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Every time Misty shifted her weight from arm to arm, the pain was a hot blade through her chest. Yet she moved steadily closer. Jen’s car was there.
Her muscles gave out and she fell, and her chest hit the ground, the steel mermaid pressing again to the raw place in her chest, and it was beyond pain. She felt split in two.
She went rigid, trying to breathe, waiting for the pain to ease. It took a long time. But then it ebbed and, as it did, their voices came to her.
“Oh Good, you’re here. Now toss your gun down and I’ll take you to your girlfriend.”
Misty pushed herself up. Through the waving grasses, she could see them, Jen Scott, facing away from her, and Jeremy, facing toward her. She saw his beautiful face and her chest ached in a different way.
Jen Scott pointed her gun at Jeremy and said, “Your weapon?”
Misty crawled closer, her hands pressing to the soft grasses without a sound.
Jeremy raised his hands and said, “I’m not armed. I came out here to visit my girlfriend at college. I couldn’t bring a gun.”
She crept even closer. She was only feet away from them now.
“That should make this easier then,” Jen Scott said, and she moved, and Misty knew she was going to shoot.
She closed her fist around the mermaid so it wouldn’t slam into her chest as she lunged upright and forward. She shouted, not a word, but something more feral as she leapt, raising her arm over her head. The chain around her neck snapped. Misty brought the mermaid down on Jen Scott’s neck, missed and hit her shoulder. The tail fins sank deep, though. Jen Scott screamed, yanked the mermaid from her neck and flung it to the ground. “What the—” and she looked from her shoulder, back at Misty. “I thought I killed you!”
Jeremy lunged, grabbed Jen from behind and took her gun right out of her hand. She tried to wrestle free and fell down onto one knee.
“You stay down there,” he said, holding the gun not quite on her, but close enough. He kept shifting his gaze to Misty, then back to Jen again. “I see you brought your handcuffs along,” he said with a nod at the detective’s hip. She was kneeling, holding her shoulder. It was gushing blood, and Misty wondered if she’d hit an artery.
“I can’t cuff up,” Jen said. “Not with this shoulder.”
He moved to her, took the handcuffs out, put them on her good wrist, and pulled it around behind her back. Then he reached for her other arm.
It happened in an instant. Jen twisted, and suddenly there was a little gun in her other hand, and she shrieked, “Eva was mine. She belonged with me!”
Misty surged, slamming Jeremy with both hands. He hit the ground, and she landed on top of him as the gun went off. Even though she braced for the bullet, she never felt it. And then she realized as Jen dropped to the ground beside them, that she hadn’t been aiming at Jeremy. She’d brought the little pistol’s barrel up to her own chin.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“Holy fuck, Misty!” Christy came running across the field.
“Christy?” Then as her sister barreled into her, snapping her arms around her, “Oh, my God, you’re alive! You’re okay!”
They hugged so hard Misty winced in pain and pulled away, touching her chest softly. Mason and Rachel had appeared, as well. She didn’t know where they’d come from, but she was glad to see them in one piece. The terror that had covered her heart in ice seemed to shatter and fall away.
“How the hell did you get out of the tank?” she asked her sister, stepping back just enough to look at her face.
“The Crisis Companion,” Christy said, through her tears.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Misty looked at the ground where she’d seen Jen Scott throw her mermaid. She spotted it and went to pick it up. It still had blood on it, but she wasn’t leaving it behind. She held it up in front of Christy.
The sun was rising, and it illuminated the mermaid with the round flat piece of lead in her belly. All her inner tools were mashed together. They’d flattened.
“Holy shit,” Christy said, running her thumb over the metal. “Is that?—?”
“A bullet, yeah.” She pulled her blouse open, and everyone gathered around as the sunrise painted her flesh. On her sternum, between her breasts, was the perfect shape of a mermaid, stamped into her skin, cut into it in multiple places.
Christy laid her fingers on the mark.
“I think my ribs are broken,” Misty said.
“That’s okay,” Christy replied, pointing to the stitches in her own head. “I know a few people at the hospital.”
