by Amy McNulty
Calder let out a deep breath. Then he straightened in his seat. “Technically, if we could get her heart and mind in the right place, Ember could drop out of this battle with the help of the orb.”
“What?” My head was pounding. They’d made the “trial period” followed by the kissing-contract seem so final. “We can… We can still drop out?”
Calder shirked back, his eyelids fluttering. “You’d want Ember to drop out,” he said. “Right?”
I squeezed my fork tightly in my hand, feeling the cheap metal dig into my palm as my mind raced. I wanted Ember to drop out. Then I could drop out.
But that wouldn’t be what the merfolk wanted. “Without two champions, there’s no winner,” I said quietly. People were getting up from cafeteria tables all around us and a short bell went off overhead, signaling the approach of the end to this lunch period. But none of my group moved.
“Ember dropping out isn’t our goal,” said Calder quietly. “But it wouldn’t hurt if the vampires thought it was.”
“So what is the goal?” I demanded to know.
Calder leaned back in his chair and scratched the nape of his neck. “To get her to where the vampires can’t reach her and make her surrender.” His voice cracked at the end.
I supposed I could live with that.
“What are you playing?” Autumn peered over my shoulder at Mom’s kitchen table as she set my utensils down beside my plate, then tapped her own fork slowly over her lips. “Something like Pokémon Go?”
“What?” I asked. “I’m not playing anything. I’m texting.”
I went back to texting Calder, then quickly swiped it away and wrote more in a conversation with Paisley. Between classes and meetings at the merfolk mansion over the past few days, Calder and I had tossed out ideas—both for getting the orb and how to lure Ember to where the vampires couldn’t reach her. We’d settled on investigating whatever was going on with her dad if we failed to obtain the orb, though the merfolk didn’t seem to relish the idea of going anywhere near wherever it was the vampires congregated.
I wondered if there were anti-merfolk traps all over the vampires’ home, too. Though I couldn’t really think of a merperson weakness, other than the fact that they just weren’t as strong or as fast as vampires.
And they couldn’t see as well in the darkness.
Still, nothing as potentially prohibitive as sizzling in water or being blinded in sunlight.
Maybe the merfolk really could win this thing.
“You’re texting about playing,” said Autumn as she made her way around the table to her seat. “Collecting orbs with your boyfriend.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I gripped my phone a little too hard at the word ‘orbs,’ angry she’d been prying that much. “And stop reading my texts over my shoulder like a little Miss Nosy.”
“Mom, Ivy called me ‘nosy.’”
“I said you were like a little Miss Nosy. And what’s wrong with calling it like I see it anyway?”
Mom brought Autumn’s plate to the table. “All right, enough, you two.” She grabbed my plate and hers.
“I want pizza bagels,” said Autumn as she stabbed a spoon over and over into Mom’s attempt at beef stew. Rather than eating, she was swirling the gravy into her mashed potatoes, her other palm flat against her cheek, her eyes heavily lidded.
“We don’t complain about what food we’re given in this house,” said Mom as she returned to the table, my serving and her own in hand. A lock of her dark hair had long ago fallen out of its ponytail and hung down all wild and frizzy alongside her face. After putting the plates down, she almost sat and then turned with a start as something sizzled over at the stovetop. She ran to switch off a burner she’d left on.
“And we don’t use our phones at the table, young lady,” she said to me as she returned, as if she’d never taken a break to go avoid potential disaster.
Sighing, I caught sight of Paisley’s reply—she’d be there and she’d drag Lyric along, she’d had enough of handling her grumpiness on her own, and she was definitely tired of being cooped up with her grounded brat of a little brother. That satisfied me enough, so I leaned backward and put the phone on the kitchen counter behind me.
We had a plan. Tomorrow—Saturday, a week before Dad and Noelle’s wedding ceremony—the merfolk would sneak into Orin’s cabin to search for the orb while I kept him distracted at The Hollow Tree with Paisley and Lyric. Paisley had let slip on one of our texts that Raelynn—comfortably Lyric’s girlfriend once more—had preordered a book she was picking up this weekend, and, assuming Orin would have to be there since he now had zero employees, I’d parlayed it into our plans.
Besides, it would be nice to pretend this week had just been a weird dream and hang out with my best friends again. Even if it hadn’t been that long since we’d seen each other. Even if Central High was okay.
I still wanted my life back.
“Straighten up, Autumn,” said Mom as she took her first bite of her dinner. Her pinched lips betrayed her own feelings on the meal before she quickly recovered and slipped on a neutral mask. “Eat your supper. Or no dessert.”
Autumn growled and put the spoon—barely covered in mashed potatoes—to her mouth, staring at me.
I sighed and did the same. It wasn’t as bad as they were all making it out to be. A little burned. A crunch echoed in my head as I bit into what might have once been a carrot before it turned into blackened goo. Okay, so it wasn’t great.
Mom deserved a break. “Thanks for dinner, Mom,” I said, swallowing hard. I soothed my palate with a scoop of bland mashed potatoes.
“Thank you,” echoed Autumn, but she glared at me as she ate another bite, like I’d betrayed her somehow.
“So,” said Mom, her face screwing up with courage as she ploughed on through the meal, “I thought we girls would go somewhere nice tomorrow. Just the three of us. We haven’t done that in a while.”
Autumn brightened. “Chuck E. Cheese?”
“I was thinking more like the mall, pumpkin,” said Mom. “So Ivy wouldn’t be bored.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “I have plans with my friends—I promised I’d go. I haven’t seen them all week.”
Mom chewed her lip a little. “Okay, then,” she said, a sigh belying her disappointment. “Chuck E. Cheese’s, it is.” She smiled at Autumn, who let out a little excited squeal. She started scraping her plate, piling more of the stew onto her spoon and swallowing quickly, washing it down with chocolate milk every few bites.
“Are you coming golfing Sunday?” Autumn asked me after her glass was empty and her plate half-gone.
“What?” I asked, distracted by the feelings of guilt and anxiety and everything else flowing through me at once.
“Dad is taking Ember and me golfing,” she explained. “Noelle is selling napkins.”
“What?” I said. My spoon clattered with a thunk to the table.
“She sells napkins and straws and other restaurant supplies,” said Mom, as if that were what I had an issue with. “And office supplies. Even to my store—despite the fact that we sell our own things in bulk.” Mom grimaced as she took a sip of white wine she’d poured for herself in a coffee mug. “She sells supplies everywhere.”
“Yeah, I knew that, but why is she doing that on a Sunday? Why are you going golfing without her?” I didn’t know why, but the thought of Noelle being there made me feel safer somehow, like Ember wouldn’t try anything with her mom there—but with just Dad and Autumn, well, there was the perfect opportunity to snatch up some hostages.
Some bait more effective than a stupid glass rock.
Bait more like the dad of hers I’d kept bringing up to Calder and the others, but that they’d kept dismissing. Not that I wanted to kidnap a person over an orb, but if Ember was already planning to do some kidnapping of her own…
And this was war.
“Ember said you probably wouldn’t want to come with us,” said Aut
umn. She was done eating and she traced her left index finger over the back of her right hand, not looking up at me.
“I’m coming,” I said, standing from the table and snatching my phone off the counter behind me. “Excuse me,” I said to Mom, gathering my dishes even as I tucked the phone under my arm. “I’ve got homework to do.”
I felt the weight of Mom’s stare on me as I quickly rinsed the dishes and shoved them in the dishwasher.
“You have to clean the sink,” chided Autumn in her best tattletale voice. “Or the crumbs stick to it.” She was just echoing what Mom and Dad had told her a thousand times.
Grumbling, I slammed the phone down next to the sink and went to work with the sprayer, Autumn cocking her head and smiling broadly at me from the table the whole time.
She seemed a little too happy with herself.
But Mom didn’t notice, asking her about school and nodding as Autumn launched into a rambling story about her new favorite book and how she was going to have a friend who was “an expert” help on her diorama for it.
Her left index finger kept moving in slow circles over the back of her right hand.
Familiar tingles worked their way up from my toes and I realized I was getting too distracted while my hand was wet. Any second now, my feet were going to become fins—right in the middle of the kitchen. Focus, I told myself.
My phone buzzed and I shut off the faucet, quickly wiping my hands off before heading upstairs to relay everything to my team of kickbutt mermaid and mermen teen soldiers.
Chapter Seventeen
Meeting at Journey’s dad’s diner for lunch probably wasn’t the best idea, considering Journey kept insisting she’d had food poisoning during Homecoming. You know, instead of vampire venom.
Homecoming. It didn’t feel like a week ago. It felt like years ago.
But if I just got through this week—and I meant that literally—it might all be over.
“Still waiting on those friends?”
It was the waitress who’d been flirting with Calder the last time I’d been here, though she was too old for him, even if she was probably barely out of high school.
Something bristled in me at the idea of someone else pining after Calder, even though I could already tell that romantically, things weren’t going great. He wasn’t the prince I’d dreamed of—if I’d even believed in princes like that to begin with.
I sighed, not at what the waitress had asked, but she clearly took it that way.
“They’ll be here any minute,” I said, quickly pasting on a smile.
She nodded and went to check on a pale, blond man in a business suit sitting at the counter nursing a coffee. My first instinct when I’d laid eyes on him had been to look for a pair of sunglasses, but he wasn’t wearing any.
Still, something about him nagged at me. I twirled my straw in my cream soda, clinking the ice cubes against the glass.
A man I presumed to be Journey’s father—he shared her dark complexion and wore a chef’s apron he took off as he came out from the back of the restaurant—stood on the other side of the counter from the man and smiled broadly, shaking his hand and leaning over the counter to speak with him. I couldn’t hear what they were saying from here, but both became rather animated as they spoke.
The front door opened and I heard Lyric’s voice before I even turned to confirm my friends had pulled up to the restaurant. So much for keeping careful vigil, particularly with Laguna in the restroom and the other four merfolk on my team all gathered in the woods, waiting on my signal.
“Ivy!” Paisley slid in beside me and side-hugged me as if I hadn’t seen her in months. It might have felt that way.
“Hey,” said Lyric, her lips pinched. Raelynn beside her seemed quite a bit friendlier, her face brightening as she exchanged a simple “hello” with me.
Buried beneath the menus, my friends didn’t notice when Laguna popped up at the end of our table, her long, wavy red hair half behind her back and half in front of her shoulder.
“Whoa, hi,” said Paisley. She gave me a side eye. “Ivy didn’t tell us she was bringing anybody.”
“We have a project to work on later today,” I said, scooching over so Paisley could do the same.
“No Bay…?” asked Paisley, looking over her shoulder. I grinned. I’d rarely seen her enamored with anyone but Grey before. Maybe she had a thing for rhyming names.
“No,” I replied. “He and Calder had stuff to do.”
I’d never seen Paisley paste on a sour expression so quickly, not even when her brother was acting like a brat.
“Hey,” grunted Lyric, not looking up from her menu.
“Hello, I’m Raelynn,” said Rae, all business and reaching her hand across the table. “Lyric’s girlfriend.”
“Laguna,” the secret mermaid answered quietly, not taking the hand offered to her.
“We go to Central together,” I explained when it was clear no other explanation was forthcoming from the redhead. Her eyes weren’t focused on the group, instead darting this way and that, and zeroing in on the man at the counter still talking to Journey’s dad.
“Yeah, Lyric’s been complaining about your transfer all week.” Raelynn pinched Lyric’s cheek and Lyric leaned away, her lips pressing into a fine, white line.
Paisley leaned in to whisper into my ear. “It gave them something to focus on other than themselves, I’d wager.”
The waitress returned, the door to the back of the restaurant swinging open wide to reveal Journey with a clipboard talking to an old woman, and I noticed Laguna’s hand clench on her lap.
We went around the table and placed our orders, and Laguna had to be snapped out of whatever she was thinking of to order her fish fry.
Merfolk certainly had no qualms about eating the denizens of the sea.
The conversation delved into something Grey and Ashton had done this week that I’d missed, but I was more focused on the moment when Raelynn turned over her shoulder to wave to Journey’s dad and he waved back, patting the blond man on the back before retreating into the kitchen, slipping on his apron as he went. Our waitress refilled the man’s coffee.
A minute later Journey came out with the first couple of plates of food. She still looked sick in my opinion, a touch pallid, but her smile was dazzling, her poise as straight and confident as if she were a model on a runway instead of a fill-in waitress holding a giant sprig mix salad and a tuna sandwich. She slipped the dishes in front of Lyric and Raelynn respectively. “Hey, Rae,” she said, her tone as musical as her words.
“Hey! Oh! I have a question about the Chile debate prep.” Raelynn dug into her purse to pull out her phone just as the waitress came out with three dishes balanced precariously between her arms, maneuvering around Journey and sliding them in front of Laguna, Paisley, and me.
“Babe, can you do the homework talk at another booth?” Lyric flicked through her greens with her fork. “It’s getting crowded here.”
Journey’s eyebrows arched, but it wasn’t until her eyes darted quickly to me that her expression soured somewhat. She backed up as Raelynn slid out of the booth and started chatting animatedly about GDP and tariffs and other things they discussed for Model U.N. in an empty booth a few tables away.
Laguna’s fingers traced over her butter knife handle as she watched them go, and I wondered—not for the first time—if there really was something to be worried about as far as Journey and Devam were concerned.
If I could just somehow casually brush against her.
As if there’d ever be a scenario here where I needed to touch her. But I wanted to make use of that subconscious mindreading trick and find out what she really knew.
“She’s not going to even eat her sandwich at this rate,” said Lyric, shaking her head and taking a bite of her salad. “Whenever she gets all geeky like that, there’s no reaching her.”
I frowned. We were kind of on a schedule to get to the bookstore. True, I wanted to spend time with my friends, but the so
oner this was all over, the sooner I could get back to all of this without worrying about a pair of fangs lurking around every corner.
Paisley cleared her throat, probably as tired of Lyric’s sniping as I was starting to be. “So how are things with Calder?” She nudged her arm against mine as she dipped her chicken strips into a tiny cup of honey mustard sauce.
I opened my mouth. I’d spent the better part of the week being mad at him. I was beginning to empathize more with Lyric after all.
My instincts had been right before this. Relationships were nothing but trouble.
But whatever was going on between us, that didn’t mean I’d give up on his people or what I’d promised to do.
…Right? The orb could undo the contract. They hadn’t wanted to let me know that.
I shrugged. “We’ve both been too busy to do much,” I said. I hoped that would be the end of that.
Paisley had to almost singlehandedly handle the conversation from there, Lyric throwing her a sassy bone once in a while and me snapping to answer a question whenever Paisley directed her attention to me. Laguna said nothing, only nodding once when Paisley tried to make her feel included.
Just as we were all just about finishing up our meals, Raelynn finally came back to the table, her dazzling white teeth on full display.
“You geeky nut.” Lyric gently pounded her shoulder with a fist. “It’s been, like, twenty minutes. Everyone else is finished already.”
Raelynn’s only reply was to shrug and quickly dig into her sandwich. The waitress came back just as Journey headed toward the bathrooms Laguna had used earlier.
This could be my chance.
“Anything else I can get you?” the waitress asked. “Pie? A root beer float?”
“Oo, well, as long as Raelynn’s still eating, maybe some apple pie à la mode?” Paisley’s tone seemed questioning.
“Oh, like you’d have passed up on that even if she hadn’t still been,” said Lyric. But she was smiling. Her mood was at least improving, even if she still directed cold energy my way every time she looked at me.
