Of Neptune

by Anna Banks

But now it looks like he’s about to direct it all back to its source. Me. “I would never have left you, Emma. He’s a fool to have done it. And selfish. He thinks he’s too good for the little ol’ town of Neptune. And that means he thinks he’s too good for you.”

  “That’s not what he—”

  “And how are we supposed to know what he really thinks? Because he isn’t here, Emma. I am. I have been all along.” He lowers his head. His lips are impossibly close to mine.

  Reed smells good. The mix of his usual scent mingles with the smell of the earthy forest and the sweetness of some honeysuckle that he must have brushed through. “I was wrong, Emma. Kissing me doesn’t make up your mind. It’s not end all, say all. It’s not choosing, at least it doesn’t have to be. Give me permission, Emma. Let me have a chance.”

  My hands tighten on his arms and I swallow. Once. Twice. I can’t blink. I can only stare into him.

  “Give me permission,” he whispers. “It’s already too late for me anyway.”

  Did I just nod? Surely not, not enough for a definite yes. But I must have, because he’s leaning in, brushing his lips against mine. They are soft lips, more gentle than I’d imagined.

  And I consider the universe. I consider what this could be the start of, what this could be the end of. I consider who I am, where I’ve been, and how I got here. I remember Chloe, my dad, running into Galen on the beach, throwing Rayna through hurricane-proof glass, making Toraf jump out of a helicopter, bringing a wall of fish to an underwater Tribunal. I remember tingles and kisses and blushes and inside jokes and winks and knowing glances.

  And none of it, not any of it, has anything to do with this kiss.

  So I stop it.

  Reed seems to know. That I’m not just stopping this kiss. I’m stopping any chance we might have together. That I’ve made my choice. That it’s not about water or land, Neptune or New Jersey or the Atlantic Ocean. It’s about choosing between Reed and Galen.

  And I’ve chosen Galen.

  He nods, backing away slowly. “All right then.” He sucks in a breath of air. “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him.

  He rakes a hand through his hair and holds up his other, halting me. “No, it’s fine. No need for apologies. That’s what I wanted to know, right? That was the whole point. And now I know.”

  We embrace a perpetual silence then, as if letting the cosmos settle from our decisive kiss. After a while, the peaceful quiet turns into tangible awkward. I’m about to announce as much, but a bush rustles behind Reed.

  Mr. Kennedy steps out. “Oh, goodness, you two gave me an awful fright.”

  Reed is almost successful at not rolling his eyes. Almost. “Hi, Mr. Kennedy.”

  The older man smiles. He must just be starting for the day, because his lab coat is still immaculate and pressed and smudge free. The smear of white sunscreen on his nose hasn’t absorbed in yet. “Reed, Emma. Lovely to see you two again this morning.” But by his tone, it isn’t lovely to see us. In fact, I’ve never heard Mr. Kennedy sound … egotistical before. And I’ve never ever seen him sneer. “I’m so happy you decided not to gallivant south of the river, though there is a mother black bear and her two cubs close by in that direction.” He points, letting his thumb linger in the air. Something is off. “Of course, with Davy Crocket here, you very well might have gone against my advice to stay north of the river. But, Emma, you talked him into listening, didn’t you? You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Emma?”

  And then Mr. Kennedy pulls a gun on us.

  28

  THINGS COULD be worse.

  The sun is rising, giving Galen a general sense of direction as he makes his way through the forest. He has no idea where he is—or if he’s headed the right way—but the logical thing to do would be to find a water source. In water, he’ll be able to sense other pulses around him and trace them back to Neptune.

  Back to Neptune, where he hopes he’ll find Emma.

  He slows his pace just long enough to bring up Grom’s name on his cell phone. It’s difficult to focus on multiple tasks when both of your hands are full, he decides. In one hand he holds Tyrden’s large knife; in the other, his cell phone. Dialing with his thumb and only half his concentration, he speeds up again, trying to put as much distance between himself and Tyrden as possible. No telling how long he’ll be out.

  Galen had taken care to use the remnants of rope to tie Tyrden’s hands and feet together, but he’s no expert in tying effective knots, and Tyrden is undeniably strong—not to mention too heavy to carry through the woods. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have left him behind at all.

  The phone rings and rings, but Grom doesn’t answer. Galen hangs up and tries again. And again. Finally he leaves a message on voice mail. “Grom. Call me back. Don’t go to Neptune. Just … Just call me back!”

  After a few more minutes, he stops and rests against a tree, trying to put most of his weight on his right ankle. He works his left in a circular motion in an effort to stretch out the soreness. Triton’s trident, but he’s lucky there are no breaks, that he came through the scuffle without more alarming injuries. Groaning, he points his big toe at the ground to stretch out his aching calf muscle—another excellent reason to find a water source. It had felt good to shape a fin, even with the ropes constricting around his tail. He stands on the other foot then, repeating the stretches.

  That’s when he hears shouting behind him.

  Shouting. And dogs.

  Rachel told him once that humans use dogs to sniff out other humans when they’re missing—or wanted. All these dogs need to find him is an item from his SUV or his hotel room, and they will be able to hone in on his scent. Galen pushes away from the tree and breaks into a jog, grimacing with each stride. Has Tyrden already sent a search party after me?

  He flies past trees and bushes, scraping his forehead on low-hanging branches and reopening his busted lip on one of them. It’s difficult for his swollen eyes to adjust to his pace and after a time, one of them closes altogether. Perfect.

  Still, he presses onward as fast as he can, the sun both helping him and hurting him as he becomes more visible in the woods. In the distance, a glint of white stops him in his tracks. It’s the unmistakable hair of a Half-Breed.

  Galen crouches down, crunching twigs and sticks and leaves beneath his heavy, clumsy feet. Fish were not meant to be stealthy on land, he decides. But there could be more behind me than there are in front of me. If I can just sneak past this one …

  He resorts to crawling on the forest floor, ducking behind anything that will shield him and cursing himself for making so much noise in the process. When he’s several fin lengths ahead of the Half-Breed, he hears a new sound.

  The roar of rushing water. He takes off in a sprint—or as close to a sprint as he can manage—and heads toward the noise of his salvation. In his haste, he drops the knife he’d confiscated from Tyrden. I can’t go back for it. I won’t need it if I can just reach the water.

  Behind him, the Half-Breed calls out to him. “Galen? Is that you? Stop!”

  Not in a million years.

  He doesn’t stop until he reaches the rocky bank of the river. Hastily, he removes the remnants of his jeans and ties them farther up on his waist to use as a covering for later. His muscles scream at him to change, to shift to his fin. But he’s afraid of what he’ll find when he does. Back in the shed he was in fight mode. Now, his fin may not hold up as well.

  Still, there are more voices behind him, and they’re growing louder by the second, calling him by name. He wades in. If they haven’t spotted him yet, they will soon. Just as he’s about to dive in, his phone rings on the bank behind him, where he had to ditch it in favor of escape; the water would destroy it anyway.

  But there is no time to go back.

  As Galen dives in, he hears a gunshot in the distance.

  29

  REED ISN’T behind me.

  Reed isn’t behind me.

  I’m too terrified to sc
ream, which will only alert Mr. Kennedy to my location. So I keep running. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what happened to Reed. I pray and beg and pray for him not to be shot. But I’m not brave enough to turn back.

  Suddenly, voices tickle my ear. Voices and barking and shouting. Hunters, maybe? There is a chance they could be with Mr. Kennedy, but so far I haven’t seen Mr. Kennedy warm up to anyone else. I have to assume he’s working alone—on whatever he’s working on. And couldn’t it be another search party looking for Galen?

  “Help me!” I screech, changing my direction slightly. “Help me—I’m over here!” Voices, shouting, barking. The roar of the river. If my heart beats any faster, my chest will explode. At this point that would be mercy. “Help me!”

  My knees almost give out as I recognize the sheriff of Neptune standing barefoot on the water’s edge. “Sheriff Grigsby!”

  He turns toward me, startled. Bet he’s even more surprised when I pitch myself into his arms and cling for what’s left of life. “Sheriff Grigsby. Mr. Kennedy. Reeeeeed,” I cry into his chest.

  “Emma, what are you doing here? Do you know how dangerous it is to be in the woods by yourself?” The sheriff would sound really stern and uncaring if not for the fact that he’s shaking beneath the security of his uniform.

  I shake my head. “Not … Alone … Mr. Kennedy…” I’ve never been so breathless in my entire life, not even underwater. “Took … Reed … Hehasagun.”

  Sheriff Grigsby stiffens in my arms. I’m beginning to think I have that effect on all males. “Did you say … You’re saying Mr. Kennedy … What are you saying, Emma? Take a second to breathe. That’s right. Calm down. In … Out … Good.”

  The mini Lamaze session does help. My heart beat slows to just outside the range of palpitations. “I was in the woods with Reed, and Mr. Kennedy found us. He grabbed Reed, held a gun to him. I ran and he started shooting at me.”

  Grigsby nods vigorously. “We heard gunfire. Tell me where you were. Where you saw Kennedy.”

  “I don’t know if Reed … Reed might be…”

  And if he is, it’s all my fault. I’m the one who insisted on coming out here, who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Mr. Kennedy was right: I played right into his hands. But what hands? How was I supposed to know that there were even hands to be played into?

  Grigsby grabs my wrist and starts hauling me away from the river. He stops briefly to put on his shoes, then there I am again, trampling through the woods. At least, this time I’m with someone who’s armed.

  “We saw Galen,” he says abruptly. “He ran from us. Jumped in the river.”

  I dig my heels into the dirt. “You saw Galen? Was he okay? Where is he now?” What? Just when I think I’m catching my breath …

  The sheriff shakes his head and pulls me forward with a jerk. “I told you, he jumped in the river. We can’t sense him anymore. He … He’s a very fast swimmer, isn’t he?”

  I nod. “Very.”

  “As soon as we get back to town, I’ll send some Trackers to the river. If we can spare any.”

  I close my eyes against the frustration. Spare any. Of course. Now that Reed has been taken, all of Neptune’s resources will be allocated toward finding him instead of Galen, who, from the looks of it, obviously doesn’t want to be bothered. I know that’s as it should be. Reed is in danger and Galen—well, Galen is obviously healthy enough to run and hide.

  The thought of us being so close to each other in the woods has me reeling. Did he see me? Is he running from me? I practically bulldoze that thought out of my head. Still, why would he run from the search party?

  What am I missing here?

  30

  JUST PERFECT.

  It’s been a long time since Galen has found himself caught in a net. But caught he is. Which is not a little embarrassing.

  At least, he reasons, it’s probably not a Neptune net. For starters, it’s human made, probably by a machine. There are tiny flaws in the knots and weaves, flaws that were made because of industrial-grade bends and tangles in the line, not because of someone’s handiwork gone awry. He’s seen this kind of net before, and Galen can’t imagine that any citizen of Neptune would choose a factory substitute over the fine art of weaving quality nets they’ve no doubt passed down from generation to generation.

  Plus, the good people of Neptune do not need fishing nets. Not when the Gift of Poseidon swims so rampantly through their veins.

  No, it’s a human fisherman’s net that caught Galen fairly and squarely. He was paying attention to all that happened behind him—and to the way he moves his tender fin so as not to hurt it more—instead of all that lay ahead of him. He’s not sure what triggered the trap to spring, or really, what the fishermen intended to entangle. He hasn’t seen anything in these waters that would warrant such a large net. But now he must wait for the fisherman to come back and retrieve his prize.

  And Galen intends for that prize to look a whole lot like a dead body when the unsuspecting fisherman finally gets around to reeling him in from the north riverbank. That’s the direction the line is coming from anyway. But how long he’ll have to wait to shock the poor guy is the true question. If Galen is right, and he didn’t spend too much time at Tyrden’s mercy, then it should be close to the weekend, though he’s not sure exactly which day it is. Any good fisherman checks his net on the weekend, right?

  In the meantime, he should at least pass the time by trying to tear through the netting—with what, he’s not sure. His teeth already proved no match for the commercial-grade rope and he’s still berating himself for dropping Tyrden’s knife in the woods. Stretching each square only makes the net tighter—as it should. The idea is to make the space tinier and tinier—and clearly, it does its job where that’s concerned.

  The good news is that he’s well out of range of any of Tyrden’s search parties. Even now, he senses no one. Of course, he’d made sure of that as soon as he hit the water. Though possibly injured and sore, his fin is still faster than that of most other Syrena.

  From this spot in the river he tastes more salt in the water than he did upstream, which hopefully means he’s getting that much closer to the ocean. Getting caught in a net is a setback—and humiliating—but it’s exponentially better than getting caught by Tyrden or his men again.

  Galen settles in for the wait, willing his body to let go of some of the tension of the past few hours. He has to concentrate on getting back to Neptune. There’s a good chance that the Royals are already on their way. An ominous directive like, “Don’t come to Neptune,” is the perfect way to get Grom to do just that. He should have known better than to leave clipped phone messages like that without further explanation.

  They must be so confused now. As is Galen.

  Clearly Tyrden wants an attack on Neptune, but why? And if Tyrden wants an attack, what does Reder want? Galen doubts that Reder had anything to do with his abduction.

  Galen shakes his head. If Reder truly wanted hostages as Tyrden said, he could have taken me and Emma the night we came to his house for dinner.

  “Emma,” he says aloud, changing the subject in his head. The sound of her name sends a refreshing jolt through his body. He thinks of how she must be feeling right now. Confused. Abandoned. Angry. Probably regretting coming on this road trip with him. I’ll make it up to you, I swear.

  Trying not to focus on the new, deep ache battering his chest, Galen massages the tip of his tail where the most damage was done by the ropes. The corners are slightly bent and will take some time to fully heal, to take their original shape. It reminds him of how a dolphin’s fin might become misshapen if kept too long in captivity. The bridge where his fin turns into tail is tender; he’s careful not to twist it. In fact, he’ll have to be careful for a long time. He’s hoping Nalia will know how to help it mend faster. If not, he’ll make a trip to see Dr. Milligan after they’ve put all this behind them.

  If we put all this behind us.

  All at once, ther
e’s a tug on the net, and Galen feels himself being slowly pulled toward shore. Given the lengthy process, he assumes there is only one person on the other end of this line, which would be the best-case scenario. The net drags the bottom through several strong currents, and Galen is tempted to help it by swimming along and keeping it unstuck. But he saves his energy and his fin.

  Besides, a smooth transition to shore just wouldn’t coincide with the behavior of the dead body he’s pretending to be at the moment. He shifts from fin to legs to make the haul more realistic. Minutes pass and the net slowly but surely moves closer and closer to shore. Galen nestles into the bottom, going limp as he’s pulled to the surface.

  Several maddening seconds pass by as Galen allows his unfortunate fisherman to behold the corpse he caught. He has to wait until his unsuspecting victim actually loosens the net before he can make his move—which means the poor guy will be close enough to touch.

  But the net doesn’t loosen. And then there is a sharp pain in Galen’s thigh, so sharp he’s forced to cry out. His eyes fly open and to his leg. A long metal rod protrudes from it, with a red feather at the end.

  Galen jerks his head toward the fisherman standing over him with a dart gun. And there stands Mr. Kennedy. His face is blank, calculating, garnished only by the hint of a satisfied smile.

  Galen’s vision suddenly swirls into a tunnel, then disappears altogether.

  31

  FOR THE second time in my life, I find myself in the back of a police car. “Where are you taking me?”

  Grigsby barely makes a show of glancing in the rearview at me. I wish I could sit up front; I feel like a criminal all slouched in the back. “We’re going to Reder’s. You need to tell him what happened to Reed.”

  What kind of backward country-bumpkin town is this? Shouldn’t the sheriff be hauling me to the station and getting a witness report and calling Reed’s parents and all that? Or am I a victim of watching too many reality shows? But then again, while Grigsby is the sheriff, Reder is the obvious leader.