Catch of a Lifetime (34 page)

   With the flip of the hand Logan remembered so well, Goran commanded the others to get back to work, then headed to the rear entrance of the tent where the caravan Logan had called home waited.

Logan let the flap fall in place behind him as he left the big top hours later, feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. And not about Michael's safety, though he was confident in that.

   "But, Papa, I can climb higher." Logan smiled at Michael's plea. How well he remembered saying the same thing at that age.

   "You prove to me you do this right, then you go higher. Not before." Logan mouthed the words as Goran said them, remembering them as well.

   His father had finally put down roots. His brothers, now grown men with families, had taken over the man agement of the family business. Aunts and uncles and cousins… they were all so entwined Logan couldn't ask for a better place to leave his son, especially since they'd accepted Michael—and him—unconditionally.

   Goran, Nadia, his brothers and sisters, they'd all been glad to see him. Not one had begrudged him taking off when he'd been a teenager, other than for the scare and sorrow he'd put in Nadia's heart.

   Being a parent himself, Logan didn't think he could ever make it up to her, but he promised them—and himself—that he'd visit often.

   With what he was about to do, however, he hoped he'd have the opportunity to make good on that promise.

"HE'S ASKED ABOUT YOU." MARIANA SHUT THE DOOR BEHIND her with a swish of her fluke and set a tray of food on Angel's bedside table.

   Angel rolled over on the mattress and looked at her. "He has? Who'd he ask?"

   "Ginger."

   Angel groaned. "Great. That bird doesn't like me."

   "True." Mariana dipped a piece of shrimp in the mango puree. Ginger
didn't
like Angel—which was why the bird had been more than happy to share that little bit of gossip with
her.
The bird knew the news would make its way back to Angel. But rubbing saltwater in the wound only hurt on land. In the sea, things were different.

   And about to get a whole lot more different if Mariana could pull it off.

   "So? What did Rod do when he heard Logan was asking about me?" Angel took the shrimp and popped it into her mouth.

   "Rod doesn't exactly know."

   Angel sat up and flicked her tail over the edge of the mattress. "Why not?"

   Because Mariana didn't want to get her sister's hopes up or jeopardize her plans. "You said yourself that Ginger doesn't like you. She came to me to gloat."

   Angel flopped back and punched a starfish pillow— who squealed.

   "Oh, sorry, Jenny." Angel plumped the starfish back up, then stuck her on the wall. Jenny suctioned herself there. "So, what did Logan say?"

   Mariana nudged Angel's tail out of the way and took a spot on the bed. "When Ginger told him you were alive, he wanted to come to the trial. To testify."

   Angel sucked in a boatload of water. "He can't. They'll kill him."

   "Or you."

   "No, Mariana. No. I won't have him risking his life for me. What about Michael? Who'll take care of him? You know The Council. They won't let a Human out alive."

   Exactly what Mariana had thought.

   But still… if he was volunteering… and wasn't that what Ginger giving him directions to Atlantis had been all about? The flamingo thought she'd hurt Angel, but Mariana hoped it'd be the way to set her sister free.

   "But Angel—"

   "No." Angel pushed off the bed, swam to her closet, and started rummaging inside, tossing clothing all over the place. "Look, I knew what I was getting into when I started this. And I certainly didn't risk my life for him to lose his. It was pure luck that I escaped the implosion and collapsing roof at Ceto's palace. Otherwise any talk of Logan coming here would be moot."

   Mariana swam over and started picking up Angel's mess. "But see? Your survival could be divine interven tion. The gods staged that oil spill so Rod wouldn't be able to convene The Council until today. They wanted you to live."

   Angel snorted. "If the gods had wanted me to survive so badly, they would have allowed emergency Travel Chamber usage to go anywhere I wanted instead of only one direction—home. I'd be in Florida with him, instead of facing a death sentence, and, again, this would all be moot." She held up one of the Human shirts. "What do you think of this one?"

   "I think you're nuts."

   
With him
. Angel's choice of words spoke volumes… though not the kind The Council would want to hear. The Tritone family had lost enough of its members to Humans—which was Rod's argument against Angel going in the first place.

   But Rod had fallen in love and no one gave him grief about it. Hades, he'd even earned his High Councilman position because of it. Why couldn't Angel have the same chance—both at life and love?

   Much as it pained Mariana to imagine her sister
out
there,
with a Human, it was better than the alternative.

   Angel picked an oyster off the serving tray. "Why am I nuts? It's a pretty top."

   "It's from
Humans. Rubbing The Council's face i
n your transgression isn't such a good idea when facing them for your life, Ang. You're going to set them on their tails before your lawyer even opens his mouth."

   Angel popped the oyster in her mouth, then spit the pearl from it across the room into the Ming vase Mariana had found for her graduation. The pearl made a nice tin kling sound as it circled down to the bottom.

   Mariana made a not-so-nice gurgling sound. "You don't have a lawyer, do you?"

   Angel shrugged. "Why bother? I've already been tried and convicted anyway. Figured I might as well save this family and the citizens the added expense. It's not as if I have a prayer of getting out of this. I mean, I
did
talk to Michael. I did turn Logan."

   "Zeus, Ang. Do you have a death wish or what?" And what did it say about Mariana that she was going to at tempt to save Angel's life with a move that could very well put her in the same boat? But, Hades, she wasn't going to let her sister go down without a fight.

   "Of course I don't. But I'm not going in there to apologize, Mariana. I did what I'm accused of, but with good reasons. First and foremost, let us not forget Harry was all over my tail. Was I really supposed to just tread water and let him get me?"

   Mariana could argue that if Angel hadn't gone in the first place, none of this would be happening, but she wouldn't. She'd
thought
Angel's lawyer would come up with a compelling argument, but obviously her sister was going to ride her seahorse into the sunset on this one.

   Mariana couldn't accept that.

   "I did the best I could. I even got some useful infor mation out of the experience." Angel pulled the top over her head.

   Mariana piled the clothing Angel had tossed onto an odd piece Angel had collected. A spinning wheel. It looked more like an instrument of torture to Mariana. She'd heard the stories about what that needle could do. "Is that information enough to save your life? Because I can't watch it, Ang. I can't watch them do that to you."

   "It might be if I had it with me. Unfortunately, I left the journal back at Logan's, so who knows?" Angel's breath hitched and her voice lowered. "But I'm certainly going to try."

   Finally, the emotion Mariana knew was beneath all the bravado. Angel was as scared as the rest of the family—which was why Mariana couldn't just lie down and rest on the bottom.

   She didn't hold out much hope for Angel's argument, but if The Council heard the words straight from the Human's mouth, perhaps then they'd listen.

   And allow Angel to live.

LOGAN CHECKED THE COORDINATES GINGER HAD GIVEN HIM, then looked overboard. Somewhere down there, beneath the island of Bermuda, Atlantis waited.

   He dropped anchor, wondering how much damage that did to the reef, but if this all played out like Ginger had outlined, that would be the least of his worries.

   Grabbing his scuba gear, Logan scanned the area. A perfect Bermuda day. Sunny with wispy clouds. Logan could see for miles. A pair of boats were well beyond shouting distance, and others farther past them. Windsurfers sailed near the shore, and that party cruise had been headed north. He'd rented the boat for the week, so it wasn't expected back until then, and no curious Jet Skiers were around to take note of how long he'd be gone. His arrangements were either good subterfuge or suicide.

   He hoped it wasn't the latter.

   One more look at the map and the coastline confirmed that he was at the right spot. Ginger had even mentioned the area off the bow where the greens of the shallows meshed with the blues of the deep in a ninety-degree angle.

   Time to do this.

   His ability to breathe under water had disappeared the day after he'd stepped back on land, so Logan had to don scuba gear. He made sure to include a knife—something he'd never again be in the sea without—then slid into the temperate water around the island and hoped to God this worked.

   And that Ceto wasn't lying in wait for him.

   Ginger hadn't been able to find out any information on what had happened to the sea monster. Logan hoped that meant she'd been crushed beneath thousands of pounds of marble, coral, and statues, though he wouldn't mind getting a shot at her.

   A kaleidoscope of tropical fish surrounded him— small, large, darting, meandering, chasing each other all over the coral reef—and the sea was suddenly more alive than it'd looked from above. Sea fans, anemones, corals… They were just as colorful as the fish swim ming among them.

   Bermuda was beautiful; it only made sense that Atlantis would be here. Sense in a there-really-are-such things-as-mermaids way.

   Logan swam out to where green water met blue, won dering how he was going to do this. Ginger had told him where Atlantis was but not how to get in. Bermuda was a cave-diving tourist destination; there had to be some trick to getting inside the submerged city, or Humans would have found it years ago.

   Suddenly, the largest school of jacks he'd ever seen surrounded him, clumsier than he remembered ever seeing jacks. They bumped his shoulders, his head, his tank, his mask…

   They were trying to tell him something.

   Damn. If only he could breathe under water, he'd be able to understand.

   But … Wait. Angel had said that every fish spoke English.

   What'd he have to lose at this point other than his dignity? And since there was no one around to risk even that, he took a deep breath, then pulled the regulator from his mouth.

   "I need to get to Atlantis," came out as a series of bubbles and mumbles, but it was enough to catch a few of the fishes' attention.

   He tried again. "I'm looking for Angel, the mermaid. She saved me from Ceto."

   Bubbles appeared from the fish. Answers to his questions?

   Sadly, he couldn't understand them, and whatever charades they started to do got lost as his mask fogged.

   Damn change in air pressure. People weren't sup posed to speak under the sea, so why should the mask be designed for it?

   Cursing—which only fogged it up even more— Logan shoved the regulator back in his mouth and ripped off the mask. He was going to have to go to the surface to clear it.

   Logan kicked his flippers to head up—

   Only to be grabbed by something from below.

ANGEL SWAM INTO THE COLISEUM TO THE MURMURINGS OF the assembled members of Atlantian society. Octopi, eels, fish, crustaceans, Mers, Council members. They were all there, every stone seat in the circular building filled.

   A public lynching.

   The gold walls of the Atlantian cavern were bathed in the glow from the massive magma wells ringing the circu lar building. A gently waving, multihued carpet of every species of anemone known to Man and Merkind covered the marble floor, while thousands of sea beings stared at her with antennae, eyes, or some version thereof.

   A convened Council used to intimidate her, having all the pomp and circumstance of an entity that dated back thousands, if not millions, of
selinos
. But now that The Council was convened for her, interestingly, she wasn't intimidated.

   Seriously, what more could they do to her? She'd almost cost Michael his life with his father, had almost cost Logan his life, period, and she'd broken the cardi nal rule of the Mer World. This trial was a no-brainer. Everyone knew the punishment for letting Humans know about Mers. It was the same as turning a Human—which she'd also done.

   Death.

   Funny how she'd never thought the law would apply to her. After all, she was a member of the royal family. Eligible for Immortality. A scientist preparing for the role she would play in Atlantian government to help bet ter their world.

   How clueless she'd been in her altruism.

   Rod floated behind the coral table at the far side of The Coliseum with the rest of The Council, including his wife, Valerie. The rest of the Tritone family—Reel and his wife, Erica; Mom and Dad; her younger sister, Pearl—sat in the seats behind The Council. Everyone except Mariana. Her older sister was taking this harder than any of them.

   It warmed Angel's heart but also added more guilt to her shoulders.

   From a purely scientific standpoint, however, it was interesting how she was thinking more about her family at this moment than about herself. But then, she had an almost disembodied detachment from the trial. As if she were outside her body, but… not. For some reason, she could muster no horror at these proceedings, no worry, no anxiety. It was as if she'd already consigned herself to death.