by Amy McNulty
I gave her a double thumbs-up and she laughed.
“All right,” she said. “Follow me. It’s a bit of a swim.”
I shrugged. “I did a bunch of laps at school.”
“Well, this is a longer swim than that.” Cascade winked. “But you’ll find your arms are much more suited to the task when in this form.” She stared down at my chest.
“Sorry about the top,” I said. “It’s all wet. Obviously.”
She shrugged. “It looks cute on you, even as a mermaid. Now let’s go! Everyone is probably waiting.”
She whapped her tail—hard—and took off like a shot. I followed her downward, swimming through what seemed like the fish side of an aquarium tank. Machinery at home in a basement—like a water heater, a sub pump, a furnace—streamed by on the dry side of the tank as I swam forward, and I realized we were swimming through the basement. Cascade kept flipping her fins before me, and though I didn’t tire from all the swimming, I couldn’t quite match her speed. A blinding light welcomed her up ahead and I blinked as I joined her, realizing we were under the glass walkway now, and there were two options for us to go—north and south.
She paused and turned upright, flapping her arm for me to follow her north—behind the house and to the trickling river.
We were headed for the park lake. I knew it at once. To that cavernous place below the little jut of land at the center of the water.
We did swim for quite a few minutes more, Cascade doing side rolls as she guided me, dodging piles of rocks and shoving aside growing algae as we made our way.
At last, the burbling chatter up ahead hit my ears and then our narrow river path opened wide, the lake welcoming us, the merfolk milling about and swimming around as if this were a bustling city center—granted, with only a couple dozen people. Merpeople.
“You made it!” Bay swam up beside us, his sculpted, flexing torso second only to his dazzling smile.
“Apparently,” I said, shooting a glare at Calder as he swam over with Laguna and Llyr on his tail. Cascade whispered something in a hushed tone to Laguna and she frowned, shaking her head.
Bay scratched his scalp. “Yeah, they know. They’re not happy about it.”
“Happy about what?” I asked.
“Us quitting swim team,” said Llyr. “Our parents, that is.”
“Oh.” I wondered why that was even important right now. Before I could ask, the sweet dulcet tones of Nerida rang out across the water.
“Dinner is ready, everyone!” She clasped her hands together and squeezed them beside one of her cheeks when her eyes fell on me. “And our guest of honor is here at last.”
She swam toward me and threaded her arm through mine, her bare breast nuzzling dangerously close to my skin. “Come on now, dear,” she said. “I promised you a proper discussion—but first, we eat.”
She guided me into the little cove below the lake’s sole island.
The rock lit up in several alcoves with a blue, glowing light.
The rest of the merfolk swam into the cove from all the other entrances, gathering in a circle in the middle, though there were no table or chairs to be found.
And in the middle—amidst many collections of algae arranged to look like they might be plates—was an ungodly number of mussels, the shells piled high in a giant pile for the eating.
“Dig in!” said Nerida, nodding her head.
And the merfolk did, my stomach growing sour at the sight of them cracking the shells, leaning their heads back, and swallowing the slippery meat inside.
Chapter Fifteen
“Please, have a taste. There’s plenty.” Nerida guided me to an empty spot at the head of the gathering, giving me déjà vu to yesterday’s dinner despite the incredibly different surroundings.
“No thanks,” I said, watching as Calder slurped down a mussel beside me. “I’m not… hungry.”
“Nonsense.” Nerida picked up one of the mussels and held it out to me with both hands. “You’ll find in this form that your tastes are different—your digestion works differently. Please. Just try it.”
I never did understand the friends’ moms who seemed to take personal affront to you not liking this or that ingredient in their homecooked meals, but my own mom had raised me to be polite anyway. Out of habit, I ran my palm against my thigh—only to be reminded with a start it was actually scales and I was surrounded by water anyway—before grabbing the offered shell.
Nerida turned to the mermaid beside her and chatted about something or other to do with the winter freeze and a thought occurred to me.
“What do you do during the winter?” I asked Calder, almost forgetting the tension between us. “Doesn’t the lake in Standing Springs Park freeze over?”
“With climate change, maybe not so much.” Calder shook his head, sending little bubbles afloat with the movement. He snatched another mussel from the pile. “But that’s up there anyway. On the surface. The water below is still passable for a water creature. There’s just too much of it for it to go entirely solid.”
A vague sting of a recent memory of a vampire concerned about global warming sent a tingle to the back of my neck, almost like a reminder they weren’t so different after all.
Except one was already dead.
“Are you fresh water or salt water fish?” I asked, trying to taste the water I was breathing on my tongue. There didn’t appear to be salt, but I remembered a slight tang of the stuff in the drink I’d had aboveground yesterday.
“Either,” he said, slurping down the mussel. I cringed. “This is a freshwater lake, though we do need the salt for healthy functioning merfolk organs, so we make a point of ingesting saltwater whenever we can.” He mimed the action of taking a drink with an invisible glass. I supposed we wouldn’t feel thirst when we were breathing water in through our lungs. “But really, we could ride the rivers out to the ocean and from there… The world.”
Laughter echoed liked a musical refrain across the water, Laguna’s so alarmingly loud and beautiful as she spoke with her mom that I blinked rapidly, readjusting my eyes to the water.
“You should really try it,” said Calder, sending me an encouraging look.
I sighed and opened my mouth wide, ready to get this over with. The smooth, slippery meat fell onto my tongue with a quick flick of my finger.
It tasted good, though. Not rubbery and cold like I’d expected, but sweet and succulent even. Grinning, I chucked the empty shell into the pile beside Calder’s and grabbed another.
“I bet you can’t wait to win this thing,” I said as I dug into my second mussel. “And leave this cold, dreary suburb behind to swim for warmer waters.” True, I wasn’t shivering in the water in my mermaid form. But still, something was missing—the mermaids in my fantasies had always been surrounded by bright colors, flourishing in warm water. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a couple of dull brown trout swim through the cove.
Calder stiffened and lowered the mussel in his hand, his appetite suddenly seeming lost. “These lands are important,” he said, and that was all he seemed to want to say on the subject.
Nerida snorted in her conversation, the sound tinny and strange.
“My great-grandfather died here,” said Calder—almost imperceptibly under the noise. Nerida didn’t seem notice, so I lowered my voice in response to his quiet tone.
“She said that after World War II, the vampires appeared again. So you retreated back here to these consummate lands?”
He nodded, tossing the uneaten mussel back onto the pile. “It’s better for us to be here. We remember here—we remember what it is to walk among humans, to see the dreary world for what it is from our dreary waters.”
My teeth worried at the corner of my lip. “What happened? When the vampires appeared—when your great-grandfather…”
“That was an unfortunate story,” said Nerida smoothly. A shiver jolted up my spine. I hadn’t realized she’d heard us speaking in hushed voices.
The glare she sent
Calder then made him shrink back before grabbing another mussel and distracting himself with picking at the meat within.
“A vampire seductress tricked him with promises of peace.” She slid her hand together tightly in front of her tail, squeezing one hand with the other and drawing attention to the way her hands were trembling. “He tried to end this second war before it started, and she lied. She cheated to give herself an advantage.”
“That’s awful. What did she…?”
“What did she do? How did she trick him?” Nerida sighed. I realized the room had gone quiet as her questions rang out through the waters. “She tried to convince him that blood and water could exist as one—in the same person.”
The words left my mouth before I could think over them. “She tried to have a vampire mermaid baby…?”
Nerida’s jaw clenched. “No vampire can conceive that way. No, they’re not fertile, thank goodness.” She laughed sardonically. “They have to pour venom into their offspring’s veins to create more of them.”
I nodded, not sure what else to say. I still didn’t understand.
“She bit him,” said Calder, straightening his back. “She tried to create a vampire merman by injecting venom into a merman’s veins.”
My jaw dropped. “And he…? He let her?”
Nerida’s lips pinched. “Yes. Grandfather had noble goals and sought to avoid a repeat of the past, even if our kind had done better in the conflict than hers.” Her eyes shone in the water, and I wondered briefly if it was a trick of the light. Because then the shine faded. “But Grandfather thought even those bloodsuckers should have a chance to live.” She snatched a mussel from the pile and ripped open the shell with such force, the crack rang out throughout the water.
A vampire merman. A merman vampire? I wondered if the experiment had always been intended to succeed, or if the vampire seductress had known it would bring a quick, easy end to the leader of her enemies.
I wondered at the possibility of fangs and fins united in one, of both salt and venom running through one person’s organs, creating a super paranormal creature.
“In any case, just one more reason to despise these unnatural monsters,” said Nerida. “And to hope for a speedy end to this conflict.” She looked out at the gathering around her. “Ivy, we’ve discussed your idea and have come to a decision. You’re right. We own the perfect place to have the upper hand. We’ll lure the vampire champion and her cohorts to the house. We’ll stage the final battle for you two champions there.” She wiggled slightly in the water, her hair bobbing up and down.
Murmurs broke out amongst the crowd, and Calder stumbled backward a little, his tail quickly working to straighten himself. “But, Mom—”
Nerida closed one fist in the water above her. “I don’t want to hear it from the prince who encouraged his people to drop out of swim team. Our people have led Central to swim team championships for more than half a century. And you throw that all away.” Her eyes turned pointedly to Cascade, Bay, Llyr, and Laguna. The first two shirked back while Llyr ran a smooth hand through his red hair. Laguna’s eyes were focused on the ceiling and I followed her line of sight to see three fish swimming languidly in a circle.
“Mom, we have more important things to consider right now. And besides, Ivy was uncomfortable, and her protection comes first—”
Really? Swim team is a thing that matters right now?
“And what better place to protect her than in the water.” She sighed. “Fine. This will all hopefully be at an end soon enough, and things like the last generation of merfolk winning swim meets isn’t going to mean much anymore,” she said. “We can look at it as just a reminder—a reminder of our time walking amongst the humans.”
So they did plan to head to warmer seas when they won? I studied Calder, trying to read him—fighting myself not to reach out and grab his wrist and pry his feelings from him—but his focus was on the algae below him, shifting slightly in the gentle movements of the aquatic world around us.
“So how do we lure them there?” I said when it became clear a cloak of awkwardness was descending over all of us. “To the house?”
“We’ve talked about that, too. Right, Beck? Dathan?” Nerida exchanged a look with Calder’s uncle—Beck—and he nodded, then another with Bay’s dad—Dathan—and he gave a slight head bob as well.
“We suggest stealing the selection orb,” said Dathan. “The one the faery is holding.”
“Why…?” I asked. If I could perspire underwater, the skin prickly at my forehead would be sweat right now. “With both champions decided, what use does it have?”
Nerida’s lips went thin. “The vampires won’t like that we have it, I can assure you that much. Even if it’s played its role.”
“Okay,” I said, not at all sure. Then again, what did I know about all of this? But there was another way… “What if we looked into what the vampires are up to?” I suggested. “See what kind of hold they might have over Ember?”
Calder sent me a pleading look to stop. What? I didn’t mention Ember’s dad.
“We don’t need to know what the vampires are up to,” said Nerida, her voice loud and clear despite its singsong quality. “We just need to steer clear of them.”
“This is the safest way to get their attention,” added Beck.
So the merfolk adults had already decided then.
But they’d taken my idea to use the house to its full advantage, to lure the vampires to where the merfolk were stronger.
And this when Calder had seemed so certain Nerida would never see the value in my idea.
I fluttered my fins, feeling the soothing touch of water as it slicked across my face. “Then it sounds like a plan to me. Let’s do it!”
The crowd broke out into applause, but my face fell when I noticed the crack in Bay’s smile, the lack of enthusiasm in Cascade’s clap. Llyr and Laguna barely moved and Calder swallowed visibly, even as his palms slapped together, the watery echo of the movements hollow and dark in my ears.
Chapter Sixteen
Bay stole his second bite of cod from Llyr’s plate, then moved his fork to Cascade’s salad bowl, stabbing the arugula she’d left behind. His own tray was long-since cleaned, his wandering fork distracting me in the middle of our hushed lunchtime conversation under the purple-and-gold banner of Central High.
“Orin always seems to know where the action is,” said Calder hesitatingly. “So maybe we distract him…”
“He’s not that dumb. He’ll realize some of us are missing.” Bay shook his head between bites.
Cascade seemed to finally notice what he was doing and slid her salad bowl toward him. She shivered, drawing her hands into her lap and staring down at them. “Even if we get the orb… I still don’t like the idea of them being in our space. In our… home.”
Llyr put a hand on her shoulder as the table went solemn.
Okay, so this had been my idea. Granted, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I was asking them to open up their fortress-like home to invasion. But they had to take risks or nothing would change, right?
“We have to let go sometime,” said Laguna quietly. “For the greater good.”
So she understood. Still, I shuddered at the idea of Mom’s or Dad’s houses becoming battlegrounds. Though Ember had specifically told me she would keep Dad’s place neutral.
Dad’s place. The wedding ceremony. Ember no doubt bringing her “boyfriend.”
“When we do get the orb—I know the perfect place to tell the vampires about it,” I said. “My dad and step-mom’s wedding ceremony two weekends from now. Ember won’t want the vampires to make a scene.”
Calder nodded. “Then we, what? Ask them to follow us afterward?”
“I guess?” I tapped the tines of my fork against the edge of my tray, my own lunch half-forgotten. “But I don’t really get why they would care that we have it. If they needed it for something, they could steal it from Orin now.” I looked from one merperson to the next. A
ll eyes seemed to wander toward Calder, as if waiting for his cue. “Would you care if the vampires stole it?” I asked.
“We would,” said Calder. And that was that, apparently.
I ground my molars before speaking again. They were hiding something from me. “And you think Orin will just… let you get away with having it?”
“There’s no rule against taking it once the champions have agreed to battle,” explained Llyr. “I think he’d let it go as part of our strategy.”
I threw up my hands. “Then let’s just ask him for it.”
Laguna opened her mouth and then shut it.
Calder shook his head. “I don’t want him to know what we’re doing until we’ve already done it. He’s too capricious. We can’t count on him letting us have it willingly.”
“And if he demands we give it back once we do have it?” I asked. A girl from one of my classes waved at me and I waved back. I was in my own clothes at least today, the haphazard stitches across my dark gray sweatshirt and the loose, dangling threads an aesthetic choice on behalf of the designer, manufactured into a sort of individuality repeated six times alone on the same rack. So sue me. I still felt more at home in punk.
And it’d been great to sleep in my own bed in the relative peace of Mom’s townhouse, Blossom snuggled up beside me, memories of eating slippery shellfish under the lake nothing more than a vivid dream.
“Then we give it back and try to think of something else,” said Calder glumly. “So he might make a rule not to steal it. He’s at least fair enough not to punish us for something that’s not against the rules yet.”
That gross guy from near the registrar’s office waggled his eyebrows pointedly at me as he walked by with his arm around a girl chattering away and I rolled my eyes, turning my back to him. “Okay,” I said. “But you have to tell me: Why’s the orb important again now?”
All eyes went back to Calder. They were hiding something from me. From me. The girl who’d turned her life upside down to be their champion.