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Chapter 1
10 YEARS AGO
Eva went to The Sapphire Club to rehearse because the new routine wasn’t quite there yet. God, she loved the pool room when no one else was around. Chlorine in every breath and echoes of every step. The pool was open, its mechanized cover pulled back into itself. She slid out of her jeans, already wearing her smooth, shiny leggings underneath. Blue, not that it mattered. She took off her blouse. Under it, she wore a bikini top with seashell cups. It was padded though, and not as uncomfortable as it looked.
She unzipped her custom garment bag and laid her beautiful mermaid tail out on the cool concrete floor. It was the softest powder blue color at the waist, and then it darkened through every imaginable shade of blue all the way to the rich, deep, midnight color at the wide, fluted tail fin. It was textured like a real fish, with each scale and the edges of the tail highlighted in silver. Its lighter colors were iridescent and shimmered when she moved in the lights. She knew just how to turn, how to swirl, how to flip, to make the costume sparkle and shimmer for the audience.
She put the end of a long-handled hook through her zipper pull and laid it where she’d be able to reach it, and then she wriggled into the tail, toes first, lying on her belly. She took hold of the wood handle of the hook to pull up the zipper. Her tail was skin-tight, and it took both arms and risked dislocated shoulders to do it by herself.
Most of the mermaids couldn’t do it without help, but Eva had been at this awhile and her Paul had spent more than he probably should have on a this one. A wedding gift, he’d said. Custom made with a newfangled easy-zip design.
“Easy, my tail,” she said, but she was smiling when she dropped the zipper pull and rolled onto her back. She flipped her tail and admired its delicate patterns. Every crease held hidden silver that winked and shone in the light. It was the most beautiful tail she’d ever seen. She loved her tail.
Paul had designed it himself, even though latex wasn’t his medium. He was a metal sculptor, her new husband. He made whimsical creatures and plants out of steel, and sold enough to make a comfortable living.
He’d created the tail’s design, then found someone with the skill to make it. He knew a lot of artists and sculptors. He said the colors were perfect with her long, raven curls. That’s what he called them, long raven curls.
He was a kind and wonderful man.
It wasn’t a mistake, marrying him. He was everything good and she was determined to love him the way he loved her. And she could, she knew she could.
He adored her. Had fallen for her the first time he’d seen her in this very pool, he’d said, when some friends had dragged him to The Sapphire Club for a show. Normally, he was a homebody. But after that night, he had come to every performance— like a freaking stalker, Hannah had said, but it wasn’t like that. She’d had one “fan” who’d given her that kind of vibe. She knew what that felt like. They’d stopped coming to shows though. Maybe now that she was married, they’d given up.
Eventually, Paul had managed to find an opening to introduce himself.
Eva rolled to the edge of the water and right over into the dark pool. Cool water engulfed her and she let herself sink, then executed a graceful spiral, and with a flip of her tail, swam deeper. From the bottom, she looked out the front of the tank. This aquarium was special; tempered glass, not acrylic. Not many tanks still were, but the owners had been adamant. Had it custom made with a spare front pane, in case they stopped making them entirely.
They were like that, the three owners of The Sapphire Club. The billionaire bad boys, everyone called them. Personally, she thought they were spoiled, entitled jerks with a shared mermaid fetish.
They paid well, though, and the big twice-a-year bonuses were worth the occasional blatant ogling. She bet some of the team got a little more, maybe gave a little more, too. But she wasn’t one to judge.
Through the thick, clear glass, she could see the club’s main room. It was dark, like the pool. All the chairs were up on top of all the tables. The hardwood bar was along the left side, from her perspective. Its surface gleamed. The club’s cocky head bartender was a bear about his bar. She’d set down a glass without a coaster one night and he’d leaned right up in her face, yelling at her. She actually thought he might hit her.
She did not like that guy, and it was mutual. She’d left an empty glass on the bar three nights in a row now, and he had to know it was her. Screw him. She was gonna do it again tonight.
She pushed Earl Mackey out of her mind and executed a few warmup moves. Using her tail had become second nature to Eva after seven seasons as Mermaid Esmeralda at The Sapphire Club. She loved this gig. She loved everyone here other than Mackey and the owners. She especially loved the other performers. They were like a family. They had even attended her wedding.
She gazed at the brand-new rings on her left hand as she stopped near an underwater lily with a concealed air hose for a couple of breaths. And then a ripple of alarm went through her because she’d forgotten to take her rings off, and she didn’t know if chlorinated water would hurt them.
Too late now.
She got nicely oxygenated, then swam off behind the boulder and fake seaweed to begin her routine. She tapped her underwater headphones, and the music came up, Enya’s “Adiemus.” The song’s lyrics were made-up, not a real language. So they could mean anything she wanted.
Eva had decided they told the story of a woman who found the world above too cruel and complicated to bear, and who wanted to be a mermaid for real, instead of just make believe. A reverse fairy tale.
Wouldn’t that be something?
She wouldn’t even need the ocean. Saratoga Lake was just beyond the back parking lot. The club offered shoreline wedding packages, complete with Eva and her pals in Mermaid Pose on those boulders along the shoreline.
The song for Eva’s routine would be playing on speakers for the first show of the season tomorrow, but she needed to be able to hear it, too, to get her moves synched perfectly to the beat. She wouldn’t be able to wear the headphones during the show, so she had to practice over and over.
The music started. On the third beat, she swam out and across the back of the pool, offering the audience a tantalizing glimpse where the soft, rippling light barely reached. That was when all the chattering diners would go silent, not that she could hear them in the pool, but she’d seen video from out there. That first glimpse always got their attention.
Behind the boulder on the opposite side, she got another breath, then swam out again, closer to the font this time. She paused in the middle to gaze, wide-eyed, at the non-existent diners, then darted into hiding again. After a beat, she peeked out from behind the plastic shipwreck, then ducked behind it again. Another breath, and then she swam right up to the glass and waved hello.
In the actual show, a performer with a shark tail and dorsal fin would show up to chase her around a few times, and that was when she got to execute her best moves.
As the music swelled, she imagined Hannah in her shark costume coming at her, gave a burst of speed, and executed a triple spiral to evade. The plan was, they’d both dart behind rocks for a breath, then come out again, and twine around each other in mock combat. She did the moves on her own, then went for another breath, but there was no air coming out of the lily hose.
