was on when he imagined one of us with a split tail.
Finally, I swing a left onto Puget Lane and race to the end. Johnston Marina is relatively new, barely a year old, and one of the smaller ones. They built the shoreline out a bit to accommodate a little parking area on the far side of the railroad tracks that run along the coastline. Sure enough, I spot a white Tahoe parked on the right side next to a massive blue F350 pickup.
I whip the wheel, throwing my Rubi into a tire-squeaking turn. A brief dash down the parking lot, and I skid to a stop in the space to the right of David’s Tahoe. This is both good and horrible. Good that I found something concrete. Horrible that the truck is still at the marina.
All the doors on the Tahoe are locked, and the back seat looks like kid zone: two handheld electronic games, two giant cloth bags, a handful of dolls, and a tiny Starbucks cup in a holder. What is she, eight?
They have cocoa too.
Right. More Starbucks cups up front, sunglasses on the dash along with some wadded-up aluminum foil sandwich wrappers. Guess they had a bite before the trip. The Tahoe is too normal. Too ‘nothing weird happened here.’ I doubt anyone attacked the Stricklands. No, that sinking feeling in my gut says something happened out there. I gaze at the calm sea. Every time the smell of saltwater hits me, every time I lay eyes on the beauty of the waves, I have to fight the urge to rush into the ocean’s embrace.
I am no longer a creature of land… and I don’t really mind. But, there’s no Starbucks on the ocean floor. For that, I’ll deign to visit the surface.
Focus.
&
nbsp; Licinia is like a big sister and her mom-ness is presently swelling to the surface in droves. She mothers me a lot more than I admit. According to her, some people in my position don’t get along well with their wandering soul. I know it’s technically true, but I feel strange thinking of her as a Dark Master. She has her moments, but I don’t see her as dark. Okay, so she did rip a centurion’s skin off and kill him with it, but the man played grab-ass with her underage daughter.
Girls married at thirteen, hon. My eldest brother happened when our mother was fourteen.
I shiver.
Different time; different mores.
Yeah well, Ancient Rome can keep that.
Licinia’s contempt for that reality pawn store show fades to the notion of contemporary ‘marrying age’ or the rejection of child labor. Perhaps not all of modern society is bad.
Phone out. I call Serrano. While I wait for him to answer, I turn in place, studying the area. The monster F350 to my left has a huge white travel mug on the dashboard… with a NexArc logo. Son of a bitch…
“Serrano,” says Paolo.
“I found the Tahoe. It’s at Johnston Marina.” I wander around to the back. “It’s parked next to a compensator with a NexArc mug inside. Can you run this plate?”
“A compensator? What’s the make?”
Men who buy trucks this big all have something in common.
“You know, massive truck, tiny dick? Compensating.” I read off the plate. “A family of five could live in this damn thing. Geez must be a real hayburner.”
Not necessarily the length of their sword. Maybe he’s got mommy issues.
“Hayburner? Whatever that means,” mutters Paolo. “Hang on, system’s slow.”
“Always.” Urgency gets my foot tapping. I can’t pull my eyes off the water. But it’s not the usual pull. It’s something else. Licinia’s intuition? I keep talking to fill the silence. “I don’t think he went out on the lam… I couldn’t find anything he’d be running from.”
“Got a hit. 2015 Ford F350, registered to one Troy Robertson, age thirty-six.”
“The front desk woman at NexArc said Troy’s missing too,” I say. “Guess we know why… they never came back.”
“Hang on, Alex. Someone put in a missing report on him too, and there’s an update blinking.” Serrano’s keyboard clicks rapidly for a few seconds. “Looks like Robertson washed up, literally.”
“Dead?”
“No. Locals on Marrowstone Island found him this morning crawling onto the eastern shore. I’m not sure where he is now, probably taken to a hospital for a check. Uhh, I’m not seeing anything about an EPIRB, so maybe he fell overboard.”
Most boats have an emergency position-indicating radio beacon. They emit distress signals if the craft sinks. Maybe it ran aground somewhere and Troy tried to swim for help? The phone shows it’s a couple minutes from two in the afternoon. Licinia’s pull tells me I don’t have time to hesitate.
“Thanks. Gotta go.”
“You think something’s fishy?”
“Always.” I let his bad joke roll off me. Licinia’s too wound up over the missing family, especially that damn wide-eyed smiling little girl. I can’t get her out of my mind either. The feeling that somehow her life is in my hands dogs me and makes the whole situation ten times worse. What if I don’t do something right? I need to act, and I don’t have time to think.
Marrowstone Island? That’s about twenty-five miles as the crow flies…
Or the mermaid swims.
ne good thing about Johnston’s Marina. Being new and small, it’s nowhere near as crowded as the more well-established ones. Especially at this time of day. I hop in the back of my Rubi and strip naked. Love tinted windows. As a result of my planning for emergency situations, I’ve got a watertight bag stashed back here at all times with a full outfit. Also, two empty ones. After packing the clothes I had been wearing, I drop my smartphone in (those things are way too damn convenient) a Ziploc baggie, which then goes into the watertight pouch with the clothes. Hey, it might be overkill, but, like most people, my phone is damn near everything to me.
A beach towel wrapped around my armpits is enough to fool most who’d catch a glimpse of me. They’d assume I have a bikini on underneath. Really, what sort of crazy woman walks naked into the Puget Sound? Hell, a swimsuit would draw curious stares too. Only a nutjob would take a dip here without a wetsuit.
Unless they happened to be a cold-impervious mermaid.
With the towel secure around me, I hop out of the Rubi clutching the bag. Car keys go into the Ziploc with the phone, and I’m off at a quick jog. The mere act of hurrying toward the water lifts my spirits and pushes back on that pervasive feeling of doom that’s been sitting on my neck ever since I saw that little girl’s photograph. If anyone spots me, I hope I look like I’m hoofing it toward a boat for a lazy Monday afternoon of sunbathing.
Bleh.
I make for a gap between two boats where no one can see me. The one on the left has a platform at the back an inch or two above the waterline for swimmers to board. I lower myself onto it and stash the towel in the bag with my clothes. Before anyone notices me squatting naked on someone else’s boat, I shoulder the bag on a strap and dive into the murk.
A wash of energy runs down my body to the tip of my tail, which forms before the momentum of my plunge is gone. Webbed fingers help pull me around to the right heading, and my clear nictitating membranes close over my eyes. I would revel in the freedom of being home, but I’m too worried. I can almost feel that child slipping away, and it fills my thoughts with the face of that woman I refused to let go of. Nothing I could’ve done that night would have prevented her death; as useless as my effort had been, I couldn’t abandon her. Hannah’s got a much better chance―I’m no helpless mortal anymore.
Provided I can find her in time. In time for what, though, I have no idea.
Nor I, says Licinia. It’s a general sense of alarm.
These waters have been my home for the past forty years, and it takes little mental effort to orient toward Marrowstone Island and haul ass―or tail, as the case may be. The seabed rushes toward me. I skim like a low-flying combat aircraft, bobbing up over reefs, crags, and the occasional shipwreck. My hair whips back, my arms at my sides, as my tail does most of the work. Going at this speed, small motions of my hands create big turns.
The occasional crab or piece of trash gets sucked up off the ground by the speed of my passing.
I don’t exactly know how fast I can go, but I had little trouble outrunning literal torpedoes during World War II. The first time I saw one, I had been awestruck and mystified, keeping pace with what I had thought to be a new marvel of technology―until I witnessed it strike a ship. I’d been horrified. To someone born in 1899, many advances of technology had been fearsome. But inventions like that, made only to kill in mass quantities… ugh. Sometimes I wish I could go back and live in an alternate Earth that remained in 1909 forever. I suppose we all yearn for the days of our childhood.
Barnaby, I figure, would’ve loved them. Or at least loved all the dead sailors they created, an all-he-could-eat ocean buffet.
The nylon strap of my watertight bag digs into my shoulder, a noticeable drag… but I need my stuff. Trying to investigate and ask questions while nude… yeah, no. I’d attract all the wrong kinds of attention, and no one would take me seriously.
All around me, the distant grinding or growling of technology echoes. Engines. Small speedboats, put-putting fishing boats, and I’m sure I hear a supertanker way off up ahead, likely heading for the open ocean.
A few fish blur past me as well as bits of junk. One of those plastic six-pack rings hits me in the face and clings until I shake my head side to side. The idea of an environmentalist drawing a little cartoon mermaid with her neck stuck inside a plastic ring almost makes me smile.
Serrano said they found Troy near the north end of Marrowstone Island. More than likely, someone from Fort Flagler or the USGS spott
ed him. I hug the seabed, following the ascending slope toward the coast. When the water’s only about twenty feet deep, I slow to a drift and pop my head above the surface. My aim was decent, and I wind up staring at a stretch of forest not too far south from Flagler. Empty coastline. Perfect.
I glide forward until my hands hit dirt, and force my body back into human shape before springing to my feet and darting into the trees. One of the things I enjoy most about being a mermaid is the immunity to cold. Growing up, I couldn’t stand winter. For fourteen years, I didn’t own shoes and we had thin blankets. Granted, California didn’t often get bitter cold, but when it did, I had been miserable. Streaking out of the water amid the foamy froth doesn’t bother me in the least. I could jump bare-assed into a Siberian snowdrift and be fine. Terrestrial cold has nothing on the deep sea, especially near the poles. A minute or so of fast-walking in circles gets me from soaked to damp, enough to be able to get dressed again without my clothes being drenched.
It doesn’t take me too long to pick out voices up ahead, campers from the sound of it. One man is complaining about some automated system not taking his card. Other than having damp hair, I look reasonably normal, so I change course and intercept a group of seven.
The guy with the rejected card is the oldest, white hair and a bit pudgy. He’s talking with two men both probably in their thirties, one with short, black hair and a yellow shirt. The other guy’s taller and confident enough for pink shorts. A woman who looks my age is pestering a thirteen-ish girl more interested in her phone than the island. Lagging behind them, a boy barely tall enough to see over the back of the wheelchair is pushing a grey-haired elder woman.
I walk up to the three men, dragging their conversation to a halt. The kid pushing his grandmother stops, staring at me while huddling as out of sight behind the wheelchair as he can. Some kids can sense something different about me; I bet I’d send a lot more of the little buggers scampering for hiding places if Licinia wasn’t such a saint for a Dark Master. His older sister barely looks at me. I’m not sure if kids age out of that sixth sense or if teens merely develop a superpower to ignore everything around them.