Between the Lines (11 page)

Oliver looked from one to the other. It was possible that the chest held riches he could use to bribe whoever had taken Seraphima. But it was equally possible that he’d never have the chance to leave this cave alive.

“A wedding feast,” Marina cried. “And I will be the bride!”

“No, Sister,” Ondine screamed. “You speak too soon.”

“You are both mistaken,” Kyrie said. “It’s my turn this time.”

This time?
Oliver thought. How many other men in the kingdom had fallen to a watery death at the hands of these vile
creatures? He had to find a way out, and it had to be fast, because he was starting to see stars at the edges of his vision again.

Kyrie wrapped her long fingers around his shoulders and kissed breath into his lungs. “You see, my love,” she whispered. “You need me just as much as I need you.”

If this was what love was, maybe it wasn’t worth the trouble. Oliver had grown up with a mother who’d lost half her heart and had never been able to replace it. These mermaids had been just as broken by love, albeit in a different way.

“I’m hardly dressed for a wedding,” Oliver demurred.

“We have just the thing,” Ondine said. She swam toward the driftwood door and slid open the latch. As the door swung on its hinges, a tumble of skeletons—hundreds stacked and thrown askew, some still rotting with flesh peeling back from the bone—drifted into the cave. Oliver screamed, backing up against Kyrie, who stroked his hair and kissed his neck. “Don’t be shy,” she said, pushing him forward.

The mermaids swam around one of the corpses, which was decked in the finest of white royal robes, sewn with golden thread. Oliver hardly even saw the finery, however. His gaze was glued to the face of the dead man, still frozen in horror.

“I think,” Marina said, “it will be a perfect fit.”

Behind him, Kyrie shrieked. “Take that off!” she cried. “It’s mine.” Oliver spun to find her fighting Ondine for a tattered snatch of veil. The mermaids’ fingernails clawed the fine fabric to shreds as they argued.

“Ladies,” Oliver said. “I don’t love any of you.”

The mermaids turned, eyes flashing red in unison. “How dare you?” Ondine spit.

Marina crossed her arms. “You think you’re too good for us?”

“No,” Oliver said simply. “I just don’t think you love me either. Isn’t that what true romance is supposed to be about? Finding the person who’s your soul mate. Someone you dream about at night. Someone whose name is on your lips when you wake up in the morning.”

Seraphima,
Oliver thought.

“I’m not your destiny. I’m just someone who happened to fall into the ocean.”

Marina shrugged. “Grooms are few and far between,” she said. “We can’t afford to be picky.”

“What if I could promise you each a faithful groom? One so delighted to be in your presence that he’d never leave?”

Kyrie’s eyes flashed green with curiosity. “How would you find such men?”

“Well,” Oliver said. “I’d need my compass back, for starters.”

The mermaids circled, creating a small whirlpool as they whispered, heads bent together. “We need to be sure you’re telling the truth,” Marina said.

“You have my word,” Oliver vowed. He was starting to run out of oxygen. Whatever happened was going to have to happen soon.

“We need something a bit more concrete.” Kyrie’s hair swirled
around his chest, pulling him toward a giant pink clamshell that was filled with thousands of keys. Some were rusted, some were covered with seaweed. Some were still shiny, as if they’d just dropped into the ocean this morning.

“Honesty is as rare as a man who can breathe underwater,” Ondine said. “Pick a key.”

Oliver reached into the half shell and waited, letting the keys sift through his fingers, hoping one might burn its silhouette onto the palm of his hand.

He fought to stay conscious. “What happens if it’s the right key?” he gasped.

“Then you’re truthful. You get all the riches inside, and we give you back your compass so you can find us mates.”

“And if it’s the wrong key?”

Kyrie shrugged. “The oxygen spell wears off. And you drown.”

How on earth would he know which key to pick? One wrong choice here would be his last. Oliver blinked, struggling to swallow his panic.

“Come now,” Ondine snapped, leaning over the half shell. “We don’t have all day.” Annoyed, she overturned the bowl of keys, scattering them into the sand at Oliver’s feet.

There was the tiniest flicker in his fading vision—perhaps a ray of sun slanting through the sea, maybe the reflection of a fish’s silver scale. At any rate, it drew Oliver’s attention to his father’s compass hanging around Ondine’s neck.

Very slowly, as he watched, the needle began to jump, quivering
to the right until it seemed to be an arrow directly indicating one key that had drifted and fallen a distance away from the others.

It points you home,
his mother had said.

Oliver leaned down and grabbed that key. He felt his vision fading as he slid the key into the padlock. It slipped easily, effortlessly, and the hinge fell open. A black cloud of squid ink billowed from inside.

The contents were not gold, or jewels, or anything that would be considered treasure by any stretch of the imagination. The mermaids brought him, one by one, each item from inside the chest.

A fire extinguisher.

A megaphone.

A shark’s tooth.

Oliver blinked, his vision blurred. “But these aren’t riches,” he forced out.

“What makes a treasure a treasure,” Marina replied, “is how rare a find it is, when you need it the most.” She reached toward Ondine and ripped the compass from her sister’s neck, pressing it into Oliver’s palm.

Oliver considered her words. And as he passed out, he thought that maybe this was the best advice one could ever be given about love.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW ABOUT DELILAH M
C
PHEE:

She bites her nails when she’s nervous.

She sings off-key.

She mispronounces the word
schedule
in her flat, odd accent, yet insists that I’m the one who can’t speak correctly.

She has the most mesmerizing eyes. It’s as if she needn’t speak at all, since everything she’s feeling is written within them.

“You’re not listening,” Delilah says.

After my spending hours without her, we are finally together again. It is a little difficult to hear her, because she’s blasting music from that magical box
called a radio, in the hopes that it will keep her mother from hearing her talk out loud to me. Behind Delilah’s shoulders I can see the familiar bits of what I know is her bedroom—pink walls, pink lampshades, pink everything. At the edge of my vision is a fringed, furry throw pillow. And yes, it’s pink.

“You keep distracting me,” I tell her.

“All I’m doing is sitting here talking to you!”

“Exactly,” I say, and I smile at her.

I like knowing that when I smile that way, it makes her cheeks go red. It’s interesting that the same thing happens when I smile at Seraphima, but I don’t find that nearly as charming.

I am looking at the way Delilah’s eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks and trying to decide if her hair is the color of milk chocolate or polished teak as she natters on and on. “I completely understand why you feel trapped,” Delilah says. “But it’s better to be trapped and alive—whatever that means inside a book—than free and dead.”

Teakwood, definitely. Or maybe walnut.

“If something as simple as a spider didn’t make it out of this book, how do you think a human being is going to fare? What if I pull you out of the book and you’re only… a word?”

She gets up from where she is lying on her bed, talking to me, and starts pacing back and forth. From this perspective, I can see more of the room behind her: a mirror with pictures affixed around its edge, of Delilah and the girl she was speaking with earlier today; of Delilah with her arms spread wide at the top of a mountain; of Delilah and her mother making funny faces. I think that if I were to get out of this book, one of my first orders of business would be to steal one of those photos, so that I could always have her with me.

The other thing I can see from this angle is the way every inch of her figure is quite visible in the odd clothing she wears—some sort of blue hose with several rips and tears. They’re so tight it’s as if she’s practically wearing nothing.

“Why aren’t you wearing a dress?” I blurt out.

Delilah stops moving and faces me. “What? What does that have to do with anything?”

“What you’re wearing is indecent!”

She snorts. “It’s a whole lot more decent than what some of the girls in my school wear,” she says. “Relax, Oliver. They’re just jeans.”

I realize that although I’ve seen Readers in strange garb before, they are usually so close to the page that I haven’t marked the differences between their clothing and mine. On Delilah, though, I can’t help but notice.

“As I was saying,” she continues pointedly, “I really wish I could help you. But I’ve been thinking about you all day—believe me, you’re
all
I’ve thought about—”

At this, I grin.

“—and I don’t think I could ever forgive myself if I were the one who killed you.”

My head snaps up. “
Killed
me? Why the devil would you do that?”

“Oliver, have you listened to
anything
I’ve just said? I can’t risk having what happened to that spider happen to you.” She sits down, looking into her lap. “I only just found you,” Delilah says. “I can’t lose you now.”

In the fairy tale, I’ve never had to worry about death. I know the mermaids will not let me drown. I know I’ll always beat the dragon. I know I’ll always defeat Rapscullio.

But this Otherworld, it doesn’t work the same way. There are no second chances. Death, here, is for real.

It hits me with the force of a blow: the understanding that I’d rather die than know I might never have a chance to truly, finally, kiss Delilah McPhee.

Maybe the reason I’ve never died in this story is that I’ve never had something worth dying for before.

“We just need to think of a different escape method,” I suggest. “There has to be another way.”

I hear Delilah’s mother calling her name, and all of a
sudden the book is slammed shut. I wait a few moments, in the hope that Delilah might come back.

When she does, it’s on page 43 once again. “Sorry,” she says. She is hurrying around her room, locating a rucksack and stuffing a towel inside. “I have to go to swim practice.”

“I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it quickly,” I reply. “I did.”

“I
know
how to swim,” Delilah says. “It’s a sport. I’m supposed to be doing it for fun. But when you come in last place every time in the individual medley, it’s hard to find the joy.”

“Then why do it?”

“My mother thinks it will help me fit in.”

“You should just tell her you’d prefer not to.”

She pauses and looks at me. “Why don’t you tell
your
mother off when she gives you a hard time?”

“That’s different. I was written that way.”

“Well, believe me,” Delilah says. “Being a teenager isn’t all that different from being part of someone else’s story, then. There’s always someone who thinks they know better than you do.”

I offer my most charming grin. “You could stay with me instead.”

“I wish.” Delilah sighs. “But that’s not going to happen.”

“Then take me with you.”

“Water and books don’t mix very well.”

“DELILAH!” Her mother’s voice booms in the background once again.

And so she closes the book, more gently this time, and abandons me.