by Judi Fennell
And he’d just brought one of their kind over. He must be out of his brain-coral mind. She exhaled and moved slightly in his arms. Her eyelashes were the same seal brown as her hair. They InOverHerHead.indd 22
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swept her cheeks where the sun had lingered a bit too long, leaving a sprinkling of sun-dots on her nose, but even those were adorable. He wondered if her eyes were as Caribbean blue as he remembered.
Fish, she was so tiny. Her legs were in proportion to what he’d expect to see on a small Mer of her size, but to be so slight! His people were full of muscle to battle the roiling waves in storms, to swim downstream in the strong currents of the North Atlantic, to outrun a hungry white or orca…
She’d never be able to survive the rigors of his world. Maybe he should have let her die or taken the chance of rushing her to the surface…
“Dude, what’s done is done. She’s turned. Now you get to keep her.”
“She’s not a pet, Chum.”
“It’s sure going to feel that way until you get her used to her new home away from home.”
“You know, I could use a little more confidence at the moment. A little more help. You were all full of advice while she died. ‘Turn her, Reel. No big deal.’”
“Hey, that rhymed.”
Reel rounded a guyot. Behind the rise in the ocean floor yawned the gutted hull of a once-proud U.S. battleship behind the gates he’d salvaged, complete with guards. No one entered his lair without permission. That included chatty remoras.
“I’ll catch up with you later, Chum.” He sped through the gates, nodding to the monkfish on duty.
“But—”
Reel turned back, the woman’s hair wrapping around his waist like a trawling net, only now he didn’t InOverHerHead.indd 23
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mind being snared. “When she wakes up, she’s going to freak out seeing me. We don’t need to add talking fish to the equation.”
“But every fish talks.”
“She doesn’t know that.” He turned back and headed inside. “Yet.”
A lumpy pillow rubbed against her cheek. It smelled fishy. Nothing new there. Everything smelled fishy at the marina.
Her eyelids were so heavy. They didn’t want to open. She took a deep breath. It felt… funny. And, man, did her head hurt.
Erica moved her hand to her head in what felt like slow motion. She reached her scalp, groaning when she touched a two-inch-long indentation above her temple. She’d probably lost hair when the bullet grazed—
Bullet?
Her eyes finally opened.
She’d died.
That was the only thing that could explain what she was seeing. She’d died, and this was her own personal version of Hell.
The bottom of the sea.
Okay, so she’d played a few pranks on her brothers, but they’d played more on her. And maybe she’d lied once or twice to her dad. Then there was that time when she was eight and had swiped a shell necklace from Mrs. Wickham’s stand, but it wasn’t as if she were a murderer who deserved this. Was she going to have to spend eternity running, er, swimming from sharks?
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She pushed to a sitting position on the bed, the lumpy pillow scratching her skin. She pulled it out from under her. It was shaped like a starfish. Interesting sense of humor.
Then it moved.
Erica shrieked, dropped it, and butt-scooted backwards.
“Well, if that’s the thanks I get for allowing you to rest your Human head on me, I don’t think I’ll be offering again any time soon,” the starfish squeaked indignantly as it centipeded off toward the doorway. Talking starfish? Definitely Hell.
She gazed around her prison cell. Is that what they were called in the afterworld? Maybe there was a Manual for the Newly Deceased around here somewhere. At least Hell was decently lit, and not with the fires of the damned, but rather with fish. Hatchetfish. Dozens of the little brown bioluminescent fish swam back and forth behind a thin piece of abalone shell that stood above a piece of glass—someone’s boat windshield, maybe—resting on a hunk of coral. Herring swam among the frilled anemones attached to the coral. One orange anemone sprouted through a hole in the glass like a flower arrangement, little tentacle stingers swaying with the currents created by the fish lamp over a serving tray. Whelk shells decorated the wall of an old ship’s hull—channeled whelk, knobbed whelk, a few periwinkles and slipper shells in between, sparkling in the soft glow of fish-light. It was a pretty sculpture—until one of them moved.
Great. Living art. Some underworld artiste had designed her hellishly-ever-after.
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She swung her legs off a bed that was one step up from institutional furniture. Cruise ship, maybe. Interior stateroom. Soggy mattress.
The floor was sandy, luckily not made of those crushed shells people were so fond of using for their driveways on Peck Island. The shark must have eaten her swim fins, so she’d be spending eternity barefoot. She looked down. In her bikini.
At least Death had put all her pieces back together, even if it had neglected her wet suit. Shark attacks were gruesome. If she had to spend eternity looking at what the shark had left of her, she’d probably end up stark raving mad. If she wasn’t already.
Erica leaned back on the narrow bed. Her shoulders touched the wall—at least she hoped it was a wall and not some dorsal fin of another occupant. She braced herself on her elbows and closed her eyes. She was dead. Her body was never going to be found. Her brothers, all her friends, they were never going to know what happened to her. And Joey, the prick, was going to get off scot-free. Wonder what his Hell was going to look like when he finally died?
She squinted, but that didn’t stop the tears from spilling over. Oh, Lord, she couldn’t have died—not like this. Not like her worst nightmare. She never should have gone back in the water.
But how else could she have finally proven that she could manage the fear of the ocean that had overtaken her life when she was a child—and give back to her family?
Grampa’s final wishes and her brothers getting the call to active duty had set the stage for Erica to step in and take charge of the family business. Joey InOverHerHead.indd 26
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had been all for it, so that hadn’t been an issue. The marina was her family’s pride and joy, their legacy, the thing that kept them all close to home and united through the generations. She’d had to take charge. She couldn’t let them down. She couldn’t let herself down. For the sake of her family name, her brothers’
state of mind, and her own self-worth, she was going to step up to the calling of being a Peck, stupid phobia of water be damned.
But now, with her being MIA, who knew what would happen to the marina?
All because of one shark in a designer suit and another in gray-green water.
She sat back up, pushed off the mattress—sort of—and stood. Or actually, floated to a standing position. Floated? Her hair billowed around her like seaweed on the beach after a hurricane, and she brushed it back. But it drifted forward again.
She really was in water. But how was that possible?
She was breathing…
… Breathing?
People couldn’t breathe underwater.
She held her hand up to her face. Little puffs exited her nose, but they weren’t puffs of air. They were… water…
She was inhaling water?
Panic set in. She was taking in water. She was going to drown. People couldn’t suck water into their lungs and expect to live. This was insane.
Erica clamped her hand over her mouth, hel
d her breath, and looked around. There had to be a way out of this place. Preferably up.
She looked up. A ceiling. No hole. Great. InOverHerHead.indd 27
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There was a door on one side and a porthole on the other. She swam to the porthole, but the latch was rusted in place, so she one-handed doggy-paddled over to the door and peered out. A long, dark corridor that went… downward. Her chest hitched. She needed air. Now. Swimming into that darkness was the last thing she wanted to do. Well, the last thing before drowning, that was. That didn’t leave her many choices. Swallowing her fear and the rest of the water that’d been in her mouth when she’d clamped it shut, Erica swam into the corridor.
A dozen feet in, visibility faded to shadows, and her lungs started protesting.
Another five feet and her nerves were shot. If she was going to drown, she didn’t want to do it in the dark.
Doing a front flip that would’ve made her swim-team coach proud, Erica returned to the room. Soon to be her mausoleum, apparently. Her brothers would never find her now.
But wait. Wasn’t she already dead? In Hell already?
Her lungs were burning, so, yeah, that was a possibility. But Hell was supposed to be engulfed in flames, yet this water was comfortably warm.
She sat on the edge of the soggy mattress and fought with her lungs. They could keep quiet a bit longer while she tried to figure this out.
No, they couldn’t.
And they wouldn’t.
Instincts humming, Erica found her brain wouldn’t cooperate with her lungs, and all of a sudden, she was choking. Choking and gulping.
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Choking and gulping and… breathing?
And then she was screaming.
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod…
How did one suck in enough water to drown a flotilla yet keep breathing?
She screamed again, slithering to the sandy floor as her backbone turned to jelly. But if you scream in hellwater and there’s no one around to hear you, does that make you insane?
Or a fish?
Was this some hideous cosmic joke? You turned into what killed you? How would one turn into, say, a crumbling building? A burning car? Plane crash?
She hiked herself back onto the bed. Maybe, just maybe, God was kind and she had somehow survived the shark, drifted to the surface, and was merely suffering from the bends. Once her body got the proper oxygen and nitrogen percentages worked out, she’d wake up from this air-deprivation-induced coma with its ridiculous hallucinations.
Yes, that was it. That was what she’d cling to. This delusion was her body’s reaction to the bends. It all made sense. She just needed to be patient. Once her chemistry was back to normal, she’d be back to normal. Stuck four-and-a-half miles from shore in shark-infested waters… but, hey, she could manage that. And the hallucinations weren’t all that bad. Waterbreathing lungs, so what? They were doable. Talking starfish, glowing fish lamps? Odd, but interesting. Yep, she would just sit back and let her body get back to normal. She’d be just fine.
And then a naked man swam into the room. InOverHerHead.indd 29
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Chapter 5
“Are you okay?” the aforementioned nudist asked. “I heard you scream.”
Sure. Okay. Why not a naked man? Was that any weirder than talking starfish? Breathing water?
And, she must say, her hallucinations were spot on. If she were ever going to imagine a naked man speaking to her beneath the ocean (and short of peyote, there wouldn’t ever be any reason to, not that she was into hallucinogens anyway), she’d conjure up something like this guy.
Probably six-four if he were upright, with all the necessary curves and bulges—and a rather impressive package, if she was going to be honest—if one didn’t mind the fact that he was a hallucination. An upper torso of the world’s greatest swimmers—which, of course, he’d have to be—and a face straight out of GQ. Maybe she should have experimented with drugs in college, if this was how she hallucinated. Although the talking starfish kind of freaked her out, but hey, that’s why they called it a trip.
“Sweetheart? Are you all right? I know this is terrifying, and I’ll explain everything—”
“Name’s Erica. Nice to meet you.” She stood and extended her hand. Nitrogen overload did not excuse bad manners.
“Erica. That’s a pretty name.”
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Funny, his fingers didn’t feel pruney at all. Definitely masculine. Callused. Must be from, oh, diving shipwrecks? Coral-working? Keeping nibbling fish from his man-parts?
“I’m Reel.”
“Of course you are. You got a friend Rod around anywhere?”
“Actually, he’s my brother. He’s in charge of the South Atlantic.”
“Of course he is.” Hmmm, self-actualizing hallucinations. Maybe scientists should bottle the effects of the bends. They’d make a killing on the streets. “So we’re in the North Atlantic?”
Naked-guy cocked his head. “Fortieth latitude. You don’t remember? About six hundred miles off your coastline.”
“I beg to differ. It’s four-and-a-half miles on the thirty-ninth.”
“Well, yes, that’s where you were injured, but now we’re further off-land.”
“Off-land? Hey, it’s my hallucination, and if I want to be four-and-a-half miles off-land, then four and a half it is. Got it?”
Man, he had a cute grin, cockeyed with a slash of a dimple at the end of it. She’d really conjured a good one. Made getting hit by a shark worth it—
Oh yeah. That.
She reached to her left thigh. It was a bit tender. The bruise was going to be a beaut, but at least her leg was intact. Still, she winced when she rubbed it.
“Sorry about that,” Reel (snort!) s aid. “I couldn’t get to you before Vincent did. Luckily, he was on Stun rather than Attack mode. I took your suit off to make InOverHerHead.indd 31
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sure he hadn’t broken any skin.” He picked a large, iridescent shell off a tray on the anemone table. “Are you hungry?”
“Who’s Vincent?” She took a step, a floaty one, toward the table. She was hungry. Joey’s arrival at the marina with the new toy he’d wanted to show her—
read: use to convince her that she should still marry him because he could afford high-priced luxury items whether or not he was a cheating snake—had caused her to miss lunch. She would’ve thought that being dead might’ve removed hunger pains, though. She lifted her hands. Her fingers should be pruned nicely by now, but nope. Further proof of hallucinations. Like that breathing thing.
She linked her hands behind her back. Not thinking about it now. Not gonna do it. Too weird. Reel held the shell out to her. What a name… did she have a funky sense of humor or what? “Here,” he said.
“I’ve seen Humans harvesting this for their meals.”
Green stuff squidged around in the cavity of the abalone shell. “Um, about that. I think I’ll pass on…
whatever that is. Thanks, though.”
“You don’t like Ulva lactuca? The Humans in France love it.”
“And they eat snails and frogs’ legs, too, so that’s not a great endorsement. I’ll pass, but thanks.” Did something under the ulva whatever just move? She needed to work on her food hallucinations.
“So, Reel, who’s Vincent and why was he on Stun?”
She wasn’t going to ask him why he was naked, figuring that was obvious. If she was dying, why wouldn’t she want a naked hottie with her? And if she was just InOverHerHead.indd 32
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hallucinating, same a
nswer. Or maybe he’d just been playing the bongos, but whatever… yeah, he could stay naked. Sure beat looking at a starfish. She walked/floated closer to the table. The herring left the anemones to circle around her legs. Hey—that shouldn’t happen in her hallucination. She hated swimmy things, especially ones near any part of her body. But Naked Marine Boy over there… he was one swimmy thing she wouldn’t mind near her body. His jet-black hair was a mass of loose curls riding high off his forehead. When he swam backward, they flowed forward over his head so that he looked like he was wearing a baseball cap. She always did have a thing for athletes.
Not that she was interested any more. It was going to take a lot of trust for her to open herself up to possible heartache again, no matter how good-looking the prospective male.
Besides, there was that hallucination thing going on.
“Vincent? He’s an old guy who still hangs around. Lately, he’s been turning into a bottom-feeder. I guess it’s easier at his age. He does know enough, however, not to go in for the kill in my waters. Thank Zeus, for your sake.”
She swatted as one little sardine got too close, and Reel made a high-pitched clicking noise. The fish scattered.
“Hey, neat. Does that work on bigger fish?”
“Does what work?”
“That clicking thing. Does it work on bigger fish?”
“Of course. Unless they want to be dinner.”
“Dinner? But how do you cook them? Or are we talking sushi?”
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He crossed his arms and studied her. “You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would. I didn’t know Humans had such open minds.”
“Apparently we have lots of neat tricks, us humans. Like breathing water, for instance.” She sucked in a few pints just for kicks and giggles. She hoped she remembered this hallucination when her body recovered from the bends.
“Actually, Humans can’t breathe water.”
“But I am, ergo, I can.” She demonstrated again.
“Well, that’s only because I did that to you. To save your life.”
