Immerse
Page 32
Um, Clay, remember?
No, Caspian is on his way here! How long has it been? For an instant, the thought of Caspian bursting in and saving us makes my hope resurface, but then—He doesn’t know he’s heading right into danger! Just like last time. Because of me. Because this time, I asked him to come. Guilt, sour and hot, replaces the hope.
We have to get free, Clay thinks with even more ferocity than before. Before he gets here. It’s just Ondine, and she has no magic, right? If we can get free, I can overpower her and we can get out, hide somewhere outside, and warn Caspian before he comes in the house.
It’s a good plan. And my ankle ropes are loosening, but, The ropes binding my hands together won’t budge at all.
He must detect the mounting desperation in my voice, because he thinks, We’re going to get out of this. Do you believe me?
I believe you. The familiar confidence in his voice permeates my entire body. I do believe him.
Good. Do the ropes binding your hands have a weird-looking knot on top of your wrists like mine do?
Yeah. It’s looks kind of … mystical. Ceremonial, maybe? That can’t be good. It would explain why she’s still over there, lining up vials in what looks like some kind of special order, and pouring the contents of one vial into another, carefully, carefully. But Ondine can’t be planning a ceremony or a ritual or anything. She can barely walk—she doesn’t have enough magic to pull something like that off.
Let me see, Clay says.
What?
Like we did in front of the mirrors. Let me see the knot for a sec.
Oh!
As quickly as I can in case Ondine turns around again, I close my eyes and tap even deeper into our bond. When I open them, I’m looking at the opposite side of the room—through Clay’s eyes. A wave of dizziness rolls through me at the sudden shift, but I ignore it as best I can.
Yeah, this looks kind of like some of the sailing knots my dad uses in the navy. It’s not the same, though, Clay thinks. While he examines the knot at my wrists through my eyes, I study as much of the house as I can glimpse through the glass French doors his body faces. Hmm …
All done. Ready? he asks.
I retreat into the bond and we switch back, another wave of dizziness undulating through me at the perspective change.
Okay, try this, Clay thinks. As soon as she’s distracted, use your teeth. Loosen the upper right side first. Then the bottom left, and then the right again. See if that works. Got it?
Before I can answer, a noise hits us from the kitchen. Metal against metal, like a lid being lifted from a pot. Just a small noise, but it’s enough to make my whole body tense, because it means …
Ondine isn’t alone, Clay thinks the same second I do.
“Are you almost through in there?” Ondine calls in the direction of the kitchen. “The sacrifices are ready.” She waves a hand toward me and Clay. My eyes widen. “And I can’t exactly perform the ritual myself, you know.”
A muscular man with familiar, angular features twisted into a haughty expression strides into the room, his head held an inch too high.
I gasp. How …?
Too shocked to use the bond, Clay whispers, “That’s—”
“Mr. Havelock.” I gulp, staring up at the man who tried to kill me. The man who’s supposed to be in the palace dungeon.
He carries a sauce pan foaming with bubbling liquid that smells of earth and dead leaves. “I’ve never needed to boil potions ingredients before,” he says to Ondine without so much as a glance at us.
“I told you this ritual would be far more complex than the last. You aren’t merely trying to control a curse this time.” She gestures to an empty vial she’s set up on a long steel tray and he begins to pour the bubbling, earthy liquid into it. Her voice takes on a superior, pedantic quality as she says to her cousin, “After all, did you think it would be easy to rip the Mer world and the human world apart?”
Chapter Forty-Two
Melusine
Terror should fill me the instant my toes sink into the sand, the instant my head breaks the surface, the instant I gaze up at the stars. This isn’t my world. It’s the world I’ve been banned from.
If a single soul from the Community sees me on land and reports it, I’ll be thrown in a prison cell for the rest of my immortal life. But I can’t seem to summon the terror my rational brain reminds me I should feel; every drop of terror in my blood is for Caspian.
The man those guards captured isn’t my father.
Which means, since my father hasn’t made any attempt to come get me, he must be after Lia for whatever powerful ritual he mentioned in his letter. Knowing him, he grabbed her the second she was fool enough to go anywhere without her guards.
And Caspian is heading right for her.
I hate the thought that my father would hurt Caspian, but he doesn’t know him as anyone other than Lia’s best friend who testified against him. Against us. He doesn’t know Caspian is someone I …
And if Caspian interrupts some important ritual (which, let’s face it, he has a tendency to do), my father won’t hesitate to hurt him. Maybe … maybe kill him.
Like he killed Mom? I push the thought away. No proof. No time. Have to get to Caspian.
I make my way across the beach as fast as I can, then slip between two oceanfront houses so I’m less visible. It’s late, but not so late that no one might come out for an evening stroll. Once I’m in the shadows, I peer out onto the quiet residential street, my gaze darting from house to house. Trying to find Lia and Clay’s love nest certainly marks a new low in my life. It’s somewhere on this street, but which one is it? My best bet is to see Caspian go in, but what if I’m too late? What if I’ve already missed—
A tall figure rounds the corner, blond hair glinting under a street light. All the air rushes from my body in a sigh. Thank the current!
“Caspian!” I shout as he walks past. But not a single sound escapes my lips. Storms. Right when I need my voice more than ever! He keeps walking, turning toward the large house on the corner. I have to stop him before he reaches that door.
His legs are long, his strides quick. I break into a run. Turn around! Turn around! I hope the noise of my steps will get his attention. But my feet are bare, and he must be lost in thought because he doesn’t hear me, doesn’t turn.
With every step he’s getting closer to that door.
I cut across the front lawn and jump, launching at him from the side and clamping a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t scream.
We tumble to the ground, the copper case he carries landing next to him on the grass. A tide of panic floods his eyes but recedes when they land on my face. Only to return with a vengeance. He pulls my hand away from his mouth but has the good sense to heed my warning and whisper, “Melusine, you can’t be here!” He snaps his head back and forth, looking down the empty street. “Your probation! What are you doing? If someone sees you—”
I flash pleading eyes at him, all my muscles tensing. That’s when I realize I’m still draped over him, my face inches from his, my body on top of his larger one, pressing him into the grass.
He feels it the same second, sucking in a breath as he freezes. Then his large hands grip my waist, lifting me like it’s nothing. My brain turns back on, and I do the rest myself until we’re both standing.
“What’s going on? What are you doing here?” he whispers again as he picks up the copper case from where it fell.
I look up at the house and shake my head, conveying as much urgency as I can.
“You don’t want me to go in?”
I nod.
“Why not?” A car drives by on a side street. He glances down the block again. Still empty. “You shouldn’t be standing out here like this.”
He’s right. I grab his wrist and guide him around to the side of the house between the outside wall and a leafy hedge. It’s a tight squeeze, but we aren’t visible from the sidewalk anymore.
“Why can’t I go in?” he repeats.
Because my dad’s probably in there! Because he might kill you! How am I supposed to gesture that? I let out a silent groan of frustration and try to think, my gaze wandering. It lands on a patch of illuminated green leaves along the hedge. The front of the house is dark, but farther back, light pours out from two of the windows that the hedge blocks from the neighbors’ view. I jerk my head toward them, then hold a finger to my lips. We creep between wall and hedge to the first window. It’s high up, probably above a kitchen sink. We huddle under it on either side, then steal glances through the glass.
There he is. Perfect posture, black hair like mine. My father stands with his back to us, heating something at the stove. He never once used the human kitchen when we lived Above. There’s no way he’s cooking. He must be mixing a potion. What kind of potion requires heating over a flame? My stomach plummets. One stronger than any I’ve ever heard of.
Caspian pulls me back down under the window. “But they captured him. He’s supposed to be in custody at the palace.”
That was my uncle, I want to say. They’ve always looked alike—same build, same hair, similar facial features. The only big difference was their ages. Uncle Axenus is seven years younger than my father, but now that the curse has broken and both of them have reverted to the stasis age of about twenty-five, they must look more alike than ever, just like the queen and Lia’s oldest sister do.
And with the pox on his face, which looks suspiciously like an overdose of my dad’s potion for scaleworm, they’d be even harder for anyone to tell apart, let alone guards just going off a physical description. But I can’t tell Caspian any of this. I can’t tell Caspian that, like him and his little sister, my dad and his brother have similar tail colors, my uncle’s just a slightly darker shade of puce. I can’t tell him that even I didn’t realize he wasn’t my dad until I heard my uncle’s voice emerge from those red, swollen lips. So I shake my head. I grab Caspian’s hand and open it, drawing a Mermese symbol across his palm with my fingertip.
“Trick?”
I nod.
His hands ball into fists as understanding dawns. “Where are Lia and Clay?” Fear laces the words.
I tug his wrist again, then move toward the next window. Only two windows with light—it’s the logical choice. I kneel down and peek from below, letting Caspian look in from the side. Sure enough, there they are. Tied up back-to-back with thick ropes of seaweed. Damn it, Dad! He had escaped. He had his freedom. What is he trying to do?
“What is he going to do to them?” Caspian echoes my thoughts, more alarmed than ever.
I shrug my shoulders, shaking my head. I don’t know.
But whatever he’s doing, he must be able to use his magic to sense that Lia purged herself of Ondine’s power, or he would never risk leaving her conscious.
Movement catches my eye, and I inhale sharply, pointing to the side of the room.
Apparently, my father has help.
Ondine takes potion after potion from a bag on the couch, setting each one on the coffee table. I guess that answers the question of who broke him out of prison. All those times we visited him together—she had so many opportunities to case the place, to learn every detail of his captivity.
Caspian’s eyes widen at the sight of her, then he plasters himself to the stucco wall, tossing his head back and gritting his teeth, his curse as silent as my own.
“Okay. Okay …” Caspian whispers, thinking fast. “You need to get back in the ocean. Stay as hidden as you can until you get there. I’ll go to the Foundation and get help.”
A voice soaks through the window’s thin glass from the room within. “Are you almost through in there?” Ondine calls loudly toward the kitchen. “The sacrifices are ready. And I can’t exactly perform the ritual myself, you know.”
Caspian stops dead. “Sacrifices?” he mouths, worry carving deep trenches into his brow. My father says something I don’t quite catch as he comes into the room carrying the bubbling saucepan of potion.
Ondine starts talking again about the complexity of the ritual; she’s closer to the window, so it’s easier to hear her. Her voice is crystal clear when she says, “After all, did you think it would be easy to rip the Mer world and the human world apart?”
What?
Caspian’s head snaps down to face mine, and there’s only one way to describe his expression: scared. It’s mirrored on the other side of the glass by Lia’s face.
Clay says something, too quiet and too far away for me to hear. I watch his lips move, and it looks like he’s asking if that’s even possible.
Yes.
“Yes,” my father’s voice answers. “This won’t be the first time humans have driven magical creatures away. Splitting from the human world has been done before.”
By the Fae!
“By the Fae,” my father says, pouring another liquid into the vial with the one he heated, then corking it and shaking the two together. “When faerie folk grew displeased by the increasing tension and danger in their relations with humankind, they split Avalon onto a separate plane of existence entirely and left the human world behind.” How many times did he tell me that story when I was a little girl? How many hours did I spend poring over his old maps searching for Avalon, daydreaming of fairies?
“But … but if the Mer depart from this plane, they’ll take the ocean’s magic with them,” Lia cries, her face stricken with fear as the implications click into place behind her eyes and come pouring with increasing speed out of her mouth. “That magic is responsible for the tides, the currents, the moon’s gravitational pull—all of it.” Her voice breaks. “Without it, the human world will self-destruct.” As she finishes, her gaze falls on Ondine, almost instinctively, like she’s still looking for validation.
My head is reeling. She’s actually right for once. Avalon was an island—isolated, self-contained. When the Fae split off from the human world, they did so without any real harm to humanity. The fairies took their magic with them, of course, which meant sorcery and earth magic became far harder to practice in the human world, but humans focused on improving technology instead, sparking the Renaissance and moving all the way into the Machine Age. The Fae’s retreat to a separate plane didn’t kill any humans. But this … this would kill all of them.
“I’d say it’s a shame, but then, I rather think they deserve it.” My father crosses the room toward Lia and Clay, a vial clutched in his hand. “It’s not as if they’ve shown the ocean any respect. Why shouldn’t it turn on them?”
Unlike my father, Ondine doesn’t look as if she takes pleasure in the idea of impending human destruction—but she doesn’t look like she regrets it much, either. She walks toward the window, and Caspian and I both duck down and flatten ourselves against the house, not daring to breathe. “We need to get started,” she says to my father.
“Ah, the moon is rather higher than I thought,” his voice joins hers at the window. My leg shakes against the rough stucco. “The potion took longer to heat than I expected. I suppose you’re right. If we’re to finish before the moon reaches its apex, we should begin.”
Caspian and I glance up at the ascending moon—the same shimmering silver as his tail when he’s safe in the ocean instead of huddled and hiding on land—then down at each other.
His expression tells me he’s thinking what I am: there’s no time to get help. By the time he even reaches the Foundation, they’ll have performed the ritual.
Caspian’s fists ball tighter, and he hits one against his leg. Decisiveness crashes over his face. If he can’t get help, he’ll go in himself. I didn’t come all this way and risk eternal imprisonment just so Caspian could endanger himself anyway. I shake my head, and tug on my ear, then point to the window. Listen. Maybe they’ll say something we can use to our advantage. When my father and Ondine move away from the window to face Lia and Clay, we peek back inside.
Lia (to her credit, I guess) must
have understood the implications of my father’s words too, and must know how time-sensitive these powerful rituals can be because she instantly starts talking, trying to waste every precious second she can.
“Don’t do this. Please. You don’t have to do this.”
My father pays her no mind. He uncorks the first vial and begins pouring a thick, viscous liquid in a circle around her and Clay.
Ondine lowers herself onto a nearby chair, her movements stilted. Is she hurt? Her voice is calm, controlled. “It’s necessary, Lia. To protect us.”
“No, it’s not! You can’t do this. There’re other ways.” Her eyes dart between the circle my father is making and Ondine.
“There was another way, that’s true,” Ondine says. “This wasn’t my first choice for keeping Mer safe from human discovery, if you recall. But no, you couldn’t bring yourself to siren for the good of your species. If you had done what I asked, you would have sirened a few dozen humans a year maximum. Now …” She tilts her head to the side and shrugs.
“Don’t you dare blame Lia for this,” Clay says, loud and forceful. “If you choose to do this and it really k-kills all human beings—”
“Oh, it will,” my father interjects as he stands upright, the circle complete. “Within about one moon cycle, I would say.”
“If you choose to do it, that’s on you. It’s not Lia’s fault.”
“But it is,” Ondine says, stretching out the words. Enjoying them. I suppose not even she’s above reveling in an I-told-you-so moment. “She was selfish. Shortsighted. And now she’s left us no choice.”
Lia looks like she’s about to cry, but instead she grits her teeth, biting back the tears. “Then punish me. Do whatever you want to me, but let Clay go. He never did anything to hurt you.”
“No way I’m leaving you,” Clay says, pressing his back against hers, his legs shifting against each other.
“There’s that self-sacrificing love everyone makes such a fuss about,” my father says as he walks back over to the coffee table and selects another vial. He holds one up to the light and gives it a shake. “Once again, Miss Nautilus, your rather deplorable love for this mortal proves useful.”