Chapter 15
Araizas are like a box of chocolates. I wanted to bite them and spit out their nuts.
“Oh, come now, Juna Lee,” a silver-haired patrone said in a Ricardo Montalban accent. He laughed. “Look at this wonderful party we’re throwing for you, just to keep you entertained.”
My suite was full of people, all Mers — all of them gorgeous, exotic Araizas decked out in the best resort wear and world-class jewelry, not to mention a lazy aura of privilege with a side dressing of dangerous charm. When I called them the Corleones of the Caribbean I was exaggerating a little, but they do have several centuries of, shall we say, creative buccaneering to their credit. Even by Mer standards they’ve collected a few too many ships’ cargoes the old-fashioned way, without even bothering to leave a tip on the nightstand. I’d always heard juicy rumors about their Soprano-like penchant for sending Landers to sleep with the fishes.
“Yep,” I mused, “It’s always fun to party with kidnappers.”
“You aren’t going to write about us in that blog of yours, are you?” Aphrodite asked, her white smile a wicked sliver. “You like having both your ear lobes, don’t you?”
That was just an idle threat, because no matter what Mers do to Landers, they generally don’t touch their fellow Mers. No, even Araizas would complain to the Council instead. Then a Peacekeeper like Rhymer would show up on my doorstep, and I’d find myself exiled somewhere on a rock.
Those old seafaring stories about sirens singing on rocks?
They were doing time.
“Of course I’m not going to write about you,” I lied.
Around dawn, when the party broke up and the bartenders carted the last of the rum fizzes away, I eyed my two new gorgeous boyfriends. Aphrodite’s boy toys. Guards. They lounged, looking like pouty male supermodels in their open shirts and oh-so-clingy trousers on the deck chairs of my balcony, ensuring that I’d never climb down the mandevilla vines again. So they thought.
“Boys, I’ll slip into something comfortable,” I called, “and then we’ll smoke some herbal stogies and order breakfast.” And after that I’ll turn you into sexually hypnotized guppies, and then you’ll get the hell out of my way so I can escape. They smiled at me and flexed their bare webbed feet. A subtle Mer flirtation.
I went into a bath boudoir about the size of a Manhattan apartment, rummaged through several enormous closets full of fab clothes (Araizas knew my weaknesses all too well), and selected a vintage silk nightgown from a 1930s Claudette Colbert movie. Claudette was a Mer on her grandmother’s side, by the way.
The gown was more see-through than silk. I fluffed my hair down my back, spritzed myself with extra Chanel, a fave fragrance of Mers (oh, yes, Coco had webbed toes), then sauntered onto the balcony with everything set on High Jiggle. “Good morning, boys,” I drawled. “How do you like the view?”
They looked up at me without batting a single pouty eyelash. “We’re gay,” they said in unison.
I stared at them a second.
“Shit,” I said. “Get your own breakfast.”
And I went back inside.
Venus Shines
Chapter 16
A dogfish trying to keep order in a catfish aquarium. That’s what you are, McEvers.
I was no good at daddying my nieces, and not much of a catch when it came to romancing Moll. The incident at the pier made that clear. I’d hurt her feelings. Female-wise, I’d always gotten by on good military manners and a big, thrusting attitude. But with Moll I was swimming in uncharted territory. As for the girls, they needed a daddy, not a sergeant.
Not that I intended to change my bullish ways, you understand. I wanted the girls and Moll to stay alive. I wanted Orion dead. Nothing else mattered.
Uncle Rhymer. Help!
The shriek of dual voices inside my mind. Stella and Isis. I left my station on the mansion’s veranda and bolted upstairs.
The two girls met me at the landing. “Venus has disappeared,” Stella said.
* * * *
Heathcliff was just a kitten when my parents died in the car accident. My mother gave him to me on my fifteenth birthday, only a few weeks before she and Dad were killed. At the hospital, family friends sneaked Heathcliff into my room several times. I was barely conscious, fading in and out between physical pain and grief. Heathcliff would sit delicately on my pillow and nuzzle my face with his head, sometimes licking the tip of my nose and purring. He was my one link to happy sensations, the last remnant of comfort in the world.
In the twenty years since then, he and I had rarely spent a day apart. Now I watched him everyday, my heart breaking, wondering which day would be our last together.
“You didn’t eat well this morning,” I said to him. I cuddled him in my lap as I sat down in a heavy wicker chair on the veranda of Randolph Cottage. He sighed. I stroked his head and pretended to gaze out over the bay, toward Sainte’s Point, while I fought back tears. With all the miracles I’d discovered recently, there was no miracle for him. He had been my dearest friend, my only family, for two decades.
I feared he was beginning to die.
“I’m going inside and get a small can of your favorite fancy tuna,” I announced. “And we’re going to sit out here in this wonderful ocean breeze and nibble on tuna. If you just get some breakfast in your tummy, you’ll feel better.”
I gently set him on the chair’s thick cushion. He sighed again, and curled up with his eyes closed.
I can’t let you go without a fight, I thought, then scrubbed a hand over my eyes and hurried inside.
I was reaching for a small bowl in a glass-fronted cabinet of the cottage’s cozy antique kitchen when I heard a thump on the veranda’s wooden floor. Oh, Heathcliff, no, I whispered, rushing back through the cottage. I pictured him falling off the chair. “Heathcliff.” I slung open the screen door.
I halted, staring.
Venus stood there, her back to me. She was soaking wet; her pale sundress dripped saltwater. A bit of seaweed clung to the hem. She swayed and hummed and hugged Heathcliff. I could just see the tips of his ears above her shoulder.
“Venus, honey, you shouldn’t be here. What are you—”
She turned around. Her eyes glowed with tears, and her mouth trembled. “Please don’t be angry,” she said in her soft Scottish burr. “I couldn’t let the wee old cat keep hurting. And I could hear you crying about him.” She set Heathcliff down. The breath stalled in my lungs. He looked up at me, bright-eyed. His fur was soft and smooth again, each black tabby stripe standing out like the vivid bars of a military chevron against the silver-gray background. He meowed with robust delight, then launched himself at me. I caught him in my arms. He nuzzled his head against my cheek, then licked the tip of my nose.
“Now he’s young and happy again,” Venus said. “And he can be your friend for a long, long time yet. Your heart doesn’t have to break.”
I sank down in the chair, hugging Heathcliff, making small, incoherent sounds of awe and crying. Life always comes with a price. Venus had restored a piece of my heart but may have doomed herself, her sisters, and Rhymer in the process.
Venus, aware only that life can be saved, smiled.
* * * *
I could no’ yell at little Venus. I couldn’t do it, though she’d gone against every word I’d said on the subject of healing. Nor was anything Moll’s fault. She hadn’t called for help with the dying old cat. Now a teary-eyed Moll stood in front of Venus like a female tiger shark, holding Heathcliff in her arms, staring at me sadly but firmly.
Don’t you yell at Venus, she ordered in my head. Venus peeked up at me. “Uncle Rhymer, I did no’ sing out very loud when I healed Heathcliff. I promise. Just a little hum. I could no’ help myself. With scary things all about, and sadness, and worry, Moll needed her kitty fixed. So I fixed him. It was quick, quick and quiet! I promise!”
“All right. I’m not mad, I swear it. Go get in the boat and wait for me.”
“And you’re not mad at Moll?”
“No, I’m not mad at Moll. Now scoot along.”
“I won’t heal anything or anyone else! Except for a wee butterfly with a torn wing here and there. I promise.”
“Aye, we’ll have a talk about your promises later. Now go.”
She scampered off the veranda and through the oleanders, then turned and waved. “Bye Moll, bye, Heathcliff! Oh, but he looks so fat and fine!”
Moll waved and blew her a kiss. The old cat, not old anymore, purred.
When Venus stood safely in the well of my speedboat, I looked at Moll grimly. “You understand what’s happened?”
She gave a pained nod. “Isn’t it possible she only sang out ‘a little,’ and Orion didn’t hear her?”
“Her by herself — maybe not. If it had been all three girls singing together, he’d hear for sure. But even just her alone is too much. This isn’t good, Moll.”
“I know. Rhymer, if I did anything, thought anything, wished anything that drew her here, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“She’s had her eye on old Heathcliff all along. It’s near impossible for Healers to resist healing. Especially when it comforts them to do it.”
She hugged the new Heathcliff to her chest. “I’m so glad to have him restored — but not at the risk of the girls’ safety.” She looked tortured. “And yours.”
“I want you to move out of this place. Go stay with Tula.”
“Move out? Why?” She froze, reading fears I couldn’t hide quick enough. “You think he might come here? Looking for me?”
“I don’t know how he might track what he heard. Just to be on the safe side, move in with Tula. Go get your things. I’m not leaving this yard until you’re packed and settled in your car.”
“But—”
“And whatever you do, don’t sing out to me anymore. Not for any reason. Keep your mind quiet.” I paused. “I’ll miss you.”
Her face paled. She understood. We looked at each other sadly. We’d never been together, except in our minds, but that was the most powerful bed of all. And now even that would be empty.
* * * *
“Molly, I’m taking you someplace fun and decadent to get your mind off what happened,” Tula announced. “You’re going to see hot, wild, mermen in action.”
Since I had spent the two days since the Heathcliff incident in deep brooding at Tula’s cottage, I looked at her blearily over an empty soda bottle and said, “In case you’re wondering, I’m not a naive, thirty-five-year-old virgin who goes dewy over male hotness. I have managed to lure a couple of fully accredited men into my lair over the years. But frankly, they didn’t fulfill my fantasies the way Rhymer does. So I’m not interested in hooking up with some merman.” I paused. “Or maybe the operative term is ‘hooking’ a merman.”
She smiled. “I’m not taking you to a Mer brothel, for goodness sake. Just a nightclub.”
“Under the circumstances, I have no intention of partying. Because of me and Heathcliff, Orion may be on his way to Sainte’s Point. I can’t just—"
“Rhymer asked me to take you out.”
I stared at her. “He asked you to find me a man?”
“No, he asked me to keep you distracted. He says there’s no point in you sitting and worrying. It won’t help. Think positively and cheer up.”
“Think positively and cheer up?” I stood furiously, pounding a fist on my bad leg. Heathcliff leapt from my lap to the back of Tula’s overstuffed white couch. He loved racing around her cottage, amazed at his own new youth. “Do you know what would cheer me up? If I could make my gimpy leg work well enough to swim long distances! If I could find Orion and lead him off the track of Rhymer and the girls! I want to help Rhymer defend Stella, Isis, and Venus!” I searched for a mantra. “I want to be a Singer, not a Floater, with real webbed feet!”
“Well, in the meantime, let’s dress your inner Mer in something sassy and go see some naked men. I brought you an outfit.”
She held up black leather pants low enough to show my inner Mer’s hipbones and a white leather bustier barely long enough to lace under my inner Mer’s outer boobs. Even Britney Spears didn’t show that much stomach.
I took a last, long swallow of soda. On the melodrama meter, my mood clicked from depressed to reckless. “Give me those clothes,” I told Tula.
* * * *
It was the Mer equivalent of a Chippendales show. A girls’ night out at the most elegant nightclub imaginable on the decadently elegant riverfront of one of the south’s most decadently elegant old cities, Savannah. I stared as a sleek, gorgeous, web-toed man wearing nothing but a flesh-colored thong undulated to the ethereal beat of some New Age Celtic rhythm, flexing with provocative masculine grace as a coordinated lightshow of shadows cascaded over and under him. His powerful body and barely concealed erection weren’t more than a quick tickle away from me. I could have stroked him, except for four inches of brilliant glass between us. He floated inside a giant tank as large as a room. He smiled at me from inside a glorified goldfish bowl.
A penis on the half shell.
“Blow him a kiss,” Tula whispered. “You’re the famous Mer author, M.M. Revere. Everyone’s watching you. It’s only polite for a celebrity to flirt with the performer.” Thank goodness for the darkness, which was lit only by the flickering light of our table lamp. Tula’s breasts were barely visible inside a diaphanous blouse. Her long legs were sparsely topped by a black leather mini skirt. She should flirt with Mr. Penis, not me.
When I continued to sit there like a red-faced monkey, she elbowed me gently.
“Tula,” I finally managed, “if I lift my arm to blow him a kiss, one breast will fall out the bottom of this bustier.”
“So? Be brave. Risk flashing a nipple.”
Slowly I put my fingertips to my lips. I kissed them, then reached out to tap my fingertips on the glass in the general vicinity of the swimmer’s smiling lips. But at the last second he swirled upward and, grinning, pressed his pelvis to the glass.
My fingertips planted a symbolic smooch on his erection.
Everyone laughed and applauded.
I slumped back in the shadows, mortified. Tula put an arm around me. “Now see, you’re becoming a wild libertine, just like the rest of us. Mers aren’t shy. We’re the beautiful people. That was fun, wasn’t it?”
“I just wish he’d kept his waterlogged woody away from my fingers.”
Tula laughed until her eyes watered. I hunkered miserably over my tumbler of vodka, then pushed it aside and downed a chaser of fizzing tonic water. The hard stuff. Cool, sea-scented air curled around my bare midriff like a seductive breath. Leave me alone, I told it. I’m a librarian-slash-author from staid old Boston. I’m not here to be seduced. I’m worried about Rhymer and the girls.
The haunting Celtic music faded away, and the handsome male performer disappeared through a nearly invisible tunnel at the bottom of the enormous tank. Seconds later the music changed to a throbbing dance beat. A magnificent young couple plunged from perches high in the nightclub’s elaborately carved rafters. They speared the water of the giant bowl, then curled toward one another in perfect symmetry. He wore nothing but a bulging thong of gleaming fabric; she wore little more than a shimmering band of ribbon between her legs. As the lighting system strobed them, they entwined, touching, kissing, undulating in a yin/yang dance of pure, fluid sexuality.
I lost myself in their thrall. This is what I want. To be made in the water, by Rhymer. To be made of water, with Rhymer.
Beside me Tula gave a soft, unhappy sigh. Loneliness suddenly radiated from her like a bleak aura. Someone had hurt her, or she’d hurt him, and the memories returned. I wasn’t drunk enough to ask for details, and her thoughts were closed. She proceeded to polish off nearly a dozen glasses of bubbly water over the next two hours. I designated myself the chaperone and switched to straight vodka.
By the time we left the club, Tula was wobbling and I had to take her by one arm to keep her on course. I thumped
my cane’s silver tip on a rustic, cobblestoned path that led to a patio overlooking the river. “Follow the sound of the tapping cane,” I quipped. “What kind of stones are these? It’s like an obstacle course.” The stones were rounded. Even sober, it was like walking on stone eggs.
Tula lurched and nearly pulled us both down in a heap. “Ballast stones. Thousands of ’em. Tossed from the hulls of big ships coming up the river to harbor since the sixteen hundreds. They’re everywhere in the old part of Savannah. Streets, walls, you name it. The weight of old trade, under our feet. That’s what life is all about, isn’t it? The weight of our trades? Our compromises? Trying to walk when we just want to fall down?” She stumbled again. “I’m so sorry,” she moaned. “Juna Lee always says I shouldn’t watch the couples’ acts. She says I get morbid and start babbling clichés from old soap operas. She’s right.”
“Let’s sit on the patio edge over there.” I guided her like a tugboat pushing a tanker. We made our way to a heavy wooden railing, which gave us something to hold onto. A lamp post cast a soft cone of light around us. We sat down and dangled our legs over the side. A dozen feet below us, the Savannah River made a slow, deep highway to the Atlantic. Across the river, the lights of the city’s historic cotton exchanges winked in the hot night air. Now the grand old buildings were full of shops, restaurants, and bars. I heard the faint sound of music. On a summer night the riverfront surged with young people, rowdy and carefree. I had never been rowdy or carefree, at least not outside my imagination. An enormous freighter slid by, heading downriver to the ocean, blanking out the scene, a peaceful monolith in the moonlight.
I clasped Tula’s hand. “Feeling better?”
“A little.” She slumped a little, staring into the blackness. “I owe you an explanation.”
“Being a newly liberated Mer who air-kissed a stranger’s penis tonight, I’m now frank enough to say, ‘You betcha.’ So explain. Is this mood of yours about a man?”
She nodded wearily. “He was a Lander. But not just any Lander. Most Lander men are easy for a Mer to control; they’re as docile as pet puppies. They can’t resist us. They’re fun to play with and easy to forget. We use them; we break their hearts. For that reason, conscientious Mers don’t indulge in Lander romances. But there are the rare ones — the special ones — the ones who catch a Mer off guard.” She exhaled wearily. “And in those cases, the outcome is almost never good.”