Sleeping with the Fishes (6 page)

Yes, but for what?

He floated thoughtfully,
then
zipped past her with a powerful flex of his tail. She turned to watch him go by, and suddenly he was behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist where her scales met flesh. She felt a tingle that shot from her brain straight down her spinal cord and… lower.

She tossed an elbow back and caught him in the throat, which accomplished several things: he coughed explosively, sending out a stream of bubbles, let go, swam back, and let her get some distance.

Hands off, chum.

You are unlike any of my people, Little Rika. I cannot resist you.

Try hard, chum. And it's Fred. Got it?
F-R-E-D
.
She swam irritably past: him, keeping an eye on his hands.

It is unfair that you have an affectionate nickname for me and I am not allowed one for you.

Affectionate
… ?
Oh, hell.

Last time: what do you want? Cough up or I'm back on tile before you can say "
ow
, my balls!"

My what?

Chum!

All right, Little Rika, do not distress yourself.

You haven't seen me distressed yet.

The bipeds are poisoning the harbor waters.

As far as thunderous announcements went, that one was weak.

She shrugged.
That's what bipeds do
.

My father, the High King, has charged me with finding you and enlisting your help to stop it.

Your father, the High King, can take a long walk off a short
—

As one of our subjects, you are thus charged to aid us until our task is finished.

Well, lucky
lucky
me.

Wait. What had Pearson been babbling about?
Toxins in the harbor?

Oh, hell.

Can you walk around on land for a few hours?

I do not like the surface
, he admitted, swimming circles around her (literally),
but I can tolerate the environment as long as I must
.

Swell. Because I'm thinking there's someone you should meet.

She shot up to the surface, switched back to legs, and climbed out. She heard
Artur
come up behind her but luckily for his continued good health, he didn't try to grab her again.

"Someone like you?" he asked, almost eagerly.

"No," she replied. "Not like me at all."

Jones stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Fred and who she was sitting with.

"Whoa," he said by way of greeting.

"Jonas, Prince
Artur
of the Black Sea. Art, Jonas."

"Prince what of the
what
?
Oh my God! Your hair!
Your eyes!"
The prince courteously stood and Jonas wrung the man's hand like Fred would wring a wet washcloth, craning his neck to stare up at the man. "Have you thought about modeling?"

"I do not know what that is."

"Didn't you get my message?" Fred bitched. "I told you our dinner thing was cancelled."

"Oh, you always try to punk out on me. I didn't think you had, you know, an actual real reason. Like a date!"

"It's not a date," Fred began, but Jonas was already sliding into the seat beside Fred, forcing her to move over or be squashed.

"Hi, I'm Jonas, like the lady said. So, what's up with you, dude?"

"Bipeds are poisoning our waters."

Jonas arched a blond brow and turned to Fred. "So you were saying the other day. What's going on?"

Fred shrugged.
"Nothing new."

"Nothing new?
Have you
seen
this guy?" he cried as if
Artur
wasn't sitting three feet away. "Is he like you? He's a
mer
-dude, ism' he?"

"Yeah," she sighed.
"A
mer
-dude."

The waiter stopped by the table, set a tray of sushi in front of
Artur
and a bowl of
miso
soup in front of Fred, took Jonas's order, and glided away.

"So again with this biped thing?"
Jonas demanded. "What are you talking about?"

Artur
quietly ate his sushi (with his fingers, she noticed; probably didn't get much practice with chopsticks at the bottom of the ocean) and said nothing. Fred assumed it was up to her to explain.

"Jonas, I
know
the bipeds are wrecking the planet. You—they—can't help it. As far as they're concerned, they don't feel the sea; it's just something else to claim and fish and gut and leave dead."

"Uh," Jonas said. He paused, then, again: "Uh."

"Quite right,"
Artur
agreed with his mouth full.

"Come on," he protested. "We're not that bad."

Both Fred and
Artur
stared at him stonily.

Jonas, the chemical engineer, couldn't keep up the facade. "Okay, we're pretty bad. We wreck the planet and we're not potty trained. But I don't think anybody's dumping bad stuff in the water to—I mean, on
pur
—uh…" He trailed off, no doubt hearing the absurdity of his words.

Fred sucked down half her
miso
soup, waited to see if her tongue would blister, then said, "I still don't know why you want my help. I'll be frank—"

"Not Fred?"
Artur
teased, tossing a chunk of tuna sushi into his mouth.

"—and tell you I'm not real interested in solving your little mystery. I just
wanna
feed the fish and stay out of my mom's living room for the rest of my life. Like I said to Dr, Pearson—tried to say—it's not really my field."

"The sea belongs to you as well."

"Oh, sure.
All the
mer
-guys would welcome me with open arms."

"They would." In went some halibut. "And if they did not, they would answer to me. Would you like some? It's very fresh."

Fred shuddered and slurped more
miso
. "No."

"Fred's allergic to seafood," Jonas explained.

"You—you are?"
Artur's
jaw was sagging, which annoyed her to no end. "But—but what do you
eat
?"

"Everything else."

"So, your plan is… what?" Jonas was tapping his fingers on the table in an irritating rhythm. "You're
gonna
be the Dr. Watson to his Sherlock?"

Fred shuddered; she couldn't help it.

"You don't want to?"

"I don't care."

"So give him the old heave-ho."

"Apparently," she said dryly, "I'm one of his subjects and have to do whatever he wants."

"Since when has
authority
stopped you from being you?"

"Well. How weird is it that in forty-eight hours two guys
show
up both bitching about the same thing?"

"You're
gonna
team him up with the water fellow?"

"That's the plan."

"What is a water fellow?"

"Eat your dead fish," she told
Artur
. To Jonas: "Let them team up and solve the mystery. Let me get back to work. Everybody's happy."

Jonas was holding his head in his hands. Fred ignored it.
Artur
looked slightly alarmed. "Good sir, what ails you?"

"
Artur
, could you give us a minute, please?"

Without a word,
Artur
rose, crossed the room in four big strides, and started talking to their waitress, who was staring at him the way diabetics stared at sundaes.

"What?"

"Fred, what the hell is wrong with you?"

"What?"

"You've met two new guys and instead of, I
dunno
, trying to build a meaningful relationship or at least get laid by either or both of them, you're
gonna
match them up together and head back to the aquarium?"

"Yeah."

"Fred. You are dumber than an octopus."

"Octopi," she told him with raised eyebrows, "are among the smartest animals on earth."

"Why don't you guys work together? Huh? He came all the way from the Black Sea—where the hell
is
the Black Sea, anyway… well, it sounds far away—and you can't just dump him!"

"I can." She added, "Southeastern Europe.
Oh, and Asia Minor.'"

"What?"

"The Black Sea.
Connected to the Mediterranean by the
Bosphorus
and the Sea of
Marmara
, and to the Sea of
Azov
by the—"

"This is not the point—"

"—Strait of
Kerch
," she finished.

She ignored his moan of despair and fished the last piece of tofu out of her soup bowl. The fact was, both Thomas and
Artur
made her anxious. She wasn't used to attention from men. And she had no interest in being in a triangle. Not that
that
was likely to happen.

"When was the last time you went on a date?" Jonas was demanding. "And if you give me the patented Fred 'I don't give a shit' shrug, I'll beat you to death."

She laughed at him.
Then thought about it.
And thought.
And thought some more. "Dr. Barb's ex-husband," she said at last.

"Oh, God, that's right. I totally forgot about him. You're lucky you didn't lose your job over that one."

"She's the one who set us up," Fred reminded him. What neither of them needed reminding was, it was a complete disaster. Dr. Barb's ex, whose name Fred had by now forgotten, spent half the date making gross passes at Fred, and the other half pining for his ex-wife. They had ended the meeting with a handshake, and he'd gone home with a black eye when he'd tried for more too persistently.

"And ever since then, you've been stuck in the vortex of a—what?
Six?
Six-year dating dry spell?"

"Vortex?"

"And here's two hunky fellows climbing all over you—"

"They aren't—"

"—and all you can think of to do is stick them together and vamoose."

"I've got other stuff to worry about."

"That's why," he said kindly, "you're a moron. Just like an octopus. No, don't tell me, I don't care. They're stupid, too."

Jonas cheerfully trailed behind his best bud and her massive, ridiculously good-looking new pal. He eyed the people milling around on the cobblestones and wondered if any of them had the faintest idea he was walking behind two
mer
-people. Hell,
be
had a hard time believing it, and he'd grown up with one of them.

Artur
kept leaning over and trying to whisper in Fred's ear, and she kept batting him away like he was a persistently annoying fly. Jonas shook his head. It was so obvious that
Artur
—a prince! A
freakin
' prince!—had the
hots
for his pal. Did she notice?
Nuh
-uh.
Would she have cared if she did notice?
Probably not.
Was she a
nutjob
of the highest order?
Yup.

But then, if she didn't engage in that odd
Freddish
behavior, she wouldn't be Fred.

He still remembered the day they met. He'd been pretty shocked when the big kids had ganged up on him, and had barely noticed the small, stick-thin blue-haired girl reading a book up against a tree.

Whether she didn't like the distraction from her book or couldn't stand to see the odds so badly out of whack (probably the former), it didn't matter. She'd gotten up and put her hands on the big kids and they'd gone flying and then she went back to her book and she'd ignored the stares and the whispers.
Almost as if, at the ripe old age of seven, she.
didn't
notice them anymore, or never had, or just didn't care.

He'd pestered her the rest of the day until she had sighed and agreed to bring him to her house. They'd been buds ever since.

He'd known. Not that she was a mermaid, but even as a child, Fred wasn't like anybody else.
Anybody
else.
That was all right, though, because he wasn't a typical elementary school student, either, not when he knew how to do floral arrangements and had a collection of paint chips which he kept organized by tint and type (matte, gloss, etc.).

And when she finally worked up the courage to show him her other form, he had been surprised, but not shocked. And not horrified, either. He'd thought her tail was pretty, and had told her so. She'd told him to shut up, and he'd ignored her.