Forty-one
“How can we find out who they are?” Mekkam demanded.
Fred and Thomas exchanged glances. “Um,” he began. “That’s a little tricky. Other than storming a secret naval base on Sanibel Island, I don’t have a clue. And with all respect, Mekkam, I don’t think you want to go to war with the United States Navy. Which means the United States.” He paused. “We fight dirty. We fight to win.”
“Fat Man and Little Boy,” Fred muttered. She didn’t dare mention Hiroshima . . . Mekkam was having a bad enough day.
“I cannot sit back and wait to be attacked. If it were only my life, I would not mind. But I must think of my son—of our future queen—and my people.”
“Ack!” Fred choked. “Please, please don’t factor me into any of this. Artur and the Undersea Folk, absolutely. But I can take care of myself. Please don’t worry about me. You’ve got enough problems.”
“Do not underestimate your father’s people, Fredrika. News of your betrothal has spread from mind to mind at the speed of thought. You would make an excellent target.”
“Big deal, she’s been hearing that since the third grade,” Jonas scoffed. “Usually from me.”
“Don’t forget, Mekkam, I have zero trouble hanging out on land indefinitely. Any UF who comes after me is risking major dehydration. I’ll be safe as long as I stay out of the water.”
“I recommend moving to the Sahara,” Thomas said. “Today.”
“I’ll help you pack,” Jonas offered.
“I’ll help you help her pack,” Thomas added.
“Everyone calm down. And nobody’s touching my things. Listen, we’ve agreed storming the naval base is baaaaad. Right?”
Nods all around. Except for Mekkam. Mekkam’s gaze was fixed on her. She wondered when he was planning to blink.
“Well. These guys, whoever they are, they’ve disappeared off Mekkam’s radar, right? Maybe specifically his radar. Maybe they’ve been augmented, or whatever, strictly for the purpose of hiding from Mekkam’s telepathy, maybe the whole royal family’s telepathy.”
“Yes, yes, my Rika. We know this.”
“We’ve surmised it,” Thomas corrected. “We don’t know shit.”
“Well. Who’s the most powerful telepath after the royal family?”
Dead silence.
“Who would these guys never dream of being a threat because he’s been banished for decades?”
Finally, from Artur, “He will never help us. We made his name unspeakable. We banished him to a friendless life, to die alone. We—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know all about it. But I’ve been talking with him—you remember, he’s sleeping here at night—and he’s fine with it. Well. Not fine. But he’s older now, you know, and he’s sorry. He’s had years and years to think about his mistakes. And in the interim he’s made an entirely new life for himself. Believe me, Artur, my father would leap at the chance to help you guys.”
“Leap?” Mekkam said doubtfully.
“Like a frog on cocaine,” Fred confirmed. “But if you want his help, we need to ask him now. He’s leaving any day. He’s afraid that if he sticks around it’ll cause trouble for me.”
“That is . . . thoughtful,” Artur admitted. “I will say, the Farrem I knew was not remotely thoughtful.”
“You want to talk to him?”
“Yes, Fredrika. I do.”
“Then you can do it in about an hour.” Fred glanced around at the group. “He told me last night he was seeing to some business this morning; he was headed for a FedEx drop-off. Payroll or some such crap; I wasn’t paying much attention. But we’re supposed to have lunch today.” She glanced at the clock on the far wall. “In sixty minutes.”
Thomas stood. “I think we’ve got some hamburger left in the fridge. I can fire up the grill.”
“I shall catch some fish,” Artur said, also standing. “I detest sitting around waiting. Join me, Rika?”
“Ah, no, thanks, Artur.” On the off chance her father showed up early, she wanted to make sure she was here. Who knew how the meeting would go without her? It could end up a cluster fuck. Or worse: more of the furniture could get broken.
Forty-two
Fifty-five minutes later, her father walked through the large hole that was once her front door. “Fredrika, are you well? What in the king’s name happened here? Did you—”
He saw the group waiting for him and stopped short.
The king cleared his throat. “Greetings, Farrem.”
Farrem couldn’t have looked more amazed if the king had kissed him on the mouth. “G-greetings, my king. Prince Artur. Thomas. Jonas. Fredrika.” He paused and took another step into the house. “May I ask what is going on? Has someone been hurt? Fredrika? Is your lady mother all right?”
“My lady mother and Sam are at SeaWorld for the day, thank God. We need your help, Farrem. Do you have some time? Can you talk to us for a little bit?”
“Certainly.” He eyed the broken table and sat down in an empty dining-room chair without comment.
As they explained the situation and showed him bits from the classified file, Farrem’s eyes got wider and wider.
“But this is my fault!” he cried, shoving the file away from him as if it were hot. “They must be some of my old followers. And they never would have—would have let surface dwellers do things to them if I hadn’t—if I—” He looked up at Mekkam, stricken. “My king, I am so very sorry. Count on me. I will do whatever you require to make amends.”
Mekkam, who had been sitting stiffly (as stiffly as Artur . . . both of them looked as flexible as mannequins), relaxed slightly. “I thank you, Farrem. Our people will be most grateful for your help. But . . .” He seemed to struggle with the words, then coughed them up. “But you are not responsible for what youngsters decided to do once they attained a few years. Our society has ever been about free will.”
“Hey, so is ours,” Jonas whined.
“You are kind, my king. But my debt is great. I am grateful for the chance to pay it off.” Her father smiled grimly. “Including the interest.”
Forty-three
“What in the name of the king happened to your door?”
“Funny how people keep using that phrase,” Jonas sighed.
Tennian and Wennd were standing in the hole where the door used to be, and Fred figured it was about time to find a gallon of Off! and pour it over her head.
Tennian shook her head as if trying to come back to herself. “Forgive me, my king, the door is irrelevant.”
“Says the woman who didn’t have to cough up a four-figure security deposit,” Fred grumped.
“You called and I have come.”
“Thank you, Tennian.”
“Four figures,” Fred reminded them. “Down the drain.”
“Oh, shut up and dig into your trust fund,” Jonas hissed. “Priorities, dammit!”
“Besides the prince and me, you are the only member of the royal family within three thousand miles. We need your courage today of all days. And I needed to make sure you were safe.” The king turned to the beautiful violet-haired mermaid. “Wennd, this is none of yours, young one,” Mekkam said gently. “I wish for you to return to the Indian Ocean as quickly as you can.”
“I—I was with her when you called, my king.”
Fred couldn’t help looking at the beautiful woman, but it wasn’t the hair or the eyes that had her attention. There was something about Wennd that was bugging her, and damned if she could put her finger on it.
“I want to help,” Wennd whispered. “Please let me help. Don’t send me away if my people are in danger.”
Artur smiled at her. “Very well, Wennd. I should hate to reward such loyalty with dismissal.”
What was it about her? Fred wondered if it was something so simple as concern. Wennd was so timid and gentle, Fred wasn’t crazy about the thought of her getting hurt. She really had no business here. Things could get nasty.
She wished the king had made
her leave.
Tennian, meanwhile, had marched up to Farrem. “It appears you are redeeming yourself,” she managed through clenched teeth, hands on hips, staring up into his face. “I am grateful, on behalf of my family, for your assistance. I . . . regret my rudeness earlier.”
Farrem laughed, but it wasn’t mean. It was a cheery laugh and Fred grinned, despite the seriousness of the situation. “No, Tennian, you do not. But it is kind of you to swallow your ire for the sake of your king.”
“Mmph.” As a comeback, Fred thought, it wasn’t much, but at least Tennian wasn’t tackling her father or throwing him through the kitchen window. Progress! “What are we doing?”
“Farrem has kindly agreed to try to locate those who have hidden themselves from me,” Mekkam explained. “If he does, and if he can pinpoint their locations, we will form teams and go after them.”
“How many of us are in these waters?” Farrem asked.
“Seven hundred sixty-four, not counting the ones I can no longer ‘see.’ ”
Jonas whistled, but Artur shook his head. “A mere fraction. If what we fear is true, and we face war against artificially augmented traitors . . .”
The king nodded grimly. “I will mobilize all the Folk in the area and we will hunt them down.”
Fred wondered what that meant. She knew that in general, Undersea Folk abhorred killing one another. It was almost unthinkable.
“One coup in a lifetime is quite enough,” Mekkam continued grimly. “I would this one were thwarted before it truly began.”
Fred leaned over and whispered in Farrem’s ear, “Told you they’d give you another chance if you gave them one. Thirty years was long enough.”
“You did tell me,” he admitted, not whispering, “but I put it down to the naïveté of extreme youth.”
“Well, thanks a heap, Dad.”
“Farrem, if you please,” Mekkam asked, except everyone in the room knew it was a royal command. “Please try to locate the lost ones.”
Lost ones, Fred thought. That was an awfully generous way to put it.
Farrem nodded and sat back down in the dining-room chair. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and closed his eyes.
The room felt . . . Fred didn’t know exactly how to describe it . . . it felt thick. Charged, even, the way it felt before a kick-ass thunderstorm. And if she could sense that, what must Tennian and Wennd and Artur and Mekkam be feeling?
Cripes, Farrem calling . . . searching . . . it must be like a megaphone in their heads!
Farrem’s shoulders started to tremble. His face was hidden in his hands as he concentrated. In seconds he was shaking all over.
Suddenly, shockingly, Wennd’s odd, goose-like laugh sounded through the room, making them all jump. And she was just—she was just standing there, holding her stomach and laughing.
And Farrem looked up.
He was laughing, too.
Forty-four
“You really thought I was going to help you. Didn’t you, Mekkam?”
Fred clutched the arm of her chair so hard, she felt it splinter beneath her fingers. Too late, she had it. The thing that was bugging her.
“Dammit!” She was staring at the hee-hawing Wennd. “You live in the Indian Ocean. And my father has a house in Perth. Which is on the Indian Ocean.” Aarrgghh! She was a fucking marine biologist, she knew her geography, which countries and cities bordered which oceans. They had both dumped a large clue in her lap, and she hadn’t suspected a thing.
Moron!
“Nice,” Thomas said, his mouth twisting in distaste. “You sent your girlfriend to spy on us.”
“Of course I did.”
“That ‘scared of surface dweller’ thing,” Jonas said. “Nice act.”
“Do not speak to me,” Wennd said by way of reply.
Artur was on his feet. “You will address my father as ‘my king’ or ‘Your Majesty.’ ”
“Actually, that’s how you’ll address me. If you were going to live through this. Which you won’t. Sit down.”
Slowly, looking astonished, Artur did so.
“Why do I feel like I came into the middle of the movie?” Jonas asked.
“Because you’re a worm,” her father replied. He wasn’t even mean about it. Perfectly casual, the way Fred would have said, “because you have blue eyes.”
“You won’t get away with this, Farrem. You didn’t before,” Fred said. “Also, not to be a nag or anything, but this really isn’t the way to win back the royal family’s trust.”
“Do not speak to me, you stupid girl. I’ve known anemones that had more intelligence.”
“That seems uncalled for,” Jonas said.
“I know. I think he needs a nap. He’s getting grumpy and he was up late last night, poor tyrannical baby.”
“Be quiet! To think, a child of mine who can’t read, who can’t speak our language, much less possess the rudimentary telepathy an infant is born with! I cannot believe your mother let you live.”
“Yeah, well, she’s full of flaws like that.”
“I’ve told Moon and told her,” Jonas said, “she just has to step up the baby-killing. But she never listens.”
“And by the way, Dad—”
“I ordered you not to speak to me.”
“—there’s more of us in this house than you. Why, exactly, are we not going to rip your treacherous heads off?”
He smirked. “I confess to shock; I thought the prince or the king might ask that. Not you. I wasn’t working this morning, stupid. Well, I was, but not the way you think. I stopped by Sanibel Station—very helpful, some of those surface worms—and made sure that Captain Pearson worm was going to leave with the file.”
“What?” Thomas asked, his voice dangerously low. “You got my dad involved in this?”
“Not at all. It was just a delicious coincidence that he was going to stop by to try to get information for you. I knew Mekkam would eventually notice something was wrong, and I knew my idiot daughter would have a worm friend somewhere that could help her.”
“Did he just call moi a worm friend?” Jonas asked.
“No,” Thomas said. “Moi.”
Looking annoyed that the three of them weren’t more terrified, Farrem continued, “I made sure one of his worm friends had access to it.”
“So we’re supposed to believe you wanted us to have your super-secret file?” Jonas asked skeptically.
Fred, meanwhile, was wondering why Tennian, Artur, and Mekkam weren’t moving or speaking.
A megaphone in their heads. That’s why.
“Of course I did! Because I knew even if I literally handed you the plan, you’d be too dim to comprehend it. And I knew that what little you could figure out would inspire the stupid girl to suggest they ask for my help.”
“I have to admit,” Fred said, “that wasn’t one of my brightest ideas.”
“Like the time you tried to eat two packages of Mint Milanos with Baileys chasers,” Jonas agreed.
Farrem hissed through his teeth, appeared to recover his temper, then turned to Fred. “I so enjoyed our little talk by the pool, girl. I knew you were dim, but that conversation confirmed it, even before I realized you were mind blind. I certainly dropped enough hints.”
And so he had, Fred realized, cursing herself. When he called her stupid, he wasn’t so far off.
Perth.
So you did sort of get your own kingdom, after all.
Just because your father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather had been king, that didn’t mean that you should be king.
My gift and my curse.
Your mother’s blood is strong in you.
I naturally assumed one of my blood . . . You are your mother’s daughter.
Awww. She had disappointed her papa. Oh, the shame of it!
She couldn’t have been more thrilled. It was hard not to chortle.
Like a typical James Bond villain, her doorknob dad was still bragging about his clever plan.
“So after thirty years, I was again face-to-face with my enemies. And they were kind enough to bring the royal cousin, too!”
Wennd smirked. “She was planning to swim down to La Habana today. But I kept her in the area.” Fred noticed that her normal voice was not a whisper. In fact, it was rather nasal and grating, like Madison when she had a head cold and had eaten too many Mentos.
“Too bad,” Fred said.
“What?” Wennd asked, seeming surprised that Fred was speaking to her.
“You’re not beautiful anymore,” she said simply, and Jonas and Thomas nodded in agreement.
“Your sire told you not to speak.”
“Yeah, well, Dad hasn’t been paying much attention this past week if he thinks that’ll shut me up. What’s the matter, Farrem? Is something not going according to plan?” Slowly, Fred stood.
Wennd actually took a step backward. “You said they wouldn’t be able to move, Farrem. You promised you could control—”
“Quiet,” he snapped.
“Tough luck about your daughter being the UF equivalent of retarded. Mind blind, isn’t that the phrase? Are you trying to telepathically control me right now, Pop? Because I couldn’t help but notice I can think and talk and move without any trouble at all. So I guess I’ll be kicking your ass starting right about now.”
“Even now,” Farrem said, “even now my people are starting to take over. They’re subduing any Undersea Folk they can find. None of them will be able to move or speak until I say so. It is through me that my people can control yours, Mekkam! My stupid daughter and her idiot worm friends couldn’t break the codes or decipher the charts.”
“Well, of course not. The thing was a thousand pages long. They only had it for a couple of hours,” Jonas said reasonably. “Way to play fair, ya big pussy.”
It really wasn’t the time or place, but Fred had to hide a smile. It was her and Jonas and Thomas against the super strong, super quick, super psychotic nutbag (and his super strong and quick henchwoman/girlfriend) who had boned her mother on a Cape Cod beach. And Jonas and Thomas were acting like it was lunch at McDonald’s. Nothing extraordinary going on here, no way, nuh-uh.