Lies Beneath (27 page)

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I had never seen such ferocity in Lily’s eyes, and for a moment I wondered if Tallulah had met her match. But then Lily’s equilibrium faltered, and she swayed. She caught herself from falling and stiffened her legs against any doubt she might have about jumping. A second later, I could see Lily’s mind go blank. She was no longer thinking of jumping off the cliff, or of anything she was leaving behind. The muscles in her jaw flexed.

“Time’s up, Calder,”
Maris said from where she watched, her voice a combination of incredulity and mirth.
I strained against the mesh and did not shrink from the knots that tore my flesh. Thrashing and contorting, I wrestled with the net, which jerked upward and sliced my skin, scattering scales into the water like a shower of silver coins.
“Don’t do this!”
I raged.
“I don’t have a choice,” Lily replied, although it must have been in response to her own thoughts.
“No, you don’t,” Tallulah said. “Not really.”
“You do,”
I whispered.
“You always have a choice.”
“Come to me,” Tallulah said, her voice a seduction.
“If I do, that will save my dad?” Lily asked.
“I promise,” said Tallulah.
“And Calder will be free?”
“If he still wishes.”
With a gasp, Lily stepped off the edge— as easily as stepping through a doorway. Her hair streamed skyward as her body plunged. Her arms drew up alongside her ears, her toes pointed. She hit the water like an arrow, and the black water consumed her.
Tallulah dove, and now I watched Lily from my two

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sisters’ perspectives. Feathery particles floated like an underwater solar system as Maris lurked in the weeds and Tallulah counted out the seconds for Lily to run out of air. The bleakness of Tallulah’s mind shrouded my heart. Like never before, I felt how low she’d fallen— how far my rejection had depleted her emotional tank. Tallulah was on empty, and Lily promised to fill her beyond measure.

None of us had ever witnessed a martyr’s death before. Lily projected colors I’d never seen. Mesmerizing. Glorious. Unearthly. They intoxicated me, enraptured Tallulah, and lured Maris out of her hiding place. Tallulah sensed Maris encroaching on her prey, and she unleashed a feral snarl.
“Stay away!”
she screamed.
“The girl is mine to finish.”

A hissing sound rattled through Maris’s chest. Tallulah bared her teeth and lunged for Lily, sleek and quick like the oily snakes of legend. Together, they rocketed to the surface, and Lily gasped for air before Tallulah flipped and dragged her down again into a death spiral.

“ Are you watching, Calder?”
Maris seethed as she slunk back into the weeds, her mind writhing with jealousy as Tallulah clutched the glowing Lily to her chest.
“This is what happens when you betray your family.”

Another second passed, and Lily was as good as dead. Maris’s imagination flashed ahead to what she assumed would be my and Tallulah’s affectionate reunion. Maris had no intention of sticking around to witness
that.
With Lily’s sacrifice complete, there was no more reason for her to stay. Besides, watching Tallulah had triggered her own appetite. Maris took off in search of Pavati.

The vibrations of Maris’s retreat found me where I lay
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imprisoned, but I could not be bothered with her final thoughts. My mind was focused on Tallulah and the precious life between her hands. Heat flooded my body as Tallulah’s mind whirled into a crazed obsession, overflowing with the thrill of the kill. She tightened her grip on Lily’s chest as she prepared to absorb that vibrant rainbow of martyrdom.

“You are nothing,”
Tallulah said, though Lily could not hear her thoughts.
“Meaningless. Unworthy.”
Hatred boiled black and molten in my heart. I chewed at the ropes, getting a mouthful of sand. I ground the grains between my teeth, creating white- hot sparks that snapped on my tongue.
“You were never his,” Tallulah said. “Never. But now you are MINE.”
With that last word, my mind exploded with fury. A blue flash of electricity shot from my eyes and my heart. The sheer energy of my revolt raced down my arms to my fingertips, slashing through the ropes that bound my wrists, and shredding the net into a thousand pieces that shot, blazing, across the sky.
I didn’t know if I was swimming or flying. Water trilled like piano keys as it streamed past my ears. The smoldering tatters of my prison fell back to Earth. Fish scattered.
And then there was blood.
Far in the distance, Maris’s laughter faded into an eerie thin line. Tallulah shut her eyes. And Lily was no more.

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39

SILVER RING

I ’d never known Tallulah to break the skin, but this was not the Tallulah I knew. The image of Lily’s broken body fueled my rage and pushed me faster. I would kill my sister. Tallulah would know my pain. I bent my body toward the surface, the metallic scent of blood flooding my senses, and prepared myself for what I would see. But I had made all the wrong assumptions.

High atop the cliff, Jack Pettit stood at the rocky edge, the scope of a hunting rifle pressed to his eye. He pointed the barrel at Tallulah, whose lifeless arms floated an inch below

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the surface. Her silver tail hung low while a dark red line spiraled out of her body, then dissipated in the churning water. Tallulah’s blood filtered through the water, across my lips, coppery on my tongue: her macabre parting kiss.

My shoulders tensed and my muscles hummed with adrenaline. I suddenly couldn’t remember if Tallulah was to be hated or mourned. Despite everything, I felt only pity and wondered if Maris had encouraged Lulah’s misguided affections for me,
used them,
like any other tool in her box of manipulations. I could not abandon my sister’s body to the carrion birds. Or worse, Jack Pettit. Most importantly, I could not allow Tallulah’s body to be discovered.

Jack lowered the rifle, and his eyes locked on mine. “All mermaids ever do is hurt people,” he shouted. “Not anymore.” Then he raised the rifle again, centering me in his scope.

Before he pulled the trigger, another voice yelled,
“Stop!”
and Jason Hancock collided with Jack’s shoulder. There was a grunt and a clatter as the rifle slipped from Jack’s fingers, hit the rock, and fell into the lake. Jack was gone before the splash.

Hancock and I spotted Lily at the same time. Waves had pushed her against the face of the cliff— arms splayed wide, palms pressed back against the precipice. Her heart slogged out a lazy rhythm I could feel in the water. Her pale face tipped back against the onslaught of waves, like a battered water lily. “D- don’t,” she said.

Hancock swayed, and his legs trembled. He bent his knees in preparation for a jump his mind could not force his body to make.

“Jason!” I called up to him. “I’ve got her.”
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Why I said it, I will never know. If I thought my words would be reassuring, I was wrong. I’d forgotten how different I was— that I was not human, that my presence would not provide him comfort.

When Hancock saw my tail twitching and slapping at the waves, he yelled, “Stay away from my daughter!” and searched reflexively for the spot where the gun had gone in.

I held up my hands, palms out. “I won’t hurt her. I would never hurt her.”
“She’s gone!” he cried. “Oh Christ, she’s gone!”
I dove.
And I dove.
Down.
Deep.
Lily hung in suspended animation, her arms extended softly in front of her. The last blip of air— a thin line of bubbles— trailed from her nose to the surface. The lake was as silent as a grave.
Fifty feet separated us. It would take mere seconds to reach her. My fingers tingled with a new flow of electricity as I prepared to reach out and reinvigorate her— not really knowing if it would work. Another part of me wondered if it was better to let her die. Was a martyr’s death really so much worse than the life of a mermaid? Was it selfish of me to save her for myself? Could I condemn her to the life I hated, and could she still love me once the damage was done?
All these questions interlaced and melded together until they were a jumbled patchwork of hopes and fears. I reached for her, closing the last few feet. My fingertips charged with a brilliant blue light.

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There was a splash from above: Jason Hancock, submerged for the first time in his life, swimming with powerful, purposeful strokes to save his dying daughter. The man had no tail, but it was only a matter of time. I’d witnessed thousands of transformations, and I knew the signs. A silver ring already shimmered around Hancock’s throat, and his eyes glowed with an unnatural fire. He showed no awareness of the impending transformation. Only I bore witness.

My confusion was arresting. It caught me up short, if only for a second. Just enough time for a stone to skip across the surface. Really no time at all. But in my hesitation, two arms wrapped around Lily’s chest and pulled her to safety.

And they weren’t mine.
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40

NIGHTMARES

L ily’s lips parted silently, and her head dropped backward over someone’s arm.
With the jerk of her head, I woke from the dream, gasping beneath a canopy of trees, calling “Lily!” I tried to pretend it was only a dream, but I’d never felt such an allconsuming rage. I’d been shunned, set up, betrayed, and now left alone to die, brokenhearted. I begged anyone, anything who would listen to rewind time, to put things back the way they were before. I’d do anything.

But who was I kidding? There was no response, and I sank deeper.
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It had been twelve hours since Hancock pulled Lily from the water. Twelve hours since I witnessed his glowing eyes and the silver ring around his throat. Eleven hours since I’d reasoned out the truth. Tom Hancock hadn’t promised to sacrifice his son in exchange for his own life. He’d promised to return Mother’s son—
their
son— to her at the end of his first year.

Jason Hancock was my brother. It explained his yearning to return to the lake all these years. It explained his inability to break his promise to his father. It answered everything except why Mother had allowed us to grow up with a lie. What did she think we would do? She couldn’t have wanted us to kill her son. But Maris . . . Maris should have known the truth. These questions would have to wait for later. My mind was too tired, my heart too sick to think it through.

I was now lying in the thickest part of the forest, covered in a blanket of wet and decomposing leaves, preserving myself from the heat of the sun. I breathed in the smell of last year’s rot and let the little gray beetles climb over my body.

This was my penance for being such a worthless hero. There was no point to any of it. Why couldn’t Tallulah have just talked to me? Told me how she felt? I could have made her see reason. It didn’t have to end this way.

Each time I closed my eyes, the dreams returned: Hancock plunging into the water. Hancock pulling Lily from my fingertips. Hancock pumping her chest and blowing saving air into her lungs.

I heard myself pleading from the water,
“Please, Lily, Please.”
I measured each heavy second, counted along with Hancock as he pushed blood around her body, exhaled with him as he blew oxygen into Lily’s wasted lungs.

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The sound of Lily coughing and sputtering against her father’s knee was the only reprieve from this nightmare, but it plunged me into the next:

Me, dragging Tallulah into the depths of the lake, searching for a place to hide her body, digging a hole under a sunken pallet. Me, wedging her into the chasm and repositioning the pallet over her, closing my eyes to the shameful burial. Me, tucking in her arm that— even in death— reached for me. Me, squeezing her hand before letting her fingers slip away.

Then Lily’s head jerked back, and I was awake again, gasping—
Lily!
This continued for three days. Hour sixty- one. A new record.

From the cool shadows of the forest, I watched her bedroom window. There was no movement. No flip of the lights. No brushing against the curtains. I wanted to go to town to see if there was any talk. I doubted Hancock would have told anyone the truth, but even a lie would be worth knowing.

But I couldn’t have made it to town even if I tried. My body grew weaker with each minute of my self- imposed exile from the water. My skin pulled tight across my cheeks. My tendons thinned and turned brittle. My muscles cramped and sent stabbing pain from my thighs to my toes.

Defeated, all I could do was watch from the trees. I whispered Tennyson through cracked lips. When my skin split in long, thin lines across my cheeks and shoulder blades, I wondered how long it would take to completely mummify, and as my body dried, my mind slipped into hallucinations.

At first I thought the trees were watching me— or at least one thin, pale birch, which leaned forward with the breeze as if getting ready to speak, or wanting to speak but wondering if it should. A glimmer of reason reminded me that birch

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trees didn’t talk— even in my nightmares. I pushed myself to allow my mind to clear and my eyes to focus, but in retrospect I should have left my hallucination alone. It didn’t take long to realize it wasn’t a talking tree. The thin, pale figure was Maris. And she was coming closer.

“Stay away from me,” I croaked through my cracking larynx.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Maris said. “Obviously Tallulah wasn’t going to keep you in the net forever. Where is she?” She scanned the woods. “Why are you out here?”
I narrowed my eyes. She didn’t know? Of course she didn’t. Tallulah hadn’t seen the danger at the top of the cliff. She hadn’t seen Jack Pettit pull the trigger. Tallulah didn’t have time to alert Maris or even project her own fear or pain. The secret was mine to bear alone. For better or worse.
“You need serious help, Maris.” My voice was like chalk.
She picked at the bark on a tree, and the corners of her mouth twitched into a sad kind of acknowledgment. “I assumed you and Lulah would be riding off into the sunset by now,” she said.
“I won’t be riding off into any sunsets. With Tallulah or anyone else for that matter.”
She rolled her lips inward and nodded knowingly. “I guess that’s why I’m here. Isn’t there something you want to ask me?”
“Me?” I coughed.
“Yes, you. We struck a bargain. The deal is complete. I assume you want to collect.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Our bargain . . . ?”
“Okay. I get it if you want me to say this out loud. Will that make up for the lump on your head?” She almost sounded