I shook my head, “I think I’d just make it worse. My song is what they want most, and I won’t sing again.”
“Who’s asking you to sing to them?” Stacie said, “Not me. The fact is, you’ve already done some damage control. They’re not sobbing or hurting themselves anymore, are they?”
“No,” I admitted, “but that’s different… they’re sleeping.”
“How is that any different? The plan will be simple. Tell them to forget what they heard before— in fact, tell them to forget about you in general. My father and I can take care of the rest of the town! No one will even bring it up to them.”
“I live at their house,” I said, confused.
“Not anymore. You can stay here!” Stacie giggled. Her expression became a bit more subdued. “At least, for now. It will be up to the council, of course…” She bit her lip, “but all the more reason to stay here for the time being.”
She opened a large closet near the entry. She selected a few things, threw her robe off, and pulled on the outfit. It was slouchy and comfortable, but somehow Stacie still looked like the queen of fashion.
Pulling a blue pea coat from behind the door, she walked to an ornate-looking cupboard in one corner of the room. She threw the fancy doors open. Inside was a small bottle of something covered by a silk handkerchief. Stacie pulled the cloth off and gripped the bottle tightly in one hand.
“All set,” she said. She’d already found her keys inside her designer handbag. She gripped them fiercely, “Let’s go.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The experience of erasing myself from my foster parents’ memories was methodical.
First we ignored the two, rounding up all the things that were mine, all of the photos of me (only four, including one that I almost forgot Susan had clipped to her organizer), and all paperwork that bore my name on it. Stacie promised me that replacements would be made and planted in Susan’s filing cabinet, as if they’d never left. They’d only be missing tonight.
We had to make a total of five trips to Stacie’s car. Most of the loads were clothing that no longer fit me that we shoved into large plastic bags marked for charity. I only kept two formerly baggy sweatshirts and three pairs of shoes. I’d never decorated my room, so that spared us time and effort. The most personal items I brought back were my meager book collection and, of course, my new inheritance.
The dulcimer was in its case, slung over my shoulder— it had been since I’d first played it. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but during the aftermath of my song, my fingers had been cleverly placing it in the case and hauling it behind me. It’d somehow become a natural extension of me. I had no conscious idea I felt that way until I was panicking while packing the room. I was certain I’d lost the instrument. It wasn’t until Stacie pointed at it and gave me a ‘duh’ sort of look that I realized it’d been with me all along.
The rest of my inheritance I bundled together. I tucked the ring inside the music box with the letter from my birth parents— who were really sirens, I was now sure.
During the last trip inside, I stooped down to my foster parents who were still slumbering on my bedroom carpet.
“Forget,” I said, being sure to enunciate the word carefully. “Forget Sarah Mills. Forget you ever had a teenage foster child. Forget this night. You both sat down and watched reruns on television. Forget the song.” This sentence elicited a response, the first sign that my compulsion was having any effect. Susan whimpered at the suggestion, while Rick made a sound like I’d punched him in the gut. “Forget the song,” I said again with emphasis.
Was this going to be enough? Could it be? I didn’t feel the magic the way I did when I was singing, but both were eager enough to follow instructions before.
“In thirty seconds, you’ll wake up. You will not remember me, or the song. You will continue your life as normal.” I sighed, feeling drained. I was certain this was for the best, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. This was just another example of me taking away their freedom of will. I only hoped I hadn’t destroyed them.
I watched their chests rise and fall softly for a few seconds before Stacie whispered, “Come on.”
I followed numbly behind her, hoping that I’d successfully erased myself from the truest family I’d ever known.
We stood at the door. Our plan was to knock, then evaluate if it’d worked. If it had, we’d know when Susan or Rick answered. Stacie pulled out her phone, pausing for a long moment before she nodded. “Should be waking up now.”
My nerves ignited, and my stomach churned. I felt dizzy and light-headed, like I might faint. Did it work?
Stacie pressed on the doorbell, and I could hear it chiming within faintly. Susan cracked the door open with wide and suspicious eyes.
“Hello!” Stacie said cheerfully, “We’re here on a fund raising effort—”
Susan shook her head, her eyes hollow. “No,” she whispered. “No. No…” She turned to me, taking me in from head to toe. Not a flicker of recognition crossed her features. “You don’t have it,” she said bitterly.
“We don’t have what?” Stacie asked her carefully.
“The song! The song, the singing! The song!” she muttered rapidly, slamming the door in our faces.
Stacie’s brows furrowed. She turned to me, shaking her head sadly. “It didn’t work.”
That was obvious. Still…“It worked a little,” I said, feeling my heart sink. I had successfully made her forget me, but not the song. I slumped against the siding on the house. It was wet, and left a muddy smear against my jacket. “But not enough.”
“Maybe they just need some time. Let’s go in and check on them.” Stacie pried the door open, “Come on.”
Susan sat on the edge of the couch, Rick beside her. They didn’t bother looking up when we entered, though we were breaking into their home. They stared off into space, eyes blank, focused toward the television. It was turned off.
“Are you two okay?” Stacie asked them.
Rick turned his head to her, slowly, mouth slacked. “There is nothing.”
Susan gripped a chunk of hair, yanking it out with a sharp jerk. She stared at it as it fluttered to the ground. “There is nothing,” she repeated.
“What do you mean?!” I asked, practically in tears, “There’s nothing?”
Susan’s eyes met mine, but her expression seemed to look through me. “There is no feeling in this world,” she said. “Only the singing. Only the song, and that is gone now.”
Rick flicked a thumb against his lighter, hovering his palm over the flame. His skin sizzled, making the room smell like burning flesh. I gagged.
“What are you doing?!” I demanded, batting it away from him. The lighter clattered to the floor.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said hollowly. “There is nothing.”
I’d ruined them. Permanently, maybe. I had ruined them. I had broken their minds apart.
“Just sleep!” I yelled. I balled my hands into tight fists and pressed them against my eyes. I heard my foster parents slump down, falling against the leather couch cushions.
Stacie circled her arms around me, pulling me into a hug. It was surreal, standing here with my tormentor, taking comfort from her. After a few minutes, she released me, rubbing my shoulders. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Communication
I felt sick as I slid into Stacie’s car.
“You didn’t know what would happen,” she said gently.
I shook my head, crying silently. I pressed my forehead against the cold glass and stared out the window. I’d had enough warning— enough that I shouldn’t have risked it, shouldn’t have risked them.
“What will happen to them?” I whispered.
“If you wake them up, they’ll probably have to be institutionalized,” she said seriously, staring straight down the road.
If I wake them… was she suggesting that I kill them off? I wiped the te
ars away from my eyes, my heart heavy. It felt like someone was sitting on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I’d ruined their lives anyway. Maybe death would be a mercy.
“If you don’t wake them, they’ll be in the hospital, in a coma,” she said, pursing her lips tightly together. “Which might not be a bad idea, truthfully.”
“Leaving them in a coma?” I squeaked, my voice cracking.
She rounded the corner into her driveway, putting the car into park. “Yes. It will buy time until you decide… until you decide what to do.”
There was nothing ambiguous in her inflections. The time would allow me to get comfortable with murdering them. I doubted I would live that long.
Stacie held up the bottle she’d retrieved from her cabinet earlier, “For now, we’ll see what my father has to say about it.”
“Your father?” I felt confused, regretful, distraught. I wanted the night to be over, for all this to have been a nightmare.
“When I pulled off the handkerchief, it alerted my father that I wanted to speak with him.” She clicked her seatbelt, sliding out of the convertible, and I followed her into her mansion.
“How is that possible?” I asked, “What’s inside?”
“Sea water,” she answered with a shrug, “gathered a few years ago from the beach in our back yard.”
“Just ocean water?” I asked incredulously, “So the bottle is special?”
“No, the water is special. It has one other ingredient, but it’s 99.99% plain old saline.” She kicked her shoes off and sunk down onto the chaise, gesturing for me to have a seat as well. I curled into one of the plush chairs dotting the edges of the room.
“What’s the other ingredient?”
“A single scale from my father’s eye.”
I wrinkled my nose, “Your father’s eyes have scales?”
She laughed, “It sounds icky, but it’s really not. My eyes have scales too, but they’re small. You know how the iris has varied pigmentation? It’s just one of those tiny slivers of color that we’re talking about here. We shed them normally. It was just a matter of my father collecting one. It links him to this bottle, when necessary.”
“Is it too small to see?”
“Well, yes, but even if it was large enough to see a dot floating around, you have to remember how our eyes work. They change color to match the water we’re in. This water is pretty clear, so the scale is pretty clear, too.”
“Why do we need to talk to your father?” Stacie seemed like she was fairly independent, and the servants all obeyed her as if she was the lady of the house. I’d never met the elusive Mr Robinson before, nor had I heard of anyone who’d seen him personally.
“My father,” she snorted, making air quotes with her fingers, “‘His Majesty King Dorian Ocean Kai Whitecrest of the Oceanids’ needs to know how emergency situations are handled.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure we’ll be summoned soon to hear what he thinks in person, but for now I’m supposed to report important things like this to him. Princessly duty,” she scoffed.
“So you’re the Princess of the Mermaids?” I asked her. I wondered if I really was dreaming. Everything today had been on the hugest scale possible, it seemed.
“Not as great as you might think,” she muttered, looking tense, “but yes. I’m the heir to the throne.” It was clear that Stacie had a problem with authority, or at least was a bit hostile towards her father. I couldn’t tell which, but regardless, she didn’t seem to like her role. Her birthright explained why she acted so entitled at school, if nothing else.
“Are you going to be in trouble for helping me?” I asked, suddenly feeling anxious. Stacie’s choice to assist me came before she knew the scope of the issue, how dire it was. True, she didn’t seem especially concerned about Rick or Susan personally, but something like this must be cause for a scandal, right? Maybe not. I didn’t know enough about extras, yet.
“No,” she said, inhaling sharply, “not at all. It’s protocol. But if I’d let you just slide past me, under the radar?” She whistled low, “Big trouble.”
One of the maids walked straight to Stacie and said, “Miss Marin, your father sends word. He knows you’d like to speak with him, and he is available for conference now.”
Stacie scowled and slammed the door behind her, tossing off her coat and leaving it in a heap on the floor. I jumped. My nerves were running high again thinking about speaking with her father, King of the Mermaids.
She waved her hand, gesturing for me to follow her as she stalked down the main corridor.
“What did she call you?” I murmured as we trudged along.
“Marin.”
“Does it mean princess or something?” I asked her.
The tension on her shoulders eased a little. She cracked half a smile, “It’s my name.”
“I thought your name was Stacie?”
“For school, sure. But it’s only Stacie for now, for the human world. I’ll get bored and leave eventually, then come back in a few years with a new name.”
While it was surprising that she used an alias, a different revelation bothered me more. “Why would anyone want to go to high school more than once?” I asked.
She gave me a Cheshire Cat’s grin, “Why would I give that up? It’s like being queen without any of the drawbacks. I rule when I want to, party when I want to, act benevolently when I want to. I can be as just or unjust as I feel.”
“But aren’t you going to be queen anyway?” I asked her.
Her face looked grim, “Yeah… someday. But every day I’m not queen is a good day to me. Besides, I’d never do half the stuff down there that I do in high school. High school doesn’t matter.”
I wondered if that was the tension I’d felt when Stacie— no, Marin!— was told her father wanted to speak. She was reluctant to succeed him, instead opting to be a big fish in a small pond. A surprisingly appropriate metaphor.
We reached the dead end of the hallway. Stacie pressed her hands against the cream colored wallpaper. The paper split, forming a door that swung open, revealing a room. It was round, surrounded entirely by windows, but the moon and stars did little to illuminate the space. Most of the light came from a small white basin atop a pedestal in the center.
Marin tipped the little bottle with her father’s eye scale into the bowl.
Curious, I peered inside the saucer and was shocked to see a face staring back at me, as dimensional and present in the room as Marin and me, but separated from us by a thin layer of clear water.
It was the face of a young man, barely drinking age, with a handsome, chiseled jaw and sun-kissed blond hair. His eyes were an unflattering murky green, which felt out of place with his otherwise perfect features. He looked like the kind of guy who could be an actor, or maybe walking the runways in Milan in designer suits. His skin was flawless, lightly tanned, and seemed to glow from within with a slight pearly sheen. The water made his hair stick up, floating around his head, defying gravity.
“Daddy,” Marin said softly.
It didn’t look like someone who was old enough to be her father. But with everything else that’d happened today, it barely fazed me. I kept my gaze on the man, weary.
His face looked impassive at Marin’s greeting, aside from the slightest rippling raise of his eyebrows.
Marin sighed, “Your Majesty.”
“Marin, my dear, you should learn manners— before you take over the throne,” he said. His voice sounded like a bully playing with a geek, all power with currents of threat underneath. The last half of the response even sounded like a bit of a challenge. It was surprising: I wasn’t expecting this type of greeting between a parent and his child.
“Let’s just get on with it,” snarled back Marin. “This is Sarah, the siren I told you about earlier.”
Her father’s attention turned to me. He grinned broadly. It was flattering, and I had the sense that he was fully focused on me. A blush crawled up my cheeks. I’d never been comfortable being the cente
r of attention, and that hadn’t changed since becoming a siren.
“Sarah,” he tilted his head to one side, eyes studying me as I leaned over the edge of the dish. “The Muses have smiled on you?”
I stared at him, confused.
He chuckled, a burst of bubbles emerging from his mouth. He shook his head, “Apologies. You are a bit of an oddity, my dear.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled meekly. I wondered if he would be so kind when he knew what I’d done.
Marin sighed, “Sarah’s new to everything, Daddy— Your Majesty. She needs time to adjust to everything, and she’s made a couple mistakes.”
“Anything severe?” he said coolly to her. His brow arched ever-so-slightly.
She shook her head, “the biggest mistake is regarding her foster family. I told you everything I knew before. In the interim she has unfortunately sang for them.”
“Ah. What happened?” he sounded interested.
I squeezed my eyes shut, taking a deep breath. I didn’t want to admit what I’d done, as if ignoring it would make it less real. I bit my lip, “They… their sanity is gone. They only live for the song. I—” I hesitated, but he didn’t look judgmental to me, only a little concerned. “I asked them to sleep, and they are. They won’t wake up unless I tell them to.”
“Interesting power over humans,” said the merman. He sounded impressed with it, and my brows knit together. I certainly wasn’t impressed by it— only horrified.
Marin nodded tightly next to me, “It is quite compelling to them. I verified it with my own eyes.”
“So you’re actually taking an interest in something important,” he said, his eyes narrowing as they fixed on his daughter.
“Despite this,” she said, ignoring his tone, “we have the unfortunate problem of dealing with the humans. My suggestion is to put them into a hospital, explain it to the human staff as an unusual coma, and go from there.”
Prelude (The Rhapsody Quartet) Page 5
