“It could be a special place for all the oceanfolk,” he offered.
“Maybe… And some of the oceanfolk can get pretty protective, I mean my grandfather, Dylan—he sounded mean enough to kill someone.”
For a second, he looked like he was considering it. Then his face fell. “We’re speculating. We can’t do that. We need facts.”
“Okay, what facts do we have?”
“The bodies are all found in water.”
“On or near my reef.”
“What else?”
I thought about it for a minute. “I don’t think we know anything else. Well, they were all friends, their dads all worked together.”
“We need more facts,” Sam decided.
“How do we get them?” I wished the council still existed. I could go to them and ask. I imagined it as a group of people who would answer all my questions without a fight. Unfortunately, they were lost to me. The council was disbanded. I went through the people I knew were on it. My dad was dead. I wasn’t about to trust anything Edgar told me. The only other person left was Mom… That was an idea. “Don’t say anything, I’ve got a plan.”
“I’ve got one too. I think we need to explore the reef, see if there’s something we missed. There could be something crazy out there like buried treasure or nuclear waste and we’d never know it.”
“Okay, tomorrow after school we explore the reef; but tonight, I’m going to call my mom.”
“You are?”
“She was on the council. She knows about my dad’s death. And she knew something about Ryan’s dad. So she knows more than she’s telling me.”
“What makes you think that’s going to change?”
“I’m going to make it change.”
He gave a low whistle. “Do you want me here?”
I shook my head. I’d need to call her in the water; and while he could go along, it would probably be better if he wasn’t there.
“If things go badly, call me, okay? You can always stay at my place.”
“You think she’d kick me out?” I let the sides of my mouth quirk up into a smile. “She’s more likely to drag me down to the bottom of the ocean.”
“In that case, if I don’t hear from you tomorrow morning, I’ll start searching.”
I smiled at him because I knew he wasn’t lying. He’d start searching for me and keep it up until he found me. “Don’t worry. I’ll come back to you.”
****
I thought I could trust my mother. Maybe not to tell me everything she knew, because she hadn’t told me everything before. But I thought she’d tell me the truth after I confronted her with what I knew. At least I hoped she would. I didn’t want to have a fight, but I wouldn’t go on like this, not knowing what had happened. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the murders were somehow tied to my father’s death.
A light rain started as I swam out to my reef, glad to find it free of bodies. I settled onto the sand where I’d spent last night and most of my childhood nights. This place always felt safe. It was my sanctuary under the waves. Nothing could touch me here. Except that something had. I’d never think of my reef without a fleeting thought of Mara and Tiffany. It wasn’t ruined; only changed. Or maybe I’d changed. Either way, the familiar coral and soft sand seemed different, and the difference fueled my anger.
I sang for my mother. The song called to her without words, just tones only she and I knew. In our pod, there were dozens of songs like this that let mother call daughter, sister call sister. I sang it without thinking about how the notes linked us or the number of times I’d called for her. All I could think of was the things Edgar had said, the things Serena had said, and the questions I still had.
Mom found me a few minutes later, a soft smile on her face. I knew she assumed I wanted to leave dry land and join the pod. I pointed to the house without talking. We were on the beach when she broke the silence.
“What’s going on?”
“I wanted to talk to you. I’ve got some questions.”
“Well, ask me. We don’t need legs to talk.”
The rain had gotten stronger while I was under the water. “I’d rather go inside.”
She rolled her eyes at me, clearly thinking that a mermaid shouldn’t worry about a little rain, but in an instant, she had her legs and was standing on the beach. I switched my own tail to legs just as quickly.
Her mouth fell open in shock, but she quickly shut it. “Took you long enough to figure that out.”
I nodded, not ready to start the fight yet. “It’s harder when you’re drunk or distracted, but I bet it’s like anything else: eventually, it won’t matter what state I’m in. Changing back will be second nature.”
“Just like getting a tail only hurts if you think it will.”
I nodded, fine with her having the last word, and walked ahead of her in the house. Once we’d both made it into the kitchen, I shut the doors and turned to face her.
I spoke as calmly as I could, spacing out the words so she wouldn’t misunderstand me. “I need to know how my father died.”
“I’ve told you before, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I’m sorry, but I need to know.”
“He drowned.”
“Did he? Or was he killed by dry-landers who found out he was a dolphin shifter?”
“Who told you that?” She hissed the words, so angry I could see her teeth had changed to fangs.
“Is it true?” I tried to stay as calm as I could.
“Who told you?” She shouted the words, even angrier than before.
“Does it matter?”
“Fine. So you know. You know what happens when you try to fit in. Now we’ll go live with our kind.”
“No.”
She was half out the door when she realized what I’d said. She turned around and looked at me, stunned.
“What?”
“No.” I shook my head. “There’s a murderer out there, and I have to find him.”
“Why? Why you?”
“Because he’s dumping bodies at my reef.”
“Your reef? Who cares about one reef? Danika, you have the whole ocean.”
“And you think I’ll be safe there? He killed Mara.”
“So you’re going to track the killer? How? You don’t have any way to find out what’s happening. What’s your plan?”
She had me there. I didn’t know how I was going to do this. Sleep in the water, maybe? Wait for him to dump the next body? I tried to think of every mystery I’d ever read, every court case I’d ever heard about, and how it worked in those stories. Finally, I admitted the truth. “I don’t have a plan.”
“I thought so.” Her voice dripped with bitterness, and she must have heard it too because she stopped and took a deep breath. “Your father and I were members of a group of people that thought we could all live together: dry-landers and ocean dwellers. The city had been ours from the beginning, but as the area got more developed, more dry-landers moved in. We wanted to work with them. We thought it was working.”
She stopped and I waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, I prompted her. “And then?”
“And then there was a beach, not far from here.” She shook her head at some long ago memory. “Everybody loved that beach, even the dry-landers—including a real estate developer with mob ties. He wanted to put up condos. The council fought him. One by one, he picked them off.”
I thought she might be talking about Heather’s father. “He killed Dad?”
“Not personally. His men did, on his orders. They caught your father and his business partner, Edgar, when we were all out to dinner. You’d gotten tired, so I’d taken you out to the car to lie down while they got the check. I watched the whole thing while you slept with your head on my lap. They just kept hitting him.” Her eyes were far away, looking into the memories and seeing something horrible.
“You watched?”
“I had to protect you.” She shrugged off the choice. “Your fathe
r and I had talked about it. If anything happened, it was my job to keep you safe. That meant sitting in the car, as still as I could, and hoping they wouldn’t see us.”
“You kept me safe,” I reassured her.
“And that’s what I’m still doing. That’s why I want you to come back to the pod with me. Enough with school and acting human. Take your place in the ocean where you’ll be safe.”
“Mara wasn’t safe. The ocean isn’t safe.”
“It’s safer than here,” she insisted.
“I’m sorry, Mom. It’s my reef and the victims are my friends. I’m not going anywhere until it stops.” Even after that, I didn’t think I would leave. Serena had told me that my father wanted me on the council. Knowing how he died made me want to be on it, too. If the council had faded away, then maybe I needed to bring it back.
“I can’t keep you safe if you’re going to behave this way.” Her anger was back, hiding under the caring words.
“If we were with our pod, would you be worried about keeping me safe?”
She blinked, surprised by the question, “No. You’d be an adult, free to swim wherever you want, to do whatever you want.”
“Then treat me like an adult out here. Let me make my own choices.”
A frustrated noise tore from her throat. “You could be killed!”
“I know.” I went back to my very calm voice. “I know it’s dangerous. I’m asking you to let me live my life, my way. Please, Mom.”
She looked at me for a while, then finally blinked and shook her head. “If this is what you want. I’ll be with the pod. Sing for me if you need me.”
She stepped outside of the kitchen, not moving fast but definitely going. Suddenly I felt very alone. “If I need you, will you come?”
“Always.” She didn’t turn around, didn’t even look at me. But when she spoke, her voice was strong.
****
After she left, Mom’s words came back to me, this time linked to faces. The real estate developer with mob ties was Heather’s father; his men were Ryan’s father and Tiffany’s father. You couldn’t just build a building; you needed permits and permission from the city. Even if Tiffany’s father hadn’t done any killing, he’d have taken part in the development from his seat on the city council.
I thought about the building, and realized you’d need something else: a zoning change. I learned about it on the Internet with a few clicks. If you wanted a zoning change, like to make a public beach into a private housing development, you needed a ruling from the tax assessor.
The city website included a biography on each person. In his picture, Lewis Cogan looked older, old enough to have been on the job when my father died. I thought about Ashley calling him out of his house. When I Googled his name, I found nothing.
A giant squid. A beach oceanfolk thought should be kept safe. My father’s death. It all fit together somehow, but I couldn’t figure out how.
Chapter Seventeen
I opened the car door to find Ashley sitting alone. She looked better, well rested, the dark circles gone from underneath her eyes. I wondered for a moment if using her song to call someone had helped her somehow, the way being with Sam helped me control my hormones. Before I could ask, I noticed something more important. I was the only one getting a ride to school that morning.
“Where is everyone?”
“Jen’s got her own car. Heather’s…gone. Sarah’s dad is driving her to school now. He says it’s only until the murderer is found.” Ashley sighed. “I’d die if my dad did that.”
“Would he?”
“He’d just tell me to use my song.” She paused at a stoplight and turned to me. “It feels amazing to say that to someone.”
“Trust me, I know.” It felt great to have a conversation with Ashley, the real Ashley, and not have to hide anything. “My mom wants me to go back to the pod.”
“Will you?” Ashley looked a little pained.
“No. Not until this murder thing is over. I’m going to find the person doing all this and stop him first.”
“Good. I like having someone around who knows.” Ashley pulled into the school parking lot. “You don’t know that the murderer is a him. It could be a her.”
“I’m actually thinking it’s a giant squid.”
She tilted her head to the side, her eyes looking left.
“What?” I asked.
“I’ve never seen one, but the sirens used to keep them around, sort of like watchdogs.”
“Really?”
“Have you ever seen a cuttlefish?”
“No.”
“When you look at them, it’s like they look back. The stories say they used to talk to us. When they did, they taught some of the sirens how to command sea animals. We’d keep them around, ordering them to keep us safe.”
“You can command sea animals?” My jaw dropped open in surprise. “I mean sure, a siren’s song is powerful; but being able to control fish and sharks and—”
“I can’t do it. No one I know can. We used to be able to do it, like decades ago. But there could be someone out there who remembers how. Someone mean enough to use an animal to kill.”
“You’re thinking about someone in particular, aren’t you?”
Ashley turned away from me and got out of the car. I thought I knew who was on her mind: a guy who’d used her like that. I followed her, walking fast to catch up to her in the parking lot.
“About Edgar,” I said.
She turned around and gave me an evil look. Any other girl in school would curl up and die, but I knew better than to worry about that now.
“What are you going to do about him?”
“There’s nothing to do. It’s not like I can go to the cops and say, ‘This guy was mean to me; arrest him.’ He didn’t do anything wrong.” She turned away from me, ready to walk into the building.
“Really? You think so?” I grabbed her arm and practically dragged her into the building.
“What is your deal?” she hissed.
“Humor me for a minute.” I pulled her down the halls, ignoring the stares of everyone around us.
“Ms. Cohen?” I poked my head into the classroom, and kept one hand on Ashley. “Do you have a second? I need to talk to you about something important.”
“Well, if it’s important, you’d better come in.” She closed the file she’d been working on and turned away from her computer. That was when she saw Ashley, and her face looked less than pleased.
“Ashley and I have some questions.”
“Uh-huh.” Ms. Cohen’s eyes went from Ashley’s face to mine for a second, then she settled on mine. “How can I help?”
“Say a guy and girl got together, and the girl was into it, but then she wasn’t, and she wanted things to stop, only they didn’t.”
“That sounds like a bad situation.”
“But not one where you go to the cops, right?” Ashley asked, sounding bitter.
“Maybe not. It would depend on the circumstances. Was it a misunderstanding or was it deliberate?”
Ashley looked away instead of answering, so I did. “The guy totally knew what he was doing. Also, he’s older, like thirty-five, or maybe even forty.”
Ms. Cohen’s eyes narrowed. “That would be something you go to the cops over. What happened?”
She sounded so angry I didn’t know what to say, but this time Ashley jumped in. “Nothing. We were talking about the possibilities; you know one of those what if things. Thanks for your help.”
Ashley tried to walk out but my hand was still on her arm, so she was stuck. Her only choices were to wiggle away from me in an undignified way, or stay there while Ms. Cohen spoke. Ashley never did anything undignified.
“Even if you didn’t want to go to the cops, you should still tell someone. It’s hard to handle stuff like that, talking to someone helps.” She kept glancing from Ashley to me, back and forth. “Whoever it was that got hurt, they need help. They deserve help, and I want you to tell them that
they can come to me. I won’t tell anyone or do anything they don’t want, okay?”
“Like I said, it was only a question.” Ashley shook her head.
“I’m sure it was, but if it ever happened, that’s why I’m here.” Ms. Cohen didn’t sound like she believed it was just a question.
“We need to get to homeroom.” Ashley pulled away from me.
“Yeah, we do. Thanks, Ms. Cohen.”
“Anytime. I mean that. Anytime you need me, girls.”
“Oh my God, that was so awkward and uncool.” Ashley said it the minute we were in the hallway. “Never make me do that again.”
“Something serious happened to you. You have to do something about that.”
“Like what? There’s nothing I can tell someone without telling them what I am, and you know I can’t do that.” She raised her eyebrows and spoke with an emphasis. “Don’t ever bring this up again. I don’t want to think about it.”
“Okay, but…promise me if you do decide to talk about it, you’ll talk to Ms. Cohen?”
“Fine. I promise.”
She walked down the hall, looking the way she always did: perfect and popular. I shook my head thinking about it. I knew there was no way she could tell Ms. Cohen about the siren part of things, but Ashley needed help dealing with it. If the council was still around, she’d have someone to go to, someone who would understand. Instead, she was stuck on her own.
I walked into homeroom and gave Ms. Cohen a smile. She smiled back and I wished I could trust her with all of it. Instead, I sat down and tried to remember what we’d been doing in class on Thursday. It felt like a million years had passed since then.
Ashley had said she never wanted to talk about it again, but an hour later I got a text from her. “Edgar keeps texting. Wants to go on a date. I can’t take it.”
I texted back under my desk. “Block the number or tell him to stop.”
Another text came in during my history class. “He sent pictures. Gross!”
I copied and pasted what I’d sent before. “Tell him to stop.”
It took another hour of Edgar texting her for her to see reason. “Now he wants me to skip school. I blocked but he switched numbers. Will you go with me to tell him off?”
The Mermaid and the Murders Page 19