“Have you owned it for long?”
“Five years. What’s this about, eh?”
“I’m trying to locate its former owners,” I said. Only then did it occur to me that I should have come up with some kind of cover story, but I didn’t even try. My heart wasn’t in it. “The people who owned it back in ’sixty-seven.”
“Oh, that would have been my uncles. Mike and Jimmy McIntyre. I bought it off Uncle Jimmy after Mike died.”
I sighed mentally. My instincts were right. He wasn’t the guy. Still, I asked, “Did either of them have kids in the sixties?”
“No. Why?”
“No reason, really. Just curious, I guess. Well, thanks for your time.” I turned and jogged back toward the car. Chelsea hurried behind me. Her hand came down hard on my shoulder, and she spun me around. Behind her, John McIntyre shook his head and went back into his house. One of the dogs barked twice.
“That’s it?” Chelsea asked.
I grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her the rest of the way to the car. She got in. I glowered at the dashboard as if it were to blame for the way I felt right now.
“What’s wrong?” Chelsea asked.
“I told you it wasn’t the guy. It’s not the right boat.”
“Okay, so fine. Cross one off your list. There’s no reason to get pissy about it.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just tired.” I leaned my head against the window.
“That’s what you get for sleeping in your car.”
I glanced at her without turning my head. How did she know that?
“Which,” she said, “you won’t be doing tonight. You can sleep on our futon. My mom won’t mind.”
“That’s really nice, but there’s something I’ve got to do tonight.” I couldn’t remember a time when I needed to swim more. Every inch of me thirsted for the water.
“Have it your way. But you are going out to dinner with me. It’s the least you can do. I’m hungry for Chinese.”
I plugged my phone charger into Chelsea’s car lighter and, with a buzzing noise, the phone lit up. Lily’s number announced itself in the display, nearly stopping my heart.
I didn’t answer, but I wasn’t mad at her. Even if she didn’t want me in her life anymore, I believed that she wanted what was best for me. Still, she could stop calling. It wasn’t like we had anything more to say.
Chelsea misinterpreted my silence. “It doesn’t have to be Chinese. Hey, are you all right?”
“I don’t have any money,” I said. “And, yeah. Right as rain.”
23
LILY
It had been three days since Calder left, and Nadia had fallen silent. It was like I didn’t know what to do with myself when I was sleeping. It used to be she woke me up by dragging me around the lake, dropping in on the ghost of my younger grandfather, or moping along the shore. Now she woke me up by making me miss her.
I don’t know what I expected. I guess, since Calder was on his way toward finding his parents, and I’d done all I could to help that along, there wasn’t anything more for her to say to me. But it still seemed kind of rude. Actually, it pissed me off. I was her granddaughter, after all.
But then, maybe Calder had been right, and I had been imagining her from the start. If that was true, if Nadia’s silence was really nothing more than my imagination going dormant, then I’d sent Calder away for nothing.
I couldn’t think about it. It had been the right thing to do. Torturing myself wasn’t going to do either of us any good now.
I prayed for the dreams to return.
It was Tuesday, too early in the week for my normally scheduled Friday transformation. But I couldn’t deny myself the calming effect of the water and ran across the yard, down to the shore. Slipping off my sandals, I walked the length of the broken willow branch, from the sand to out over the shallow water, unable to see it as just a branch. Now it was a permanent reminder of a mermaid’s fury. I could almost smell the char where the split branch met the remaining trunk. The burned spot looked ominous in the shadows.
At the end of the branch, I sat down, surreptitiously looked around, and lowered myself into the water, which broke around my waist and soaked through my clothes, permeating my skin.
I gasped. It was colder with Calder gone.
The icy water was crystal clear, and I watched as my toes wriggled in the fine layer of pebbles. Slowly, taking deep breaths, focusing to keep my body intact, I lowered myself, inch by inch, all the way in and sat on the lake floor. I raised one arm, placing my palm flat on the bottom of the willow branch to hold myself steady.
The lake was quiet except for the low rumble of a motor. When it passed, I heard a hard D-D-Daniel, followed by a tk tk tk, then a guttural noise, followed by a hard eee, then my name:
“Li … lee … Han … cock. What about her?”
I stretched my hearing out, searching for the source, finding the voices just west of Basswood Island. It was Maris and Pavati of course, but I wondered at the sound. Their voices rang so differently than in the past: high-pitched and shrieking, like wet cats in a well.
I quieted my thoughts, just as Calder had taught me last summer, so they wouldn’t know I was in the water, too. I thought of Mom’s white canvas, devoid of color, and made my mind do the same thing. It was a skill I’d gotten quite good at. Calder told me as much. He also told me he didn’t like it.
“Just tell me what you want,” Pavati demanded of Maris, “then get out of my way.” The underlying threat shot adrenaline through my veins, and I was glad she wasn’t speaking to me.
I could hear the sharp shift of sand. They were close to the bottom. Very deep. Maris delayed her response and when she spoke it was as if she had changed tactics, taking a near-motherly tone. “No need to fight. Isn’t this cozy? Just the two of us together again?”
“Make it quick, Maris. Say what you need to say, then you go your way, I’ll go mine.”
So they hadn’t even been sharing a campsite? It was that bad?
Maris was speaking. I could pick out a few clipped sounds. She seemed to be goading Pavati, but I couldn’t make out the words. Whatever they were, Pavati did not take the bait.
“What does that have to do with Lily Hancock?” Pavati asked.
Maris leveled her accusation. “You’ve met with her.”
“Once.”
“She would be wise not to put too much trust in you,” Maris said, and her sudden clarity made me think that she knew I was listening. Maybe I wasn’t as good at quieting my mind as I thought. Maybe I’d let something slip, because Maris quoted a line from The Big Sleep: “Oh, Pavati, you’re just a little child who likes to pull the wings off flies,” which made me even more suspicious that she was really talking to me.
But then Maris said, “Lily sought me out,” which confused me more than ever. Why would she lie like that if she knew I’d catch her in it? There was only one thing I knew for sure: Pavati would be super pissed about me talking to Maris. Maybe she’d even feel betrayed. I almost lunged toward their voices to explain my side of the story.
“You’re lying,” growled Pavati, and Maris howled in pain. The sound was so intense I almost sucked in a lungful of water. Maris screamed again. I wished I could see what was happening as clearly as I heard them.
“You cut me!” Maris gasped—both angry and surprised.
I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to swim out to intervene. The other part was screaming, Don’t be an idiot, Lily! My track record with interventions was abysmal, and besides, why would I want to get in the middle of that? I didn’t. But then I couldn’t just stand by and watch my mother’s only chances for a cure destroy each other.
“Lily wouldn’t trust her mother to you. She wouldn’t do that to her sister!” cried Pavati, and they both let out shrieks of agony as they tore at each other’s flesh.
“I’m losing patience with this whole situation,” said Maris. “You have no idea how to manage this family.”
“And clearly
you do? I’m tired of living under your rule and I won’t subject my son to it.”
“Your son! Evidence of your lack of restraint! You don’t have the proper disposition to lead.”
That was more than Pavati could stand. I heard the violence in her mind. I felt the impact as they launched their bodies at each other. But I couldn’t tell who was winning, or if they both were losing.
“Will you tell her? The truth?” The voice was so strained, I couldn’t tell who was speaking anymore. I had to believe they were still talking about me, so what “truth”? I searched out farther, sensing the pain in their thoughts, but then the pain was mine.
Someone grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled me up out of the lake. I gasped and spit water from my lips and wiped it from my eyes.
“What are you doing?” Gabby Pettit yelled.
I slapped my hands down on the surface of the water in frustration, and Gabby let go. I’d been on the brink of learning something important, and now I’d never know. “I should ask you the same question!” I said.
“I was watching you,” Gabby said. “Do you have any idea how long you were under?” She wasn’t saying it like she was impressed. It was an interrogation. Like the cop who asks if you know how fast you were going, when he clocked you himself and already knows the answer.
“You tell me.”
“Ten minutes!”
Wow. Color me impressed. Probably best not to mention that I could go another fifty—at least in my transformed state.
“It’s not funny, Lily.”
“What do you care? It’s none of your business.”
“Like hell it’s not my business. What is wrong with you?”
I turned toward shore and slogged through the water. My clothes hung heavy and tight against my body. I intended to keep marching to the house and slam the door behind me, but Gabby ran the willow branch like a jungle cat, leaping and tackling me to the sand. Or maybe I’d tripped and she’d fallen accidentally.
“Get off me!” I cried.
“You’re going to answer some questions first,” Gabby said. It sounded like a threat.
She had me by the shoulders and slammed me against the ground. I could feel the steely line of what I assumed was Sheshebens’s dagger, tucked deep into Gabby’s front pocket. Was she planning to use it on me?
I flipped Gabby over, gaining the advantage, and shoved her head into the sand. Then, in an almost Nadia-dream moment, I felt like I was having one of those out-of-body experiences—like when you’re watching yourself from above and not completely recognizing yourself. My God. What was wrong with me?
Instinctively (and stupidly) I released Gabby and crawled for the water. I wouldn’t fight her, but if this was going to continue, I wanted to be in the water where I had better control. Even if it meant transforming in front of Gabby, I wouldn’t let her live long enough to reveal my family’s secret. Wait, what? Did that thought really cross my mind?
Gabby must have realized what I was doing. She didn’t follow me toward the lake but pushed herself up to a sitting position in the sand. “You wouldn’t,” she said, panting.
“Wouldn’t what?” I challenged, though Gabby’s question shook me. She knew. I could see it in her eyes. “And since when do you attack me?”
“Since when don’t you need oxygen?” Gabby asked.
“Are you insane?” I asked, standing up. The water broke in ripples across the backs of my heels.
“Ha! Like my brother? Yeah. Maybe.”
“Jack never attacked me with a knife.” Only his hands, his lips, an iron chain …
Gabby closed her eyes and drew her knees up to her chin. I looked down at her as she took one deep breath, forcibly calming herself. Then she opened her eyes and leaned to her right, slipping the dagger out of her left pocket and throwing it on the sand beside her. It was a surrender. “I didn’t attack you with a knife, but I do think I cut myself,” she said.
“Must be karma,” I said.
Gabby smiled a little. “I had enough karma the other night, thank you very much. Those rats—” She shuddered. “Whatever that was, I deserved it for what I put Jack through last summer.”
I took a seat beside her on the sand, and we both stared out at the water. Quietly. Still. Moving only to swat the occasional fly that buzzed around our faces and landed on our bare feet. I dug my toes into the sand as if I could seek out the water table. I was grateful that neither of us had done anything too stupid, though still irritated that I didn’t know what was going on with Maris and Pavati.
For all I knew, they’d killed each other. But then two dark spots emerged in the North Channel. They were too far away for me to make out any details, but I had no doubt whom it was. The dark spots hesitated just above the waterline, then abruptly turned in opposite directions from each other and disappeared again.
I thought I caught the blue sequined sparkle of Pavati’s tail. But it could have just been sunlight on the water.
“I came here to ask you a question,” Gabby said. “You don’t have to admit anything. Just tell me if I’m completely off base.”
I fidgeted. “Try me.”
“How long have you been practicing holding your breath?”
That seemed like a safe enough question. Hadn’t I been doing that long before I knew my mer-potential? “A while,” I said. “Just for fun. I like a challenge.”
Gabby nodded. “Do you want to be a mermaid?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Just answer the question,” Gabby said with an exasperated sigh. Her dark hair was growing out again, and the wind pushed it up and around her face so I couldn’t see her expression. I played it safe.
“If being a mermaid is like being in one of Tennyson’s poems, then yeah. Maybe.”
“Who?” Gabby asked, finally looking at me.
I changed references. “If it’s like Disney, maybe. I always liked that singing crab.”
“But it’s not like Disney,” Gabby said.
“Gabby,” I said, like a warning. It was time for this conversation to end.
“Could Jack hold his breath as long as you?”
I didn’t answer that, and Gabby picked up the dagger. She rolled it over and over between her hands as she considered her next question, ignoring the fact that I hadn’t answered her last. Or maybe she took my silence as an affirmation. She handed the dagger to me, and my fingertips prickled at the contact. The thing practically hummed.
“Do you see that?” Gabby asked, pointing out some of the markings along the handle. “It’s an ancient language, but one of my dad’s friends can read it.”
“Dr. Coyote?” I asked.
Gabby raised her eyebrows at me. “How did you know?”
I shrugged. “He’s my dentist.”
“Well, yeah. Dr. Coyote took a huge interest in it. Asked me where I found it. Told me what it says.”
“Which is?”
“This first part here”—she indicated with her finger—“is a name. Sheshebens.”
Small duck, I thought.
“This other part took him longer to figure out, but he decided it says Safe passage home.”
“Hmm,” I said. I was already familiar with the story. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Dr. Coyote asked me the same thing.”
“If he thinks it has historical significance, you should give it to my dad. He could take it to the college and get it submitted to a museum.” I really hoped Gabby would be open to the suggestion, so I played it as cool as I could, as if I didn’t care.
“I think I’ll keep it for now. Thanks.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“So I have a theory,” Gabby said.
I scooped wet sand with my hands and buried my feet up to my ankles.
“The dagger clearly means something.” For a second she was distracted by it, and said, “It feels weird in my hand. It hums. Can you hear it?”
“No,” I lied. “I think that’s your imagination.?
??
Gabby groaned. “Well, I think Jack understood it was connected to the …” She hesitated on the word, old doubts persisting. “Mermaids. At first I thought he was dead—that they might have even killed him with it—but I’ve changed my mind.… I think he left this as a clue for me. I think it means that he found them, and that he used the dagger for safe passage. Like a peace offering.”
“Ironic, don’t you think?” I couldn’t help myself. My mouth was quicker than my brain.
“How do you mean?”
“A dagger as a sign of peace?”
“I think he went to them,” she said. “I think they changed him. Listen, Lily, I know you’re not going to admit it to me, but my guess is, with what you were just doing, holding your breath like that, that you’re planning to go to them, too.”
I started to protest, but she put up her hand, saying, “That’s why I’m not going to give you the dagger. I can’t let another family go through what mine has. No one else gets a ‘safe passage.’ ”
I still wanted to get Sheshebens’s dagger back, but I took comfort in the fact that Gabby had come up with an explanation for Jack’s disappearance that (a) satisfied her, and (b) required no retribution on her part. The last thing any of us needed was another Pettit on a crazed mermaid hunt. In her mind, Jack was still alive. Happy, even. And there was no one to blame for his disappearance but his own bad choices. That much was spot on.
I looked Gabby in the eyes and spoke solemnly. “I don’t know if what you’re saying is true, but I won’t argue against it. And I promise you this: with or without that dagger, I won’t abandon my family for a fantasy—real or imagined.”
“Promise?” she asked. She stood up and slipped Sheshebens’s dagger back into her pocket.
“Pinky swear.”
24
CALDER
A cactus garden grew around a crumbling concrete wishing well that stood by the front door of the Tijuana Grille. Scattered pennies lay below the few inches of stagnant water. My stomach constricted at the memory of Lily’s and my hunt for Maighdean Mara; Lily sprinkling old copper pennies onto the lake, shiny and patinaed circles both chasing the stony mermaid to her resting place. Man, I missed Lily. I wondered what she was doing right now.