by Sarah Cross
“What’s he doing?” she asked, meaning Caspian.
“Oh.” Freddie sighed. “Tempting fate. He can’t swim very well.”
Wills smiled. He was squatting in the sand, watching the waves. “He was in a boat accident a while back. Fell overboard during a moonlight cruise on prom night, hit his head, and went under. He woke up on the shore, with a beautiful girl singing to him, and …”
“Let me guess. Mermaid?” Mira said.
Wills nodded. “That’s what he thinks. He wants to see her again, but he isn’t sure how to find her. So …” He motioned to Caspian, who was splashing around, the water up to his chest now.
“You can’t trust mermaids,” Freddie grumbled. “They’ll drown you as soon as they’ll save you. It all depends on their temperament. Most of them don’t like humans.”
“Since when are you anything less than the spokesperson for fated romance?” Wills asked with a cocked eyebrow. He glanced at Mira. “Something go sour between you two?”
Freddie bowed his head, concentrated on dragging a stick through the sand. “No. Just … you know. Mermaids.”
“Uh-huh,” Wills said. The corner of his mouth crept up. Mira felt awkward, and oddly exposed. It was weird how they all seemed to know what was going on. Everyone here was so well schooled in curses—not to mention the drama that went with them.
“So are you all Honor-bound?” Mira asked.
“We’re mostly Honor-bound,” Wills said. “Although the only curse I’m meant to break is the curse of poverty and servitude. Cinderella,” he explained. “Still waiting for ‘the one’ to show up at one of the family galas in a secondhand party dress. Once she’s done cleaning chimneys for the day. She’ll be pretty and sweet … I just pray she knows how to read.”
“Don’t be callous,” Freddie said. “Maybe she’s been working too hard to learn how to read. You could always teach her.”
Wills stretched out on the sand. “I’m too lazy for that. She’ll have to draw pictures. At least to write the grocery list.”
Freddie sighed, and Wills laughed—then settled his head on his crossed arms. “You’re too uptight, Freddie. You have your girl here; you won’t have to go on a road trip searching for an overgrown briar patch. It’s time to relax.”
“I’m very relaxed,” Freddie protested. “Usually …”
“He doesn’t have me,” Mira said.
Wills lifted his head, a look of surprise on his face. “No?”
“My mark doesn’t brand me as Freddie’s. It just says that he serves a purpose in my life.”
“You’re a feminist,” Wills said, like that explained everything.
“I’m a person,” she said.
Wills shrugged. “Call it what you want.”
Freddie got up, undid the buttons on his shirt, and threw it onto the sand before treading dutifully into the water. He grabbed Caspian in a bear hug from behind and hauled him up the beach. “That’s enough for tonight,” he told his shivering brother.
Caspian blinked his big, limpid eyes. Water dribbled from his soaked clothes and into the sand. “She didn’t come. Do you think I imagined her?”
“You’ll see her again eventually,” Freddie said. “But I don’t think drowning yourself is a good plan. Let’s get you dried off.” He put his arm around Caspian and led him toward Blue and the others. And since it was either follow them or be left behind with Wills, Mira followed.
“Does anyone have a towel?” Freddie asked.
Rafe, Blue, Viv, and Jewel were sitting around an open cooler, bottles of beer jammed into the sand in front of them. Jewel had gathered her long T-shirt into a pouch and was storing stray gems in it.
“I have a blanket in the back of my van,” Rafe said. “And a mattress, if anyone needs it.”
“Really?” Blue said. “Because I was looking for a van to have sex in.”
“Uh … sorry, buddy.” Rafe clapped Blue on the shoulder, wincing slightly. “It’s available to everyone but you. It’s not cool to leave dead bodies back there. You understand.”
“I was being sarcastic, but thanks for that.” Blue stood up with his fists at his sides, agitated. Then he stalked away toward the parking lot.
Jewel picked a gem from her lap and pinged it off Rafe’s broad forehead. “God, Wilder, could you be any stupider?”
Rafe rubbed the sore spot. “How am I supposed to know when he’s kidding?”
“Like he’d be serious about that?” Viv said.
Rafe shrugged, blowing it off, then tossed his keys to Caspian. “Dry off, man; a blanket is better than nothing.”
“Is it … contaminated?” Freddie asked.
Rafe gave Freddie a dirty look, and Viv rolled her eyes and said, “Since when does Rafe make it back to the van in time?”
“This is my booze,” Rafe reminded them. “Watch it or you bitches are getting cut off.”
Mira grabbed a beer out of the cooler—a beer she didn’t even want—just out of spite, and followed Freddie and Caspian to the parking lot. Blue was there when they climbed over the last sandy ridge.
Caspian opened the back of Rafe’s van apprehensively, like he expected to find a girl handcuffed inside. When he saw it was empty, he relaxed, and tugged the blanket out to wrap it around his shivering frame.
Freddie went over to Blue. They spoke in low voices that didn’t carry over the wind. Mira sat down on the hood of Viv’s candy-apple red sports car. She busied herself trying to twist the cap off the beer bottle while she watched them. The metal ridges dug into her palm. Blue kept shaking his head; Freddie was leaning in, insisting on something, his face earnest and intense; and finally, the bottle cap went flying and beer sudsed up and spilled onto her lap. Mira shrieked and flung the bottle away from her, shaking foam from her hands.
“Can’t handle your alcohol, Mira?” Blue called over.
“I didn’t expect it to go everywhere! Now I smell like beer.”
“It could be worse,” Blue said. “You could smell like Rafe’s sex life, like Caspian does.” Poor Caspian was huddled in the blanket, staring longingly out to sea, oblivious to their conversation.
“That was low,” Freddie said, hiding a grin.
Blue shrugged. “So what did you want, Mira? Are you our third musketeer? Or just having second thoughts about Freddie?”
She watched him, wondering at her own reaction as she did. After what she’d learned about Blue—what he could do, what he’d already done—she felt like she should have been wary of him. But she wasn’t. Instead, her defenses were lowering.
She could see the prickly outside, but now she recognized the wounded heart underneath. And she found herself trusting him, worrying about him. Looking at him like a friend. A friend who needed her, maybe …
“You were upset,” she said. “I thought maybe I could help. I don’t know. Isn’t that what people do when they’re not assholes?”
“You expect me to know?” Blue asked. But he was smiling now.
“Come over here so I can wipe my hands on your shirt,” she said, holding up her beer-sticky hands. Eyebrows raised in amusement, Blue did as she asked. He stood between her legs at the front of the car, his knees against the bumper.
“Go for it,” he said.
Her wet fingers grazed the muscle of his abdomen as she fumbled to dry her hands on his T-shirt. Blue sucked in a breath when her hands brushed his skin, and something electric ran through her. A flush burned her cheeks. She made herself focus on the artwork on his T-shirt.
“Now the ick is on you, where it belongs,” she said.
“You are a very nasty princess,” Blue said.
“Are you flirting with me?”
He shrugged. “Probably. Is it working?”
“Not at all,” she assured him. “Being told I’m nasty doesn’t do it for me.”
“I knew there was a reason I liked you.” He grabbed her sticky hands and tugged her off the hood. “Should we get out of here before Viv shows up and wants to
know who spilled beer on her car?”
Mira nodded. “Sure. Where are we going?”
“Casa del Knight,” Blue said.
“We have a pool,” Freddie said, as if that would sweeten the deal.
“A pool that Rafe has never had sex in,” Blue said.
“That’s what makes it different from Rafe’s pool,” Freddie explained.
Mira grimaced. “One day, you guys will have to tell me why you’re even friends with Rafe. But not today. I’ll give you time to do some soul-searching first.”
“Thanks,” Blue said. “We appreciate that.”
“Caspian, come on!” Freddie called, waving him over. “And don’t bring that blanket.”
“It’s easy—like this,” Mira said, lying on her back in the Knights’ pool, letting the water support her, and showing Caspian how to float. She was trying to teach him to swim. For someone determined to find a mermaid, she figured it could only help.
Caspian clung to the side of the pool. “I don’t know, Mira. I don’t think my body is designed to do that.”
“Everyone can float,” she said, pulling on his arm. “Do you want to find your mermaid or not?”
“All right,” he said with a sigh. He made a gulping sound—and then he let go and immediately began to sink.
“Just relax,” Mira tried. “Lie on your back and—”
It would have helped to grab him and support him, turn him onto his back manually, like swim coaches did for little kids. But touching a guy’s wet, bare skin seemed too intimate, if you weren’t flirting. If you didn’t hope to be touched back.
“Um, or we could try treading water,” she said. She demonstrated, pedaling her legs, moving her arms a little.
Caspian’s wide gray eyes blinked nervously as his limbs wavered underwater. He was cute, like Freddie, but he veered even further toward adorable. It wasn’t hard to picture him falling off a boat. In a prom tuxedo, no less.
“Your hair flows out like a mermaid’s,” Caspian said.
Mira glanced to the side, took stock of the dark gold waves floating on the water. “I guess it does.”
“Only it’s lighter,” Caspian said. “Mermaids have dark hair. Well. The one mermaid I saw did. If she really was a mermaid. I guess she could just be a girl who hangs out in the ocean, waiting for shipwrecks.”
“I think that’s even less likely,” Mira said.
Caspian smiled, his whole face brightening. His arms were moving more smoothly through the water now. “That’s why I think it has to be true. That a mermaid saved me. Her voice was so beautiful….”
The look on his face was clearly love. He’d transformed from sad to smitten in an instant.
It was strange, seeing all these romantics in their different incarnations. There were regular romantics, like Freddie and Caspian: boys who got lost in daydreams, like she did. Then there were cursed Romantics, who were easy to fall for, who loved love and stole love. Love was what they needed to survive.
The Knights’ back door slid open and a parade of people came streaming out: Viv in her teeny white bikini, Blue and Freddie and Wills in swim trunks. The boys jumped in. Viv set a raft on the pool’s surface and wriggled onto it, hissing a little when water slithered up the sides.
“It’s not even cold,” Wills said. He smacked the water next to Viv, so a tiny wave splashed over her ice white abdomen. “Unless you’re afraid the chlorine might bleach you. Oh, too late.”
Viv gritted her teeth. “And you guys wonder why I hate everyone.”
“I’m swimming,” Caspian announced. “Sort of. Do you think that will interfere with my mermaid search? If I fall into the ocean and I’m not drowning, do you think she’ll bother to save me?”
“I think your mermaid probably has a life,” Wills said. He’d stopped tormenting Viv and was floating in the deep end, hanging on to a foam noodle. “You can’t count on her to be waiting around for you every day. So drowning on purpose just makes you an idiot.”
“Yes, please stay out of the ocean, Caspian,” Freddie said. “Wait for her to make a deal with a sea witch and come to you.”
“But what if she doesn’t?” Caspian asked.
No one had a good answer for that.
After a while, Henley came around the side of the house. He was dressed up—for him—in nice shorts and a button-up shirt thrown over a tank top. He sat down on one of the poolside lounge chairs and watched Viv like she was a silent movie. His gaze was lovesick and sad, but vicious, too, like his eyes could somehow punish her for not giving a damn that he was there.
Viv lay stretched out on her raft, still as death, staring up at the stars. Freddie was demonstrating how many underwater somersaults he could do in a row. When he came up for air, Caspian exclaimed, “You’re like a dolphin!”
Mira frog-kicked over to where Blue lazed at the end of the pool, half hidden beneath the low diving board. His fingers clung to the board. Beads of water slid slowly down his face, his neck.
“You’re awfully quiet,” she said.
“I don’t have any dolphin tricks.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That must be hard for you.”
He nodded, a wry smile creeping up. “It is.”
She reached up and grasped the diving board so she wouldn’t have to keep treading. The motion carried her forward, and her bare legs brushed his. The sensation was unexpectedly alluring, and when she didn’t rush to move away, he hooked his leg around hers. Neither one of them said anything for a while.
She stared at him—at that cool, impassive face—and wondered why this was so easy for him. How he could like her and make her hate him; and then make her want to be near him. How he could touch her and make her not want to move away. The definition of Romantic flared up in her mind.
He and Felix were supposed to be natural charmers. She wondered if charmer meant liar.
“Does Felix lie to people?” she asked.
“Ah, we’re talking about Felix again.”
She shrugged, her arms making a kind of pull-up motion so that her chest rose out of the water.
“Felix lies to people all the time. Our whole business is about deception: drawing people into the casino with hope and an impossible dream, and sending them home with less money than they came in with. He doesn’t wear a sign that says The House Always Wins. So, yeah, he lies.”
“You know what I mean.”
Blue raised his eyebrows. Of course he’d known. “You mean does he lie to girls? To get them to fall for him?”
She nodded. Waited.
“You’re the one who hangs out in his bedroom. Shouldn’t you be able to tell?”
His leg was rubbing against hers, ever so slightly, almost like it was an accident, but it wasn’t. It was too regular not to be deliberate.
“Why are you doing that?” she asked quietly. She was grateful for the dark, for the water that hid whatever it was they were doing, for the laughter and splashes—and, yes, even the dolphin tricks—that let the others ignore them.
“I don’t know. Why are you letting me?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Once upon a time, she would have slapped him for touching her. Thrown a knife at him, a book at him. So what was this?
“I’ve never lied to anyone. To get them to …” Blue hesitated, until she nodded, to let him know she understood. “But I’ve left things unsaid. I’m sure he does that, too. And he might lie. But he might not have to. Why? Are you afraid you’re in love with a lie?”
“No …”
“Then it doesn’t matter what I say, does it?”
“It’s just …” Mira bit her lip, tasting chlorine. “He never told me the things you told me. That’s the only thing I’m worried about. Why wouldn’t he tell me that he’s dangerous? That he could hurt me without meaning to?”
“Because he doesn’t want you to know. Come on, Mira, don’t let love make you stupid.”
“Did you tell that girl that you … that you—No
, right?”
Blue stared at her for a long time. “Do you think that would’ve happened if she’d known?”
“So I should ask him about it. Let him know that I know.”
Blue shrugged. “If you want to. Just stay out of his room.”
Her breath caught. “His bedroom? Or suite 3013?”
Blue’s eyes flickered with something strange, but all he said was, “Both.”
“I’ll have you know,” she said, breathing shallowly, “that girls get kissed in rooms other than bedrooms. He kissed me in the flower shop. After hours. The night that I …”
“The night he almost killed you.”
“The night I passed out,” she corrected.
“If that’s what you want to call it,” Blue said. “But I think part of you knows the truth. And that’s why you’re here with me, instead of back at the Dream with Felix.”
“I’m here because I’m trying to be nice. I’m trying to be your friend.”
Maybe that was too much for him—right now when their naked legs were touching, playing at being casual. Maybe friend was too close to I like you—and that was closer to trust, attraction, affection than Blue was comfortable with. Because there was a change in him; his expression turned cocky, silly.
He was about to break the spell. She braced herself to go back to the way things had been before. Joking. Bickering. The shift was almost like an insult. Because he knew she trusted him—and he wouldn’t trust her back.
“Is that what this is?” he said. “What does friend qualify me for? Can we be friends with benefits?”
Mira had the urge to hold his head underwater until he broke free and spluttered to the surface, coughing and promising not to be a jerk anymore. She was sure her irritation showed on her face—and just as sure that he was pleased about it. “You know, it’s hard to knee someone in the balls underwater,” she warned him. “But it’s not impossible.”
Blue’s eyes glittered. He was back in his element: playing around, abrasive and safe. “Hey, as long as I repulse you, I can’t hurt you—there’s no love to steal. So a friends-with-benefits thing could work for us.”