by Judi Fennell
“Oh. Right.” She choked on that last pint. “Um, to save my life? Well, that’s a relief. I had thought that I might be… um, well, dead… but then, this certainly isn’t my idea of Heaven. So, I’m alive but unconscious?
I just have the bends, right? I mean, yes, I’m seeing you as a naked, water-breathing studmuffin, but you’re really just an illusion, aren’t you? Maybe a doctor at the hospital some passing boater took me to?”
Reel didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The tittering of the little fish scattered among the whelk art answered for him.
“Um, Reel…?”
“Erica, I think you better rest on the bottom.”
“Why?” She did as he suggested but put her hands up as he floated toward her. He had to be a figment of her imagination. He had to.
“Sweetheart, you’ve been out for a few days, and you’re not in a hospital. You can’t have the bends because you never went up to the surface. Chum reminded me about them, actually. So I did the only thing I could.”
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His face was grave, which, considering the situation, might not be an appropriate analogy, but then, what was appropriate when facing the impossible?
“What. Did. You. Do?”
“I turned you.”
“Turned me?” Somehow, that phrase did not offer comfort.
“Yes. Into a water-breather.” He crossed his arms, which flared some really nice pecs that tapered down to slim hips and—
Wait a minute—
“A fish? You turned me into a fish?” Forget the pecs. And other parts.
“Not a fish. Do you see any fins? Gills? You’re not even a Mer. I just gave you the ability to breathe underwater. Otherwise, you would’ve drowned. And Vincent would’ve had the right to, well, eat you. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Of course you couldn’t.” Well, see? That made sense. “And Vincent was the, um, shark?”
“That’s right.” The faintest glimmer of pearly whites showed between his lips.
“And he wanted me for dinner.”
“Yes.” A bigger smile.
“So you somehow managed to reroute my entire oxygenation system and voila! Here I am at the bottom of the sea.”
“That’s it.” Full-out grin going.
“I’m going to be sick.” She turned her face to the side and felt her insides heave.
But then the floor blinked at her.
“What the hell was that?” she screamed, crabwalking backward. InOverHerHead.indd 35
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“Flounder. They like to hang out in here since no predators are allowed.”
She put a hand on her chest, her heart beating three times as fast as normal. Or was that now normal with her newly acquired aqua lungs? “Well, there’s a relief. So I won’t have to worry about my body being torn apart by Vincent or others like him? Good to know. Now if I can only guarantee my mind won’t fall apart, I’ll be just fine.”
The water bobbled her along the sandy floor until her back bounced against something squishy, which, of course, expelled a huge cloud of sand all around her.
“Another flounder?” she asked Reel as she scooted to his side and stood.
“Octopus.”
“Oh, God.” It was Hell because there was no way she’d put this in any decompression sickness hallucination. Then his arms closed around her. Well, that certainly didn’t feel like Hell.
“It’ll be all right, Erica. I promise. You’ll get used to it,” he said against her temple.
Too bad he wasn’t a hallucination. Then she could call him to mind again and again—
Wait a minute. He was real. That meant—
“Get used to it?” She spun out of his arms, which was a mistake because the water offered no resistance. She kept spinning until she flung out her arms and started to tread water.
“Are you out of your mind? This morn—no, yesterday, no, whenever, I woke up in my own dry bed, walked with full contact across the old plank floor, had to climb on a chair to reach the top shelf in the kitchen, and now I’m InOverHerHead.indd 36
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floating under however many feet of seawater, dodging ticked-off octopi, and talking to a naked man. I fail to see how I will get used to it. I can barely believe it.”
“Hey, you’re welcome to bare anything you like.”
Oh Lord, the puns. She was a sucker for a guy with puns, be he hallucinatory or otherwise. And that cocky grin had her smiling. He wasn’t just cute; he was flat-out gorgeous. A Mer, as he’d called himself, but a gorgeous one.
“So, you’re a merman? Are there others like you?”
“Technically, I’m a Mer and I’m a man, but not a merman like you think. Thanks to these,” he fluttered his legs (and a few other dangly parts went along for the ride),
“I’m one of a kind. The rest of the Mers all have tails, just like in your sailors’ tales. And we have different cultures, different languages, different habitats. Just like Humans.”
He put his hands on his hips and floated an inch or two off the ocean floor. His hair settled down somewhat, curling low over one side of his forehead. He flicked his head, and it fell back into place, framing his face like some kind of un-angelic halo. With that grin, the stance, the shrewd piercing of his tourmaline green eyes, that chest, not to mention the package, he definitely had bad boy written all over him.
Which so should not be her type, but that didn’t stop the blood from thrumming through her veins. Of course, she could attribute that to the whole water-breathing-beneaththe-sea thing, but she wasn’t going to lie to herself.
“And how many, er, humans have your kind, um, turned?”
His grin twisted on his lips, and he looked away. “It’s, ah, been a while since anyone’s, ah, turned a Human.”
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She lowered herself onto an upside-down steamer pot ringed with barnacles. Luckily, it didn’t move under her, although that hidden flounder did pop out to find a new hiding spot. “Define ‘a while.’”
He raised one of his eyebrows and licked his lower lip. “About two hundred selinos. ”
“And exactly how long is a sel… whatever?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know your time, but we count time by the rotation of the full moon. One moon is a full rotation. Thirteen of them are a selino. ”
“So we’re talking years. Thirteen full moons is roughly a year. Wait a minute. That’s two hundred years ago.”
She gasped. No wonder he’d turned away to help himself to the green, squidgy ulva stuff, revealing a cool tattoo just above some major musculature. “Care to tell me why I’m the chosen one? Why no one else has turned anyone in recent history? I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”
He found a sudden interest in the fish lamp. “Turning a Human is forbidden.”
“Beg pardon? Forbidden?” Great. Now she was a freak in his world. Forget about her own when she returned from the dead.
Except, now she breathed water…
“Holy crap. I’m stuck here, aren’t I? I can’t leave the water and I’m going to be breathing it for the rest of my life. Dodging sharks daily. And barracudas. And orcas. And jellyfish. Puffer fish and moray eels. Kraken. Oh my God, it’s like living in South Central L.A., and I can’t move out.” She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She had a headache. And no aspirin. Damn.
“No Kraken.”
She opened one eye. “Come again?”
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“No Kraken. One of your whaling boats got the last one before I was born.”
�
�Well there’s a relief. One less predator.” She closed her eye again then opened both. “Wait a minute. If you changed my lungs, can’t you unchange them? Just let me go to the surface slowly enough to keep my body regulated, then at the last minute I hold my breath and you fix them?”
An eel slithered into the room. “Your pardon, sir, but Chumley Masticar is refusing to leave the front gate. He insists upon speaking with you.”
Reel didn’t look at her. “That’s fine, Jet. Send him in.”
The thing saluted with the tip of its tail and was off.
“Reel?” Erica dog-paddled over to him. “We could do that, right? You could follow me to a pier, undo whatever you did to my lungs, then I could climb back up into my world and we could just forget this whole turning thing ever happened.”
“You didn’t tell her, did you?” A long, flat-headed, brown fish with a white stripe along its sides swam into the room, its tail and body wriggling like a worm on a hook. Ooh, not a good image.
“Not yet, Chum. She just woke up.”
“Chum?” Erica laughed. “Your name is Chum? Man, you peo—sea folk have a weird sense of humor.” There was something not right about the fish. It looked like a remora, but its head—
“Look, missy, instead of making fun of me, you should be thanking me. If it weren’t for my suggestion, you’d be shark bait by now. I was the one who convinced ol’ Reel here to save your life.” He made an impressive show of shoving his fins to his hips—if he’d had hips, that was. InOverHerHead.indd 39
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“You did not have to convince me to save her life.”
Reel pointed the shell at the remora, and the rest of the ulva whatever slid—drifted—to the sea bottom.
“Well, I had to stop you from killing her with your heroic rush to the surface. Same difference.”
And he could shrug his shoulders—a whole bunch of anthropomorphic behavior that would have scientists reexamining Darwin’s theory if they ever got wind of her “adventure.”
“Hello? Gentlemen? I’m right here.” She waved her hands. Man, slogging through seawater was annoying. Everything happened in slow motion.
“Anyone care to tell me why you can’t just fix my lungs and I’ll be on my merry way?”
It was interesting to note that it was possible to blush under the sea. Oh, it wasn’t a full-out red, but Reel’s eyes narrowed, his mouth grimaced, and the faintest twinge of color appeared on his cheeks. But he didn’t say a word.
“Come on, Reel. Tell her.” The remora shoved Reel’s shoulder with his caudal fin.
If looks were fishhooks, Chum would be dinner. Reel exhaled another water jet. “You can’t go back to the surface, Erica.”
“Why not?”
“Because…”
“Because what?”
“Because then I’d have to kill you.”
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Chapter 6
He’d have to kill her. Well, there was a twist. Save her life only to take it. Interesting rules these merpeople had. “Care to explain that?”
“It’s the law.” Reel scratched his jaw.
“Oh, kind of like the one about not turning humans?
You broke that one, so why not the other? Trust me, I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“Trust me, missy, you don’t have to say a word,”
Chum chimed in. “News of your turning has already reached The Council, and they are not happy.” This last was said to Reel. “You’re in for it, buddy.”
“I’ll deal with it,” Reel gritted out.
“Would one of you please explain this to me?” She turned to Chum, as he seemed the more forthcoming of the two. “If it was such a big deal, why turn me in the first place? Not that I’m not grateful, mind you, but why on earth—or in the sea—would you save me if it’s against the law?”
“Because Loverb—”
“Because you weren’t dead,” Reel interrupted.
“Vincent was hungry and I couldn’t let him do that to you while you were alive. Your air tank had a hole in the tube and the surface sickness was too risky. It was the only choice.”
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her skin. She broke its suction and set it on a shell on the floor. Which promptly sprang onto eight legs and scrambled away. Lovely.
“Surely this Council will understand? I mean, it was either that or let me die.”
Chum cleared his throat. Which was another interesting thing to contemplate, but she had enough on her shellfish plate as it was. “The Council wouldn’t care if you’d died. Honestly, do you know how many Human idiots there are in the waters of the North Atlantic alone? Forget about the Great Barrier Reef. Why your kind ventures into that sharks’ nest is beyond me. Talk about stupid. They should just dangle bait from their arms and be done with it. Then there’s that whole shark-cage phenomenon—”
“Chum, if you don’t mind, I’d like to stick to the subject,” Reel said.
“Yeah, you’re doing so well with that.” Chum used his tail to scratch under his left pectoral fin.
“Look, Erica. Yes, I turned you when I shouldn’t have. But it was either that or let you die.”
“So you saved me to live on the bottom of the sea?”
“It was a split-second decision. I have to live with the ramifications as much as you do.”
“Ramifications?”
Reel swiped a hand over his mouth.
“Who do you think is responsible for you now?”
Chum pointed out. “Who has to keep you safe, teach you how to survive here? Provide you shelter? Teach you their ways so you’ll be able to live among them because, trust me, you do not want to be an outcast in their world. All on the threat of death if he fails?”
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“Do you mind?” Reel swam in front of the remora, the ripples from his kicks sending Chum tumbling to the other side of the room.
The ripples from his nudity sent her nerves tumbling around in her tummy.
“Look, Erica.” His green eyes softened somewhat, and he had that glimmer of a grin starting. “I knew exactly what I was doing when I did it. Someone shot you. I couldn’t let you die. It wasn’t an option. So I did the one thing I could to protect you. I’m willing to deal with the fallout.”
“Oh, God. Joey. I’d forgotten.” She rubbed the sore spot on her head. “He threatened to shoot me.”
“Looks like he succeeded,” came the muttered grump from the far wall.
“How’s the head?” Reel ignored Chum.
Erica rubbed her injury again. A nasty piece of scalp was missing, but no blood. “Sore. That bastard! I hope he never finds his damn diamonds.”
“Diamonds?” Reel asked.
“Shiny white stones that come from rock. Need to be polished.”
“I know what diamonds are. What are his doing this far off-land, and why did you have to search for them?”
He gestured to a pile of sea cucumbers inhabiting a low rise in the ocean floor and sat on them, tugging her hand to join him.
She eyed the pile. Holothuria had a tendency to shoot out tentacles when threatened. They didn’t rank high on her list of aquatic friends. Not that she had a list of aquatic friends…
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Reel patted the largest one by his side with his other hand. The mass of echinoderms shivered, but no tentacles appeared.
She gave it a shot. It was an improvement over that waterlogged mattress. Not bad. As comfortable as a beanbag chair, if a bit slimy. Unlike her pillow, however, not one
of them chastised her. “Is there, um, any chance you might think about covering up?” She swished her hand toward his lap. “It’s a long story.”
“Oh. Uh…” He grabbed the shell and placed it wrongside up over his groin. “Sorry about that. I heard you scream and didn’t have a chance to put something on. I’ll get to it after you tell me this story. We’ve got time.”
“Not much,” Chum piped up again. “The Council’s messenger is already on his way. They’ve stepped up their communication chain, so the call went out almost immediately after you turned her. You’re getting paraded before the Big Guy.”
“Thanks for the info, Chum. Why don’t you go back outside and keep a lookout for the messenger? When he shows up, you can keep him occupied. Your stall tactics are legendary.”
The corners of Chum’s mouth actually turned up.
“Legendary? I like that. Yeah, a legend in his own time…” If a fish could preen, Chum was doing it as he swam out.
Reel turned his attention back to her, and Erica had an idea of what a fish in an aquarium felt like. Well, she doubted fish got the little zings of attraction Reel’s gaze was sparking in her, but the staring thing was the same. She’d been around the marina all her life, had seen many men weathered and worked by the sun and sea, InOverHerHead.indd 44
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fine specimens among them, but none like Reel—and she wasn’t talking about the nudity.
But, yeah, that was pretty spectacular too. As were the sharp cut of his jaw, the high, defined cheekbones, those ebony curls begging to be played with, eyes of varying shades of green, currently on the way to emerald, dancing with mischievous twinkling, lips to nibble for hours… Good Lord, the man was a floating fantasy.
“Like what you see?” He had a dimple in the other cheek as well.
As if she’d answer that one. She hadn’t been raised with four brothers for nothing. “I can’t believe I’m looking at a merman. I can’t believe you actually exist.”
“First of all, it’s Mer. Then man. Or, technically, just Mer. That’s what our race is called. Humans added the gender tags. And while I have been known to induce fantasies among females, I can assure you I am real.”
She rolled her eyes. Charmer and mighty sure of himself. But ever since Joey, she was immune. Both on land and in the sea.
