by Amy McNulty
Ember stood in front of Calder, flames tickling at her fingers as she held her hand out between them like a normal woman might hold a can of pepper spray threateningly against a potential assailant. Rubbing my forming bruise, I hobbled around the floating island to stand beside Calder. “Took you long enough.” I grunted.
“You stopped answering your phone,” he hissed back, like I gave a crap about that just then.
“I didn’t expect you to actually show.” I sent him my best glowering, withering look. I ignored the twitch in his jaw muscles as I stepped between Ember and him, my own icy fist held out. “Are we doing this again?” I asked her. A movement from the open sliding door behind Ember caught my eye—Bay went soaring through the air and landed somewhere I couldn’t see with a thud. I winced as Dean stepped inside, dusting his palms off.
So this was it. Prince versus prince and champion against champion once more. I could end it here right now. Not kill Ember, but maybe make her hurt so much, she gave up.
Nausea hit the back of my throat. I didn’t want to hurt Ember. So I’d wait for her to strike first—to make it self-defense.
She stared at me, the sizzle of the flames in her palms and the hiss of crackling ice the only sound between us.
“How did you know I’d be at Paisley’s tonight?” I asked.
Dean shrugged. “We didn’t know. We just had a moving job.”
“A likely story,” I said, shifting my icy palm slightly toward him instead of Ember and finding Ember slide her body in front of him. To protect this undead old man. How could she not see that the vampires had had their chance at life—that they added nothing to the world by being here?
At least the merfolk were on their first and only chances at lifetimes. Didn’t they deserve that?
“It’s true,” said Ember. “Though I did get a text to come join him—I asked Devam and Journey to take me.”
“A text from whom?” I sneered.
“Me, naturally. ’Allo, Deanie boy. Nice to see you less waterlogged again.” Orin jutted his chin at the vampire from the open entryway. With a mighty scream, Laguna slid backward on her feet down the hall behind him, crouched like a cat about to jump on its prey, her jaw clenched as she growled and seemed determined to dig trenches into the hardwood floor rather than topple from whatever vampire move had sent her skidding.
I liked this girl.
I was going to ignore that treacherous faery creature in the entryway. “Why do vampires even need to run a moving business? Surely, you’ve amassed enough wealth. And it’s not like you need to buy groceries or anything.”
Dean shrugged. “Keeps us out in the community, getting a feel for the lay of the land.”
“And it helps you recruit more bloodbags, too, I imagine,” spat Calder behind me. He leaned closer to me, whispering so only I could hear. “We need to retreat.”
“Why?” I hissed. “I’ve got this.”
“Do you?” he asked, louder this time.
I stared into Ember’s eyes. My arm was starting to get sore from being held out so long. I wondered if the same was true of her.
When was she going to make the first move?
“We’re not ready,” whispered Calder, and I almost turned around and clobbered him with the ice ball.
“Fine,” I sneered, not eager to wait all day for Ember to strike first so I could feel less guilty about going at it.
I shot my ice out in a perpetual stream this time, the sweat pouring off my brow practically freezing into little icicles on my skin as I focused on the cold, cold, cold.
Ember flinched and her fire went flying, but I’d changed my arm’s aim at the last second and I wasn’t aiming for her. The stream of ice hit the faucet handle on the kitchen sink in the island, flicking it up all the way and turning on the water.
Calder screamed as he dodged and I saw his new Central letter jacket smoking, his flesh exposed at the shoulder. But I didn’t have time to wait. I dropped the ice from my hand and grabbed the sprayer hose, aiming it right at Dean, pulling the trigger to send a torrent of rain-like water right at him.
He shrieked and started steaming, but I kept up the water pressure.
Ember shouted something and flung another fireball at me, but I turned the water at her and the flames melted into mist as they headed my way.
“It’s wet ’n wild time now, sister!” I screamed.
I ignored the snickering coming from Orin in the entryway.
Calder had to tug on my arm and drag me away, scooping me up in his arms princess-style, which caused me to drop the hose. We bolted out the open sliding door the moment the water spray stopped—not giving our enemies a second to muster their strength to follow us.
Chapter Nine
The adrenaline from the fight and the odd sensation of being in Calder’s thick, sturdy arms made me go numb the moment we darted around the foam-covered air conditioning unit and to the front of the house. My mind searched wildly for some kind of explanation, but I found none of my normal friends out on the front lawn, waiting—the sound of one of the guys’ chuckles echoing in the air from the other side of the fence.
So none had been drawn over here by the sounds of battle.
Only Paisley probably would have only noticed my absence normally, but she’d been too preoccupied with her death-defying little brother.
“Pull back!” Calder shouted to Bay, who had moved to the front lawn and was winding his arm back for a punch. He dropped the move immediately, dodging one of the vampire’s own blows—the vampire had actually removed his suit coat, his milky-white arms practically as blinding as the sun—and appeared alongside us.
Bay got the passenger’s side door of Calder’s truck open and my merman protector deposited me in the seat as Laguna burst forth from the house and the other guy and girl I hadn’t recognized earlier met up at the bed of the truck, jumping in as Bay shut my door. He joined them in the back as Calder made his way to the driver’s seat and we were off.
We drove silently for a bit, Calder adjusting his rearview mirror and continually staring at it, his Adam’s apple bobbing each time.
It was only when I looked in my own side mirror just as we turned the corner that I saw not all of my friends were gathered back in Paisley’s yard—Devam and Journey were still at the front of the moving truck in that house’s driveway.
They leaned against the hood and stared down the road at us, the slightly sickly hue of their skin apparent even from such a distance.
“What were you thinking?” asked Calder as the house vanished entirely from view.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I pointed out. “You’ve got to get over bolting at the first whiff of blood.” Pun fully intended. “How’s your shoulder?” It didn’t look like the skin was burnt too badly, but it was definitely red.
Calder batted my outstretched hand away. “Fine.” His lips worked, but nothing comprehensible came out for a bit. “We need a plan,” he sputtered out at last.
“You’re telling me,” I said. “But just because you have a plan doesn’t mean you won’t be attacked when you least expect it. Your plan needs to include an idea of what to do when things don’t go according to plan.” I turned around to look out the back window of the truck, at the four other teens hanging out in the truck bed, their arms clutched to the edges. “If you pass a cop, you’ll probably get pulled over,” I pointed out.
“They’ll duck,” he said with the confidence of a captain regarding his soldiers.
“So… Who are they?” The two I’d met before aside.
“Introductions later,” he said. Then he went quiet, his glassy stare wholly focused on the road.
Well, I wasn’t really in the mood to deal with him, either.
He’d been wrong. I’d been right. And frankly, if I’d have known the merfolk had an arsenal of kick-butt teens at their disposal, I would have called for backup earlier.
It wasn’t my fault Calder had made it seem like they were all weaklings in n
eed of protection.
After a few minutes more, I finally recognized where we were headed. “I’m not going to Dad’s,” I said. “Not for a while, remember? Not until this is over.”
“I’m taking you to my place,” was all Calder said. His tone didn’t seem to allow for argument.
Fine. About time the merfolk pitched in and we figured this whole thing out.
We passed Dad’s house and I stared pointedly inside, the TV room window’s curtain open and Autumn on the couch beside Dad. Noelle walked in the room just as we went by, passing each of them a plate.
Something sharp coiled in my gut at the idea of missing all that for the next few days—weeks—months. Would this mess I’d gotten myself into ever end?
Why me? Why had Dad even gotten married to Noelle, moved us into that house?
It took a few more minutes of silence before I became aware that we weren’t just skirting the woods that ran behind Dad’s place, that the edges of the trees were cloaking a private driveway I’d never really taken notice of before. The gravel beneath the tires crunched as the merfolk in the bed started bouncing, a clunk every few seconds from their movements as we made our way between trees overhead and down, down the winding road.
At last it came into view, a veritable mini-mansion surrounded on three sides by trees, trees, and more trees—the backside of the house nestled a short distance from the river. As we pulled into a four-car attached garage, I looked out and noticed that the river continued in a trench about six feet wide all around the front of the mansion, the driveway leading to the garage and a parking area the only part of the property not cocooned in the water’s embrace. Something sparkled in the dying evening light off the roof and I realized it was outfitted with solar panels—so wide and big and endless, they practically replaced the roof entirely.
There were three other cars in the garage—none flashy, despite the house’s appearance, which explained why Calder’s rust bucket looked more at home in a junkyard—and there was at least a dozen more cars in the parking area that could have rivaled a small strip mall’s.
What did Calder’s family need with so many vehicles?
He switched off the ignition and the inaudible murmuring of the merfolk behind us became louder, a couple of chuckles ringing out loudly as the truck bed’s tailgate clanked open and one person after the other jumped out.
Calder didn’t move. He just stared down at his steering wheel.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a minute. The dampened laughter behind us seemed almost a mockery of the ghost-white color that popped against his tanned knuckles as he clutched the steering wheel.
“Okay. Thanks,” I mumbled.
“And…?” he said, not looking up.
“And what?” I muttered, wishing he would drop this already.
“Don’t you have something to say too?”
“Like what?”
He mumbled something that might have been a curse under his breath and let out a sharp breath in a huff.
“What was that?” I asked, with all the menace of a mother whose kid had just told her to shut up.
Calder slammed his fists against the steering wheel. “You put yourself in danger like that! And I had to put my people in danger to come rescue you!”
“Excuse me?” I searched down by my feet, intent on providing evidence of his own treachery, and realized I’d left my tote with my phone in it back on Paisley’s lawn. Crap. I settled for clutching the armrest so tight, I was working its bumpy texture into my skin. “Who was it who just ran without me? Oh, but you sent me texts to get out of there. So helpful. Maybe if I started jogging down the street, no vampire would catch up to me—oh, wait, they can cross short distances in a matter of seconds. Guess I’d be screwed.”
“I said I was sorry!”
“Yeah, and I was going to forgive you—can’t expect my merman prince to be any help in a fight—but you turn around and blame this on me? No way, buster.” I opened the door and jumped out, not in the mood for any of this. I didn’t have to be here. Excuse me if my eagerness to put an end to this battle sooner rather than later interfered with his cowardly plans to take it slow, slow, slow.
The sound of Calder’s door slamming shut told me he wasn’t done having this conversation, but I didn’t care. I lingered near the group of young merfolks, who had gathered in a circle in front of the modern-day moat. Bay had his arm dangling casually around the other guy in the group, a bulky redhead who stood tall, his own arms crossed over his chest. I realized with a start that he looked a lot like the diminutive redhead girl next to him—Laguna’s brother? The other girl along—her smooth, pale brown skin; long, black hair; and dark brown eyes reminded me a lot of Bay. Perhaps this was a brother-sister combo team.
“Hey,” I said as the conversation went quiet at my approach. “Thanks for helping back there.”
Bay grinned, showing off his pearly white teeth. “You’ve got guts.”
“Thanks,” I said again, my voice wavering, my knees a little wobbly under his too-bright smile. Dang, now I knew why he’d had this kind of effect even on practically-married Paisley.
Calder slipped in beside me, his brow furrowed as he glared down at me, the rest of whatever he had to say swallowed down visibly before he turned to the group. “Ivy, you know Bay and Laguna. This is Laguna’s brother, Llyr, and Bay’s cousin, Cascade.”
Brother-sister-cousin combo. Close enough.
“Hi,” I said again. My eyes fluttered over Llyr’s Central High letter jacket and a Central High ‘C’ that dangled from a keychain off of Cascade’s phone. “You’re all at Central?”
Cascade nodded, sliding her phone into the back pocket of her jeans. “Calder would have always been, too, but Queen Nerida thought it best he attend the school that other champion was going to. In case the opportunity arose for him to pick her as a champion.”
I sent Calder the stink eye. So he’d been trying to cozy up to Ember for years before I’d even been in play? How? I certainly didn’t pick up on her remotely knowing who he was before all of this. A chicken in battle and a chicken when it came to girls, apparently.
None of this was making me feel very special to him.
He better do something miraculous if he ever wants to make this up to me.
From the wince on Calder’s face, I wondered if I was sending my thoughts loud and clear. I double-checked to make sure that no part of his skin had come into contact with me.
Good. So he wasn’t reading my mind for real.
“That’s all in the past,” said Calder before clearing his throat. “And now we’re all going to be at Central High.”
The last light of the day was fading over the tops of the trees, and I jumped, my fists ready, at the loud clashes as one insanely bright light after another went on around the property. I tried to look up to get a look at the tall lampposts, but they were blinding.
“Cripes,” I said, squinting and blocking my eyes with my arm. “What’s that? The actual sun in a bottle?”
“Close,” said Calder, and I felt a hand on the small of my back. “UV ray lights. They go on at sunset.”
“Oh, that’s skin cancer waiting to happen.” I shook my head. No wonder most of these guys were so tan. I peeked out from below my arm to take in Laguna and Llyr—the pale redheads must have lived on sunscreen—but they were gone.
I dropped my arm to find the others milling about before the moat and removing their clothes.
“Wait, what?” I said, trying not to stare, but dropping my arm, my discomfort forgotten entirely.
Calder started removing his letter jacket. “Do you want to go in through the garage or in the basement? The basement is filled with water.”
“Whaa…?” I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I kind of was. “What about the front door?”
He pointed to it and I blinked, my eyes somehow getting used to this unholy brightness. “Can you jump six feet across to get there?”
“No?” I said, search
ing wildly for some way to get around the moat. A splash echoed out beside me and I saw Cascade was missing. Then there was another splash as Laguna dove in. They both bobbed their heads out of the moat for a moment, their wide eyes and bright smiles bringing such life to their faces.
Llyr was bending over, picking up shed clothing, and I realized that included pants as well as sweaters, underwear, and bras.
Somehow my eyes hadn’t caught sight of the stark-naked Bay beside him. I barely had time to dart my eyes away, only to watch him grab Llyr’s cheeks quickly and press his lips to the pale redhead’s quickly, that “see you soon, babe” type of kiss, before he jumped in beside the girls. Oh.
Grinning, Llyr picked up his clothing, too, and then the two mermaids and one merman swam past us, Cascade waving at us and Laguna sticking her tail out to wriggle her fins. They shot by faster than dolphins as they submerged themselves under what I realized was something like a short glass walkway running from the garage to the rest of the house.
“The garage way,” I said, though I was simultaneously enthralled at the idea of swimming into a house and wholly terrified by it. I spun around to find Calder, shirtless, his hands on his jeans’ zipper.
“Seriously?” I said. My hand shot out to grasp his arm—the thought What is he thinking? forefront in my mind—and then the world around us fell away.
The water, its comforting embrace, its cool touch somehow warm against my skin, igniting my core. I felt at home here. This would make things better. This would make it all go away.
I looked down and saw my hands were tanned, my arms muscular, my chest exposed. I was Calder. This is what I—he—was thinking.
Gasping, I dropped his arm and fell back into the moment. I almost forgot I could use mermaid ESP.
Calder smirked, maybe guessing what had happened, guessing what I’d seen. He stepped back and removed his shoes and socks, then he started kicking off his pants, and I had to turn around.
