by Lilian Darcy
The memory of her mother flooded her mind again, more vivid than ever. It brought with it the rising panic she dreaded. When she fought Loucan off and began swimming again, she took him by surprise, but he soon caught up to her. This time, though, he didn’t try to hold her or stop her, just took her hand in his and swam toward the water’s surface. Breaking through into the air, they both began to breathe.
“Can you see the boat?” she asked him.
“I don’t care. We’ll dive again if it’s anywhere close.” Loucan kept moving through the water, swimming on his side. The light of the moon showed Lass the determination and certainty in his face. “We haven’t finished with any of this,” he said. “Not your memories, and not what we felt for each other just now.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To my boat, moored in the harbor, where we can be alone and safe, and can talk.”
At the speed they moved, it didn’t take long to turn into the quiet harbor and reach his boat. It was a sleek, sizable vessel, with a polished wooden deck, a powerful motor, a tall mast for sails, and comfortable cabins below.
On deck, Loucan poured cold, fresh water over their bodies. Not expecting it, Lass shivered and screamed.
“Didn’t you know?” he asked. “This will speed up the transformation by several minutes.”
“I’d never discovered that.”
“But Cyria didn’t tell you?” He leaned to his side and pulled two thick, dry towels out of a storage hatch built into the deck, and spread them in front of them.
“No.” Lass stretched herself out on her stomach, with her torso raised on her elbows. “For the first few years we were in Australia, we never went near the sea, and by the time we did, I’d forgotten all but the basic fact of the transformation. Everything I know about it, I’ve found out for myself, by trial and error.”
She paused, then added, “Mostly error.”
He laughed, then looked at her more closely. “I keep forgetting how alone you’ve been. Worse, in a way, than Kai and Phoebe, who were raised to fear the sea and didn’t even know they were mer.”
“No, that would be worse,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t imagine not having the sea in my life.”
He kept watching her, and her self-consciousness grew once more. They were both still naked, and her skin was sensitized by the ocean’s caress as well as by his touch. She’d made her need for him so apparent. He seemed to feel the same, but that couldn’t mean nearly as much to an experienced man like him as it did to her.
“When you fought me off just now, it seemed like you were fighting off the sea itself,” he said.
“No. Never that.”
“Then what happened?”
“I could taste your blood. It’s just panic, Loucan.” She could feel that her voice was shaking, but couldn’t do anything about it. “I hate it. I don’t know how to get over it. Talking helped. It did, the way you said it would. But it wasn’t enough.”
She shivered as the cool breath of the night air blew across her skin.
“You’re cold.”
He pulled out another thick towel from the storage hatch and laid it over her. She rested her head on her arms and closed her eyes, swept by a familiar lassitude. Soon, when her tail membrane split and left just a few flaking scales, she knew from experience that she would be ravenous.
“I want to tell you something,” Loucan said.
His voice was a low rumble in his strong chest. Lass opened her eyes sleepily and found that he’d moved closer. He didn’t seem to feel the cold. His waist was covered but his back was bare and still glistening with a few last drops of moisture. She couldn’t take her eyes off the rippling muscles, the smooth brown skin, the hard, flat spot in the small of his back and the rising curve of his backside.
Her sleepiness and lassitude fled, but she made herself remain still.
“Anything you want to tell me, Loucan. It’s so good to be able to talk.”
“What happened at the inlet with that little boy…” he began. “I probably shouldn’t have gotten so angry.”
She blinked, having almost forgotten the incident that had caused him to cut his foot. “It wasn’t wrong of you to be concerned for that child’s safety,” she said.
“There’s a reason for it, Lass.” His voice broke a little. “You see, I had a son once.”
“Had?”
Dear God, I don’t want to have to tell her about this, Loucan thought.
But he knew he had to. Her eyes, which had been sleepy and half-closed a few moments ago, were now wide and huge. She knew from his tone, and that sudden crack in his voice, that this was important.
He took his time over it, knowing she needed to hear every detail. She didn’t interrupt his tortured narrative at all, for a long time. That made it fractionally easier to put the story into words. All the same, the words were clumsy ones. How could they be anything but?
“I told you the other day about my marriage, and that I never told Tara I was mer.”
The truth about who he was had dammed itself in the back of his throat a hundred times from when he first began to get serious about the Arizona rancher’s daughter. There were so many times when he could have told her. Riding together, hanging out over a late night snack in the kitchen of her family’s ranch.
But he’d been so young, then—not that that was an excuse he allowed himself. Just twenty when they were going out together. Twenty-one when they’d gotten married.
He was crazy in love with her. Impatient and selfish and foolish about it. With no patience for waiting. No wisdom, and nowhere near enough trust. He was so afraid that she’d laugh in disbelief, or that the reality of who he was would repel her. He had thought about taking her on a vacation to the sea and just letting the transformation happen right there in front of her.
But the possibility of losing her was too hard to contemplate. He’d sacrificed the truth for the sake of making her his.
Only, of course, with such a lie between them, she had never truly been his at all.
“She knew I was hiding something,” he told Lass. “And that it was something important. It started to come between us like another person. This big, secret lie. This thing that I wouldn’t tell her. She made all sorts of accusations. She started watching me, and she went through my things when she thought I wouldn’t know. She read my mail and I accused her of violating my privacy. I tried to put the blame on her, but in reality it all came from me. I was the one who didn’t trust her enough.”
So they had separated. Painfully. After a huge fight.
He had left her family ranch. In fact, he’d left the whole state and gone to New York, taking on a whole new identity. He’d spent those two years as a bond trader, working in lower Manhattan. He hadn’t tried to contact her, and he found out later that she hadn’t tried to trace him.
They’d both been too angry, and too hurt.
“What I didn’t know was that Tara was pregnant. She had a baby boy seven months after I last saw her.”
“Seven months. Then she must have known about the baby, or at least suspected, before you left.”
“Yes. She knew. Things were already so bad between us that she didn’t want to tell me.”
“What happened, Loucan?”
Lass knew this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending. Loucan could see it in her face. So he just said it. “Cody drowned. When he was twenty months old.”
She gave a tiny moan, which almost brought him to tears.
Mastering himself, Loucan went on with the story. “He and Tara had gone for a visit to her sister, who had a swimming pool. It was the first time he’d seen such a big piece of beautiful blue water.”
The pool had been fenced, but Cody had found a place where the boards had been loosened by the family’s dog. He had managed to squeeze through.
Loucan coughed to try and clear the tight, painful constriction in his throat.
“I didn’t find out until six months late
r, when I finally came back,” he said. “If I’d told Tara who I was, if I hadn’t tried to hide the truth from her and from myself—I mean, hell, what was I doing, marrying a woman who lived so far from the sea?—she would have known how strong his need for water could be.”
“She didn’t tell you she was pregnant. If she had—”
“No, Lass. I’m not going to put the blame on her. I should have told her. I should have had the courage to accept the risk that I might lose her. That’s why I know that my father was right to believe that the mer must open ourselves up to the rest of the world, and that’s why I know it has to be done carefully. It isn’t going to be easy. It never could be. But it has to be done. When I realized that, I went straight back to Pacifica.”
“A good while ago.”
“Fifteen years. I was so afraid of losing Tara, but because I didn’t tell her, I lost her anyway, and we lost our son. She’s okay now. As okay as it’s possible to be. She has a good second marriage, with a couple of school-age kids, a boy and a girl.”
“You’re the one who isn’t over it.”
She was right, of course, but not quite in the way she thought.
“I never want to get over it,” he told her. “It’s a lesson I never want to forget. You have to do the hard things in life, Lass. The fact that it’s hard is the reason you have to do it.” He took a deep, careful breath. “I think if you ever want to be able to deal with the memory of seeing your mother die, you have to go back to Pacifica, the way I did.”
He waited, half expecting her to be angry and to accuse him of steering the whole point of his painful story in this single-minded direction, but she didn’t. She seemed to recognize that he wasn’t trying to manipulate her, and he was glad of that.
“I want you to think about it,” he said quickly. “I’m not asking you to make any kind of a decision now. But if you decide that you’re ready, I’ll take you there. You’ll have my protection, if you want it.”
She nodded. “I’ll…uh, keep that in mind.”
He reached out to curl his fingers around hers, and then they both lay silent and half dozing on the deck for more than half an hour.
“I’m hungry, Loucan,” Lass said a little shyly.
She stretched her legs beneath the towel and felt the last of her scales slip away. Her toes wriggled like newborn kittens, and the movement felt delicious.
“Thought you might be,” he said. “I always get that way, too. I’ve got food in the cabin.”
“But no women’s clothing, I don’t suppose?”
“For just such frequent occasions as this one? When I have a naked mer woman stretched out on my deck? No, I’m afraid not.”
“Well, you might have,” she said. “You keep this boat somewhere near Pacifica, right?”
“Not near, exactly. Hawaii, mostly. Not far if you know the right current at the right depth.”
“And there are mermaids in Pacifica, as I remember.”
“If you’re asking whether I’m involved with a woman there, the answer is no.” There was a forbidding look on his face and Lass flushed a little. “With the political situation, it hasn’t been a priority. As for clothes, I can lend you a clean pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt.”
“That’ll do fine.” Too fine, possibly. Even the idea of feeling his clothes against her skin made something coil and ripple inside her.
“And I can cook us some steak and potatoes with a salad on the side.”
“Even better.”
Lass looked away quickly as he stood up, but not quite quickly enough. She still saw everything a woman needed to see. Loucan was so casual about his body. Didn’t pick up the towel he could have slung around his waist, just padded down the steps to the cabin in his bare feet.
And he left the door open. Feeling like a schoolgirl for whom biology class wasn’t nearly informative enough, Lass peeked. It was dark in the cabin for a few seconds, and she could see only a glow of blue-white moonlight outlining his arm and shoulder. Then he switched on a warm yellow lamp and began to move back and forth around the cabin as he opened various hatches and storage bins.
Each time, Lass caught a half-second flash of his body and absorbed a different impression. First, the shallow S curve of his spine as he reached for something stored at head level, then the long, hard lines of his thigh muscles, ending in tight knees, and finally the heavy darkness at his groin.
She heard the sounds of a gas flame being lit, and of steak beginning to sizzle in a pan. A microwave oven purred. There were some flashes of color—denim-blue and cotton-white—then he appeared again, clothed in jeans and a T-shirt, holding the clothing he’d found for her. She waited until he had gone back inside, then peeled off the towel and stood up to dress.
The harbor was dark and silent. It must be very late by now. Most of the commercial fishing boats were out at sea, and the pleasure boats had sails furled or canvas canopies fastened. Beside the farthest dock, one boat had its lights on and there was music playing. Some people were having a party on board, but they wouldn’t be able to see this far.
Lass brushed some tiny, pearlescent scales from her legs, then slipped the boxer shorts on. They were made of silk, and barely perceptible against her skin, lighter than the caress of Loucan’s fingers. The T-shirt was thicker and heavier. As she pulled it over her head, something dragged against the sleeve and squeezed her upper forearm.
Cyria’s bangle watch.
Lass’s stomach sank. She’d forgotten, hours ago, that she was even wearing it, and it wasn’t waterproof like the other much more practical watch she wore most days, on the same wrist. She gave a little cry of consternation, and Loucan heard it as he came back up on deck.
“We can eat the hot meal in a couple of minutes,” he said. “But I thought you might like a glass of wine and some cheese and crackers. What’s the matter?”
“My watch.” She fumbled with the clasp, trying to get it off. “I shouldn’t have gotten it wet.”
“Here, let me help.”
The heels of his hands brushed her wrists, and his fingers were warm. With his head bent as he tried to work the mechanism of the clasp, his eyes were shaded by thick black lashes.
“It’s stopped,” Lass said. “The hands have stopped at eight thirty-five. That must have been when I first put it underwater.”
“There, I’ve got it.” He dangled the watch in his fingers and they both saw a drop of water seep from the back of the casing and fall to the deck below.
“It’s ruined,” Lass said. She felt sick with regret that she’d forgotten it. “That’s… just terrible. I’ve looked after it so carefully for so long. Cyria always said that one day she’d tell me what the gift meant, but I didn’t need her to do that. I always knew it meant that she loved me, and now it’s broken.”
“What it meant?” Loucan echoed her words. “She told you it meant something?”
“That she loved me,” Lass repeated. “She could never say it, you see.”
“No, Lass. It’s more than that. I’m sure it is.” He began to mutter under his breath. “It’s tight. There’s no screw or catch. I know nothing about jewelry like this. What have I got? A knife blade?”
“The key,” she realized aloud. “You think this is where she’s hidden the key.”
“It’s the right size.”
“Why didn’t she tell me? She would have told me!”
“She was waiting until she considered you fully adult.”
“She died quite suddenly of heart failure, just a few months before I turned twenty-one. But Loucan, this is just an idea.”
“That’s why I’m looking for a razor blade, and a pocket knife. Hell, the steaks are burning!”
“I’ll get them. You look at the watch.”
Lass switched off the gas, then came back and watched as Loucan tried first his pocket knife and then a razor blade. Finally, with a tiny click, the back of the watch flipped open. More water dripped out, and beneath it was the quarter circle
that Loucan had been looking for, its silver-white shape set into a circle of gold.
“I knew you must have it,” Loucan said. “I should have guessed that Cyria would have it hidden in plain sight, and that she would have chosen a hiding place that was valuable in itself, befitting your status as a princess. It fits, too, that she wouldn’t have trusted you with the knowledge until you were twenty-one, or maybe even older.”
His blue eyes gleamed and he didn’t even look at Lass. Her stomach dropped, and the closeness she’d felt to him so recently evaporated like morning mist on the water.
“You’ll go back now, won’t you?” she said, forcing her voice to stay steady. “As soon as you can. This was the most important reason why you came. To find the final piece of the key.”
He looked up, his expression clearer and more open than she had expected. “I told you that.”
And you also told me that you’d take me to Pacifica, when I was ready.
Just minutes ago, she had trusted that promise. Now she realized that there was a corollary condition that he hadn’t troubled to mention out loud.
As long as I’m ready when it’s convenient for him.
“Take me home,” she said. “To my place.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“Because you think you’re not important anymore, now that I have the final piece of the key?”
“That’s true, isn’t it?”
“You were never important.”
It was a brutal statement, and she gasped.
“Don’t take that the wrong way,” he cautioned.
She laughed. “Oh, there’s a right way to take it?”
“You were never important,” he repeated much more gently. “How could you be—you, Lass, the person you are—when I didn’t know you? You’ve become very important, in such a short time. It rocked me to discover that we both had similar demons in our past.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“Loved ones that we’d lost in a horrific way, and whom we both felt we should have saved. But don’t ask me to solve that for you, Lass. Don’t ask me to deal with it for you. You’re the only one who can do that.”