by Judi Fennell
"Then Stewart, the brainiac, just had to tell your kid where she went, and a self-serving hammerhead showed up—and I'm worried that he will actually serve himself. Your kid hitched a ride out to the middle of nowhere with him. You know, you really need to have a life talk with the kid. Tell him all about the hazards of accepting rides from strangers, especially ones with fins—mrrrmmph."
If someone would have told Logan that someday he'd find the need to muzzle a flamingo, never mind actually do it, he would have told that person to have his head examined. Now he was the one who needed to have his head examined.
"Can we just get back to what you said about a hammerhead?" he asked the flamingo—knowing he'd consider the insanity of that question after he had his son back.
She nodded her head.
"Fine. I'm going to release your beak." Another sentence he'd never have guessed in a million years that he'd say. "I want you to stick to the facts. What exactly happened?"
Ginger—good God—expelled an indignant, fish laden breath. "I may not seem threatening to you, but I've got enough pounds of pressure in this beak to do some serious damage. Try that again, and you'll lose at least one finger, if not more. Got it?" She ruffled her feathers.
If he didn't need her, he'd tie a knot in that neck of hers. "Fine. Sorry. Now what about Michael?"
She dipped the top of her head onto her back, strok ing the feathers, then did a quick zip by her knees before staring him in the eye again.
"I'm guessing the hammerhead told your son that he'd take him to find Angel and, for some reason, your son figured a shark was a safe bet. I don't know what you Humans teach your kids, but I'd think shark avoid ance ought to be a mandatory school subject. Especially around here."
A shark? His son was riding a hammerhead shark? There weren't enough foul words in the English lan guage to express what he was feeling.
Although, actually… he'd gone numb.
Michael was with a shark. In the ocean. Looking for a mermaid.
And he was talking to a flamingo… "Where did they go?"
"East."
"Thanks, Ginger." Logan took off at a run back
toward the steps. He had to get his boat out there and catch up with them.
"Hey!" the bird hollered from above him. Well that, at least, was normal. "Aren't you forgetting something?"
Logan didn't stop. "Forgetting something?"
"Yes. Usually the informant gets a reward."
An opportunistic flamingo. Which was better than any kidnapping shark. "Fine. Whatever you want. I'll get it when I get back."
"Or you can start by leaving your fridge open." She flapped her wings and beat him back up to his lawn. "I'll begin with the prawns and work my way to the scallops."
Hell, he'd give her an entire freezer's worth of the stuff if he got Michael back.
Chapter 31
ANGEL DECIDED SHE WOULD JUST LIE ON THE BEACH ALL DAY. Right here, at the water's edge. Listen to the waves, enjoy the tranquility, the solitude, and maybe then she could forget everything that had happened.
"You're kidding me, right? You're taking a vacation?"
So much for solitude. Who in Hades had found her here?
She lifted her head—only to have it snap back when her hair got caught under her—just like it had when she and Logan—
Maybe she'd cut her hair.
She rolled to the side and yanked the soggy mess out with a grunt, holding up her hand to block the sunlight that bounced off the water and into her eyes, blinding her.
"Zeus, Angel. What happened?"
Not that she needed sight to recognize that voice. Mariana. Great. Just who she needed.
"Nothing happened, Mariana." Unless you called your life's work going down the cosmic drain nothing.
Angel wiggled herself back into the water just to prove she was fine.
Maybe she could swim away fast enough so she wouldn't have to answer any questions—at least until she got back to Atlantis. Then there'd be no escaping the questions. And the accusations and the disappoint ment and some kind of censure. And that was if she was lucky.
"Uh huh. Nothing. Right." Mariana had trained for marathons while Angel had been immersed in her stud ies, so it was no surprise she didn't get very far before her sister was swimming beside her. "Last you told me, you were all about living with Humans. One in particu lar, and I don't see him around."
Angel brushed the hair out of her face, trying not to remember how Logan had played with it. That didn't work well, though, since the whole awful story came tumbling out.
Well, maybe not all of it. Some things were a little too personal, even for a sister to know.
"You slept with him, didn't you?" Mariana asked as they hit the drop-off to deeper water.
Then again, why even bother to try?
Angel did a swan dive off the edge, skimming past her sister and hoping to lose her completely in the schools of fish hanging around.
A wasted effort since Mariana caught up to her quickly. These deeper-water basslets, though numerous, weren't large enough to hide a full-grown Mer, and her sister was as tenacious as a hungry octopus.
"So go back and talk to him."
"He thinks I'm a freak."
"So? I think you're a freak, and you still talk to me."
"Very funny."
"I thought it was. And it got you to smile."
Angel arched her eyebrows at her sister, then somer saulted beneath Mariana's tail, knowing the extra whip she put on the end would churn the water and knock her sister off-kilter, if not flip her belly-up.
"Fine. Be that way," said Mariana, managing to keep herself upright even after Angel whipped again.
It figured. While Angel was Just Angel, Mariana was Miss Perfect. Always had been. She never found herself in these kinds of situations.
Of course, that could be because she actually fol lowed the rules.
Yeah, yeah. Angel didn't need any lectures from her conscience. Nor a repeat of the waterworks. She wasn't about to dissolve into a puddle of tears—especially in front of Mariana.
"And it got a grimace out of you, too," Mariana continued, waving a passing barracuda away. "That's a reaction, at least. I don't need you moping for the entire trip back. I don't know what you expected, Angel, and frankly, I don't really care. You shouldn't have gone in the first place. You've annoyed every one. Well, everyone except Mom and Dad. They don't know yet, but when they do, they won't be happy ei ther. Especially since your Human found out you're a Mer."
Mariana cursed. "Gods, Ang. I came all this way to tell you Rod has consented to give you an interview, but I think that's the least of our worries now. I hope The Council will be as lenient with you as they were with Reel, but he, at least, had Erica with him. You left your Human out there with the knowledge. I don't know how they're going to react at all."
Did she really need this abuse? Angel waited for a dozen groupers to pass. Bad enough all of Atlantis had known Rod's thoughts on her career choice; she didn't need the whole Atlantic Ocean knowing about her disastrous love life, too. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this, Mariana, but I'm a big girl. I can take my lumps."
"If only it were lumps. You know the punishment as well as I do. Gods, Angel, I covered for you with Rod. Told him I'd talked to you, and that you knew what you were doing. That there was no way you'd fall for a Human. That you saw what it had done to Mom and Dad when Reel did and were too smart for that." Mariana snorted. "And now look at you. Mooning over a Human, of all things. What is it that has three of my siblings passing up perfectly good Mers for them?"
"Valerie is only half-Human." Not that you could tell any more. Rod's wife had embraced her Mer half seamlessly.
"Semantics, Angel."
"No, actually, genetics."
"Don't get all professorial on me, sis. Save that for Rod and The Council. If I were you, I'd start thinking up my defense instead of getting defensive. And ways to get over him."
"Get over him? I don
't need to get over him. Logan is a non-issue." That was what she'd tried telling herself back on the cay before Mariana showed up—too bad saying it out loud didn't make it any more believable.
"Sure. Okay. Whatever you say." Mariana swam past her, yanking the tip of one of Angel's flukes on her way by. "You forget. I know you, Ang. When you put your heart into something, you do it all the way. There's no way you're going to get over him quickly, and moping is only going to make it harder."
"And what do you know about it?" Angel kicked into action and tried to catch up.
"I've had my share of heartbreak. And even if I didn't, all anyone has to do is take one look at your face. Even a blind whale shark could tell something's wrong. I'd like to see you happy again."
So would Angel. That was the thing. She didn't like moping. She never moped.
She also didn't let people swim rough-shad over her, either—yet Logan had.
Angel stopped swimming. That's right. Logan had made his damning accusations, his pronouncement of how things would be, and she'd slunk back into the sea with a broken heart and a big ol' pity party.
What happened to her backbone? She used to have one.
Angel grabbed the hair that was floating around her like sargassum in a hurricane, perfectly mirroring her mood, and draped it over her breasts and tied it in the back like a Human halter top, but not.
She did used to have a backbone. And she wanted it back.
"Hey, Ang." Mariana dove into a somersault and headed back Angel's way. "Let's not go back to Atlantis just yet. A group of my friends are vacationing in the South Pacific right now. Let's join them. A girls' week end. Or two. Relax, sun ourselves on a deserted beach, drink some fermented pineapple, have a grand ol' time. We'll just pretend this didn't happen."
"Really? And what are you going to tell Rod when he wonders what took you so long to bring me back?"
Mariana went for Innocent and I-Don't-Know-What You're-Talking-About. "What do you mean?"
It was Angel's turn to yank on Mariana's hair. "Mare, I know Rod told you he'll give me an interview, but he has no intention of giving me the job. He told you to bring me home so I'd be where he wants me. Where he thinks it's safe." Never mind that he might actually have a point… "He's not going to let either one of us head out on some vacation."
"Honestly, Angel, where do you come up with these thi—?"
"It's all right, Mariana. You're just doing what our ruler commands. I get it. But, this did happen, and you know what? Logan doesn't get the last say. Fine if he wants nothing to do with me, but I'm not leaving until I do what I came to do. In for a periwinkle, in for a porgy, I always say."
And she did. She'd never done anything relating to Humans halfway, and she wasn't about to start with this. He might have hurt her—okay, no "might" about it—but she was a professional. She had an agenda.
Okay, so sleeping with him hadn't been on that agenda, and doing it—no surprise—hadn't been the best choice. She should have stayed true to her purpose and been that professional she'd prided herself on being.
Professional. Ha. Professionalism had gotten tossed out the porthole the moment he'd shown up.
Well, she wouldn't make that mistake again. The only way to fix her mess with The Council—and the problems with the planet—was to actually succeed in what she'd set out to do.
She did a quick back-arcing dive toward the coast. "Go without me, Mariana. I'm going back." She felt bet ter just by saying it.
"To land? Are you crazy? The Council will definitely crucify you for this—and I'm scared they might actually do that. Trident and all."
"That's why I have to try, Mariana. I have to make something good come out of this."
Big words. But she was equal to them. Besides, what was her ego in relation to making the world a better place with harmonious interaction between their races?
Damn important, that ego grumbled deep inside her heart.
She ignored it. If she went that route, she'd be back on the pity party, and she did not want to go there. Time to focus on what she had originally planned. Get her life on an even keel and—
"AAAAAnnnngggeeellll!" A storm petrel dove into the water above her, his screech carrying downwards with impact.
The "even" part of that keel went bottoms-up.
"Ginger… A sea… Hike… Broken…" the bird garbled through the water.
Angel kicked toward the surface. She had no clue why the flamingo would go on a hike, and could only imagine what she'd broken, but screaming and Ginger never went well in the same sentence.
"Ang! Just where do you think you're—"
Angel broke the plane of the water before Mariana got the last word out. She scraped a few escaped strands of hair off her face and asked the petrel, "What about Ginger?"
The bird hacked out some water, then sucked in air, rustling his wings as he settled them against his back. "Ginger. Sent me. Tell you."
Angel nodded with the bird, willing his breathing to get back to normal. "What does she want?"
The bird nodded, then took another gulp of air. "She said… She said Hike went… shark."
"Hike?" That made no sense. Sharks didn't go on hikes.
"She said… Brogan… getting on his boat." Another couple of gulps went in.
The poor thing was really out of breath. He must have been flying as fast as he could. But the message didn't make sense—
"Logan? Do you mean Logan? Logan is on his boat?"
The petrel cocked the feathers over one eye at her. "That's what I said."
She wasn't going to argue with him. "Why does Ginger want me to know this?"
"Ginger?" Mariana appeared beside the bird. "Ginger's involved? Gods help us."
Angel shushed her sister while the petrel took another deep breath. "Ginger said Logan went after Michael and the shark, and she thought you'd want to know."
Angel held up her hand to stop Mariana's inevitable question. These were her Humans, and she was going to be asking the questions. "Shark? What shark?"
The storm petrel blew out a big, fishy breath. "Gods, woman, empty the water out of your ears. Ginger said that Michael went with a shark—on a shark were her exact words—to find you. Who the shark is, is still un known. But when Logan found out, he jumped in his boat to go after them."
"The kid's with a shark? How in-the-sea did that hap pen?" Mariana could only hold back for so long.
What was that shark up to? Angel had yet to meet one who had any tender feelings for the Human race—other than as a tender meal.
And Logan knew? Great.
And, oh gods, Michael was with a shark.
"Logan's going after him?" Mariana continued her in terrogation, and Angel was glad for the help because words were beyond her. "Why does this not sound good?"
"It's not." Ah, some words weren't beyond her. The fact that Ginger didn't know the shark worried Angel as much as the fact that a shark was involved in the first place. Ginger knew everyone, and if she didn't know this guy, that was even more trouble.
"Where are they?" She had to save Michael. She'd deal with everything else—Logan, her job, The Council—later. In the scheme of things, Michael's life was far more important than Logan's anger. Or her self-flagellation.
"Heading east was all I got out of Ginger," said the petrel. "Her beak was stuffed with prawns."
With prawns? Either Ginger had gotten into Logan's kitchen or…
Or what? Ginger had talked to Logan?
In the realm of possibilities, that was definitely one, because Angel would bet sand dollars to dor sals that Ginger knew exactly what had happened between her and Logan last night, right down to the humiliating scene on the beach. That bird did like her gossip. But the flamingo wouldn't speak to a Human unless she knew that he knew birds could speak—or that he'd seen a Mer. Angel could only imagine Logan's reaction.
On all fronts, she was in a sea of trouble. But the bigger issue was… so was Michael.
Chapter 32
