Sleeping With the Fishes

“We only spent an hour together but—but now Fred will never meet him. And I’ll never get to thank him for giving her to me.” Her mother covered her eyes like a child and sobbed.

  “Okay, that’s it. Get away from her right now.”

  The prince ignored her. “Our people will tell her all she wishes to know. And her sire was—he was not the type to appreciate his progeny,” the prince said carefully.

  “Bio father was kind of a dick, huh?” Fred guessed.

  The prince patted her mother, almost sending her sprawling, then straightened. “Shall we adjourn?”

  “Now? Right now?”

  “Yes. Shall we?”

  Fred noticed it was a command disguised as a question. But even though they seemed to be getting along, she was wild to get this huge redhead away from her folks. “Okay. Sorry about the door, Mom.”

  “It was one of your more dramatic entrances,” her mom said, perking up right away. “I kind of liked it.”

  “Indeed,” the stranger murmured, and led the way to the pool as if it were his house and not the place she’d grown up.

  Chapter Ten

  “So. High Prince Artur—can I call you Art?”

  “You may not.” The prince was—eep—stripping. The shirt went flying, followed by the pants. No underwear, she couldn’t help but notice. Then he dove into the saltwater pool, giving her a glimpse of a muscular back and taut buttocks, and then he was under. She squatted by the side of the pool. “Well, I’m sure as hell not calling you Your Highness,” she yelled to the water. “I live on land. I’m not one of your damned subjects!”

  He popped up, water glistening in his beard, and grinned at her, showing a great many teeth. Almost… pointy? How had she not noticed that before? “Oh yes you are, Little Rika.”

  “Fred.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Fred. Not Rika. Not Ugh. Fred. Not little anything. I’m five ten, for crying out loud.”

  “Little Rika,” he said, and dove back down, splashing her with his tail.

  His tail.

  His tail?

  Much longer than hers, wider at the hips, too. A much darker green than hers. The fins were wider at the base, and longer. She instantly deduced he was a faster, stronger swimmer—and she’d never met anyone or anything, land or sea, that could beat her in the water.

  Well, shit.

  “So why are you here?” she said to the water.

  He popped up again and blew a stream of water at her. She ducked, cursing, and nearly fell in. “Come in and we will talk about it.”

  “I’m—” Not getting naked in front of you, was her first thought, which is when her mom spoke up in her head: nudity is beautiful and natural, blah-blah.

  It wasn’t getting naked. She didn’t have much modesty. She always swam in the nude, unless she had to wiggle into that awful scuba suit. It was swimming with a merman. Someone like her. Except not like her: she hadn’t inherited the strong, pointy teeth (doubtless for chomping through raw fish and bone), or the more powerful tail. Did she want to invite comparisons?

  Fuck him and fuck what be thinks.

  She stood, pulled off her shoes and socks, shucked off her jeans and panties, tossed her sweater over her head, unsnapped her bra, and dove over his head, straight down.

  He came down at once, staring at her with unashamed curiosity.

  You look… different.

  Of course. Telepathy. How else would mer-people talk under water?

  Shut up. Why are you here?

  I need you.

  Do tell.

  He swam closer and reached for her waist; she smacked his hand away, hard.

  My subjects do not treat me thus.

  Tell someone who gives a ripe shit.

  They invite my caresses.

  They need drugs. What do you want?

  You, of course.

  Yes, but for what?

  He floated thoughtfully, then zipped past her with a powerful flex of his tail. She turned to watch him go by, and suddenly he was behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist where her scales met flesh. She felt a tingle that shot from her brain straight down her spinal cord and… lower.

  She tossed an elbow back and caught him in the throat, which accomplished several things: he coughed explosively, sending out a stream of bubbles, let go, swam back, and let her get some distance.

  Hands off, chum.

  You are unlike any of my people, Little Rika. I cannot resist you.

  Try hard, chum. And it’s Fred. Got it? F-R-E-D. She swam irritably past: him, keeping an eye on his hands.

  It is unfair that you have an affectionate nickname for me and I am not allowed one for you.

  Affectionate…? Oh, hell.

  Last time: what do you want? Cough up or I’m back on tile before you can say “ow, my balls!”

  My what?

  Chum!

  All right, Little Rika, do not distress yourself.

  You haven’t seen me distressed yet.

  The bipeds are poisoning the harbor waters.

  As far as thunderous announcements went, that one was weak.

  She shrugged. That’s what bipeds do.

  My father, the High King, has charged me with finding you and enlisting your help to stop it.

  Your father, the High King, can take a long walk off a short —

  As one of our subjects, you are thus charged to aid us until our task is finished.

  Well, lucky lucky me.

  Wait. What had Pearson been babbling about? Toxins in the harbor?

  Oh, hell.

  Can you walk around on land for a few hours?

  I do not like the surface, he admitted, swimming circles around her (literally), but I can tolerate the environment as long as I must.

  Swell. Because I’m thinking there’s someone you should meet.

  She shot up to the surface, switched back to legs, and climbed out. She heard Artur come up behind her but luckily for his continued good health, he didn’t try to grab her again.

  “Someone like you?” he asked, almost eagerly.

  “No,” she replied. “Not like me at all.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Jones stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Fred and who she was sitting with.

  “Whoa,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Jonas, Prince Artur of the Black Sea. Art, Jonas.”

  “Prince what of the what? Oh my God! Your hair! Your eyes!” The prince courteously stood and Jonas wrung the man’s hand like Fred would wring a wet washcloth, craning his neck to stare up at the man. “Have you thought about modeling?”

  “I do not know what that is.”

  “Didn’t you get my message?” Fred bitched. “I told you our dinner thing was cancelled.”

  “Oh, you always try to punk out on me. I didn’t think you had, you know, an actual real reason. Like a date!”

  “It’s not a date,” Fred began, but Jonas was already sliding into the seat beside Fred, forcing her to move over or be squashed.

  “Hi, I’m Jonas, like the lady said. So, what’s up with you, dude?”

  “Bipeds are poisoning our waters.”

  Jonas arched a blond brow and turned to Fred. “So you were saying the other day. What’s going on?”

  Fred shrugged. “Nothing new.”

  “Nothing new? Have you seen this guy?” he cried as if Artur wasn’t sitting three feet away. “Is he like you? He’s a mer-dude, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “A mer-dude.”

  The waiter stopped by the table, set a tray of sushi in front of Artur and a bowl of miso soup in front of Fred, took Jonas’s order, and glided away.

  “So again with this biped thing?” Jonas demanded. “What are you talking about?”

  Artur quietly ate his sushi (with his fingers, she noticed; probably didn’t get much practice with chopsticks at the bottom of the ocean) and said nothing. Fred assumed it was up to her to explain.

  “Jonas, I know the bipeds are wreck
ing the planet. You—they—can’t help it. As far as they’re concerned, they don’t feel the sea; it’s just something else to claim and fish and gut and leave dead.”

  “Uh,” Jonas said. He paused, then, again: “Uh.”

  “Quite right,” Artur agreed with his mouth full.

  “Come on,” he protested. “We’re not that bad.”

  Both Fred and Artur stared at him stonily.

  Jonas, the chemical engineer, couldn’t keep up the facade. “Okay, we’re pretty bad. We wreck the planet and we’re not potty trained. But I don’t think anybody’s dumping bad stuff in the water to—I mean, on pur—uh…” He trailed off, no doubt hearing the absurdity of his words.

  Fred sucked down half her miso soup, waited to see if her tongue would blister, then said, “I still don’t know why you want my help. I’ll be frank—”

  “Not Fred?” Artur teased, tossing a chunk of tuna sushi into his mouth.

  “—and tell you I’m not real interested in solving your little mystery. I just wanna feed the fish and stay out of my mom’s living room for the rest of my life. Like I said to Dr, Pearson—tried to say—it’s not really my field.”

  “The sea belongs to you as well.”

  “Oh, sure. All the mer-guys would welcome me with open arms.”

  “They would.” In went some halibut. “And if they did not, they would answer to me. Would you like some? It’s very fresh.”

  Fred shuddered and slurped more miso. “No.”

  “Fred’s allergic to seafood,” Jonas explained.

  “You—you are?” Artur’s jaw was sagging, which annoyed her to no end. “But—but what do you eat?”

  “Everything else.”

  “So, your plan is… what?” Jonas was tapping his fingers on the table in an irritating rhythm. “You’re gonna be the Dr. Watson to his Sherlock?”

  Fred shuddered; she couldn’t help it.

  “You don’t want to?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “So give him the old heave-ho.”

  “Apparently,” she said dryly, “I’m one of his subjects and have to do whatever he wants.”

  “Since when has authority stopped you from being you?”

  “Well. How weird is it that in forty-eight hours two guys show up both bitching about the same thing?”

  “You’re gonna team him up with the water fellow?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “What is a water fellow?”

  “Eat your dead fish,” she told Artur. To Jonas: “Let them team up and solve the mystery. Let me get back to work. Everybody’s happy.”

  Jonas was holding his head in his hands. Fred ignored it. Artur looked slightly alarmed. “Good sir, what ails you?”

  “Artur, could you give us a minute, please?”

  Without a word, Artur rose, crossed the room in four big strides, and started talking to their waitress, who was staring at him the way diabetics stared at sundaes.

  “What?”

  “Fred, what the hell is wrong with you?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve met two new guys and instead of, I dunno, trying to build a meaningful relationship or at least get laid by either or both of them, you’re gonna match them up together and head back to the aquarium?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fred. You are dumber than an octopus.”

  “Octopi,” she told him with raised eyebrows, “are among the smartest animals on earth.”

  “Why don’t you guys work together? Huh? He came all the way from the Black Sea—where the hell is the Black Sea, anyway… well, it sounds far away—and you can’t just dump him!”

  “I can.” She added, “Southeastern Europe. Oh, and Asia Minor.’”

  “What?”

  “The Black Sea. Connected to the Mediterranean by the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara, and to the Sea of Azov by the—”

  “This is not the point—”

  “—Strait of Kerch,” she finished.

  She ignored his moan of despair and fished the last piece of tofu out of her soup bowl. The fact was, both Thomas and Artur made her anxious. She wasn’t used to attention from men. And she had no interest in being in a triangle. Not that that was likely to happen.

  “When was the last time you went on a date?” Jonas was demanding. “And if you give me the patented Fred ‘I don’t give a shit’ shrug, I’ll beat you to death.”

  She laughed at him. Then thought about it. And thought. And thought some more. “Dr. Barb’s ex-husband,” she said at last.

  “Oh, God, that’s right. I totally forgot about him. You’re lucky you didn’t lose your job over that one.”

  “She’s the one who set us up,” Fred reminded him. What neither of them needed reminding was, it was a complete disaster. Dr. Barb’s ex, whose name Fred had by now forgotten, spent half the date making gross passes at Fred, and the other half pining for his ex-wife. They had ended the meeting with a handshake, and he’d gone home with a black eye when he’d tried for more too persistently.

  “And ever since then, you’ve been stuck in the vortex of a—what? Six? Six-year dating dry spell?”

  “Vortex?”

  “And here’s two hunky fellows climbing all over you—”

  “They aren’t—”

  “—and all you can think of to do is stick them together and vamoose.”

  “I’ve got other stuff to worry about.”

  “That’s why,” he said kindly, “you’re a moron. Just like an octopus. No, don’t tell me, I don’t care. They’re stupid, too.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jonas cheerfully trailed behind his best bud and her massive, ridiculously good-looking new pal. He eyed the people milling around on the cobblestones and wondered if any of them had the faintest idea he was walking behind two mer-people. Hell, be had a hard time believing it, and he’d grown up with one of them.

  Artur kept leaning over and trying to whisper in Fred’s ear, and she kept batting him away like he was a persistently annoying fly. Jonas shook his head. It was so obvious that Artur—a prince! A freakin’ prince!—had the hots for his pal. Did she notice? Nuh-uh. Would she have cared if she did notice? Probably not. Was she a nutjob of the highest order? Yup.

  But then, if she didn’t engage in that odd Freddish behavior, she wouldn’t be Fred.

  He still remembered the day they met. He’d been pretty shocked when the big kids had ganged up on him, and had barely noticed the small, stick-thin blue-haired girl reading a book up against a tree.

  Whether she didn’t like the distraction from her book or couldn’t stand to see the odds so badly out of whack (probably the former), it didn’t matter. She’d gotten up and put her hands on the big kids and they’d gone flying and then she went back to her book and she’d ignored the stares and the whispers. Almost as if, at the ripe old age of seven, she didn’t notice them anymore, or never had, or just didn’t care.

  He’d pestered her the rest of the day until she had sighed and agreed to bring him to her house. They’d been buds ever since.

  He’d known. Not that she was a mermaid, but even as a child, Fred wasn’t like anybody else. Anybody else. That was all right, though, because he wasn’t a typical elementary school student, either, not when he knew how to do floral arrangements and had a collection of paint chips which he kept organized by tint and type (matte, gloss, etc.).

  And when she finally worked up the courage to show him her other form, he had been surprised, but not shocked. And not horrified, either. He’d thought her tail was pretty, and had told her so. She’d told him to shut up, and he’d ignored her.

  Now he was tagging along, as he so often did, partly because he smelled excitement, and partly because he was hoping to get another glimpse of the delectable Dr. Barb. He’d been wondering for years what her hair would feel like in his hands, if it ever was out of that silly braid, if her eyes narrowed or widened or closed completely during orgasm. It was a full-on crush, the one secr
et he kept from Fred. Just the thought of her scorn (or indifference) made him cringe.

  “It’s pretty late,” Fred said over her shoulder, leading them to a darkened employee entrance. “I doubt anybody’s around. Which is good. Technically neither of you should be here.”

  “Technically, you’re a frigid bitch,” he reminded her.

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up.”

  Fred sighed. “Are you ever going to leave the second grade?”

  “Are you ever going to do anything about those split ends?”

  She ignored him, the way she ignored the stare Artur gave her. That was also business as usual. He’d long given up trying to point out the guys (and occasional gal) checking her out pretty much daily.

  Fred wasn’t gorgeous, but she had—something. The hair, of course. The long legs and waist. Skinny, so she could wear anything and look good. And the height. He had barely an inch on her. Altogether, she was a striking, if startling, woman.

  And the smile. Fred had a perfectly beautiful smile, he happened to know from seeing it three, maybe four times in twenty years.

  And a wonderful sense of humor. The trouble was…

  He thought about it. The trouble was, she was also the loneliest person he knew. And it wasn’t hard to figure why. She worked so hard shoving people away, nobody had a chance to dump her first. Psych 101, plain and simple.

  “Yeah,” he replied, “but Dr. Barb doesn’t have a life any more than you do.”

  “Says the moron tagging along at ten thirty at night on a Friday.” She turned, walked backward for a second, and narrowed her sea green eyes. “What do you care if Dr. Barb is here?”

  “I’m just warning you,” he covered.

  “Muh,” she replied, turning back around.

  And lo and behold, the gods of frustrated sexual yearnings smiled on him as the employee door slammed open and out darted Dr. Barb! Who, he happened to know, trotted everywhere, like a little kid. She nearly slammed into Fred, checked herself, skidded to a halt, straightened, blew her bangs out of her eyes, and said, “Dr. Bimm! You’re back. Everything all right at home, I trust?”

  Instantly, Jonas seized Artur and dragged him away so Dr. Barb wouldn’t realize Fred had been about to sneak two unauthorized persons into the NEA in the middle of the night. There was a convenient corner near the outdoor seal tank and he hissed, “Put your arms around me.”