And that’s what they did, for almost ten hours straight—sifted through useless paper after useless, empty paper while Wanda intermittently napped on the crisp burgundy leather armchair they’d found pushed against the wall under a stack of more papers, and Darnell went and grabbed sandwiches for their lunch.
“Okay,” Esther said, rising to stretch out her legs, cramped and tired. “I’m calling this. There’s nothing here. You’re tired. I’m tired. We’re all tired, and we’ve been cooped up in this veritable paper factory all day long. I can’t thank you all enough for the help you’ve given me, but you guys need to go home and sleep…see your families…do whatever paranormal people do.” Then something occurred to her. “Wait. Nina, how are you awake when it’s well before midnight? How were you even awake last night? Oh my God! Am I keeping you from vampire sleep, or whatever you need? How rude and selfish of me—”
Nina popped up from the floor, stopping her tangent. “First, I sleep normal hours just like you, Tina The Tuna. I’ve learned to tolerate daylight because of these two fucking nuts. They leave for the discount mall at eight sharp in the morning, and they drag my ass with them. There is no sleep with these two. Second, no one goes anywhere until we find out the truth about your uncle and someone teaches you how to be a mermaid. I like Big Fish, don’t get me wrong. He’s nice enough. Cute accent, blah, blah, blah. But I gotta tell ya, I’m not a fan of his fucking family right now. I mean, fuck—his own father thinks he had some shit to do with this? Uncool. If that’s the kind of welcome you’re going to get from them, I’ll bite you myself so you can join my clan just to keep you from that bunch of misguided morons.”
Esther threw her head back and laughed, throwing her arms around Nina’s neck. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in forever, you know that?”
As Nina pried herself loose from Esther’s grip, Wanda woke up, rubbing her eyes. “I’m dreaming, right? Did someone just say Nina was the best thing that ever happened to them? That has to be a dream,” she said groggily, covering her mouth to hide a yawn.
“Nay!” Nina crowed, holding her hand out to Wanda to help her up. “In fact, this is not a dream, Sleeping Beauty. Esther just has the good damn sense to know I’m the nicest one out of all of you. I’m honest and I get to the fucking point. Some people still value that shit. Now, c’mon, Drooler. Let’s get you back to the cottage so Arch can fill your endlessly empty fucking tank.”
As everyone began to work their way to the front door, Esther held back, taking one last look at her uncle’s apartment, knowing someone was coming to empty this all out tomorrow, and closed her eyes.
I’m sorry, Grandpa. I’m sorry I didn’t force my way in here. I’m sorry I didn’t think to look closer at the circumstances surrounding his death. I’m sorry.
She scoured every last inch of his apartment with her eyes, memorizing the plain beige walls, the tiny kitchen with its brown Formica countertops barely visible, the towering piles papers, and inhaled, wiping her tears.
Tucker leaned down near her ear. “You ready now?” he asked, taking her hand.
And she let him, her nod one of determination. “Let’s go catch a killer.”
* * * *
“Esther, it’s so amazing to see you again,” Jessica, Tucker’s beautiful sister, said with a warm hug. “Are you ready to be a mermaid?”
Esther peered around, still unable to tell Tucker she didn’t know how to swim. But in for a penny, in for a pound, right? That’s what she kept telling herself as she, Marty, Nina, and Tucker gathered around the lake these mermaids owned, shivering.
They’d decided nothing else could be done until the morning, so what better time to teach Esther how to be a mermaid than tonight?
It was a chilly midnight, filled with a light mist of fog rolling in across the manmade lake, constructed just for this purpose. And even with the fog, it was like something right out of a Disney movie. Nothing deterred from the magnificence of the scene before her. Not even her terror.
Mermaids, their sparkling tails in all colors of the rainbow, appeared before her eyes, surfacing to slap the water, only to dive back under again and disappear into the glittering depths. Enormous rocks, grouped together and fashioned to resemble cliffs, housed women of all shapes and sizes, soaking up the moon’s rays as they sprawled out along the craggy surfaces, their hair flowing out in satiny ribbons behind them. Men, too, their chests bare, their signature wristbands glowing in the dark, sat with them, resting and enjoying the evening.
The moon, full and high, glowed bright in the sky, giving their skin an almost ethereal tint. The water swished in hushed pools, dipping in small circles as another mermaid surfaced and dove back under. Seeing their graceful glides, watching them frolic with such ease, Esther couldn’t help but smile.
The lights from the houses, set farther away from the lake on a hilltop, cast dots of light on the horizon, making her wonder what these people in Tucker’s pod were like.
And Esther?
Well, she was terrified, as Marty held her hand and Jessica peered at her with gentle eyes. “Please don’t be frightened, Esther. I’ll teach you everything I know. You’ll be glorious. I promise you. I just need you to trust that I’ll be close, and so will Tucker, and if you become afraid, we’ll help you.”
Chester popped up behind Jessica, his wide chest and boyish good looks even better looking under the moonlight. “I’ll help, too,” he said with a wide smile.
Marty tucked Esther’s hair behind her ear. “This is just a trial run, sweetie. We can bail anytime you want. You don’t have to learn everything in one night, right, girls? It took me a long time to learn to be a werewolf. Ask Nina.”
Nina nodded, her eyes glittering in the dark. “Holy fuck, if that ain’t the truth. There was more whine than a damn vineyard while she learned how to be a werewolf. But I think I got your number, Esther, and I’m pretty sure you’re a badass bitch. Now, go do mermaid things like a good girl, so Auntie Nina can go back to the cottage and watch Stranger Things and poke holes in their bullshit theories about the paranormal.”
Nina shooed her with a hand, but Esther gripped Marty’s hand tighter, digging her heels into the sand.
Tucker came to stand in front of her, his warm hands cupping her face as he looked down at her, his eyes soft. “I’ll be there the whole way, Esther. I won’t let you out of my sight. But you need to know how to do this. The urge will call you, and when it does, you’ll need to know how to handle your tail and fins. I can teach you. We can teach you. Most importantly, Jessica can teach you. Our tails are designed differently as males and females; she can teach you how to navigate.”
She let go of Marty’s hand and gripped Tucker’s wrists, her next question filled with worry. “Won’t you get into trouble for being here? Maybe we should leave and you can teach me another time? You’ve already been kicked out of your pod. I don’t want you to get in more trouble because of me.”
Sure, sure, she was stalling about getting in the water. But she wasn’t lying about her worry he’d get caught. It was enough that he’d likely be questioned in her uncle’s death once she started poking around.
Jessica shed her coat and her shoes as she said, “Don’t worry, Esther. I’ll make sure no one says anything to him. He’s here with me, and they’ll just have to like it. Besides, his evacuation from the pod has to be run past a council. My father’s not the be all and end all of merpeople.” Her face looked cross under the moonlight, convincing Esther if nothing else, she was loyal to Tucker.
Shaking off her sheer terror, she tried so hard to suck it up—she didn’t have a choice but to do this. If this urge was going to call to her, she had to know how to handle it correctly.
“Okay,” she murmured, giving Tucker’s wrists one last squeeze before she, too, shed her jacket and kicked off her sneakers.
Nina drove a playful knuckle into her ribs and smiled at her. “That’s my girl. Swim, fishy, swim!”
“But wait. What
about…” She circled her breasts with her hands. “The last time I turned into a mermaid, I was sort of naked. Those women out there don’t look naked.”
Jessica nodded her head and chuckled. “Those are scales covering their breasts. They’re soft, almost like satin, though. Once you’re in the water long enough, you’ll acquire them, too. But I brought you a bikini top, just in case.” She grabbed what looked like a beach bag from the sand and dug around until she pulled a hot-pink top out. “We’re about the same size, I think.”
Yeah. In what fantasy?
Esther nearly laughed out loud. They absolutely were not even close to the same size. Jessica had full, round stripper boobs and Esther had training-bra boobs, but whatever. It was nice of her to compare her so generously. She liked her now even more than she had the first time she’d met her.
Marty held up a colorful beach towel with a whale on it and winked. “Let’s get you changed, young lady.”
As she stripped down to her bikini undies and shrugged into the bikini top, she shivered, her skin withering beneath the cold night air. “If I get frostbite, Pearson, you pay the hospital bill. Go that?”
Tucker laughed, his deep chuckle husky and sexy in her ears. “Consider that a deal, Sanchez. You ready?” He’d shrugged off his jeans and shirt as though he took his clothes off in front of women every day.
And if she were honest, he should. If her body looked like his, she’d wander everywhere naked. She’d food shop naked.
God, he was sexy. He had more ridges and ripples on his body than ten bags of Ruffles potato chips. From his wide shoulders and his heavily muscled chest with a sprinkling of hair between his pecs, to his thick thighs and tapered waist, as he stood in front of her in nothing but his red boxer-briefs, she had a harder time not staring at his perfection than she did being in a bikini.
Yes, she jogged. Sure, she tried to watch what she ate, but in the end, she didn’t look like Tucker, who looked like he belonged in Perfect Body Monthly.
As Marty stood in front of her, holding up the towel, Esther leaned in and whispered, “I don’t want to say I’m intimidated here, but hello. Is it fair I should be undressing in front of Body Beautiful?”
Marty’s laughter tinkled in the chilly air and she made a face. “You have an incredible body, Esther. I’d kill to have an ass like yours. You have nothing to be intimidated about. Now, go be a mermaid. We’ll be right here when you surface.”
Said the beautiful blonde with perfect makeup and sexy curves like a mountain road. But okay. There was nothing she could do about her cellulite now.
Jessica held out her hand to Esther and gave her another reassuring smile, and as she led her to the edge of the water, and Esther violently shivered, all she could do was pray somehow her newfound mermaid-ness would negate her inability to swim.
Or she was gonna swim with the fishes, all right.
Face down.
Chapter 12
Nina and Marty sat cross-legged on the beach towel, fist pumping and wolf whistling as Esther began to wade into the water, but she halted when the water hit her waist and froze on the spot as the soft sand beneath her feet squished between her toes.
Tucker turned to her, his lean hips now covered in the water. “Esther?”
And when he looked at her with that question on his face, she became a blubbering idiot.
“Okay, so look. Here’s the thing. I can’t swim. That’s how this all started. Well, no. I stand corrected. It didn’t start there. It started at a funeral. I just mean, that’s when I found out I was a mermaid. Anyway, when my tail finally decided to show its face…er, fin…I was at a Mommy and Me class taking swimming lessons with babies because I’m a thirty-two-year-old sissy who’s afraid of the water. I don’t know the first thing about swimming but the little I learned at my first class with Maurizio, which was blowing bubbles. So I’m going to sink like the proverbial rock right in front of you and there’s nothing I can do to stop—”
Tucker stopped her by pulling her close to him, their skin meeting for the first time, leaving her fighting a gasp as every nerve in her body caught fire. “I figured as much.”
She snorted against his chest. “Really? Was it the masterful way I floundered like the Titanic was going down at the beach the other day that gave me away?”
Now he snorted, his arm curving around her waist, warming her from head to toe. “Just a hunch,” he teased, tilting her chin up so he could see her eyes. “Listen, Esther, I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise on my very life, you’ll be okay. If anything at all goes wrong, I’ll be there.”
Jessica, now gloriously slick with water, the beads clinging to her supple skin, nodded her head. “I’ll be there, too, Esther. Promise.”
Chester, who’d remained quiet and patient, gave her a thumbs-up sign and winked.
She knew she could trust them. It wasn’t that at all. It was herself and her reactions to the water since…
But she nodded and smiled at Tucker. “Okay then, let’s do this. What do I do first?”
He grinned at her and pointed to the water. “You take my hand and we go under. It’s as simple as that. But one thing—don’t fight the water. Hold your breath until I tap you on the shoulder, and when I do, I promise you, you’ll be able to breathe. Your gills will allow you to breathe. Getting you to accept that is going to take an enormous amount of trust in your part, and I know that. But I need you to believe me. Just believe, Esther.
Yeah, yeah. Just believe, she told herself as they waded deeper into the water and she blindly held his hand, feeling like a lamb going to slaughter. Unlike a Disney movie, where the heroine gives the handsome prince her unwavering trust just because he says she should, she felt the exact opposite.
This was bananapants. Like, who in their right mind would believe any of this was real?
But, she reasoned, the girls were here, and they wouldn’t let her drown. She knew that without a shadow of a doubt. And they were real. She’d seen they were real. She’d seen her tail was real, for crap’s sake. Still, she wished she’d worked out some kind of SOS with them as a just in case.
A million thoughts ran through her mind at that point, but before she knew it, the lights of the houses above the lake were fading and she was under the water, forcing herself to think of nothing but the task at hand.
Be a mermaid.
And then stark panic set in and she did exactly what Tucker said not to do. She fought the notion that she would eventually breathe through her gills and she began to struggle, her limbs twisting, her chest so tight she thought it would burst.
But then Tucker was there, pulling her toward him with a strong hand as Jessica’s voice vibrated in her head, soothing and clear as a bell.
“Open your eyes, Esther. Look and see what’s around you. It’s beautiful. Open your eyes.”
When Tucker tapped her on the shoulder, she forced her eyes open—and all at once, the panic fled, seeping from her body as she stood on the bottom of this lake that had been turned into a watery paradise.
It was incredible, breathtaking, utterly magnificent, and as she looked around, clinging to Tucker’s hand, she took it all in.
The water was crystal clear, turquoise and green, just like the beaches she’d seen so many times on television. Small castles, almost like the ones you’d see in a fish tank, sprang up in the distance, their candy-colored peaks and arched windows serving as portals for the mermaids to swim in and out of, frolicking with one another as though they were at some sort of mermaid version of an ice cream social.
Seashells and conchs the size of living room furniture sat along the bottom, scattered about like one would chairs arranged in the lobby of a hotel. Coral reefs crafted in bright pink, green, orange and blue cropped up in the corner of her eye as Tucker pulled her to him and swirled her around. There was even a small sunken ship in all its wooden glory, where merchildren chased each other from one end to the other, the tattered sails wafting with the water’s movement
.
Fish in every color of the rainbow and every variety swam by in schools, their fins gracefully swatting the water, propelling themselves forward, and this time she heard Tucker in her head.
“Look, Esther. Look down,” he said, pointing to the sandy bottom of the lake with a grin.
Esther did as she was told and, without any warning, and no tingle to suggest otherwise, her limbs were gone and her yellow and aqua tail was suddenly there, resplendent as the water washed over them. It glimmered against the backdrop of the water, fascinating her.
Instantly, her hands went to her breasts to cover them, but as promised by Jessica, her bikini top had been replaced by scales, and just like Jessica said, when she skimmed her hands over them, they were as soft as silk.
And then she realized something else—her chest was no longer tight. Her lungs didn’t feel as though they were going to explode.
She was breathing through her gills, just like Tucker said.
She experienced a moment of pride—a deep sense of satisfaction that she wasn’t freaking out, but listening and following directions, trusting her body.
“You’re beautiful!” Jessica whispered. “Now, listen to me. Your tail can be used for many things, Esther. Not just for swimming. But let’s learn the basics for now. At first, this will feel cumbersome, heavy, but once you learn how to maneuver, you’ll be magnificent and you’ll swim faster than any dolphin. Watch me and do what I do.”
Jessica’s tail and fins were as beautiful as she was, in gold and deep hues of pink and crimson, and as she shot out in front of them, her hair making an auburn cloud around her gorgeous face, there was still a surreal feel to all of this.
So, Esther blinked. This was really happening.
She was really underwater, in a lake, with a hot merdude from Australia and his sister, learning how to be a mermaid.
But she didn’t have time to ponder for long, as Jessica, with Chester by her side, summoned her, holding her hands out and beckoning Esther to take them. But she didn’t know how to get lift off. Using her fins to propel her upward wasn’t like using her feet.
The Accidental Mermaid (Accidentally Paranormal Series Book 16) Page 12
