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I recoiled a step back as the merfry rocked playfully up and down on the tips of her toes. She looked so harmless. All bright eyes rimmed with long lashes, with an angelic tilt to her chin as she shuffled on her feet. It was a sharp contrast to the horror I’d seen only a second earlier.
My eyes blinked rapidly, studying her face for another glimpse of the more-than-human side of her. I’d been away from merfolk for so long; were all of them like this? A kingdom of deep-sea terrors draped in human flesh?
Did that make me a terror, too?
My whole body froze with that thought. Had I ever checked to see if my eyes glinted with fury like Leander’s and his father’s? Could I immobilize and bewitch some unsuspecting mortal with a pull of my lips? As far as I knew, I’d done none of those things. Never even wanted to.
But had I ever thought to look at myself in the mirror to see if I had a fiend living inside me, too?
“Hey, your name is Claira, right? My name’s Echinea. Do you want to see my shells?” The merfry’s dark crop of hair bounced off her shoulders as she struggled to wiggle a heaping fistful of shells out of her pocket. “I havethirty-nineshells. Thirty-nine!” The back of her free hand wiped across her face, smearing a shiny line of snot above her top lip. “Started collecting them as soon as they took us here. Look! Look at this one.” She dug a cream-colored disk out of the bunch and held it up for me to take.
“Wow, Echinea, you found a perfectly whole one. That’s impressive.” I accepted the circular shell and held it up so that sunlight could shine through it. “It’s a really pretty sand dollar. Where did you find it?”
“Sand dollar?” Echinea sniffed sharply before snatching the shell out of my fingers. “It’s aclypeasteroida, and it used to bealive.” She whipped her head back to scowl at me, her eyes narrowing. “Hey… why do you wanna know where I got it?”
I blinked down at her, interested in her reaction. I’d mostly asked just to humor her, but now I was curious. “Maybe I want to go down to the beach and find a nice, juicy lobster for dinner?”
“Eww,” she groaned.
I shrugged. “Better me catching them than your father.”
Her mouth opened wide in contemplation. “Answer a riddle, and maybe I’ll tell you.”
A riddle? And from a merfry young enough that her father still called her a sea squirt? It must have been some sort of popular new game. Times certainly had changed from the days of digging for clams and playing shooters. “All right, let’s hear it.”
Leaning in close, she recited the words like she was confiding a secret. “I follow each boat, each bird, each fish, each net… I glide across the ocean floor, but I never get wet.”
Echinea paused, her eyes growing wide with a sort of strange optimism. She seemed to hold her breath as I puzzled over the rhyme.
“Hmm.” What followed a boat, a bird, a fish, and a net?“Is there more to it?”
Her face fell. “You don’t know either, do you?”
“Echo!” a deep voice cut between us, and Echinea’s spine shot up as straight as a captain’s spear. Her hands moved faster than lightning bolts, working to shove the shells back into her pocket. She spun around and took off for the warehouse.
“My papa needs me,” she yelled out, not even bothering to look back. “And he’s a captain, so I gotta go!”
Her hair trailed behind her in a dark swish of movement as she ran. I’d spent little time with young mermaids, even when I was a merfry myself. It sure was impressive to see how much chaotic energy Poseidon had managed to fit into such a small package.
“You look like you had a good nap,” a low voice called from behind me, and I turned to see Kai’s cheerful smile.
“Oh, wow,” I said, taking in how different he looked in the daylight. I’d thought his hair was blond, but the short tips were actually a light shade of purple. An edgy choice—one that seemed to set off his overly bright persona. “You made it out of the gas station.”
“Yep, sure did!” He stepped next to me, and his hand dipped into his front pocket. “Brought you a little something.”
Half-expecting Kai to pull out a fistful of seashells, it surprised me when his hand emerged with what looked like a long, plastic snack packet.
He flourished the lengthy package of meat in the air, looking like a triumphant puppy waiting for praise and a pat on the head for a job well done.
“A beef stick,” I drawled. My mind went back to the disaster that was the gas station. Surely the mob of raccoons wouldn’t have left anything edible behind?
“Thanks, that was very thoughtful of you.” I took the stick, and his puppy-dog eyes opened even wider.Wow. His irises really were lilac. It was a softer shade than the purple color of his hair but still an odd coloring for a human or a merman. Next to him, my fiery red hair probably didn’t seem as absurd as usual.
His face seemed bursting with energy as he nodded, urging me on. He totally expected me to eat it right now. Gulping, I peeled back a corner and ripped off a chunk of meat with my teeth. Lilac eyes settled on my lips as I ate it, and self-consciousness crept in—like I’d suddenly forgotten how normal people were supposed to chew.
At least it tasted all right. I went for another bite.
“Do you feel like getting out of here?” he asked casually, and an arm hooked around my shoulder.
